“The line about the dunes offering privacy seems suspicious,” a slim Asian guy named Royce replied. “That’s where men in P-town usually have sex.”

“Exactly,” the professor replied. “The tourist board couldn’t put ‘This is where gay men fuck’ on the brochure, so they wrote, ‘The dunes offer privacy’ instead.”

I tried to contain my shock, first at a professor saying the word “fuck,” and second that we were talking about sex outdoors like it was no big deal. I did my best to absorb D. A. Miller’s point, that texts weren’t just what something explicitly said, but there were many layers underneath, which were important to tease out of gay-related material because queer people often used coded language to express themselves in a society that rejected them. He called this method of analysis “deconstruction.” I wrote down the word in my five-subject notebook, which I already planned to replace when I noticed that most of the class used slim journals with ribbon bookmarks.

Still, it was hard to distill the professor’s points not just because he used such unfamiliar terms but also because the discussion moved on to places in Provincetown where gay men met to “cruise,” as we talked about a line in the brochure about “convenient public restrooms.”

“That’s a reference to glory holes,” a student named Gavin said, whose confident voice I recognized even though he sat on my side of the table so I didn’t get a good look at him. The class began to talk about the glory hole as a site of rebellion during the AIDS crisis, and I was once again completely lost, overwhelmed by phrases like “police state” and “the Marxist commons,” as I raised my hand without thinking.

“I’m sorry but what’s a glory hole?” I asked.

The chuckles in the room aimed themselves at me. Gavin leaned forward so I could see him. In the half-second before he spoke, I noticed that he was beautiful.

“A glory hole is an opening drilled into the side of a restroom stall,” he said like he was reading out of a dictionary. “You slide your cock through and someone on the other side gives you head.” My eyes cast themselves down, yet I felt the thrill of discovery along with my embarrassment, and that flutter in my chest because of how attractive Gavin was with his dark curly hair, thick lashes that framed seductive eyes, and full lips set against a square jaw.

Professor Miller asked us to write an essay summarizing our goals for the class, due in his department mailbox by six, so he could decide who to let in. I figured I might as well try.