Names That End with I

After college, for a very brief period of time, I lived with a woman named Tori. My mother had told me, growing up, never to trust a woman whose name ended in the letter “I,” though she’d been saying it then from a decidedly heteronormative perspective, like don’t get yourself tangled up with one of those sluts!  She said it the same way my father did whenever he’d point out a woman who had “crazy eyes,” a vague and nebulous term that only ever seemed to apply to people who were objectively out of his league. One of my favorite phenomena is watching people hung up on their own traumatic uncoolness realize that hot people can be decent and interesting and intelligent too, actually, that personality isn’t reserved for outcasts and nerds. More people, I think, should take time to learn that.

Unfortunately for me, though, and for the scales of justice everywhere, when it came to Tori, my mother was absolutely right; she was a piece of work.  

Tori had a yin-yang tattoo and a habit of leaving her Uggs just inside the front door so you’d trip over them in the dark on your way to your room. Or I would, at least. 

“We should buy a shoe rack,” Tori had said dreamily when I’d observed the hazards of this. “Misty ordered one on Amazon, you know, it’s like a …” She looked vaguely off into the distance and scrunched her mouth up into a thinking face. “It was, like, you know, like a light wood, like a sandalwood.” 

“Mm.” I was curled up on the couch and thinking about how much I disliked Misty because she had a nose ring, just like I did, and because she was a Gemini, which did not vibe well with me, and because she was really into astrology, which was irritating because that was only a good thing to be into if you weren’t named fucking Misty and didn’t have one of those cursive gold-swoop necklaces with your name on it that you wore everywhere and anywhere. One time Misty had told me that she had such a fondness for the necklace because her mother had given it to her, before she’d died, when Misty was still a teenager. 

“It’s like a little bit of my mom,” she’d said, fingering the necklace. “She gave it to me. Just like she gave me my name.” 

“I guess that makes me my own mom,” I’d said. 

Misty had blinked. “Your mom didn’t name you?” 

“Well, she did,” I’d said. “It’s just that I changed it when I changed everything else.” Which answer had seemed to nonplus Misty before a look of recognition had passed over her face and she’d done that thing that people do when they’ve only just realized you’re trans, where they start trying to look for the evidence of it. 

“I can’t believe I didn’t know,” she’d said, as though there was something to know, or as though people were supposed to have a radar for this sort of thing. I’d unconsciously tried to suck in my Adam’s apple. “I guess you are kind of tall.” 

“I guess.” The last syllable had come out choked-back and gnarled because I’d been intending to say, I guess you are kind of dumb. But I’d stopped myself at the last minute, which was something you had to be careful about, not letting your reactions to microaggressions become full-fledged aggressions. People wouldn’t like you then, and when people didn’t like you it gave them an excuse, they felt, not to accept you. Like how it’s bad to make fun of fat people but it’s fine for it to be funny that Donald Trump is fat. How it’s fine to be trans if you just are, but if you’re trans and make it anyone else’s thing to deal with it’s sort of a big pain in the ass, like you came up with the whole thing just to make people pay more attention to you. 

The trouble is, it’s really hard to come up with vengeful and covert microaggressions for straight cis people, or at least straight cis white people, who tend to meet insult with an air of ignorance or impassivity, like their surfaces are smooth, sanded down, like nothing ever nestles in there. So even when I’d then asked her if the necklace was real gold, because I’d been hoping that might force her to admit the cheapness of it, she’d instead looked down at it as though she might be able to appraise it on the spot and said: “You know, I’m not sure …” 

Which is all to say that when Tori suggested we buy a sandalwood shoe rack for her to put her Uggs on I said, “Mm,” and then added, “I don’t think Misty’s got great taste.” 

Tori looked at me and pouted. “That’s not very nice, C.J.,” she said, like she thought I’d been trying to avoid acting not nice. Which bugged me even more. The innocence of that. If there’s anything worse for a person you hate to be than good, it has to be innocent. At least goodness has something to do with what you are, with the person you’ve become. Innocence is as irritating as any other thing a person gets because they came out of the womb the right way. It’s nothing but a privilege. 

