Michael wraps an arm around her and starts to run the fingers of his free hand through her hair. Lee’s weight on him is perfect, smothering much of the residual static in his brain. Everything is comfortable, except—he should have pulled his shirt off before he laid down, it’s sticking to his back and making his burn sore. But it’s not worth moving. He’ll get Lee to put some lotion on it later.
“You are not,” he retorts, calling her out. He’s not mad about it. He did it to himself, mostly. It is ridiculous, though, how Lee refuses to burn no matter how long she bakes outside, while it seems impossible for Michael to tan. The shades of her hair and skin have nearly inverted, like a film negative. It’s fascinating.
Also fascinating is the freedom they have here. They can do anything. Lee has started wearing whatever she wants on different days, going outside looking androgynous sometimes, sitting on the beach shirtless by his side. They’re always obviously a couple. People shoot them looks—surprise, disgust, curiosity, confusion. Every once in a while the looks are different—recognition, approval, understanding. Michael didn’t notice at first but he does now, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.
He’s always known about Lee, almost from the start. That she’s not really a girl. Or a boy. He knows she’s different, that it’s hard for her, that people are cruel because of that. It goes beyond things people say or looks they give—he knows what his father did, what the cops did. It burns him up inside. It’s an anger he’s grown used to. What he hasn’t grown used to is what it means about him. What it means when Lee takes him to certain kinds of parties or places like the Stonewall, places where not everyone calls Lee a girl but they still accept him as her boyfriend. What it means that calling Lee ‘she’ isn’t only for her protection but for his. What it means when people look at them in all these ways out here in California, and they’re not just looking at Lee, they’re looking at him, too. It’s him, too, that they’re disgusted with, or identify with, or confused by, and it’s not because he’s ranting about pickles or comparing doctors to cops. It’s not because he’s Jewish or because he’s an immigrant. It’s something else, and whenever he tries to think about it, it slides, all slippery and oily off the top of his mind.
The thought dogged him as he walked this morning—that thought, among all the others, but it’s the only one left spinning in his head now as he lies underneath Lee. The only worry. It’s not new, not really; months have passed and he’s never mentioned it to her. He didn’t want to reach for the words, even silently. He still doesn’t. It’s not something he wants to deal with now.
But it’s too present out here, it’s right in front of him, and he’s getting the bursting feeling he gets when something’s going to happen whether he wants it to or not.
“Hey,” he says reluctantly, “you know, you remember when—remember when we met, and I asked if you were a homosexual, and you said no?”