About a month ago, the school from which I graduated, Colby College in Waterville, Maine, sent a mailing to my home in Seattle. The postcard gave the name and address of a bar in the gayest part of Seattle, a date (National Coming Out Day), a list of participating colleges, and urged me to, “Join alumni from some of the nation’s best liberal arts schools for a joint GLBTQ and Allies Networking Reception and Happy Hour.”

You could’ve knocked me over with a swizzle stick.

My college on the other side of the country had arranged for me to meet other gay people? Colby was looking after my personal and professional well-being as a lesbian? What next, an invitation to use the college chapel for my commitment ceremony?

While I was busy being stunned that my school and others were colluding on such an event, a different thought suddenly bulldozed all others: How did they know I’m a lesbian?

I wasn’t out in college, not ’til a good many years later, in fact. What, do they employ a professional gossip in the alumni office to ferret out such information? A private detective? A psychic? A Homeland Security agent? Wait, that’s right, I told the class secretary I write this column and she put it in the class notes. Probably the alumni office has a work-study student sifting through those notes to extract gold. “Look, she’s a lesbian – let’s see if she’ll fund a Stein-Wilde Lecture Series.”

On Oct. 11, I heeded the postcard’s suggestion to “Come OUT for a drink!” When I got to the bar, I noticed people were wearing name tags with their colleges on them. I looked around for the Colby stickers but couldn’t find any, so I pinched one from another school. I crossed out “Carleton” and wrote “Colby,” and if Carleton College wants to take this up with me, I’m ready. It beat writing my name and college on a cocktail napkin and attaching it to my chest.

I chatted with two women from Macalester College, which, like Carleton, is in Minnesota. Soon I met other… Macalesterites? Macalesterians? Big Macs? They were a terribly organized bunch, writing their names down on a list. One woman, a new graduate now working for the school, said she had actually been sent to Seattle by Macalester for this event. It took me some minutes and switching to water to believe her.

“I just have to put in a plug for Macalester. We’re the second most gay-friendly school,” she said, referring to a recent survey of the nation’s schools. I believe it, if the place is actually shipping out liaisons to gay alumni.

An Oberlin alumnus handed me a newsletter, the Oberlin Lambda Alumni News. That such a thing simply exists sealed it – I knew somewhere in the sky, pigs were flying. Good God, schools these days are actually making efforts to acknowledge and support their gay alumni! Not long ago that would’ve seemed as likely as me becoming a physics major.

A fellow asked me about the name tags, and since he turned out to be a Colby grad too, I advised him to take the low road like I did and steal from another school. He and I heard a rumor there were others from Colby in attendance, so we rooted them out.

We communed in a corner, three guys and I, swapping Colby stories. One of the men turned out to be straight, which was as telling as the Oberlin newsletter. He felt he belonged there, and he did.

It was he who told me Colby had sent the mailing about this event to all alumni in the area. Duh. What was I thinking? Between my brain freeze and public pilfering, Colby may not want to claim me.