. (wakanda) wrote in dunhavenic, @ 2018-06-11 22:55:00 |
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He’s thirteen the first time he kisses a girl. He’s at a birthday party for a girl a year older than he is and her parents aren’t home, which his parents would not have agreed to if they’d known ahead of time, something he’ll definitely get in trouble for once they hear about it (and they will; his parents always have a way of finding out). He’d wanted to leave almost right away, but his friends had talked him into staying. He isn’t sure he’s glad for it yet. The birthday girl and her best friend decide that everyone’s going to play spin the bottle, to the delighted squeals of the other girls. One boy remarks that it’s so old school, but they all sit down in a circle. “You too, Harris,” his friend says, drawing more attention to him than he wants in this moment. David’s been trying to think of a good lie to get out of it, but he can’t, so he sits down. It happens quickly: Jazmin, the birthday girl, spins and the bottle points to him. A boy claps him on the shoulder and pushes him forward while the others cheer or clap. Jaz looks pleased, he thinks? Nervous, maybe? She doesn’t look disgusted, so he’ll take that as a win. It only lasts for a few seconds, but after, he can still smell her shampoo and he can still taste her lip gloss when he licks his lips. He catches her staring at him on and off the rest of the night. She’s his first girlfriend. She breaks up with him a few weeks later. ---- The first time he leaves home by himself, he’s sixteen and he spends six weeks at music camp in Michigan, surrounded by like-minded and equally talented people. It’s the farthest he’s ever been from home, and it’s the first time he’s ever felt the most like himself in his life. He spends his days playing music and listening to music and just completely immersed in a whole new world. Even outside of the practice rooms, there’s a sort of music in the way the wind rustles the trees and the lake laps against the shore. Out of his entire cabin, though, there’s one boy in particular that caught his attention. They’ve been inseparable since camp began, and his presence is both inspiring and terrifying. David feels electrified around him, but he doesn’t understand. He thinks it’s just the music. But when they’re five weeks in and David is thinking about how they’ll probably never see each other again, he’s filled instead with a painful ache that won’t go away, and he spends an entire day thinking about Eliott’s lips and Eliott’s smile. He makes mistakes on his compositions left and right, and he’s sulking by the lake when Eliott finds him after dinner. The thrill that he feels in Eliott’s presence is back and he still can’t figure out why -- or maybe he knows why, and that’s why he’s been messing up all day, and that’s why he’s been avoiding the other boy. He says he can’t stop thinking about something. Eliott says neither can he. When they look at each other, David knows they’ve been dancing around the same thing for weeks. I’ve never done this before, David admits. Kissed someone? Eliott asks. No, he corrects. I’ve never kissed a boy. The other boy’s smile could light up a whole room. You’re in good hands, he tells David, and it’s true. They write letters back and forth for the rest of the year, until his father accidentally opens one and realizes what his son has been hiding. David only writes one more time, to say good bye. He has a string of girlfriends over the next few years. He tries to forget, but years later, he’s still sure what he felt that summer was love. ----- He’s twenty one when he attends his first Pride. His friends at Howard talk him into a long weekend in New York City for the fortieth anniversary of Stonewall. The city is pulsing with energy and with love, with joy and with rebellion, and all he can do is cry. This is where he belongs, he thinks, in a world more vibrant that he had ever imagined. He doesn’t know exactly who he is or who he’s going to be, but he’s no longer afraid to find out. |