M or F?

by Lisa Papademetriou

  “So,” Astrid said suddenly, “I’m hungry. Does anybody want to get something to eat?”

  “I’m in,” Jeffrey said.

  “Me too,” Glenn agreed. “Frannie?”

  I bit my lip. I knew that Marcus would say that I should go for it—especially if Astrid was going. And I was starving. But on the other hand, I was completely wiped. I needed about three weeks’ worth of hot bath and soft bed. Besides, our date had already gone well this time—you know, from Jeffrey’s point of view—and anything more would probably just mess it up. “I think I’ll pass,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”

  Glenn looked like he might insist, but Jeffrey just said, “I totally understand.”

  “Well . . . ’bye,” I said awkwardly.

  Jeffrey kind of leaned toward me, and I thought he was going to kiss me right there, but it turned out that he just wanted a hug. But I wasn’t expecting that, so I ended up giving him a weird little kiss kind of under his ear.

  “Ooh,” he said in surprise, touching his neck where I’d kissed him. Then I was so embarrassed that I had to scurry away as fast as possible.

  Oh, just get me out of here, I thought as I headed toward the girls’ locker room. I just want to take off this stupid armor, find my friends, gripe to them, and go home. . . .

  “Francesca—just the woman I was looking for.” Patricia stepped right in my path, smiling like crazy. She had two bright red spots on her cheeks.

  “Oh, hi, Patricia.” I smiled wearily. “How did the performance go?”

  “Pure crap,” Patricia said cheerfully. “But the drinking went great.”

  I laughed.

  “So, did you ever find my grandson?”

  “Well—not exactly,” I hedged. The truth was, Marcus had managed to nail me with the paint gun. Right on the butt. Is he ever going to get it, I thought.

  “You know, I was wondering,” Patricia said, her hazel eyes twinkling as she swayed slightly on her feet. “I have this new gentleman friend—Arthur. He’s a businessman from Chicago, but he’s a lot of fun. I was wondering if you and Marcus might like to double date with us sometime? Maybe next Saturday?”

  I opened my mouth to say no. Of course not. For one thing, Marcus and I aren’t dating . . . but I knew that Patricia seemed to think we were, and I know that Marcus kind of plays it off with her because he can’t deal with telling her the truth.

  But then it hit me—what on earth could be worse than going on a double date with your very own grandmother? Answer: Not much.

  It was perfect. Perfect payback.

  I smiled. “Patricia,” I said, “we’ll definitely be there.”

  Seven

  “No,” I said to Frannie. “I’m not saying it’s going to happen; I’m just saying that if we weren’t friends anymore, I’d be the one eating lunch alone the next day.”

  “It’s never going to happen,” she insisted.

  We were both in our rooms on the phone, and I was getting sorry that I had brought this up. I wasn’t even sure why I had, except that if you spend as much time on the phone as we do, everything comes up eventually.

  I tried again. “My point isn’t that something is going to happen. My point is just that you have backup I don’t have. That’s all.”

  “Please,” she said. “If you get hit by a truck, I’m going to go off and be a nun or something.”

  “A nun with a boyfriend,” I reminded her.

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” she came back.

  “He’s pretty close to being your boyfriend,” I said. “Besides, ‘Sister Mary Frannie’ just doesn’t sound as good as ‘Frannie Osborne.’”

  “I’m not changing my name.”

  “When you get married—”

  “Right.”

  “To Jeffrey—”

  “To whoever.”

  “Jeffrey, who isn’t your boyfriend.”

  “You just said he’s pretty close to being my boyfriend.”

  “Good. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  “Omigod. You’re impossible,” she said.

  “Talk to you later?”

  “Call me if you see him.”

  “As always,” I said, and we hung up.

  Frannie and I had a new system. If one of us saw Jeffrey online, and we weren’t already with each other or on the phone (which we usually were), I’d call her or she’d call me, and we’d go into a three-way chat: Jeffrey on his computer, Frannie on the phone in my ear, and me, invisible, at my computer, making suggestions and typing in Frannie’s half of the conversation. It was way less bizarre than it sounds and way more fun. Frannie and I had great flow where Jeffrey was concerned. At some point, of course, she was going to have to wean herself off me, but so far, she didn’t feel ready, and I didn’t push it. I was having too good a time for that.

  About an hour later that same night, I was surfing around, looking at movie previews online and waiting for my homework to do itself, when I clicked over to the chat room for the umpteenth time and found that Jeffo had logged on. I picked up the phone and dialed Frannie’s cell.

  Voice mail answered on the first ring. She was probably talking to Jenn or Belina or both. “Hi, it’s Frannie. Leave a message. Be original.”

  And I hung up.

