"I tell Noah about Kyle - how could I not? - and about some of the other disastrous dates I've had," says the book's protagonist, Paul, who is on a first date with a boy named Noah. More refined, but with echoes of his high school self, a strong, engaging and intellectual stream of consciousness. And then, a few weeks ago, and years after I'd last heard his name, I discovered David's new young-adult novel, "Boy Meets Boy." As I read it, I heard David's voice again. I heard, vaguely, that he'd come out, and that after college he had become an editor at Scholastic Books. I lost touch with David not long after he went to Brown University in the fall of 1990. The only literature for teens with gay characters was terrifying: Sandra Scoppettone books from the 1970s that ended in brutality, or the early 1980s classic "Annie on My Mind," by Nancy Garden, in which two girls fall in love but everything falls apart in the end when they're busted by a morality squad. This was the 1980s, and there was nary a gay role model on the horizon: Melissa Etheridge and K.D. Bush winning straw polls and Jim Florio considered by a majority to be a liberal, evildoer governor. Because at Millburn High School in 1989, "queer" was far from a friendly epithet.Īs far as we knew, there were no gay kids at Millburn High School. But you certainly wouldn't have said so back then. Today, in the era of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and "Will & Grace," you might say that David had a queer aesthetic - good taste, an eye for new trends. He was smart and funny in a meticulous and offbeat way.
He would cut out designs from construction paper and frame the song titles, making art that enhanced the 10,000 Maniacs or Julia Fordham tape you had just received. He made mix-tapes with music you might not yet know. He wrote long loopy notes to friends and passed them off in the hallways, lines upon lines of erudition written in a tiny but consistent hand. He read Anne Tyler novels and was in love with Anna Quindlen. So there you have it – the main differences between a twink and a pup for gay men.When I first met David Levithan, he was the editor of my suburban New Jersey high school newspaper. After they’ve been out awhile and been exposed to dating, apps, bars, hookups, etc – they then graduate to another classification. Remember, the defining trait for a pup is their newness to the gay world.
Pups can also have body hair or be smooth. Pups can be of all body types, including slender and muscular or roundish and heavy (not the same as a gay cub). Many pups are newbies to our gay world, just taking their first few steps of self-discovery as part of coming out. In gay-speak, “pups” are fairly young (18-early 20’s) with the defining feature of having almost zero experience in the gay universe. That’s a twink subtype in case you didn’t know.įYI: Technically speaking, twinks can also be pups but they aren’t exactly the same. You see, if a twink is referred to as having pretty features, they are referred to as a glamour twink. Many gay men mistakenly think of “Twinks” as pretty but that would be incorrect. There really isn’t a universally agreed upon construct here. Twinks are often thought of as smooth but they can also have body hair. Usually, they are in their 20’s and have boyish features. Example twink TWINK DEFINEDįor the most part, a twink is a guy who has a slender build. While I don’t pretend to be an expert, I will give you the basics of what I found out. Hey, you have to have something to talk about when you’re checking out the meat at the bar, right?Īfter we all went home that night – empty handed I might add – I started to do some research on twinks and pups.
#Gay twink creampie old plus#
His bit of insight then led to an hour long conversation about the larger topic of gay twinks and pups – plus a few other labels thrown in for good measure – like wolves and otters.