Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.

Most importantly, what you get from a greasy spoon is a certain kind of smell that has been almost legislated out of existence. It is cigaretty, certainly, and it also has the catch-throat quality of smoking fat. It is a warm, companionable fug that rises to meet you as you step through the door on a late autumn day and it is how public places used to smell in my childhood in the 1970s. It is real, it is human, and it beats anything I know.

Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not.