I’d written a long paper on Passion for my junior project the previous semester, so I’d studied it intensely and knew every word, every entrance and exit. I didn’t plan well, had no shirt or jacket to cover my arms in that air-conditioned theater, but the cold was comforting because it dulled the shock of seeing the person who most resembled me onstage.

I wasn’t one of the beautiful lovers, not the gallant captain Giorgio or his married beloved, Clara, even though her name meant “light” and her skin was nearly as pale as mine. My twin was Fosca, a shockingly ugly woman who scares the captain when they meet for the first time, but he makes conversation with her because she is his commander’s niece. They figure out that they’re like-minded readers and sensitive souls in this remote Italian outpost, even though Fosca rebuffs Giorgio when he suggests that learning is the purpose of reading. To Fosca, reading is about dreaming in other people’s lives, “I read about the joys the world dispenses to the fortunate, and listen for the echoes,” she sings.

It was as if Fosca was singing the person I truly was. Her name means “dark” in Italian, and she is not only a gloomy presence in the play but is also sick with a mysterious illness, and so ugly that other men make fun of her because they consider her a freak. Her only solace is books, where she can project her fantasies onto fictional characters, knowing she can never have what she wants, to love and be loved. No matter how attractive I became, how much I buffed up or got the right haircut, the fact of me always remained, and that was the person who would always be unlovable. So I made sure to hide him under layers of muscle, confidence, and erudition, so that maybe no one would ever find out, so that I could maintain the illusion that I was worthy of love, even if what I ended up being loved for was not who I actually was.

But Passion gave me hope, however far-fetched, when Fosca in her ugliness falls in love with Giorgio, becomes obsessed with him, and he wildly rejects her after she follows him to the top of a mountain, as rain like his fury erupts from the sky. But over time and as his married lover comes up with more elaborate excuses not to leave her husband, Giorgio finds himself drawn to the uncompromising clarity of Fosca’s love, the purity of her longing. They finally come together near the end of her life as I cried over the miracle of their love, even as I mourned the impossibility of it for myself. My only comfort was that even though Fosca and I were so alike inside, at least I could fake being someone else and live with that compromise.

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