He looked down at his curry with that timid expression I found so endearing. I asked him what Oxford was like, and he described individual tutorials, wearing gowns to meals, and the deer park at his college. He asked me about Harvard, and I described the naked pool parties at Adams, which were alas a thing of the past, but the queer rebelliousness lived on. And as we continued to discuss our interests, my fondness for women’s literature and his for German opera, I was struck by how he had an instinctive ability to interact with me like a peer, even though he was so much more learned and accomplished, someone who had been part of the scholarly world, I was sure, his entire life. I mentioned I’d developed a recent interest in evolutionary biology.

“You know, I’m actually descended from Darwin,” he said, and I could sense regret right after he spoke those words, like it was a breach of decorum to mention his lineage. I couldn’t help but interpret this uncharacteristic revelation as first-date jitters, his eagerness to impress getting in the way of his typical restraint.

“You can’t say something like that without giving me more details.”

“My last name is Wedgwood, and Darwin married a Wedgwood, though his mother was also a Wedgwood. So actually,” he said, now grinning, “I’m descended from Darwin twice over.”

“So you’re a product of inbreeding,” I replied. “We’re not so different after all. A geneticist once told me the reason I’m albino is probably because my parents have a common ancestor.” I started, so I figured I might as well finish. “People think I’m white but I’m actually Filipino. I lived in the Philippines until I was fifteen.”

“I lived in Malaysia for two years when I was twelve.”

We moved on to less personal topics as we shared a mango-and-coconut dessert, like the differences between Southeast Asian cultures, and comparing Bahasa with Tagalog words. I carefully observed if something had changed after I told him I wasn’t white, but I didn’t notice anything.

Afterward, we walked through a maze of concrete buildings to Kendall Square Cinema, a new theater that specialized in indie movies, to watch Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet, a play I’d read for at least half a dozen classes by then, though I didn’t feel a strong connection to it compared to other Shakespeare tragedies, maybe because Hamlet’s tragic flaw is his indecisiveness, whereas I was prone to making decisions too fast rather than not. So the figure I’d always gravitated toward was Ophelia, whose only fault was loving a man who turned out to be disloyal.