This year, Alan Gotlib threw a 40th anniversary party. It was held COVID-style — a YouTube livestream, complete with guests, music and an epic speech. But it wasn’t a birthday, or a wedding anniversary. Alan was celebrating 40 years since he first came out as gay, in 1981. Alan didn’t know any other gay people and it was the early days of the AIDS epidemic, with gay panic about to peak. Also, Alan had no idea how to tell his parents, both religious Jewish Holocaust survivors, without being disowned. But he made it through. And that’s cause for celebration. This is Alan’s story: looking forward, by looking back on a life well lived as an out gay man.