Neil doesn’t really think Peter is cheating on him. He doesn’t think Peter would ever cheat on him. That’s not what this is about. It’s about Neil’s fear that Peter will want to cheat on him, that he will someday realize there’s someone better out there.
Peter is young enough to not really understand this. He thinks Neil is being foolish, slightly paranoid. He has done nothing wrong, and resents being attacked, anyway.
“Look,” he says, “I think we need to step away for a sec. I’m going to go down the street and get coffee. Do you want anything?”
Neil shakes his head.
“Okay. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Which is hopefully the amount of time it will take for you to realize that even if a million other guys say ‘Hey, beautiful’ to me, it doesn’t change what we are, not one little bit.”
“A million? Who said anything about a million?”
“There happen to be a lot of people who use ‘Hey, beautiful’ as a greeting when I am involved.”
“Well, you are beautiful. I grant you that. It must be the hey I object to. It’s so common. For horses, really. And you are so uncommonly, unhorsily beautiful.”
Peter realizes this last twist in the conversation means things with Neil are curving back into being better, but now that he’s mentioned coffee, he wants it. So he heads out, gets an iced latte, drinks it in a few gulps (too many damn ice cubes), then heads back to the bookstore. He finds Neil still in the YA section, his arms full of books.
“Wow,” Peter says. “Are they putting you on bed rest or something?”
Neil puts the books on a table and shushes Peter with a finger to his lips.
Then he picks up the first book and holds it so Peter can read the title.
I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This
Peter quiets. Watches as Neil holds up the books one by one.
Just Listen
Stay
You’re the One That I Want
So Much Closer
Where I Want to Be
The Difference Between You and Me
Positively
Matched
Perfect
Wonder
You Are Here
Where I Belong
I’ll Be There
Along for the Ride
The Future of Us
Real Live Boyfriends
Keep Holding On
When Neil is through, Peter smiles and holds up his hand, gesturing Neil to wait there, to not say a word. He picks out two books from the YA section, then runs to the fiction section for a third. He is still smiling when he returns to Neil and shows his selections one by one.
Take a Bow
A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You
Keep Holding On
Peter makes a stack of his books and takes a picture of the spines, to send to Neil. Neil then does the same for Peter. They put a few of the books back on the shelves and buy a few of them. (They’d buy them all, if only they had the money to do so.)
As they map their way in ribbons through the store, as they traverse the alphabetical and the topical and the arcane, we are reminded of bookstores where we went, of coffee shops and sex shops and Barneys and the Piggly Wiggly—all the aisles where we navigated relationships, all the conversations that were part of the aggregate conversation of our love.
It isn’t until they’re in the back of Peter’s mom’s car that Neil remembers the two boys kissing in Millburn. With his permission, Neil takes Peter’s phone and clicks on the link again.
Neither one of them can believe it. Right there, in the town next to theirs, two boys kissing for hours in front of the high school.
“Not your typical Saturday,” Peter says.
“No,” Neil agrees. “Not at all.”
Cooper had to leave Walmart after he bumped into Sloan, so now he’s at a Starbucks a few towns away. It’s full of people who are the same type of people who go to his high school and live in his town, but they’re not the same people. Cooper feels anonymous, and that suits him fine.
He’s flipping through three different hook-up apps, finding a lot of the same guys on each one. Forty-seven-year-olds who want him to come over. Eighteen-year-olds who want to flirt aimlessly. Twenty-nine-year-olds who want to know what he’s into. He never starts the conversations. He never picks them out. It means more if they come to him, because that means he’s desirable. And if he’s desirable, he has the upper hand.
We think he is too young to know this. But he knows this. You learn it now at a much younger age.
By now, he’s seen that there are at least a dozen messages on his phone, all from his parents. The house line. Each of their cell phones. He’s not going to listen to them, and he’s not going to call them back. He is blacking all that out. It is on the other side of the barrier. He doesn’t know where he’s going to sleep tonight, but it’s not tonight yet, is it? He’s sure some people would think it’s denial, but it’s not. He doesn’t care. In order to be in denial, you have to in some way care.
All he feels is the bored emptiness of the flat, flat world. And there’s no one who bores him more than himself. He looks again at the men on the apps, and this time a new one has popped up. Twenty-three. Hot. His screen name is Antimatter. His stats are the right stats. His one line of description is Trying to find the sensible strain in the midst of all the chaos.
Cooper waits for five minutes. He wants Antimatter to contact him first. But he’s impatient. After five minutes, he thinks, Fine.
He goes ahead and makes the first move.
The question, in Avery’s mind, is whether or not they’ll kiss.
They’ve been on the boat for a couple of hours now. They’ve talked, they’ve paddled, they’ve talked some more. As the sun angles closer to the horizon, it’s getting warmer. The canoe is metal, and it’s becoming hot to the touch. They haven’t brought anything to drink or eat, and the sun is starting to make them drowsy. Avery wishes the boat was wide enough for them to sit next to each other. It’s so much easier to kiss when you’re right there.
“I think I’m starting to bake,” Ryan says. “Maybe we should go in.”
