TUESDAY
25 SEPTEMBER, 1990
ISAIAH

               Our eyes meet through the window. Dorian waits for me at the stop with an umbrella and a plastic food container. I feel his eyes follow me as I walk the length of the coach to the door where I'm greeted by the musk of soggy grass. The humidity seeps through the seams of my blazer.

I hesitate to step down to the tarmac as though there's an invisible tripwire waiting for me. Stumble and I might ruin everything. Eleven years of friendship can easily be annihilated with one explosive when the fuse leads right to my heart.

I shouldn't have kissed him.

I knew it the moment he pulled away. Dorian won't think of me like that. Maybe there's some part of him that's curious, the part that makes him stare when he doesn't think I notice — Of course, I notice. How could I not when it's all I've ever wanted? But Dorian has always observed halakah; no matter how intrigued, he won't think of me like that.

I accepted years ago that the closest I'd get to kissing him was sharing an apple. To take a bite and, when I catch him looking, offer it to him, position it so he has to bite the same cheek, for his lips to touch the flesh my lips were on moments ago, then to return it to my own mouth and suckle his saliva along with the nectar. I accepted it years ago, so why risk everything?

It was a mistake. It was a dream. A mistake. A dream. A mistaken dream, maybe. Maybe I'm rotten to the core.

'Are you on or off?' the driver prompts and thus, with jittering hands, I take the plunge.

My left foot has hardly landed beside my right before the rain stops dotting my shoulders. Dorian holds his umbrella over my head, forcing us much closer much quicker than I prepared for.

Normally, I'd live for him to be this near. Now, it's a threat of the distance to come; the way you squeeze someone's hand before you let go, or how doctors give a conciliatory pat on my shoulder after admitting there is nothing they can do for me. "You could try praying."

I guess I could try praying.

The door thwacks shut behind me and the coach trudges around the cul-de-sac. The stench of the exhaust fume is heightened by the humidity and Dorian coughs a little, burying his face into his arm until the coach has disappeared behind the cypress and aspens.

'I'm really sorry.' It's all he can get out before he chokes and stumbles over himself in incoherent messes. 'I'm so sorry. I didn't mean it– I'm so stupid– Say things without thinking and I hate that I hurt you and it's completely reasonable for you to hate me– You hate me– It's fine– But I just– I'm bored or rebelling against my parents or testing HaShem or anything like that. My mum hates me– I can't– I'm so confused, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. 

'I baked you these.'

Dorian shoves the plastic container into my chest.

I cling to my shield but it takes half of a second for it to crumble. He baked for me. Who am I to hold a grudge three days from Yom Kippur? Who am I to hold a grudge? I could've said no, I could've pulled away...

''S all good, cuz.' I accept the tupperware box with a smile. We're so close I have to crane my neck to look up at him. It's funny — we rarely stand facing each other, our nearness most common when we lie down, and I almost forget we're not the same height. 'You're my best friend; I'll get over it — well, probably not, but I'll deal with it. We can forget it ever happened. We can just go back.'

Dorian blinks. 'I don't... I don't want to go back.'

My heart plummets like a stone into my stomach. He's had enough of me. Having a batty boy for a best friend is one thing, kissing him is another. I've finally crossed the line. I'm almost relieved–

'I liked it.'

I step back. Within seconds, my shoulders are soaked but before it can seep through my blazer, Dorian shoves the umbrella over me. He does so without moving forward and is drenched himself.

'Don't play with me, Dorian. Not about this.'

'I'm not.'

Rain rolls like tears down my cheeks. 'We can't. You know that. Someone like me can't, not with someone like you.'

'I don't believe that.'

'"A mamzer shall not enter the assembly of Adonai" don't leave a lot of room for interpretation.'

'I don't believe that.'

'It's Deuteronomy ch–'

'I know it's there: I'd read all of Jewish scripture by the time I was nine. But it's wrong. I don't believe that.' His eyes drill into mine, lock me in place when I want nothing more than to turn away. 'HaShem wouldn't think like that.'

Dorian steps forward so we're both under the umbrella again. He brushes my damp braids out of my face, though, too short to tuck behind my ears, they fall back. Trembling, I stare up at him. I realise I'm crying only when he wipes my tears. Noticing the crack is enough for the dam to break and my first sob rattles through my ribs.

He kisses my forehead, mutters a fourth "I don't believe that" into my hairline, and swaddles me. Incredible how he manages to radiate warmth even through damp clothes.

'I liked it.' In our hug, his mouth falls centimetres from my ear and he doesn't need to raise his voice louder than a whisper. There's a soothing rumble to it you wouldn't hear from a distance. 'I've always thought kissing is gross, but it wasn't gross with you. It was the opposite. It makes sense now — art. I don't think there's anything I wouldn't like if it's with you.'

I bury my face into his chest. The rain intensifies his scent too. Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. I need you to have found something else in my mouth than shame or sugar.

'Did you?' he asks.

'Hmm?'

'Did you like it?'

'A bit more than liked, I reckon.'

I cram myself against him. The handle of the umbrella digs against my back as Dorian holds me tighter. Around my ankles, my socks are wet from the rain that ricochets off the asphalt. In my chest, my heart flaps like a goldfish amongst the shards of its shattered tank, desperate to cling to life and pathetic for trying.

