idiosyncratic selves, being simultaneously predictable and regularly surprising. It’s fun to build a model of someone over time, through the repeated modulations of their regular life, punctuated by vertiginous moments of rawness and profundity. Living with men, I get to learn them in a way that society otherwise does not give me real permission to know them, or them to be known. I like to think this has been a two-way street — that I have been seen by my male housemates in a way I haven’t been seen by other men in my life, even lovers; and that these men in turn have benefitted from seeing and being seen by me, as well.