Unlike Willy and Sandy, my parents’ friend Brodrick Westcott did not live in the closet because he was yanked out of it. During a routine police raid of the public men’s rooms in a park in St. Louis, he was discovered having man-on-man sex, arrested and thrown in jail under the prevailing sodomy laws. Word of his transgression spread quickly among his peers in the elite West County suburbs and, within a short time, he lost his his marriage, his child, his livelihood, his friends, his reputation and eventually his life.