First of all, if you’ve just finished reading Boy Meets Boy, please put the book down for a little while before coming back and reading this impromptu authorial note. There’s nothing I find more intrusive than an author crashing his own book, so it’s best to let the story settle in before hearing me prattle on about it (if that’s even something that interests you in the first place—I won’t be offended if it’s not). What I’m about to share here is meant to be a small commemoration to mark the tenth anniversary of the book’s publication. It is no way meant to be part of the book itself. So, yes—put the book down, let it steep for a bit, then return for the next paragraph.
Welcome back.
Here’s something that Paul, Boy Meets Boy, and I share: We’ve all lived pretty charmed lives. We are all devoted to our friends, and are finding new friends all the time. And we’re all, in many ways, fueled by the joys and wonders that life can bring, even as the challenges rack up.
It’s amazing how much has changed in ten years. When I wrote Boy Meets Boy, marriage was only equal in one state. The idea of a drag queen quarterback seemed like a flight of fancy. Or even a queer homecoming queen. But, oh, how wonderful to report that Boy Meets Boy becomes truer every day. This morning I read about the Supreme Court agreeing to hear arguments against California’s discriminatory Proposition 8. There have been drag queen quarterbacks and LGBT homecoming kings and queens. There are even kids who realize who they are in kindergarten, just like Paul. What seemed like fantasy in 2003 isn’t fantasy at all in 2013. Which is as it should be.
I have received thousands of emails since Boy Meets Boy was published. I have heard from twelve-year-old boys in love with their first boyfriends. I have heard from a seventy-year-old who wrote (in perhaps my favorite email ever), “Things sure have changed since I was a teenager in the 1940s!” I have heard from kids in trouble, kids nowhere near trouble, brave kids, confused kids, and a lot of readers who are as musically obsessive as I am. In rereading the book for the first time in years, the line that struck me the most was one of Paul’s from the final chapter: “I am amazed at the randomness, the comedy, and the faith that brings us all together and makes us hold on.” Because that not only sums up the scene in the clearing, but it’s as complete an expression as I’ll get for the book’s life thus far. I have met so many wonderful people because of this book, and I am grateful for each and every one, whether they’ve become my close friends, or if there was just one exchange of emails, years ago. If I’ve ever written back to you and thanked you for your kind words, please know that I really, truly mean it. It’s one of my favorite things about life: hearing that you’ve inspired someone ends up being an inspiration itself to do more.
For this edition, I wanted to do a Q&A rather than simply write an essay. So I asked the people who look at my Facebook page what they wanted to know, and the results are the questions you see below. (Thanks to Ada, Alyssa, Andrea, Ashley, Bobbie Sue, Bradley, Claire, Daniel, Ed, Hallie, Heather, Jeff, Jessica, Joey, Kenny, Kevin, Lauren, Mason, Nathaniel, Raymond, Scott, Sharon, Tristan, Tyler, Val, Vicki, and everyone else for chiming in.)
What inspired you to write Boy Meets Boy?
The first inspiration came from a conversation I had with my best friend’s other best friend about growing up gay and coming out. I come from a liberal family where my gay uncle’s boyfriend was always invited to the holidays. My best friend’s other best friend came from a very conservative family that forced him into marrying a girl to save his soul. And after our conversation, what I desperately wanted was to write something for the teenager he once was. I began what would ultimately become the “Paul Is Gay” chapter. And, much to my surprise, I kept writing.
Another inspiration came from Patty Griffin’s song “Tony”—which is where Tony’s name comes from, and also where the dedication of the book comes from. It is told from the point of view of a girl whose gay classmate kills himself. Every time I hear the song, I want something different to happen. In many ways, you could say I wrote an entire novel just to change the ending of a song.
Finally, I was inspired by my friends. This started as a story for them. Then it grew into a novel for them. Then it grew into the novel I wanted to find as an editor—an LGBT YA novel that showed that gay kids’ lives aren’t all gloom and doom, which was the only thing being reflected in YA literature (with some notable exceptions). All those ingredients made Boy Meets Boy what it is.
What writers influenced you to write Boy Meets Boy?
