A.D., a memoir

the long version

This is a book about love and the influence of money. It is also a dialogue between artist and patron, student and teacher, and a story of growing up gay in a time and place where circumstances were sufficiently difficult to encourage dishonesty and dishonor. Kate Millett lied to her mentor, and confidante (and in a sense her first love), Aunt Dorothy - A.D. - in order to study at Oxford with her own first woman lover. A.D. is about education and art and patronage - and about being gay in 1950s America - an impossible time of silence and shame, of largesses encumbered by "strings," coerced promises ending in deceit.