Tori was always very kind to me about my being trans. Surprisingly, it didn’t seem like it was of very much interest to her; I’d expected her to show me around to all of her girlfriends because it was interesting and novel and droll to have a trans friend. But no; she was unassuming about it, neither offended nor celebratory. This was a rare quality in people that I found I had a grudging respect for—the ability to treat anyone like anyone else. It would be difficult to overstate how deep it runs, the desire to be treated like anyone else. 

I’d actually run into trouble before when trying to communicate to people from college that I wanted them to leave me the hell alone about the whole thing. Like when my best friend Irene had started asking me for what she called “transition updates.” Or when I had tried to tell Quentin (who was white, and who was dating a Black woman at the time, something he was very sure to remind people about as often as he could) that my favorite book as a teenager had been Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, because I’d related to it. 

“What do you mean, you related to it?” he’d asked. 

“I related to it. The way people covet beauty. The, you know, like, the self-hatred of your own body. It’s basically a novel about dysphoria.” 

“It’s a novel about race,” Quentin had said. “Don’t you think it’s sort of presumptuous of you?” 

“To like a book?” 

“To identify with a Black character.” 

“I mean, no, I don’t think that.” 

He’d leveled me with a stare when I’d said that. “Really.” 

“Yes, really.” 

“You don’t think there are problems with that.” 

“Jesus, Q, do you think I’m Rachel Dolezal?” 

“No, I just think that maybe your willingness to co-opt a story about a different experience from your own in order to suit your own hang-ups is sort of, you know, I don’t know. Indiscreet.” 

I’d looked at him for a long moment, and then I’d said, “I read it when I was fourteen, Quentin. When I was fourteen and I wasn’t sure yet how to, like, articulate any of this shit. About my own body or about gender politics or whatever. I don’t think I was being a racist.” I’d almost said, How could it be racist to appreciate the work of this Black author? But then I realized there was something a little racist about that, and I’d stopped. For a long time afterward, though, I’d wondered what Toni Morrison would have had to say about the whole thing. In my own experience as a writer, I guessed she would only have been pleased. But then I’d considered that perhaps there was something kind of circuitously problematic about attempting to psychologize her from afar. And after that I’d stopped telling people my favorite book was The Bluest Eye. I’d started saying, instead, that it was Nevada by Imogen Binnie. Which is supposed to be your favorite book if you’re like a lit-pilled trans woman because it’s a book all about being a trans woman, which is supposed to be very difficult and exhausting and soul-crushing, which is true but incomplete, and besides the whole book is too tiring to be my favorite, because the last thing I want to do when I read is look in the mirror and remind myself of what I am. Most of the time I’m looking for ways to not remember who I am at all, because I’m not sure who I am is someone I particularly like.

And that’s the story of me and Toni Morrison, whose name ends with an I. 

I certainly wasn’t someone I liked while I was living with Tori, which was why it mattered to me that she didn’t seem to care about deep gender politics or anything like that. I guess, if I had to admit it to myself, this was part of why I’d stuck around on the sublet for the better part of that first year out of school; life had been exhausting enough already even before getting asked to constantly interrogate it, to figure out how to place myself within it, to figure out who I was becoming. And freedom from that inquisition was worth the cost to my curiosity. It was nice, for a while, not to think. 

“Have you ever noticed,” I said too loudly, spilling a little bit of cider. We were all standing around outside on some guy’s lawn in Somerville; he was an ex-boyfriend of Misty’s, I think. Tori was off getting round three from the mini fridge and that had left Misty and me to our own devices, which I was drunk enough not to really mind (I’d had a few rounds before round one). 

She looked at me for a minute and then said, “What?” 

“What?” 

“Have I ever noticed what?” 

“Oh.” I swayed back and forth a little bit. “Listen. Okay. You know how people are always talking about, oh, you should do this, you should … I don’t know, you should go to Peru now, you know, you should go to Peru now, while you’re so young and beautiful. Because you’re so young and beautiful. You’re still young and beautiful! Take advantage of it!” 

Misty made a very Valley Girl face and raised her eyebrows. “Uh. Yeah.” 

“Right. It’s always because you’re young and beautiful. Which has nothing to do with Peru.” 

“What’s in Peru?” 

“I don’t know. Nothing, really. It’s just an example.” I took a messy swig of the cider. “Like if, for example, you were young and beautiful and the thing you wanted to do was go to Peru.” 

