This freedom-seeking gay man, who deeply loved his sisters and brothers—biological and metaphorical—never left them at all. He preserved himself so he could stay alone. In France, I saw Baldwin didn’t live the life of a wealthy man but he did live the life of a man who wanted to travel, to erect an estate that held a mood of his own design, where he could write as an outsider from the noise, alone in silence, with fearlessness.
