"I am tired of pretending. But I am too afraid that no one will like me without the parts of me I have worked so hard to make up."
"'White, Chinese, Syrian - is the same thing! You not Black like we. You can get ahead in life. The rest of we just have to stay right here till we dead."
"'And therein lies the greatest fiction about America. It is never about just anything. It is always about something else. Something big. When it comes to the USA, other seemingly unconnected things are always connected.'"
"Then I wonder if I am just curious also. Maybe I just want to sleep with a girl so I can say I tried it. But I'm not so convinced when I spend the days hoping that Tanya or Belinda or Francine will take a chance and invite me up to their dorms to 'experiment.'"
"Fuck, this is New York City! You can be anything you goddamned wanna be."
"There are plenty of girls who allow for some sexual intimacy under the guise of exploration, but they stop talking to me when they find out that I want to be exclusive. The more it happens, the angrier I become."
"I wish I could just go straight to the police and report it. But I can never tell anyone how silent the brave Staceyann Chin was in that room."
"I think about how I let those hands touch me - how I did not say anything while they did what they wanted to me."
"I do not feel so alone when I can see the sky."
"I refuse to grow old kissing the woman I love under the cover of night and pretending I don't know her the next day."
"In my heart of hearts I don't want to leave either, but I don't see a way I can stay. Plus the wheels have been set to turning and I am already on my way."
"It takes all my willpower not to say that I intend to be away until it is safe for Jamaicans to be openly gay. I try not to think of how long that might be."
"And when I visit them in Jamaica, I am often caught between anger at the suffering I endured in the years I spent with them and understanding that, more often than not, people did the best they could under the remarkably difficult and pressing circumstances."
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