[...] I suspected I had a chance with her. This would do amazing things for my self-worth, as well as my stature in the academic community. I asked her out to coffee. It’s not that I thought of her as a prop or a thing to obtain or something for my résumé. Well, I did think those things, but I wanted not to think those things. I planned to work on those unappealing thoughts, to make them go away. I knew they were wrong. And I knew they weren’t the entirety of my thoughts. So I would keep them secret and instead focus on the feelings of genuine attraction I felt for this woman. Eventually, the novelty of her African Americanness would recede, and I knew I would be left with a pure love for her, as a woman of any color, of no color: a clear woman. Although I understood that even my feelings for women in general were not pure. Attractiveness was a determining factor, which is wrong. And of course any exotic racial, cultural, or national characteristics were appealing to me. I would be as excited to show off my Cambodian or Maori or French or Icelandic or Mexican or Inuit girlfriend as I would my African American one. Almost. It was something I needed to better understand about myself. I needed to fight my instincts at every turn.