Melvin pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows, as if he couldn’t believe I could be so dense.

I blinked. “How can you tell something like that just from looking at him?”

“Gaydar,” said Melvin, stirring his coffee. “Automatic sensing system that lets you spot people of similar persuasion. A lot of gay guys have it to some degree or other. If it was more reliable, it would make life easier on us—”

I interrupted. “Speak for yourself.”

Melvin sighed. “I wasn’t necessarily including you in that particular ‘us.’ I was just pointing out that it’s harder spotting potential partners when you’re gay. If a guy asks a girl for a date, about the worst that can happen is that she laughs at him. If he asks another guy, he might get his face pounded in.”

That thought had crossed my mind more than once as I was trying to figure myself out over the last year—and not only in regard to dating. I would have been happy just to have someone I felt safe talking to about this.

“Is this gaydar something you can learn?” I asked.

He furrowed his brow for a moment, then said, “I don’t think so.”

“It must be lonely,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.

“It doesn’t have to be,” he replied sharply. “If gay people hadn’t been forced to hide for so long, if we could just openly identify ourselves, there would be plenty of people you knew that you could ask for advice. Everybody knows gay people; they just think they don’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“Listen, honey, the world is crawling with faggots. But most of them are in hiding because they’re afraid they’ll get treated the way you did about an hour ago.”

I took in my breath sharply. Melvin must have seen the look of shock on my face, because he looked puzzled for a moment. Then he laughed. “That word bother you?”

“I was taught that it was impolite.”

“It is. But if you live in a world that keeps trying to grind you down, you either start thumbing your nose at it or end up very, very short. Taking back the language is one way to jam the grinder. My friends and I called each other ‘faggot’ and ‘queer’ for the same reason so many black folks call each other ‘nigger’—to take the words away from the people that want to use them to hurt us.”

His eyes went dreamy for a moment, as if he was looking at something far away, or deep inside. “I walk and talk the way I do because I’m not going to let anyone else define me. I can turn it off whenever I want, you know.”

He moved in his seat. I couldn’t begin to tell you exactly what changed, but he suddenly looked more masculine, less . . . swishy.