Page 21 of Isn't It Obvious?
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever had a real close friend at all.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
That makes me sound like a hermit. I’m not. Maybe what I’m getting at is that I don’t know how to open up to people the way I want to.
To:Kevin Kisson
RE:Not Work Thread
I didn’t read it that way. Do you think it’s a masculinity thing? I remember reading a study in college about how woman-woman friendships tend to be based on emotional sharing, whereas man-man friendships are more likely to be based around shared activities. And then man-woman friendships usually take on more of the characteristics of woman-woman friendships; so to the man it’s like the closest relationship outside his family he’s ever had, and to the woman it’s just Tuesday (which maybe explains why so many men misread their platonic friendships with women).
I don’t really remember it taking queerness or transness into account, so grain of salt, but I do think there might be something there.
I feel like I’m somehow managing to talk too much even over email. I’m sorry lol
Even though Ravi has no idea what Elle looks like, it feels like his idea of her crystallizes. Colorful and bubbly. Fills the spaces when someone like him doesn’t know how.
He rereads, rubbing his hand over his mouth. Deciding how much he wants to say. Then, he starts typing.
YAEL WASHES HERface as she waits for Kevin’s reply. Partly to avoid the mild embarrassment of projecting her self-deprecation over email, mostly because the clay face mask she applied before getting that picture of Squirtle is long-dried and cracking.
Including that parenthetical had been calculated, admittedly. What Charlie had called a “competency crush” is feeling dangerously close to an actual crush. Earlier tonight,Yael visited the LinkedIn page Kevin had included in his resumé, but his profile picture is his own digital illustration. Highly stylized, so all it really told her is that he’s probably South Asian, which she’d already gleaned from his last name. And then, much worse, she typed out and very nearly sentwhat can you tell me about Kevinto Sanaa. Luckily, she still has enough self-preservation to avoid the inevitablebitch I sent you his contact info to help you, not so you could become infatuated with someone who lives across the country!!!!response.
God, the mask was on long enough for the skin around her nose and lips to get ashy. She slathers on extra moisturizer, returns to her bed, and finally,finallylets herself look at her phone.
To:Elle Rex
RE:Not Work Thread
That’s likely part of it. Or a lot of it. Most of the men around me growing up were very stoic. My brother, too, but he’s softened over time, I think. Definitely since he’s become a father. I’ve seen him cry more times since moving in with him than in all twenty-nine years leading up to it combined.
I think it’s hard to tell what’s because of masculinity and what’s because of queerness. I had my first crush on a boy when I was in primary school, and I don’t know how, but even then I knew it was something I had to keep to myself. I was so relieved when I had a crush on a girl the next year, because I thought that meant it had gone away. Obviously, it hadn’t, because that’s not how it works.
I’m from Chaguanas, Trinidad, and the environment is still quite culturally homophobic. Maybe part of it is because of how much more religious the people there are than in big cities in the US. It’s sort of hard to describe to an outsider, but for perspective, our courts only overturned the ban on buggery(you’d call it an anti-sodomy law) in 2018. I finished post-secondary school in 2013. There was one openly gay boy in secondary school, and he was bullied so badly that he switched schools. When I first moved to New York for university, I saw two men walking down the street holding hands, and I just stood there staring because of how shocked I was. After, I went back to my dormitory and cried.
I don’t want to make it sound like I hated it in Chaguanas. It’s part of why I don’t talk about this so much with people I’ve met here, because I feel like I’m betraying my home in some way. I still think that Trinidad is the most beautiful place in the world, and I miss it every single day. I joined a Caribbean student group during university because I was so homesick. And I know there are people doing really good work to make the parts I don’t miss better. But, especially with Suresh, it’s a lot easier for me to be here.
I feel guilty about that sometimes. There are a lot of decisions you make when you immigrate, whether you mean to or not. How much you change how you speak so that you can be understood versus teaching your friends words from home. How much you assimilate generally. Even who you surround yourself with.
You said something about talking too much? Ha.
Yael reads with her bottom lip between her teeth and her hand on her chest. By the end, tears are pricking her eyes, and her breath comes out shaky. She doesn’t know what to say, exactly. There’s probably nothing quite right shecouldsay. That he even told her feels momentous. So big that whatever it elicits doesn’t fit inside her; it doubles and triples in size until Yael thinks she might burst.
She takes one deep breath, and another, and then she’s drafting her reply so quickly that her fingers trip over themselves trying to keep up with her brain.
To:Kevin Kisson
RE:Not Work Thread
I don’t think I have the right words to capture what I’m feeling, and I worry that if I try, I’ll end up embarrassing us both. I’ll just say that I’m honored you shared this with me and that I don’t really believe in the concept of talking too much among friends. It’s just something that I know other people think about me.
I am so sorry you grew up that way. I can see how completely isolating that would be, and I can’t begin to imagine what it would have felt like. I have a bi dad and a gay stepfather who didn’t blink when my childhood crushes shifted quickly and indiscriminately with regard to gender, so I got to be myself earlier than most of the queer adults I know, and I am extremely, magnificently lucky for that.
I also want to be clear that I could tell what you meant, and I didn’t think you were trying to disparage your country or culture. We live in the United States, home of groomer moral panics and school library book banning. I think my buy-in to homonationalism only lasted for the summer of 2015 when I was doing an internship abroad and Obergefell was decided. Also, Lawrence v. Texas was decided in 2003, so gay sex has been legally protected for only 2 of this country’s 25 decades. Not that I’m saying it’s the same, or that things aren’t easier for you here (I’m sure they are, especially because of where you’ve chosen to live); I just mean to say I didn’t think you were doing the hypocritical cultural-superiority thing, and I’m not doing that, either.
I do think I understand your worry about talking to other people, for different reasons. I’m Black and biracial, and my dad is an Ashkenazi Jew. I don’t want to get into all that right now, but I’ve had some pretty negative experiences in Jewish spaces because I don’t look Eastern European (or at least my Eastern European features are not my most obvious ones), but I’m sometimes afraid to talk to people outside of the community about it lest the wrong person hear and use it to justify theirantisemitism. The inverse is true for some of my experiences in Black spaces. I know I don’t owe anyone my silence, but I also know I don’t live in a vacuum.
