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But I Think We Both Knew, Even Then, That What We Had Was Something Even More Rare, And Even More Meaningful. I Was Going To Be His Friend, And Was Going To Show Him Possibilities. And He, In Turn, Would Become Someone I Could Trust More Than Myself.

-David Levithan

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But I Think We

David Levithan

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But I Think We Both Knew, Even Then, That What We Had Was Something Even More Rare, And Even More Meaningful. I Was Going To Be His Friend, And Was Going To Show Him Possibilities. And He, In Turn, Would Become Someone I Could Trust More Than Myself.

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We Could Call You An Ambisexual. A Duosexual. A—” “do I Really Have To Find A Word For It?” Kyle Interrupts. “can’t It Just Be What It Is?” “of Course,” I Say, Even Though In The Bigger World I’m Not So Sure. The World Loves Stupid Labels. I Wish We Got To Choose Our Own. We Pause For A Moment. I Wonder If That’s All—if He Just Needed To Say The Truth And Have It Heard. But Then Kyle Looks At Me With Unsure Eyes And Says, “you See, I Don’t Know Who I’m Supposed To Be.” “nobody Does,” I Assure Him.

Seven Wonders Of The World And I Have To Ask For An Eighth Fill A Bottle With Some Prayers And Spend Them On Hope Create An Easy Route Just So I Can Complicate Send My Heart Down That Slippery Slope

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Just Because A Person Is Beautiful Doesn't Mean There's No Soul Beneath. Doesn't Mean That Person Hasn't Suffered Like Everyone Else, Doesn't Mean They Don't Hope To Still Be A Good Human Being In An Awful World.

After Tiny Has Tried Ballerina Pose, Swing-batter-batter Pose, Pump-up-the-jam Pose, And Top-of-the-mountain-sound-of-music Pose In The Reflection Of The Bean, He Walks Us To A Bench Overlooking Lake Shore Drive.

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Hubris, N. Every Time I Call You Mine, I Feel Like I'm Forcing It, As If Saying It Can Make It So. As If I'm Reminding You, And Reminding The Universe: Mine. As If That One Word From Me Could Have That Kind Of Power.

Every Person Is A Possibility. The Hopeless Romantics Feel It Most Acutely, But Even For Others, The Only Way To Keep Going Is To See Every Person As A Possibility.

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I Don't Want To Steal Anybody's Story. I Very Much Want To Use The Stories That I Hear To Get Lost In My Mind, To Tell A Larger Story.

No Matter How Happy We Are, No Matter How Much We Want Our Night To Stretch Out Infinitely, Sleep Is Inevitable.

In School, The Year Was The Marker. Fifth Grade. Senior Year Of High School. Sophomore Year Of College. Then After, The Jobs Were The Marker. That Office. This Desk. But Now That School Is Over And I've Been Working At The Same Place In The Same Office At The Same Desk For Longer Than I Can Truly Believe, I Realize: You Have Become The Marker. This Is Your Era. And It's Only If It Goes On And On That Will Have To Look For Other Ways To Identify The Time.

Tiny: But There Is The Word, This Word Phil Wrayson Taught Me Once: Weltschmerz. It's The Depression You Feel When The World As It Is Does Not Line Up With The World As You Think It Should Be. I Live In A Big Goddamned Weltzschermz Ocean, You Know? And So Do You.

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Exemplar, N. It's Always Something We Have To Negotiate- The Face That My Parents Are Happy, And Yours Have Never Been. I Have Something To Live Up To, And If I Fail, I Still Have A Family To Welcome Me Home. You Have A Storyline To Rewrite, And A Lack Of Faith That It Can Ever Be Done. You Love My Parents, I Know. But You Never Get Too Close. You Never Truly Believe There Aren't Bad Secrets Underneath.

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There Was A Time Before You But I Can't Remember It Now A Time Before Your Beauty And I Were Formally Introduced I'm Sure I Lived Without You But I Don't Remember How Can't Imagine Living Without These Feelings You've Produced Just One Glance And My Life Was Redrawn Just One Word And My Vocabulary Changed I Asked The Time And You Said 'what's The Hurry?' You Asked My Name And I Almost Forgot

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This Is What My Voice Sounds Like I Don't Need To Be Talking To Someone Else To Hear It

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It Was Rather Awkward, Insofar As We Were Both Teetering Between The Possibility Of Something And The Possibility Of Nothing.

