I felt a surge of power over her, aware that for the first time, she needed me in her life more than the other way around.

“I am your mother,” she said in Tagalog. “I worry about you.”

“You need to worry about yourself before you worry about me,” I replied in her own language, to make sure she understood. “I’m a student at the best university in the world. You’re so addicted to gambling you can’t even hold down a job.”

“So what? You don’t want me to take care of you anymore?”

“You’ve never taken care of me.”

This brought on a litany of complaints, how she took me to tapings while I was acting, how she got me to America. I had easy rejoinders prepared, but I didn’t need to argue with her version of the world at all. I could just refuse to be part of it.

“You can send me money if it will make you feel better,” I said. “I don’t need anything else from you. Goodbye.”

—

I was determined to go to the first queer dance of the year, even though I was scared of many things—being out, being unattractive, being a virgin. But I really didn’t have much choice if a gay man was who I planned to be, and besides, it was practically across the street from my freshman dorm, over at Adams House, where I’d gone to the first meeting of the BGLSA—the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Students Association. Having procured a white T-shirt and fitted jeans from the Gap, and thankful it wasn’t too cold since I couldn’t afford a nice jacket yet, I left my freshman dorm and eventually found myself in the Adams House dining hall, where I encountered a hundred kids or so dancing while portraits of dead white men surrounded them.

As for the alive white men, they dominated the floor like they did at the BGLSA meeting, resplendent in their own tight shirts and jeans, dancing in the rotating glow of disco lights set up on a black metal frame around the DJ booth, incongruous amid the tall windows and dark-paneled walls. They were young men with names like Brian, and John, and Greg. I appreciated that my parents named me Marc instead of Ramon Jr. after my father, but I already knew I would never be one of those chosen ones, because even though I passed as white, I could never be the kind of white who was firm-jawed, tall, and muscular.