Chapter 12: Hetero Schmetero




     "Have you seen FM?" I blurt to Deb Lew sunning on a concrete bench beside the fountain in the mounting heat of a tidewater mid-morning. "She disappeared from my room."

"I hate to break this to you Enzo," she elucidates while sitting up and slipping sunglasses onto her head, "but Freida-Mae's got a girlfriend."



     Just like that on a mid-May Sunday morning my illusions of heteronormativity were scattered in the spray of the Gibson-Henry fountain. In a single hour I'd discovered that a fraternity brother was becoming a sister and a new lover already had a same-sex lover. 

     Ours was the generation after the counterculture movement of the late 1960s. Vietnam was over, hippies had become freaks, and equal rights were filtering into even a conservative small college in the south.  Still, the coming out of non-binary friends was liberating in a way I hadn't even known I'd needed. 



     "Well that explains a lot," I sigh, my frown turning into a smile of relief as I suddenly feel the cooling mist on my face and arms. "What should I do about her?"

"Duh, just relax and enjoy it," she groans, flipping sunglasses down and laying back as the ripples of a fit midriff catch my admiring eye.




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