  Something like silence filled my room, except that there was a big unspoken question hanging in the middle of it: Why did I just do that? I never hung up on Frannie’s voice mail. I always left some kind of message—a random question, or a little smoochy sound, or at least a quick “hi call me later”—but not this time. And since I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the reason why, I picked up the phone again. My thumb found the redial button while my eyes stayed glued to the computer screen.

  “Hi, it’s Frannie. Leave a message. Be original.”

  “Hey, it’s me. Ummm . . . what’s the worst movie ever made? Later.”

  And I hung up again. Without mentioning Jeffrey.

  Technically, I hadn’t broken any rules. Frannie had asked me not to chat Jeffrey without her, and I had stuck to that promise. It was tempting sometimes, but so far, I’d been good.

  Maybe I could just go into the chat room and look around, I thought. As long as I wasn’t being Frannie, that wasn’t against the rules either. I might even learn a thing or two that she could use later. It was all so convincing (in my head) that I went for it, and logged on as Stanley.

  Jeffrey was still there, along with a bunch of screen names I didn’t recognize and one that I did.

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  Rock on? Apparently, Astrid’s shoe collection wasn’t the only thing about her that was stuck in the nineties. I was embarrassed for her and a little glad for Frannie.

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  What’s the symbol for blushing? I couldn’t believe it. That was what I had said to him before. Jeffrey had just stolen my line—or Frannie’s line, depending on how you looked at it. And . . . maybe not stolen. Maybe it was imitation, as in, the sincerest form of flattery, even if he had used it on Astrid. It wasn’t like Astrid posed a threat to Frannie anymore. At least, she probably didn’t . . . but probably wasn’t the same thing as definitely.

  Cue the thought bubble. In the movie, it kind of blossoms out of my head and floats above me like a mini-cartoon on the screen:Dear Advice Wench: My best friend told me not to impersonate her when she’s not around, and I really wasn’t planning on doing it again, but now I’m in this situation where I could do her more good by ignoring the request than by following it. What should I do? Signed, Queer and Conflicted.

  Dear Q&C: Normally, I’d say you should let your friend solve her own pro
blems because really, isn’t that more empowering in the end? But for you, I’ll make an exception. Go for it. Signed, Advice Wench.

  And then, like an idiot moth to a flame, I flitted straight toward Jeffrey before I could remember why it was such a bad idea. In about two seconds, I logged off as Stanley, logged back on, and sent Jeffrey a private message.

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  He responded right away.

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  Translation: Are you talking to Astrid?

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  That one barbed me a little as a non-Frannie, non-girl person. It made feel almost weird enough to stop what I was doing. Almost . . . but not quite.

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  I smiled right at the screen. Jeffrey thought that I was—that Frannie was—almost too perfect. If Frannie were here, she’d want to answer with something like, “No, I’m not.”

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  My mind was racing and excited and at the same time relaxed in a really unexpected way. I was so much more comfortable with this stuff as Frannie than I ever would have been with my own not-quite-boyfriend. A big part of it was about not having to think. I didn’t worry about every little word; I just said whatever came to mind, and somehow, it all seemed to come out right.

  At the same time, though, not thinking was what had gotten me this far behind Frannie’s back in the first place. It was frustrating, because I was somewhere I absolutely should not be, but still, all I wanted was to keep going.

  When I couldn’t stand the mixed feelings anymore, I forced myself to say good night and log off. It was some kind of psychic move, I guess, because the phone rang about thirty seconds later.

  “I know what you did last summer,” Frannie said.

  My heart thumped involuntarily. “What?”

  “Worst movie ever,” she said. “I Know What You Did Last Summer. I hated it.”

  Then I remembered the question I’d left on her voice mail. “You hate slasher movies in general,” I said. “That doesn’t mean it was the worst movie ever made.”

  “Hey, choose your own,” she said. “That one’s mine.”

  “We could do a whole bad-movie fest. The Worst of Hollywood, this Saturday night.”

  “Nice try,” she said. “We’ve already got plans, as if you didn’t know that.”

  This was a perfect topic to help me get away from my guilty feelings, so I glommed onto it. “You know,” I said, “this double-date thing with Patricia is way more than the paintball thing deserves. I’m going to owe you some payback when this is over.”

  “Oh no no no,” Frannie came back. “Double date with grandma and the man friend is worth the exact same number of points as a night of paintball hell. I looked it up.”

  “Grandma and the man friend,” I said. “It sounds like a bad TV show.”

  “And you’re this week’s guest star!” she crowed.

  “You’re actually looking forward to this, aren’t you?” I asked. It was amazing how quickly I could fall back into normal conversation with her.

  “Of course,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  “Oh, please.”

  “How do you know you won’t have a good time?”

  “I don’t know” I said. “I must be psychic.”

