How They Met and Other Stories

by David Levithan

  The movie didn’t matter. As far as I was concerned, it existed to give us its glow in the darkness, to give us faint voices to hear at a distance from our thoughts. I wished I had gotten us only one soda. I moved mine so the center armrest would be free and clear. The theater was almost empty, the movie at the end of its run. I tried to focus on the scenery on the screen—the English manor house, the droll goings-on. But it was Graham, Graham, Graham. Right beside me. Only a gesture away.

  His arm was on the armrest. I moved mine closer. Then closer still, so our sleeves were touching. He was looking at the movie, but he was feeling me closer. And closer. I turned to him. He turned to me. I moved my hand on his. I traced my fingers around his fingers, then ran them down his sleeve, down his arm.

  He pulled away.

  I wasn’t ready for his movement. The choreography suddenly confused me. This was the wrong improvisation. He pretended to be moving for his soda. When he put it down, he kept his arm in his lap and his eyes on the screen.

  Two more hours. The movie lasted two more hours.

  When it was over and the credits were rolling, he leaned over and asked me what I thought, if I was ready to go. Ready was the last thing I felt, but go was pretty much at the top of the list.

  He wasn’t going to say anything. For a second I wondered if my mind was playing tricks, if what had happened hadn’t really happened after all. But once we were in the lobby, once we were in everyday light again, I could see the awkwardness of his stance, his expression.

  When you dance, you measure distance as if it’s a solid thing; you make precise judgments every time two bodies exist in relation to each other. So I knew right away the definition of the space between us.

  We moved to the street, the rest of the audience dispersing in animated clusters around us. It was still daylight, but it was almost dark.

  “Jon,” he said. Just the way he said my name. Every part of me but my hope gave up right then.

  “But why?” I asked.

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and even now I loved that.

  “I really think you’re fantastic,” he told me. “But I think you might have the wrong idea.”

  Later on, I would want elaboration—every possible kind of elaboration. But right then, I only wanted to leave. He asked me if I was okay. He asked me if I wanted to get coffee, or talk some more. He was kind, and that made it better and made it a whole lot worse. I had to go.

  I walked around the city a little, but even that was too much. I took the train home, defeated. The only saving grace was that my parents were already out when I got home.

  Jeremy was there, though, babysitting himself, which wasn’t something I’d been allowed to do. He was watching a movie on cable, studying his Torah portion during the commercials.

  “Hey,” he called out when he heard me come in. “How was it?”

  At first I didn’t know what he meant—how was what? The movie? The date? The ride home?

  Then I realized he meant the sleepover at Thomas’s. Which he thought I’d spent with Graham.

  “It was okay,” I said, throwing my bag down on the floor and sitting next to him on the couch. He muted the TV.

  “Did you have fun? Did you tell Graham about the Bar Mitzvah?”

  “Look,” I said, “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  “No, it is!” Jeremy said, looking totally energized. “Mom and Dad gave in. I knew they would.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

  “How?” I asked.

  “I just told them I wouldn’t do it,” he said. “And they knew I wouldn’t.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  He looked at me, confused. “No. Not at all. It seemed stupid to have a Bar Mitzvah if I wasn’t going to stand up for something that’s right, you know.”

  I knew he was trying to help. I knew he was trying to take my side. But still I couldn’t help but see him as my younger, inexperienced brother who didn’t know anything about anything.

  “Do you understand what you’re doing?” I said, my voice rising. I wanted to shake him. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate it. But are you crazy? Think about it for a second. Not about Mom or Dad. Or me. Think about you. This is a very big deal, Jeremy. All our family. All your friends. Do you really want all your friends to see your brother and his boyfriend? There has to be a line somewhere, doesn’t there? Do we get to sit together? What do I introduce him as? Do we get to dance together? What do you think everyone will say, Jeremy? Your Bar Mitzvah will go down in history as The One With The Gay Brother And His Boyfriend. You can’t want that. You can’t.”

