I saw I hadn’t just been holding back from coming out to Edith as part of some game. I also feared that she’d stop being friends with me. I thought that about Julian, too, and about anyone in my life who had ever remotely cared about me, but I’d never had to confront it in Hong Kong because I hadn’t had a crush on a woman till now. Or maybe I didn’t care about coming out and just didn’t want her to know that I was into her specifically. It was impossible to separate these issues. I couldn’t like Edith without liking women, and I also felt—illogically, but with conviction—that I couldn’t like
...more
