We stop just outside the door. Deafened by the sudden silence. Both aware that we’ve crossed the threshold from private to public. Outside, there’s no bar or bathrooms or DJs or music. No crowd to lose ourselves in, no pillars to hide behind.

Outside The Echo it’s only us, and the pressure to be in the real world, who I am at the club, is almost unbearable.

Where should we go? Gabriel asks too loudly because we’ve been screaming over the music for hours.

I mean, he asks—quietly now, smiling—Where to?

I shrug.

I’ve lived in the city all my life.

Connor and I learned to ride bikes in Riverside Park.

Our parents took us to Yankee Stadium before either of us could lift a bat.

I once walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with my eyes closed on a dare from Becky.

But I’m totally out of ideas for private places in New York City where two boys can go to make out.

On a whim, we take the L crosstown to the 1. We stand on the subway, shoulder-to-shoulder, barely speaking, hanging onto the same center poll, the vibrations from the tracks pushing us together, bouncing us apart, over and over.

Becky would tell me to make sure that someone knew where we were going, “just in case.”

In case, I guess, Gabriel turns out to be a serial killer. Or in case the subway loses power, and we’re stuck between stations, and my parents start freaking out. Or in case… Well, who knows?

It isn’t that I disagree with her, but I’m so damned tired of doing the right thing all the time. Tired of being safe simply for lack of anything else to be.

In the garish light of the subway, against the thick black graffiti, and the advertising, and the dirt, Gabriel’s smile is somehow even more intoxicating than in the club. And when he reaches over to fix my collar, his fingers linger on my skin, and that’s intoxicating too.

I’m out of words, anyhow.

We get off the train at Christopher and walk through Sheridan Square, and then around a corner. It started to rain while we were underground, and the street is oddly quiet and dark under these huge un-city-like trees.

I don’t spend a lot of time in the West Village, except when I visit Connor at work.

The gay stores, the gay boys, the gay girls, so sure of themselves and who they are, make me feel self-conscious. It isn’t like I would change anything. And it isn’t like I’m really in the closet. But it isn’t as if I’m all the way out either; it’s more like I’m standing in the doorway.

I don’t walk around school advertising the fact I’m attracted to boys, and it’s clear my parents sure as hell have no clue since they haven’t kicked me out. I mean, Becky and James know, and Connor, and probably everyone at The Echo and maybe the staff of The Strand, if they bothered to look at the books I’ve read in their darkened corners.