Meredith Talusan - Fairest: A Memoir

Red brick; white tent; green grass. The outlines of prestige at an inner courtyard on a drizzly day. That was what I saw, the same as what I remembered, the specifics fuzzy from afar, my albino eyes only able to render life in scant detail unless I held it close. But I couldnt well squat down to examine those blades of grass under my feet as I entered the cover of that tent, not at a reunion reception for queer students at Harvard, whether at that moment in 2017, or when I graduated in 1997. I couldnt reveal myself a freak, especially not in this crowd, which would damn me for my failure of sight.

I arrived at this reception from New York, passing several bodies of water by train, but somehow the Charles still stood out to me when I took the T from South Station, the vast expanse of it, the first substantial body of water I crossed after the Pacific Ocean, when I left the pain of my childhood and hurtled to a future of great promise. This was a memory I could only vaguely make out from that distance of time, though I was used to the feeling, since my physical vision could never represent anything far except as blurs. My way of seeing had advantages though. Since I couldnt perceive detail from far away, I could more easily associate what I saw with my past, like how those language philosophers say that when a person hears the word chair, they picture an idealized chair in their mind, drawn from an amalgam of memories. My vision was like that all the time, except it absorbed the few details I could actually see and integrated them with the objects I imagined.

Unable to identify any specific blade of grass on this occasion, I could imagine the blurry mass under my feet as the same uniform stalks of verdant green Id stepped on twenty years earlier, and so became two people without much effort, the person who arrived today and the young man from the afternoon of my improbable graduation from the most prestigious university in the world. Me, a child from a Philippine province, descendant of peasant farmers, son of derelict immigrants.

Except: I was no longer a son, no longer a man. I became more aware of this as groups of gay men, mostly aging or aged, circulated around me. Their manner of casual evaluation was all too familiar from the countless gay occasions Id been exposed toclubs, parties, rallies, meetingsevents where official interactions were always tinged with the energy of male desire. Though having such blurry vision made me pay closer attention to what I could perceive, and what I saw was the change in how those men approached and retreated, the way their bodies created invisible patterns in space, the distinction between being observed but found wanting and being dismissed offhand, the difference between being a not-so-hot guy and a woman.

Its kinda fun to see a bunch of boys who rejected me under the same tent, a droll voice behind me said, whose owner I immediately identified as Kit Clark, a black alum who was several classes ahead of me but had worked at Harvard after graduation and never left. We got back in touch a few years earlier, so he was one of the few people Id seen since I finished college.

Havent snagged one yet? I asked as I turned to face him.

Its a lot worse than when you were here, he replied. The men keep getting younger and Im only getting uglier.

I would protest if it were anyone else, but Kits tone had always made it clear that he did not invite praise whenever he said something negative about his appearance. What he invited was empathy, agreement with the injustice of how looks so determined our place in the gay pecking order and how our lack of attractiveness had so much to do with our race and femininity.

Kits broad, open face, his strong jaw, his wide nose, would not be considered ugly, if not for the kinky hair he kept long. His olive skin would have also been attractive, except that it didnt come with the hypermasculinity that seemed to be a prerequisite for black gay men to be thought hot. Instead, Kit refused to subject his tall, lanky frame to the rigors of a gym regimen and preferred activities like circus silks and modern dance, which he could perform with a lithe grace.

You can always leave Cambridge, I suggested.

Youre not serious. My life is here. I accept that Im undesirable.

This struck me as a fundamental difference between us and why Id kept my friendship with Kit at arms length over the years, because his self-acceptance rattled me. Kit would not allow himself to butch it up or keep his hair short just to court suitors; he wanted to be wanted, but he wouldnt compromise himself for the sake of anothers desire. I, on the other hand, didnt have the same solid sense of self. Id been more than willing to clamp down on my most undesirable traits, especially two decades ago, when I had such an unclear sense of who I was beyond other peoples reflections of me.