Test
  by Austin Head-Jones, '05

 
 

Jonathan and I are trying to find out what gender I am. Or, rather, we are trying to find out what gender I am supposed to be. I have, throughout my life, been fairly sure I was female, but there is a new test online that claims it can predict genders with 100% accuracy. Jonathan already took it himself, and afterwards seemed even more self-actualized than usual. Jonathan is the only person I have ever heard describe the theories behind Catholicism as "too mean", and, being the sort of person who likes to share love, kindness, and self-actualization with friends, he has made me next in line for testing. I will take the test as soon as he gets my computer working, although I have already suggested that it might be possessed by a demon, which means we will have to go to the Church for help, mean or not.

Apparently, the test will not only tell you that you are male, but can give you an accurate percentage of how male you are. I am told it recommends about 75% as a good, healthy level. If you are more than 75% male, the test reports that you are three times as likely to die in an automobile accident, but, on the other hand, if you aren't male enough you will end up using scented facial products. My own collection of scented facial products looms at me from my bedside table every morning like a local mafia, and I am glad that Jonathan's result was a good one, though he hasn't told me exactly what it was, yet.

Like many of my friends, Jonathan has fully entered the test craze: there are tests to determine your IQ, your emotional capacity, the television sitcom character that best applies to you, and even the color of your aura. Although I flat out refused to take the aura test, he easily persuaded me to do the one for gender. "We can see how accurate the constructs of patriarchy really are, and conceptually destroy them," he suggested. Jonathan has known me for long enough to realize that if he uses the words "patriarchy" and "destroy" in the same sentence, he can get me to do almost anything. Once I helped him move his desk up three flights of stairs. Another time I attacked a bat. Being Jonathan, though, when he says agreeable things like that about patriarchy, he means them. He's got one of the best souls I've ever known, which, of course, makes it worse to take a test after him. Next to him, Gandhi might come off looking a little petty.

"Fine," I tell him, guarded. "But only if you can get my computer to work. It's broken." I say the word "broken" with confidence, because I have said it a lot in the last few weeks, and know exactly how it goes. Jonathan smiles at me with a careful sympathy, as he always does when I say things about computers, plugs the machine in, and in a minute the test is on screen, ready for my judgment. I tackle the first question.

Which shape is most appealing to you? The computer asks, displaying a blue circle and a red square. I slump slightly when I see them, having read the question and expected something more interesting. Pictures of a male water-polo team, for instance.

I turn to Jonathan, who has locked my computer screen with the same eager eyes that he puts on whenever we pass a store that sells pc-compatible sound systems. My friends all wear these eyes when they take tests like this one, because they realize they are about to add another category to their stack of personalities. That means they, and I, will get to be someone slightly different once the test is over.

"What do I do if I don't like either of the shapes?" I ask Jonathan, pointing at the screen. "They're boring."

Jonathan does not sigh, because he is enlightened, and enlightened people who have infinite patience in human kind can't sigh. Like when people who've had too many eye surgeries can't cry anymore. "It's not about whether or not you like them," he explains, "it's which one you like best. You know, your favorite of the two. Everyone has favorites."

And this is true. From my first few, soggy moment of thought in first grade, I remember being asked about my favorites, and the people who asked were fairly sure I would have them. It was easy stuff at first: favorite ice cream, favorite teacher. But later on, when our brains were supposed to have gotten more solid, the grown-ups started asking things I didn't know about. The new things, invariably, were questions about my favorite outfit, or my favorite brand of shoes, or, from others my age who were also trying to figure out what we were supposed to be, who I thought was the hottest guy on television. I found out eventually that the right answer was Brad Pitt, but it's different now, so I'm in the dark again.

