The Same Name

The basement room that served as the Lion’s Roar newsroom smelled like duplicator fluid and old dreams. Fluorescent lights hummed a low, persistent note over paste-up boards, coffee-stained copy, and the clatter of a Royal manual typewriter someone had liberated from the guidance office. September 1974. John Linnell was trying to write a review of a concert he hadn’t actually gone to.

He’d seen the band—a local thing called The Bitter Lemons—at a church basement show, but he’d spent most of it by the fire exit, watching the drummer’s hands and wondering if you could capture syncopation in words. The review was due in two hours. All he had was one sentence: The bassist wore a Hawaiian shirt that seemed to be trying to escape him.

“Hey. You’re John, right?”

Linnell looked up. A tall, grinning kid with an explosion of dark curly hair and glasses sitting crooked on his nose leaned over the desk, holding a stack of photographs. He filled space without trying—like a friendly dog who didn’t know his own size.

“Yes,” Linnell said, careful.

“I’m John Flansburgh. New photo editor. Which means I take pictures of the football team looking miserable and the drama club looking confused.” He dropped the photos, and one slid off. “We have the same name. That’s gonna be confusing. Maybe we should go by middle names. Mine is—actually, I don’t think I have one. Do you?”

“Conant. But please don’t call me that.”

Flansburgh laughed. A real laugh, not the polite adult kind. “Conant? Sounds like industrial solvent. I’ll stick with John. Or maybe Linnell, to differentiate. You’ve got that skinny, serious look. Like a poet who just saw a bird die.”

Linnell blinked. Oddly specific. Not inaccurate. “I’m reviewing a concert I didn’t go to.”

“Even better. Make up the set list. Put a song about a giant frog on it. Nobody checks.”

That was how it started. A shared desk, a shared sense of absurdity, a mutual recognition that the world was strange and you could only tolerate it if you found someone who saw it the same way. Over weeks, they fell into a rhythm. Flansburgh would bound into the newsroom with an armload of photos and a new theory about why the school mascot should be a platypus. Linnell would type out reviews with surgical precision, then read them aloud in a flat, deadpan voice that made Flansburgh choke laughing. They discovered a shared love for off-kilter music—Captain Beefheart, early Roxy Music, a scratched 45 of “I’m the Man” by some band Flansburgh found at a garage sale. Afternoons in the dusty AV room, listening to reel-to-reel tapes of obscure folk songs, arguing about whether you could have too many chords in a song.

Linnell had never had a friend like this. He’d had acquaintances, people who found him odd but harmless—the kind of kid who could recite the periodic table but couldn’t remember the name of the girl next to him in homeroom. Flansburgh was different. He didn’t just tolerate Linnell’s eccentricities. He celebrated them. He’d ask Linnell to explain the scansion of a Leonard Cohen lyric, then listen like it was gospel. He’d bring a kazoo to the lunch table and insist they form an impromptu band. He treated Linnell’s quirks not as defenses to dismantle, but as instruments to play.

And somewhere in the middle of October, the feeling shifted.

It happened one evening, in the darkroom. Flansburgh was developing photos for the Halloween issue—a series of grotesque portraits of teachers wearing monster masks, which he insisted was high art. Linnell had come to watch, ostensibly to give feedback, but really because he had nothing else to do and the red light made the room feel like a womb. Flansburgh bent over the developing tray, tongs in hand, and the faint chemical smell mixed with the warmth of his body. He said something stupid and funny, and Linnell laughed, and then he caught himself looking at the curve of Flansburgh’s jaw, the way the amber light caught the fuzz on his cheek. His stomach dropped.

No. No, no, no.

He knew what it was. He’d known for a while, abstractly—the way you know a storm is coming from a shift in air pressure. But this was concrete. An undeniable ache. He wanted to reach out and touch Flansburgh’s hand. He wanted to lean in and kiss the corner of his mouth. He wanted, with a sudden violence, to be somewhere else, anywhere else, before he did something unforgivable.

“You okay, Linnell? You look like someone just told you all the record stores are closing.”

Linnell forced a smile. “Just thinking about chords.”

Flansburgh laughed and turned back to the tray. “You think about chords the way other people think about food. It’s beautiful, really.”

It was beautiful. Everything about him was beautiful. And that was the worst part.

That night, Linnell lay in bed and stared at the ceiling, fists balled. Seventeen years old, and the world was full of words he was learning to hate. Queer. Faggot. Pervert. Painted on lockers, whispered in hallways, shouted at kids who walked a certain way or talked with a certain lilt. Lincoln-Sudbury wasn’t violent—not like some schools he’d heard about—but the atmosphere was thick with quiet, grinding contempt. You learned to keep your head down, to not draw attention. And now he had a feeling that was going to mark him for life, pressing against his ribs like a captive bird.

