M

6

y dad drove me to Princeton in the summer of 1981, across the flat
highways connecting Illinois to New Jersey. But it was more than a simple father-
daughter road trip. My boyfriend, David, came along for the ride. I’d been
invited to attend a special three-week summer orientation program, meant to
close a “preparation gap,” giving certain incoming freshmen extra time and help
settling into college. It was unclear exactly how we were identified—what part of
our admissions applications had tipped the university off to the idea that we might
benefit from lessons on how to read a syllabus or advance practice navigating the
pathways between campus buildings—but Craig had done it two years earlier,
and it seemed like an opportunity. So I packed up my stuff, said good-bye to my
mom—neither of us teary or sentimental—and climbed into the car.

My eagerness to leave town was fueled in part by the fact I’d spent the last
couple of months working an assembly-line job, operating what was basically an
industrial-sized glue gun at a small bookbinding factory in downtown Chicago—
a soul-killing routine that went on for eight hours a day, five days a week, and
served as possibly the single most reinforcing reminder that going to college was a
good idea. David’s mom worked at the bookbindery and had helped get the two
of us jobs there. We’d worked shoulder to shoulder all summer, which made the
whole endeavor more palatable. David was smart and gentle, a tall, good-looking
guy who was two years older than I was. He’d first befriended Craig on the
neighborhood basketball court in Rosenblum Park a few years earlier, joining
pickup games when he came to visit relatives who lived on Euclid Parkway.
Eventually, he started hanging around with me. During the school year, David
went away to college out of state, which conveniently kept him from being any