Rites of passage come in various disguises

Amid gold confetti, topless figureheads and raging techno, I experienced my first encounter with San Francisco’s LovEvolution last weekend. In an extravagant parade down Market Street, I saw pink elephants and cage dancers, penis balloons and some Amazonian wilderness. I even witnessed at least eight nude men, each posing for pictures with girls young enough to be their prepubescent grandchildren. Love was all around, as visible as areolas and as palpable as the constant, potent aroma of marijuana in the streets. Oh, the glory of San Francisco.

While waiting for the BART into the city, my friends and I became very aware of exactly how underdressed we were. Where were our fuzzy, colored boots and our fairy wings? Where were our neon-colored wigs, fishnets and booty shorts? At the very least, where were our Teletubbies costumes with accompanying bling-bling?

I certainly did not make this mistake at the release party of Harry Potter’s final installment. Without shame and overwhelmed with excitement, my friends and I planned every last detail of that night with meticulous care. Although there was less nudity and much less marijuana, the parade of teens and preteens celebrating the seventh book was just as decadent as the one that marched and shimmied down Market Street only a few days ago. Confetti, music, costumes, dancing, love — all these things found themselves crammed into every Borders and Barnes & Noble that had the intelligence to host a party in return for an advanced purchase.

And was it a party. When I think back to my senior year, the night that Harry Potter came to an end is the night that I find the most epic, the most collectively memorable — even more so than graduation, which was a tired rundown of secondhand blue robes and graduation speeches inspired by Beatles songs. July 21, 2007 was, to a very large extent, the end of my childhood. I started the Sorcerer’s Stone when I was 10; when I turned 11, despite every screaming ounce of logic, I was disappointed when my birthday came and went with no owl-delivered letter.

When I was 15, I criticized J.K. Rowling’s insensitive and exaggerated treatment of Harry’s puberty-driven angst while I myself lived my life in constant caps-lock fury. And when I was 18, a few months after I graduated high school and a few weeks before I would become a college freshman, I felt an ache that reverberated more deeply than any sense of loss I had previously experienced.

Since then, things have changed. Loved ones passing, first loves dissolving and homes migrating have shifted my sense of what is memorable. But that night, straddling two chapters of my life, I felt a cover fall harshly upon an adventure I associated with my own childhood. It was as if the parade that was Harry Potter had suddenly and rapidly found its end on Market Street.

I hurried home once the book was delivered into my long-awaited arms and read the book from cover to cover before the sun began to rise. I sat and pondered, discussed, analyzed, hated, worshipped and, at the very end, regretted. If only I hadn’t finished it so fast; if only I had taken my time; if only I hadn’t read it at all, then, at the very least, it wouldn’t be over — just like one feels at the close of a parade.

But that is the wonderful thing about parades. They lead to something — a demonstration, an angry mob or, like this weekend, a music festival of moshing electronica. And then after that, there are all-night raves (or, for those who still need to persuade parental consent, all-age dance parties). I was wrong about the resounding finale that was July 21, 2007. Even after that momentous day — and following morning — there were still movies and rumors and soon-to-be-published encyclopedias and, maybe one day, there will even be spin-offs (the Frasier kind, not the That ’80s Show kind). Just like the smell of marijuana that remains etched onto one’s clothing, every memory I associated with those books lingers today. And just like the detached eyes of someone faded from ecstasy, you can always identify — even from a distance — a fellow HP fanatic.

Yes, it’s not the same. I will never be closing that back cover for the first time again; the next naked man painted with shimmering glitter will never again be quite as scandalous. Love will never be as windswept, homes will never be as rooted and loved ones will never return. But isn’t that the beauty of it all? That those closed covers mark another opening pair, arms waiting and welcoming?

Tiffany Yang is a junior majoring in comparative literature. Her column, “Alphabet Soup,” runs Wednesdays.