[bri]

Один из самых-самых любимых рассказов

David Levithan "Princes"
(из книги "How they met and other stories")

The minute I hit high school, the minute the train station was only a walk away, I escaped into the city and danced. I had been practicing since I was seven—practicing to be that kind of body, the kind that gets away. Right after school, two days a week. Then three. Then four. The Nutcracker in winter, the big recital right before summer. I outgrew my teacher and his storefront studio. Cut class to audition for a modern dance studio in Manhattan. Treated my acceptance like the keys to the city.

When you’re a boy dancer, your progression through the Nutcracker is like this: First you’re a mouse, then you’re a Spaniard, then you’re a prince. I could feel my body changing that way, from something cute and playful to something strange and foreign, then something approaching beauty. You start off wanting to be a snowflake, to be a character. But then you realize you can be the movement itself.

I loved watching the boys, and I loved being the boy who was watched. Not as a mouse, not as a Spaniard. But now, as a prince.

I doubt my parents knew what they were getting into when they let me go to that first dance class. I know some fathers justify it by saying it will help when the boy grows up to be a quarterback, when he has to dance past the linebackers. I know some mothers tell other mothers that it’s so much better than staying on the couch all day. My parents never really discussed the subject with me. They came to the Nutcrackers, they came to the big recitals, and they came to the conclusion that I was gay. Not every boy dancer is gay, or grows up to be gay. But come on. A whole lot of us are.

My brother Jeremy came to most of the performances, too. When he was five and I was ten, he got all worried that our Jewish family was starting to celebrate Christmas, with all of the red, green, and white costuming going on. It was only when he realized he was celebrating me instead of celebrating Santa that he was all for it. Five years younger than me, always a kid in my eyes. Whether he knew I was gay or not didn’t really matter to me. He wasn’t going to be a part of that part of my life.

That part resided in the city. Specific address: the Broadway studios of the Modern Dance Workshop, housed in a rent-by-the-hour space between Prince and Spring in SoHo, with a view of a publishing company across the street. I had to audition four times in order to get in—there were only twenty students, mostly city, some suburban. Six guys, fourteen girls. The instructors were either older dancers who’d been worn down into being choreographers or aspiring dancers looking for a day job to support their auditioning habits. There was Federica Rich, a middle-aged footnote of the footlights. There was quiet, unassuming Markus Constantine, who looked at us not so much as teenagers but as potential trajectories, mapping the mathematics of our every movement. His counterpoint was Elaine, who’d just graduated from the dance program at Michigan, and clearly belonged to the dance-as-therapy school. She was always examining her reflection in our wall of mirrors.

And Graham. At twenty-two, he was only five years older than me. He hadn’t gone to college; he’d danced his way across Europe instead. He was beautiful in the way that a breeze is beautiful—the kind of beauty you feel gratitude for. From the minute I saw him behind the table at my fourth audition, I knew I would be dancing for him. To make him watch, so I could return the watching.

I was not the only one. We’d all tell stories about Graham and treat them like facts, or glean small facts and turn them into stories. Carmela had heard that he’d been an underwear model in Belgium. Tracy said he once dated one of the male leads at Tharp, and that when he’d left, the lead had drunk himself into depression. Eve said this wasn’t true; the dancer had been from Cunningham, not Tharp.

I wanted to be the one to find out the truth. I wanted to become a part of the truth, part of the story.

Mostly, I hung out with the girls. They weren’t competition. As for the other boys—only one or two were a real threat. Connor had the inside track with the teachers, since he’d been at MDW for two semesters now. Philippe was much stronger than he was graceful, but he was also named Philippe, which I had to imagine gave him an advantage. As for the others—everyone trusted that Thomas had been accepted because of his trust fund; Miles seemed intimidated by the sound of his own footsteps; George leaped like a gazelle but landed like a lumberjack. Modern dance is forgiving of many things, but it still discriminates against the balance-impaired.

From the minute I got on the train, I felt I was already in the city, already a part of that rush. But when I got into the studio, the city ceased to be anything but a traffic buzz in the background. That room contained a world.

On the train ride back, I would try to stay within it. I would replay Graham’s single nod to me a hundred times over, watching it from every angle. If he said anything to me, I would gather the sentences like a shell seeker. Sitting on the orange reversible seats, jutted back and forth by the rhythm of the rails, I would try to remember all of my movements. Inevitably, the ones that came back to me the most were the errors—the slight wobble of the ankle, the unfortunate and unintended dip of the arms. My memory became slave to the corrections I would need to make. More so if Graham had noticed.

