“That’s easy, hon, if it feels good when you’re getting fucked, you’re a bottom. If it feels good when you’re doing the fucking, you’re a top. If you like it both ways, you’re vers.”

“Vers?”

“Versatile. Why are you asking?”

They passed Madame Rosa’s psychic shop, her name and a palm outlined in red and blue neon in the window.

“Pete fucked me. It hurt a lot. Is that normal?”

Waldo shook his head. “Pete! I was wondering when he’d make a move on you. Did it hurt the whole time?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to try it again?”

“No way.”

“Then you’re a top,” he said. “Congratulations!”

“Why?”

Waldo laughed. “Because this city is the planet of the bottoms, hon. You’re going to be very popular.” Then, serious again, Waldo said, “The thing is, Billy, you’re like the all-American twink and most guys who cruise you are gonna want to fuck you. You don’t have to let them, okay?”

“How will I know if someone’s a bottom?”

“Ask,” Waldo said.

Although Bill was eager to find another boy to practice with, he was still too shy to approach anyone, so he remained a top in theory only as he continued to relieve himself in his hand.

The first time he saw the Golden Gate Bridge it appeared at the end of a long walk that had taken him through Chinatown, where cooked ducks hung in the windows of restaurants and sidewalk grocery stalls were filled with fruits and vegetables for which he had no name. He had gone past Washington Square, where a white-faced mime followed him across the park parodying his walk, and to Aquatic Park where the fishing boats creaked in their berths like old beds. Looking up, there it was—the bridge—like an edifice on the cover of one of the science fiction paperbacks his brother Tom had left behind when he went to college. The bridge was not gold but orange, its graceful span less a structure than a gesture. But it was truly a gate, one that marked the border of the remarkable city from the great swath of sea beyond it. The city that was now his home.