The thing about having to answer questions like that every day, aside from the fact that not knowing the hottest guy on television isn't looking good for my gender test score, is that when you're asked certain kinds of questions often enough, you become a certain kind of person. During the time when people asked me about clothes, for example, I thought a lot about clothes, because I had to answer all their questions. And if some horrible creature was to come out from under my bed every morning and ask me about the hottest guy on television, I would, just because I had to answer it, end up as one of those people who are obsessed with celebrities. Answering a question doesn't just give others more information about you; it gives you more information about yourself. Once you have that information, you've defined a part of yourself that might not have existed before, whether it's the part that has a plan for how to stop hunger in the world or the part that cares about hot TV guys. You become a different person after you've answered the question. And if the questions don't fit you, the person you become won't fit, either. But there's no way to go back.

So the square and the circle make me nervous. Finally, I click the square, because it is red, and I like red. I wouldn't say it is my favorite color, but I like it.

"Really?" Jonathan's voice flickers curiously when I click the square. He puts a hand to his chin. "Interesting," he says.

"What?" I ask defensively. "Did I do it wrong already!?"

"No, no," Jonathan assures me. "You haven't done anything wrong. I'm just interested to find out new things about your personality."

"It's a square!" I protest. "What does that tell you about-"

"The next question's come up." Jonathan points at the screen.

Does this statement apply to your own opinions?: "In a certain light, nuclear war would be interesting." The options are "yes" and "no".

"I click 'yes'."

"WHAT!?" Jonathan's voice bursts onto the computer screen. I'd swear it flickered, but it may just want to break again, since I'm the one using it. He's not yelling, although any non-Jonathan entities probably would be: just shocked. So it must be breaking just for me. "What do you mean; nuclear war would be 'interesting'?" he presses me. "It would be absolutely horrible! Do you really think that?!"

I am not possessed of infinite patience for humankind, so I get to sigh. I should have made Jonathan read The Prince instead of that "happiness guide" thing. Although if he had, there's a danger that he might have ended up like me. "Sure," I say. "I mean, it would be bad, of course, but it would be interesting from both a political and a scientific standpoint. Like Hiroshima." Jonathan gives me the same look that would go to someone who has just killed a puppy in front of a priest. He has large, crushingly brown eyes, and I have to turn back to the computer screen. "I'm serious," I say. "Look: I'm majoring in International Relations. Anybody who has my major, and enjoys it, and says nuclear war is so bad it can't be interesting is a hypocrite."

"Okay," Jonathan says shakily, blinking into the distance in shock. "Everyone has their own opinion, I guess." He steadies himself. "And it doesn't mean you aren't a good person," he says, the words coming down with the finality of stones.

"Right," I say. People like Jonathan understandably set great store by being "good people", and they use their tests and favorites to make sure everyone around them is a "good person", too. Because of this, their most needed people, like myself, must also, in their minds, line up with the most good. I can only hope that the idea of very good people with an interest in nuclear war has a precedent somewhere. JFK, maybe. . . ?

We have another disagreement when I come to a question about monkeys. There is a picture of two monkeys, one streaming black and white tufts of ferocious fur, the other small and tawny. The little monkey stands on a tree, while the big, fierce monkey flies at it through the air like a genocide. But when I look at the pictures more closely, I find that the tawny monkey is, in fact, the same size as its enemy. It just doesn't have as much fur.

Which do you think will win? the computer demands. I decide that the tawny monkey will, both because it has a more solid starting position, and because the black, flying monkey reminds me a little of my friend Sarah, who wears gothic clothing and tends to throw fits. She does not win many fights.

"Oh, come on!" Jonathan insists. "Now you're just being controversial." I can tell that this answer has also sparked some heat in him, because his eyes get wider. Jonathan's voice, however, does not rise or sharpen. It almost never does. No matter how impassioned he gets, nothing, ranging from my computer to myself, is ever yelled at. Back in first grade, he was probably the only kid in his class who figured out what the term, "inside voices" meant, and he's been getting grief for it ever since. Still, it makes him much more fun to have arguments with. If I owned a skittish animal, like a ferret, maybe, he wouldn't ever frighten it. So I could hypothetically buy a ferret whenever I wanted, which is not true for many people in steady relationships. This question has not yet come up on the test. "There's no way that monkey would win," Jonathan continues in his ferret-friendly voice. "It's too small."

