It turned out Jahan was just half Iranian, on his dad’s side—his mom was Dominican—but after he had had a few drinks himself, all he wanted to talk about with me was Iranian culture.

“Have you heard of Fereydoon? He’s this singer,” Jahan said. “I’m obsessed with him. He was huge in the 1960s, and he had an emo poet sister, kind of like the Iranian Virginia Woolf. He was also deeply, deeply homosexual. Everyone knew! But of course you couldn’t say anything.” And then Jahan got up on the bar—I’m serious!—and he performed a bit from one of his songs, flamboyantly flashing his fingers and kicking his legs, and I just thought, Who is this guy?

The whole night, Jahan told story after story. His nipple story was particularly gruesome—in the best way.

But before we got really drunk and heard the nipple story told ’round the world—from what I understand, that story has spread farther from its initial source than influenza in 1918 or herpes in a frat house—we listened to Joni Mitchell.

“Do you know this song, Amir?” Jahan asked, leaning over the bar.

I definitely recognized the upbeat melody, the lyrics—paved paradise, something about parking lots—but I didn’t know the singer.

“You’re hopeless,” Jahan said. “Gay card revoked.”

It was like there was another rainbow scoreboard for gay men that I had never been exposed to, and I was starting from scratch.

-5: Doesn’t know Nina Simone or Joni Mitchell.

“You know, Joni Mitchell is how I came out to my dad,” Jahan said.

“Um.”

“You don’t have to look so horrified.” He laughed. “It didn’t go that badly. I was in the eighth grade, and my dad asked at the dinner table if I had any crushes, and I replied, totally seriously: ‘Father. Joni Mitchell is the only woman for me.’ The man looked at me, utterly disappointed, shaking his head—but he knew. That was all I ever had to say.”

I couldn’t believe how nonchalant Jahan was about coming out to his dad. I looked over his face carefully, but I didn’t find an ounce of pain, regret, shame, any of the feelings I’d been dealing with these last few months. It was just another story for him, and he went about washing glasses in the bar sink.

“Aladdin,” I said quietly.

“What?”

I looked up from my beer.

“It was Aladdin for me.”

Jahan placed a clean glass on the dish rack and smiled. “How very on-brand.”

I stared in awe as he intercepted a different conversation, this one about a record store in Naples that was run by the Italian mafia. The way Jahan told his tales, with so much flair, they reminded me of the stories my mom and dad had told me growing up. The ones their parents had told them. It felt like part of a thousand-year-old tradition I never thought I would be allowed to be a part of.

The bar emptied out around four in the morning, and I stuck around for another hour. I had been nursing the same beer since midnight, so Jahan made me finish and we took shots of fancy liqueurs. Not liquor. Liqueur. I’d never even heard the word before tonight. I definitely couldn’t spell it. Jahan kept making me try.