Avery agrees. They start to paddle in earnest, and Avery is startled by the satisfaction he feels as he levers through the water, how gratifying it is to push through the resistance, to feel the effort in his arms. He is still a long way from being proud of his body, but sometimes a movement will catch him the right way.
The air cools as they move, but their bodies remain warm. They find their tandem and row in rhythm. Not a word needs to be said.
When they get back to the dock, they both have to wipe the sweat from their foreheads. Ryan jumps out first and ties down the bow. Then he holds out his hand to Avery. Even though he’s an overheated mess, Avery takes it. Ryan pulls him onto the dock and keeps hold. They stand there, the canoe clanking against the dock in the slight tide.
“That was fun,” the blue-haired boy says.
“It was,” the pink-haired boy replies.
These words are inadequate.
Ryan keeps hold of Avery’s hand as he ties down the stern. Then he rises back up and turns their bodies so they’re face to face, toe to toe.
“Hey!” a voice calls out—Ryan’s aunt, coming down from the house. “How was the river?”
She walks a little closer, sees how they’ve moved a little bit apart, but are still holding hands. They’re not looking at each other now; they’re looking at her.
“So, Ryan,” she says, “are you going to introduce me to your friend? I’m guessing you boys are thirsty. I have just the thing.”
Just the thing.
Another hour has passed, and Harry and Craig remain in their kiss. More people gather. Mr. Nichol, a science teacher, takes over for Ms. Luna. There are now two thousand people on the live feed. Tariq hands Harry and Craig their phones, so they can tweet and respond to the comments on the feed. Already it’s gone global. People in Germany are sending in encouragement; a boy
in Helsinki has made a sign that reads GO KISSERS, GO! Some of the gay blogs have picked up on what’s happening. Word is spreading.
Harry loves responding to the comments. But mostly he’s concerned that his feet are starting to hurt, and it’s only been four hours. He leans on Craig and shakes them out. Then the sun starts to hit, and he shapes his hand into a U, so Smita will come and hold an umbrella over his back, making sure not to get in the way of the camera. (There are backups from other angles, but everyone feels it’s important that the primary feed should only be blocked in emergencies.) He and Craig are both wearing old-people socks, to try to keep the blood flowing in their feet. But the bottom line is that being upright for a long time is not how the body is supposed to work. Already he feels like he’s at a standing-room-only concert and there have been seven opening acts.
The song “Dream a Little Dream of Me” comes on Tariq’s playlist, which makes Harry think of the movie Beautiful Thing, as Tariq no doubt knew it would. Harry can feel Craig smile under his lips, and knows he must be sharing the same thought. As confirmation, Harry feels Craig’s finger on his back, tracing the letter B, then T. They start to shuffle and slow-dance. It feels good to move their legs. Smita steps back with the umbrella, and Tariq steps in and starts to dance with her. Mr. and Mrs. Ramirez step in as well. Other people look like they want to join in, but Rachel, watching the cameras, tells them they need to keep clear, not get in the way. The police officer who’s been assigned to watch over things offers to get some caution tape—Rachel says that might be a good idea, but asks if there’s any way it can avoid saying caution. The officer says she’ll see what she can do.
It feels so good to Harry to be dancing. It makes him so happy to see his parents smiling as they sway. He wants to sing along, but knows he can’t. He holds Craig lightly, and they glide in a slow circle. Craig’s eyes are closed, Harry’s are opened.
Which is how Harry sees her first.
Craig feels Harry stop. He feels Harry clasp him tighter. He traces a question mark on Harry’s back. But there’s no way for Harry to respond. He only kisses Craig closer, puts his hand on the back of Craig’s neck, warning him to stay focused, warning him not to turn.
Then Craig hears it. His name. His mother’s voice. His name.
We all turn to her. She is a small woman, who until ten minutes ago thought Craig was on a camping trip for the weekend. She looks more confused than angry, and we wish there were a way that we could explain it to her. We want to pull her aside and tell her everything we know, everything our mothers did wrong, everything our mothers did right. Your son is alive, we want to tell her. Your son is living.
She doesn’t understand why he isn’t answering. She doesn’t understand why he goes on kissing this other boy even though she is standing right behind him, saying his name.
“Mrs. Meehan called me and started to talk to me, and I had no idea what she was talking about.…”
Craig wants to turn around. He wants to try to explain. But he feels Harry’s hand on the back of his neck. He remembers why he’s here. They are already too far along. He can’t reset it.
“Craig.”
His mother’s voice is cracking.
It’s Smita who steps forward. She lets go of the umbrella and walks over to Craig’s mother.
“He can’t say anything,” she says. “They have to keep kissing.”
Craig’s mother knows Smita. She’s known Smita for a long time. Smita is the only thing that makes sense to her now. It’s only vaguely that she understands the crowd, understands the cameras.
“What’s happening?” she asks, her voice the thinnest of lines.
This was not the way she was supposed to find out. Craig feels the tears starting in his eyes. He tries to stop them. But it’s too much. They leak down his cheeks. Harry holds on. Craig shudders, and Harry presses his mouth closer. This was not how it was supposed to be. He’d imagined telling them after. Somehow, he believed it could be kept a secret until it was over. He’d have this big accomplishment, and then he could tell them. He imagined gathering them in the den, sitting his parents and his brothers down on the couch while he stood in front of them and told them, like when he was little and he’d put on one-man shows for them right before bed—and whatever happened, they wouldn’t be able to take anything away from him, they wouldn’t be able to erase anything he’d done.
