I sat near one end of a long oval seminar table with a wooden base and a smooth black top. The room was painted an unusual shade of blue, like the sky right before dusk, which added to the sense that wherever I’d been, I was about to go someplace else.

I watched as student after student walked in, so there was a line of them standing against one wall by the time a man in a black leather jacket, white T-shirt, and tight jeans walked in, with the air if not the clothes of a professor. He introduced himself as D. A. Miller, but asked the class to call him David.

“This is an advanced seminar so I’m giving priority to upperclassmen,” he said. “I can only take twelve students.”

There were at least twenty-five of us in that room. I was sad to learn that the decision to take the class was not in my hands, though also a little relieved. But I figured I’d stay for the first class anyway, even if I didn’t have a shot at getting in. As I looked around, I was surprised there were several women there, but not surprised that everyone else sported a knowing expression, like they had been in these seminars before.

After everyone said their names, Professor Miller distributed the class syllabus, two pages of books by authors I’d never heard of—Baldwin, Genet, Proust—along with critical essays with titles like “The Epistemology of the Closet” and “Is the Rectum a Grave?” I promised myself I’d read these books anyway, and take the class the next time the professor offered it.

“E. M. Forster’s Maurice isn’t a great book, but it’s the only one of his novels that explicitly discusses homosexuality,” the professor said as he walked us through the syllabus. “And please remember the correct pronunciation. It’s Mau-rice and not Mau-rice. This is why your parents pay thirty thousand dollars a year for you to go to Harvard, so you won’t embarrass yourselves at cocktail parties.”

As the other students chuckled, I peered at their faces and imagined what it would be like to have parents who could afford full price for Harvard, to not be on full financial aid and need a work-study job to pay for living expenses.

After the syllabus, Professor Miller took what looked like a stack of brochures from his black leather satchel and passed them around. When I got my copy, I saw that it was for a beach area on the Massachusetts coast called Provincetown. The paper was glossy and thick, with photographs of wide beaches, which I could have mistaken for home except the color of the water was cooler somehow, less inviting, the green masses that assembled between patches of sand too dark and clumped.

“Do you notice anything unusual?” he asked, and I had no idea what he meant. “Pay attention to the language.”