'I'm terrified I'll ruin you. You'll despise me.'

'Impossible.' He shakes his head to reiterate: that's impossible.

I never came out to Dorian. He pieced it together at the same time as I did. Discerned my longing to have my ears pierced like all the women in my neighbourhood, reflected my confusion at the comments adults made at any interaction I had with a girl my age, maybe even related to my apathy at every male character who was given a shallow love interest when he already had a best friend.

When we got older, he witnessed my classroom crushes on a different boy every month, watched me stare a bit too intently at John Canada Terrell shirtless in She's Gotta Have It which I snuck us into, and eventually the slurs people threw at me couldn't be brushed off as meaningless.

At some point, I just started calling myself gay when it naturally came up in conversation and he never reacted to it as anything surprising. And last January I finally started to wear the rainbow kippah I hid behind the loose panel above my wardrobe with my Oxford savings for years.

And though Dorian never took issue with it and always listened intently regardless of how mundane my daydreams about the boy I saw at the bus stop must have been, he never shared anything similar with me. I accepted that it could never happen before I allowed myself to yearn for it.

But I yearn.

'Let's go or we'll miss shacharit.' My voice is still rough but when I wipe my eyes on the back of my sleeve, they stay dry. 'Yalla!'

I walk forward, intentionally bumping into his shoulder to nudge him toward the school. Dorian smiles, the kind that squints his eyes and makes his lashes look even longer, burrows dimples deep into his cheeks. The kind that summons the sun into my chest even in torrential downpour.

Once the bus stop is out of sight and my breathing is only strained by the awful stamina I'm cursed with, I pry open the food container to find teiglach. How have you managed to shape them into hearts after boiling them in honey? I eat one and feed him a second, which turns out tougher than I expected with us walking at the same time: the sweet bumps into his lips, my fingers against his teeth.

Pressing the lid shut, I nudge his side. 'Thank you.'

'You're welcome. Wait.'

We're a few meters from the doors and I've sprinted from under his umbrella only to u-turn back. The top of my head is freshly wet. 'What?'

Without answering, he tugs me behind one of the many decorative pillars of the main entrance. 'Can we do it again?' he asks. 'The kissing.'

His skin is too dark to show it but I know he's blushing. The blades of grass glued to his oxfords are suddenly incredibly interesting; he refuses to look up from them. I'd laugh if I weren't melting like sugar in the rain.  

I draw on his tie. He leans down.

When we're so close we can't maintain eye contact, I allow mine to shut. I use his breath to feel my way up until my lips finally brush his and I quiver. For ten heartbeats, we stand as still as we manage.

Then I pull him as close as he can get. His hand slots to the back of my neck as it did on Sunday. It stirs me exactly as it did on Sunday. I think I might faint.

Please don't destroy me. I'm not sure whether I'm pleading with Dorian or with God, but the prayer is the same: please don't destroy me.

We make it to morning prayer when everyone is already seated. We stifle grins as we collect our tallitot and tefillin and shuffle to the end of the second to last row where we always sit, much to the annoyance of the boys who have to stand to let us through.

With his tallit draped around his shoulders, I watch Dorian unfurl the straps of his shel yad and roll up his shirt sleeve. There's a fluidity to his movements I don't have on my best days and certainly not now.

Sunday is still collecting debt from my body and I fumble to undo the cuff buttons of my left sleeve. My knuckles ache as my fingertips numb, an agonizing combination that makes any precise movement near impossible.

'Should I?' Dorian whispers.

I stare at him, mute. Mute because the muscle in my neck clenches and I'll cry if I open my mouth. Mute because talking during shacharit is discouraged. Mute because I wouldn't know what to say: It's not proper. People will talk. I should be able to do it myself.

I should be able to do it myself.

Effortlessly reading my thoughts, Dorian eases the cuff button open. 'You're in pain.'

The gentle validation is enough to sire fresh tears to my eyes and I squeeze them out as he folds up my sleeve. I watch him loop the thread of my shel yad around my middle finger — above the knuckle, over the knuckle, and below the knuckle, threading my ring finger into the knot with the final twist. Will I ever learn to do it with equal grace? He wraps the excess around my palm and pulls away with a caress.

This must be God's blessing. How else could it feel so free?

Notes

Deuteronomy (Devarim in Hebrew) 23:3: "A bastard* shall not enter into the assembly of the LORD; even to the tenth generation shall none of his enter into the assembly of the LORD."

*A mamzer, or a bastard, is a child born out of sex that is prohibited in Judaism. Mamzers and their parents suffer the biblical punishment of "karet", also know as "excision", which means to be separated from the Jewish people, and according to scripture, will be excluded both from Jewish communities and from Heaven until the tenth generation that is descended from a mamzer.

Shacharit: Morning prayer.

Yalla: Let's go.

Teiglach: A pastry boiled in honey.

Tallit (plural: tallitot): Prayer shawl.

Tefillin (singular: tefillah) and shel yad: Prayer boxes. Black boxes that contain scrolls of scripture that are tied to the body with straps. There are two: one that is born on the upper arm (shel yad: lit. of the arm) and one that is worn on the head (shel rod: lit. of the head).

Here you can see both tefillin and the tallitot.