“Lake Titicaca.” Some guy in a backwards baseball hat had leaned into our conversation to share this pearl of wisdom before flashing a shaka, sticking his tongue out, and moving on to give his friend by the beer keg a noogie. 

“Ew,” Misty said. 

“But do you know what I mean?” 

“I … uh, actually, honestly, no, Ceej, I have no idea.” I really didn’t like when anyone but my mom or Irene called me Ceej, but Misty made it seem non-negotiable.

“I’m saying … fuck, what am I saying.” I ran a single finger under my eye, like I was clearing gunk out from under it, but I didn’t really have any gunk, it was just a gesture. 

“I’m not sure what you’re saying.” 

“Oh!” It came to me. “Oh, I mean, what I mean is, like … what if you’re ugly?” 

Misty blinked. “Sucks to suck, I guess.” 

“No.” I shook my head. “No, I mean, nobody ever talks about what you’re supposed to do if you’re young and you’re ugly. Like, can you go to Peru if you’re ugly? Or are you supposed to, I don’t know, work at a FedEx warehouse, or like an AMC. Like, what are you supposed to do if you’re young and you’re ugly and there’s no real, like, time limit, you know? Like, you’re already fucked. So there’s no urgency.” I sloshed a little cider over the rim of the can. “You know. No urgency, to like … to go to Peru.” 

Misty shook her head. She really looked bamboozled. “Ceej, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t really think you have to worry about it.” 

“Worry about …” 

“Because you’re pretty, stupid. You’re young and beautiful. You can go to Peru if you want.” 

“I don’t want to go to Peru,” I said, but it was only because I wasn’t sure what to do with the fact that she’d really meant it, about my being beautiful, which was something I was constantly worrying about and normally only got given to me as a kind of sisterly pity. You know, how women have to tell each other how beautiful they are, and how it kind of neutralizes the whole gesture. Or else it was a guy saying it, and it was followed by something awful, usually “… for a trans girl.” I wasn’t sure what to feel, but even beneath the low buzz of alcohol it vaguely annoyed me, like I didn’t want Misty to be the one who made me feel all validated, like I wished it could have been anyone else. 

“Jesus, sorry guys,” Tori said. She was holding three shots of tequila. “I got stuck talking to someone named Chester.” 

“That’s not real,” Misty said. 

“That’s what I said,” Tori replied, “which was a mistake, because then he pulled out his ID and …” 

Tori proceeded to tell us all about Chester, who was studying to be a pilot and looked like Clark Kent. “He called himself the real-life Superman,” she said. “Because, like. Flying.” 

I laughed at this, and Misty did too, and for a while the night wore on around us like so many of those nights did. Misty was always hearing about parties and I was always feeling compelled to go to them. I’d never been able to prevent myself from signing on for experiences, even the ones that seemed like they were going to be overtly unpleasant; life was sort of a FOMO roulette for me, having to pick and choose carefully which things I was most willing to not experience. So I would drag myself to these big fratty-but-progressive Boston parties Misty was always getting hooked up with. Even more irritating was the fact that Misty somehow seemed to know every twenty-something this side of the Mystic River and was always getting snuck up on by people and then giving them an exaggerated “oh, hiiiii” and a big hug and then telling everyone all of everyone else’s biographical details. Like this is Chester, he’s a pilot or this is C.J., she’s trans (kinder than this is C.J., she’s unemployed, I guess) or this is Tori, she’s my best friend (that one was consistent). 

“Do you guys know Ti’Quan? You must know Ti’Quan.” I didn’t know Ti’Quan. He was a flamboyant, slender Black man with a septum piercing and extremely stylish glasses and a sequined blazer. “Ti’Quan’s a lit student.” Misty went on, “at Emerson.” 

“Mm, don’t embarrass me, Mist,” he said, pursing his lips playfully. “I don’t like presenting as a member of the intelligentsia.” 

“You don’t,” I said, a little too bluntly. I’d meant it to make him feel okay, about going to a nice school, but the way it came out was you don’t look very intelligent. Which made him purse his lips just a tiny bit differently, in my direction. 

“I met Ti’Quan at a poetry reading in Cambridge,” Misty said. Then she leaned forward to half-whisper to me and Tori, “He’s really good.” 

