Two Boys Kissing(4)

As they’re dancing, Avery wonders if Ryan realizes, and worries that Ryan will care. The blue-haired boy sees him—this is for sure. But does he see everything, or only what he wants to be seeing? This is always one of the great questions of love.

Ryan is more worried by time, and what to do about time. He cannot believe he’s found someone here in the bowels of the Kindling community center. The same place he learned to swim. The same place he took rec-league basketball when he was nine. The same place he’s staffed bake sales and blood drives and the same place he’ll vote, when he’s old enough to vote. Yes, it’s also the same place he ducked out of to have his first cigarette and, a couple of years later, his first joint, but it’s never been somewhere he would have imagined finding a pink-haired boy to dance with. He can sense his friends watching from the sidelines, whispering about what will happen next. This only amplifies his own need to know. Time is running out, but what is it running toward? Should he stop and talk to this boy more, before the DJ plays the last song and the lights come back on? Or should they stay like this, paired by the music, cocooned in a song?

Talk to him, we want to say. Because, yes, time can be buoyed by wordlessness, but it needs to be anchored in words.

We know what their best chance is, and in this, the DJ does not disappoint. As most DJs will at some point in an evening, he spins a song that means a lot to him and nothing to anyone else present. Within seconds, the floor starts to clear. Conversations rise from a buzz to a clamor. A line forms at the men’s room.

Both Avery and Ryan stop. Neither wants to leave if the other wants to stay.

Finally, Avery says, “I can’t see any way to dance to this song,” and Ryan says, “Do you want to get some water?”

An escape is made.

The DJ opens his eyes and sees what he’s done. By all rights, he should switch the song. But it’s a long-distance dedication to the boy he loves down in Texas. He dials up the boy right now and holds his phone into the air.

Not all songs need to be for dancing. There will always be the next song, to draw the dancers back.



This is what happens when you become very ill: Dancing stops being a reality and becomes a metaphor. More often than not, it is an unkind one. I am dancing as fast as I can. As if the disease is the fiddler who keeps playing faster and faster, and to lose step is to die. You try and try and try, until finally the fiddler wears you down.

This is not the kind of dancing you want to remember. You’ll want to remember a slow song like Avery and Ryan’s last dance. You’ll want to remember dancing as Tariq remembers dancing, as he heads home from his night at the club. It’s only eleven at night—which is barely noon when you’re on party time—but he promised Craig and Harry that he’d get some sleep, so he can be with them for the big kiss tomorrow without nodding off. It was hard for him to step away from the music, from the pulse it created. He tries to simulate it now by blasting music in his ears, ignoring the other sounds on the late-night suburban train. It’s not the same, because there are no other boys to look at or to be looked at by, just remnant commuters and some girls who’ve just seen some Broadway show. One of them tried to catch Tariq’s eye earlier, and he just gave her a nice try, sorry smile, sending her back into her Playbill.

If you close your eyes, you can conjure a world. Tariq closes his eyes and sees butterflies. The vibrancy of them, spinning in the air to the music in his mind’s eye. That’s who he wants to be—on the dance floor and in life. A butterfly. Colorful and soaring.

There is something about the pureness of butterfly dreams, about all the things that dancing can unlock when you are young. When it works, that freedom doesn’t stop when the last song is played. You take it with you. You use it for bigger things.

You notice when it’s taken away.



Ryan and Avery can feel their words working with each other, can feel the simple joy of falling into the same rhythm, thinking companionable thoughts. Ryan’s friend Alicia is giving him a ride home, and she is hovering on the periphery, shooting him a look every now and then. Ryan ignores this, because he and Avery are in their fortress of non-solitude, talking about how small their towns are and how strange it is to be at a gay prom. Ryan loves the way Avery’s hair swoops, loves the shy curiosity in his eyes. Avery, meanwhile, keeps stealing peeks at the tip of Ryan’s V-neck, at his jeans, at his perfect hands.

We remember what it was like to meet someone new. We remember what it was like to grant someone possibility. You look out from your own world and then you step into his, not really knowing what you’ll find there, but hoping it will be something good. Both Ryan and Avery are doing this. You step into his world and you don’t even realize your loneliness is missing. You’ve left it behind, and you don’t notice because you have no desire to turn back.

You keep your eye on him.



Perhaps because of the Diet Dr Pepper consumed earlier, Peter and Neil are up later than they expected to be. The date was a success, even though they’ve been together long enough that they don’t even think of it as a date, just as a night together. They watched both movies in quick succession—horror first (for Neil), then romantic comedy (for Peter), with Neil holding himself back from smiling at Peter’s fright during the horror and his tears as the romantic comedy resolved itself in predictable romantic comedy fashion. Peter is still self-conscious about these things, and Neil is conscious of this self-consciousness … even if he can’t always contain his amusement. (“Are you all right?” he asked at a moment during the romantic comedy when Peter seemed particularly tense, and he couldn’t help but squeeze Peter’s arm with mock sympathy when Peter said, “I just want Emma Stone to be okay.”)