Benoit Denizet-Lewis

Two brothers, two suicides:

“On the afternoon of Saturday, May 4, 2001, the nine-person cast of the Monadnock Regional High school production of Ordinary People gathered in the school auditorium in Swanzey, New Hampshire, for their first dress rehearsal. Opening night was only four days away, and the cast’s five boys and four girls were starting to feel the pressure. The mood was strained and occasionally hostile.

“The problem, most everyone agreed, was an angry Greg Kochman, who played the lead role of Conrad, a suicidal teenager coping with the death of his older brother. Then a junior at Monadnock, Greg was in one of his moods. ‘He was so angry that week, and that day was the worst of it,’ recalls Kristen Arrow, who played Conrad’s mother in the play. ‘He would just lash out at people for no reason. It was the first day that I had gotten really irritated at Greg.’

“Still, there was no denying that Greg could act. And on Saturday, the broad-shouldered, brown-haired 17-year-old was acting even better than usual.”

Serpell told me that those handicaps can be easily masked by an outgoing, playful personality. “Bulldog breeders will insist that their dogs are happy and have a very good life,” Serpell said. “But a dog can love its owner and be happy at times, but that doesn’t mean his life isn’t needlessly compromised. In many ways, dogs are their own worst enemy. They don’t complain. They just kind of plod along, trying to make the best of things. That’s how I see many bulldogs. They are severely handicapped because of what we have done to them, but they still have these amazing personalities that shine through despite it all.”

“Ever since I was 19 or 20, I knew that I would want to give myself over to one person in a formal way,” said Brandon A., who had been in two previous gay relationships lasting more than a year before meeting Brandon L. “And it didn’t even really matter to me if the politics of the world were going to bend in my favor so that my marriage was considered legal. Legal or not, I was going to have a commitment ceremony in front of the people who matter to me. I’ve always been oddly traditional about that.”

He was walking toward the cafe, holding something that I couldn’t make out. I stepped out of my car and waved to him. He looked the same as I remembered — tall, lean, blond, boyish and handsome in a Nordic ski instructor kind of way. I was nervous, but as he approached I decided to lean in for a hug. Michael, though, pre-emptively stuck out his right hand. “Hello, Benoit,” he said, standing stiff and upright, clutching what I could now see was a Bible.

Austin didn’t know what to wear to his first gay dance last spring. It was bad enough that the gangly 13-year-old from Sand Springs, Okla., had to go without his boyfriend at the time, a 14-year-old star athlete at another middle school, but there were also laundry issues. “I don’t have any clean clothes!” he complained to me by text message, his favored method of communication.