Monkey Business

layla sees the truth

Friday, April 9, 3:00 p.m.

“Hi, Dorothy!” I sing. “Hi, Dennis! Hi, everyone!” Today ends the last week of the task force. Truth is, Dennis and I are the only ones who have weathered it out. The other volunteers have all dwindled away with exams and interviews. But not me. I stick by my commitments.

“Hi, Layla,” Dennis says. His glasses are crooked, and I resist the urge to straighten them.

Dorothy is biting into an apple and packing up her stuff. “Layla, I have to run out early. If you could update some files for me, I’d really appreciate it.”

“No problem.” I pull up a chair in front of the main computer and start inserting data. Deepak Hussein will not be joining us in the fall. Has decided to remain at his job for the time being, and would like to know if he can defer his acceptance until the following September. Sorry, Deepak. No deferrals. Try again next year.

Forty-five minutes in I spot Brad’s file. He has decided to go to Harvard Business School. Apparently, he’s never been dumped before and I’ve soured him off LWBS completely. Oh, well. Not sure how well he would have done at the Zoo, anyway. The closet might not have had enough room for his shoes. The entire dorm might not have had enough room for his shoes. He didn’t write about his shoes in his application. Would have been an interesting add-on under hobbies. Not.

I click on his name and add the information to his file. I shouldn’t make fun of him. Just because he’s a prince, doesn’t mean he’s my prince. You can’t fall in love with a man on paper, is all.

I close the file on Bradley Green, and you know what comes almost right after Green? Grossman. Can’t hurt to peek at his file, just for fun. I’ve been here for three hours; I could certainly use a break. I peer around the room to see what Dennis is up to. He appears to be totally engrossed in his keyboard, so I click on Jamie’s student file. The screen with his student number pops up. I scroll down and click on the icon for his application. I’m giggling in anticipation. How crazy could he have gone?

The document opens and I see where he typed in his name and Florida address. How cute! I picture him sitting on a wooden patio, a sand beach in view, typing away his address on his laptop, pursing his adorable lips. He’s a great kisser. I’m really happy. Everything is perfect. Fine, not perfect. He’s a little shorter than my dream man. And balder. And he has a unibrow. But other than that he’s perfect for me. I hope. I think. Is he?

And here’s his birthdate, this July. We’ll have to do something fabulous.

And then the F for female…

F? Why was there an F anyway? Ah. No wonder the school records had him down as a woman. He applied as one! Silly Jamie.

Mild panic. Why did he apply as a woman? Maybe secretly he is a woman. That would explain why he didn’t want to have sex. I exhale with relief when I remember Kimmy’s less than fervent description of his genitalia. I know that she’s seen the equipment, what there is of it.

Silly Jamie. He must have accidentally checked the wrong square when he applied. There is no way that he’d do that…purposely.

Unless he thought that applying as a woman would give him a competitive advantage. An invisible vacuum sucks all the air from my lungs. No. He wouldn’t have done that. Would he? People make typos all the time. I saw them myself. Applicants wrote in the wrong schools. If someone could write in the wrong schools, then surely I can expect someone to write in the wrong letter. Except, the M square on the original application was nowhere near the F square.

A fog of nausea overwhelms me. I have to ask him. Now.

I say goodbye to Dennis and return to the Zoo. Jamie is sprawled on his bed, watching an old black-and-white movie I don’t recognize.

“Hey darlin’, have you ever seen-” He breaks off at the shocked look on my face. “What’s wrong?”

I close the door behind me. It must have been a mistake. This sweet man wouldn’t do something that despicable. “Did you apply to LWBS as a woman?” I blurt out. As soon as the question is out of my mouth, I realize how ridiculous it sounds. I may as well have asked him if he is, in fact, transsexual.

His cheeks flush. The balding part of his head flushes. And then I realize he did it.

He smiles like a kid who just got caught dipping his finger in the cake’s icing. “Kind of funny, huh?”

Tell me he doesn’t think this is a joke. I attempt to stop my hands from trembling. “Excuse me?”

“I said it’s kind of funny. Or it was kind of funny.” He sighs. “Obviously you don’t seem to think so, so why don’t you sit down and we’ll talk about it?”

Instead of sitting, I pace the room.

“Layla, sit. I just washed my sheets. No germs I swear.”

And that’s when I blow up. “Not everything is a joke! This isn’t funny! What were you thinking?”

He crosses his arms in front of his chest. “I didn’t plan it.”

“It was an accident?” Please tell me it was an accident.

“It was research. For an article. Affirmative action was a hot topic and I thought it would make an interesting study. I applied to ten different schools, five as a male and five as a female.” He’s talking quickly, the words pouring out of him like water on full blast from the tap.

“But why male versus female? Why not pretend to be Hispanic or African-American?”

“Because people always think the name Jamie is female. If the only discrepancy was my gender, then I could keep my name and get my college to send my real grades.”

“But what about the rest of the application?” Someone in the hallway smashes into the side of the room and laughs. We both ignore it, and I continue pacing.

Jamie sighs. “I wrote the essays, the GMATs-that’s all legit.” He pales. “But I had to write my own letters of reference.”

Holy crap. “That is so illegal.”

“I know, I know, but I couldn’t ask former professors to write them, could I? People normally use gender pronouns in their letters.”

“And you got in.”

“Yeah.”

“You took advantage of the system.”

“Maybe the system is wrong,” he says.

“An MBA class is stronger when it’s diverse. Just as our learning groups are stronger when we’re not five engineers, our class is stronger if it’s not a hundred white men. So what if diversity needs a little help? But that doesn’t mean you have the right to take advantage of it.”

“I didn’t see it as that big a deal. I thought, why not?”

“Why not? Because it’s wrong!” I yell.

“Why is it wrong? Why shouldn’t I get the chance to be here?”

I feel dizzy. “How has no one noticed? How is that possible?”

“You’d be amazed how irrelevant gender is in school life. My only problem was my student card. The picture ID says female or male on it. And we need to bring those to exams.”

I feel nauseous all over again. “And that’s when you asked me to change the F to an M so you could get a new student card.”

“Yeah. Thank you. I don’t know how I would have written my exams otherwise. I guess I could have risked it, but I was nervous one of the proctors would look at it and start wondering.” He pauses. “You don’t look so good. Are you okay?”

No, I’m not okay. “How could you do that to me? You asked me to commit a felony! What if I had gotten caught?” I’m pacing again, this time faster. “What if Dorothy thinks I’m an accomplice? And I get expelled? What if you ruined my life?”

He leaps off the bed and puts his arms around me. “Calm down.”

I push him away. “Don’t you dare tell me to calm down. I can’t believe you would do that to me. Put my future at risk.”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s really kind of funny, when you think of it.” He smiles hopefully.

Why is nothing ever a big deal to him? “It is a big deal. Not everything is a joke, Jamie. I could be in front of the tribunal with Russ and Kimmy. I could lose my job at Silverman.”

“You don’t even want your job at Silverman,” he points out.

“What I want is not to be manipulated.” What I want is to get out of his room. “You’re no better than Russ.”

I jerk the door open and storm out. I hear him protesting from inside, but I don’t care. I’m angry. Furious. Steam-shooting-out-of-ears pissed off. And I’m feeling something else, too. Something really familiar.

Relief.