Eighteen Again
The butterflies, the awkward eye contact, the drama. Ah, the teenage mating dance. David Levithan’s charming book of gay and straight love tales, How They Met, and Other Stories (available now) is intended for young adults, but it’s just as enjoyable for us slightly older readers; its dead-on observations about adolescent love will have you back in high school — in a good way.
Levithan captures the thrill of the kiss and the agony of rejection that seems life-ending when you still have a curfew. In the bittersweet “Princes,” Jon is devastated when he’s rebuffed by his dance teacher: “He asked me if I was okay. . . He was kind, and that made it better and made it a whole lot worse.”
Others fare better: Prep school student Roger romances nervous-flier Rory when their plane hits turbulence in “The Number of People Who Meet on Airplanes.” But no one has it better than Gabriel: In “Starbucks Boy,” he’s set up with a barista by the precocious six-year-old whom he babysits. If we’d had our own little matchmaker — and a remarkable book that presents gay romance so matter-of-factly — adolescence would have been a breeze.
How They Met, and Other Stories is available now from Alfred A. Knopf BFYR.
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