I could have called one of my parents to pick me up when I got into the station, but I was never ready to see them, never ready to concede that I was home so soon. So I walked the mile home. My body, having just been sitting for a half hour, reawakened to a new kind of fatigue—not the adrenaline exhaustion of having just finished, but the unoiled hinges of afterward, when everything catches up with you and your body lets you know how it truly feels. Sometimes I loved that ache, because it felt like an accomplishment. Other times I was tired of everything.

I always stayed until the last possible moment of class, and then sometimes a few of the girls and I would run to Dojo for a yogurt shake or a cheeseburger. By the time I got to my street, suburbia was empty of cars, of noise, of movement. Even the reading light in Jeremy’s room was off, the new chapter dog-eared for the night. My parents’ room emanated a blue television glow; if I went close to the window, I could hear the sound of law-and-order suspects being caught, or the roll call of the news. By the time I passed their doorway, my parents were usually asleep, even if the television wasn’t.

I was seventeen, halfway toward eighteen, and I had learned something nobody had ever taught me: Once you get to a certain age, especially if a driver’s license is involved, you can go a whole day—a whole week, even—without ever seeing your family. You can maybe say good morning and maybe say good night, but everything in the middle can be left blank.

I saw Jeremy a few minutes every morning at breakfast. He was starting to really grow, almost thirteen. His awkward voice didn’t faze me, but the way his body was beanstalking, beginning to fit into itself, was strange. I knew there were probably things I should be telling him—but then I figured that I’d figured it all out without the help of an older brother. I wanted him to be independent. So I left him alone.

Did I know him at all? Yes. He was class-president material, in a town where that was more a measure of affability than popularity. He would grow up to be the boy every girl’s parents wanted her to bring home. He was ingratiating without being grating. He was, I imagined, an okay guy.

And did he know me at all? He knew me as the brother who was always leaving. So maybe the answer was yes.

One of the reasons I was so happy to avoid my house was that everyone else was deeply involved in the preparations for Jeremy’s Bar Mitzvah. My own Bar Mitzvah had been stressful enough—forget coming of age, it was more like a see-how-many-times-his-voice-can-crack contest. (The answer: roughly 412 times in one morning service.) The experience left me with a sheaf of savings bonds and little else. Jeremy’s, if anything, was going to be more elaborate. Jeremy seemed less bothered by this than I was. He deferred everything but the Torah portion to our parents, and appeared grateful and interested when such things as appetizers and candle color were discussed. After my recommendation for a bacon-flavored cake, I wasn’t consulted.

Two more weeks. I only had two more weeks to put up with the preparations. My mother had made me pick out my tie over a month ago. I was all set.

At class, we didn’t acknowledge our parents. No, that’s not true—we were willing to acknowledge their faults. I kept relatively quiet during these conversations, because I had less than the other kids to check off on the dishonor roll of slights and abuses. Carmela’s dad had left and her mom had given up. Eve’s stepmother nearly broke Eve’s leg. Miles’s parents were in a constant state of disowning him. Although he’d never say it, the girls knew he was working two jobs to pay for tuition. Every now and then Thomas, our trust funder, would strip a twenty from his parents’ billfold and we would all draw hearts on it before slipping it into Miles’s gym bag.

Graham never talked about his parents or where he’d come from. When he said “home,” he meant his basement apartment in the East Village. I imagined it so clearly, down to the rag rug on the floor and the incense holder on the bedside table. Sometimes I would play an infinite game of Twenty Questions with him, trying to use each question to narrow him down even further, to get to his one single answer. Did he live alone? Yes, if you didn’t count the uninvited mouse. Was he happy in New York? Yes, but in a different way than he’d been happy in Barcelona or Paris. What did he think of Center Stage? That God was cruel to make Ethan Stieffel straight.

From the way he criticized my dancing, I knew he thought I had a chance. You don’t need to go to too many classes to know the difference between a teacher who points our your errors because they are beyond help and need to be pointed out as an obligation to dance itself, and the instructors who tear you down because they think you can rebuild in the proper way. Graham didn’t hold back his corrections, but he didn’t hold back his praise, either.

