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  For Steve

  We Love Anderson Cooper

  Markus hadn’t had sex with Gavin. Not yet. But he couldn’t help thinking about it as he lay on his bed, listening through a single earbud to Rabbi Margolin’s nasal recording of Leviticus, Chapter 20, Verse 13. “If a man lies with a man … both have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death.” It was part of Markus’s bar mitzvah reading. In less than a month, he was supposed to chant those words from memory in a Cedarhurst, Long Island, temple.

  Markus hadn’t bothered with the second earbud because he didn’t need to hear the recording in stereo to know he hated Leviticus. He didn’t need to hear it at all. He swiped the file containing the Torah portion and deleted it. Just like that, the offending words were gone. He breathed easily, the air in his room suddenly light and abundant, his heart full and calm. On a poster above his dresser, Mets’ slugger David Wright leaned over home plate, gripping a bat. Markus imagined hitting a home run and the crowd cheering.

  His mother, Miriam, was in her study. She wore a short-sleeved sweater tucked into pressed khaki pants and peered at documents open on two computer screens. She had been promoted to vice president at her consulting firm that spring. Less than five feet tall, she nevertheless frightened those who crossed her.

  Markus stood in the doorway. “Mom?”

  “Yes?” she said, keeping her eyes on the documents.

  He would tell her everything if she turned around. Why should he keep his relationship with Gavin a secret? Hadn’t she exclaimed, “It’s about time,” when the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage? Hadn’t she worn a pride pin to the wedding of a lesbian cousin?

  After he told her, they would tell his dad, who would cry because he cried at everything, especially happy endings. His mom would open a bottle of champagne and say how proud they were of him for having the courage to be himself.

  “Yes?” she repeated.

  He couldn’t say it to her back.

  She was busy. Markus had overheard her say to his father the night before, “I don’t know how I’ll get it all done, with Markus’s bar mitzvah and this project deadline coming up.” She sat on the boards of three charities.

  “Do you need something?” she asked, still facing the screens.

  “I accidentally deleted the rabbi’s recording.”

  “How come you never accidentally delete Lil Wayne? I’ll e-mail you a backup.”

  * * *

  The next morning, he tried again to tell his mother. “I can’t read Leviticus.”

  His mother was late for work. He followed her through the house as she stuffed her laptop into a messenger bag and pulled on a navy jacket and heels that stabbed the carpet, leaving a bloodless trail. “If you practice, you’ll get it.”

  “No—I can’t say the stuff about gays.” He wanted her to ask why he couldn’t say it. If she did, he would tell her. But if she didn’t ask—his mother, who asked a million questions about everything—if she didn’t ask, it was because she didn’t want to know.

  “Don’t take it literally,” she said, staring at the entryway mirror as she applied plum lipstick.

  “How else can I take it?”

  “Tell yourself you don’t mean it. Or tell yourself you mean the opposite.” She kissed the air in front of his forehead and hurried out the door, calling over her shoulder, “Don’t forget your lunch.”

  Furious, he trolled the temple’s website that afternoon under an account he created for the purpose—Kosher Fag—leaving comments like God loves gays and Moses was queer. God’s Watching replied, It’s Adam and Eve, faggot, and Sodomites burn in hell. The temple blocked both accounts.

  “I don’t want a bar mitzvah,” Markus announced at dinner. “Dad’s not even Jewish.”

  “Your dad wants you to have a bar mitzvah,” his mother said, though his father was sitting right there. “Don’t you, Fritz?”

  Markus’s father cleared his throat. Sawdust clung to his unruly eyebrows. Markus had heard him planing boards in his workshop before dinner. He towered over the kitchen table, which he had built to suit his wife. “I want whatever you and Markus want.”

  Over the years, the temple congregation had become more progressive, but the rabbi remained a zealot. Markus couldn’t remember his father ever attending services, though he occasionally picked up Markus outside after Hebrew school.

