Take a Lemon

The House Parties’ organizers had illuminated the paths between the dance locales by lining them with fat candles in white paper bags, using sand to both keep candle and bag in place. The overall effect was somewhat ethereal, and Jackie had commented the year before that it gave a romantic air to the night. For my purposes, it simply showed that the path in front of Danby Hall led to dances in both directions. To my annoyance, Geoff started down the path that led back to Blair without asking me. I caught up with him and grabbed his bicep. “If you’re going to walk with me, Geoff, at least let me decide where,” I demanded. “I want to walk and clear my head, not talk with people.”

“We’re going to find people in both directions,” he pointed out. “Does it really matter which way we go?”

As if to prove him right, two couples passed us, heading for Danby, and at about the same time, three girls left Danby and took the path towards Holder.

“It’s the principle of the thing,” I retorted, using his arm to urge him after the couples now ahead of us. They moved to the right to allow another group to pass them, going the other way. To my surprise, it was Lee Ann and the gang, who quickly spotted us, with me still hanging on Geoff’s arm.

“Are you guys leaving already?” Lee Ann asked.

“Marsh wanted to take a walk,” he replied. I glared at him for answering on my behalf as though we were a couple. Then I realized that my hand on his arm reinforced that impression, so I grabbed it back.

“So you’ll be coming back?” Lee Ann continued.

This time I answered before Geoff could. “Maybe, but probably not.” I could imagine what Lee Ann was thinking, and couldn’t meet her eye.

She gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Be careful. I approve, but take things slowly.” If I hadn’t already been bristling, that would have sealed the deal, and I seethed inwardly as our friends passed us, some looking at Geoff and me curiously, and a few smiling at us. Possibly the worst were Susie, who shot me a smile that I read as triumphant, and Phil, who looked surprised, and – if my imagination wasn’t play tricks on me – almost a bit hurt.

“OK, Let’s go,” I said, hurrying him along the path once they had gone. I grabbed his bicep again, just because it seemed the most practical way to get him moving. He didn’t resist, which was fortunate, considering that he probably had about eighty pounds on me.

“Are we going any place in particular?” he asked.

“We’re just walking, remember?” I snapped. Then we came to a tee, and I hurried us down the unlit path.

“Ah, we’re going for a moonlight walk, then?” he commented, brightly. “How romantic!”

I stopped. Testily, I said, “Geoff. You know my mood. I’m trying to avoid crowds, which we would certainly run into on the lighted paths tonight. You suggested that we talk a walk and said that I didn’t need to engage in conversation. Why are you joking around? Should I just leave you here and walk by myself?”

“Sorry,” he said, sounding maybe a bit contrite. “I’ll be good.”

Yeah, right, I thought. I should have known better; Geoff cannot stand silence – he just has to fill it.

“You know there are going to be people on these paths, too, right?” he continued, proving me right. “Coming from the dorms, going back to the dorms… mostly back, this late, probably.”

I sighed in exasperation. “I know,” I snapped. “Let’s go down here,” I said, taking another path as I spotted some more students passing us on our current one.

“Do you think we can avoid everybody? There are a lot of students walking around tonight.”

“I’m going to try,” I muttered.

“Well then, we’d better go back the way we came, because here come a whole bunch of people.”

I looked, and he was right; there were several couples heading our way, so we back-tracked and returned to our previous path.

“No good,” he said, “Here come some more. We’d better cut across the quad.” And he took my hand and pulled across the grass.

“Wait, Geoff,” I protested. “I think you’re getting a little–”

“Uh Oh,” he said about a minute later. “I hear somebody over there, too. Let’s duck behind this tree!”

“OK,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Now you’re getting a bit ridiculous.”

“Whoops!” he exclaimed. “There’s squirrels in the tree. Their chittering is bound to disturb you.”

“Squirrels?!” I said, trying to keep from smiling at his antics. “Now that’s–”

“Look out! A bat! How can you unwind with all that squeaking?”

“Stop it!” I yelped, starting to laugh.

“Oh, you’re in a good mood, now!” He said, sounding very pleased with himself.

“I am not!” I insisted, trying to force a serious expression back on to my face.

“But you’re smiling.”

“No, I’m not!”

