A song can give you a place to be, a place to live for three-and-a-half minutes. If the song works its wonders, you don’t have to be anywhere else.

I have to stop looking at him. He must sense that I’m looking at him. The whole audience must see it.

There was this one time after rehearsal when Joe and I were going the same way and we had to have talked for at least fifteen minutes after we got to the corner where he was supposed to go his way and I was supposed to go mine, and even though we were mostly talking about the chorus and whether Fredrique deserved the ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ solo and whether we were going to get to tour at all this summer, I really sensed this subtle flirtation between us, although maybe subtle flirtation is just the usual way gay friends talk to each other, and it’s not like we ended up going in the same direction after that, because that night he was going to a birthday party, but he did ask me at least twice if I was going in his direction even though he knew it wasn’t my usual direction, and why am I only figuring out now that I should have just made up an excuse to go in his direction and why am I so bad at this?

When Gaga sings, it’s genuine. When Katy Perry sings, I’m not so sure. But right now, we are genuine. We mean it.

Sing it in defiance of all the people who want you to be quiet. Sing it to lift your own soul from the depths. Sing it to be the music you want in the world.

You know what, Tyrone? It’s wrong to make a guy feel safe and then pull all that away without a word. I know you don’t want it to happen again – I am definitely getting that message. But I’m telling you right now, I’m making it my decision: it is never going to happen again. And if anyone asks me why all of a sudden I’m not eager to be sitting next to you on the bus, I’m going to tell them exactly why.

“He always loves to hear you sing,” Mom said. And I told her, “Yeah, but which voice is he expecting to hear?” Still, she took him to the Christmas show. Told him it was the only present she wanted that year, and he said, fine. He said it wouldn’t prove anything. But as he sat there in the tenth row, thinking he was anonymous, I saw him. And when we started to sing ‘Silent Night’, I saw him start to cry. I, who had vowed a million times over that he would never make me cry again, began to let the tears fall like they were the silent notes housed all along within the music. When Mom invited me back home after, he didn’t protest, nor did he acknowledge what it meant. We’ve been navigating that conversation and absence of conversation ever since. Over a year … and he hasn’t missed a show since.