Two Boys Kissing(16)

He hated feeling this way. He hated feeling helpless. He wondered what he could do. How could he stand up for himself? He knew vengeance wasn’t an option. He wasn’t going to track down the guys who’d beaten up Tariq. He wasn’t going to punish them. But there had to be some way to show the world that he was a human being, an equal human being.

He thought about protests. About gestures. About making the world watch. Then he thought about world records, and came up with the idea of the kiss.

There was nothing in the rules that prevented it. To the book of world records, a kiss was a kiss, no matter who was kissing. All the record keepers cared about was that the two people were standing the whole time, that there were no breaks, that lips were always touching lips.

The only hitch was that Craig couldn’t do it alone, and he knew the only person he could do it with was Harry.

Harry had no hesitation. He thought it was a great idea. And when Craig and Harry told Tariq about it, it seemed to help him drown a little less, too. Harry was a dreamer, not a planner, so it was up to Craig and Smita and Tariq to figure out all the logistics. Craig was sure there were things they’d forgotten, and yet here they were. Here he was. Kissing Harry. Smita had been merciless in her teasing—Surely, there are less elaborate ways of getting your ex to kiss you again. But it wasn’t about that. Or at least that’s what Craig insisted to himself. It was Harry because they were the same height (no neck strain), because he and his parents were on board, because he took it seriously, because they had trained their bodies and their minds for it in a way that only two people who were really close could do. Harry’s lips are so familiar to Craig. He has memorized these lips. And yet each time they were together was a little different, each time was a small thrill. These lips. Harry’s arms around him. Their balance together. Craig could lose himself in this, if there weren’t the need to keep it going for thirty-one more hours, if there weren’t people watching, if it were about him and Harry, not about him, Harry, and the world. Don’t think of it as kissing him, Smita said. Think of it as standing for thirty-two hours with your lips together. But how can he not think of it as kissing? He remembers the first time Harry kissed him, leaning over in the movie theater as the credits rolled. The surprise of it. The welcome surprise. The whole world narrowing down to that one intersection of skin and breath. Then expanding out, larger than before. A gasp of a kiss. His body remembers that. Even now. Even still. They have their signals—for water, for phone, for needing a squeeze, for calling the whole thing off. But there’s no signal for what Craig is feeling. There is no way his hand can take the form of a question mark. He looks into Harry’s eyes, wondering what Harry is thinking. Harry sees him, and Craig can feel his smile. But he still doesn’t know what that means, or really what any of this means, except for the fact of doing it.



There are fewer than a hundred people watching them online—mostly Harry and Craig’s friends, too lazy or too far to come see it in person. A few of those friends forward the link to other friends. This you have to see, they say. A few more tune in.





Two boys kissing. You know what this means.

For us, it was such a secret gesture. Secret because we were afraid. Secret because we were ashamed. Secret because it was a story that nobody was telling.

But what power it had. Whether we cloaked it in the guise of You be the boy and I’ll be the girl, or whether we defiantly called it by its name, when we kissed, we knew how powerful it was. Our kisses were seismic. When seen by the wrong person, they could destroy us. When shared with the right person, they had the power of confirmation, the force of destiny.

If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have space for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world.

We knew the private power of our kisses. Then came the first time we were witnesses, the first time we saw it happen out in the open. For some of us, it was before we ourselves had ever been kissed. We fled our towns, came to the city, and there on the streets we saw two boys kissing for the first time. And the power now was the power of possibility. Over time, it wasn’t just on the street or in the clubs or at the parties we threw. It was in the newspaper. On television. In movies. Every time we saw two boys kissing like that, the power grew. And now—oh, now. There are millions of kisses to be seen, millions of kisses only a click away. We are not talking about sex. We are talking about seeing two boys who love one another kiss one another. That has so much more power than sex. And even as it becomes commonplace, the power is still there. Every time two boys kiss, it opens up the world a little bit more. Your world. The world we left. The world we left you.

This is the power of a kiss:

It does not have the power to kill you. But it has the power to bring you to life.



Nobody is watching as Peter and Neil kiss. It is just a quick kiss as they leave the IHOP, before they head home. It is a syrupy kiss, a buttery kiss. It is a kiss with nothing to prove. They don’t worry about who might see, who might pass by. They’re not thinking about anyone but themselves, and even that feels like an afterthought. It is just a part of who they are together, something that they do.



Walking through the aisles of Walmart, Cooper isn’t thinking about kissing. He is scrolling through his app, chatting with strangers, and kissing isn’t on any of their minds. He came into the store because he was getting sick of the inside of his car, was feeling stupid just sitting there in the parking lot as moms and old people paraded in front of him with their shopping carts. Now he walks around as his mind is fragmented into screens and windows, torsos and come-ons, stats and entreaties. Most of the guys on here are older—some much older—than him. Cooper ignores the much older ones, but that still leaves him plenty to choose from.