The following is an excerpt from the new book Manboobs: A Memoir of Musicals, Visas, Hope, and Cake by Komail Aijazuddin, available now from Abram Press.
Senior year found me as alone at home as at school. Both my sisters now lived abroad, so it was only me with my parents in the house. I locked myself in my bedroom to better focus on the raging anxiety of SAT prep and US college applications in solitude. It helped that my eldest sister was going to be married in spring, and my parents were preoccupied with planning the event. I worked on my applications as best I could and sent them off with hopeful excitement. On the windy spring night of the actual wedding several months later, I fell spectacularly ill with a stomach flu. South Asian stomach bugs are not mild conditions, the kind of serene illnesses that allow you to recline gracefully on a Victorian fainting couch while kindly matrons press bottles of smelling salts up to …