He was Corey the first time he met Bear.
She was Kori when she met Otter.
They saw whoever he or she showed them, and it mattered not to them.
He was Corey the first time we tried to have sex. His dorm was quiet, the lights down low. My hands were shaking, my heart thudding, and I was sure I was going to throw up all over him, either physically or emotionally. The little voice did nothing but laugh.
She was Kori when I had my panic attack moments later, touching my hair and back, her voice high and sweet, telling me it was okay, that it’d be okay. Kori comes out more for the panic attacks than Corey. I think it’s his way of dealing too.
He was Corey when he went with me to a PETA rally, that small smile on his face as he watched me scream that fur was murder. “I don’t think the ecoterrorist is in training anymore,” he told me later.
She was Kori when she announced she was switching over to vegetarianism.
He was Corey when I caught him eating a sausage pizza four hours later. “Oops,” he said through a mouthful of animal companion and absolutely no shame. “It didn’t take.” He grinned at me, and there was pig stuck in his teeth.
He was Corey.
She was Kori.
I know what it sounds like, trust me. Bigenders, much like transgenders, have long had to deal with the misconception of a mental illness. Corey told me one night, when neither of us could sleep, that doctors considered him bipolar when he was younger. Even schizophrenic. They treated him and her as such. “I’d be Kori because I was scared,” he said bitterly. “And they thought I was crazy. Most of them did, anyway.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy,” I said, kissing his bare shoulder.
“The crazy ones never do,” he said. Then he laughed and all was right in the world.
At least for a little while.
He was Corey when he broke up with me three months later. “It’s not right, Ty,” he said. His words were kind, but his voice was trembling. “You know it. I know it. I love you too much to love you like that.” I waited until he left before I let the panic overtake me. Bear found me in the bathtub and waited with me until the earthquakes went away. Until the ocean receded.
She was Kori when she showed up at our house three weeks later in the middle of the night. I hadn’t seen her since we’d broken up, though she had called. “I can’t do it!” she cried. She was angrier than I’d ever seen her before. “I can’t not have you there. You can’t cut me out, Tyson! You can’t! I won’t let you!”
He was Corey when we met up a few days later. Both of us were nervous at first. We fumbled our words. We tripped over ourselves. But finally, we found the rhythm, the beat that we both could dance to, and instead of Corey and Ty or Kori and Ty, we became something so much more.
Corey became part of my family, the crazy, fucked-up thing that it is.
So did Kori.
He was Corey when he asked me why I never went back to Oregon with Bear and Otter. I told him there was nothing for me there.
She was Kori when she met Creed, Anna, and JJ when they came to visit. They doted on her. They adored her. And as they left, she looked at me and said, “How can there be nothing for you there when they belong to you?”
He was Corey when the truth came out about Dominic. I don’t know how it happened or why, but all of a sudden I told him about Dominic. Everything about Dominic. Our word of the day. Our promises. Our friendship, my love, the bright and burning and god-awful thing that it was. The look on his face when everything was inevitable. His broken voice due to screaming the night his mother was murdered by his father. How big he was to me, both physically and emotionally. “It was hero worship,” I finally said, the tofu stir fry in front of me going cold. “I can see that now. That’s all it was.”
A minor earthquake struck when I said that, but I kept it at bay. After that, the panic attacks stopped, for a time. But I wouldn’t realize that until later, when I was standing on a beach in Seafare in the rain.
Corey watched me for a while, not saying anything. Eventuall
y, I looked away. The restaurant we sat in was almost empty.
Then, “I knew, I think.”
“Knew what?” I asked.
“That there was something else about you.” He smiled sadly. “You were there, Ty, with me, when we were together. But you were never there.”
“I was,” I said weakly. My own words felt like lies.
“This Dominic.”