From the outside, the Ballet Academy of San Francisco is nothing but a narrow, white door. Simon climbs a tall staircase, turns right at the landing, and finds himself in a small reception area: creaking wooden floors, a chandelier furry with dust. He didn’t think ballet dancers would be so loud, but women chatter in groups as they stretch against the wall and men in black tights shout at one another, kneading their quads. The receptionist signs him up for the twelve thirty mixed level – ‘Trial class is free’ – and hands him a pair of black canvas slippers from the lost and found bin. Simon sits to pull them on. Seconds later, the French doors behind him bang open. Teenage girls in navy leotards stream out, hair pulled back so tightly their eyebrows lift. Behind them, the studio is as large as a school cafeteria. Simon presses against the wall to let the girls pass. It takes all of his resolve not to bolt down the stairs.

The other dancers gather their bags and water bottles and begin to amble into the studio. It’s an old, dignified room, with high ceilings, worn floors, and a raised platform for the piano. Students carry heavy-looking metal barres from the perimeter to the center as an older man enters the studio. Later, Simon will learn that this is the Academy’s director, Gali, an Israeli émigré who danced with the San Francisco Ballet before a back injury ended his career. He looks to be in his late forties, with a powerful stride and the dense body of a gymnast. His head is shaved, and so are his legs: he wears a maroon unitard that ends in shorts, revealing smooth thighs striated with muscle.

When he places a hand on the barre, the room becomes silent.

‘First position,’ Gali says, turning his feet out with the heels touching. ‘We prepare both arms and we have: plié one, straighten two. Lift the arm three, lower into grand plié four, five – arms en bas – rise seven. Tendu to second position on eight.’

He might as well have been speaking Dutch. Before they’ve finished with plies, Simon’s knees are burning and his toes cramp. The exercises become more baffling as class continues: there are dégagés and ronds de jambe, the toes making wide circles on the floor and then above it; pirouettes and frappés; développés – the leg unfurling from the body, then enveloped back in – and grand battements to prepare the hips and hamstrings for large jumps. After the warm-up, forty-five minutes so excruciating that Simon can’t imagine continuing for the same amount of time, the dancers clear the barres and process to what Gali calls the center, where they move across the floor in fleets. Mostly, Gali walks through the room shouting rhythmic nonsense – ‘Ba-dee-da-DUM! Da-pee-pah-PUM!’ – but during pirouettes, he appears at Simon’s side.

‘Goodness.’ His eyes are dark and sunken, but they dance. ‘What, it’s laundry day?’

Simon is wearing the same striped, collared shirt he wore on the bus to San Francisco, along with a pair of running shorts. When class finishes, he runs to the men’s bathroom, takes off the black slippers – the pads of his feet are already swollen – and retches into the toilet.

He wipes his mouth with toilet paper and leans against the wall, panting. He didn’t have time to close the door of the stall, and another dancer, entering the bathroom, stops short. He is easily the most beautiful man Simon has seen in person: sculpted as if from onyx, his skin a rich black. His face is round, with wide cheekbones that curve like wings. A tiny, silver hoop hangs from one earlobe.

‘Hey.’ Sweat drips from the man’s forehead. ‘You okay?’

Simon nods and fumbles past him. After the long flight of stairs, he wanders dazedly down Market Street. It’s sixty-five degrees and windy. On an impulse, he takes his shirt off and reaches his arms above his head. When he feels the breeze on his chest, he’s filled with unexpected euphoria.

It is beautiful masochism, what he just did, more difficult even than the half marathon he won at fifteen: hills, thunder of feet and Simon in the midst of it, gasping down the Hudson River waterfront. He fingers the black slippers, which he shoved in his back pocket. They seem to taunt him. He must become like the other male dancers: expert, majestic, invincibly strong.

In June, the Castro blooms. Prop 6 pamphlets drift through the street like leaves; flowers keel over the sides of boxes with such bounty they’re almost a nuisance. On June 25th, Simon goes to the Freedom Parade with the dancers from Purp. He didn’t know that so many gay people existed in the country, let alone in one city, but there are two hundred and forty thousand of them, watching the kickoff by Dykes on Bikes and cheering as the first rainbow flag is hoisted into the air. Harvey Milk’s upper body emerges from the sunroof of a moving Volvo.

‘Jimmy Carter!’ Milk bellows, his red bullhorn held high, as the sea of men roars. ‘You talk about human rights! There are fifteen million to twenty million gay people in this nation. When are you going to talk about their rights?’

Simon kisses Lance, then Richie, wrapping his legs around Richie’s thick, muscular waist. For the first time in his life, he’s dating – he calls it that, though usually, it’s just sex. There is the go-go dancer from the I-Beam and the barista at Café Flore, a mild-mannered Taiwanese man who spanks Simon so hard that his ass cheeks blush for hours. He falls hard for a Mexican runaway with whom he spends four blissful days in Dolores Park; on the fourth day, Simon wakes up alone beside Sebastian’s floppy, green-and-pink hat and never sees the boy again. But there are so many others: the recovering addict from Alapaha, Georgia; the forty-something Chronicle reporter who is always on speed; the Australian flight attendant in possession of the largest cock Simon’s seen.