  “Your father’s welcome in temple, if that’s what you’re worried about,” his mother said.

  * * *

  With the bar mitzvah two weeks away, Markus was miserable. Even thinking about the Mets-themed party his parents were throwing for him Saturday night after the service failed to cheer him up. He lay on Gavin’s bed, his head on his boyfriend’s stomach, his heart aching as if he had taken a punch to the chest, and decided once and for all he wouldn’t read Leviticus.

  Gavin’s parents were working late. The rapper Drake stared from a paisley hoodie in a poster pinned above the headboard. Jay-Z’s “Fuck With Me You Know I Got It” blasted from desktop speakers.

  Gavin was a popular boy whose habit of wearing untucked Oxford shirts, the last button undone, had been adopted throughout the seventh grade. Outside school, he wore headphones and crossed against lights, oblivious to honking horns and ambulance sirens. He was a foot taller than Markus. For years, girls had been including Gavin in their trips to the mall and ice skating. Lately he joined them at concerts, though Markus complained of being left out. No girl ever asked Markus anywhere, and boys never picked him to captain a team. Since Gavin kissed him behind the 7-Eleven six months ago, Gavin’s lips cold and tasting like raspberry Slurpee, Markus tried to tell himself he didn’t care about his own lesser popularity. He’d been chosen by the only boy who mattered.

  Markus had first suspected Gavin was gay when he saw him at their neighborhood community center, loitering outside the room where PFLAG was running a support group for queer kids. Neither boy had the courage to go in, but when they ran into each other at the 7-Eleven a few weeks later, Gavin had motioned for Markus to follow him around back.

  “I’m not going to recite the Torah,” Markus said now.

  “The what?” Gavin was Catholic.

  “Leviticus,” Markus said. “Fags are ‘an abomination.’ I told you.”

  Gavin nodded, but Markus didn’t know if he was nodding to the music or because he was following what Markus was saying.

  “Remember the valedictorian who came out in his graduation speech? His video was downloaded two million times,” Markus said. “That’s what I’m going to do in temple.”

  Gavin sat up abruptly, forcing Markus’s head off his stomach. “You’re not going to mention me, are you? My father would kill me.”

  “I won’t mention you.”

  “Don’t even say you have a boyfriend.”

  Markus wished they could come out together. Not only would they get to be themselves, in public, but having Gavin as his boyfriend would be a social triumph. No one would ever exclude him again. “I won’t. It’ll be fine. I promise.”

  Gavin let out a breath. “You’ll be famous. Everyone will be talking about you.”

  Markus pictured kids at school congratulating him on his newfound celebrity.

  Gavin wound his fingers in Markus’s hair, tugging gently
on the black curls. Markus’s scalp warmed. He felt pleasantly dizzy.

  “More guys our age should come out,” Gavin said. “I’d like to know who they are.”

  Markus stared at the luminescent stars glowing dimly on the ceiling. He didn’t like the idea of Gavin with other guys.

  Gavin pulled Markus on top of him. Even fully clothed, Markus felt as if they were one boy. They moved against each other, and Gavin found Markus’s mouth and rapped Jay-Z’s song into it.

  When Gavin tried to unbutton Markus’s shirt, Markus brushed his hand away. It had been like that since the beginning, Markus content to make out, Gavin pushing for more. Markus knew he would eventually give in, but the idea scared him. He wasn’t proud of his body the way he knew Gavin must be. He was short and doughy, and though Gavin had seen him in his bathing suit, it would be different if they were having sex. He hated the idea of disappointing Gavin.

