Zeke. Vagina-Zeke. That Zeke.

“Oh my God, I’ve heard about you!” I said.

“Ugh, what did you hear?”

“My friend Hazel mentioned you.”

He suddenly seemed more attentive — “What did she say about me?” — and raised a judgmental eyebrow.

“Nothing, she just mentioned you,” I lied.

My brain replayed the warning about Zeke. Maybe there was just a silly grudge between them, and Zeke was actually a normal guy? Zeke seemed absolutely fine, I didn't see an issue. The warning became relaxed in my brain. I would give Zeke a chance.

“All right.” He said.

I don’t think our conversation reached depths lower than that. We talked more about nerdy things, and then it ended. Zeke had a curfew to meet.

When he left, I was lonely, maybe I was lonely with him there too, but it was more noticeable in his absence. Tanner was talking to a bunch of eighteen-year-olds with beards, and everyone else had that arrogant Nerd Look on their faces I did not want to deal with. Imagine my excitement when Zeke returned—with a donut!

We shared the donut while sitting in the same chair. One of my butt cheeks hung off of the edge. It was uncomfortable. I didn’t care. He held the donut up and I took some bites of it out of his small hand; “I guess this makes me your bitch now,” I joked. I can’t remember if he laughed.

When Zeke had to leave for real, I decided on being a gentleman and I walked him home. I alerted Tanner, who responded with mild annoyance, and we were off. First, he cut into the alleyway between the Cave and some other building, and I followed closely. It was dirty and dark. Bleak was a good word for it. We both escaped this trench with our lives intact, and the rest was suburbia.

‘’You had a relationship with Mac?’’ I asked. We were chatting about our lives. I didn’t think Mac was gay, I thought.

He wasn’t.

‘’Yeah. We’ve been having an on-and-off for a long time.’’ Zeke responded.

What I learned about Mac Michelle was that he was a pervert; he liked the Innocent Girl type. He was French, like, born in France French. That likely contributed to the perversion, I suppose. I didn’t like Mac at all. His voice was too loud, and his character was annoying as fuck.  Still, for some reason, Tanner liked him. 

After that, the only things Zeke liked to talk about were what I call the Holy Trinity: weed, his transphobic lesbian mom, and Hazel being the bane of society. He talked about the first two as we walked, and nothing else.

We didn’t talk. He talked. This was the foundation of our relationship. Whenever I got the rare opportunity to speak, it was always weirdly personal, like Zeke was trying to dissect my every word, to see what made me tick.  

 My mother and I are almost certain that I’m hormonally intersex. I’m androgenous, have a girl’s voice as well as a wispy beard, have developed small breasts as well as an adam’s apple, and I’m never quite certain what my gender is (but I think I’m a dude at least). I’m still not sure what the chromosomes for that look like, but we’re sure I have three instead of two. So that’s what I tell people when they ask if I’m a boy or a girl: I was simply born with three chromosomes, so I’m biologically both.

That’s what I told Zach when I met him. At the beginning of our walk to his house, I told him that, just as he was telling me his own stories. It was one of the few things I got in. I lied a little; I said that my parents did a chromosome test before I was born. I wish they did, but no. Again, we still aren’t certain, we just strongly assume. 

But after that story, it was right back to Weed for him.

We got to Zeke's tiny shack of a house, I pet his cute but sad-looking dog, and I tried my best to navigate back. What was Stupid Freshman Brain thinking? I was going to ask this dude out.

..................................................................................................................................................

I had first smoked pot early in my freshman year. The year prior to that I spent my time researching weed. I needed to be sure before I even considered doing it. This was how I did anything new for the first time: first learning how to do it safely. Don’t smoke out of aluminum, it causes Alziemer’s; weed takes tons, literal tons, of smoking in under fifteen minutes to overdose, meaning it was safe in that regard; underage smoking can lead to temporary memory loss, so be wary of that; marijuana mixed with certain antidepressants can cause Serotonin Syndrome, which is deadly; etc. etc.

Smoking with Zeke was not a problem. It was fun, actually.

About two days earlier, I had asked him out, and, he said yes! This led to Instagram posts, Snapchat stories, and texts to friends about a new relationship status. Zeke probably posted on Facebook, too. But fuck Facebook.

One thing I used to like about our relationship—or at least its beginning—was the Snapchatting to each other. He showed me how to use it, and I got good at using it. I was screenshotting everything he sent me. After my fingers and phone screen had a wrestling match over the screencap button getting pushed quick enough, it felt like a true accomplishment.

Another thing I had to practice was his pronouns. I’d verbally slap myself every time my brain said ‘she’, terrified that it’d slip out while I was talking to him. I got it down in two hours. I do not understand why it was that hard to do, it’s stupid really.

Then came our very first date, at the mall.

We smoked just outside the parking lot, under a tree. It was a tiny pipe that we smoked out of, wooden, and about an inch and a half long. But one bowl out of that thing and I was rocketing into space. That stuff was powerful. I’m not even sure it was weed. All I knew was I was getting knocked on my ass.

Whatever it was, I don't remember Zeke taking more than two hits.

We walked back towards the mall. At first, we tried laying our arms on top of each other's shoulders, but that was awkward. A simple holding of hands sufficed. 

"You hold hands better than Mac did."

I don’t know what the hell kind of compliment that was, but I liked hearing it at the time. Anything giving me a step above Mac was a good thing. And that also meant that Zeke’s and my relationship was better than Mac and Zeke’s. None of this was saying very much, however.

We bought rides on electric mall animals and rode around. I was the zebra, he was the lion trailing behind. Afterward, we walked over to the Orange Julius and I waited while Zeke ordered a 'surprise'. I tried to listen to what he was ordering, but at that moment I swear the drugs had made me deaf. It was terrifying. I couldn't hear a goddamn thing for a solid five minutes. 

My hearing came back, and we sat at a table with a hot fudge sundae in a cup. I stared off into space. It was the last thing I remember of the mall. 

The effects wore off a bit as we walked away from the mall. Apparently, we were headed toward Zeke’s friends, who were at a rugby meet. We walked All The Fucking Way There; thank god I was high. 

Zeke glanced at the golf course across the street and told me about the time he fell off of a golf cart with his friends. Other than that story, it was all about the third item of the Trinity.

"Me and Magnus started fucking first. Hazel was the addition." This was true. "They got close, and that’s when I backed off.’’ This was not true.

Zeke didn’t back off. He was obsessed with Magnus. And at that point in time, he still was. That's what Hazel meant by obsessive. I tried not to let it bother me, but it did. 

He then bragged about taking a shower with Magnus and then bragged about bragging to Hazel that he’d taken a shower with Magnus. The whole story was a drag. I thankfully made it to the rugby meet with my brain cells unscathed.

We met a girl at the meet, sitting at a playground adjacent to the field. This was Tabby, one of Zeke’s aforementioned friends.

‘’Look at John’s ass! Isn’t it nice?’’ Tabby said, referring to her boyfriend on the field.

Zeke and Tabby continued to loudly catcall John until practice ended, when John told Zeke directly to "Shut the fuck up, please." 

The second part of practice started, and us three moved to the bleachers. I sat behind Zeke and rubbed his back, stirring him to call me ‘cute’ to Tabby. I liked compliments like that.

I don’t remember much else. We drove back to the mall in Tabby’s car that had some good week-old donuts in them. And I got picked up. It was a good afternoon, but it wouldn’t be a good memory after what happened a day later.