A college friend of my father’s picked me up at the airport. It was my first time ever riding in a convertible and although Anne—that was her name—kept the top up, it still felt like an important milestone for me. I’d never met Anne before but I knew she was a lesbian. I knew Anne and her ex-wife, now estranged, had been among the first gay couples in the U.S. ever allowed to have their own baby, using fertility. Also, I knew Anne to be extremely affluent.
In transit all these facts became somehow conflated, so by the time we finally reached the Castro, I genuinely believed Anne had gotten rich off being gay alone. This seemed possible. Hers was the same house she’d rented when she arrived in the…
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The Paris Review (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2024 (250)