We each had to perform in a piece, and Graham chose me to be in his. While Elaine dangled her dancers in Debussy, Markus knit together swaths of Schubert, and Federica fastened onto flamenco, Graham decided to make a suite out of recent Blur songs. “An aria of dislocated longing,” he called it. “A dance for the anonymously lovelorn,” I answered. He nodded, happy with me.

Practice was different now. He would touch me, guide me, manipulate me into the right contours, the shape of his vision. I was used to this, but not in this way. This was not the Nutcracker. This was personal. I was prince now of a kingdom that was still being defined.

There was a movement I couldn’t get. A turn with arms outstretched. I could not get my arms to match his direction—or maybe it was that he could not get his direction to match with words. My arms spread too much like wings, then too much like broken branches. They embraced too much of the air, then they did not hold the space tight enough. Graham came behind me and mapped my arms with his, held my hands and made every point align, wrist to shoulder. I closed my eyes, taking in the angles, the arcs, his breathing against my neck. When he let go, I stayed in the pose. David’s slingshot, he called it, and I knew I wouldn’t get it wrong again.

When we were done, he asked me to join him for a drink. I knew it wasn’t a date. I knew he wasn’t asking me out. But what my mind knew, my hope ignored. It was my hope that was disappointed when I came out of the changing room to find a whole entourage waiting for me. It was my hope that faltered when Carmela said, “Are you coming with us or not?”

But my hope was stubborn. When Graham held back so we’d be side by side on the sidewalk, my hope ignored everything else and held on to the single fact of his proximity, his choice. He led us from the back, calling out directions to George and Carmela until we made it to Beauty Bar, which used to be a beauty parlor but now served cocktails. The decor was still Retro Beautician, with half-dome hair dryers attached to the backs of many of the chairs. There were six of us, and Graham was the only one who was legal. We gave him money and he represented us at the bar, returning with Cosmopolitans stemmed through his fingers, perfectly balanced.

He chose to sit next to me and then he chose to talk to me for the next hour. We talked about Paris, and I tried to erase my family from as much of our family vacation as I could. He touched my arm for emphasis and left it there. Our legs came into perfect contact. He glinted at me.

Is this really happening? I thought. Then I saw Miles on the other side of Graham. Noticing. He smiled at me, as if to say, Yes, it is happening.

I didn’t feel that many steps younger than him. He wasn’t treating me that way. If I didn’t feel like his equal, then at least I felt like he was welcoming me into the range.

I wanted every word to last for hours, every gaze to last for days. I wanted to confiscate all our watches, banish all the clocks. But inevitably Graham looked down at his wrist and realized there was somewhere else he needed to be. There was no question, no discussion, that the rest of us would go when he did. Staying would be like trying to act out the trick after the magician had left the stage.

Graham hugged us all good-bye. My hug lasted a little longer, had a little tighter squeeze at the end.

I wanted to kiss him. I wanted him to want to kiss me.

But not on the street corner, not with George and Miles and Carmela and Eve there. We all dispersed, me and Miles walking together to the subway. I was practically floating—and then I realized that Miles, in his quiet way, was floating, too.

“Wasn’t that amazing?” he asked. “I mean, that place. And that drink. And everything. I can’t wait for life to be like that, can you?”

No, I told him. I couldn’t wait.

I wasn’t planning on waiting.

When it was time for us to part, he opened his arms for an embrace. I figured this was now the way we would all say good-bye.

As he hugged me, Miles said, “You’re pretty cool, you know.”

“You’re drunk,” I told him.

He pulled back with a smile and said, “In a way.” Then he said good night again and disappeared with a wave.

On the train ride home, I wondered if I should have asked for Graham’s phone number, what it would be like to hear his voice at midnight, the last sound before going to sleep. It was late when I got home, but not too late. Still, my father was waiting for me when I came into the kitchen. He did not look happy.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

“A few of us went out after. For dinner.”

“Was it better than the dinner you were supposed to be home for?”

And it wasn’t until then that I remembered—a Family Dinner. I had promised, and I had forgotten.

“Your mother is very upset,” my father added.

“Well, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t sound very sorry.”

There was no winning. None whatsoever.

“I’m going to bed,” I told him.

“You will be home for dinner tomorrow. Do you understand?”

“It’s not that difficult a concept.”

“What did you say?”

“I said fine. Fine.”

The next day at class, Federica had us doing exercises most of the time, so I didn’t get a chance to have Graham Time by myself. I did notice him watching me, though. Singling me out. At one point I winked at him and he laughed.