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We Hold Hands As We Walk Through Town. If Anybody Notices, Nobody Cares. I Know We All Like To Think Of The Heart As The Center Of The Body But At This Moment, Every Conscious Part Of Me Is In The Hand That He Holds. It Is Through That Hand, That Feeling, That I Experience Everything Else.

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It Daunted Me That You Were So Beautiful, That You Were So At Ease In Social Situations, As If Every Room Was Heliotropic, With You At The Center. And I Guess It Daunted You That I Had So Many More Friends Than You, That I Could Put My Words Together Like This, On Paper, And Could Sometimes Conjure A Certain Sense Out Of Things. The Key Is To Never Recognize These Imbalances. To Not Let The Dauntingness Daunt Us.

We Remember What It Was Like To Meet Someone New. We Remember What It Was Like To Grant Someone Possibility. You Look Out From Your Own World And Then You Step Into His, Not Really Knowing What You’ll Find There, But Hoping It Will Be Something Good. Both Ryan And Avery Are Doing This. You Step Into His World And You Don’t Even Realize Your Loneliness Is Missing. You’ve Left It Behind, And You Don’t Notice Because You Have No Desire To Turn Back.

The Most Understandable Thing In The World Should Be How Minutes Lead To Hours, How Hours Lead To Days, How Days Can Make A Year. And Yet, This Neat Progression Can Still Be Surprising.

And Maybe It Is Only By Finding Yourself That You Can Feel The True Intensity Of Becoming Close To Another Person.

Finding Yourself

I Still Felt Fondness For Her - Fondness, That Pleasant, Detached Mix Of Admiration And Sentiment, Appreciation And Nostalgia.

The Way You Argued With Me, You Would Have Thought That We Were Debating The Existence Of God Or Whether Or Not We Should Move In Together. These Kinds Of Fights Can Never Be Won – Even If You’re The Victor, You’ve Hurt The Other Person, And There Has To Be Some Loss Associated With That.

Magic Naturally Fades Over Distance. But Proximity - Well, When It Works, Proximity Amplifies Magic.

If Goodness Can't Come From Bad Things, It Makes Bad Things Unbearable.

Breathing, N You Had Asthma As A Child, Had To Carry Around An Inhaler. But When You Grew Older, It Went Away. You Could Run For Miles And It Was Fine. Sometimes I Worry That This Is Happening To Me In Reverse. The Older I Get, The More I Lose My Ability To Breathe.

Every You, Every Me. Fractals. Fractures.

I Couldn't Fault Her For Believing, Because I Had To Imagine I Was Nice To Have That Illusion Still Intact.

In My Experience, Desire Is Desire, Love Is Love.

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Things Are Not Magical Because They've Been Conjured For Us By Some Outside Force. They Are Magical Because We Create Them.

I Would Always Wait To Take You Home.

You Have To Trust The Words. They Do Not Create Anything More Than Themselves.

Be Careful What You're Doing, Because No One Is Ever Who You Want Them To Be.

You Think You Know Your Possibilities. Then Other People Come Into Your Life And Suddenly There Are So Many More.

Ted Is Smart And Good-looking, But He Doesn't Use It To Good Effect, Like A Rich Person That Never Gives To Charity.

When Dawn Looked At Vic, She Saw Vic Exactly As He Wanted To Be Seen. Whereas Vic's Parents Couldn't Help Seeing Who He Used To Be, And So Many Friends And Strangers Couldn't Help Seeing Who He Didn't Want To Be Anymore, Dawn Only Saw Him. Call It A Blur If You Want, But Dawn Didn't See A Blur. She Saw A Very Distinct, Very Clear Person.

I Still Don’t Know If This Is A Good Quality Or A Bad One, To Be Able To Be In The Moment And Then Step Out Of It.

The Thing About Champagne,you Say, Unfoiling The Cork, Unwinding The Wire Restraint, Is That Is The Ultimate Associative Object. Every Time You Open A Bottle Of Champagne, It's A Celebration, So There's No Better Way Of Starting A Celebration Than Opening A Bottle Of Champagne. Every Time You Sip It, You're Sipping From All Those Other Celebrations. The Joy Accumulates Over Time.

