When the Body Combat instructor pushed to the front of the crowd and introduced herself, I could not help but be reminded of a bygone era. Her thick pink headband, stretch pants, and neon athletic top made her seem as if she had just arrived in a time machine from an 80s aerobics class. Of course, I have never experienced the 80s for myself, so I cannot be sure that all aerobics instructors wore such tight, shiny fabric, but the movies of the time seem to indicate they did.
My full name is Lily Rosalind Offit. It sounds relatively neutral in terms of nationality, but I am 100% Jewish. The Offit clan hails from Lithuania— Benjamin Ofceotowitz came to the U.S. in 1888, to escape persecution. Immigration officers changed his name at least five times due to misspellings: Ofsiowitz, Ofseoyowitz, Ofgeoyowitz, Owseverwitz, Ofsavitz…. Finally, in March of 1917, Benjamin settled on the simple spelling “Offit.”
There’s nothing as acutely dissatisfying as the knowledge that somewhere, many people are having sex, and you are not one of them. That’s not the only reason why gay Ivy Leaguers flocked en masse to Princeton for IvyQ, the annual LGBT conference, but it was certainly one of them. IvyQ’s stated mission is to “create a pan-Ivy community of lgbt students and allies equipped with the skills to examine their identities” and “value those of others.” But it is better summed up in the conference’s keynote speech: “Have fun, make friends, and get frisky.”
It’s an interesting characteristic of Western culture (and maybe of cultures in general) that, over time, we tend to forget exactly why we do the things we do. Of course this is to be expected, as behaviors and preferences become institutionalized over time, making it less important to remember who was the first person to do or say something, and under what authority this was done.
“Looking back at it now, it feels like that iPhone 6s was like an omnipresent eye throughout my adolescence, there to capture and see it all, completely unfiltered.”
“He wondered if his body felt cold when she touched him. If she could sense the disconnect of his skin. If she could tell that even with her hands on his chest and her legs between his, they weren’t really touching.”
