College Ain't Shangri-La

Whenever I turn on TV and see Black People Tryin' to Make a Difference, much effort is devoted to making sure black kids make it to college. But in all our Let's-Get-Our-Kids-to-College fervor, we pay remarkably little attention to what happens to them once they get there.

In my case, college was where I started sleeping around, dipping my toes in the water of sexual exploitation and dating a much, much older man (details coming soon). And college was where many of my fellow black Yalies, presumably the nation's cream of the crop, also fell by the wayside:

• The stress of being at Yale triggered epilepsy in my sophomore-year roommate, Deep. She quietly dropped out, with no support and no fanfare. (Thanks to Facebook, Deep and I are now back in touch. She recently had brain surgery and is now symptom-free.)
  
  
• One of the prettiest and most talented girls in my class got pregnant freshman year by an upperclassman. Rumor had it that he physically abused her. (She eventually returned to Yale, adorable baby in tow, and graduated.)
  
  
• One of the most brilliant, charismatic and amazing people I ever met in my life got addicted to cocaine at Yale. At his graduation ceremony, he walked in the procession, but didn't actually get his degree.
  
  
• Another of my friends, a brilliant singer and actor, dropped out and moved to NYC. Last I heard, he was working in a bookstore.
  
  
• And then there was a visible relic of Yale Gone Wrong, a former student of the Yale School of Drama, who was a constant fixture on campus streets ... as a schizophrenic, crack-addicted panhandler.

And those are just the stories I know about.

And that's not counting all the other stories. Like one of my freshman-year roommates – a pretty, popular, rich, white girl – who attempted suicide and transferred to another school. Or the white girls who wrote plaintively in bathroom stalls about the white boys who date-raped them ... before the University painted the walls dark brown to choke out their voices and avoid libel lawsuits.

College is not nirvana. It's not a place where futures automatically grow bright and brilliant.

College can be remarkably stressful.

College can be the place where young adults, recently released from their parents' watchful eyes, make extraordinarily bad decisions.

And college can even be the place where naive students become easy marks for sleazy individuals looking for someone to exploit.

As I wrote my Virginity diaries and looked back on my dark college years, the biggest lesson I learned is how vulnerable and unsupported I truly was during my Yale years.

(Virginity Diaries: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned Part 2 of 3: 1 2 3)

The Power is in the Present

The biggest lesson that I learned from my Virginity diaries is that I've been holding a grudge against the girl I was half a lifetime ago. I've been secretly believing that 19 was the age when Everything Went Wrong and secretly blaming 19-year-old me for:

• My 26-18 football score of lovers (26 for anyone I was ever naked or intimate with, 18 for men I actually had intercourse with).
• Nearly a decade of manipulation by Dollar the psychic.
• The woman I am right now: single, childless, celibate and fat at the ripe old age of 38.

Don't get me wrong. I have moments, days, sometimes even weeks when I realize that I have a great life. I live in California, a 15-minute bike ride away from the Pacific Ocean. I have a job that pays me a decent salary, and unlike women of previous generations, I can make a good life on my own. I've overcome a lot of difficulties, and I have more self-love and self-esteem than I've ever had in my life.

But many days, many moments, many weeks, I really feel that life sucks.

Like when I wake up alone in my empty bed with my body on fire and no one but me to put it out. When I go to my high-school reunion and see everyone else's spouses and children and realize that all I have are stories to tell. When I count up the 10 years since Brown and the four years since my last ill-conceived love affair and wonder how a woman who always wanted to be a wife and mother became a spinster instead.

Then I look back and point the finger at 19-year-old me and say, "It's all your fault. If only you could have kept your legs closed ... if only you could have made better choices ... if only you could have had enough self-esteem and good sense to just say no."

So the lesson I'm learning – present tense, because I'm still figuring it out – is how to make peace with the present so that I can make peace with the past.

I got through my childhood and the difficulties of my 20's by living in the Glorious Fantasy Future inside my head. I daydreamed constantly about being rich, being famous, being adored. And that glittering future helped me gloss over the grossness of the present.

But now that I'm in my late 30's, I can't dream about the future anymore. I tried my damnedest to gain fame, fortune and adoration as a Hollywood actress, and it didn't work out. I fooled around with 26 men, secretly hoping each would be The One, and it didn't work out. Hell, I've even been on and off Weight Watchers for eight long friggin' years, and that only works out when I leave the best lover I've ever had – Chocolate – out of my shopping basket.

