■ If you’re old and gay and in the public eye, sometimes people are like, “Oh, you’re an old fag.” And it’s like, “Yes, and that’s awesome.” I came out in 1980 and watched a lot of guys my age die pretty gruesomely in their 20s and 30s. I knew a lot of fags who didn’t get to be old, and so I’m never going to take it for granted.

■ My mom had been raised in a house where children were to be seen and not heard. She found it very oppressive, even traumatic. So she was like, “We’re going to hear our kids.” My parents encouraged us to have opinions, and also to be able to defend them.

■ My parents believed homosexuality was something a kid could drift toward. If you didn’t want that for your kid, you just had to give them a nudge. I got pushed a lot when I was a little kid, and I knew what was happening, and I knew it wouldn’t work. This is what my parents thought love for an effeminate boy was supposed to look like. Their motives were good, but a lot of damage was done.

■ When I came out to my mom, she called Father Tom. He rushed over. My mom sat with him on the front porch, and she was very upset. She said, “Danny says he’s gay,” and Father Tom put his hand on her knee and said, “Judy, I’m gay. It’s better for Danny to be out than to make the choices I’ve made.” Tom became a priest with a drinking problem who was deeply miserable. At that moment, when things could have gone really south with my relationship with my family, there was this priest who said the thing that my mom needed to hear.

■ I look at my old columns, and I’m just mortified. First time I wrote about the clitoris, I put it in the wrong place. At least I had an excuse: I’ve never been to that country.

■ I have a problem with people who are like, “All the dirty sex adventures I was having before I became a parent or a spouse were meaningless distractions.” No. There’s meaning in human connection, in sexual adventures or one-night stands. There’s humanity in that if you’re present and available. People feel like sex is dirty or wrong unless it’s in the service of something greater. I don’t think that’s true.

■ One thing about gay relationships is you understand each other sexually in a way that doesn’t require you to pretend to be Mr. Darcy, ever.

■ I have the Catholic kid gift basket of predictable kinks but also predictable insecurities. I don’t like to be naked. My husband, Terry, is shirtless all over the internet. If you go to his Instagram account, it’s like, does he own any clothes? Not only aren’t there many pictures of me on my own Instagram account, there are no shirtless pictures of me in the world. I get undressed in the shower.

■ Terry and I have had fights that lasted a month, but I’ll still make him breakfast. Or if he goes to the store when we’ve been fighting, I’ll get a text saying, “Is there anything you need?” What that says is that we will get through this, that our relationship will endure, and here are your fucking eggs, you asshole.