But I Think We Were Walking Around Like We Were Invincible. And Maybe That's A Bad Way To Live Your Life. Because You're Not Invincible. Nobody Is. And Maybe Now That We've Learned That, We'll Be Better.

It Is Its Own Form Of Conversation -- You Can Learn A Lot About People From The Stories They Tell, But You Can Also Know Them From The Way They Sing Along, Whether They Like The Windows Up Or Down, If They Live By The Map Or By The World, If They Feel The Pull Of The Ocean.

And Still, For All The Jealously, All The Doubt, Sometimes I Will Be Struck With A Kind Of Awe That We're Together. That Someone Like Me Could Find Someone Like You --- It Renders Me Wordless. Because Surely Words Would Conspire Against Such Luck, Would Protest The Unlikelihood Of Such A Turn Of Events.

What A Horrible Feeling That Is, To Know That If The Disease [aids] Had Primarily Affected Pta Presidents, Or Priests, Or White Teenage Girls, The Epidemic Would Have Been Ended Years Earlier, And Tens Of Thousands, If Not Hundreds Of Thousands Of Lives Would Have Been Saved.

They Defy Gravity, As Good Books Should.

And I Told You: I Think Of A Photograph You Took Of Me, Up In Montreal. You Told Me To Jump In The Air, So In The Picture, My Feet Are Off The Ground. Later, I Asked You Why You Wanted Me To Do That, And You Told Me It Was The Only Way To Get Me To Forget About The Expression On My Face. You Were Right. I Am Completely Unposed, Completely Genuine. In My Mind’s Eye, I Picture Myself Like That, Reacting To You.

I Can't Pretend To Know What Love Is. It Just Is.

I Don’t Want To Throw Everything Away For Something Uncertain.

There Are Boys So Enraptured By Love That They Can't Get Their Hearts To Slow Down Enough To Get Some Rest, And Other Boys So Damaged By Love That They Can't Stop Picking At Their Pain.

Then I Go In The Den And Turn On Law & Order, Since The Only Thing I Can Really Count On In Life Is That Whenever I Turn On The Tv, There Will Be A Law & Order Episode.

Love Is The Higher Law.

Maybe Relationships Could Have Fractals, Too. And Maybe The Sense Of Loss Was When You're Becoming A Fractal Of What You Once Were To Each Other.

Moments Into Minutes. Minutes Into Hours. Hours Into Days. Days Into Years. Years Into Possibility. This Will Linger.

We Are So Used To Releasing Words. We Don't Know What To Do With Them If They Stay.

These Words Are Now Mine, But Soon They’ll Be Ours.

It Was Like Everyone Suddenly Knew What Mattered. Money Didn't Matter. Politics Didn't Matter. Tabloid News Didn't Matter. No-compassion Mattered. Calm Mattered. Respect Mattered. Did It Really Take Something Of This Magnitude To Make Us Realize This?

I Kiss Her And She Finds The Light Switch And Turns It Off, And We're Just Lit In Pepsi-can Colors And It's Like We've Finally Found This Other Kind Of Conversation, This Conversation In Gestures And Pulls And Pushes And Breaths And Grasps And Teases And Glimmers And Rubs And Expectation.

I Felt Like I Was Missing Something. Missing You More. Missing Whatever Was Going To Happen Next.

Sometimes The Space Between Knowing What To Do And Actually Doing It Is A Very Short Walk. Other Times It Is An Impossible Expanse.

When He Talked To You, You Seemed To Fit In, But When Someone Else Was Talking, Or He Would Be Distracted, You Jsut Looked Lonely Over There. At Least To Me. But Whenever I Would Tell You That, You'd Say "i'm Fine. I Just Slip Out Of It, You Know?" And I'd Say "i'll Catch You," And You Would Say, "it's Not The Kind Of Slipping You Can Catch.

You Make It A Production. Slam Doors. Knock Things Over. Scream. But I Just Leave. Even If I'm Still Standing There, I Leave. I Am Refusing You. I Am Denying You. I Am An Adjective That Is Quickly Turning Into A Noun.