So I'm trying to appreciate the life that I have now and the woman that I am now instead of comparing my life and myself to the Future Fantasy Me that never was. I know that when I can truly be happy with Present-Day Me, I can truly forgive 19-year-old me and thank her for helping me create a life that I truly love.

(Virginity Diaries: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned Part 1 of 3: 1 2 3)

And That Was That

The day after New Year's Day, I decided it was over between me and Latin Muslim. He stood me up on Christmas, and then again on New Year's.

After one last no-phone-call too many, I got the message.

He didn't love me. Or maybe he did, but he loved cocaine and his ghetto lifestyle more. Or maybe his hatred of himself overpowered his love for me. But whatever the case, I gave up. I decided not to call him anymore.

I discovered to my surprise that I was tougher than I thought. I thought my feelings were so delicate and fragile that if I let someone into my life and they walked out on me, stomping on my heart and trampling on my delicacy, I'd fall apart.

But I didn't. I knew I'd get through it.

Three weeks later, he finally called me.

Collect.

From jail.

Full of remorse and apology.

He told me that he tossed me aside because he knew he was no good for me and because he was afraid of "falling." That he really did love me and that I wasn't a "f*ck flick" – his words, not mine. I was a "nice, honest, loving, understanding, caring woman" and he would always love me and never forget me.

I told him that I forgave him, but he would never get another chance.

"I'm a f*ckup," he confessed. "One day, you're going to have a man that's going to be good to you, and you're going to have a family, kids, and I'll be very happy for you." He said that he couldn't handle trying to live his life "my way, society's way." He said he got frustrated, it hurt, and he couldn't cope. When he got out of jail in a few months, his mother was going to send him to Puerto Rico.

He also mentioned that he ran out on me because he didn't want to get me involved in drugs and crime and stuff. I told him he didn't have to worry about that.

"Why is that?" he asked.

"Because I know what I want, I know what's right from wrong, and 89% of the time, I try to do what's right."

Before he hung up, he asked if we were friends.

"Yes," I said.

"Best friends?"

"No."

"I can't be your best friend?"

"No."

"But you can be mine?"

"Yes."

That was the last time we talked.

I discovered that collect calls from jail were prohibitively expensive, even more expensive than regular collect calls. The next time he dialed my number, I didn't accept the charges.

And that was the end of that.

(Virginity Diaries Part 11 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

Shame, Shame, Shame

Entangling myself with Dollar the Psychic wasn't the only thing I did in the days after I lost my virginity. I also fell head over heels in love with Josephine Baker. And I decided to emulate her by answering an ad that was taped to the walls of Yale Station, the Yale post office.

It said that nude models were needed for "artistic photos." And that the pay was $20 an hour.

It was Christmas break, and Yale was a ghost town. I didn't have enough money to go home, plus Latin Muslim had promised that we'd spend Christmas Eve and Christmas together. So I arranged to pay $70 in rent to two of my off-campus actress friends, and I stayed in their roach-infested apartment during the two weeks that my dorm was shut down.

Christmas was spent alone, attempting with 50% success to cook a pot of greens. I didn't burn them, but they didn't taste all that good. I washed them down with ambrosia and a box of chocolate-covered cherries.

And with nothing else to do, I read. Stanislavski. And a book about Josephine, a black girl who ran off to Paris at age 19 and became the biggest star in Europe, the "most photographed girl in the world." And the most consistently naked, best known for dancing topless in a skirt made out of bananas.

Wow. That was some nerve.

Is that what it took to become famous?

My "artistic photo" day dawned a few days after Christmas. I arrived at the shoot with a huge triangle-shaped burn on my face, courtesy of kissing my right temple with my Golden Hot curling iron.

My photographer was a weaselly-faced graduate student, possibly black, possibly Latino. I later learned he had also "artistically photographed" at least two other black actresses I knew, who confirmed my opinion that there was nothing artistic about it.

The "set" was his bed, which had black sheets. The main prop was me. Completely nude except for a tie, artistically draped near, but definitely not covering, my crotch. And his "direction" was probably more Hustler than Playboy, with not a smidge of the coffee-table artiness I expected from his flyer.