Boy Meets Boy wouldn’t exist without Francesca Lia Block and her Weetzie Bat books. Period. There are many other influences that have made me the writer I am, but the most direct line I can see is that one.
I will add a coda, though. It was only after I had finished Boy Meets Boy that I read James Howe’s The Misfits. I have no doubt that if I’d read it before Boy Meets Boy, it would have fueled me in some way.
Is it at all autobiographical? Are any of the characters based off you or your traits? Was Paul based on a real person? I always wondered if there was a real live basis for Noah.
These questions came from different people, but I’ve put them all together because the answer is pretty much always the same: I’m sure there’s some of me in all of the characters, and small parts of other people I know in all of the characters, but none of this was on my mind when I wrote the book. One or two or four details from my life popped up while I was writing it (more on one of them, below), but that’s about it. To this day, the only book I’ve written with a deliberate autobiographical connection is Love Is the Higher Law, because I couldn’t imagine writing about the experience of 9/11 without relying on what I myself saw. But the rest of the time, I’m making it up. Or trying to.
How has your life in New Jersey bled into your writing of the book?
Careful readers have noticed that the town Paul lives in exists geographically in the same spot as the town where I grew up in New Jersey. And towns like it pop up a lot in my books. Certainly this happens because it’s my frame of reference for high school—and also because the proximity to New York City usually has something to do with the story (just as the city itself has something to do with every story I set there). Interestingly, I have yet to set a novel in the town where I actually live (although Nick from Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist is from there). But of course my memories of where I lived and my observations of where I live now color my writing. It’s where my mind naturally goes when it’s referencing the real world.
Was the title inspired by Boy Meets World, by any chance?
I’m afraid not. The original title for the book was Paul Is Gay—a joking Beatles reference. The problem? The first ten people I told this title to didn’t get the Beatles reference. And it always nagged at me that it reduced Paul to his gayness, when the whole point is that there’s much, much more to him than that. In searching for a new title, I knew one thing: I wanted it to be an “out” title. Meaning: I wanted you to know the book was gay even if you were just passing it on the shelf. Because there is such power in that. One day, I found myself describing it to someone as a “boy meets boy, boy loses boy, boy gets boy back” story—and the title was right there in front of me.
What are your thoughts about the cover? And did you know every book lover’s secret dream is to find love at their local bookstore?
And here I was, thinking I was the only one! I swear, one day I’ll meet the love of my life at the Strand.
But back to the cover. Boy Meets Boy revels in the serendipity of things, and the cover is, fittingly, the result of serendipity as well. When I write, I focus on words, not images—and as a result, I rarely have an idea what any of the characters look like, especially the narrators. As a result, I love for readers to have the same leeway, and to avoid picturing the characters unless there’s a reason to. My wonderful editor, Nancy Hinkel, and I sat down over lunch to talk it out and come up with a cover that didn’t show Paul or Noah. It was a few days before Valentine’s Day, and candy hearts were on our minds. (This is also a fun in-joke, because the book started as a story for Valentine’s Day.) When Nancy got back to the office, she asked the book’s ace designer, Melissa Nelson, to try Pantone 292 for the color, just because it’s name-checked in one of our favorite Magnetic Fields songs. It ended up being the perfect color.
This is an LGBT novel with no mention of hate/intolerance/prejudice/bigotry. Why did you choose to leave these aspects out of your novel?
Oh, they’re there. Even when they are absent from the page, they’re there. You have to understand, this novel is as much about Tony as it is about Paul. It is as much about the reality of Tony’s town as it is about the ideal of Paul’s town. Which leads to the next question …
Paul’s town seems almost utopian in its support of LGBT people, a dream of how the world should be. Why did you choose to make it like this, and what do you think it will take for that level of support and acceptance to be universally normal?
I think there are some amazing novels about LGBT teens that reflect reality as it is—that is extraordinarily valuable. But I also feel that literature has the ability to create reality—first in its pages, and then perhaps in the world of its readers. Why not show things as they should be, instead of just how we are? Also—and this is important—happiness is woefully underrepresented in all media (not just literature) about gay teens. Society has this perverse desire to define us by the negative things that happen to us—the slurs that are thrown, the lives that are lost. But most gay people—and I very much include myself here—lead lives that are more good than bad, more happy than sad, more about friends than about enemies. “It gets better” is certainly part of the equation, and Boy Meets Boy shows that. But it also shows “It isn’t always bad to begin with.” As mentioned in my previous answer, the book isn’t about the bubble of Paul’s town—it’s about the tension and the journey between Paul’s town and Tony’s.