But he wasn’t thinking about them. About what it would be like to be in that audience. He realizes it with such shock. He wasn’t thinking about them at all. Few of us did. It was our revelation. Our event. How could we know that they had a right to feel things, too? They had no right to deny us. But they had every right to feel things.
He gets this all from the sound of her voice. The way she’s said his name.
Harry’s parents have never met Craig’s parents. Harry’s mother comes over to Craig’s mother now and introduces herself. She and Smita try to tell her what’s happening. They tell her about the world record. Tell her what Craig and Harry are trying to achieve.
“But I don’t understand,” Craig’s mother says, crying now, too. “I don’t understand.”
Craig can’t bear it. He opens his eyes, looks over to Tariq, who has tears in his own eyes. He mimes writing. Tariq scrambles for a marker and some paper. He runs it over to Craig. All the things Craig has to say boil down to the essential. It’s the thing that neither Smita nor Mrs. Ramirez can say. It’s within everything they’re saying, but they can’t unfold it for Craig’s mother, can’t spell out the foundation.
I’M GAY, MOM. I’M GAY.
Craig rotates his and Harry’s bodies so he’s facing his mother. Then he holds up his shaky sign. He sees her eyes as she understands it. Then, quickly, he writes another sign.
I CAN’T STOP NOW. I’M SORRY.
He is not sorry for being gay, but he is endlessly sorry that this is how she’s found out. Or maybe not found out—she doesn’t seem entirely surprised by the revelation, only in the way it’s being revealed. Only in the way it’s being confirmed. She’s asking Smita if this is Craig’s boyfriend, and Smita, poor friend, doesn’t know what the better answer is, so she goes with the truth and says, no, that’s not what this is about. Harry and Craig are friends. They are kissing to show the world that it’s okay for two boys to kiss.
Mr. Ramirez brings over a chair, so Craig’s mother can sit down.
“It’s a lot to process,” he says.
At this point, some of our mothers would have laughed, would have said, Understatement of the year. Others would have said, Fuck you, and stormed away. Still others did exactly what Craig’s mother does now—falling silent, falling completely into the sound of her own thoughts, which can’t be heard from the outside. Mrs. Ramirez tries to hold her hand, give her support. Craig’s mother pulls her hand away.
Craig is twisting in place, a bystander to one of the most important moments of his life. Harry understands this and loosens his grip. If you need to go, it’s okay. But what can Craig say? And if he lets go now, all of this will have been for nothing. He lets the paper and marker fall to the grass. He wraps his arms around Harry and pulls him in for a real kiss, a true kiss. His tears run down his cheeks, into their mouths.
Don’t let go.
The crowd cheers. Craig and Harry had forgotten they were there.
Tariq can’t stand it. He feels it’s in some way his fault, too.
He plants himself right there in front of Craig’s mother and says, “You need to love him. I don’t care who you thought he was, or who you want him to be, you need to love him exactly as he is because your son is a remarkable human being. You have to understand that.”
And Craig’s mother whispers back, “I know. I know.”
This time it’s Smita who takes her hand, and she doesn’t pull away.
“It’s okay,” Smita says. “He’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
Harry can feel Craig going slack, and catches him. All that tension, suddenly release
d in sobs. Harry keeps his mouth on top of Craig’s.
They do not break the kiss.
Some of our parents were always on our side. Some of our parents chose to banish us rather than see us for who we were. And some of our parents, when they found out we were sick, stopped being dragons and became dragonslayers instead. Sometimes that’s what it takes—the final battle. But it should take much, much less than that.
For fourteen minutes, she sits in the chair. Watching her son. Watching her son kiss this other boy. Smita does not leave her side, but she doesn’t try to talk to her, either. She lets her take it in. Lets her feel it through.
At first Craig can’t face his mother. He and Harry stand so that she is seeing their profiles, out of their sight lines. But eventually he has to see her. So he shifts them around, dances a quarter turn, and looks at her over Harry’s shoulder. Their eyes meet, and hold for a few seconds as Craig forgets to breathe. They both start crying again, but it doesn’t seem as desperate as before, as devastating.
There are all these moments you don’t think you will survive. And then you survive.
There are so many things Harry wants to say to Craig. All of the comforting words that gather on the inside of his mouth but must remain unsaid. We know how he feels, because we gather those words inside us every single day, knowing what we know now, seeing what we see now. But at least Harry can hold him. At least Harry can give him strength that way. And then he realizes there’s another thing he can do. He makes the sign for phone, and then, after Tariq has given him his phone, he makes the gesture for phone again and points to Craig. Tariq is confused, but Rachel understands. She brings Craig’s phone over to him and opens it to the message page.
Over his shoulder, Harry texts him.
It’s better this way. It’s going to be okay.
Craig texts back:
I think I know that. But it’s hard.
Harry knows the answer, but he has to ask, anyway.