In the 1950s the three most heinous things in America were heroin use, communism, and homosexuality. - Edmund White

When I did finally come to, I reported to Patrick that Valentino (not the dress designer but the silent movie star) had auditioned Patrick and me. At the climactic moment we had to twirl pantless, go into splits, and leave on the floor an inked impression of our anuses. Valentino had liked my impression more than Patrick’s and called me back for a second audition, which didn’t go so well.

He’d had a few sordid gay experiences. He’d wrestled with an obese neighbour boy in Clermont-Ferrand when he was fourteen and last year had been approached in the Clermont-Ferrand train station loo by an obscene old man who’d removed his dentures, wagged his tongue, and pointed to his open, pulsing mouth.

I thought that to write of my own experiences would require a translation out of the crude patois of actual slow suffering — mean, scattered thoughts and transfusion-slow boredom — into the tidy couplets of brisk, beautiful sentiment, a way of at once elevating and lending momentum to what I felt.