Two Boys Kissing

Two Boys Kissing opens with the words, “You can’t know what it is like for us now—you will always be one step behind. 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” (1). Levithan writes from the perspective of the gay men of the past who did not survive the AIDS epidemic. Their voices become an omnipresent narrator to the lives of the young gay boys whose stories are the book’s central narratives. Levithan presents the chorus as ancestral watchers over the lives of the queer youth of the present day. The chorus’ pains, triumphs, struggles and joys are inexorably intertwined with the current generation’s.

Sexual orientation and gender identity are separate branches of a person’s identity. Unlike race, religion, and culture, sexual and gender minorities don’t have the built-in culture and community that comes with those other aspects of identity. Queer people tend to find each other during adolescence or even adulthood, and have historically formed new communities and families, especially when their families and communities have rejected them. The voices of the past in Two Boys Kissing represent a lost generation that was building the kinds of communities and cultures for queer people that they didn’t have growing up. They represent the missing generation who wanted to make the world safer and more inclusive for the generations coming after them, but passed away, taking many of those foundations with them.

Levithan uses their voices in the same way that a Greek playwright might use the chorus. They observe and narrate, unable to affect the story. However, this chorus of voices also reflect the experiences of the characters and compare them to the very real, raw experiences of the queer people of the past. The characters’ experiences reflect both how far the world has come with LGBTQ equality, and how far it still has to go. Harry’s and Craig’s attempt to break a Guinness World Record is light-hearted and innocent, but the kiss becomes more profound as Levithan compares Harry’s difficulty—making it through the 32-hour ordeal—to the battle that many queer people experienced when trying to survive deadly HIV infections. “When your body starts to turn against you—when the surface value of the skin is nothing compared to the fireworks of pain in your muscles and your bones—the supposed truth of beauty falls away, because there are more important concerns to attend to” (149).