nccotus

I was aced out of Harvard 5 minutes after my 2nd roommate arrived on the scene at Mower A-31 in Harvard Yard.

I was so thrilled and relieved to meet Colleen from Ohio half an hour before, a homely and kind young woman.

she had taken the single room in the suite.

Sally, the 2nd roommate, the daughter of a Dean at Stanford, sailed into the room and said, out of the blue, “I don’t know how people who aren’t pretty can make love.”

I still don’t see what she was saying except that it silenced me in the worst way. My Harvard education was over before it even started.

looking back I realize with a gasp that oh so obviously it was about my smoking. I had asked for non smoking roommates hoping to quit. I was chainsmoking 3 packs a day uncontrollably because of an incident at home over the Christmas holiday high school senior year.

***!!!

I realize now that she was a pretty woman in a way that I didn’t see at the time. And moreover, because of her father men were inclined to see her that way. Unlike me she was washed and groomed well.

I wrote a story about her that was unkind and absent mindedly left it out around the room and she picked it up and read it. This ended the rest of what was left of a Harvard career for me. I was comandeered to be her friend. Sort of like the Black woman in The Color Purple who was forced to serve the White woman who she hauled out and punched her; for some 17 years. Sally didn’t have any other friends. Neither did I. Because of her. It was kind of like my situation with my mother. She got in the way of those who might have stepped in to help.

I had read the materials that were sent out over the summer and just didn’t understand what they were saying about Freshman year roommates and how crazy it could be the extremity of the journies that lead to Harvard. Looking back, I have to give myself a break about how I didn’t belong there and “Let it Be.” Per the John Lennon song. Nothing was as it should have been. I just had to ride it out as it was until I could get to a place where I could figure things out better.

because of the malpractice by John’s Hopkins that time never came until here today, when it’s all said and done. Past tense. Time served. I feel like I have a gaping hole blown out of me where my life for 31 years should have been.

Hopkins will be sued.

unfinished

never to return