“You’re gonna make them hate me, honey,” Ti’Quan said to Misty, and I had to stop myself from telling him that he was right; I was starting to hate him a little bit. Which is something that I think people tend to do. It’s a pathetic impulse, really, but I think for a lot of people it’s the only alternative they have to hating themselves. To avoid feeling inferior you decide it’s bad to be superior. And Ti’Quan, by all accounts, was smarter than all of us; you could just sort of tell, the way he held himself, with this supreme unshowy confidence, that if you asked him to launch into some brisk exegesis of Heidegger he could do it, then and there, and make it seem simple to you. 

“What kind of poems do you write?” Tori asked. Which made me think, of course you’re asking that. 

“Limericks. Exclusively.” Tori nodded like she thought that was really interesting, and Misty giggled, and Ti’Quan threw me a wink, I think to try and fix things between us. 

“Well,” Tori said. “That’s way over my head.” 

Ti’Quan and Misty burst into laughter and Tori said, “What? What did I say?” 

“Nothing,” Ti’Quan said. “You’re just funny.” 

“Oh.” Tori smiled. “Thanks!” 

“Mist, I’m thinking I might head over to the Seaport later tonight. Talk to Bronson.” Ti’Quan tapped his nose a little bit and Misty nodded. 

“Right on, man. Is Leuci working?” 

“Yeah, they’re on weekend shifts now. I really feel for them.” 

“C.J.,” Misty said, then, as if something had suddenly occurred to her. “Have I introduced you to Leuci?” 

“You have not.” 

“Oh, you’ve got to meet Leuci. They’re, like … I don’t know.” Misty waved her arms around a little bit excitedly. “You’ve just got to meet them.” 

Misty was always telling people that they just had to meet so and so, but I could tell that, in this particular instance, the only reason she felt like I needed to meet this Leuci person was because they seemed to be some kind of gender-non-conforming, and she figured that was something I would automatically be into. Which was satisfyingly off-key enough, as an assumption, that it made up for the disappointment of Misty having been kind to me earlier. She could be Ugg boot Misty again. 

But I didn’t say that to Misty; instead, I said, “Oh, sure, yeah, they sound great.” 

“Leuci works at the aquarium,” Misty said. She was looking at something on her phone as though it was the real thing and I was the distraction.  “So we can get a look at the fish.” 

“I like fish,” I said. And that seemed to settle it. 

Boston’s Seaport District is cold and hollow and void. There are a bunch of hotels and advertisements for whale-watching tours and, right outside the aquarium itself, this big tank full of seals that are always swimming around with a full view of the actual ocean, something that’s always made me vaguely sad. One of those so-close-yet-so-far things. 

The seal tank was dark and the wind off the harbor was biting. Outside the door a guy with a mullet was smoking a cigarette and wearing his security uniform open at the chest in a way that reminded me vaguely of a 70s porn star. He flicked his cigarette into the ocean, which I didn’t consider very eco-conscious and marine of him, for a guy who caught night shifts at an aquarium. Then he smoothed his mullet back with two hands, one after the other, and brushed his mustache downward. 

“Hey, Bronson,” Misty said. “How’s this weather treating you?” 

“Like tits,” Bronson said gruffly. Then he drew his hand up to his mouth in a cigarette-smoking way before realizing he’d already flicked the cigarette into the ocean. He could have been forty-six or twenty-seven. I had no idea. 

“Is Leuci inside?” Misty asked. 

Bronson jerked his head. “It’s unlocked,” he said. 

Ti’Quan leveled Bronson with a flutter of his eyelashes. “Have you got, sweetie?”  

“Yeah, I’ve got.” Bronson shoved his hands into the pockets of his uniform. You could see his breath like exhaust against the icy wind. “You’re looking?” 

Ti’Quan tapped his nose a little and Bronson nodded. 

“Come on, I’ve got some in my office. In here.” He looked at me and Tori. “Who are these two?” 

“Friends of mine,” Misty said. “They’re cool.” 

