Unable to identify any specific blade of grass on this occasion, I could imagine the blurry mass under my feet as the same uniform stalks of verdant green I’d stepped on twenty years earlier, and so became two people without much effort, the person who arrived today and the young man from the afternoon of my improbable graduation from the most prestigious university in the world. Me, a child from a Philippine province, descendant of peasant farmers, son of derelict immigrants.

Except: I was no longer a son, no longer a man. I became more aware of this as groups of gay men, mostly aging or aged, circulated around me. Their manner of casual evaluation was all too familiar from the countless gay occasions I’d been exposed to—clubs, parties, rallies, meetings—events where official interactions were always tinged with the energy of male desire. Though having such blurry vision made me pay closer attention to what I could perceive, and what I saw was the change in how those men approached and retreated, the way their bodies created invisible patterns in space, the distinction between being observed but found wanting and being dismissed offhand, the difference between being a not-so-hot guy and a woman.

“It’s kinda fun to see a bunch of boys who rejected me under the same tent,” a droll voice behind me said, whose owner I immediately identified as Kit Clark, a black alum who was several classes ahead of me but had worked at Harvard after graduation and never left. We got back in touch a few years earlier, so he was one of the few people I’d seen since I finished college.

“Haven’t snagged one yet?” I asked as I turned to face him.

“It’s a lot worse than when you were here,” he replied. “The men keep getting younger and I’m only getting uglier.”

I would protest if it were anyone else, but Kit’s tone had always made it clear that he did not invite praise whenever he said something negative about his appearance. What he invited was empathy, agreement with the injustice of how looks so determined our place in the gay pecking order and how our lack of attractiveness had so much to do with our race and femininity.

Kit’s broad, open face, his strong jaw, his wide nose, would not be considered ugly, if not for the kinky hair he kept long. His olive skin would have also been attractive, except that it didn’t come with the hypermasculinity that seemed to be a prerequisite for black gay men to be thought hot. Instead, Kit refused to subject his tall, lanky frame to the rigors of a gym regimen and preferred activities like circus silks and modern dance, which he could perform with a lithe grace.

“You can always leave Cambridge,” I suggested.

“You’re not serious. My life is here. I accept that I’m undesirable.”