Order in the Court (15 page)

I wondered, as she left the store, when she’d had time to write it down. Did she carry her number in her pockets, waiting for the right occasion to slip it to someone? Or had she seen me and written it down before she interrupted my selection process?

I ended up buying the book and using her number as a bookmark. My fingers slid over the leaf of torn notebook paper every night as I read about two girls in love, each time I touched it feeling like a little betrayal.

“I FEEL
conspicuously like I know a lot about you and nothing at all,” Valerie said when we’d settled in. I took a sip of my too-hot coffee, burning my tongue. I was surprised I’d called. The whole situation was strange and a little embarrassing.

“Same,” I said numbly. “Nothing said at the support group counts, and it’s just so….” I trailed off, losing the word I wanted.

“So…,” Valerie echoed. She dunked her tea bag in and out of her steaming London Fog, nearly spilling the foam over the side.

The silence that followed was awkward. I wondered if this is what a first date felt like and then began to panic. Was this a date? Was I on a date? I just wanted to talk about the book!

“Why don’t we just… start over?” Valerie asked. My panic ebbed a little. “We can give each other the elevator speech and go from there.” At my blank stare, she sighed. “You know. Like a job interview. ‘If we got on an elevator together and you had the duration of the ride to pitch yourself to me….’”

“Yeah, okay. Let’s do that.” I ran my burned tongue over my teeth. The feeling helped to ground me; I felt off-kilter, my equilibrium disturbed by the notion of dating again so soon after Kate. Was this a date? “You start.”

“Okay. Right, then.” Valerie continued to dunk her tea bag, narrowing her eyes at it like it had personally offended her. “Well, my name is Valerie. I have two cats, Foggy and Cousteau. Foggy is a big fluffy ball we rescued from a shelter and Cousteau is a very uppity Siamese my stepfather brought with him when he moved in. I still live with my parents.”

“Me too,” I said, feeling a little relieved that she didn’t have her own apartment or something. At least we were on a level playing field in that way. Valerie looked up from her tea to grin at me.

“Keepin’ it cheap, college-style!” She laughed, finally letting go of the tea bag’s string and taking a sip of her drink. “I’m a Pisces, and I love to read those stupid horoscope columns in the paper, even though they’re always wrong. I love tarot cards, and palm readings, and I’ve been hypnotized twice in my life, once by a professional and once onstage during a magic act. I love magic.” She wiggled the fingers of her free hand. “Even though it’s fake most of the time. I’m majoring in health science with a minor in nutrition, which I bet you didn’t even know was even
offered
because it is the tiniest class on campus, I swear to Sappho. I want to be a nutritionist, but also someone who does herbal remedies and spiritual cleansings.”

She looked at me with her wide green eyes and paused, looking thoughtful. “This is the longest elevator ride ever. I feel like I’m rambling on about stuff that I think is important, but I don’t know if you think it’s important. What’s important to you?”

I shrugged, feeling quite enraptured by the easiness with which she talked about herself. “School, I guess. The future. Justice and equality.” None of those things really gave an opening for conversation. I knew we had one thing in common: Pride. And it was the perfect lead-in to talk about the book. “When did you know you were interested in women?”

“Ah yes, the coming-out story. I knew when I was eight or nine that I didn’t like boys the way that my friends did. I wanted to make them eat dirt, not kiss them. But I was probably twelve before I realized that I liked girls the way I was supposed to like boys. I told my mom right away, and she was really cool about everything, but she’s basically a hippie. Dad was less enthusiastic. He left about a year later, but my parents were already on the rocks, so I don’t think it was my gayness that scared him off.” She shrugged, sipped her tea like her parents divorcing wasn’t a big deal. “But yeah, I was super young. So I’m a gold-star lesbian, obviously.”

“Gold star?” I asked bemusedly. “I didn’t realize we were being graded, or I would have studied harder.”

Valerie laughed softly. “I got the feeling at Pride that you were a late bloomer. A newbie. Gold-star just means a lesbian who hasn’t been with a man. Sometimes, you know, there are girls who aren’t sure so they have sex with a guy to see if they like it. Or they get pressured to date guys by homophobic parents and sleep with guys to keep up appearances while they’re in the closet. Or they’re in denial.” She waved her free hand like she was shooing away the thought. “But I’ve never even kissed a guy. Only slept with ladies. So I’m gold-star.”

