“Sure. Yeah.”
“Are you better than Matteo?” I gestured to Matteo, who was already a small figure in the distance.
“I don’t know,” Vincent said, giving me a smug smile. “Look… I grew up skating. It was what we did as kids, all the time.” He eyed me. “What did you do as a kid? In the winter, I mean.”
I blinked. That was a long time ago. “Played the piano. Read books. Gazed out of the window at the neighborhood kids lugging their skates to the rink.”
Vincent looked shocked. “What? That’s so sad.”
“I was obsessed with my music back then. I’m starting to realize I may have short-changed myself.” I looked down at my skates as I attempted to orient myself as we moved forward. “And, uh, I didn’t get along well with most kids my age.”
Vincent was quiet. Then he said, “That must have been tough.”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t their fault. I didn’t fit into any of the neat little packages their parents had told them about. I wasn’t much of a girl. At that time, I wasn’t much of a boy, either. I was an awkward loner with a music habit.” I grinned at him. “A skinny little runt.”
He snorted. “Yeah, right!”
“I was…ugly and not very likeable. At least, by high school, I could pull off the heroin chic look with my stringy hair and bony cheekbones.”
“Huh. I can’t picture it,” Vincent said, keeping me steady. We were about halfway there, now.
“Count yourself lucky. I didn’t keep any photos from those days.”
We continued on without speaking. Then Vincent said, “How did you finally, you know…figure yourself out? Your identity and all that?”
“Bowie.”
“Pardon?”
“David Bowie. I was obsessed with him as a musician, and he was the first androgynous, gender-fluid person I’d ever seen. When my dad died, I inherited his record collection. Makes me wonder if maybe my dad wasn’t a bit gender-fluid himself, even though I never saw an outward sign to indicate that.”
I had felt an instant connection to Bowie’s lyrics and had had a visceral response to his pose on the cover ofHunky Dory, where he reclined on an antique chaise in a medieval-type dress, sporting voluminous, curly locks. It had awakened something dormant, or at the very least undefined, inside of me. If Bowie could dress like that in public—on the cover of a record album—maybe I could dress the way I wanted. Maybe I could live my truth.
“Wow,” Vincent said.
“Bowie didn’t give a fuck what other people thought. And after that, neither did I.”
Vincent met my gaze. “You are the bravest person I know.”
“Oh, come on. I don’t feel brave right now,” I said. But my mood was starting to lighten. Dow’s Lake was crowded with people who were laughing and joking and having a good time. It was difficult to keep myself separate, and maybe it was time to stop trying.
“Once I gave up attempting to conform, everything went in a masculine direction. One of my girlfriends started calling me ‘Nic’ and, it felt right. Eventually, I asked her to refer to me as ‘him’, and she never questioned it.”
“Wow. That’s pretty amazing.”
“Yes, it was. Daphne was always ahead of her time.”
Vincent laughed. “How long have you known each other?”
“I think we met in fifth grade. Well, I was in fifth grade. She was older. I remember her using curse words and knowing all sorts of very interesting sexual things. She fascinated me.”
“She fascinates menow.”
“Yeah. I can’t believe she’s getting married. It just seems so bizarre. I never expected Daphne to want to get married.”
“Sometimes people surprise you.”
“Like Matteo and Zarah,” I said, peering ahead at the rest stop filled with picnic tables and bordered by a Beavertails shack and a changing station.