I was home in time for dinner, but not in time to set the table. Jeremy had done it dutifully in my place.

As soon as the food was served, conversation turned immediately to the Bar Mitzvah. Reply cards were in, and with less than two weeks to go until the big day, it looked like there were more attendees than my parents had been planning on.

“All your cousins are bringing their boyfriends,” my mother said with a sigh. “I knew we shouldn’t have let them bring a guest. All it takes is one of the girls to bring a boyfriend, and suddenly they all have boyfriends to bring. We haven’t even met these boys. Except for that Evan, and he was not family material.”

I don’t know what started me thinking. Maybe it was the fact that two of my cousins were exactly my age. Maybe it was the notion of family material. But suddenly I had something to say.

“I didn’t know Diane and Liz were allowed to bring guests,” I said.

“Yes, and Debbie and Elena. You knew that.”

I put down my fork. “So I assume this means that I can bring a guest, too.”

Now my father put down his fork. “What do you mean?” he asked, with a tone of genuine mystification.

“I mean, I can bring someone. Right?”

“But these are the girls’ boyfriends,” my mother said.

“What about my boyfriend?” I found myself asking.

Pure silence at the table, loud shouting in each of our heads. Except Jeremy’s. He just watched, transfixed.

“What boyfriend?” my mother asked.

“He doesn’t have a boyfriend,” my father answered. “He’s just being stubborn.”

“His name is Graham,” I said. “He’s in my dance class.”

It was the name that did it. The name that made it real. For all of us.

“Jesus Christ,” my father said, pushing his plate away.

“There are already too many people,” my mother added quickly, somewhere between diplomatic and petrified. “There isn’t enough room.”

“There is for Diane and Liz and Debbie and Elena’s boyfriends.”

“But that’s different.”

“How is that different?”

“It just is.”

“That’s bullshit.”

Now my father looked truly pissed. My mother was still trying to salvage her argument. “We don’t even know this boy,” she said, having already forgotten his name. “It’s not like you’ve brought him home for us to meet.”

That was brilliant. “Why in God’s name would I want to do that?” I was shouting now, near tears. Trying desperately to keep those tears in, so my parents wouldn’t see them.

“Honey…,” my mother soothed. But it was too late for her to make it better.

“Don’t leave this table,” my father said, anticipating my next move.

So I left. Threw my napkin on my plate, went to my room, closed the door.

How many times had we acted this out before?

Usually I slammed the door. Locked it.

I was beyond that now. I didn’t want them to hear a thing.

Like I was already gone.

If I’d had a car, I would have driven all night. But instead I let my mind do the driving. It took me to Graham’s apartment. Into his arms.

My mother knocked and told me there was still food in the kitchen.

I didn’t answer.

My father walked by. I could hear his footsteps slow for a second, then move on.

When Jeremy came by, his knock was quiet, as if he thought I was already asleep. Because I felt bad he had to see everything, I told him to come in.

He stayed in the doorway. Was it because he didn’t want to disturb me? Or was he afraid I’d shout at him, too?

I didn’t know.

I was about to apologize for dinner, to let him know it really didn’t have anything to do with his Bar Mitzvah. But he surprised me by speaking first.

“Do you love him?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Graham.”

He was serious. I could see it on his face. He was trying to process it all, and he was serious.

“Yes,” I said. “I probably do.”

He nodded, and I knew there was something else that I should say. But once again, I didn’t know what those words were. I wasn’t used to being a brother.

And that nod. Was he accepting me? Or was it about something else? He looked determined. But I had no idea why.

“Good night,” he said, closing the door.

I had planned on sneaking away in the morning, avoiding them all. But when I got to the kitchen, Jeremy was already there, our parents in orbit around him, trying to get their things ready for work. Neither my mother nor my father said anything about the previous night. Neither acknowledged that this was anything but an ordinary day. But Jeremy…well, Jeremy did.

He didn’t even look up from his Frosted Flakes.

“You’re going to let Jon bring Graham to the Bar Mitzvah, right?” he said between spoonfuls.

My parents shot each other a glance. Then my father said plainly, “No, we’re not.”

Jeremy, still looking at his cereal: “Why not?”

“It’s not appropriate. If this were a few months ago, maybe. If this was a longtime thing, perhaps. But not now.”

“How do you know how long it’s been?” I asked.

But my father didn’t rise to the question. He just said, “End of discussion.”

Now Jeremy raised his eyes from his breakfast and looked straight at our mother.

