Two Boys Kissing(15)

Or maybe Ryan is just waiting for the next sentence. “Go on,” he says. His tone is encouraging.

“I think it was obvious to everyone from the start. And my parents are very … liberal, I guess. Practically hippies. So they actually tried to make it seem like I was normal. Or at least going through something normal. Now I can see the strain, and how much easier it would’ve been for all of us if I hadn’t been born a girl. But they never made me freak out. It was everyone else. Well, not everyone. There were some people who were cool. But there were a lot of people who weren’t cool. I was homeschooled a lot. We lived in a lot of towns, trying to find the right doctors. Eventually we found them, and I found other members of my tribe. Mostly online. But my parents and I go to conferences as well. They put me on hormones early, to sort of stop me from going through the wrong kind of puberty. Is this TMI? I’m sure you don’t want all the details.”

Ryan leans toward Avery, the boat rocking back and forth as he does. Avery grips the side, and Ryan puts his hand on top of Avery’s.

“Tell me whatever you want to tell me,” he says. “It’s cool.”

Avery shudders, and can feel the shudder travel through the boat, through the water, until the water becomes smooth again, until he feels his nerves become smooth enough to continue talking. It’s too much, too soon, but now that he’s talking, he can’t stop. He’s talking about hormones and the surgeries that have happened and the surgeries that are going to happen, and all along pretty much the only thing that’s filling his head is the question of whether Ryan is seeing him as a girl or a boy. Now that Ryan knows, is Avery still a boy in his eyes?

Ryan is measuring his next words carefully—in fact, he’s been weighing them, trying them out in his head, even as Avery’s been talking. We don’t blame him. We know it is sometimes hard to receive someone’s truth. Not as hard as the telling, but still hard if you care about how your response will be taken.

Finally, he says, “I like whatever it is that makes you the person you are.” It’s like something his aunt Caitlin would have told him, back when he was figuring things out. Then, to show that he doesn’t think this is the entirety of Avery’s story, he asks, “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

The conversation continues, and we leave them to have it. We watch from a distance as the boat drifts for nearly a mile, without either of them really noticing.



You can give words, but you can’t take them. And when words are given and received, that is when they are shared. We remember what that was like. Words so real they were almost tangible. There are conversations you remember, for certain. But more than that, there is the sensation of conversation. You will remember that, even when the precise words begin to blur. How you gave, how you received. How close you felt to this other person, how remarkable this closeness was. The sharing of the words becomes as important as the words themselves. The sensation stays with you, attaches you to the world.





It was Craig’s idea to kiss like this. And a half hour into it, he still doesn’t understand what he was thinking.

There are many roots to it. One of them runs deep and connects directly to his childhood, to all those hours he spent poring over the Guinness World Records, dreaming that one day he’d be in it. The odder the record, the better—the world’s largest cherry pie, or the man who could fit the most nails in his mouth. As a kid, he probably skipped over the kissing section. Too gross.

Then there’s the root that runs closest, that runs right to where Tariq is standing with the cameras and the computer monitors, each one tethered to an extension cord they’ve run from the high school. Craig and Harry hadn’t really been friends with Tariq, not before he was assaulted. Even though they were all out, they didn’t move in the same circles. But when Craig and Harry heard he was in the hospital, heard what had happened, they felt the distance evaporate. Craig pictures him the day they visited his house, his body a badly matched collection of bruises, his usual smile too painful to use. Craig had cried—right there in Tariq’s living room, he had cried, and he felt so awful about that. Tariq told him it was okay, everything was okay, they hadn’t killed him. Ribs heal. Bruises fade. But Craig couldn’t stop crying—not just because Tariq was hurt, but because it was so senseless, so enormously wrong. Harry tried to comfort him, and Tariq said more soothing words, and Craig wanted to feel anger, he wanted to feel raw outrage, but instead it was sadness that was filling him, an extreme, helpless sadness. He rallied then—stopped crying, let Tariq tell them what he wanted to tell. But for the next few weeks, the sadness wouldn’t let go. At school he could distract himself from it, and with Harry and Tariq he could hide it. But when he was home it engulfed him. Because his family didn’t know and couldn’t know. They wouldn’t beat him up. They wouldn’t break his ribs. He knew that. But they had other ways of breaking him—with silence, with disappointment, with disapproval. His father would never accept who he was. Never. And his mother would go along with that. They had their beliefs, and those beliefs were stronger than any belief they had in him. Maybe this was the well that his sadness was being drawn from.

He knew what it was like to drown in it, to feel the sadness coming up to your neck, your mouth, your eyes. For a long time he thought he had a demon on his shoulders, weighing him down so he’d drown quicker. The demon liked boys, wanted nothing more than to kiss a boy. Craig couldn’t get rid of him, no matter how much he wished it, no matter what promises he made to God. Then he met Harry, and suddenly the demon was revealed to be a friend. He offered Craig a hand, pulled him up. Craig emerged, gasping, from the sadness—then created a dam to keep it at bay. He didn’t let Harry see it, just like he didn’t let his parents see it. It had to remain inside of him, contained. When Harry broke up with him, the dam came undone. He started drowning again, even as he pretended for Harry and their friends that he could swim. Smita kept a close eye on him, and in his own way, Harry did, too. Their friendship helped him rebuild the dam. He still had his life within his house and his life outside his house, but he was almost used to that. It was all under control. Until he saw Tariq after the assault, and felt in his heart that this was his future, that this time the demons were as bad as he feared, and they were going to win.