He hated himself for it. Hated the way his eyes lingered. Hated the way his pulse quickened when Flansburgh’s hand brushed his. Hated the lies he told himself: It’s just friendship. It’s just admiration. It’s just the way I am, and the way I am is wrong.

But the feeling didn’t go away. It grew, fed by every shared joke, every moment of unguarded closeness, until by the last week of October it was a constant, low-grade fever burning under his skin.

Halloween fell on a Thursday. Half-day at school, then a dance in the gym half-heartedly decorated with paper skeletons and construction-paper jack-o’-lanterns. Flansburgh asked if Linnell wanted to go.

“To the dance? I don’t dance.”

“Neither do I. That’s the point. We can stand in the corner and mock everyone else’s costumes. I’m going as a paper bag.”

“You’re going as a paper bag.”

“Yeah. Cut eyeholes. Simple, profound. You should come as a giant question mark.”

They didn’t go to the dance. Flansburgh showed up at Linnell’s house at seven, wearing a brown paper grocery bag over his head with two holes crudely ripped out. It was raining, and the bag was already dissolving. He stood on the porch, dripping, grinning through the soggy paper.

“Change of plans. The dance is a bust anyway. Heard the DJ’s playlist is mostly disco. I brought contraband.”

He produced a bottle of bourbon from inside his jacket, half-full and unmistakably stolen from someone’s parents’ liquor cabinet.

Linnell’s parents were out—dinner with friends in Concord, a rare late-night absence. The house was dark and quiet, only light from the kitchen and the flickering TV in the living room playing a Twilight Zone marathon. Linnell had been reading a book on the history of the accordion, trying not to think about the way Flansburgh’s laugh sounded from across the cafeteria. Now here he was, standing in the doorway, wearing a wet paper bag and holding a bottle of bourbon.

“You’re insane,” Linnell said, but he was already smiling.

“Yes. Let me in before I drown.”

They settled in the living room. Flansburgh peeled off the ruined bag and tossed it in the trash, revealing damp curls and a face flushed with cold and excitement. He poured them both generous measures into red plastic cups from the kitchen. The first sip burned, settled in Linnell’s chest like a warm coal. The second made the edges of the world go soft.

They watched Twilight Zone in a haze of alcohol and proximity. An episode about a woman who sees a grotesque thing on the wing of an airplane. An episode about a man who wishes for more wishes. Flansburgh kept laughing at the twist endings, punchy and unguarded. At some point, his leg pressed against Linnell’s, and Linnell didn’t move away. He didn’t dare. But he didn’t want to.

“You know what I like about Rod Serling?” Flansburgh said, swirling bourbon in his cup. “He makes the weird stuff feel normal. Like, here’s a guy who turns into a pig. Okay. Let’s follow him. He doesn’t explain it away. He just says, ‘This is happening. Deal with it.’ I think that’s how life should be. Just deal with it.”

Linnell stared at his own hands. “What if you can’t deal with it?”

“Then you find someone who can help you.” Flansburgh turned to look at him, eyes bright and serious in the TV glow. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

Friends. The word was a splinter in Linnell’s chest. “Right.”

They drank more. The bottle down to a quarter, and Linnell felt a loosening in his limbs, a courage he didn’t normally possess. Twilight Zone credits rolled, replaced by local news about a fire in Framingham. The room was quiet except for rain pattering against windows and the hum of the refrigerator.

“I’m glad we’re not at that dance,” Flansburgh said. “This is better. Just you and me and the bourbon. And Rod Serling’s ghost.”

“He’s not dead.”

“He will be someday. Everything dies.” Flansburgh’s voice went soft, almost sad. “That’s why you have to say things while you can.”

Linnell looked at him. In the dim light, Flansburgh’s face was all shadows and planes, glasses catching the blue glow. He was close. Very close. Close enough to smell bourbon on his breath, damp wool of his sweater, faint undercurrent of rain and salt.

And then, without thinking—or perhaps thinking too much, without the filter of self-hatred that usually stopped him—Linnell leaned forward and kissed him.

It was clumsy. He hit the corner of Flansburgh’s mouth first, tasted the sharp edge of alcohol and something else, something warm. He pulled back, horror flooding through the haze. He had done it. Ruined everything.

But Flansburgh didn’t pull away. He didn’t say anything. He just looked at Linnell with an expression impossible to read, and then leaned in and kissed him back.

The world fell away. Twilight Zone theme played on unheeded. Linnell’s hands found the collar of Flansburgh’s sweater, Flansburgh’s fingers tangled in Linnell’s hair, and for a few minutes—maybe seconds, maybe an hour—there was nothing but the heat of mouths and rough friction of fabric. They moved together on the couch, a tangle of limbs and breath and the desperate, silent language of two people who had never done this before but knew, with a certainty that bypassed thought, that this was what they wanted.

