Giovanni jumped up on a creaky old armchair and announced that we were moving to a bar in Testaccio, another neighborhood in Rome. It was nearly three in the morning; I couldn’t believe these people still had the energy to go out. But Giovanni rallied the troops and we left the apartment, wandering the streets of Rome to our next destination.

It was a long walk—we crossed the bridge over to Trastevere, and our group was so loud and so obnoxious that half the people we passed avoided us like the plague, while the other half high-fived us and took part in our debauchery. The streets of Trastevere were cramped and alive as ever, but we marched right past every bar, every temptation. Eventually, we reached a second bridge to Testaccio. On this bridge, a group of Italian boys—they looked like teenagers, maybe even younger than me—noticed us and yelled some words at Jahan in drunken Italian before exploding into cruel laughter. I didn’t need to understand what they were saying to know what had just happened. I was shocked. But Jahan just smiled. He waved the pearls he had put on at Giovanni’s. And when he caught the look of shock on my face, he said: “The thing about bigots is they always go out of their way to acknowledge my fabulous existence, when I hardly notice theirs.”

You see? Jahan always had the power.

Me? I’d felt powerless my whole life. This was new to me. Confidence. Power. Whatever you want to call it. But instead of feeling inspired by Jahan’s words, by knowing I could be like that someday, too, I felt an itch under my shirt.

Jake’s blackmail came rushing back—You wouldn’t want us to smear your faggy little secret across town, would you? I was quiet the rest of the walk through Testaccio as the anxiety festered under my skin; I felt it through my shirt like a burning rash, and I thought that if the other boys so much as looked at me, they would see it. Could Jahan tell that I was hiding this big secret? That I was stalling a big decision? Could he tell that I wasn’t totally comfortable, that I was spiraling inside my head, that I was neither here nor there?

Maybe all they could tell was that I’d had four glasses of red wine. I was drunk. Being drunk can be a great thing and a terrible thing. It can help cover up your emotions, or it can expose the hell out of them. It can help you make friends and lose them.

We arrived at Rigatteria, the bar Neil’s partner had just opened. I had kind of assumed it would be a gay bar, but where he took us was the literal opposite of a gay bar. It was an antique shop. There were at least fifteen odd lamps. A wooden panel. Mismatched couches and armchairs. And it was just as empty and quiet as an antique shop. Neil explained to me that in Italian, “rigatteria” meant “junk shop.”