Kim Fu - For Today I Am a Boy

“What else is in the chickpea salad?” I asked.

“Fruit and spices,” Eileen said, passing around a stack of plates.

“So why did you mention the mayo?”

“I don’t eat eggs,” said a blond girl. Her eyeliner was drawn in sharp points nearly an inch away from each eye.

“And some of us can’t eat dairy,” added the boy in the skintight baby-blue pants.

“Mayo’s not dairy,” Eileen said.

“Oh.”

The floor was now open. “I can’t eat wheat,” explained a thick-bodied girl with a deep voice.

The girl with aviator glasses said, “Me neither. And shellfish gives me hives.”

“I’m allergic to nuts and soy,” Blue-Pants chimed in. “And mushrooms.”

John said, “I don’t eat mushrooms either, but that’s not an allergy. Something about the texture just makes me want to retch.”

Deep-Voice said, “Oh, I’m like that about potatoes.”

Eileen turned to me. “I’m sorry, Peter. I forgot to ask you if you had any food sensitivities.”

“Um, no,” I said. They seemed to be waiting for me to say something else, so I added, “It’s sort of funny that you all do, isn’t it? Have so many allergies, I mean. For one group of friends.”

“They’re not all allergies. Some are intolerances,” Pointy-Makeup-No-Eggs said. She started gathering food onto her plate.

“I read somewhere it’s a generational thing,” said Blue-Pants-No-Soy. He was waiting for Pointy to relinquish the tongs, his plate hanging limply from his hand. “Something about us not getting tapeworms, or parasites, or something. Like, we’re the no-tapeworm generation, so we’re the food-allergy generation too.”

Deep-Voice-No-Wheat said, “Or maybe it’s all in our heads. We’re the hypochondriac generation.”

Aviators-No-Shellfish replied, “My EpiPen would disagree with you.”

“My stomach hurts so bad when I eat dairy. Like, I can’t get out of bed,” Pointy-Makeup-No-Eggs said.

“Maybe in previous generations, they wouldn’t have figured it out, and you would’ve just died,” I said. “Maybe there wasn’t as much choice. Maybe you just had to eat what was there or starve.”

Blue-Pants tapped the tongs together like a castanet to get my attention. “What are you saying? That we should just suck it up and deal with it? Lisa would asphyxiate, you know. Her throat closes up.”

“No,” I said. Even though we all sat around the table, it felt as though they were all facing me. “Sorry. I just meant that no one would have thought to blame the nuts.”

“Shellfish,” said No-Shellfish, apparently Lisa.

“Shellfish.” It was rare for me to talk so much at once, especially to strangers. “You wouldn’t realize it was the shellfish. You wouldn’t try it out and think about how you felt afterward. If you lived somewhere where the dominant food was shellfish, you’d just have a reaction and die, and no one would know why.”

“Why are you talking about Lisa dying?” asked Pointy.

“Sorry,” I repeated. I turned my eyes down to my plate. It was the only one still empty.

Blue-Pants and I stayed after everyone else had left. Eileen washed the dishes and I dried, while Blue-Pants sat at the table behind us typing into his phone. John was outside fiddling with the compost in the small garden of their first-floor apartment.

“Way to help, asshole,” Eileen said casually to Blue-Pants. “What are you doing?”

“Coming up with a short, pithy summary of the evening to share with the Internet,” Blue-Pants said, in a self-mocking drawl.

“Yes, the Internet needs to know what you thought of my macaroons.”

“They were acceptable,” Blue-Pants said. His chin was lit from below by the screen. At dinner, everyone had been fascinated by the fact that I didn’t own a computer. “I didn’t know there were dinosaurs like you still left in the world,” Blue had said.

Eileen handed me a wet glass. My small hand, with a dishcloth wrapped around it, fit inside. We worked to the soft clinking of dishes and Blue’s tapping thumbs. “May I ask you something?” I said.

“Shoot,” she said.

I paused, holding the glass aloft. John’s friends had a brittleness he lacked, hardened and delicate at the same time, as though the wrong touch or the wrong word would blow them apart. I couldn’t figure out how to talk to them.

Eileen said, “You’re wondering about John, right?” I nodded. She opened a cupboard above our heads so I could put away the glasses. “He’s always bringing home curious strays. Thinks it’s his job to educate the whole fucking world.”

“Never mind,” I said, burying my face in the cupboard. “It’s none of my business.”

“I’ll make this short,” she said. “John’s parents came around to the idea when he was in kindergarten, though he’d been demanding it since he could talk. He went on puberty blockers early enough that there were no breast buds to be removed, and then on testosterone. His family moved to Toronto for better care, and so nobody knew him from when he was a girl. He hasn’t had bottom surgery and doesn’t plan to, although he thinks all M-to-Fs should do it, because, as he says, ‘Your surgery works.’ Enough? Does that answer your question?”

She was holding out a bunch of utensils. I didn’t take them. The world took on the unimportance that it has in dreams where you know you’re dreaming and you can leap off buildings without fear.

Eileen shook the utensils so they dripped onto the counter. I reached for them, and as I felt the knife edges and fork tines through the cloth, what I was feeling gave itself a name. Rage. I was so angry I could’ve driven the tiny blades into her side. I hadn’t understood some of the terms she used, but I understood the tone. Who were these kids? What right had they to be born into a world where they were taught to look endlessly into themselves, to ask how the texture of a mushroom made them feel? To ask themselves, and not be told, whether they were boys or girls? You eat what’s there or you starve.

I started yanking open the drawers, pulling them all the way back until they snapped at their farthest opening, then slamming them shut again, looking for the one where the utensils went. Moved to Toronto made it sound like he came from somewhere like Fort Michel. “What about your parents?” My voice came out as a snarl, surprising both of us. “Are they happy with this?”

“My father is dead,” Eileen said, “and my mother is a born-again Christian, so we don’t talk about it much. She calls every other week to remind me that we’re going to hell. We spend all our holidays with John’s parents.”

I found the drawer. The utensils inside rattled like chains as I pulled it free. “How did your father die?”

“Cancer,” she said.

“What kind?”

She handed me a mug and our fingers touched. “Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.” The mug rattled against the others.

“Pancreatic. It spread to his bones and then he was gone. Swift, painful, and very ugly.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. Is your father dead?”

I blinked at the directness of the question. I nodded.

“From what?” We were out of dishes. She scrubbed a pot while I dried my hands on my thighs.

“I don’t know.”

Blue glanced up, as though I had finally said something interesting. “How can you not know?”

I thought about that. “My parents are very private people,” I said finally.

Eileen worked away at a stubborn spot, a lock of hair falling into her eyes. “That’s fucked-up.”

“I guess.” The curve of Eileen’s back flexed with effort. I wanted to tell her she was going to scratch the bottom of the pot.