Back then, it was the typical alienation of being a poor college student in the world’s richest school, but over time, it turned into feeling alienated from the person Harvard wanted to make of me, someone who was supposed to think freely so that I could be groundbreaking and innovative, yet also conform to whatever arbitrary standard the university decided I should meet. Harvard reminded me of a fickle father who encouraged you to break the rules, except you were never allowed to undermine his authority. From the distance of a quarter century, I now had enough perspective to acknowledge how my experiences at that school had shaped me, and that many of my conflicts with administrators were a form of acting out desires I couldn’t reasonably expect them to understand, let alone fulfill. Yet speaking at Harvard was a final, grudging admission that the institution I fought with for so long was also one that gave me the tools to be the person I ultimately wanted to be, someone who made an impact in the world while remaining true to the parts of myself I cherished, which I managed not to give up even though Harvard tried to discipline them away. But now, accepting how I’d grown into a person that both I and Harvard approved of also made it harder to grapple with the struggle it took to get to that place, as if feeling even a modicum of satisfaction betrayed the part of me that suffered for so long. I wondered about other people I could have become had I made different decisions—a professor in the Philippines or the dutiful grandson who took over the family business once my grandfather died. Or I could still be a gay man in a twenty-year relationship with the love of my life, no doubt married, maybe even with adopted children.

In that agitated state, there was only one place that could ease my mind. I felt pathetic as I scaled those three dozen concrete steps up to the entrance of Widener Library, but it really was the building on campus where I felt most safe. When I entered through the gilt-and-glass doors to that building’s lobby, encased in marble with a row of pillars on each side, the opulence no longer intimidated me, knowing how this part of the building was for donors and tourists, while the best part was what the public didn’t see.

The guard at the entrance directed me to the privileges office, through a door near the back corner of that vast room. A gray-haired, pink-skinned man with metal-rimmed glasses, light blue shirt, brown tie, sage green cable sweater, and a dour expression—the very image of a stodgy librarian—met me when I got to the wood-paneled counter, and I told him I was an alum who wanted to visit the stacks. He asked for identification, and I handed him my passport: blue, American.

“Year?” he asked.

“Nineteen ninety-seven.”