  Later that night, wide awake in bed, everything started to weigh down on me. This whole thing had been a kind of lie to Jeffrey from the beginning, and now it was spilling over onto Frannie as well. I couldn’t take back what I had done, and even worse, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. With all the places in the world where it’s not okay to be queer, it’s more than easy for me to get hooked on the ones where I can just be myself without having to think about it. I’d always felt that kind of freedom around Frannie and now was feeling it in these conversations with Jeffrey too, no matter how high that sent the irony meter. What did that say about me, if I felt like my own best self when I was pretending to be someone else?

  My only refuge was the fact that things were still on track with Frannie and Jeffrey. At least there, I had done some good work. It seemed more important than ever, too, because amid everything else, I was starting to see Jeffrey Osborne as the seriously nice, funny, and good person he was. Good enough for my best friend.

  A few nights later was the big double date. At six that Saturday, a giant American car of some kind pulled up in front of the house. Dad, Frannie, and I were waiting on the couch while Patricia put on her finishing touches.

  “Manfred is here,” Frannie whispered in my ear. That was our new shorthand for Arthur Goldstein, aka The Man Friend, now aka Manfred.

  Patricia came into the living room and gave us a twirl. “How do I look?”

  “What is Uzbekistan?” Dad said to the TV, not that it counted. They had Jeopardy repeats on the weekend, and we’d seen this one before.

  “You look fabulous,” Frannie told her.

  “You really do, Momma,” Dad added without looking up.

  She had on a pair of stretch jeans tucked into black cowboy boots, and a denim shirt with red lassos embroidered on the shoulders. Her hair was pulled back tight in a silver ponytail that made her look younger somehow. She did, in fact, look great. The whole Western thing, though, was giving me a bad feeling. All Patricia had told us was that we should dress comfortably.

  She waved at Arthur through the living room window. His face lit up when he saw her. He looked very Texas himself—definitely shopped at Big and Tall. He had on jeans and an open-collared shirt and oh yes, a big gold chain around his neck. When the doorbell rang, Frannie practically skipped across the floor to get it. She was loving this already.

  “What is Breakfast at Tiffany’s?” I grumbled at the TV.

  Dad nudged me. “Good one.”

  A big Texas voice boomed from the doorway. “You must be Frannie. Just as pretty as Patricia said.”

  “Well, thank you.” I could have sworn she threw in a little twang of her own.

  Dad turned off the TV and we stood up as Frannie led Arthur inside. He filled the room with his take-charge energy. “Don’t tell me,” he said. “Patrick and Marcus. Real good to meet you.” I tried not to show the pain on my face when he shook my hand.

  “Good to meet you too,” Dad said.

  We looked around. Patricia had disappeared in the confusion. I knew she wanted to make an entrance. That’s the Southern belle in he
r. “Be right there,” she called out, as if on cue.

  “So where are you all headed tonight?” Dad asked Arthur.

  “I think that’s supposed to be a surprise,” he said, jabbing Dad with his elbow just as Patricia came in. “Oh my,” he went on. “Two gorgeous ladies and two lucky gentlemen. You sure you won’t join us, Patrick?”

  “Patrick isn’t invited,” Patricia said, coming out of her second fashion twirl of the evening, this one for Arthur. “Tonight’s a double date. No room for a fifth wheel. Sorry, honey.” She reached over and grabbed Dad’s chin affectionately.

  “No problem,” Dad said. It was the most jealous of him I’d ever been.

  “So y’all have already met?” Patricia said.

  “We have,” Frannie answered for us.

  “Isn’t he divine?” Patricia leaned into Arthur and put her skinny arms as far around his middle as she could get them. He was a good foot taller than her, too, but you could just see how they clicked together.

  Well, good for Patricia, I thought.

  “Where are we going?” I tried again on the way to the car. “Line dancing or something?” It was supposed to be a joke.

  “I thought you were making this a surprise,” Arthur said to Patricia, and my heart sank.

  Frannie smiled even harder, if that was possible. She tried a little do-si-do with me on the lawn, but I wasn’t buying.

  There are plenty of gay stereotypes I fit into, but “good dancer” is not one of them. In that department, I’m a shame to my people. A drunk baby ostrich with no sense of direction. Two arms and two legs that never know what the others are doing. A natural disaster, set to music.

  “Marcus thinks he doesn’t dance,” Patricia told Arthur.

  “Marcus knows he doesn’t dance,” I said in return.

  “Come on, honey, it’ll be fun.” Patricia joined Frannie and started shimmying around me, bumping hips and pushing me across the yard. I wondered how many neighbors were watching and went straight for the car.

  The inside of Arthur’s ride smelled like leather upholstery, pine air freshener, and cigar smoke. I was hoping for a nice long (or maybe endless) drive, but that didn’t pan out. Arthur got us onto I-94 and back off again somewhere west of downtown Chicago in some kind of record-breaking time. We pulled into a strip mall, generic looking except for the big pink-and-red neon sign that flashed LINE ’EM UP! . . . LINE ’EM UP! . . . LINE ’EM UP!