Two Boys Kissing(33)

Tariq is too shy to speak for them. In the back of his mind, he can imagine all the violent homophobes writing his name down, remembering him for later. It is Harry’s father who steps up and explains their aims. It is Smita who prepares the sound bites of support. It is Mr. Bellamy—Tom—who may be risking his job to say that he is a teacher at this school and that he supports the boys one hundred percent. He doesn’t identify himself as gay, but he doesn’t try to hide it, either.

Craig tries to stay focused on the kissing. When distractions are manifold, it’s best to remember what you are supposed to be doing.



Word travels fast, our parents would warn us. It’s amusing to think of that now. We thought words had so much speed back then, but we had no idea.

Avery is driving to Kindling again. Ryan offered to drive to Marigold, then admitted he’d have to borrow someone’s car to do it, since he doesn’t have one of his own. Avery doesn’t mind—he likes driving, likes the feel of being on the road.

At a certain spot, the music he’s been listening to loops around, and he doesn’t want to listen to it again. When he ejects the CD, the radio comes on—a station that’s Top 40 during the afternoon and evening, but talks too much in the morning. Avery would usually just put in more music, but his ear is drawn to the word gays and the way it’s being said. Dismissively. Contemptuously.

“This is what the gays do—they stop at nothing to be in our faces with their disgusting habits and then act like they’re the ones being treated badly. I don’t want to look at that, and I don’t want my kids to have to look at that.”

The host comes on. “So you don’t think they have the right to be there?”

“I don’t think the founders of our country really had two homosexuals on their minds when they wrote the Constitution. That’s all I’m saying.”

“And we have our next caller.”

“I don’t understand why they’re not being arrested. Why aren’t the police arresting them? It’s a public place.”

“You know the police are protecting the two boys—”

“Well, they should be ashamed of themselves and start doing their job.”

“I’m with you there. Next caller.”

“I think what the boys are doing is brave.”

“Brave? Tell them to join the army if they want to be brave.”

“To be in public—”

“They should just get a room! Next caller!”

Avery doesn’t know what these people are talking about, and since he’s driving, he can’t go online to check. The sensation he has is a strange, difficult one. He knows these people aren’t talking about him. But at the same time they are talking about him, in their blanket dismissal. And they’re also talking about us. Because so many of them are our age or older, stuck in previous decades of thought. The gays of today, the gays of yesterday—we’re all the same bother, all the same wrong. Not people, really. Just something to yell about.

“If we let this go on, what’s next? Men having sex with dogs in a church? Is that free speech?”

The phrase rush to judgment is a silly one. When it comes to judgment, most of us don’t have to rush. We don’t have to even leave the couch. Our judgment is so easy to reach for.

None of these people who are talking know Craig or Harry, or even care about who Craig or Harry are. The minute you stop talking about individuals and start talking about a group, your judgment has a flaw in it. We made this mistake often enough.

“You can’t have a world record if you’re two guys. That’s not a world record.”

Avery knows he should put on the music, blot out these voices. But none of us can stop listening. Because what is more transfixing than the sound of people hating you?

In the darkest part of our hearts, we used to think that maybe they were right.

We don’t think that anymore.



Cooper is driving, too, but the radio is off. He was woken by a hard pounding on his windshield—someone telling him he needed to clear out of the parking lot.

Cooper’s mind is slowly working up to something. The chemicals are gathering, some of them in the wrong places. He should be thinking about clothes, about a shower, about getting home. He should be realizing that his parents are probably going to church this morning, giving him an opportunity to sneak in and get more things. He should be figuring out a next step. He should care.

But Cooper feels at too much of a distance to truly care. It’s like he’s sitting in an empty movie theater, looking at a blank screen. His parents aren’t going to change. The world isn’t going to change. He isn’t going to change. So why try? He’s too tired to fight it, too tired to sneak into his own house, too tired to call some hotline or ask some contact to pretend to be his friend for an hour or two.

We know: An almost certain way to die is to believe you are already dead. Some of us never stopped fighting, never gave up. But others of us did. Others of us felt the pain had become too much, and that there was nothing left to life but the struggle for life, which was not enough reason to stay. So we signed out. We caved. But our reasons are not anything Cooper knows. If he could step out of his life for a moment, if he could see it as we see it, he would know that even though he feels it’s as good as over, there are still thousands of ways it could go.