For most of my existence, mirrors were not just mirrors to me, but bridges made of light to fantastic destinations, where I would be different than myself and lead a better life. If the other side of the mirror was another world, then my imagination was the vehicle that could take me there. In that dimly lit bathroom, I came to acknowledge that I was no longer at my place of origin but at my destination, the world I’d determined for myself I would someday reach, and that my imagination had successfully taken me there, a place where passing had transformed into being.

But having arrived, it turned out my imagination did not have the fuel to take me back, that the journey to this world I now inhabited was a one-way trip. I touched the mirror and felt the truth of its material surface, how it was a piece of glass with beveled edges, coated in silver that had oxidized in places, creating black spots like little islands on the edges of the frame.

It was eerie to be on the other side of that glass, when I once stared at my reflection in a mirror so much like this one and believed I could never become the beautiful woman in my fantasies. Then I remembered that I’d already crossed one bridge toward whiteness and its advantages, including an education I could have never imagined possible, had I been the color I was meant to be.

—

It was sophomore year, the Saturday before Halloween, 1994. I ended up on the top floor of the farthest entryway in Adams House, which I didn’t mind because the eaves made my room feel like a garret. I’d recently learned that word at a lecture on Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, where the professor proposed the garret as an ideal space for writers in search of quiet and contemplation. I felt inspired in that room, even though I occasionally bumped my head when I sat up in bed.

I’d skipped breakfast that day, so it was past noon by the time I shuffled into the dining hall. I hoped to see people I recognized after I got food, but when I didn’t, I sat alone at one of the square tables in the middle of that vast space with its dark wood paneling and red velvet curtains, hoping still that someone I knew would come along and join me. I had only lived in the house for six weeks and was slow to make friends.

At the next table, I overheard some juniors I didn’t know well talking about Drag Night, an Adams tradition I’d heard about but didn’t realize was happening over dinner that evening. They were planning to do a number to “It’s Raining Men.”

“We need to go to the thrift store to get costumes,” a compact blond man named Zach said.