“We were not amused,” Professor Miller wrote, and refused to grade the essay until I gave him a copy with the correct title. His pronoun use confused me until someone in class explained that he preferred to give his paper comments in the “royal we” like the Queen of England, an affectation I found delightful as I too tried to develop that ironic air gay men were known for.

It was just as well that I had no family to go to by the time Thanksgiving came along, since I had my final paper for Topics due the following week and looked forward to working on it without any distraction. Though Papa had settled in New York with his new family, and his second wife, Clara, had invited me to Thanksgiving dinner, I chose to avoid my father and recede into my schoolwork, which through the years had been a more reliable companion than he ever was.

Not having any friends in town, or really any friends at all, I decided to splurge on dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square, instead of eating alone at the Union with other freshmen who had friends to eat with, or even worse, who might pity-invite me to be part of their group. After my meal, I crossed Mass Ave and entered the Yard, then walked around the back of Widener Library to get to the Science Center, the one facility on campus that never closed. I was determined to at least outline my paper that night on masculinity and femininity in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America.

I’d first heard about the play while I was a junior in high school, when it ran at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. I’d taken a beginning composition class at the local community college over the summer to help my English, and the professor recommended me for a job at the tutoring center afterward, because many of the students who asked for help were also recent immigrants, and she thought I’d be a good example for them. One of the supervisors was a stout, bearded guy named Michael, who despite being quiet was always ready to help whenever I didn’t understand a pop culture reference, or take over when a student preferred to work with an older tutor.

We occasionally made small talk, and I happened to ask him what he was up to one weekend. He said he was going to see an amazing play called Angels in America for the second time.

“It’s about gay men in New York coping with AIDS,” he said. “It’s the best play I’ve ever seen.”

I sensed him gauging my reaction. We lived in a conservative part of California, and it felt like he was coming out to me just by talking about the play. No one had ever come out to me before.

“That sounds interesting,” I replied.

“You can come with me if you want.”