“I can see you…”

“No, you can’t! It’s too dark.”

“But I can see you when I put my face close to yours,” he said, his actions matching his words.

Suddenly it got a bit hard to breathe, and I was starting to lift my face to his when I realized what I was doing. I put my hand on his chest and pushed him away. “No, Geoff,” I told him, “I think we…” I clamped my mouth shut as I realized what I had been about to say: Let’s just be friends. It was such a stereotypical girl thing to say, and every guy I knew hated that line. So I amended it to, “I’m really confused about a lot of things, and this is a bad idea. I mean… I’m not thinking straight. I just found out about Jeremy this morning, and… I mean, I don’t want to give you the wrong idea about anything.”

“Going after Lee Ann was a mistake,” he said, his face still uncomfortably close to mine. “I see that now. I should have paid more attention to you from the start.”

I backed up. “Geoff, I don’t want to give you any false hopes. This is not… I mean, I don’t know what I want right now. I’m not ready. I’m still… really upset about… well, Jeremy. I need to work through this first. I need to think about things, and you’re not making it easy for me.” It was all happening way too fast. I had only discovered that I could be attracted to boys for the first time, about twelve hours earlier. Actually trying some kind of relationship with a boy, well with a boy I wasn’t attracted to, anyway, was still way too disturbing to contemplate.

He stopped. “I guess I’m better as the goofy friend, huh?” he asked, now resembling a scolded puppy.

“Your timing is off. That’s all I’m saying for now.”

“Alright,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “Do you want to go back to Danby now?”

“No… I think I’m just going to call it a night. It’s been a really emotional evening for me, and… I think I’m done.”

“OK, I’ll walk you home.”

“No!” I said a bit more forcefully than I needed to. “No. You go back to Danby and hang out with the gang. I’m just going to walk back alone. Really. It’s better that way.”

As he stared at me, I added. “And thanks for the walk, and for making me laugh. It really did take some of the edge off of my feelings. I appreciate it.”

“OK… I mean, no problem. You’re sure…?”

“I’m sure. Good night.”

“Good night.”

When I looked back, after reaching the nearest path, he hadn’t moved. He was still standing near the tree that supposedly had squirrels, and I didn’t see him move until I could no longer see the tree.

Getting to sleep that night wasn’t easy. After two months as a girl, I thought I would have been getting used to feeling more and more, but today had just outdone everything else. My world had been turned inside out once again. I couldn’t believe that I was now crushing on a guy, attracted to another, and had almost kissed a third. I had also made a ‘take a lemon’ promise to go out with the next one who asked me, a promise that seemed dumber and dumber every time I thought about it.

But what had happened with Geoff? Had I actually been giving out ‘kiss me’ vibes? To be sure, his persistence with Lee Ann suggested that he wasn’t all that great at reading girls, so maybe it hadn’t been my fault at all.

But dating boys? Is that really what I wanted? Having a boy kiss me, fondle me? I shivered – but with anticipation or fear, I wasn’t really sure. My brain said that it was a sensible thing to do, a logical step in this new life I was living. My heart was anything but certain it agreed. I think I must have fallen asleep through shear exhaustion, because I certainly never felt the calm that sleep usually required.

I woke up the next morning, determined to put all this guy-girl romance stuff out of my head for now. I had to focus on my exams, and as a pre-med student, my grades were critical. Fortunately, I was current with all my reading, and I had been keeping good notes, so I started by recopying my notebooks once more. I told my roommates to tell anybody looking for repairs or alterations that I might not be able to get anything done before January. I hated to give up the work, but I couldn’t afford the distractions.

My roommates drilled me before breakfast about what had happened with Geoff, but I just told them the truth – that I hadn’t felt ready, that I was still too upset about Jeremy. Lee Ann shook her head, but our agreement about me dating boys had been for next year, so she backed off.

The first distraction I could not put off, though, came about an hour before lunch in the form of a phone call from Vicky.

“Marsh, could I talk to you?” she asked, her voice sounding as though she had been crying for some time.

“Of course, Vicky,” I assured her. I wasn’t about to cut her off now, not after all we had meant to each other, but I considered her to be on probation just now.

“I don’t think you realize just how different–” she started, but I cut her off.