  In his room later, Markus had second thoughts about surprising his parents with an announcement in temple. His father fried schnitzel—Markus’s favorite—every Sunday night. The dusky smell of the sizzling meat almost made up for having to return to school on Monday. A math professor, his father came from a long line of cabinetmakers. He taught Markus to build tables and desks using dovetail joints, handing him a fresh piece of wood without recrimination when Markus missed a cut or cracked a pin, applying too much force in his impatience to join the boards. And his mother: She had written an absence note after he skipped school to attend the Mets’ opening day. She helped him with book reports, improving what he wrote with her own views on The Basketball Diaries and The House on Mango Street. Together his parents attended all of his soccer and baseball games, though coaches often forgot him on the bench.

  But Markus was afraid if he told them, his parents would try to stop him from coming out in temple. His mother was secretary of the synagogue’s Hadassah chapter, whose members took it upon themselves to enforce decorum in the sanctuary. If he told his father, his father would tell Markus’s mother, so Markus couldn’t tell his father, either. Markus imagined taking a picture of himself in a rainbow Mets jersey in the photo booth at his party. He envisioned other boys finding the courage to come out at the party and all of them dancing together. He kept his mouth shut.

  * * *

  It was a warm May morning. In his bedroom, Markus struggled to button his white dress shirt, his fingers sweating and wobbly. His father knotted Markus’s tie, while his mother ran a lint brush over his pristine navy suit jacket for a third time before handing it to him. When Markus was dressed, his father wrapped an arm around his mother’s waist, and they leaned into each other and observed him, a boy they thought they knew.

  His mother handed him a folded copy of the speech she had written for him and cleared with the rabbi and the youth director. The speech was about being a member of the Jewish community. Markus didn’t plan to read it. He had written something for himself that was about belonging to a different community. It was in the top drawer of his dresser, buried beneath a pile of tube socks. He had memorized it, but planned to bring it anyway, just in case.

  His father took out his phone to snap Markus’s picture. Markus could tell how proud his parents were, how excited their only child would be honored in the temple, and he knew the day wouldn’t go as they expected. Wiping his palms on his pants, he forced a smile.

  Two hours later, standing on a stool behind the lectern, Markus smelled bodies pressed too close together, Rabbi Margolin’s musk aftershave, and the slow disintegration of parchment Torah scrolls lined up in the ark behind him. Soft light filtered through abstract stained-glass windows just below the ceiling. The temple seats were covered with purple velvet and spring loaded. When he attended services, Markus half expected to find a bucket of popcorn between his knees.

  The rabbi rested a hand on Markus’s shoulder as he introduced him to the congregation, but Markus wasn’t listening. He was picturing a makeup artist preparing him for a morning show, just one of the many TV spots he imagined he would do after the video of his bar mitzvah speech went viral. The valedictorian who came out had appeared on the Today Show and CNN. And then there was Sam Horowitz from Dallas. The video of his bar mitzvah dance routine landed him on Ellen. After he was famous, Markus thought he might do one of those “It Gets Better” videos that gave hope to gay kids.

  He looked down at his mother in the front row. She was smiling, displaying teeth whitened for the occasion. She held one of the dozens of small cellophane bags stuffed with candy she had distributed among the congregation to throw at Markus at the conclusion of the service. Next to his mother sat his father, a silver skullcap perched on his head like a miniature alien craft. At his father’s right was Markus’s grandmother, Helga, who had flown in from Hamburg. Knowing he was about to disturb a Lifecycle Event, as the Hadassah ladies liked to refer to the bar mitzvah, Markus’s legs trembled. He clutched the lectern. He hoped his parents would understand that confronted with Leviticus, he had to be honest about who he was.

  In the second row, Markus’s classmates from Hebrew school and Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School gazed down at silenced phones, texting or playing World of Warcraft, as he had done during so many interminable bar mitzvahs. Markus located Gavin, whose cheeks were pink—whether from warmth or excitement, Markus couldn’t tell. A pale blue shirt fell easily across Gavin’s chest. Mindful of his promise not to mention his boyfriend, Markus looked away.

