AT OUTWRITE 1995, the queer writers’ conference in Boston, an unlikely but lasting friendship was born. Mattilda was a 21-year-old genderblur club kid with a history of radical organizing who felt trapped in Boston except when the Ecstasy hit at 2 a.m. Michael was a 25-year-old former Dartmouth College Woodsmen Team competitor who had recently moved from New Hampshire to Boston, where he edited erotic anthologies to bankroll his attempts to write literary fiction. … After all these years, and despite the continent between them, Mattilda and Michael still love to talk. Recently, Michael set up a Zoom session, which Mattilda called into using a landline, and they chatted about their new projects and a wide range of other topics.