“The entire day I was thinking about what it means to be in

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“The entire day I was thinking about what it means to be in the White House and in the Oval Office,” he said. “What it represents to be an openly gay person and a queer LGBT person in the White House.”

The lace fan was his partner’s, he said, though it has become a regular traveling aid when he visits somewhere warm — as Washington was in April.

The gold anchor around his neck was not his standard attire. But he was representing Rhode Island, and it’s the state symbol, after all.


“I was definitely nervous,” Giannopoulos said. “I didn’t know what the reaction would be.”

No one seemed to notice as he passed through security, he recalled. But Trump spotted the fan shortly after the teachers were led into the Oval Office.

“He said I had good style.”

Giannopoulos grew more confident then — enough that when an aide asked him to put the fan away for his private photo, he raised a small protest.

“I said, ‘I was hoping to pose with this,’ ” he said. “They said, ‘No — just put it away.’ ”

He did, for a minute. But before the shutter snapped, Giannopoulos asked the president if he minded.

“He said, sure.” So the fan came out, the ensemble was complete, “and the rest is history,” Giannopoulos said.

“To be clear, the whole thing was surreal and very brief.”