The drive to Petersburg, Virginia, pours out of him: a memory in slow motion.

Green fields blurring past the windows, telephone lines trailing across the sky. Behind the wheel, Tramell Tillman , then in his 20s, sits in silence, his mother beside him. It’s the holiday season — a time of hushed reverence and fragile traditions, of winter roses and greeting cards that can say too little or too much. They’re headed to visit his grandmother, the family matriarch. But Tre, as his family calls him, has brought something else on the trip: a truth that has matured quietly inside him for years. “Mom, I’m bisexual,” he says to her, his eyes fixed on the road.

She glances at him, surprise flickering across her face, before turning her gaze back to the highway: “Well, how’s that going for you?”

T

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