On weekdays, Klara wakes before seven and dresses in one of two dull, beige skirt suits from Goodwill. She temps first at an insurance company, then at a dentist’s office, and returns so moody that Simon avoids her until she’s had her first drink. She hates the dentist, she says, but that doesn’t explain the exasperation with which she looks at Simon when he primps in the mirror or returns from a shift at Purp – drowsy, ecstatic, purple paint running down his legs in rivulets. He wonders if it’s the voice messages. They arrive daily: emotional missives from Gertie, lawyerly arguments from Daniel, and increasingly desperate appeals from Varya, who moved home after her final exams.

‘If you don’t come back, Simon, I’ll have to put off graduate school,’ Varya says, her voice wavering. ‘Someone needs to stay with Ma. And I don’t understand why it always has to be me.’

Sometimes, he comes upon Klara with the cord wrapped around her wrist, pleading for one of them to understand.

‘They’re your family,’ she tells Simon afterward. ‘You have to talk to them eventually.’

Not now, Simon thinks. Not yet. If he speaks to them, their voices will reach into the warm, blissful ocean in which he’s been floating and yank him – gasping, dripping wet – onto dry land.

One Monday afternoon in July, he returns from Academy to find Klara sitting on her mattress, playing with silk scarves. Taped to the window frame behind her is a picture of Gertie’s mother, a curious woman whose diminutive size and fierce gaze has always made Simon uncomfortable. She reminds him of witches from fairy tales, not because there is anything sinister about her but because she seems to be neither child nor adult, woman or man: she’s something between.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks. ‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’

‘I’m quitting.’

‘You’re quitting,’ says Simon, slowly. ‘Why?’

‘Because I hate it.’ Klara packs one of the scarves down into her left fist. When she pulls it out the other end, it’s turned from black to yellow. ‘Obviously.’

‘Well, you need to get another job. I can’t make rent on my own.’

‘I’m aware of that. And I will. Why do you think I’m practicing?’ She waves a scarf at Simon.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Screw you.’ She grabs both of her scarves and stuffs them in the black box. ‘You think you’re the only one who’s entitled to do what you want? You’re fucking the whole city. You’re stripping and dancing ballet, and I haven’t said a thing. If anyone has the right to discourage me, Simon, it isn’t you.’

‘I’m making money, aren’t I? I’m holding up my end of the bargain.’

‘You Castro gays.’ Klara sticks a finger at him. ‘You don’t think of anyone but yourselves.’

‘What?’ he says, stung; Klara never speaks to him this way.

‘Think about it, Simon – how sexist the Castro is! I mean, where are the women? Where are the lesbians?’

‘What’s it to you? You’re a lesbian now?’

‘No,’ says Klara, and when she shakes her head, she looks almost sad. ‘I’m not a lesbian. But I’m not a gay guy, either. I’m not even a straight one. So where do I fit in here?’

When their eyes meet, Simon looks away. ‘How am I supposed to know?’

‘How am I? At least, if I start my own show, I can say that I tried.’

‘Your own show?’

‘Yes,’ Klara snaps. ‘My own show. I don’t expect you to understand, Simon. I don’t expect you to worry about anything but yourself.’

‘You’re the one who convinced me to come here! Did you really think they’d let us go without a fight? You thought they’d just let us stay?’

Klara’s jaw is tight. ‘I wasn’t thinking about those things.’

‘Then what the hell were you thinking about?’

Klara’s cheeks have turned a sunburnt coral that only Daniel usually provokes, but she keeps quiet, as if indulging Simon. It’s not like her to censor herself. It certainly isn’t like her to avoid eye contact, which she does now, latching her black box with more focus than the task requires. Simon thinks of their conversation on the rooftop in May. We could go to San Francisco, she said, as if the idea only just occurred to her, as if she didn’t know exactly what she was doing.

‘That’s the problem,’ Simon says. ‘You never think. You know exactly how to get into something and you know how to bring me with you, but you never think about what the consequences will be – or maybe you think about them and you just don’t care, not until it’s too late. And now you’re blaming me? If you feel so bad, why don’t you go back?’

Klara stands and strides into the kitchen. The sink is full of so many unwashed dishes that they’ve begun to stack more across the counter. She turns the water on and grabs a sponge and scrubs.

‘I know why,’ Simon says, following her. ‘Because it would mean that Daniel was right. It would mean you have no plans – that you can’t make a life for yourself, away from them. It would mean you’ve failed.’

He’s trying to trigger her – his sister’s restraint disturbs him more than any of her outbursts – but Klara’s mouth remains set, her knuckles white around the sponge.

