Two Boys Kissing

by David Levithan

He has no idea how beautiful the ordinary becomes once it disappears.

Love is so painful, how could you ever wish it on anybody? And love is so essential, how could you ever stand in its way?

Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.

Good first dates are more than short stories. They are first chapters. On a good first date, everything is springtime. And when a good first date becomes a good relationship, the springtime lingers. Even after it’s over, there can be springtime.

After a year, Peter and Neil feel they are beyond the discovery phase. But we’re sure that they will continually discover this not to be the case. There’s always something new to learn about the person you love.

Because we know that the best antidote for doubt is presence. Magic naturally fades over distance. But proximity—well, when it works, proximity amplifies magic.

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.

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.

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.

Along the way, they don’t say much, but their relationship has reached that stage where silence is comfortable, not threatening. Silence only harms when there are things that aren’t being said, or when there’s the fear that the well is empty and there’s nothing left to say.

It is hard to stop seeing your son as a son and to start seeing him as a human being. It is hard to stop seeing your parents as parents and to start seeing them as human beings. It’s a two-sided transition, and very few people manage it gracefully.

This is what we don’t admit about first kisses: One of the most gratifying things about them is that they are proof, actual proof, that the other person wants to kiss us. We are desirable. We desire. Every kiss that matters contains a recognition at its core.

The minute you stop talking about individuals and start talking about a group, your judgment has a flaw in it.

It’s one of the secrets of strength: We’re so much more likely to find it in the service of others than we are to find it in service to ourselves.

It killed us, to be picked on, to be ridiculed for being something we weren’t even allowed to be. So many of us first heard the word gay as an insult, an abomination. So many of us were called a faggot before we even knew what that meant.

We watch Craig’s hand press against Harry’s back, and we remember the miraculous feel of skin. Such a thing to miss. Touching his chest and feeling the heartbeat beneath. Touching his back and feeling his spine. Breath against our necks. The chill of pulling away. The furnace of wrapping together.

For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life widens. And you can’t expect your partner’s love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn’t empty as much as it’s filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air.