“Oh, I’m not saying everyone born a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ necessarily adheres to all supposed ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ traits,” I said. “Or even that they do at all. Alls I’m saying is, our bodies—both hormonal makeup and social nurturing—encourage us a certain way, temperamentally. And only through awareness of these tendencies can we subvert em.

“But in terms of self-representation and -understanding? We’re capable of occupying either side, either archetype, for sure.”

“No I’m saying that whole binary is a lie,” she said.

“What about nature? Pollination? Mating?” I asked, turning onto Baltimore. It was way more lit than the tree streets—Pine, Spruce, Osage—we’d been passing, and I felt suddenly exposed in my U.S. Air Force box van with stickers repping my blog in reflective ‘mailbox’ alphabet all over it.

“Well no. Not all of nature reproduces that way. Some things reproduce on their own,” she said.

“Examples?!” I damn near yelled.

She typed frantically into her phone, into Wikipedia. Like we were on a game show and there was a countdown timer.

“Some rare, single-celled bacteria—”

“Oh c’mon!” I smacked the steering wheel.

“—and fungi, like mushrooms—”

“Oh word?” I said, curious suddenly.

“—don’t reproduce by mating female and male parts, but instead do so on their own.”

I pulled onto ex-roomie bae’s street. Into a corner spot, by a stop sign. Killed the engine.

“Well that,” I said. “That’s interesting. Fungi and mushrooms, huh?”

She nodded.

“The ole shroomies, huh?”

She smiled. Smirked. Like See?

“Nah girl,” I said, laughing. “This ain’t over. That’s still an outlier!”

•

Over the six months after I agreed to work on my Walk Book with editor bae, I cut—nixed, snipped—every savage, ugly, testosterone-fueled, shameful thing it had been the most difficult to write.

I re-buried all the parts I wrote the thing precisely to force myself, and the reader, to look at.

Everything I wrote so others might be more aware of such flagrant tendencies in themselves.

When editor bae ghosted I honestly didn’t know why.

I thought maybe she didn’t want our correspondence to end, and was stalling, since once the book was submitted, we wouldn’t have a professional reason to stay connected.

I thought maybe she felt like I was using her.

Thing was, I wouldn’t have given two fucks if she shared the script and the agent said No, this isn’t for me.

I was just not about not sending it.

You gotta send that shit!

I almost wanted it to get sent and get rejected, so that way we’d no longer have this veneer of professionalism preventing me from doing what I actually wanted to, which was turn on all that fuccboi charm and get back inside.

Or whatever, just kick it as homies.

I tried to communicate this.