At the end of it, I got my big $20/hour payday: a grand total of $60. And a $6-million serving of shame. I had just taken naked pictures. The kind that would come back to haunt me if I ever got rich and famous. And I'd broken my virginity vow. And my boyfriend had abandoned me on Christmas. And according to Dollar, I was cursed with Jealousy.

This was the moment when I really began to think of myself as a slut.

(Virginity Diaries Part 10 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

Abusive Relationship

Within days of losing my virginity to Latin Muslim, the abuse began. It lasted nine years. It left thick, traumatic scars. It cost tens of thousands of dollars. And Latin Muslim wasn't the abuser.

The abuser wasn't even a man, and the relationship wasn't even sexual.

My abuser was a psychic.

I was in downtown New Haven, walking past the mall, when I was accosted by a girl selling fake roses. At first, I ignored her.

"You, stop! No, you, stop!" That command, uttered in a thick Brooklyn accent, was issued directly at me.

I turned around and faced a girl in a red coat. She was about my age. Thin. A woman of color, but of indeterminable ethnicity. She had piercing brown eyes and large ears that poked through her thin curtain of straight black hair.

Her name was Dollar, and for $10 she offered to read my palm.

She saw trouble.

But for $70, she would go light seven candles at Church for me, and pray all night for me, and all of my problems would be solved.

When Dollar finished lighting up the Church, she called me with the news. It wasn't the happy ending she'd initially promised. It was something more.

Something called Jealousy.

She interrogated me, with extreme gravity, about my parents. What position in the family was my dad? The oldest child. What position was I? The middle child. What about my mom? The middle child.

"Yes, that's it. It's coming from your mother."

My mother had been a victim of Jealousy, and that's why her life had never worked out right. That certainly rang true. My mom, a brilliant woman, the first of her family to go to college, had ended up marrying my dad and losing her mind. You couldn't get more star-crossed than that.

And now my mother's mysterious hex was being passed down to me because we were both middle children. But for $500, Dollar was going to dig up a graveyard, remove the curse and set everything right.

She referred to her mysterious and outlandish spiritual tasks as The Work, and like a child molester, she was very insistent that The Work must be kept secret. I could not talk to anyone about it – absolutely no one. In fact, I couldn't even write about it, not even in my diary. Because the Bad Spirits were everywhere, and we didn't want them interfering with The Work.

Did I buy it?

Yup.

Dollar knew things about me that she couldn't possibly have known, and she threw me little evidences of her Power.

She told me I'd know she had started The Work because I would dream about her, and sure enough, that night I had a vivid dream about her, laced with serpents and religious imagery. When Yale shut down for the Christmas break and I stayed at a friend's off-campus apartment, she called me there, even though I'd never given her the number. The Spirits had revealed my unlisted, temporary phone number to her.

That's how my long, twisted life with Dollar started. And initially, it wasn't all bad. She became my "friend." We hung out together. I got to know her entire family – mother, father, aunts, uncles, cousins. And some of the "advice" she gave me over the years probably saved my life.

But ultimately, the relationship was about power, and not just the Magic Kind. Dollar terrorized me with veiled threats about all the dire things that would happen if I didn't come through with money for The Church (up to and including that my mom would get sick and die). Dollar verbally abused me, taking credit for everything good that happened in my life and blaming my "negativity" for everything that went wrong.

And I, like a gambler, kept paying and paying and paying because I didn't want to believe that I'd been so thoroughly had. Dollar became the thread that ran through all of my sexual relationships, from Latin Muslim when I was 19, all the way to Brown, when I was 28.

(Virginity Diaries Part 9 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

Father Panic, Blood and a Roach

It was known as the Baby Bronx. Bridgeport, CT. Where Latin Muslim was from. We journeyed there together after our night of painful passion and magic-marker love notes.

If it was the baby, then Mama Bronx must've been a hellified gangsta wench.

As we walked from the train station, I was struck by how bleak and desolate and concrete and cold everything looked. But he'd seen my world, and now it was my turn to see his.

His world was the projects. But not just any projects. Projects that were either aptly or unfortunately named the Father Panic projects.

We passed a light-blue Crown Victoria sedan that I'd never have even noticed. Latin Muslim pointed it out to me with a knowing smirk: "Undercover cop."

The Father Panic projects looked and felt like the third world. Tiny self-contained houses stranded in the middle of "yards" that were all concrete, no grass. Mean, mangy German shepherds. And young men like Latin Muslim, with prison records and no jobs.

