I turned to see the broad face of another guy from the queer student meeting named Matt. I tried to relax and pretend I was just with a friend, instead of a man who seemed to like me, even if he wasn’t exactly my type, stout and barrel-chested rather than the tall, slim, but toned men I was becoming aware I preferred.

“You know this song is about blow jobs, right?” he shouted in my ear when “Like a Prayer” came on, lyrics about going down on knees and feeling a man’s power in the midnight hour. The religious images I grew up with, the God I was told to hold sacred, were being replaced with this new world where it was fabulous divas who were the icons, and sex itself was a form of worship.

An hour and a few more dances later, Matt complained that it was getting too hot and asked if I wanted to go outside. I looked around for Kit but couldn’t find him in the dark, so I followed Matt toward the back of the dining hall, to a door I didn’t even know was there, which opened out to the street. He asked me if I wanted any food, and when I shook my head no, he wondered if I’d been to Dunster House, where he lived.

“I can give you a tour,” he said when I shook my head again.

“Sure,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure at all.

There was a quiet that followed as we walked down brick sidewalks in that early autumn night, and I didn’t know whether the goosebumps I felt as I crossed my arms were because of the cold or something else. We reached that set of buildings that bordered the river, and Matt led me through a dining hall that looked eerily like the one at Adams House.

“We’re sister houses,” Matt explained. As if he forgot he was supposed to show me around, we walked up a flight of stairs directly to his suite and sat alone in the common room because his roommates were out.

“Do you want a beer?” he asked.

“No thanks.”