We did not have the Internet, but we had a network. We did not have websites, but we had sites where we wove our web. You could see it most in the cities. Even someone as young as Cooper, as young as Tariq, could find it. Piers and coffee shops. Spots in the park, and bookstores where Wilde, Whitman, and Baldwin reigned as bastard kings. These were the safe harbors, even when we feared that being too open meant we were opening ourselves to attack. Our happiness had defiance, and our happiness had fear. Sometimes there was anonymity, and sometimes you were surrounded by friends and friends of friends. Either way, you were connected. By your desires. By your defiance. By the simple, complicated fact of who you were.
Outside of the cities, the connections were harder to see, the web thinner, the sites harder to find. But we were there. Even if we thought we were the only ones, we were there.
There are few things that can make us quite as happy as a gay prom.
Right now, 9:03 on that Friday night, we’re in a town with the improbable name of Kindling—surely the pioneers had a fiery death wish, or maybe it was just a tribute to the burning sticks that kept the settlers alive. Somewhere along the way, someone must have learned the third little pig’s lesson, since the community center is built entirely of bricks. It’s a dull, quiet building in a dull, quiet town—its architecture as beautiful as the word municipal. It is an unlikely place for a blue-haired boy and a pink-haired boy to meet.
Kindling does not have enough gay kids to support a prom on its own. So tonight the cars drive in from far and wide. Some of the couples drive in together, laughing or fighting or sitting in their separate silences. Some of the boys drive in alone—they’ve snuck out of the house, or they’re meeting friends at the community center, or they saw the listing online and decided at the last minute to go. There are boys in tuxedos, boys adorned with flowers, boys in torn hoodies, boys in ties as skinny as their jeans, boys in ironic taffeta gowns, boys in un-ironic taffeta gowns, boys in V-neck T-shirts, boys who feel awkward wearing dress shoes. And girls … girls wearing all these things, driving to the same place.
If we went to our proms, we went with girls. Some of us had a good time; some of us looked back years later and wondered how we had managed to be so oblivious about who we really were. A few of us managed to go with each other, with our best female friends covering as our dates. We were invited to this ritual, but only if we maintained the story line of our supervisors. It was more likely for Neil Armstrong to invite us to a prom on the moon than it was for us to go to a prom like the one being held in Kindling tonight.
When we were in high school, hair existed on the bland spectrum of black/brown/orange/blond/gray/white. But tonight in Kindling we have Ryan walking into the community center with his hair dyed a robin’s-egg blue. Ten minutes later, Avery walks in with his hair the color of a Mary Kay Cadillac. Ryan’s hair is spiked like the surface of a rocky ocean, while Avery’s swoops gently over his eyes. Ryan is from Kindling and Avery is from Marigold, a town forty miles away. We can tell immediately that they’ve never met, and that they are going to.
We are not unanimous about the hair. Some of us think it is ridiculous to have blue hair or pink hair. Others of us wish we could go back and make our hair mimic the Jell-O our mothers would serve us in the afternoon.
We are rarely unanimous about anything. Some of us loved. Some of us couldn’t. Some of us were loved. Some of us weren’t. Some of us never understood what the fuss was about. Some of us wanted it so badly that we died trying. Some of us swear we died of heartbreak, not AIDS.
Ryan walks into the prom, and then Avery walks in ten minutes later. We know what’s going to happen. We have witnessed this scene so many times before. We just don’t know if it will work, or if it will last.
We think of the boys we kissed, the boys we screwed, the boys we loved, the boys who didn’t love us back, the boys who were with us at the end, the boys who were with us beyond the end. 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?
Ryan and Avery do not see us. They do not know us, or need us, or feel us in the room. They don’t even see each other until about twenty minutes into the prom. Ryan sees Avery over the head of a thirteen-year-old boy in (it’s true, so gay) rainbow suspenders. He spots Avery’s hair first, then Avery. And Avery looks up at just that moment and sees the blue-haired boy glancing his way.
Some of us applaud. Others look away, because it hurts too much.
We always underestimated our own participation in magic. That is, we thought of magic as something that existed with or without us. But that’s not true. Things are not magical because they’ve been conjured for us by some outside force. They are magical because we create them, and then deem them so. Ryan and Avery will say the first moment they spoke, the first moment they danced, was magical. But they were the ones—no one else, nothing else—who gave it the magic. We know. We were there. Ryan opened himself to it. Avery opened himself to it. And the act of opening was all they needed. That is the magic.
Focus in. The blue-haired boy leads. He smiles as he takes the pink-haired boy’s hand. He feels what we know: The supernatural is natural, and wonderment can come from the most mundane movement, like a heartbeat or a glance. The pink-haired boy is scared, so incredibly scared—only the thing you’ve most wished for can scare you in that way. Hear their heartbeats. Listen close.
Now draw back. See the other kids on the dance floor. The comfortable misfits, the torn rebels, the fearful and the brave. Dancing or not dancing. Talking or not talking. But all in the same room, all in the same place, gathering together in a way they weren’t allowed to do before.
Draw back farther. We are standing in the eaves.
Say hi if you see us.
Silence equals death, we’d say. And underneath that would be the assumption—the fear—that death equaled silence.
Sometimes you glimpse that horror. When someone close to you gets sick. When someone close to you gets sent to war. When someone close to you takes his or her own life.
Every day a new funeral. It was such a large part of our existence. Imagine being in a school where a student dies every day. Some of them your friends. Some of them just kids who happen to be in your class. You keep showing up, because you know you have to. You become the bearer of memory, and also the bearer of sorrow, until it is your turn to be the one who is gone, the one who is mourned.
You have no idea how fast things can change. You have no idea how suddenly years can pass and lives can end.
Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given.
It is 10:45. Craig Cole and Harry Ramirez are planning their big kiss. There have been months of preparation leading to this kiss, and now here they are, the night before. Most kisses only require two people, but this one will end up needing at least a dozen. None of those other people are in the room right now. It’s just Craig and Harry.
“Are we really going to do this?” Craig asks.
“We most certainly are,” Harry replies.
They know they need their sleep. They know it’s a big day tomorrow. They know there’s no backing down, and also no guarantee that they’ll make it.