  But even as I was saying it, I was looking at his expression and I was thinking, Yes, he does. He is ready for all of that.

  I didn’t know where he got it from. Not my father or mother. Or me.

  “Jon,” he said, “it’s okay. Really, it’s okay.”

  This twelve-year-old. This stranger. This brother. This person sitting on the couch with me.

  It was too much. I had to leave again. Only this time I wished I had the ability to stay. I wished I could stay there and believe him.

  But it was too much. It was all too much.

  I tried to sleep through Sunday. My mother came into my room and asked me to try on my suit one more time.

  “I have to hand it to your brother,” she said. “He makes one hell of an argument. Especially when he’s right. Sometimes I guess you need to be bullied by the truth. I was caught up in everything else.” Then she smiled at me and apologized for how stressful the past few weeks had been. “I just want to live through it,” she said, straightening my tie. “I want it to be a perfect day. Although at this point, I’d settle for really good.”

  She asked me if I’d asked Graham. I said yes.

  She asked me if he was coming.

  I said yes.

  It’s not that I wasn’t thinking—I was thinking way too much. I was thinking of what Jeremy was willing to do, and how I’d be letting him down if I didn’t deliver on the situation I’d thrown him into.

  “Does he know to wear a suit?” my mother asked.

  Again, yes.

  She put her hand to my cheek and said, “I look forward to meeting him.”

  I knew that took a lot.

  I thanked her.

  My father let his lack of complaint speak for him.

  The whole day I wanted to pull Jeremy aside and tell him: You’re believing in love more than I do; you’re standing up for someone who is less than deserving.

  I was trying to keep my mind from Graham, from Monday afternoon when we’d see each other again, but that was an impossible thing to do. Every hour that passed was loaded with thousands of thoughts—and no conclusions.

  Somehow I made it through school. Somehow I made it into the city. Somehow I walked through the door to class without trembling.

  He was waiting for me, waiting with Eve and Miles to rehearse the third movement of the Blur piece.

  “Hi,” he said, a little hesitant. Then, after he sent Eve and Miles to rehearse in a corner together, “How are you?”

  “Been better,” I said. “I’m really sorry—”

  “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to give you the wrong idea. And at the same time, I don’t want you to think I don’t care about you. I do.”

  “I know,” I said. Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

  We hovered around our apologies, our acceptances.

  “It’s okay,” I said, finally. “Really, it’s okay.”

  Maybe I even believed that. But my body didn’t. It had lost the thread of the dance, grasping instead at ulterior intangibles. My arms opened too wide, then held too fast. My turns ended in the wrong place.

  Graham did not say a word. Not until Eve and Miles were involved. Then he tried to minimize the damage I was doing, the errors of my way.

  I could sense Miles watching me, wondering what had gone wrong. But Graham was always withi
n hearing distance. It wasn’t until after the dismal rehearsal that Miles could come over, put his hand on my shoulder, and ask me, “What happened?”

  He took me to a used bookstore café around the corner. He bought me tea. He sat me down. He didn’t ask what happened again, because it was so obvious. The language of my posture translated to defeat.

  “Jon,” he said. Quietly, gently, the word pillowing out to me.

  And I told him. What had happened, what hadn’t happened. Even more than I’d realized before. Eventually I found I was talking more about Jeremy than I was about Graham. About how I had set up this picture in my brother’s head of what my life was like, and how he had fought for that picture. That had made it more real. And I still couldn’t deal with it. I was still running away instead of fighting, too.

  “Your brother’s pretty brave,” he said. “I can’t imagine…”

  I waited for him to finish the sentence. What couldn’t he imagine? Doing it himself, or having someone do it for him? I waited, but he left it open, closed.

