By An dy and Rebecca
Be thankful for that.
You can’t know what it was like for us then—you will always be one step ahead.
Be thankful for that, too.
...We were once like you, only our world wasn’t like yours.
You have no idea how close to death you came. A generation or two earlier, you might be h ere with us.
We resent you. You astonish us.”
When I first learned that David Levithan had written a new book, I didn’t read it. This may not seem like that big of a deal to you. Remember, though, that I have been completely obsessed with David Levithan’s novels for a good deal of recent history. To illustrate: I’ve read every. Single. One. My walls are covered with sticky-notes of his quotes. I even turned one of his novels into a movie. So when I say that I chose not to read Two Boys Kissing, it’s a big deal.
So why didn’t I want to read it? For a start, I didn’t want to pick it up at a bookstore because, yes, I didn’t want to put a book with the boys-making-out cover image down on that bookstore counter. (Even when I did finally read it, I still tended to hide the cover as best I could.) As I stood in the bookstore, wondering whether or not I was willing to buy the book, I happened to read the summary on the back. And I really didn’t want to read it. A “32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record” sounded really unreal and a little forced. And when I learned that the book was narrated by “a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS”, I put it back on the shelf.
That would have been that, except that a couple months later, I was wandering the teen section of the local library and, out of habit, gravitated over to the ‘L’ section. And there it was. I had half an hour until my bus left, so I figured I might as well read a bit of it during the wait. So I sat down on an uncomfortable chair, propping the book up on the library table, and I read. And read. And read.
And I am so glad that I did.
Andy:
David Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing is more than just a well-written book. It is a reflection point and a call to arms for advocates of LGBT rights, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity. Not only does he look back on the greatest victories and the most agonizing defeats of the queer community since Stonewall, effectively encapsulating LGBT history in a thematic sense, but he also lays a clear path for the future of our movement. For me, Levithan’s masterpiece represents the passing of the torch from one generation of freedom-seekers to the next. It is very much a book written about us and for us, the rising adults of the globe.
I feel, now more than ever, that we have a responsibility to continue changing the world if only to show that we can. We’re standing on a lot of shoulders, and we can never forget those who had to give their lives for the freedoms we can enjoy today, but we have to take what they fought for and add to it. We have so much further to go, and I can’t wait to see the new heights our generation will aspire to and overcome. Last August, I had the amazing pleasure of meeting Sir Ian McKellen (himself a very staunch advocate of marriage equality and a very out gay man). When I thanked him for his work in human rights, he replied in a sage tone: “You do what you can and the world around you begins to change.” I can’t help but think back to his strikingly true statement now. We will all continue to work toward equality, and around us, the tide will keep on turning.
And someday we will be able to say that we made more than dust.