Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni

Author:Taleen Voskuni [Voskuni, Taleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2023-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

16

Warm a frozen serpent, and it will sting you first.

Սարած օձն տաքզընես’ առաջ քեզի կը խայթէ:

—Armenian Proverb

I’m late, duh, but that’s because I made the harrowing journey from the Peninsula to the East Bay during rush hour. I know Southern California hoards all the infamy for its traffic, but they don’t have bridges. Nine-mile-long bridges where you can be stuck. With no exit. A terrifying prospect if you’ve been chugging water all day without a bathroom.

It’s the Wednesday night after the bonfire, and now I’m jogging along UC Berkeley’s campus, approaching the building where Erebuni’s genocide lecture is taking place. I had to stop and look at a map at one point because college campuses are the most confusing places in the world. I’ve had to do, like, ten news stories at Stanford, and I still don’t understand where anything is or how you can get around that place; every building is made up of the exact same tan brick, every outlying street huge and winding, popping you onto an unknown corner.

I parked off campus, and while walking through a tunnel of shops to get to Telegraph Avenue, I passed a dim sum place that advertised sixty-cent bao. I was super tempted to stop and get some but was already way too late, so now I have only the memory of hypothetical sticky buns in my head.

Berkeley’s actual campus is very different from Telegraph’s head shops and white-kids-with-dreads vibe. It feels highly academic, and since it’s a university, good job. As I’m on the cobblestone steps I can’t help but wonder: Had I gotten into Berkeley, would I be different now? I mean, of course I would be, but how fundamentally? Would I have actually gone to their queer alliance club and become a member? Would that have bolstered me to come out, to be comfortable with that part of myself? Would I have actually dated women?

The campus is mostly quiet at six p.m., but a group of blond girls wearing sorority logos on their clothes pass me by, a couple of them linking arms, giggling to themselves. Hmm. Who am I kidding, I probably would have done exactly what I did at Davis. Walk up to the club meeting, peer inside, see that everyone looks much older and more confident in their gayness, and turn right around and go back to the dorms. But who knows.

I enter the building I’m targeting, Dwinelle Hall, and my footsteps echo across the empty lobby. I wind my way through the hallways, realizing I took the longest route possible, and finally find room seventy-six, a lecture hall that holds about fifty people. It’s about three-quarters of the way full, which is good for a lecture on a topic as thrilling to the masses as the genocide of a race no one cares about (William Saroyan’s words, not mine).

There’s a long table on the stage, where the speakers, including Erebuni, are sitting, mics in front of them. Erebuni is listening intently to the woman on her left.

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