“I want to invite Graham,” he said.

“That’s sweet,” she replied. “But really, it’s too late.”

Jeremy went on. “If you don’t want to invite him as Jon’s date, he could come as one of my friends. I know Herschel can’t make it, so Graham can come instead.”

Instead of answering my brother, my father went after me. “What have you been saying to him?” he asked. Then, turning to Jeremy, “What did he say to you?”

“He didn’t say anything to me,” Jeremy answered. “I just think if Jon wants to bring his boyfriend, he should.”

“The answer,” my father insisted, “is no.”

He gathered up his briefcase, as if this truly was the end of discussion. My mother and I stood still, waiting—for what, we didn’t know. I watched Jeremy. He looked pained. I wanted to tell him to stop, it was okay. But I stayed silent and he did not. He looked right at my father this time.

“If Jon can’t invite Graham,” he said slowly, surely, “then I am not having a Bar Mitzvah.”

“What?” my father asked, as if he hadn’t heard right.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said.

“No,” Jeremy told me. “I do.”

Why? I had done nothing to deserve this. Nothing.

“We’ll talk about this tonight,” my father said before storming out. He didn’t even kiss my mother good-bye, like he always did.

My mother looked at me and said, “You see what you’ve done?”

I couldn’t take it. I know I should have stayed by Jeremy’s side. I should have talked to him. Maybe talked him out of it. But it was too much. I did the only thing I knew how to do—I left. I gave Jeremy a squeeze on the shoulder before I did. That’s what I could give him. And I gave my mother a kiss, probably because my father hadn’t. Then I was out of there. Free, but not.

I was in a daze through school and the trip into the city, but seeing Graham brought me to all of my senses. At first I wanted to tell him everything. Then I just wanted to tell him something. And eventually I would have been satisfied with telling him anything. We worked pretty much the whole day together, the same Blur songs playing over and over as he led me through the steps, as I showed him what I could do. His sweat on mine, his hand guiding my body. I felt such sureness there. Nobody could tell me what I was doing was wrong.

Thomas invited some of us to stay at his house overnight. His parents were away and he wanted to have a party. We didn’t trust Thomas to catch us from our leaps, to make the right entrance at the right time. But we did trust his parents to have a large, unlocked liquor cabinet and plenty of space to crash.

It was Friday. There was no reason for me to go home, and plenty of reasons for me to stay.

I called the house and Jeremy picked up.

“Tell Mom and Dad I’m staying over at my friend Thomas’s,” I told him. I even gave him the number.

He took it down, repeated it to me. We hung on the line for a second.

“Hey, Jon?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you really going to Thomas’s?”

“Yeah.”

“Not Graham’s?”

I heard a little hope in his voice. “Nah,” I said, “but I’m hoping he’ll be there. Thanks again, by the way, for this morning. You really don’t have to do that.”

“No, I want to,” he assured me. “It’s important.”

I was trying to think of something to say to that, but Jeremy quickly told me our mother had gotten home, so he had to go.

I told Thomas I was in the clear, then I went to find Graham. He’d just changed from the shower, his hair dripping perfectly.

“A bunch of us are going to Thomas’s,” I said, all casual. “You wanna come?”

I thought for a moment he was going to say yes, his smile was such a welcome one. But then he shook his head and said he had other plans. A date? I wondered immediately.

“A friend’s birthday party,” he said, as if reading my fears.

So a bunch of us went up to Thomas’s—Miles and I were the only sleepover guests; the rest were all city kids. Thomas’s place was nearly palatial, an Upper East Side mansion-apartment. We had the run of the land. Soon we were drinking, flipping cable channels, and gossiping about all the people who weren’t there. For one night—this big city night—I was an adult and I was treated like an adult. Like my opinion mattered. Like I had things to say. Like I could do what I wanted because I could judge my own consequences. We started talking about families and I bragged to everyone about what my brother had done, made it sound like we’d both stood up to our parents. Of course, I didn’t tell them who I’d named as my boyfriend, or even that I’d given him a name. I made it an argument over principle—an argument I’d won.

“So what’s going on with you and Graham?” Miles asked later on, when we took over the bunk beds in the guest room. Everyone else had left by now, except for Eve, who was making out with Thomas. A kind of host gift. I thought Miles was a little bit drunk and I wasn’t sure whether or not I was, too. I knew Graham would tell me, if only he were here.