His mother's house was neat and clean. She was a nurse, and she was at work.

His brother was home. And his brother was nothing like Latin Muslim. He was thin, while Latin Muslim was stocky. He was quiet and studious, while Latin Muslim was cocky. He seemed like a good guy, on the straight and narrow, and Latin Muslim was anything but.

The brother watched warily and with barely disguised disbelief as Latin Muslim showed me off and bragged about being on the Yale campus. I could tell his brother was wondering what a nice girl like me was doing with a knucklehead like Latin Muslim, and his eyes seemed to be warning me that I was making a big mistake.

Our small talk didn't last long.

Latin Muslim led me to a bedroom with a twin bed and blue-and-white flowered sheets.

Before I knew it, he was on top of me, I felt a sharp pain, and that was it.

There was blood on the sheets.

I was officially no longer a virgin.

There were no tender feelings of love and togetherness. Just the cold, hard reality of my blood on the sheets, and the icky realization that Latin Muslim and I were not alone. A dead roach was also sharing our bed, a few inches away from my head.

I was too polite to mention the roach, and there was no time for pillow talk anyway.

"You'd better get out before my mom gets home."

I felt like I'd been had, and not merely in the Biblical way. Like maybe he'd been playing a game just to get my virginity, and now that he had it, I didn't matter anymore.

We were supposed to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas together the following week, and of course, he didn't call and didn't show.

(Virginity Diaries Part 8 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

A Violation of Personal Space

In his overnight dorm-room stay, Latin Muslim did more than get into my panties. He violated my mental aerospace and my personal space, in ways that were probably more manipulative than malicious.

Of course, he had been manipulative right from the start. He wanted to talk About Us all the time. He'd been doing that since day one, sprinkling "I love yous" and "I'll never hurt yous" and "we're going to grow old togethers" into every conversation.

Only I didn't find it sweet. I found it alternately threatening and boring.

Latin Muslim was also controlling.

The Monday after our weekend sleepover, he made me dress up and curl my hair, snarling, "You're not a nerd. I'm bringing out the real you."

(In all fairness, he was probably reacting to some low self-esteem comment on my part. "Unattractive nerd" was how I truly saw myself, even though on an intellectual level I did realize that I was physically attractive.)

He was also critical.

"Why don't you listen to black music?"

I was honestly taken aback.

"What are you talking about?" I defensively rattled off my short-list of R&B greats I listened to all the time, starting with Stevie Wonder and Prince.

Latin Muslim was dismissive, pointing derisively at the artwork of my new Terence Trent D'Arby CD. "What is this skull and crossbones sh*t?"

He rattled off a list of "real" black artists – three or four rap artists du jour that I had no interest in whatsoever.

Was a Puerto Rican really trying to tell me how to be black? I thought incredulously. But I said nothing.

He began hinting, more than once, that he wanted to have a kid, while I silently wondered if he really thought I'd actually get pregnant and drop out of school with no money.

But the worse thing he did was write me a love letter, in black magic marker, in a messy, childish scrawl that included a huge heart-shaped happy face ...

... in my Bible, my most deeply private personal possession.

Never mind our unmarried state of presumed fornication (I thought I probably wasn't a virgin anymore, but I just wasn't sure). Never mind my secret belief that I was now going to burn in hell for breaking my secret virginity vow.

What really bothered me was that my Bible already contained a love note in it. It was a note my mother had written in blue ink three months after my birth, gently advising me to read the Bible from time to time. It was proof positive that even though my mom was physically absent for most of my childhood, that she had loved me enough as a baby to write a note to the adult me.

His note felt inappropriate, like he was crowding out my mom's painstaking attempt to document my family tree.

I was offended. And completely shocked.

But I said nothing.

I was used to saying nothing around men.

(Virginity Diaries Part 7 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

A Whiff of Violence

Now that I was "half in love" with Latin Muslim, consecrating our union was the logical first step. En route to whisking him into my dorm room on a Friday morning in December, I took him through the Yale Campus.

I'll never forget the wonder in his eyes as he drank in the sights of Yale Commons, the large, majestic main dining hall. He was surprised at all the free cereal, the unlimited second and third helpings, and last but not least, the fact that he – a convicted felon – was actually inside the rich kids' university where he was normally and emphatically not welcome.