Simon has been selfish, he knows. But thoughts of the family hum throughout his days. In some way, he continues at Academy for them: to prove that his life is not all excess, that it also contains discipline and self-betterment. He takes his guilt and turns it into a leap, a lift, one perfect turn.

The irony, of course, is that Saul would have been appalled to learn that Simon is dancing ballet. But Simon is convinced that if he were alive and came to watch, his father would see how hard it really is. It took six weeks to figure out how to point his feet, even longer to grasp the concept of turnout. By the end of the summer, though, his body has stopped hurting so much, and he’s earned a larger dividend of Gali’s attention. He likes the rhythm of the studio, likes having somewhere to go. In fleeting moments, it feels to him like home, or like a home, as it does to so many of them: Tommy, seventeen and breathtaking, a former student at the Royal Ballet in London; Missourian Beau, able to pirouette eight times in a row; and Eduardo and Fauzi, twins from Venezuela, who hitchhiked their way north on a soybean truck.

These four are all in Academy’s company, Corps. In most ballet companies, male dancers act as bland fairy-tale princes or offer furniture-like support – but Gali’s choreography is modern and acrobatic, and seven of Corps’s twelve members are men. Among them is Robert, the man Simon saw while retching and with whom he hasn’t made eye contact since. Not that Robert seems to have noticed: before class, the other men stretch together, but he warms up alone by the window.

‘Snob,’ drawls Beau.

Late August: a cold front has brought the Sunset’s fog to the Castro, and Simon wears a sweatshirt over his white tee and black tights. He rolls his right ankle, wincing as it cracks. ‘What’s his deal?’

‘Is he a fag, you mean?’ asks Tommy, pounding his fists up and down both thighs.

‘That’s the million-dollar question,’ purrs Beau. ‘Would that I knew.’

Robert does not stand out only because he is solitary. His leaps are miles higher than anyone else’s, his turns matched only by Beau’s (‘Cocksucker,’ mutters Beau, when Robert spins eight times to his six) – and, of course, he is black. But Robert is not only a black man in the white Castro. He is a black ballet dancer, even rarer.

Simon stays after class to watch him rehearse Birth of Man, Gali’s newest creation. Five men use their bodies to create a tube: their bent knees touch and their backs curve, arms interlocked above their heads. Robert is Man. He threads through the tube, guided by Beau, the Midwife. At the end of the piece, Robert emerges from the front of the tube and dances a tremulous solo, nude except for a dark brown thong.

Corps performs in a black box theater at Fort Mason, a group of renovated military buildings on the San Francisco Bay. When they begin to rehearse there, Simon comes to assist, taking notes for Gali or taping marks on the stage. One afternoon, he wanders outside to see Robert smoking on the dock. Robert hears Simon behind him, turns, and nods affably enough. It isn’t exactly an invitation, but Simon finds himself walking to the edge of the dock and sitting down.

‘Smoke?’ asks Robert, offering Simon the pack.

‘Sure.’ Simon is surprised; Robert has a reputation for being a health nut. ‘Thanks.’

Seagulls wheel overhead, calling; the smell of the water, brackish and salty, fills Simon’s nose. He clears his throat. ‘You looked great in there.’

Robert shakes his head. ‘Those tours are really giving me trouble.’

‘The tour jetés?’ asks Simon, relieved that he has managed to remember this piece of terminology. ‘They seemed awesome to me.’

Robert smiles. ‘You’re going easy on me.’

‘I’m not. It’s true.’

Immediately, he wishes he hadn’t said it. He sounds cloying, like some dumb fan.

‘Okay.’ Robert’s eyes gleam. ‘What’s one thing I can do better?’

Simon is desperate to come up with something – it would be a kind of flirtation – but to him, Robert’s dancing is flawless. Instead, he says, ‘You could be friendlier.’

Robert frowns. ‘You don’t think I’m friendly.’

‘Not really, no. You warm up on your own. You’ve never said anything to me. Though I guess,’ Simon adds, ‘I’ve never said anything to you.’

‘That’s fair,’ says Robert. They sit in companionable silence. Freestanding wood piers rise from the water like tree trunks. Every so often, a bird lands on one, screeches dictatorially, and departs with a thick flapping noise. Simon is watching this happen when Robert turns, dips his head, and kisses him on the mouth.

Simon is stunned. He keeps very still, as if Robert might otherwise fly away like the gull. Robert’s lips are deliciously full; he tastes of sweat and smoke and very slightly of salt. Simon closes his eyes. If the dock were not beneath him, he would swoon straight into the water. When Robert pulls back, Simon leans forward, as if to find him again, and nearly loses his balance. Robert puts a hand on Simon’s shoulder to steady him, laughing.

‘I didn’t know . . .’ says Simon, shaking his head. ‘I didn’t know you – liked me.’

He had been about to say liked guys. Robert shrugs, but not flippantly; he is thinking, for his eyes are distant but focused, they are somewhere in the middle of the bay. Then they return to Simon.

‘Neither did I,’ he says.