“I don’t know what’s going on with me and Graham,” I said—and Miles laughed. “What?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he said. And then his voice changed to another voice, a gentler voice, as he wished me good night.

The next morning—more like afternoon, really—we woke up before Thomas. Miles cleaned the living room a little while I took a shower. Then another hour passed and Thomas still hadn’t emerged from his room. There was no way we were going to interrupt his closed door, so the two of us decided it was safe to leave. I asked Miles what he wanted to do.

“Why don’t we check out where Graham lives, see if he’s around?” he replied.

“But we don’t know where he lives!” I protested.

“Ooh, look,” he said, picking up the phone, “I got some magic in my fingers. I just press four-one-one, and…”—he gave Graham’s name and the East Village and asked for the address—“presto!”

There were messages on my cell phone from my home number, but I didn’t check them. My parents’ voices didn’t belong anywhere near this world. As Miles and I rode the 6 train downtown, we tried to piece together all the events of the previous night. Miles seemed disappointed in Thomas, and I wondered if he had a crush on him. (I hadn’t known Thomas was into girls, but I hadn’t really cared, either.)

I didn’t think we actually were going to show up at Graham’s doorstep. But when we got there—he lived next to a pizza place on East Ninth—Miles started to head straight for the bell.

“What are you doing?” I asked, not without some alarm.

“Don’t you want to see if he’s in?” he replied. I couldn’t tell if he was taunting me or just trying to help.

“I’d rather just bump into him,” I said.

So we got a pizza, then wandered around the block a half dozen times, until a lady on the stoop next to his asked us what the hell we were doing.

Neither Miles nor I wanted to go home, so we dragged our wandering farther, checking out the tattoo parlors on St. Mark’s and getting an overpriced latte to share at the Starbucks on Astor Place. Finally we found ourselves back at the dance studio—we were allowed to use it on weekends for rehearsal. It was better than going home.

And there he was. We walked into the studio and Graham was the only one there. Dancing each part of his piece, rehearsing for all of us at once. I felt such intimacy toward him then. An intimacy that was stolen, yes. Like staring at someone dreaming.

I watched him, and I could feel Miles watching me watch him. I didn’t try to hide it.

It was only when the dance was through, when the soundtrack had moved on to the next song, that Graham looked over and we made our presence known. Applauding, Miles and I walked into the room. Graham seemed surprised to see us, but not unhappy.

“So you survived your momentary brush with the lifestyles of the rich and infamous?” he asked. We told him a little about the party. He didn’t talk about his party, but he did say that his friends hadn’t made it to a midnight showing of a movie he wanted to see.

“We should go,” I said.

“Cool.” Graham looked at me. “You free now?”

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too eager.

“Miles?”

And Miles did the most amazing thing. He said, “No. I gotta get home. You two’ll have to make do without me.”

Part of me was afraid Graham would use this as an excuse to back out. He said he was sorry Miles had to go. And he asked me if I could wait ten minutes while he showered and changed.

I said it wouldn’t be a problem.

“Thank you,” I said to Miles as soon as Graham had hit the changing rooms.

He shook his head. “I don’t know which of us is the bigger fool.”

I asked him if he was really going home and he just shrugged and said, “We’ll see. I gave away my shift, but maybe I can get it back.”

Graham came out of the changing room with his shirt unbuttoned one step lower than most guys would have dared. I was wearing a black stretch T made for a dancer’s figure. We were quite a pair, entirely in place on the SoHo streets. On the ten-minute walk to the theater, we talked mostly about the dance and how it was coming along. When we got to the box office, he insisted on buying my ticket. I got us sodas.

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 within 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 well 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.

“Why?” I asked.

He winked at me. I swear to God, he winked at me. And then he said, “I want to make Tom insanely jealous.”

“Let’s go, then,” Miles said, laughing. And with that, they left me. Stunned. They took the dance floor, laughing and awkward and wonderful. I felt such love for both of them. Such love.

I looked over to Jeremy’s friends, who were all watching. I wondered which of the boys was Tom. If Jeremy was serious. Then I looked over at my father, at everyone else who was watching, confused and excited. Something was happening. I knew my father would blame me. I knew he would say all of this was my fault. And I would take it. I couldn’t take any of the credit for my astonishing brother, but I would happily take all of the blame. If it could be in some way my fault, then I would know I’d done something right.

I would stay to find out. And stay, and stay, and stay.

It is never, I hope, too late to be a good brother.