+15: Gets along with other gay men.

Most of all, the common denominator was Jahan. If these boys were a rainbow, then Jahan was their sun, the source of their light and the center of their universe. I watched the way he swept through the crowd with such wonder. He commanded the room; he always held the power, whether it was in animated conversation or in the slightest movement, the way he took a step or reached for a plate. He never second-guessed himself.

Jahan used his power to start playing music videos on YouTube, on the iMac in front of the Caravaggio and next to a bust of Julius Caesar. The party transitioned from dinner and conversation to high-energy dance party.

It was a warm evening, made even warmer by the fact that we were inside an old apartment with no air-conditioning, jumping up and down.

Jahan and the other boys took turns pulling up grainy eighties music video after music video. Some Italian, some English, but all completely unrecognizable to me.

“Who’s that one?” I asked when a woman with a seriously bad spray tan in a shiny silver leotard came on-screen.

“That’s Mina!” Neil shouted at me, sufficiently drunk by now. He got close to my face, and even with his breath smelling like alcohol, I was more than a little turned on. “She’s one of the most important divas in Italian pop culture. She was like Ariana Grande in the sixties and seventies.”

“That’s an insult to Mina,” Jahan said.

“That is an insult to Ariana Grande,” one of the other boys snapped back.

It went like that for a few hours—a different diva or queer icon would come on, I’d ask who she was, and a different boy would yell at me for not recognizing her before educating me. “Child!” “Child!” “Not again!” “SOMEONE NEEDS TO REVOKE HIS GAY CARD!” I didn’t think it was fair; these people grew up in Italy, or in Neil’s case, the Castro in San Francisco, where they were surrounded by plenty of divas. I was sorely undereducated in the diva department.

These boys made it their mission to educate me.

Neil, Jahan, and I stepped outside when “Let’s Have a Kiki” by the Scissor Sisters started blaring through the speakers.

“Amir, do you even know this song?” Jahan asked.

“‘Let’s Have a Kiki,’ by the Scissor Sisters,” I said.

Jahan raised his chin. “Very impressive.”

“It was on the computer screen . . .” I admitted. Neil and Jahan looked at each other, rolled their eyes, and laughed.

It was raining lightly, and the three of us huddled underneath the entrance of Giovanni’s apartment building. Neil propped an elbow against the arched wooden door. He ran his hand through his perfectly sweaty, greasy hair. The overhead light illuminated him like in a museum exhibit. He was pretty much the statue of David in that moment.

Jahan took out a lighter and flicked it no fewer than a dozen times before it caught fire. He lit his cigarette and looked at me appraisingly. “You’re going to need more lessons if you’re actually staying here,” Jahan said.