By 2004, Em and I were spending more time in Toronto—we were learning to be more like Canadians. Or we were learning to let go of the things we couldn’t change; we just did our best with those things we could do something about. At least this was what Em said we were doing. It did seem to me that we were trying to be more like Canadians, because we both liked Canada—and we liked being in Toronto—but it also seemed to me that Em and I were demonstrating we were the little English teacher’s students. Mr. Barlow had been more than our copy editor. As writers, Em and I were the snowshoer’s disciples. More and more, the writing was the only thing that mattered—besides Matthew.

When you get older, you find out how good (or not) your teachers were. Elliot Barlow had taught Em and me to care about the writing, not only about our writing. Melville had listened to Schiller: “Keep true to the dreams of thy youth” was good advice for a writer. As fiction writers, Em and I had our own gods to listen to, but the snowshoer gave us a manageable rule: what applies to fiction is relevant to other writing. You have to be truthful to time and place; you can’t leave out anything important. Lies of omission count as lies, right?

In June 2004, Em and I knew Ronald Reagan had died—it was a while before we got around to reading his obituary in The New York Times. Em and I were in no hurry to read about him. Reagan had been secluded from the public since 1994, when it was learned he had Alzheimer’s. His death didn’t mean much to Em and me; we’d never liked him. By the time Reagan died, he was long dead and gone to us. We’d hated him enough when he was president. We didn’t run to get the stepladder when we heard he died. The GOOD RIDDANCE sign stayed put, but there was no forgiving Reagan’s willful silence about the AIDS epidemic. “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” he’d said. How easily he abdicated his responsibility.

Reagan’s aw-shucks, nice-guy demeanor had belied his moral absenteeism. A lot of Americans didn’t care about the gay men who died of AIDS. Like Ronald Reagan, those Americans who didn’t care about those gay men already seemed dead to Em and me.