You can go home again

Happy Pride! When the clock struck midnight last night, I got out of bed and scurried across the apartment to kiss my wife’s cheek as she put the electric toothbrush down to accept and return the favor. “Happy Pride!” took on the reflexive and expected quality of “Happy New Year!” or  “Peace be with you!” There is comfort in tradition, after all. I’m a traditional person and maybe even conservative if I looked even deeper. I usually don’t. 

I think that’s one of the reasons that Princeton University was such a comfort and a challenge all at the same time. I entered that place with my vibe sorted in a very precise way. I would be cool, but not too accessible. I would question things, but not the things that included being gay. I could start with being black and that would be enough work for four years, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t.

In college, one of my still dearest friends and I used to pore over the works of Foucault and Satre and sometimes DeBeauvoir when we were feeling feisty. But the idea of something being so repressed that it would start to poke through and shine, was enticing and a cautionary tale. Was the fact of my being so in the closet the reason that I kept meeting gay professors who were encouraging and inspiring me to want to speak my truth? Was the fact of my wanting to just focus on whatever issues of intersectionality that came with being of a certain comfortable socio-economic class and being black at the same time, the reason I kept meeting friends with all sorts of other axes of privilege and oppression at work? I can’t say.

But, what I know is that after four years at Princeton, my vibe rearranged itself; I found a stronger and more coherent voice. I fell in love for the first time. I would get my heart broken too, but that wouldn’t come for a few more years. In the calendar of traditions, June is Pride Month, Princeton Reunions and our wedding anniversary month. And the site where all three of those traditions converge is Princeton University. Old Nassau. The place where alumni sing about “going back, going back, to the best old place of all.” So, maybe it isn’t the best place in the whole wide world, but for me, it’s pretty special. 

Happy Pride 2018!

For more about my time at Princeton, check out this cool oral history project: https://findingaids.princeton.edu/collections/AC465/c20