“Of course I can,” she said, looking to me to back her up. “Sorry,” I said, giving her the cigarette back. “I’m with John on this.” “Harry?” she said, hoping to make one final successful plea. Harry shook his head. “We go down there, all we do is attract attention away from the cause and toward us. The story becomes about whether we’re homosexuals and not about the vights of homosexuals.” Celia put the cigarette to her lips and inhaled. She had a sour look on her face as she blew the smoke into the air. “So what do we do, then? We can’t sit here and do nothing. We can’t let them fight our fight for us.” “We give them what we have and they don’t,” Harry said. “Money,” I said, following his train of thought. John nodded. “I'll call Peter. He’ll know how we can fund them. He'll know who needs resources.” “We should have been doing that all along,” Harry said. “So let’s just do it from now on. No matter what happens tonight. No matter what course this fight takes. Let’s just decide here and now that our job is to fund.” “T’m in,” I said. “Yeah.” John nodded. “Of course.” “OK,” Celia said. “If you’re sure that’s the way we can do the most good.” “It is,” Harry said. “I’m sure of it.” We started filtering money privately that day, and I’ve continued to do so the rest of my life. In the pursuit of a great cause, I think people can be of service in a number of different ways. I always felt that my way was to make a lot of money and then channel it to the groups that needed it. It’s a bit selfserving, that logic. I know that. But because of who I was, because of the sacrifices I made to hide parts of myself, I was able to give more money than most people ever see in their entire lifetime. I am proud of that. But it does not mean I wasn’t conflicted. And of course, a lot of the time, that ambivalence was even more personal than it was political.