My brain and my will got me to Harvard, but I didn’t want to be the poor immigrant kid once I got there. I was a poor kid who’d gone to a mediocre public school in Chino, California, in the smoggy, working‑class part of Los Angeles where my uncle worked as a nurse, so that was where we ended up when my family immigrated four years earlier. Though I was excited to wear women’s clothes for the first time, I was even more thrilled that someone at Harvard cared enough to hang out with me, especially someone as popular as Lucy, small‑boned and fine‑featured yet unfailingly jovial, like a bird in mid‑flight. I agreed to meet Lucy later that afternoon. I have dresses that would probably fit you.” I sneaked a peek to see who she was talking about, someone whose name I didn’t know, who had dark curly hair and patches of stubble. “And he needs to shave,” a redheaded girl named Sarah commented. “We need to go to the thrift store to get costumes,” a compact blond man named Zach said. They were planning to do a number to “It’s Raining Men.” I had only lived in the house for six weeks and was slow to make friends.Īt the next table, I overheard some juniors I didn’t know well talking about Drag Night, an Adams tradition I’d heard about but didn’t realize was happening over dinner that evening. I hoped to see people I recognized after I got food, but when I didn’t, I sat alone at one of the square tables in the middle of that vast space with its dark wood paneling and red velvet curtains, hoping still that someone I knew would come along and join me. I’d skipped breakfast that day, so it was past noon by the time I shuffled into the dining hall. I felt inspired in that room, even though I occasionally bumped my head when I sat up in bed. I’d recently learned that word at a lecture on Virginia Woolf ’s A Room of One’s Own, where the professor proposed the garret as an ideal space for writers in search of quiet and contemplation. I ended up on the top floor of the farthest entryway in Adams House, which I didn’t mind because the eaves made my room feel like a garret. It was sophomore year, the Saturday before Halloween, 1994.
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