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" Adapted from PARTY OF ONE: A Memoir in 21 Songs. Copyright \u00A9 2016 by Dave Holmes. Published by Crown Archetype, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. My senior year of college, I was the campus social chair, because I loved to throw parties and also nobody gets more done than a young person who is furiously sublimating his need for intimacy. And so it was that in the summer of 1993, I was sent to a student leadership conference at Emory University in Atlanta, where something happened to me that you are not going to believe, but that I swear to God is absolutely true.  That summer, incidentally, was the one where I had decided I would come out to my family. I came home in late May, set down my bags, saw their smiling faces, and mentally dragged and dropped this task from early June to very, very late August. Oh, sure, I meant to sit them down and say something, but we were having such a nice time.   In mid-August, I hopped on a plane to Atlanta to spend three days at this conference. This being the early 1990s, political correctness was in full bloom, and this event would focus on programming to reflect our culture&amp;#039;s growing diversity. I imagined a Utopia filled with different types of people, all mutually respecting one another; a really sexy Benetton ad. The informational brochure arrived a week or so before the event and revealed that the conference would be titled &amp;quot;Diversity: Isn&amp;#039;t That Special?&amp;quot; I had a bad feeling, and I immediately got to work repressing it. On the first morning, just as I was finishing up my registration, Debi, a pantsuited administrator with a fanny pack and a harsh attempt at the Chynna Phillips/Jane from Melrose Place hairdo, fixed her eyes on me with a look of practiced disapproval. &amp;quot;Blue eyes,&amp;quot; she sneered. &amp;quot;We know all about people like you. Go sit on the floor.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m more hazel, but the distinction didn&amp;#039;t seem important, so I went and sat on the floor next to a beefy lacrosse type in a Clemson t-shirt. &amp;quot;Hello,&amp;quot; said Clemson. &amp;quot;Welcome to a clumsy parable about racism.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;They wouldn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; I said, as a Hispanic girl from Vassar was led to a table where a group of brown-eyed people ate steak and baked potatoes. They would. They are.  And so it continued: all the brown-eyed people were shown to tables and given fancy meals, while all of the blond girls in topknots\u2014and in the tradition of student leadership conferences, this thing was roughly 94 percent blond girls in topknots\u2014were sent to huddle on the floor and share those packets of orange crackers with peanut butter in between. A blue-eyed Janeane Garofalo type from UVA plopped herself down next to us. &amp;quot;Racism&amp;#039;s bad news, huh? Gimme a cracker.&amp;quot; After all the conference attendees were accounted for, and right when we were speculating as to whether they&amp;#039;d lead the blue-eyed people outside and turn a fire hose on us, Debi took the stage. &amp;quot;Welcome to &amp;#039;Diversity: Isn&amp;#039;t That Special?&amp;#039; Now, you might have noticed that some of you have been treated differently than others.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yep, got that,&amp;quot; said Clemson as a murmur passed over the floor. &amp;quot;Doesn&amp;#039;t feel too good, does it?&amp;quot; Debi continued. &amp;quot;Oh, it&amp;#039;s awful,&amp;quot; I whispered.   &amp;quot;Well, that&amp;#039;s because we...&amp;quot; &amp;quot;...are doing a thing about racism,&amp;quot; we said. &amp;quot;...have taught you kind of a sneaky lesson...&amp;quot; &amp;quot;...about racism.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;...about racism.&amp;quot; The murmur grew to a roar. Blond buns bobbed this way and that. &amp;quot;See, some of you, just because of the color of your eyes, had a completely different experience than your neighbors, and you may not even have known why.&amp;quot; The room was in a full uproar. The topknots simply could not take this information in. &amp;quot;See, racism is still alive and well in this country, and some people like to judge other people on the color of their skin. It&amp;#039;s not fair, is it? The topknots made a beeline for the black kids, with speeds that tested the integrity of their scrunchies. &amp;quot;Is this what it&amp;#039;s like for you?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You guys, I am so sorry!&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Can I touch your hair?&amp;quot; Baby steps toward enlightenment.  Right around here was the first time I ever even began to view my homosexuality as an asset rather than a liability. Maybe if I came out to some of these administrators, they&amp;#039;d view me as less of an oppressor. Maybe we could actually have a constructive talk about what I was going through, in real time, right then. So in a small- group discussion about sensitivity to gay and lesbian issues (alas, the B and the T were not yet invited to the party), I piped up: &amp;quot;You know, I&amp;#039;m actually gay myself, so . . .&amp;quot; and the facilitator squinted her eyes, made her lips disappear, tilted her head at a perfect 45- degree angle\u2014 the international symbol for You Poor Thing\u2014 and interrupted me. &amp;quot;So brave,&amp;quot; she stage-whispered, and then got right back to her spiel. It went that way with each facilitator I came out to. No dialogue, no &amp;quot;How are you?&amp;quot; no inquiry as to whether anything they were saying was resonating in any meaningful way, just a condescending look. I was being treated like a box of fragile glass figurines, or Cousin Geri from The Facts of Life.  