The Important Thing Is For The Characters To Feel Real, And To Be Given The Humanity They Are Due. That Granting Of Humanity Is What Separates A Full Portrait From A Stereotype.

You're Giving Up. You're Slipping Into Being Miserable And If You Are Being Miserable, Then It's All About You Again. But It's Not All About You. Love Doesn't Work That Way.

In The Next Election, I'm Voting For Your Mom To Be The Next God.

You Know, I'd Get A Tattoo With Your Name On It. Only, I Want You To Have The Freedom To Change Your Name If You Want To.

Sharing Truth Is Not The Kind Of Gift That Comes In Wrapping Paper - Ripped Open Once And, There, You're Done. No, This Is A Gift That Must Be Unfolded.

Maybe Language Is Kind, Giving Us These Double Meanings. Maybe It's Trying To Teach Us A Lesson, That We Can Always Be Two Things At Once.

There Will Always Be More Questions. Every Answer Leads To More Questions. The Only Way To Survive Is To Let Some Of Them Go.

Do You Know When You Cross Against Traffic? You Look Down The Street And See A Car Coming, But You Know You Can Get Across Before It Gets To You. So Even Though There’s A Don’t Walk Sign, You Cross Anyway. And There’s Always A Split Second When You Turn And See That Car Coming, And You Know That If You Don’t Continue Moving, It Will All Be Over. That’s How I Feel A Lot Of The Time. I Know I’ll Make It Across. I Always Make It Across. But The Car Is Always There, And I Always Stop To Watch It Coming.

I Learn About The Highs And Lows Of Living With The Same Mother For Your Entire Life, About How No One Can Make You Angrier, But How You Can't Really Love Anyone More.

Her Vulnerability Is Open, But She’s Safe Within It.

Me: You Know What Sucks About Love? O.w.g.: What? Me: That It's So Tied To The Truth.

You Leave The Phone On Beside You As You Fall Asleep. I Sit In My Bed And Listen To Your Breathing, Until I Know You Are Safe, Until I Know You No Longer Need Me For The Night.

I Was Starting To Think I Was Making Up Memories, Just To Have Answers. Our Brain Does That Sometimes. Or At Least Mine Does.

In My Experience, Desire Is Desire, Love Is Love. I Have Never Fallen In Love With A Gender. I Have Fallen For Individuals.

Underneath All That Denial, You're Someone Who's Deeply, Deeply Nice.

But Isn't This A Dance? Isn't All Of This A Dance? Isn't That What We Do With Words? Isn't That What We Do When We Talk, When We Spar, When We Make Plans Or Leave It To Chance? Some Of It's Choreographed. Some Of The Steps Have Been Done For Ages. And The Rest -- The Rest Is Spontaneous. The Rest Has To Be Decided On The Floor, In The Moment, Before The Music Ends.

Here’s What I Know About The Realm Of Possibility— It Is Always Expanding, It Is Never What You Think It Is. Everything Around Us Was Once Deemed Impossible. From The Airplane Overhead To The Phones In Our Pockets To The Choir Girl Putting Her Arm Around The Metalhead. As Hard As It Is For Us To See Sometimes, We All Exist Within The Realm Of Possibility. Most Of The Limits Are Of Our Own World’s Devising. And Yet, Every Day We Each Do So Many Things That Were Once Impossible To Us.

It's As If When You Love Someone, They Become Your Reason. And Maybe I've Gotten It Backward, Maybe It's Just Because I Need A Reason That I Find Myself Falling In Love With Her. But I Don't Think That's It. I Think I Would Have Continued Along, Oblivious, If I Hadn't Happened To Meet Her.

Falling In Love

When You Love Someone

I Have Already Spent Roughly Five Thousand Hours Asleep Next To You. This Has To Mean Something.

Someday Your Prince Will Come," I Assure Him. "and The First Thing I'm Going To Say To Him Is, 'what Took You So Long?

Why Do We Feel The Need To Disconnect In Order To Connect?

But Death Is Not Freedom. For A Moment, It Can Look Like Freedom. But Then It's Death. Anything. Something. Nothing.

When We’re Alone Together, I’m The Destination. When I’m Here In Her Life At School, I’m The Disruption.