But I wasn’t feeling very cool as I followed them inside, and it was invigorating to hear Misty, of the sandalwood Uggs rack and the gold-plated name necklace and the pretty much undeniable prettiness, acting street-hardened. I’d had a couple of low-level weed dealers in my time, but nothing like this. And the drinks were beginning to catch up with me. I felt queasy and the world had begun to take on a sharp blur, an uncanny clarity. I swayed a little bit when I walked through the door. 

The inside of the aquarium didn’t do anything to help; it was dark in there, reflections rippling against black felt walls. It turned the echoey concrete interior of the building into a weird grotto, and the cold white light from the subterranean penguin exhibit flooded upward from a gap in the floor like a portal into Dante’s thirteenth circle, all icy fire. 

I’d been to the aquarium countless times when I was a kid, before I’d had any conception of myself, or what I guess people would call my “transness,” though those don’t feel like separate things to me. My father had always taken me; he’d liked to sneak in what he called “guy time.” My favorite part, he always liked to bring up around the rest of my family, had been the big circular tank in the middle of the building, which has about five stories of spiraling concrete walkway wrapped around it and functions as a kind of atrium. There are filthy windows into the tank every five feet or so along the spiral, and the interior is a giant artificial reef with about as many kinds of fish as you can imagine in there—groupers, tuna, bonnethead sharks, moray eels, and even a small cabal of sea turtles, who are all old and wise and sometimes linger up at the top of the tank, which is open. The way my father tells it, I’d always ask him, at that top level, if I could go swimming in the tank. “Like Finding Nemo,” he claims I would say. “I want to be like Finding Nemo, Dad.” I knew it wasn’t my favorite—I’d liked the little tidepool tank where you could touch the horseshoe crabs—but he told it with such conviction and reverence that I’d never wanted to correct him. Once he’d gotten us kicked out by picking me up by the ankles and dangling me over the tank. My mother had been furious, but the truth was that I had hoped he’d drop me in. There was something about the ecosystem in there that had seemed right to me. Pleasant. Simple. A bunch of fish just doing their thing, minding their business. Fish doing what fish are supposed to do. Not a thought in the world about it. 

“Mist!” A figure had emerged from the jellyfish exhibit. They were coming toward us in a kind of canine half-trot, a big grin on their face, a baggy sweatshirt draped over a roundish frame. I noticed that their feet lit up when they ran; they were wearing those weird sneakers from the late 2000s, the kind only the rich kids had in middle school, that flash colors when you put pressure on them. And they had really skinny ankles underneath tight blue jeans. This, I assumed, was Leuci. 

“Hey girlie,” Misty said, and then quickly caught herself. “I mean, um. Sorry.” 

“I’ll let it slide,” Leuci replied. “Old habits.” 

Misty laughed and then said, “Plus, I mean, everyone’s girlie. Bronson’s girlie.” 

“Don’t be coming for my man like that,” Ti’Quan said. Then he put a hand on Bronson’s shoulder while Bronson looked down at a ring on his belt and started shuffling through keys. Bronson jerked his shoulder away and gave Ti’Quan a warning look. 

“Hands off, brother.” 

“Please do not touch the animals in the exhibit,” said Leuci.  

“Leuc,” Misty said, “this is C.J. I’ve mentioned C.J., yeah?” 

Leuci turned to me and looked me up and down, which made me feel sort of self-conscious. I’d done myself up to look like a cheerleader, so I was wearing my hair in pigtails and a short plaid a-frame skirt and knee-high striped socks and a button-down white blouse. It wasn’t something I always felt great about, all that appealed to the male gaze, but it was the easiest way to avoid the awful clocking-you-as-trans onceover thing I’d gone through the other night with Misty: to distract people with an excess of femininity. If you could pull it off, it worked like a charm. And besides, I thought, what’s the male gaze, anyway? Ti’Quan’s was fixed on a dude with a mullet. 

“Yeah.” Leuci gave me a small smile. “Misty’s told me a lot about you.” 

“Same here,” I said, although she hadn’t.  

“What can I say,” Misty said. “I’m a matchmaker.” 

Bronson grunted and held up a key. “All right, kids. Let’s go to the stash.” 

Misty and Ti’Quan fell in line behind him as he began to walk toward a narrow door on the right side of the lionfish tank. Misty gave me a little wave and then Leuci a little wink. Then she blew Tori a kiss, at which point I realized Tori hadn’t said anything for about five minutes and turned to ask if she was all right. 

