Question

What is Bardeen’s relationship like with his twin brother when they are growing up?

How does their relationship change?

Why doesn’t Bardeen tell his brother his “secret” sooner?

How does Bardeen’s brother react when he finally tells his “secret”?

Do you think Bardeen is satisfied or disappointed with his brother’s reaction?

Explain. What do you think is the main message of the story?

LIVES; Not Close Enough for Comfort By David P. Bardeen I had wanted to tell Will I like boys since I was 12. As twins, we shared everything back then: clothes, gadgets, thoughts, secrets. Everything except this. So, when we met for lunch more than a year ago, I thought that finally coming out to him would close the distance that had grown between us. When we were kids, we created our own language, whispering to each other as our bewildered parents looked on. Now, at 28, we had never been further apart. I asked him about his recent trip. He asked me about work. Short questions. One-word answers. Then an awkward pause. Will was one of the last to know. Partly it was his fault. He is hard to pin down for brunch or a drink, and this was not the sort of conversation I wanted to have over the phone. I had been trying to tell him for more than a month, but he kept canceling at the last minute -- a friend was in town, he'd met a girl. But part of me was relieved. This was the talk I had feared the most. Coming out is, in an unforgiving sense, an admission of fraud. Fraud against yourself primarily, but also fraud against your family and friends. So, once I resolved to tell my secret, I confessed to my most recent ''victims'' first. I told my friends from law school -- those I had met just a few years earlier and deceived the least -- then I worked back through college to the handful of high-school friends I keep in touch with. Keeping my sexuality from my parents had always seemed permissible, so our sit-down chat did not stress me out as much as it might have. We all mislead our parents. ''I'm too sick for school today.'' ''No, I wasn't drinking.'' ''Yes, Mom, I'm fine. Don't worry about me.'' That deception is understood and, in some sense, expected. But twins expect complete transparency, however romantic the notion. Although our lives unfolded along parallel tracks -- we went to college together, both moved to New York and had many of the same friends -- Will and I quietly drifted apart. When he moved abroad for a year, we lost touch almost entirely. Our mother and father didn't think this was strange, because like many parents of twins, they wanted us to follow divergent paths. But friends were baffled when we began to rely on third parties for updates on each other's lives. ''How's Will?'' someone would ask. ''You tell me,'' I would respond. One mutual friend, sick of playing the intermediary, once sent me an e-mail message with a carbon copy to Will. ''Dave, meet Will, your twin,'' it said. ''Will, let me introduce you to Dave.'' Now, here we were, at lunch, just the two of us. ''There's something I've been meaning to tell you,'' I said. ''i like boys.'' I looked at him closely, at the edges of his mouth, the wrinkles around his eyes, for some hint of what he was thinking. ''O.K.,'' he said evenly. ''I've been meaning to tell you for a while,'' I said. ''Uh-huh.'' He asked me a few questions but seemed slightly uneasy, as if he wasn't sure he wanted to hear the answers. Do Mom and Dad know? Are you seeing anyone? How long have you known you like men? I hesitated. I've known since I was young, and to some degree, I thought Will had always known. How else to explain my adolescent melancholy, my withdrawal, the silence when the subject changed to girls, sex and who was hot. As a teenager I watched, as if from a distance, as my demeanor went from outspoken to sullen. I had assumed, in the self-centered way kids often do, that everyone noticed this change -- and that my brother had guessed the reason. To be fair, he asked me once in our 20's, after I had ended yet another brief relationship with a woman. ''Of course, I don't like boys,'' I told him, as if the notion were absurd. ''How long have you known?'' he asked again. ''About 15 years,'' I said. Will looked away. Food arrived. We ate and talked about other things. Mom, Dad, the mayor and the weather. We asked for the check and agreed to get together again soon. No big questions, no heart to heart. Just disclosure, explanation, follow-up, conclusion. But what could I expect? I had shut him out for so long that I suppose ultimately he gave up. Telling my brother, I like boys hadn't made us close, as I had naïvely hoped it would; instead it underscored just how much we had strayed apart. As we left the restaurant, I felt the urge to apologize, not for liking boys, of course, but for the years I'd kept him in the dark, for his being among the last to know. He hailed a cab. It stopped. He stepped inside; the door still open. ''I'm sorry,'' I said. He smiled. ''No, I think it's great.'' A nice gesture. Supportive. But I think he misunderstood. A year later, we are still only creeping toward the intimacy everyone expects us to have. Although we live three blocks away from each other, I can't say we see each other every week or even every two weeks. But with any luck, next year, I'll be the one updating our mutual friends on Will's life.

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Answer 1