The more sensitive among us hadn&amp;#039;t really learned any constructive ways to vent our negative emotions in 1993; Jagged Little Pill was still two years off. Instead, Clemson, UVA, and I chose to express our frustrations through the medium of drinking. There was an Applebee&amp;#039;s across the street from campus, and once things got to be too much, one of us would give the high sign\u2014 index finger making quick circles in the air\u2014 and one by one we&amp;#039;d disappear. We&amp;#039;d grab a table on the patio and smoke cigarettes and laugh and drink things that were blue. I came out to them, and they said &amp;quot;Okay,&amp;quot; and we discussed it a little bit and then got on with what we&amp;#039;d been talking about, which for the record is exactly the way it&amp;#039;s supposed to go. At the farewell banquet on the last evening, the administrators fired up a slide projector with a greatest-hits compilation from &amp;quot;Diversity: Isn&amp;#039;t That Special?&amp;quot; Slide after slide of white girls crying on patient brown shoulders, set to carefully selected hits of the day: &amp;quot;Free Your Mind&amp;quot; by En Vogue, &amp;quot;A Whole New World&amp;quot; by Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle, and then, finally, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding.&amp;quot; Except it was the version from the soundtrack to The Bodyguard. The Curtis Stigers version. Oh, hell no.        Listen: you can condescend to me. You can cut me off and treat me like an injured baby bird when I try to start a dialogue with you. But don&amp;#039;t you dare think you have anything to teach me if you don&amp;#039;t know who Elvis Costello is. I gave the high sign, and Clemson and UVA were headed for the door before my finger could complete a full rotation. By our second round, the blue drinks started doing their job and Clemson leaned forward and asked a question I&amp;#039;d waited a lifetime to hear: &amp;quot;Are you okay?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Yeah, no. Yeah,&amp;quot; I answered, out of habit. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m fine.&amp;quot;  And then I took a deep breath. &amp;quot;No. You know what, guys? I&amp;#039;m not okay. That was bullshit. We spent three days talking about sensitivity and diversity, when I am right here being diverse and needing some sensitivity and nobody&amp;#039;s letting me say anything. I am about to come out to my fucking family, which is scary, and I would love it if just one person in my fucking life would listen to me.&amp;quot; People started to look over, because I was loud, and I didn&amp;#039;t care. &amp;quot;I do not need to be told how brave I am, I do not need the head at the 45-degree angle.&amp;quot; Clemson and UVA gave a puzzled look, but chose to let me continue releasing steam. &amp;quot;I need what you and you and everyone I know has always had, and has never had to worry about not having, and that&amp;#039;s someone they respect who has been through what they&amp;#039;re going through, who can sit them down and tell them they&amp;#039;re okay, and listen to what they have to say, and tell them what to fucking do. I am alone, and I am furious, and I am scared to fucking death, and I just want someone who isn&amp;#039;t an idiot who&amp;#039;s gone through this to Tell. Me. What. To. Do.&amp;quot;  We are now at the part of the story that you are not going to believe, but again: this actually happened. I sat back, wiped my eyes, and lit a Marlboro Light. &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s it,&amp;quot; I exhaled. &amp;quot;I just want someone to tell me what to do.&amp;quot;  These words left my mouth, and in the very next second the door opened, and out onto the patio of the Applebee&amp;#039;s across from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, walked the Indigo Girls. The. Indigo. Girls.        And not the Indigo Girls and their friends. Not the Indigo Girls and their manager and publicist. Just Amy and Emily, taking time out to enjoy some boneless wings with their choice of sauce. It was as though they had seen some kind of gay distress signal in the Atlanta skies and reported for duty. They sat down at the table next to us. My jaw did not so much drop as unhinge. The Blue Cura\u00E7ao was really pumping through my bloodstream, so I did not hesitate to turn to my left and start in: &amp;quot;Um . . . Amy? Yeah, hi, my name&amp;#039;s Dave and I&amp;#039;m gay just like you and I&amp;#039;m sort of about to come out to my family and see I&amp;#039;m here for this conference and I tried to talk but they do the angle and they don&amp;#039;t know who Elvis Costello is and . . .&amp;quot; &amp;quot;You know what,&amp;quot; she stopped me, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m Emily.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Sorry! That happens a lot probably, right?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Not really,&amp;quot; said Emily. &amp;quot;But I get you. Been there. Coming out is hard, and it&amp;#039;s something you have to do on your own. You gotta trust yourself.&amp;quot; She patted my knee. &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re okay. Just trust yourself.&amp;quot; And then she turned to Amy and got down to the business of choosing an Appeteaser, her work having been done. And I&amp;#039;ll be damned if that wasn&amp;#039;t the best advice I&amp;#039;d ever gotten. I flew home to St. Louis the next day and stood face-to-face with my parents and took a deep breath and immediately waited a couple more weeks and then came out to them. It was awful, and it took some time for things to be okay, but they were, eventually. I trusted myself, and I got through it.  I went back to school, ready to spend my fifth year prostrate to the higher mind, get my paper, and, finally, be free.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/a46230/dave-holmes-party-of-one-excerpt/>