Except on the front lawn of the local high school. There, two boys remain kissing. Muscles sore, mouths tired, eyelids weighty, Harry and Craig hold on to each other, hold on to the forces inside them that will keep them awake. At four in the morning, you can be so light-headed that even the stars seem to have a sound. Harry and Craig sway to the sound of those stars—the few that glimmer over their heads—but also to the sound of all of the unseen stars, all the nebulae that are out of reach but still present. At four in the morning, you can imagine the whole universe is looking down at you. Harry and Craig dance for the universe, and also for the friends who have gathered, the ring of people that remains around them. Mr. Ramirez is snoring lightly in his chair. Tariq’s fingers tap out a language on his keyboard as he responds to questions from Rome and Edinburgh and Dubai. Smita’s mom takes orders for coffee. Jim laughs at something another boy from tech crew has said. Mr. Bellamy, our Tom, tells his husband all is well, that he should go home and get some sleep. Harry and Craig dance to these sounds, too. Craig needs to be held, and Harry is holding him. Harry is letting his mind wander—to books he’s read, to movies he’s seen, to things he may want to say to the tens of thousands of people who are watching them. But Craig’s mind doesn’t wander much farther than Harry. With everything that’s happened, Craig is retreating into the closeness of Harry, the familiarity of his body, of him. This is what he missed when it was gone, what his loneliness calls out for. He knows the reason Harry is kissing him, but he still feels it as a kiss. He can’t help it, because it helps him. He can’t help it, because right now he needs it so much.
He is not wrong to do this. When you need to hold on to something, you should. Whatever gets you through, take it.
Harry needs him, too. Even if he’s not concentrating on that need right now, it’s there. He is so safe within it that he hardly realizes it’s present. Like the coolness of the night, like the small sounds that soundtrack the stars.
We know what it’s like to need to hold on. We hold on to you. Which is to say, we hold on to life.
You have music at your fingertips. Any song you want to hear, there it is.
We marvel at that. The infinite jukebox.
If we want to hear a song, we must steal the sound waves that you send into the air. But there are moments that are so palpable, so in sync with a song we once knew, that it plays itself from some long-lost cassette player that even our memory doesn’t seem to control.
Like the moment Ryan wakes up and thinks of Avery, and the moment (forty minutes later) that Avery wakes up and thinks of Ryan. There is only the sound of their breathing as they blink themselves into the day, only the shift in the mattress, the accidental fall of a pillow to the floor. This should be all that we hear, but there is also the unmistakable sound of Aretha Franklin in our ears, singing “What a Diff’rence a Day Made.” They both wake into happiness instead of uncertainty, into a better version of the world because yesterday was so welcome. There is no way they would articulate it in the same way Aretha does, when she bursts out with “It’s heaven, heaven, heaven when you / When you find love and romance on the menu.” Go and listen to it right now—you have it right at your fingertips, for less than the price of a candy bar. The lyrics sound old, but the music is eternal—that joy in discovering that the right person at the right time can open all the windows and unlock all the doors.
The world wakes up around Harry and Craig.
Harry lifts his feet, wiggles his toes, and only feels soreness, bloat. His back feels like sandpaper has been put between each vertebra. His neck is a wire hanger that an elephant is pulling on. His eyes are dry, but his body is damp. He still smells the egg, feels the egg. But maybe that’s just what sweat smells and feels like after twenty hours. Despite the fact that he’s surrounded by electricity, he finds himself wanting it to rain.
Craig wants to brush his teeth. He and Harry experimented with mouthwash when they were practicing, but it never worked—it was impossible to spit and kiss at the same time. Usually Craig’s fantasies of Harry are elaborate—dancing in tuxedos across the floor of Grand Central Terminal, or canoeing on a lake as the world around them turns instantaneously from summer to fall, all the trees burning into color at once. But now the deepest, clearest fantasy Craig has is of the two of them sitting down. That’s it. Him and Harry, in those two chairs right over there. Sitting down. Not even holding hands. Not kissing. Just sitting there, resting. No one else in the whole world. Just the two of them, sitting down.
We think of ourselves as creatures marked by a particular intelligence. But one of our finest features is the inability of our expectation to truly simulate the experience we are expecting. Our anticipation of joy is never the same as joy. Our anticipation of pain is never the same as pain. Our anticipation of challenge is in no way the same experience as the challenge itself. If we could feel the things we fear ahead of time, we would be traumatized. So instead we venture out thinking we know how things will feel, but knowing nothing of how things will really feel. Already, Craig and Harry are far beyond any expectation, any preparation. They must make up each minute as it comes along, and in doing so, they are creative. Yes, creative. You do not need to be writing or painting or sculpting in order to be creative. You must simply create. And this is what Craig and Harry are doing. They are creating a kiss, and they are also creating their stories, and by creating their stories, they are creating their lives.
This can be a very painful process.
We, who can no longer create, can stand for hours and days and months without feeling anything. You wouldn’t think that we would miss physical pain, considering all the pain that we went through. But we do. We miss it. We miss the price we paid for life. Because it was part of life.
Craig and Harry are exhausted, to a degree we can understand well. Some might think them foolish, to put themselves through this, especially if they fail. But we understand the need to push beyond expectation, beyond preparation. We understand the desire to create, to step on new ground. To feel every ounce of space you are taking up in the world. To endure.
Around the world, screens light up. Around the world, words are flown through wires. Around the world, images are reduced to particles and, moments later, are perfectly reassembled. Around the world, people see these two boys kissing and find something there.
Around town, boys and girls wake up. Around town, men and women mobilize. Around town, complaints are made and disbelief feeds within an echo chamber. Around town, breakfast is served and breakfast is taken. Around town, it feels like an ordinary day, but also not, if you know what’s happening on the lawn outside the high school.
Camera crews from local TV stations begin to arrive.
Shortly after waking, Peter is at his computer. This is what you do now to give your day topography—scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It’s a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn’t really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.
The headlines on Yahoo don’t require much of Peter’s head. The latest exploits of a rich girl with her own TV show, the latest poll showing that for the first time ever, Americans prefer dark chocolate to milk chocolate. Peter has to take in these words before disregarding them—so much information pushing its way into your consciousness, trying to take residence so you will watch the new show, buy the new chocolate. He quickly clicks on to the feed of the two boys kissing, and is relieved to find they are still there, still kissing. Twenty-two hours gone, less than ten hours to go. He scrolls through the comments and finds a lot of encouragement and more than a few haters. These words are now in his bedroom, now in his life. How can he not take them personally? If you let the world in, you open yourself up to the world. Even if the world doesn’t know that you’re there.
The camera crews unload their equipment. The reporters check their makeup, gauge the light. Harry takes some satisfaction from it—attention was the point of this, and now it has come calling. Craig feels a slight uneasiness, and also a little relief that he doesn’t have to worry anymore about his parents seeing this without warning, turning on the channel and finding something unexpected.
The news teams—there are three of them—are pushy. They want to ask questions, want to get close. The police officers keep them back on the other side of the non-caution tape. But still … they suck all the air from the area. They are the new center of gravity for the crowd. There are people now who haven’t been seen before, who haven’t spoken up before. There are Craig and Harry’s friends, yes, but there are also people who think this is criminal, that it should be stopped, that it is an affront to the high school, to the town, to society. The cameras search them out, and they gladly allow themselves to be found.