Free With Patience and Fortitude: A Memoir by Christine Quinn

that after graduating I wanted to work in politics and government, and these majors made the most sense for me. I’d considered majoring in political science, but everybody in the whole world was a political science major. Besides, when you were a political science major, you had to study national and international issues, and by then my focus was clear: cities fascinated me most—and they still do. I added the education major, not with an eye toward becoming a teacher but to study education from a political perspective.
    O nce I’d experienced how exciting and satisfying it was to be involved in the political process, I had an even clearer idea of what I wanted to do with my life. As graduation neared, I knew my challenge after Trinity would be to channel my passion for progressive causes, political organizing, and getting things done into some kind of job and profession. I was pretty clueless about how to make that happen in a self-sustaining way, but I was determined to find a way.
    A more complicated challenge waited in the background.
    While I had a very busy social life at Trinity and enjoyed spending time with my friends, my romantic life was just as nonexistent as it had been in high school. Not that there was a lot of pressure to date at Trinity—there wasn’t. Every college has a different social dynamic. I didn’t know anyone at Trinity who went out on dates, and compared with other schools, there weren’t even that many couples. One of my high school classmates went to a college in the South, where if you didn’t have a date you didn’t go to football games. Trinity was nothing like that. So I never really felt left out.
    Then again, I just assumed I was always going to be left out, which is different from feeling left out. I had no expectation that I’d ever get asked out on a date and had no interest either, so it’s not like I was disappointed. It was what it was. Then, during my senior year and much to my dismay, I discovered that I wasn’t immune to romantic feelings.
    T o this day, I vividly remember my first crush, although the funny thing is, I can’t remember her name. I just remember her big halo of curly hair. We were both seniors, but she was probably in her midtwenties because she’d taken time off to travel. I’d see her in some of my classes, and on occasion we talked. We were friendly but not supergood friends, and I certainly never told her about my feelings for her.
    Normally a crush is kind of a fluttery feeling. You feel excited and anxious, but not in a bad way. And when you’re in that state of mind, your friends will tell you it’s a crush. It’s a universal experience that’s celebrated in music and poetry. But to me, all those fluttery feelings were overshadowed by a troubling sensation, because I was having them for a girl. And so those feelings were wrong.
    Looking back, it’s hard to say exactly how I knew my feelings were wrong. I don’t remember hearing any sermons in church about it. It didn’t come up once in religion or theology classes. I don’t remember being taught about it in school at all. And my parents never indicated one way or the other how they felt about LGBT people. But I saw and heard things that probably had a subconscious impact on what I thought about being gay. When I was a child, other kids did use the word gay in a negative way. I don’t think those young kids were aware of being homophobic—I’m not even sure they knew what gay meant.
    In sixth or seventh grade, I got called dyke by kids at school. Again, I don’t know how I knew what that word meant, because I have no memory of ever having heard it before, but I must have because I knew it was bad and knew enough to say, “No, no, I have a crush on” a certain boy. Of course I didn’t have a crush on any boy and never really have, but I said it to prove that I wasn’t what they said I was. I didn’t say a word to my parents or to my sister about the episode because I was afraid. I