Some of the fiercest and most heartfelt criticism of the book (from well-meaning people) has been about the fact that the town isn’t “realistic” and is “far-fetched.” My response is usually something along the lines of “So what?” And “Doesn’t that make you want to figure out why it’s not realistic—and why our world’s not that way?” The surreal moments at the start (cheerleaders on Harleys! janitors playing the stock market!) are put there to show the town is a little different from other towns. But then, very much by design, the surreal details fall away. Because, really, there’s no reason this town can’t exist. In fact, the people who live in this town exist—millions of them. They just don’t happen to all live in the same town.
Now, as far as how we create this reality—already a lot of progress has been made in the ten years since the book came out. And progress will continue. Why? Because, at the most basic level, what LGBT people are being asked (absurdly) is to prove that we are as much human beings as anyone else. We know this is true. And slowly but surely, other people are realizing it’s true. By getting to know us. By talking to us. By hearing or reading our stories. The truth, as they say, is self-evident.
Do you think that you’ll experience a society like the one you created for the novel during your lifetime?
We’re getting closer every day. I don’t know that we’ll ever get to the ideal, but I do think we’ll get much closer.
I seem to remember a kindergarten report card mentioning that Paul was gay. Does that report card have any basis in reality or is it just another creative detail?
Some readers have thought this is one of the more ridiculous elements of the novel—Paul being gay so young. But it happens to be one of the few completely autobiographical details in the book—my kindergarten teacher did really out me to my parents. It took me longer than Paul to clue in, but eventually I did.
Who is on the soundtrack to Boy Meets Boy … or which artists did you listen to the most while writing the book?
For the Boy Meets Boy launch party, I made a mix of all the songs in the book, either directly mentioned (like Chet Baker) or used as chapter titles (like Björk’s “Possibly Maybe”). I think it would be much less fun if I spelled them out here, so I will send you back into the pages of the book to find them.
That said, I’ll also mention that I was listening to Tegan and Sara a lot when writing the book, and there’s a Tegan and Sara reference on this page that most people don’t catch at first. I wish I could say “he’s the one my heart was made for” was my own thought, but it comes from one of their songs.
What kind of music inspires you to paint music?
You have to try all kinds.
If Paul’s “Elsewhere” song is “Always” by Erasure, what’s yours?
All I’m going to say is that I have one, and that during college I must have listened to it hundreds of times. But it is so sacred to me that I almost never put it on mixes or tell people about it. I think when you have an Elsewhere song, it’s best to allow yourself to keep it as your own.
Is there a tune floating around (in your brain or recorded somewhere) of Zeke’s song that Paul gives to Noah?
I could sing it for you. I won’t, but I could. And for a far superior version, check out the Full Cast Audio version of Boy Meets Boy. When I first listened to it, it never occurred to me that they’d actually set the song to music. But they did, and it’s awesome.
Do you feel any of your other books are connected in some way to Boy Meets Boy?
I think many of the themes that come up in Boy Meets Boy come up in my other novels—connection and serendipity and equality and identity. I wrote my novel Wide Awake to be a spiritual sequel to Boy Meets Boy—the characters are different, but the main characters’ relationship and the world those characters live in are very deliberately one stage further than those of the first book. If Boy Meets Boy presents an ideal town, Wide Awake provides an ideal country—though not without its challenges. And my new (as of fall 2013) book, Two Boys Kissing, has me plunging back into the lives of LGBT teen characters—reflecting reality more than trying to create it. And in reflecting reality this time, I hope I show that there are a lot of teens out there who are creating reality with everything that they do.
What books do you suggest to readers who want a book like Boy Meets Boy?
