known since hating her freshman year. We lived in the same dorm, but not the same planet. It was me, her, this tall guy who played the saxophone like a virgin, and a girl who wore ankle-length jean skirts and Keds topped with tube socks. Those were the blacks on our floor. From a scientific point of view, I took an educated guess that all black people on campus were either geeks or militant (Adrienne wore loose-laced Timbs). I decided to hang out with white people and got hanged for it. Supposedly a mental memo went out to all the Black Student Organization members. I’d been Oreo listed.

I had no clue how bad it was until one drunken night in the elevator to the sixth floor. Hamish, who was Irish or British and smelled like chlorine and foot fungus, was seeing me home after too much “punch” from a house with Epsilon or Chi on the facade. Adrienne, her good friend LaKia, and a bunch of fellow conscious card-carrying black girls were coming from something with “African” or “Malcolm” on the flyer. Buried in Hamish’s pasty neck, my arms wrapped around his concave swimmer’s waist, I never heard what they were whispering about. But when we got out, I saw the looks—disgust, shame, envy maybe.

After that, Adrienne was just a fancy Bed, Bath and Beyond shower basket in the bathroom, overstuffed with Victoria’s Secret lotions. We never spoke, but I had a speech prepared in case of an eminent showdown. It began thusly: “First of all, I’m from Compton. I have a cousin on death row. I went to public school for a friggin’ entire year. You don’t know my life!” And my ghetto résumé went on from there.

As fate would have it, though, my oratorical skills would go untested, because one shitty work-study job grilling hot dogs for outside “jams” later, the two of us were inseparable. Adrienne made me go to $3 pajama parties at the Pan African house, saving/drowning me in a mosh pit of black bodies pulsating to the xylophone stylings of “Money, Cash, Hoes.”

One semester later and I was deemed sufficiently black enough for even the most discerning of palettes. I rebelled by letting Spencer Schulz, a blond Floridian of German descent, lick my fingers in private and hold my hand on College Walk. Hey, I enjoyed white people and delicious Korean BBQ. But the Benetton ads of my teens had been canceled. Welcome to the real world as experienced through four years of voluntary social segregation. Having seen School Daze on VHS, DVD, and BET, I figured joining up with somebody might help simplify things.

So, Delta. Adaoha thought all we had to do was sign our names on a sheet numbered one through five, and then allakhazam, we’d be in. “Umm, no, honey,” was the thought bubble that hovered above every already-Delta. “Do your research.” That meant going to all their parties, study breaks, and women’s forums on the state of black relationships as depicted in Love and Basketball. Adrienne and I, having done the aforementioned research, knew all the tricks—have at least one intelligent thing to say per run-in with a sister, covet the color red but never think of wearing it, and always stay till the end.

Adaoha, we thought, didn’t have a chance, seeing as how she was a total weirdo, one of those black folks on campus who do hang out with other black folks, but not the normal kind, so they might as well be hanging out with white people. That was me before Adrienne saved/drowned me with black lip liner and Lil’ Kim. Adaoha should’ve gone first, maybe.

Somehow she made it in—something to do with a 3.6 GPA. So, it would be the five of us—me, my new best friend Adrienne, her friend LaKia, Adaoha, and her freak of a friend from the women’s college across the street, Darienne. We all lived together temporarily while studying for the DAT—the Delta Aptitude Test, which every candidate for membership had to pass. Grudgingly, the five of us spent Spring Break ’00 in my double in McBain Hall (Stella was gone on vacay). We figured the bigger the room, the less likely it’d be that anyone would have to breathe the same direct air as Darienne.

This is going to sound extremely elementary, but Darienne picked her boogers and then ate them, according to Adrienne, who knew her from nursery school or something. She could have been reformed, having completed the twelve-step program