  I looked at him, studied the thoughts right underneath his expression. Most dancers find their confidence in dancing. Right is mere millimeters away from wrong. Failure is always louder than success. But there is an accumulation of all the things you don’t do wrong, and that becomes your confidence. You can even get to the point where that confidence lasts longer than the dance. Seconds at first. Then minutes. Then maybe it’ll be there when you’re walking into a party, or meeting people after a show. You know you have something desirable, and you know you can move. But for Miles, the confidence wasn’t there. Instead, there was something even more marvelous—the trying.

  Suddenly, it occurred to me. I was looking at Miles twisting the coffee stirrer around his paper cup. I was thinking of him, of me, of Jeremy.

  “You could be my boyfriend,” I told him.

  “I could?” The coffee stirrer fell to the table, still looped.

  “For the Bar Mitzvah. You could be my boyfriend. Would you?”

  “Be your boyfriend?”

  “For the Bar Mitzvah.”

  Miles looked at me strangely. “That’s one hell of a proposal,” he said.

  “C’mon…it’ll be fun.”

  “Now, you know that’s a lie.”

  “Are you free?”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Please,” I said.

  “You want me to pose as your boyfriend—the boyfriend you’ve never had—in order to make sure your brother—God bless him—didn’t take a stand for nothing.”

  “Pretty please,” I said.

  “You’re so stupid. You know I’m going to do it.”

  For the first time that awful day, I felt something approximating happiness. “I will owe you,” I told Miles. “Anything your big heart desires.”

  “Anything?”

  He seemed happy despite himself.

  And so it came to pass that on the morning of my brother’s Bar Mitzvah, I was introducing Miles to my parents as Graham, but telling them to call him Miles, since that was what all his friends did.

  He looked amazing, in a blue suit, white shirt, and purple tie. He’d taken a train, a bus, a subway, and a cab to get to the synagogue, and he’d made it exactly on time. My parents, overwhelmed by all the greetings coming their way, were polite without really registering. Jeremy pulled away from the rabbi to shake Miles’s hand, to tell him he was glad he’d come. He turned to me and said Miles was exactly what he’d pictured. I didn’t know what to say.

  Miles was going to sit in the back, but I wanted him beside me. So we sat in the front row. When his keepa kept falling off his head, I reached up and pulled out one of the bobby pins keeping my keepa in place. Instead of handing it over, I leaned into him and touched his hair, securing the keepa. Maybe nobody was looking, but it felt like everyone was. I didn’t turn to see what was true. I just looked at him and his nervous smile.

  The service began, and all focus turned to Jeremy. It was so strange to sit there and watch him for two hours. I don’t think I’d ever considered him—really watched him—before. It wasn’t that I hadn’t realized he was growing up—I was always waiting for the next stage, the first hint of body hair, the voice’s awkward, jagged plunge. But I was always mapping him out against my own progression—as if he was somehow having the same life just because he had all the same teachers. Now I wasn’t seeing him in terms of age, or in terms of me. I was just seeing him. Five years behind me, but somehow with his shit together. He’d tied his tie himself and it was perfectly knotted. He chanted over the Torah portion as if it was something he was born to do. And he made eye contact. I swear, as he spoke it was like he looked each of us in the eye. Bringing us together.

  I should have felt proud, but instead I felt awful. That I had let him down so many times, that I had been a horrible brother. That he loved me anyway. That maybe he knew more about life than I did, even if I’d had more experience. Because knowing about life is really about knowing how it should be, not just how it is.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be Miles’s first Bar Mitzvah; it hadn’t occurred to me that he might be more nervous than I was. During the rabbi’s sermon, his leg started to shake. I rested my hand on it for a second, giving him as much of my calm as I could. He accepted it without a word. I used the open prayer book as a phrase book to tell him things, pointing to words, rearranging the scripture to spell out our own verse. GOOD. IS. PLENTIFUL. YOU. ARE. ALL. WISDOM. SHINING ON A HILL.

