“Oh, sorry.” I felt dumb for a moment but then I took a breath and just said it. “Like, Clark Kent is with all the important people in his life, being you know, a mild-mannered average guy in a totally normal situation, being totally normal, and then aliens attack and he has to go be Superman.”
People who felt, I don’t know, connected to being male and female, were they just going about their day as a woman, painting their nails and then bam, they wanted to play football and drink beer? Was being gender fluid like being a superhero?
It was probably wrong or naïve to think being genderfluid sounded cool just because it seemed like being a superhero. And they probably faced lots of dumb stuff. My brain was stuck on this, but once it knew, maybe it could move on.
Morgan considered the question. “I don’t think it’s like the flip of a switch or an alien invasion.”
Huh. Okay, gender fluid people didn’t lead lives like Clark Kent. My interest didn’t wane though. The lives they led still seemed, wait, was interest even the right word? All this stuff seemed like… an experience. One pretty different from mine. Not in a bad way! Maybe not even in a good way. It just seemed like a whole original kind of perspective to have from my own.
That was okay, right? To know I didn’t know much and to want to learn more. Maybe I had to stop worrying I was going to do or say or think the wrong thing. I didn’t want to say that didn’t matter, but maybe if something was new, it didn’t matter as much? Or like, how could you avoid doing the wrong thing if you weren’t entirely sure what was right and wrong? Finding out would likely involve both. Sometimes you would get it wrong. Sometimes you would get it right.
Maybe it wasn’t terrible to get stuff wrong as long as that wasn’t the part you were going to stop at. What mattered was that you didn’t give up. Kept making an effort. Being willing to be wrong or silly or confused or dumb in order to eventually not be those things.
Did I figure something out? Did that relate to my own situation?
I remembered that I was with two other people and probably doing a terrible job at having a conversation, so I gave Morgan a quick smile. “Cool, thanks,” I said since they answered my question.
Morgan smiled. “Ryan said meeting you would be an experience.”
“Did I say something totally stupid? I’m so bad at this stuff.” Even though I was constantly feeling like I was one move away from a massive social faux pas, I’d been feeling pretty down before I came in here and at least this conversation gave me other stuff to think about.
“No, Ryan got it exactly right,” they decided with a nod.
“He told you I wouldn’t say anything stupid?” I asked skeptically. “That doesn’t sound like him.”
They smiled. “Ryan said you would be totally clueless and say several wrong things, but you would still somehow get the important parts right, even if it took a minute.”
That… Ryan had a lot of faith in me, even though we’d been doing everything wrong lately. And I felt even worse for a moment because he thought I got stuff right, and I couldn’t figure our current situation out, so there I was letting him down again.
“Are you guys having problems?” Morgan asked. When Jeremey gave them a stern look, they added, “I’m not trying to be nosy. Not totally. Don’t give up,” they encouraged me. “You love each other, right?” If only it was that simple.
“Yeah, but I don’t know,” I answered. I hesitated, then decided, why not? I’d been talking about this with everyone else, why not discuss my relationship problems with complete strangers? “Things aren’t great. It’s like, whenever we’re off, the distance grows. Whenever we’re on the same page, the distance grows. There’s no right answer anymore.”
“You love each other,” Morgan said, trying to make it all simple again. “If you trust that, it’s got to turn around.”
“That’s been true from the start,” I argued. “Things still go wrong.”
“That’s not a guarantee everything will go right,” Morgan argued back.
“Um,” Jeremey said quietly, but we both turned to look at him. “I’m not very good at this relationship stuff,” he told his hands. “And I was even worse when it came to Morgan.” He looked at them quickly, then looked away. “See, I identify as straight, and what if Morgan was born a guy? Does that make me not straight? And then, what if they were born a girl? Does that matter? Because they aren’t one now. I was making a big deal out of everything and also making it all about me.”
And then Jeremey and Morgan shared a look, and I couldn’t quite tell what it meant because I had just met them, but it seemed like Morgan thought he was being too hard on himself while Jeremey disagreed. Then their little moment ended and he looked at me. “I think we get stuck on the wrong thing.” I don’t know if he meant humans in general or him and me.
“We forget what matters,” he continued. “We get afraid. We tell ourselves so many things. We let ourselves be led away from the truth because it’s scary to really want someone. To navigate things going wrong.” He opened his mouth to keep talking, but he faltered and couldn’t figure out what to say next.
Morgan took over. “There’s no, if it’s meant to be, it will be. There’s only, if you want it to be, you make it meant to be.” They smiled at each other.
I wanted it to be. I wanted me and Ryan to be together. I was so worried we might not be when he came back, but if we both still wanted the same thing, then what was the problem? This wasn’t one of those things where I could say it was out of my hands. That was up to me. I could let things fall apart or I could do everything in my power to fix things.
I love Ryan so much. He loves me so much. Showing that to each other, in a physical way, I guess we thought the act would match our feelings. And when it didn’t, we thought are our feelings off, wrong? Does this mean something? I don’t think there’s an answer. It means something if we want it to, if we let it.
The world is a gigantic, confusing place. You grow up thinking it’s simple. At least I did. There’s only male or female. There’s only straight. Everything works in a certain way. Yet everyone is different and has different experiences. Maybe it’s impossible to never think the wrong thing or be confused, but the important thing to keep trying. To learn, to grow, to understand, maybe you just have to keep trying.
I don’t know if all the problems Ryan and I have lately mean something.
I love Ryan and he loves me. That means something too.