Instead of answering me, she turned to Leuci. “Is there anyone else …?” 

“No,” Leuci said, “just us.” 

“Thank god,” Tori said, then tossed me her purse at end zone-pass speed and said, “Where’s the bathroom? I’ve had to pee for, like, four hours.” 

Leuci threw their chin past the penguin hole. “By the jellyfish.” 

“I’ll come find you!” Tori yelled without turning around. Her high heels echoed weirdly and dully off the concrete, reverberating like the slapback from a bass. Then she disappeared and the aquarium fell silent but for the weird burble from the tanks. 

I turned to look at Leuci. “Well,” I said. “Hi, I guess.” 

“Yeah, hi.” They scratched their head and I caught a glimpse of a mandala tattoo on their neck. They were white and pasty and sort of circle-shaped. Not ugly so much as poorly-kept, I thought. Like with a little effort they might have looked like a rockstar. 

“Misty always does this,” they said after a moment of silence. 

“Does …” 

“She, like, pairs queer people together. Like she thinks they’re going to have something to talk about, or like, I don’t know, like she wants to be a recruiter for some nebulous community. I don’t know.” They wouldn’t make eye contact with me. “It’s sweet in theory, I guess.” 

“Yeah, well.” I adjusted the neck of my blouse. “Leave it to Misty.” 

There was an uncomfortable beat during which I heard something slide into the water with an aqueous splash. Probably a penguin. Then Leuci asked if I wanted the tour. 

“Sure,” I said. “Let’s look at the big tank.” 

They gave a soft laugh. I couldn’t tell if it was derisive or not. “People always want to see the big tank,” they said. “It’s, like, the least interesting thing here.” 

“It was my favorite,” I said. “When I was a kid.” 

Then they nodded. But they didn’t say anything else. 

While we made our way up the concrete spiral (I insisted on walking up instead of taking the elevator, which seemed to exasperate Leuci), I realized that I didn’t like them very much. This happens to me sometimes with people. It’s not that they’re bad—a lot of times it’s the exact opposite. It’s that they mean too well to have anything interesting to say. It’s like hearing a conversation on The Bachelor, where what passes for conversation is really facile agreement on universal things. It’s an arrogant poise, and it’s not only reserved for PTO members and good Catholics. Young, hip, alternative people are this way, too; they just don’t know it’s righteousness. The moral aristocracy and the people who protest it work on shockingly similar wavelengths. Both presuppose that their way of living is the correct one. 

Leuci, I could tell, thought they were living correctly. Talking to them was a little bit like talking to a Twitter feed. They talked in circles about a number of things. About how protests and marches were often only good for the capitalists organizing them. About how they thought the pussy hat phenomenon was sort of un-inclusive and offensive. About how people who didn’t vote were execrable but people who voted and really meant it were, like, maybe worse. I didn’t disagree, exactly, with any of it. But I guess I disagreed with the idea that it constituted a personality. When they broke out that old Karl Marx aphorism—the religion is the opiate of the masses one—as part of a screed about the rollback of educational rights in Florida, I finally decided to change the subject. 

“So,” I said. There was a big fish with stupid eyes casting us an aspersive glance from behind the dirty glass. “Your name.” 

“My name.” 

“I’ve never seen it spelled that way.” I nodded at the nametag on their uniform. 

“It’s short for Leucippus,” they said. “You know.” 

“I don’t.” 

“Oh.” They fingered the nametag. “He’s a Greek thing.” 

“A Greek thing.” 

“Yeah,” they said. “There’s sort of a … well, okay. He’s, like, basically transmasc. There’s this family, and like, the dad wants a boy. But the mom gives birth to a girl. So she just pretends Leucippus is a dude. And then when he hits puberty she prays to the gods for them to help out. So they just do a full physical transition on his ass. Turn him into a guy.” 

“Huh.” I raised my eyebrows. “That’s pretty cool of the Greeks.” 

“They were a lot more okay with queerness.” 

“And pedophilia,” I said. But Leuci didn’t respond to that. So I added, because I was drunk and low on filters, “So do you identify that way, then? Transmasculine?” And then, I added again, “You don’t have to answer that if you don’t want to. Sorry. That’s like, a trans 101 thing not to ask.” 

