it and I assumed I would stop when I wanted to. I was young and thought I was having a good time and could not see into the future. I didn’t know that these ways of coping with misery and guilt would follow me for years. Not until I was an adult would I come to deal with them.
N ow when I think about my belief that I was overweight, I realize I was actually wrong. After my mother died, my father and Aunt Julia and I took a trip to Maine to look at colleges. When I look at pictures of myself on that trip, I don’t see a fat girl. I looked perfectly reasonable. But when I was a small child, I was clearly very chubby. When I was in high school, I thought I was fat, but the pictures don’t bear that out. Unfortunately, my self-image and my need to use it against myself was already set by high school, and it’s been something I’ve struggled with ever since.
At that point in my life, I wasn’t aware in any conscious way that my sexuality contributed to my sense that I was different. Mostly it felt like whatever was wrong with me was a deficiency of some sort, which was somehow linked to my responsibility for my mother’s illness. I rationalized it by thinking that some people are tall, and some people are short. Some people have a romantic life and feel good about how they look, and some people don’t. Not until college did I realize I was destined to have a romantic life after all, but it wasn’t the kind of romantic life I had planned for.
C HAPTER 5
What I Learned in College
I left home for Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in the fall of 1984. My friends had helped me shop and pack. My father, my friend Dorothy, and I drove up in separate cars. I was excited, of course, and nervous about leaving home.
But leave home I did. I didn’t go home on weekends or call home every Sunday. Ellen lived in Connecticut and was only a half hour away, so I had a great safety net and saw her a lot. My dad and I didn’t call each other often, but we stayed in close touch in our nontraditional eccentric ways. For example, our primary way of communicating was through his interoffice memo that included a hundred-dollar check. “To: Christine; From: LQ.” Or “To: Christine; From: Mr. Quinn.” Usually he said nothing else in the memo, but occasionally he’d write, “Attached please find an article I thought you would find of interest.” And there’d be a newspaper clipping about Glen Cove or his old neighborhood in the city or something political. That was my father’s way, and it still is. You know he’s always thinking of you, and his actions speak louder than his words. He wasn’t a cuddly father, but he was so endlessly dedicated and attentive and always there when I needed him. He still is.
Just as he had in high school, my father came to every college event he was invited to. He missed only one big occasion when I was at Trinity. It was a parents’ weekend, something he loved to attend. But my sophomore year there was a strike at work, and he was a shop steward. He felt bad about missing the weekend, but there was no way he would abandon his responsibilities to travel to Hartford and, besides, he didn’t have the money to spend on the weekend. I felt bad that he couldn’t make it, but I admired him for his loyalty to his fellow workers.
The fact that my father was the member of a union also made me something of a standout at school. I remember when I’d use my credit card, which was issued by the union, at the college bookstore, they’d take a look at the image on the front of the card—hands locked in a solidarity shake—and look confused or stunned. They weren’t being rude about it; they just couldn’t process it, because it was out of place for them.
My father called Trinity the preppiest place in America. So when it came to like-minded progressives, there weren’t a lot of us. However, the faculty was much more liberal than the students, so I felt I had the support I needed when it came to
N ow when I think about my belief that I was overweight, I realize I was actually wrong. After my mother died, my father and Aunt Julia and I took a trip to Maine to look at colleges. When I look at pictures of myself on that trip, I don’t see a fat girl. I looked perfectly reasonable. But when I was a small child, I was clearly very chubby. When I was in high school, I thought I was fat, but the pictures don’t bear that out. Unfortunately, my self-image and my need to use it against myself was already set by high school, and it’s been something I’ve struggled with ever since.
At that point in my life, I wasn’t aware in any conscious way that my sexuality contributed to my sense that I was different. Mostly it felt like whatever was wrong with me was a deficiency of some sort, which was somehow linked to my responsibility for my mother’s illness. I rationalized it by thinking that some people are tall, and some people are short. Some people have a romantic life and feel good about how they look, and some people don’t. Not until college did I realize I was destined to have a romantic life after all, but it wasn’t the kind of romantic life I had planned for.
C HAPTER 5
What I Learned in College
I left home for Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, in the fall of 1984. My friends had helped me shop and pack. My father, my friend Dorothy, and I drove up in separate cars. I was excited, of course, and nervous about leaving home.
But leave home I did. I didn’t go home on weekends or call home every Sunday. Ellen lived in Connecticut and was only a half hour away, so I had a great safety net and saw her a lot. My dad and I didn’t call each other often, but we stayed in close touch in our nontraditional eccentric ways. For example, our primary way of communicating was through his interoffice memo that included a hundred-dollar check. “To: Christine; From: LQ.” Or “To: Christine; From: Mr. Quinn.” Usually he said nothing else in the memo, but occasionally he’d write, “Attached please find an article I thought you would find of interest.” And there’d be a newspaper clipping about Glen Cove or his old neighborhood in the city or something political. That was my father’s way, and it still is. You know he’s always thinking of you, and his actions speak louder than his words. He wasn’t a cuddly father, but he was so endlessly dedicated and attentive and always there when I needed him. He still is.
Just as he had in high school, my father came to every college event he was invited to. He missed only one big occasion when I was at Trinity. It was a parents’ weekend, something he loved to attend. But my sophomore year there was a strike at work, and he was a shop steward. He felt bad about missing the weekend, but there was no way he would abandon his responsibilities to travel to Hartford and, besides, he didn’t have the money to spend on the weekend. I felt bad that he couldn’t make it, but I admired him for his loyalty to his fellow workers.
The fact that my father was the member of a union also made me something of a standout at school. I remember when I’d use my credit card, which was issued by the union, at the college bookstore, they’d take a look at the image on the front of the card—hands locked in a solidarity shake—and look confused or stunned. They weren’t being rude about it; they just couldn’t process it, because it was out of place for them.
My father called Trinity the preppiest place in America. So when it came to like-minded progressives, there weren’t a lot of us. However, the faculty was much more liberal than the students, so I felt I had the support I needed when it came to
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