“You sound so proud of that. Like it’s an accomplishment.” I was surprised but intrigued. The concept had never crossed my mind.

“Well, it just means that I never wavered. I knew what I wanted, and I never succumbed to heteronormativity. Some people think that you have to have had sex with a guy and not enjoyed it to ‘become’ a lesbian, but that’s bull.” Valerie tapped her fingers along the side of her cup as though agitated. “A lot of lesbians take pride in it if they’ve never had a man touch them. It’s like a purity thing.”

“So what are bisexuals, then? Tainted?” I demanded, only half joking, trying not to let any hurt creep into my voice. I was starting to feel insulted.

Valerie snorted, still tapping. A stone settled in my stomach, low and heavy. Her finger-tapping, tea bag-dunking, twitchy, never-still self was suddenly very much on my nerves.

“Bisexuality is just a code word. The real thing is hard to come by,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s a word for gay men who are too scared to come all the way out of the closet and want to keep one foot in the door. Or it’s a transition in their coming-out process, so people get used to the idea that they’re into guys before they come out as gay. Or it’s straight girls who kiss their friends to get attention from men.”

“So the whole letter in LGBT is just for show, then? They don’t exist?” I was surprised Valerie hadn’t picked up on my hackles going up. My temperature was rising, my hands gripping my coffee cup, my jaw clenching.

“A true bisexual is like a unicorn. Anyone who says they’re bi is probably lying. I mean, there might be a few of them out there, but I’m not going to go around kissing straight girls masquerading as them to find one. That only leads to heartbreak.”

“You wouldn’t date someone bisexual?” My heart was racing. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I felt a bit like an undercover spy or a reporter looking into the Secret Minds of Lesbians.

“No, I’d be too afraid of them leaving me for a guy. Or, God forbid, asking for a threesome with one. No thanks. I don’t want any penises anywhere near me or the person I’m with.” She sipped her tea. I wanted to kick her. “So, what about you? When did you know?”

I considered the question a moment before I answered. After taking a moment to steady myself, I said, “I questioned for a while after I started high school. Dated a couple of guys. Got really passionate about LGBT issues and started a GSA, even though I wasn’t too sure yet. Then I fell in love with one of my best friends. Kate.”

My hands were still clenching my coffee cup, gripping like I’d never let go. The plastic lid was about ready to pop off. Valerie nodded sympathetically.

“I’m sorry you lost her. The first girl is always special. My first love and I still stay in touch.” She reached across the table between us and touched my hands with hers. I pulled back, bringing my hands and my coffee out of her reach. “What’s wrong?”

“I exist.” I let go of my cup for fear of breaking it and spilling coffee, putting my palms flat on the table as I looked into her ridiculously large eyes. “And apparently my existence offends you in some way. I’m bisexual, and I find your concept of gold-star lesbianism highly offensive.”

“I’m sorry if you misinterpreted—” she backpedaled, but I was not having it.

“I gave you every opportunity. If someone said ‘I wouldn’t date a black person because they’re all thugs,’ that would be racist. But it’s okay to say that you wouldn’t date someone bisexual based on stereotypes? I knew that some people think we’re greedy or slutty or can’t be monogamous, but that’s just not true. So what if I like men as well as women? I can like pie and cake and not eat both every single night.”

“So you like men.” Valerie seemed to latch on to that. “And you think that makes you special? Straight girls are a dime a dozen. Kissing girls every once in a while when it’s convenient for you doesn’t make you special. You can retreat back into heterosexuality any time you want while the rest of us are
actually
being oppressed.”

“I’m not heterosexual!” I spat. “I’m
bi
. It has its own letter in the acronym. You know what else has its own letter? Transgender. Which you seem to be forgetting with all your ‘keep the penises away from me’ stuff. That’s so openly transphobic it’s not even funny.” It was a cheap shot and I knew it, but I couldn’t help but go there once I’d started. I couldn’t help raising my voice in my fervor, couldn’t help getting passionate.