Because Sometimes You Just Have To Dance Like A Madman In The Self-help Section Of Your Local Bookstore.

He Doesn’t Just Look Upset—he Looks Newly Blind. There Is Such Loss In His Eyes, And It Permeates Every Other Part Of His Body.

What Did It Matter To Me? Did I Think That By Making You Rational About One Thing, I Could Make You Rational About Everything? Maybe. Or Maybe I Just Wanted To Save You From Your Fears

Having Someone Think Of Me That Way Was Like Discovering A New Window In The Room I'd Lived In All My Life.

So What Else Can I Tell You?" I Asked. "i Mean, To Get You To Reveal Lily To Me.

Being With Someone For Over A Year Can Mean That You Love Them … But It Can Also Mean You’re Trapped.

Love Is Tied To Truth. I Think Of Them As Unhappily Conjoined Twins.

That Lasting Things Do, In Fact, Last.

There Are Times When I Worry That I've Already Lost Myself. That Is, That My Self Is So Inseparable From Being With You That If We Were To Separate, I Would No Longer Be. I Save This Thought For When I Feel The Darkest Discontent. I Never Meant To Depend So Much On Someone Else.

I Love You,” She Says. “i Love You,” I Say. And Then We Hang Up, Because Nothing Else Needs To Be Said After That. I Want To Give Zara Her Life Back. Even If I Feel I Deserve Something Like This, I Don’t Deserve It At Her Expense.

Anchor, V.: I Drift, I Drift, I Drift, You Stay.

Scapegoat, N. I Think Our Top Two Are: 1. Not Enough Coffee. 2. Too Much Coffee.

We All Contain Mysteries, Especially When Seen From The Inside.

Eventually She Fell Asleep, But I Kept The Phone Against My Ear, Lulled By Her Breathing, And Her Breathing Again In The Background. And Yes, It Felt Like Home. Like Everything Belonged Exactly Where It Was.

Belonging. Togetherness. These Words Are As Complicated And Confusing As The Word Love. It’s Probably All The Same Thing. Or It Would Be If We Let It Be. I Can Only Guess From Observation.

Love Weaves Itself From Hundreds Of Threads.

There Is No Such Thing As Equality For Some. Equality Must Be For All. That Is What Freedom Is. That Is What Liberty Is. No Human Being Is Born More Or Less Important Than Any Other. How Can We Allow Ourselves To Forget That? What Simpler Truth Is There?

The Minute I Knew I Was In Love Was The Minute When There Was No Question About It.

I Don’t Like It When You Use My Shampoo, Because Then Your Hair Smells Like Me, Not You.

There Are Times I Think Of Us All And I Wish We Were Back In Second Grade. Not Really That Young. But I Wish It Felt Like Second Grade. I’m Not Saying Everyone Was Friends Back Then. But We All Got Along. There Were Groups, But They Didn’t Really Divide. At The End Of The Day, Your Class Was Your Class, And You Felt Like You Were A Part Of It. You Had Your Friends And You Had The Other Kids, But You Didn’t Really Hate Anyone Longer Than A Couple Of Hours. Everybody Got A Birthday Card. In Second Grade, We Were All In It Together. Now We’re All Apart.

I Am Not Dangerous. Only The Stories Are Dangerous. Only The Fictions We Create, Especially When They Become Expectations.

Incessant Adj. The Doubts. You Had To Save Me From My Constant Doubts. That Deep-seeded Feeling That I Wasn't Good Enough For Anything I Was A Fake At My Job I Wasn't Your Equal My Friends Would Forget Me If I Moved Away For A Month. It Wasn't As Easy As Hearing Voices Nobody Was Telling Me This. It Was Just Something I Knew. Everyone Else Was Playing Along But I Was Sure That One Day They Would All Stop.

There Are Things I Miss," You Said. "but If I Didn't Have You, I'd Miss More.

I Wish I Were Someone Else, Even Though I Know I'll Never, Ever Be Able To Get Away From What I've Done And What's Been Done To Me.

She Is So Lost In Her Sadness That She Has No Idea How Visible It Is.

I Don't Get This At All. It's Like Protesting The Fact That Some People Are Red-haired.

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