“Having doubts about your dream man?” Ashleigh asks.
“Just … after tonight’s lecture. I thought it was a preference, but …”
“It didn’t say ‘no fats, no femmes, no blacks,’ if that’s what you’re worried about,” George says. “It was something like ‘masculine guy seeking the same.’”
“Okay. So it’s just a preference,” I say.
“If it said no something, that would be bad,” Ashleigh says, getting out her toothbrush. “That’s exclusionary. Like, ‘no fatties’ is bad, but ‘prefers fit women’ is okay, I think?”
“Feels like a fine line,” Paz says, hopping into her bunk. “What if it said they like ‘white guys’? That’s not far from ‘whites only.’”
“Yeah,” Ashleigh says. “You’re right, sorry.”
“But what about, like, guys into body hair?” I ask. “That’s not bad, right?”
“Historically, people with body hair haven’t had to use separate water fountains,” Paz says dryly.
“Right,” I say. “Sorry.”
“When I see a profile that says they prefer skinny twinks,” George says, “I know I won’t ever stand a chance with that guy. But when it says ‘no Middle Eastern guys,’ then it feels like I’m being rejected for who I am, my identity. Hairy isn’t such a huge part of my self-worth. But being Middle Eastern, being Jewish? That’s about me. And saying you’re rejecting all that preemptively because it doesn’t get you hard? That’s racist. Your dick is racist, and so are you, and you really shouldn’t be putting that online. It’s tacky.”
Paz laughs. “Yeah, what he said.”
“Okay,” I say. “But that’s not about masc or femme. That’s behavior. That’s mutable. I mean, I changed, right? Like the woman putting on heels. So … it’s not bad, right? Like … would Hudson have applauded when that woman walked in heels? Or would he have said it’s better to be herself, even if I—the lesbian version of Hudson, I guess?—am not into her in a leather jacket and jeans?”
“You mean if you were here, where it was safe to wear the jeans and not get harassed for it?” Paz asks.
“What he means,” Ashleigh says, “is would he think it was okay you went butch for him, because that means it’ll be okay when you drop it later.” She turns to me. “But we don’t know him as well as you do.” She sticks her toothbrush in her mouth and starts to brush. “You ashk him.”
“What do you think?” George asks.
“I think …,” I say. “I think it’s just a preference. I think he’d tell that woman to be herself, because being herself has nothing to do with attracting femme-only women or something.”
“So you think he’d tell you to be yourself,” George says.
“Only if I was willing to give him up,” I say quickly. Maybe defensively. “And I’m not. But he wouldn’t think putting on the dress made her a better person. Just more attractive to people who like girls in dresses. And there’s nothing wrong with that, right?”
“I mean, we could say you should be attracted to a person’s character, not their wardrobe,” Paz says.
“Oh please,” George says. “I judge men entirely by the contents of their closets. And their drawers,” he adds, wiggling his eyebrows.
I snort a laugh and stand up and take my toiletries into the bathroom. I brush my teeth and wash my face and stare in the mirror for a moment after, my face wet. I look different from last year. I look like what Hudson is attracted to. That was the point. I put on heels for him. And it’s worth it. Tonight definitely showed me that—he’s kind and fun, and I want to keep kissing him forever. It’s just a preference, him liking this me, and not the chubby, long-haired Randy with flowers in his hair and lace on his shorts. After all, he likes me. Not just my face, body, wardrobe. We’ve talked. He thinks I’m special, that we have a connection. And if a haircut was what it took to show him that, then it’s worth it. And once he sees it, he won’t mind if my hair grows back or if I love musicals or paint my nails. Heels or jeans, maybe Paz is right. It’s about falling in love with a person—preferences are just things that make us think we’re more or less likely to fall in love because of what our dicks react to at first. So I made his dick hard. Now we can fall in love. And love is more important. And I’m falling wildly in love with Hudson.
The next day goes by like the last one: We hike instead of doing the obstacle course, Hudson and I holding hands when we can, we eat lunch together, and I hear about rehearsals from Ashleigh and George during A&C (George has already mastered his song and is having fun with it, Ashleigh made suggestions about changing the lighting scheme that Mark liked, and apparently Crystal’s choreography is panic-inducingly ambitious this year), and then we play kickball during sports. Then we all swim together, Hudson wrapping his arms around me and putting his head on my shoulder to talk to Brad in the pool. Then Hudson and I steal some time at the boathouse to make out, our hair still wet and smelling of chlorine, before running back to our cabins to change and head down to dinner, which we eat thigh to thigh before it’s time for that night’s activity: a campfire by the flagpole where we all take turns telling ghost stories and making s’mores. I sit on a log, and Hudson sits in front of me, and I wrap my arms around him like he did to me in the pool, and I feel warm and happy.
True, I am ready to get naked with him already. And I know he is, too. But that’s not part of the plan. So we stick to making out—though we’re learning to hide it better, to avoid the eye-rolling from other campers.
The day after that, at the boathouse, his hands slip down the back of my swim trunks as I straddle him, and I feel his hands squeeze my bare ass for the first time. The day after that, lying down on the love seat, I feel our erections press against each other, instead of just our legs, for the first time. Every new thing our bodies do brings with it a heady lightness in my body, like I’m being thrown out of my own body because it’s so crazy it’s happening—really happening. Hudson Aaronson-Lim is my boyfriend. Hudson Aaronson-Lim is falling in love with me. This is better than a musical. A musical is just pretend. This is real.
Except that I’m not. Which I remember the next night, after dinner, when he turns to me, our hands interwoven as we walk out of the dining hall, and asks, “So what do you want to do?”
“Me?” I ask. “I don’t know. What do you like doing?”
“Oh, come on, you’ve been here a week, you’re not new anymore. You pick the date-night activity.”
I smile on the outside, but inside I am feeling the sheer panic of being onstage when a spotlight pops on and you’ve forgotten the opening lyrics. I was not prepared for this—he’s supposed to be the one showing me the ropes, doing butch stuff. I know what I’d want to do—go hang out at the drama cabin and maybe paint each other’s nails, but that is definitely not what he’d want to do, and not what Del would want to do. What do butch guys do on dates, anyway? It’s been mostly wandering around camp and him showing me stuff, then going to the boathouse to make out so far, and I’ve been enjoying that quite a bit, especially the latter part. I suppose I can’t just say “Let’s go right to the boathouse,” though. Or “Let’s go watch sports,” ’cause there’s no TV, and there’s not even a game going at the kickball field.