  When the service was over, when we were all getting up to shuffle to the reception, he straightened my tie and moved some of the hair from my eyes. My mirror. I fixed the back of his collar. His mirror.

  Jeremy had sneaked into the reception hall before the service, banishing one of our cousins to a kids’ table so Miles could sit with our family. I wondered what we all looked like to Miles, as we said our prayers and lit our candles and danced a whirlwind hora. I tried to put myself in his place, and realized we looked exactly like what we were: a family. These strangely tied together individuals trying desperately to keep both ourselves and one another happy. Succeeding, and failing, and succeeding. When Jeremy called me up to light one of the thirteen candles on the cake, he said the kindest things, and I knew he meant each and every one. He talked about me teaching him how to ride a bike, how to swim, how to kick an arcade game in just the right place to get a free play. He was remembering the best of me. The way he spoke, I almost recognized who he was talking about.

  I stayed up for the final candle, for my parents at their proudest. The love I felt for them then—I knew I meant that, too. It wasn’t something I had to think about. It was there, unexpectedly deep. I hadn’t been running away from that, or even from them. I had been so focused on my destination that I’d forgotten all the rest.

  At the table, my mother asked Miles how long he’d been dancing. They talked Nutcrackers while my father watched, taking it in. After the hora, the dancing grew more scattered, the sincere thirteen-year-old girls and the jesting thirteen-year-old boys doing their sways and muddles as my older aunts and uncles kicked up (or off) their heels and used the same moves they’d learned for their weddings decades ago.

  Miles and I watched from the sidelines, and I gave him the anecdotal tour of my family’s cast of characters. At one point Jeremy came over and asked, “So, are you guys going to dance or what?” But I wasn’t sure Miles wanted to, so I put it off. Miles was doing me enough of a favor. Dragging him onto such a dance floor would be cruel.

  I tried to imagine Graham there in his place, but I couldn’t. It was laughable. Impossible. Stupid.

  Finally, after two or three songs of sitting in the folded-chair gallery, picking at the mixed salad with blueberry balsamic vinaigrette, Miles turned to me and said mischievously, “So…are we going to dance or what?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”

  Miles smiled. “It’s about time.”

  Just because two people can dance wel
l on a stage to prearranged choreography doesn’t guarantee that they will be good partners in a simple slow dance. When Miles took my hand in his, there was no guarantee that our arms would fit right. When he put his other arm around my back, there was no guarantee that it would feel anything but awkward, unrehearsed. When his feet started to move, there was no guarantee that my steps would match his.

  But they did.

  As if we had rehearsed. As if our bodies were meant to be this. As if we were meant to be this. Together.

  He closed his eyes. He was with me, he was elsewhere, he was with me. I looked over his shoulder. My mother smiled at me and I nearly cried. My aunt and uncle smiled. Jeremy watched, as a girl tugged on his sleeve, telling him to hurry.

  I closed my eyes, too.

  The sound of a dance. This dance. The ballad of family conversations, clinking glasses, plates being cleared. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. The song you hear, and all the things beside it that you dance to.

  When it was over, Miles pressed my back lightly and I squeezed his hand. Then we separated for a fast song. Instead of jumping off the dance floor, we jumped into the fray. We joined Jeremy and his friends, the aunts and the uncles. We electric slid. We celebrated good times (come on). We cried Mony, Mony. As a crowd, part of the crowd, together.

  It was fun.

  When the next slow song came on, there was no question. I reached for him, and he let me.

  “May I?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” he replied.

  But just as we were about to start, there was a tap on my shoulder. I looked to my side and saw it was Jeremy.

  “May I have this dance?” he asked.

  I let go of Miles and turned fully to my brother, raising my hand to his.

  “Uh…sure,” I said.

  Jeremy looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Not with you,” he said. “With Miles.”

  My brother wanted to dance with my not-quite-but-maybe-so boyfriend. I could imagine all his friends watching—his eighth-grade friends watching. Talking. Our family. Our parents.