In my dorm room, an interesting situation developed. One minute he was kissing me and unloosening my clothes, and then the next he had somehow unzipped his pants and was working on insertion.

Uh uh.

No.

Stop.

He complied without protest.

On the subject of date rape, he was an absolute gentleman.

But there was a whiff, a hint of violence in him that I could just smell. In the back of my mind, I knew it was only a matter of time before he hit me, even though I didn't voice the tiny, persistent suspicion to anyone.

A few days later, Latin Muslim quit the rehab house and pulled his first disappearing act. The next time we talked on the phone, that didn't stop him from berating me "for not trusting him enough to tell him about myself."

But that conversation ended with him saying, "I love you," as he often did. Only this time, instead of just letting it pass, I said, "I love you, too" for the first time.

Soon, he was back in my dorm room for another round of wrestling my panties to the ground. I fought him every step of the way. Not intentionally. It's just that the love-making attempts hurt.

He was an interesting mix of patience and exasperation.

"Anita, stop running from me."

"Anita, don't lock your legs on my legs. You keep doing that."

"Anita, stop using your strength. You control your vagina. When you start fighting me, you tighten up. Then I have to force my way in, and it makes you feel pain."

"Damn, girl, you wear me out. You know you're strong for a motha**ing girl."

I honestly wasn't sure whether or not I was still a virgin. There had been pain, but no blood. Wasn't there supposed to be blood? But how could I still be a virgin if a man had been inside me more than once?

(Virginity Diaries Part 6 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

Full-Court Press and Half-Hearted Yes

Immediately after our first date, Thanksgiving Break forcibly separated me and Latin Muslim. I crammed three classmates who offered to help pay for gas into my hoopty Ford Escort, and off I went to spend a week with my real mother in South Carolina, dropping each classmate off somewhere along the way.

Latin Muslim was on my mind all break ... but not in the loving, breathless way you might expect.

All I could think about was how to protect myself from him. What I'd say and do if he started acting possessive and jealous, how to tell him to slow down, what I'd do if he ever tried to hit me. Did I mention that I was terrified of, and absolutely didn't trust, men?

I dreaded the thought of his two and three phone calls a day so much, I took my mother's phone off the hook.

His rehab house only allowed him 10 minutes at a time on the phone, but when he finally reached me, he completely laid all my fears to rest in 10 minutes flat. Without me even having to struggle through my tentatively prepared "slow-down" speech, Latin Muslim volunteered that he "was not going to mention 'relationship' for the time being" and that he was going to show some restraint.

So when I got back to New Haven, we picked up where we left off.

We had a Sunday daytime date, where he honeyed my ears with more talk of how I was the one for him. How he didn't care if he had to wait until I was 39 years old, because he knew one day I would wake up and realize that I had a good thing with him. That he'd never hurt me or run out on me. That he'd never stand in the way of my goals. That he'd follow me wherever I chose to go.

He'd even let me fool around if I ever decided that I needed to do that in order to make up my mind.

All because he believed deep in his heart that we'd be together "at 39, 60, and when we go, we'll go together."

It was all so very Catholic. (Except for the freedom to fool around part. That was a sin, Sin, SIN.)
He asked me formally, "Can I be your boyfriend?"

Of course, I said yes.

That night, I wrote in my diary, "I think I'm half in love."

(Virginity Diaries Part 5 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

First-Date Kisses and Counseling

When I started dating Latin Muslim, the cute Puerto Rican from the train, I didn't give much thought to his criminal past or his drug-addicted present.

I was sufficiently naive and sufficiently nonjudgmental and sufficiently optimistic to believe that he wasn't his rap sheet.

I judged him on how he acted and on how he treated me.

His kisses got an A-. His neediness got a C+.

It was immediately obvious to me that Latin Muslim and I shared several personality traits: stubbornness, unwavering persistence and perseverance, and a tendency to rush headlong into any situation as long as it felt right emotionally.

We met on the New Haven Green at 10:30 a.m., a few days after our chance encounter on the train.

The morning was magical. All the things I'd ever dreamed of doing with a boy that I'd never done because I'd never had a boyfriend.

We walked around New Haven. Stopping to sit on the steps of a university building, where he leaned toward me and kissed me lightly on the mouth ... twice. Then more hand-in-hand strolling, until we paused by the gate of a Secret Society tomb for more kisses. He raised my temperature by running his tongue along the outside of my lips. He sucked on my neck and gave me my first-ever hickey.