  The rabbi droned on, throwing out worn phrases Markus heard at every bar mitzvah: “upstanding young man,” “future of the Jewish people,” “honor thy father and mother.” The man seemed to have a boilerplate speech into which he plugged each boy’s name. Perhaps after Markus’s announcement, the rabbi would talk about diversity, a subject Markus couldn’t remember him ever addressing.

  Markus fingered the speech in his pocket his mother had written. “Never be afraid to take initiative,” his father had once said to him. “That’s what makes a leader,” his mother added, only half listening as she bent over her laptop. He was taking that advice now, but he knew they might not see it that way.

  The rabbi squeezed his shoulder and receded from the lectern. In the packed synagogue, Markus stood alone.

  The congregation stared at him, hundreds of faces shimmering in the heat, flesh pixelating into swaths of pink and yellow and gray. Markus struggled to breathe the thick air. In the back someone coughed, and it startled him. His mouth was as dry as soda crackers, and his tie choked him.

  He cleared his throat. Glancing at his mother, her posture erect and her expression a mix of joy and anticipation as she held his father’s hand, Markus considered giving the speech she had written. He wasn’t responsible for Leviticus, which Jews had been reading in temple for thousands of years. But then he looked at Gavin. Why shouldn’t everyone accept him as Gavin had? And why shouldn’t he be famous, more popular even than his friend? Markus left his mother’s speech in his pocket. A tremor in his voice, he began: “Thank you all for coming to my bar mitzvah.”

  “Louder,” the rabbi stage-whispered from his thronelike chair facing the congregation.

  “Remember the people in the back,” his mother said.

  Markus raised his voice. “The Torah portion of the week is Leviticus.”

  “Louder,” Rabbi Margolin said.

  “Project,” his mother said. “Like we practiced.”

  Markus shouted: “In Leviticus … In Leviticus—”

  “Leviticus—we got it,” said the rabbi.

  Words that had come easily as Markus practiced them alone in his room now eluded him. He began again. “Things … things are different now. People are different.”

  “Yes?” the rabbi said. But Markus didn’t know where to go from there. He reached for his speech, patting his pockets, but found only his mother’s. He had forgotten to bring his own.

  The congregants leaned toward him, waiting, but Markus’s mind remained blank. He felt as exposed as the carvings of Ada
m and Eve hanging on the wall. Unsteady on the stool, he shifted his feet.

  His mother rifled through her large Chanel purse. She pulled out a sheaf of papers, her speech, and waved them. “Markus.”

  Determined to ignore her for once, he tried again. “Michael Sam,” he pleaded. “After he came out, no one in the NFL wanted him. He wasn’t drafted until the seventh round. He kissed his boyfriend on TV. On TV!” He didn’t know what point he was trying to make.

  Markus’s mother stopped smiling.

  His father cocked his head, sending his silver skullcap to the floor.

  His classmates looked up from their phones, the disaster unfolding before them more interesting than the fiery explosions on their screens.

  “I didn’t even want a bar mitzvah,” Markus shouted, but that wasn’t what he meant, either.

  Clenching his fists, the rabbi stormed over. Still waving her speech, his mother hurried toward him. They were closing in. His time was running out.

  “Markus Grunewald, that will be enough,” the rabbi said, clutching Markus’s sleeve.

  “I’m not an abomination,” Markus shouted. “Gavin and I are not an abomination.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he didn’t feel quite so alone, but he also couldn’t believe what he’d done.

  Kids turned to stare at Gavin, who sat there wide-eyed, shaking his head as if it were all a lie.

  Veins throbbing at his temples, the rabbi dragged Markus from the lectern. “This is not a church where you make your confessions,” he mumbled.

  “Michael Sam got a raw deal!” a boy in the second row called out.

  “They can’t force you to have a bar mitzvah!” came a woman’s voice from the back.

  “Obama Nation!” shouted the rabbi’s young son.

  Someone hurled a bag of candy at the rabbi, knocking off his skullcap. Someone else pelted the microphone, which let out a sharp wail.