Meatballs went flying everywhere. It was like Vesuvius had erupted.

“Cazzo!” Giovanni’s friend yelled angrily.

“Eccolo,” Jahan bellowed.

I sent red lava and hot magma exploding all over with my brilliantly klutzy act. Thankfully, none of it touched the art—it just splattered over my shirt and his—but still. I was mortified.

A crowd formed around me as I sputtered my apologies. Giovanni refused to let me apologize and instead led me to his bedroom—massive, by the way, just totally insane—where I took a quick shower and changed into one of his shirts. It was a blue button-down, made from the smoothest Italian thread. He watched closely as I changed into the shirt. I asked if he had something less expensive, that felt less like clouds and more like cotton, and he just clucked his tongue. “Keep it,” he said. “The clouds are yours.”

Obviously, we didn’t have meatballs for dinner, but we had everything else. I piled pesto pistachio pasta on my plate, juicy slabs of tomato and mozzarella, and a butter chicken that was decidedly not Italian but tasted better than any other chicken that I’d ever had . . . probably because I was having it in Italy. Some people took their plates to the fancy couches in Giovanni’s living room. I pulled up a chair at the desk in the office room, where Jahan and Neil were sitting. It seemed safer for me to eat next to an iMac than on an antique sofa.

Water didn’t seem to be an option at this party, so I poured myself a glass of red wine. It was dry, not sweet like I was expecting, but it went down smoothly enough.

After dinner, we reentered the living room, where Giovanni was holding court with the other boys. His face perked up when he saw me. “Gentlemen,” he said, and it was like a podium had sprung underneath him. “Have you met our new friend Amir?” The others all exchanged silent smirks.

“We’ve all met,” I told Giovanni.

“Ah, but they must meet you again. Amir is a writer. He is rewriting his life. That accident with the meatballs was merely a plot twist.”

Giovanni took me under his wing. I had the distinct feeling that he just felt bad for me and had already told the other boys about how I’d ended up in Rome. I was under the impression that Giovanni was trying hard to make up for my difficult past by showing me just how good I had it, being at that party.

They were fascinating people, though, I have to admit. I met doctors and painters; a singer with a shaved head who had just won a minor talent competition in Italy; a Greek man with a very loud laugh; and Giovanni’s boyfriend, Rocco, a macaroni artist. I’m not kidding. He makes actual art out of actual macaroni pieces.

All of a sudden, I was happy to be there. I felt lucky. The common denominator in the room wasn’t that everyone was gay, or that they were Italian, or that they were friends with Giovanni. It was that they were a fun, interesting group of people.