So this is an excerpt from a memoir I'm
working on about my educations.
And imagining that what my parents and what
many parents with not a lot of formal education
have to offer the world.
And that comes from working with Fred Moten who's always
asking us to be more creative about how
we see each other existing in the world.
But I went to Williams College.
Does anybody know where that is?
It's in the Berkshires.
I'm sure you don't know where that is.
Either that's fine.
I didn't as well I'm from Bell Gardens,
which is the Rust Belt of LA, Southeast LA.
And in the house.
So I went because they had a lot of money.
They still have a lot of money.
But this story takes place there.
And it's pretty self-explanatory.
Are you what do you need to know?
The word [? changa ?] or [? chango ?] means sloppy
according to my mom.
And Vista is the Latinx student group on campus.
Swishy Pants.
Amá taught me that there was a direct connection between
dressing up and my intelligence?
Vistete bien, no hay que ser changa.
In short, pay attention and fix yourself up
because I didn't teach you to be a Mensa who
can't comb her hair.
This theory fell on its face for my fellow students
when I arrived Williams College my first year.
There were [? changas ?] everywhere.
Come skiing with us, Judy said.
She was a Korean-American biology major
from New Jersey with rosy cheeks.
I wish I could go, I joked.
But I left my ski equipment in LA.
Oh, that's OK, she said.
You can rent the stuff there.
I smiled to myself.
No thanks, I said.
Maybe next time.
She didn't mean any harm.
People rarely did.
People at Williams assumed we all
had the same access to cash, and that we all loved the outdoors.
People rowed, lacrossed.
Things that required gear, boots, walking sticks,
ski pants.
Weren't we all in the mountains, and didn't that
mean we could all ski.
No.
I was on those mountains so that I wouldn't
have to be in a home so tiny.
I could hear my thoughts.
It was like Williams was a country club vacation for some
of these fools, a place tucked away
inside a 200-year-old college that occasionally gave out
really hard tests.
I was serious when I'd said I'd left what I needed back home.
My confidence had waned since my grades took a huge dip.
Williams students may have had Rhodes scholars' vocabulary.
But they couldn't brush their hair in the morning.
I didn't have the money for skiing.
But I showed up clean and ironed for class.
It's not that they were supposed to be Town and Country models.
But it was more like the L. L. Bean catalog up there.
Everyone except me it seemed wore
filthy baseball caps embroidered with school names
I've never heard of.
Things like that sounded like conservatories
with swimming swans, Spence School, Seton Hall, Andover.
There was one exception to the casually dressed rule.
The son of his Highness, Aga Khan, the son of the Aga Khan
was a year ahead of me.
And for class wore black leather pants and Versace silk
shirts with the latest gold medallion pattern.
He probably also wore expensive whale oil perfume,
something with opium in it.
But maybe I'm just making things up.
He partied with the international club,
which played lots of techno.
And the reason I never stayed long at those parties.
Every other regular student had the fleece and hat outfit
but me.
I thought it had been given out during a special orientation I
missed.
Kids would mold the cap's bill into a tunnel,
walking around like ducks, turning the whole way around
when someone said their name.
And then there were the pants.
Swish, swish, they said.
Passing me at the library on their way
to get a drink of water.
Swish, swish going back to their seats.
It was hard enough reading the biology
for non majors textbook, which was Greek to me.
I had to concentrate extra hard to block out the swish, swish
of people's pinche pants.
Someone eventually said they were called warm ups denoting
a sport to warm up for.
But the people who wore them weren't jocks.
People claimed to like them because they were comfortable.
I needed to know if it was true.
I had not gone that far to never know
what was going on in rich people's pants.
Our campus frequently had clothing drives.
So I kept an eye out on the contents.
So I could rescue cashmere sweaters.
The swishy pants were $80 on sale at the Spring Street
store.
One lucky night, once everyone had gone to sleep,
I looked inside a donation box at the Student Union.
And peeking out from the bottom was a purple pant leg.
The kind I'd seen on every day at Williams.
And it was a telltale sign that swishy pants would be mine.
No one was around.
I acted like I was putting something in.
Because we're all rich, right?
So I folded the pants into tight little package
and shove them in my bag and ran.
I was slightly embarrassed at picking through the bin,
but not so much that it made me unlearn
a Moz rule of taking an opportunity
if it presented itself.
There was no one to share my spoils with though.
My roommates were two sweet white girls
who weren't rich enough to ski.
But who bought J.Crew from the catalogs occasionally.
I didn't wake them.
But I let out a squeal when I put them on.
The pants were lined in soft gray fleece.
They felt like a blanket making me more than warm.
No wonder everyone wore them.
Winter in the Berkshires went from November to May.
The pants were lined.
It was genius.
Why hadn't my Vista friends told me sooner?
They probably didn't know either.
Watching myself in the long bathroom mirror,
I wondered if they would make the same annoying sound
if I were them.
I waddled, refusing to brush my legs together.
No noise.
I walked across the bathroom and back a few times to check.
Swish, swish went the pants.
I turned my nose up at them for years.
But how could I wear them to breakfast?
I didn't have the polar fleece to match.
They would never be a place the pants would feel right.
And then there was the fit.
When I turned around, the pants were baggy in the butt
and too long as if I'd taken them out
of a free pile somewhere.
The lining was starting to make me sweat.
And that might have been the guilt
making its way onto my skin.
The pants of the working class trying
on the leisure of the rich.
And the guilt won.
Somewhere there would be a taller poorer person
who could use them.
Maybe they owned a baseball cap and a fleece to go.
The next day, I put them back in the box.
Someone else definitely needed the pants surely, or just
want it to be warm in a place that refused to melt its ice.
That time, I was actually giving something away.