“Vicky,” I said firmly. “If you’re planning on telling me how you’re right and I’m wrong, this is going to be a really short conversation, because I’m just going to hang up on you.”

I heard nothing but silence for a few seconds, while she must have been trying to decide if I was serious. “May I tell you how I feel, then?” she asked.

That seemed safe enough, so I said, “Go ahead.”

“I’m afraid, Marsh. I’m afraid of losing you.”

“So you decided to cheat on me with Kevin?”

“I… that’s not fair!”

She was right, it wasn’t. It was a measure of my lingering anger with her, though, that I didn’t let it go so easily. “Don’t you think it hurts me? Knowing that he’s with you? Flaunting him in front of me? Making it really clear that you’re sleeping with him? Do you think I have no feelings?”

“But… if you change back, it won’t have happened. You and I will have been together the whole time, so it doesn’t really count.”

“Well, it still hurts! And if it doesn’t count, why should you care if I find a relationship of my own? As you say, if I change back, I certainly wouldn’t have been dating a guy!”

“But…”

“But what?” I pressed her.

“It’s not the same,” she whined.

“Why not? Why is it any different?”

“Because… look, when you wanted to go after Lee Ann, I backed off. It hurt me, but I thought that I didn’t really have a chance to keep you then, and I hoped that maybe one day you might get tired of her and come back to me.”

“And…?”

“My being with Kevin is sort of the same thing. You know that if you can become Marshall again, he won’t even be in the picture.”

“Go on…”

“But if you find… if you start dating boys, what if you fall in love with a boy? What if you decide to stay a girl? Then we’ll never be together. Never!”

“But why would…?”

“Don’t you see? If you change back, it won’t matter if I was dating another boy. But if you date a boy, you might not change back at all! Then where will I be?”

“With Kevin, probably,” I pointed out, sourly.

“Which is not as good as being with you, just better than nothing.”

“But… what if I can’t change back, Vixy? What if I’m stuck? So far, it really looks that way, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know… I don’t want to think about that.”

“But I have to, don’t you see? I can’t imagine not wanting to change back, but shouldn’t I try to live this life as a girl as best as I can, just in case?”

“You’ll never be a proper girl, Marsh,” she snapped. “You don’t have the feel for it. I mean, seriously! Do you realize that you were wearing daytime makeup last night? You looked ridiculous!”

“Well… maybe you could teach me? Show me how I should be wearing my makeup for something like that?”

“I am not doing anything that might make you more comfortable as a girl, Marsh. I want you to want to change back, remember.”

“OK…” I made a mental note to ask Nikki, instead. “But think about this, Vix. If I’m supposed to want to be a guy again to be with you, shouldn’t you be nicer to me, so that I’ll want to be with you?”

She didn’t answer right away. “OK,” she finally said. “Maybe I have been a bit bitchier than I needed to be. I’m just… really scared, Marsh. I feel like I have no control, and… I don’t want to lose you.”

“Maybe you just need to trust me a bit more, Vixy. This is hard for me, and you’re the only person who even remembers the old me. I need you to keep reminding me who I really am. Don’t push me away, Vixy.”

She sighed. “OK… OK, you’re right. I’ll do better.”

“And you won’t give me grief if I decide to… explore my feminine side?”

She laughed. “If you ask me, you’re doing that a bit too much now, but… OK, I’ll try. I can’t promise anything. Um… so you’re going to be dating Geoff, now? Your friends said that you left together.”

“And he tried to kiss me, but no, I’m not attracted to Geoff at all. At least right now.”

“Then, is there somebody else? I mean, besides the guy who… and really, this is hard for me to say… the guy who have a crush on?”

“Not yet. But I figure it’s going to happen, and I don’t mind telling you I’m nervous. I don’t think most girls realize what guys are thinking when they’re with a girl. I do, and I’m scared stiff.”

Vicky laughed again. “Maybe this will be good for you, then, Marsh! Just… I don’t know, I feel really uncomfortable giving you advice on dating boys.”

“I understand.”

We talked for a while after that; I knew we were far from repairing our relationship, and we had a ways to go on figuring out what kind of relationship we should have now, but we seemed to have made a start. And that was worth a lot.