Josh explained the details of the action at a meeting, though the logic remained unclear to me. We were to dress conservatively and pretend to be homophobes by holding up signs borrowed from Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, like GOD HATES FAGS and NO RIGHTS FOR SODOMITES. The signs were meant to expose Ralph Reed’s hypocrisy and Harvard’s disingenuousness for inviting him. Though Reed seemed benign and respectable, he still reeked of the same homophobia as Phelps and his cronies. This logic made sense in a somersaulting kind of way, though I still wondered why we couldn’t just kiss as we were and send a less confusing message.

Though I got on board in the end and put on the black wool suit I wore to interviews, procured at Filene’s Basement with extra money from the Winter Coat Fund, which gave every Harvard freshman from west of the Mississippi three hundred dollars to buy warm clothes. The suit was an armor I didn’t want, that cover of respectability and dominance as a man. I couldn’t handle the idea of wearing a tie, so I settled for a linen shirt with a mandarin collar, unclassic but respectable.

I got to the auditorium early and made my way to the queer section in the center near the back. The group wasn’t big, maybe twenty kids or so. I was chatting with one of them when Josh appeared in the periphery of my vision wearing a white dress, and I hadn’t quite absorbed his outfit before he asked, “Would you be my kiss-in partner?”

That was when I noticed he was not only wearing white but that his head was covered in a wimple, and I recognized the familiar crisp fabric of a nun’s habit from my dozen years in Catholic school. I had no idea why he asked me, the two of us having never hung out as friends over four years, but I nodded yes. Maybe it was as simple as me having the right look, a studious blond man in conservative clothes. I sat next to him as Ralph Reed’s talk began, though there were still murmurs among us about who was ready to take action and who wasn’t, who was risking arrest and negative backlash, or some sort of permanent smirch on some record, official or otherwise.

I had my doubts as Reed started his speech. I still wasn’t quite getting the point of all the theatricality, as I held a sign that read DYKES WILL BURN IN HELL. Was this all a manifestation of Josh’s ego? Judging by the absence of the more mainstream queers among us, the gay guys with their tight shirts and muscles, there didn’t seem to be full consensus that this was a good idea.