As I thought of this, my straight self surfaced for a moment and groaned with mournful nostalgia for the girls I’d dated, or at least fantasized about, and all the desires that had dropped off this new, unfamiliar horizon. I remembered what it felt like, but the actual feeling was gone. It was like I had taken one of those Mberries that totally altered your taste buds, but instead of just your sense of taste, the change went down to your very nature. What used to be bitter was now sweet, and what was once sweet had no flavor at all.

As I saw Paul to the door, he said, “You’re still looking kind of off. You sure you’re okay?”

“Just tired,” I told him. “I’ll be fine.”

“So . . . math on Sunday?” he asked. “Usual time?”

I offered him a slight grin. In all worlds Paul tutored me on Sundays. Even here, those sessions were actually about math.

“See you then,” I told him. We fist-bumped a goodbye but held our knuckles together longer than a fist bump usually lasts. It’s amazing how much your knuckles can feel when you really want them to. Then he went to his car and I closed the door behind him, the old part of me relieved, and the new part already missing him.

There are a great many things I don’t understand. I’m sure it’s the same for you. No matter how smart we think we are, we simply can’t know all there is to know—and if you spend all your time thinking about those things, it will drive you crazy.

Mostly, we’re okay with the things we don’t get. We shrug our shoulders, accept the mystery, and move on.

But not everyone’s like that. There are people who are so threatened by things they don’t understand that they feel a need to stomp them out. They have to crush them so that each thing killed is one less thing to tax their brain. It’s the force behind war, behind genocide, behind the worst things that human beings are capable of.

It’s also the cause of the small injustices we come across every single day.

My dad once told me a story about his father. How, when his dad was little, he would naturally pick up crayons with his left hand. But then he had an old-school teacher in first grade, and I mean “old-school” in the true sense. When she caught him putting a crayon in his left hand, she would smack it painfully with a ruler and make him switch to his right hand. Left-handedness was shameful and wrong. Conformity was the solution.