And he took a gold chain from around his own neck and put it around mine. A symbol of ownership.

He told me that he had never associated with a "nice, college-attending" girl like me and that he felt feelings for me he'd never felt before. And that he would never take advantage of me. And he wanted our relationship to work out.

My body was melting, my heart was aglow, but my mind was suspicious, distrustful, unsettled, unsure.

I was both attracted and repulsed by him, by his unbelievable persistence.

He was like an earnest little boy, telling me how much I meant to him ... on our first date.

After a few hours, I drove him back to the inpatient rehab facility where he was being treated for a cocaine addiction.

Around 5 p.m., he summoned me to return. He absolutely wouldn't take no for an answer.

So our first date resumed in a most unusual way: in a family-counseling session at a rehab facility.

He and I and a therapist talked about "the relationship" and I had a breakthrough.

I realized that we couldn't put each other on a pedestal, that I couldn't be his fantasy of the good girl who would be good for him and that he couldn't be the fabled strong man who would solve all my problems.

That said, I was more than willing to give the relationship a try. With Latin Muslim, I felt whole.

(Virginity Diaries Part 4 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)

The Puerto Rican in the Muslim Hat

"Does anybody tell you that you are very beautiful?"

"Not often," I smiled.

And just like that, I met my much-longed-for first real boyfriend, at the late-blooming age of 19, midway through the first semester of my sophomore year at Yale.

I was on the train from New York City back to New Haven, flushed with excitement from my first "professional" audition somewhere "off-off-off-off-off-Broadway."

I'd just done a monologue for a black theater group that was high on anger and self-righteousness and low on quality of writing and acting.

Totally didn't matter.

I was flattered that someone had asked me to audition – in NYC!!! – and dreaming that I'd get the part, become a star and get the hell out of dreary, stressful Yale.

I noticed the Puerto Rican guy for three reasons.

1. He was really cute. He resembled the 70's actor Erik Estrada.
2. He was direct. He swaggered down the train aisle with confidence, walked right up to me and made his intentions known.
3. He was wearing a Muslim cap that I associated with a famous Black Muslim organization, and it was a bit of a pleasant surprise to see a non-black person wearing it.

The latter requires a bit of an explanation.

I was having a mild love affair from a safe distance with all things Black Muslim, because the semester before, the Honorable Speaker Mr. Look So Good had given a rousing speech at the Yale Law School which had shocked, horrified, angered and terrified my white roommates, and I'd loved every single minute of it.

I was, in my recently desegregated state, grappling with something I'd only experienced once before in my life, when my family lived in a nearly all-white Pennsylvania town for a few months. Personal prejudice. Which is very different from institutional prejudice.

Institutional prejudice is when you pay higher insurance rates for living in a black neighborhood. Or when there are no grocery stores in your neighborhood. Or when your black public school doesn't even have an auditorium but you find out that some suburban white public schools have professional theaters, with state-of-the-art lighting and video equipment.

Institutional prejudice is impersonal and largely invisible. You know it's there, but you have the luxury of ignoring it 95% of the time.

Personal prejudice is different. It's being surrounded by white people who can't see the real you, who ask stupid questions, who play with your hair. It's when you're the Joint Chief of Staff and some jerk clerk at the airport won't let you into the high-security, VIP area because he can't fathom that you're the Joint Chief of Staff. Or in my case, it's when a gawky white boy knocks at your dorm door, looks past you as if you're the maid and asks if "Anyone's home."

Hand-in-hand with my new adventures in personal prejudice came the rude awakening that America wasn't the place I thought it was. For example, according to Honorable Speaker Mr. Look So Good, Yale was founded with money from slavery and the opium drug trade.

Yale was rocking my sense of patriotism and demolishing my Kumbaya, let's-hold-hands-and-love-each-other naivete.

So seeing a presumed Puerto Rican defiantly wearing a Black Muslim cap was definitely a turn-on.

So much so that no alarm bells went off in my head when he told me that he had learned about Islam during a four-year prison term.

Or that he was currently in a drug-rehab program.

I gave him my phone number without the slightest hesitation.

(Virginity Diaries Part 3 of 11: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Lessons Learned 1 2 3)