At least I’m not Asian. The unconscious thought became words inside my brain before I had the chance to replace “I’m not” with “I don’t look,” as I watched the Asian men in that room hover at the periphery of desire, those planets revolving around their white suns. We’d read an essay in Professor Miller’s class called “Looking for My Penis” the week before, which talked about how Asian gay men were automatically seen as subservient and emasculated, so they metaphorically did not have penises. Gavin intoned in class that it was important to let go of these ingrained stereotypes and for Asian gay men to consider themselves powerful and desirable, even as he seemed oblivious to the way his white good looks made him the star of the class, the room’s attention constantly pulled toward him. That essay was meant to unpack stereotypes about Asian gay men, to allow us to come to our desirability on our own terms, but the lesson I got was that it was a lot easier for white men to get laid, and in matters of sex, there was no real difference between looking and being white, since that was the only criterion gay men used to judge you anyway.

I spied Gavin himself on the dance floor and watched his perfect face flashing different colors with the light. He swayed from side to side with the smallest of effort, and it didn’t even matter if he barely danced because he was so attractive. I’d long given up on the idea of being with him and instead settled on thinking about what it was like to have his life, to be able to attract practically whoever I wanted. Comparing myself to Gavin left me anguished, so I walked away from the dance floor and sat on a chair at the far end of the cavernous dining hall, where the happy music wasn’t so loud. A tall figure emerged from the shadows toward me, and I recognized him from his long curly hair as Kit Clark, a black alum who was now working at Harvard and had introduced himself to me at the BGLSA meeting.

“Wanna be my granddaughter?” he asked as he sat down, and when I stared at him blankly: “You know, in the House of Ho.”

He explained that a queen who graduated years ago started the House of Ho, the Harvard version of the fabulous houses for black and brown gay men in the New York ball scene. I was only aware of it because Professor Miller had described the movie Paris Is Burning to our class, though we hadn’t watched it yet.

“But I’m not—”

“What? Femme? Brown? You think I can’t tell you’re not a white boy? I’m very aware you’re albino. Mulattos like me know these things. And girl, you gotta flaunt your femme because it’s seeping out of you.”