"That's not true!" I say. Jonathan already knows from my face that I'm going to lunge at him with my Texan-ivy-league logic, which has often ended up getting us into illegal buildings. "If you look at them both, they're actually the same size, under the fur. And fur makes a difference! Have you ever washed one of those big, fluffy cats?"

"No," says Jonathan. "Have you?"

"Besides," I go on, since I have not washed a cat, "it's standing on a tree! That black one could get thrown to the side, and fall to the ground and die." I make expressive, monkey-throwing motions with my hands as I talk, as though I have a great deal of experience in these matters. Jonathan is used to this.

"But it looks so much cooler," he insists, the same way he defends his computer sound system whenever I try to insult it. Jonathan's stereos do not work when I use them, so I have been trying to give them a bad reputation for years. It never works. He always believes them, instead of me.

With important issues like monkeys, however, I hold firm. "It's going to lose," I say decisively. I stab the black monkey with my finger, which would probably have marked the gelled computer screen if it wasn't full of battle-scars already. "That monkey is toast."

Jonathan bores into the screen, then crosses his arms, which means he's thought something through. I hear that the Dalai Llama does exactly the same thing.

"Okay," he says, giving up his glorious vision of genocidal monkeys and other cool things. "I guess it will, with the added leverage that brown one will get from the branch. I've got to take the test again, though," he adds, resigned.

I have moved on from monkeys to another test question about what I eat for breakfast. I do not eat breakfast. "Why?" I ask him.

"Because I said that the black monkey would win, when I took it. But it wouldn't. I've got to go back and change my answer."

I stare at him. "No you don't!" I say, confused. "That's just my answer. You can think anything you want about the monkeys." I study him. "It's okay for us to have different opinions, you know."

Jonathan blinks at me. "That's not true," he says. "It's a two-choice question. Only one can be right." He shakes his head. "And my monkey is toast." Jonathan is a solidly optimistic person, always the first to say that both parties in a contest have won, each in their own ways, whenever it's possible to. So I know that if he's condemned the black monkey, it must all be true.

The questions continue. There are pictures of boats and trains. I pick which one I like best. There are questions about shoes, which are easier to answer because I've been asked about them so much. There are questions about emotions, for which I close my eyes and click randomly, because I have the same attitude about emotions that my father does about sharks. When he was young, he couldn't sleep for four days after seeing "Jaws".

In the end, the computer proclaims that I am most definitely a man (66%), but I'm relieved anyway, because the machine hasn't broken yet. "This is the longest I've used it without a problem for weeks!" I tell Jonathan, awed.

"If you just stopped hitting it, it would probably be okay," Jonathan says glumly. "Maybe the test is broken," he hypothesizes. Then he pauses. "I had a cousin who was friends with a transvestite once," he says, the gears in his brain already beginning to problem-solve. "You can wear some of my clothes, if you want."

"I'm not a transvestite!" I shout at him, smacking the computer. The screen gives off a feeble beep, and goes blank. "Goddamnit."

"Okay," Jonathan says with so much emotional stability that I want to whack the computer again. "Whatever you're comfortable with." He leans over my keyboard, presses two keys in a strange combination, and the screen come back on again.

"Sorry I'm a freak of nature, and things," I tell him sympathetically, staring in wonder at the Lazarus test results, which survived my physical abuse and are still blazing at me from the machine. "At least I don't own a ferret."

"I wouldn't mind having a ferret," Jonathan considers. "Although it would probably chew through some of those wires, you know, behind my sound system, and electrocute itself. Besides," he brightens, "the test said I was weird, too."

"You're not going to get into a car wreck, are you?" I ask sullenly.

"No," Jonathan smiles, his extra, personal peace always at the ready when I need it. "Actually, it said that was very unlikely. When I tested it told me I was female. 93%."