There’s no way I can be fully inclusive here, so first I’ll say that the ALA’s Rainbow List and Stonewall Awards and the Lambda Literary Foundation usually provide excellent lists of LBGT novels for teens and adults. So, with that disclaimer, I will suggest (in no particular order) Billy Merrell’s Talking in the Dark, Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat and Baby Be-Bop, James Howe’s The Misfits and Totally Joe, A. S. King’s Ask the Passengers, Nick Burd’s The Vast Fields of Ordinary, Virginia Euwer Wolff’s True Believer, Brent Hartinger’s Geography Club, and pretty much anything by Julie Anne Peters. And this is really just a very, very small sample. Check out my Facebook page and my website (davidlevithan.com) for more recommendations.
Do you think it is possible to have happiness without it being at someone else’s expense?
Certainly.
Did you in any way expect the book to have the impact it has had? Also, what has been the negative reaction to the book and has that changed over time?
Even ten years later, it genuinely floors me every time someone tells me the book has affected them in some way. It’s just extraordinary to me that the story I write in relative isolation can then connect with so many people, and that the meaning I pour into it somehow translates into meaning for a reader. I don’t think you can ever expect that.
As for negative reaction—I think it’s made me much more aware that we have to be vigilant about preemptive censorship just as much as we are about book challenges. That is to say—we know to fight for the freedom to read when a book is pulled from the shelf, but we also have to fight for the freedom to read when someone refuses to put the book on the shelf in the first place. Boy Meets Boy has been a big target in this way because of its title—the gatekeepers who don’t want to deal with LGBT books in their collections (whether it be a bookstore or a library or a classroom) just don’t put them there in the first place, thereby disenfranchising the readers—both straight and gay—who might want or need to read them. We have to insist on these books being included.
That said, the mass majority of librarians, teachers, and booksellers I have met have been fierce advocates of the freedom to read. And times are changing. There were some conflicts when Boy Meets Boy first came out (picketing, protests, condemnations!) … but when my novel with John Green, Will Grayson, Will Grayson, came out in 2010 and hit the bestseller list, there were only a few murmurs of discontent. And it’s just as gay a book as Boy Meets Boy in many ways.
What would happen if Infinite Darlene and Tiny Cooper met?
I have no idea, but it would be fabulous.
What inspired the ending of the book?
I don’t plan out what I’m going to write, so when I started, I had no idea how it would end. About two-thirds of the way through, I realized what the last line would be. And I also knew in my heart that there was no way it was going to end with the Dowager Dance, because that’s the most predictable thing in the world, to end a teen novel or a teen movie with The Big Dance. So the characters took me on a detour, and led me to a clearing.
Looking back, is there anything you’d change about the book?
To be honest, when I sat down to reread the book, I thought there’d be some things that fell the wrong way, after all this time. But I was surprised to find I love it exactly as it is. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Ever think about where Paul and friends would be now?
I don’t. I want to leave them in the clearing. I often get this question, not just for this book, and the answer is always the same: I end the books where I do because that’s where the story ends for me. And in particular with Boy Meets Boy, I love the ending so much I would never want to go past it, even in my mind.
I will, however, say it always bothered me a little that Infinite Darlene never got a story of her own. In Boy Meets Boy, she steals just about every page that she’s on, but she’s a very proactive character who, by plot necessity, keeps getting put in a reactive position. So last year, when I was thinking what I wanted to write for my annual Valentine’s Day story, I thought … why not go back to Infinite Darlene? The result will appear when you turn the page after this authorial excursion is done.
When I think back to my experiences with Boy Meets Boy over the past decade, what I feel most is wonder and gratitude. All the acknowledgments at the start of the book still apply in a big way, especially to my editor, my friends, and my family. I have to thank all the lovely librarians, amazing teachers, awesome authors, and remarkable readers I have met because of the book, who have inspired me in a multitude of ways. And, even though I am aware that this is starting to sound like a mawkish Oscar acceptance speech, I also want to thank a few people whose contributions to the life of Boy Meets Boy I couldn’t have known when I initially wrote my acknowledgments, but who were instrumental to its success: Adrienne Waintraub and her team at Random House, who helped (and continue to help) bring the book into the world in such a spectacular way, and the magnificent Michael Cart, whose blessing of this book still means the world to me.
What a wonderful world, indeed.