“Don’t pull that Tumblr feminism crap on me. One of my best friends is trans! I support trans people! Your
identity
is inherently transphobic because it reinforces gender binaries!”

“My
identity
is a label used to describe people who are attracted to genders similar and different than their own. Similar and different. That’s
two
, as in
bi
. It only reinforces the gender binary if you ignore the definition created by actual bisexuals instead of other people trying to put labels on us that we didn’t agree to!”

People were staring at us. Somehow, this had become a fight. When had this conversation become a fight?

“You know what, screw you!” Valerie gathered up her outerwear and began pulling it on. Her cheeks were flushed as she roughly yanked on her jacket. “I thought you seemed nice, but you’re really arrogant, you know that? You think you know so much more than me. It’s pathetic.”

It was like she’d been drilling and drilling at me with her bias and ignorance and had finally hit oil—social justice oil, that is. White-hot feminist oil backed by dozens of online articles and resources.

“What’s
pathetic
is putting down women who have been with men just because you aren’t attracted to them. What’s
pathetic
is you storming off right now instead of admitting that what you said was incredibly ignorant!”

“When you figure out that you’re really gay and want to apologize, you’ll know where to find me,” Valerie said as she tucked her scarf into the front of her jacket.

“I’d say good-bye, but I wouldn’t want to upset your worldview that all bi’s are bad.”

End with a pun, good going, Corey
, I thought as Valerie scooped her tea off the table and turned away in a huff. I watched her leave and felt the tension drain from my shoulders when the door closed behind her.

I put my head down on the table and let the anger slowly leach out. So much for being a normal college student. Only I could turn flirting into a heated argument in ten seconds flat. I had to have set a new record for pissing off a potential date. No matter that she was the one who was wrong—so, so wrong—I was the one who had steered the conversation there, had poked and prodded until I woke the bear, had overturned the wrong stone and found a worm. Maybe it was
me
who had been the one drilling, looking for something to blow up at. Self-sabotage so that there wouldn’t be a second date. Was this supposed to have been a date?

“That sounded like a bad breakup,” a voice said from above me. “Are you okay?”

I looked up and saw a teenaged boy with bad skin and his hair slicked back with way too much product standing awkwardly beside my table. I shrugged. He asked, “May I join you?” and then paused, lowering his voice. “I, uh, I think I might not exist either.”

I took a deep breath. It really wasn’t the time to be mentoring some kid. I didn’t feel like it. I didn’t want to talk about it, to provide resources, to educate. I wanted to mope and wallow. I let the breath out and gestured to the seat across from me, previously occupied by Valerie.

“Sorry I was eavesdropping. I didn’t mean to, but you got pretty loud and a lot of what you had to say was really interesting. That girl was way out of line.” The boy slid awkwardly into the booth, arranging his long limbs with the gracelessness of puberty. “My name is Caleb, by the way.” He held out his hand.

“Corey,” I said and shook his hand. It was sweaty. “You exist, don’t worry. You wouldn’t know it for the lack of characters on TV, but you exist. Bisexuality isn’t a curse word. There is nothing wrong with us.” I sighed, rubbing a hand over my eyes and trying hard to believe it. “So, why do you think you might be bisexual?”

Caleb smiled shyly and began to tell me about a cute boy in his class. He was a tenth grader. I sat back, adjusted the lid on my dented coffee cup, and listened. There is nothing wrong with us.

THE FIRST
witness called on the second day of the trial was an expert witness on blood spatter that the defense had brought out of the woodwork. He looked a bit like a fly, with thick glasses that made his already bulging eyes look gigantic. I didn’t listen to his testimony, which, according to Haywood, was supposed to cast doubt on the validity of the coroner’s findings. The expert droned in a monotone about minute blood drops and different kinds of blood spatter. Even his voice was like the buzzing of a fly—impossible to focus on.

There was no recess before the defense called their second witness, Dr. Marianne Wagner. She took the stand confidently, swearing on the Bible with ease. She looked like a real expert witness, not something one might find trapped between window panes during spring cleaning.