Identity is, for me, a point of departure for alliances, which need to include all kinds of people, from trans to working people to those taxi drivers that J. K. Rowling is worried about. Identity is a great start for making connections and becoming part of larger communities. But you can’t have a politics of identity that is only about identity. If you do that, you draw sectarian lines, and you abandoned our interdependent ties.

I feel like it’s actually in an idealized future because of the fluidity of their sexual path as well, especially with Willem. [Editor’s note: At the start of the novel, Willem dates women and later is in a romantic relationship with Jude.] There’s a certain flow to it where it’s less judged. The references are all dealt with in a very casual way, which is natural and how I’ve always felt about my own sexuality. I really related to that part on a personal level because, although it felt idealized, it also felt like the way that I see things.

When I was struggling with my family, I had a very complicated relationship with them, I was with a woman who was very maternal, who took care of me and taught me that family was what you made of it, that it was logical vs. biological. When I started exploring my own vanity and going to the gym and working out and paying attention to my body, it was when I started dating a guy and seeing a naked man for the first time, and that comparison and this brotherhood … it all happened exactly when it was supposed to happen. And then when I didn’t feel like I was really being myself and I didn’t know the type of gay man I wanted to be, I went out and dated women again.