They kind of cocked their head from side to side and said, “Well, it’s complicated.” Then they fingered the mandala tattoo on the back of their neck. “I’ve read a lot of literature from different cultures about gender fluidity, and I think the one that best suits me is the idea of being two-spirit.” 

“Like.” An eel stuck its head out from behind a sponge. “Like the … that’s a Native American thing, right?” 

“Well, I mean, it was different for different Native communities. There are distinctions.” They pushed their glasses up on their nose. “But, basically, yes.” 

“You’re …” I gave them another glance. They were glowing in the blue light. “Sorry, but you’re … are you …?” 

“Oh, Native? No.” They shook their head emphatically. “White as a sheet.” 

“Hm.” 

“Anyway, yeah, I just really like the fluidity of the term, the ways in which it captures a multiplicity that acknowledges but transcends the binary … I mean, I wouldn’t ever say I, like, identified that way, in a public sense, since it would be, you know, sort of appropriative. But I like it.” They kept fingering the back of their neck. “It speaks to me.” 

I don’t know why I said what I said next. Like I mentioned, I was a little drunk. We were almost at the top of the big circular tank; the reef was beginning to give way to clear blue, and I could see our reflections stretched and distended in the curved glass. And I knew I shouldn’t have, that it wasn’t worth it, or that it wasn’t my thing to say. But then I thought about how they’d reacted when I’d said I wanted to come see the big tank. And I let it slip out anyway. 

“Don’t you think that’s sort of presumptuous of you?” 

They stopped walking. We had gotten to the top of the tank “What?” they asked.

“I said, don’t you think that’s sort of presumptuous of you. To, like. To take something specific and complicated from a culture you’ve had a hand in oppressing and just try to make it your own. To, like. I don’t know. To paper over the nuances. To co-opt it.” 

For a moment, they were flustered. “I don’t,” they said. “I didn’t,” they said. And then they seemed to catch themselves a little bit. And they said, very evenly, “Don’t you think it’s sort of presumptuous of you to ask?” 

I shrugged my shoulders and felt blood rushing to my head. I was quivering all over with doubt and with a weird kind of fury. But I tried to play it cool. “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know. I’m drunk. I’m really drunk. Forget I said anything.” Then, after a moment where they kept looking at me in a steely, recoiled way, I added, “I really liked the story about Leucippus.” 

“Yeah, well,” they said. “I’m not Greek, either.” 

“Leuci.” I closed my eyes and took a breath. “Leuci, I’m really sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” they said. “Enjoy the view. I’m gonna go downstairs.” 

“I’m sorry,” I said. But they were already leaving. And watching them lope down the concrete walkway like that, I had a split second, looking at the bobbing mandala, where I wanted to ask if they were Hindu, too. Just to try and stick it to them. To show them I’d been right all along. But I wasn’t feeling righteous anymore. I was feeling impossibly, unutterably sad. Like in the process of breaking someone else’s heart, I’d also broken my own.

Their footsteps disappeared around the bend and I was alone, the light warbling off the ceiling and the bottom of my chin. The tank filters bubbled. Little reverberations of water slipped up against the sides of the tank. I walked over to the edge and looked down. 

In another world, I jump in. I dive into the clear water and grow gills and shed my skin for scales. My legs tie off into fins and my arms become flippers. Everything slips away into an endlessness of circular blue. Turtles glide past with wise little smiles as I thrum through the water with ease, with grace, without anyone there to correct my posture or criticize my makeup. I no longer have an Adam’s apple or a heavy brow or big, sturdy hands. No one is concerned about the size of things. Sharks circle lazily at the surface, basking in the artificial sun, waiting to be fed chum they don’t have to pay for. The sharks don’t eat anyone in here. They don’t have to. We exist in perfect harmony. We are fed and housed. We are without discomfort. Even the eels are looking beautiful today, with their leering green grins and their big buggy eyes. I don’t notice these things, because I have no sense of my aesthetics. I have no sense of who I am. I don’t think at all, in this cerulean chamber, this perfect empty place. I am down here. That is all. And I am a fish without a wardrobe. I am a fish without a culture. I am a fish without a body. I am a fish. I am a fish. I am a fish.