A study in regret and reckoning.
My first week as a freshman at the University of Missouri-Columbia, I learned how things would go for me.
In high school, I wasn't a"cool little thing." Rather, I prided myself on being an iconoclast. I wore T-shirts with the word"shit" emblazoned in pink letters to algebra class to make a statement about free speech. I co-hosted an anti-prom party, silently daring anyone to ask me why I didn't have a date. I'm sure it kind of went down like this: After high school, I decided to leave Chicago to go to college in Columbia, Missouri, an eight-hour drive down south.
"I'm soooo excited," she would say, swinging her long limbs in routines across the room."My audition dance is sick!" Soon enough, there was a Ken doll fraternity boyfriend crawling into her twin bed. I didn't want to hear any of the action, so I got earplugs and covered my head with my blanket. I also used this cocoon to hide from her constant use of the n-word.
Her boyfriend had gotten into two or three fights in the few weeks they'd been together, and he joked about how much fun it would be to burn one of"those nigger houses." His voice scared me, and so did the way people talked about race. One minute, racist"jokes" sounded like light-hearted jabs; the next, like pretending to run people down with your car.
When people made jokes about whether I knew how to"dirty Sanchez" or"Mexican deep clean," I laughed. At a party, a guy asked where I could possibly be from. I explained it was Chicago."C'mon," he said, tipping into his Solo cup, eyeing me warily,"You're not really from there. Say a word in Spanish, say something in your real language.
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