“Cool, me too. I’m Genevieve. Can I have some of your weed?”

“Yeah, could I have one of your cigs?”

You pushed the pink hood off your head and shook out a tangle of brownish hair with a bit of pink at the ends. I noticed that there was, like, a lot of glitter on your face. Maybe too much. It made your face look pale and fragile. In every other respect you looked like a teenager, awkward and ill-at-ease in your own body, hunching over, shifting your weight a lot.

Music from the house filtered through the quickening dusk. We passed the joint quickly back and forth. We found out that we lived within two blocks of each other and that we were both English majors. Then some guys came out of the house with beer, and someone you knew pulled you away. I ended up saying hi to someone I had classes with last year.

He struggled to remember me. “Oh, we were in — what was it?”

“Chaucer,” I said.

“Oh, riiiiight,” he said.

I just nodded. Then he had some question about me — how was your summer, what are you taking this term, blah blah blah — and as I answered automatically I zoned out and my ambient thoughts started playing on loop, like a screensaver: Does this guy know I’m trans? Is he treating me differently? Talking to me as an equal or talking down to me? Is he enlightened, chauvinistic, what difference does that make? Do I ever really get treated like a woman or just like some other third thing halfway between a wimpy guy and a null pointer? Is there any way to tell about any of this? Then, in counterpoint, the self-aware layer: He doesn’t care that you’re trans, you care that you’re trans; you’re staring at your shoes all the time expecting everyone else to be staring too.

I realized that I was too stoned for this conversation and should probably go upstairs, but I wanted to talk to you again. Unsure how to escape, I stared into the face of the Chaucer guy as he talked about Sartre or Heidegger or northern Michigan or his girlfriend’s parents or which co-ops throw good parties or snowboarding or whatever else passed for conversation in the rich suburb of Detroit that he was probably from. I kept wondering what I would say to you next, but at some point I looked up and you were gone.

October 3

When classes started, Elena and I resumed a version of the routine we had in the dorms — after dinner, we would sit in the armchairs in the living room or go to the library until our eyes hurt from the fluorescent ceiling lights.

“Do you know someone named Genevieve?” I said to her one day as we were walking back at one in the morning.