January 15, 2026 “Jeremy! Oh my God! They let you out?” I didn’t recognize him. He was tall, he was gay, and he knew my name, so the probability of us having a mutual friend was high. He also had the unmistakable upspoken whine of a California gay, so I had to also imagine he could be a coworker of my partner, an agent, or worse, an overfamiliar film exec. I had been invited to the W Hotel in Aspen for Aspen Gay Ski Week and it was my first outing in America since the infamous Reuters headline. When my phone was returned on December 8th, it lit up with so many messages I threw it across the table. Friends, friends of friends, mothers of friends, reporters, politicians, my niece’s middle school principal; they all reached out to ask me (a person they thought was in jail) what they could do to help? Or what happened? How was I? I didn’t respond. I couldn’t. I called my mother. My fiancé. The six friends my fiancé …