The bourbon made it easier. Silenced the voices in Linnell’s head that screamed wrong, wrong, wrong. Blurred the edges until the only thing that mattered was the map of Flansburgh’s body under his hands. They explored each other with clumsy, urgent curiosity—teenagers who had spent years imagining and were finally, finally allowed to reach out. Flansburgh’s laugh turned into a gasp when Linnell’s fingers traced the line of his hip. Linnell’s breath caught when Flansburgh’s hand slipped under his shirt, palm flat against his stomach.

There was a point where it could have gone further. Linnell felt the possibility in the air, a tension like a bowstring drawn taut. But something held him back—the ghost of his own shame, maybe, or the simple, stark terror of being seen. He pulled away, breathing hard, pressing his forehead against Flansburgh’s shoulder.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Flansburgh’s hand came up to cup the back of his head. “It’s okay. It’s okay. We don’t have to do anything. This is enough.”

It wasn’t enough. Linnell knew that. But it was something, and for a moment, curled into the warmth of Flansburgh’s side, he let himself believe it was enough to be here, breathing the same air, sharing the same silence.

They must have fallen asleep. The next thing Linnell remembered was gray dawn through the blinds, the smell of stale bourbon, and the cold, empty space on the couch beside him.

Flansburgh was gone.

The next two weeks were a study in avoidance. Linnell didn’t call. Didn’t go to the newsroom. Ate lunch in the library, hidden behind a stack of books on ornithology, and told himself he was being sensible. He had crossed a line. Made it real. And now the only way to survive was to pretend it had never happened.

But the memory was a splinter that wouldn’t come out. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Flansburgh’s face in the TV glow, the way his lips parted, the sound he made when Linnell kissed him. Replayed it a thousand times, each time with a fresh wave of shame and longing.

On the tenth day, a photograph appeared in his locker. A Polaroid, slightly blurry, of a single apple on a desk. Written on the back in Flansburgh’s messy handwriting: For the poet who saw a bird die. I miss you.

Linnell stared at it for a long time. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his coat pocket, next to his heart.

They met on a Friday afternoon at the far end of the football field, where nobody went. Cold air, brown grass stiff. Flansburgh sat on the bleachers, hands in his coat pockets, breath fogging. He looked up when Linnell approached, and there was no anger in his eyes. Just relief.

“I thought you hated me,” Flansburgh said.

“I thought you hated me.”

“Why would I hate you? You kissed me. I kissed you back. That makes us partners in crime, not enemies.”

Linnell sat down, leaving a careful six inches. “I’m sorry I ran. Or—I didn’t run. I just didn’t know what to do. I still don’t.”

“Yeah, me neither.” Flansburgh laughed, hollow. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot. About what it means. And I think… it means we’re not what everyone expects us to be. That’s scary. But I don’t want to not be with you, Linnell.”

Linnell felt the words like a punch. “You mean… you want to…”

“I want to be whatever we are. Friends who kiss. Boyfriends. I don’t know the word. I just know I missed you. Missed you so much it felt like I’d lost an arm.”

They sat in silence. Wind rattled the dry leaves of oak trees along the field. Then Linnell reached out, slowly, and took Flansburgh’s hand. Their fingers interlaced, cold skin against cold skin.

“I’m scared,” Linnell said.

“Me too. But we can be scared together.”

It was a promise. Small, fragile, secret, hidden in the shadow of the bleachers. And they kept it.

Through the rest of high school—the lies, the excuses, the careful meetings in basements and empty classrooms. Through college, moving to Boston, sharing an apartment that was always a mess. Through the birth of They Might Be Giants, the first album, the first tours, the first brush with fame. Through the internet, the AIDS crisis, the slow shifts in public opinion. Every interview, every public appearance, required a careful dance. Friends. Creative partners. Colleagues. Never them, not the way they wanted to be.

But at home, in private, they were everything. Lovers who knew each other’s rhythms, who could communicate a thought with a glance, who had built a life on the foundation of that Halloween night. The bourbon was a catalyst, but what grew from it was real.

In 2011, New York passed the Marriage Equality Act. They were in the studio working on what would become Join Us when the news broke. Flansburgh had been checking his phone obsessively, and when the headline appeared, he let out a sound half laugh, half sob.

“Linnell. Look.”

Linnell put down his accordion and read over Flansburgh’s shoulder. Then he took off his glasses and wiped his eyes.

“So,” he said, voice rough. “I guess we can stop hiding now.”

Flansburgh pulled him into a tight, desperate hug. “We can tell the world. I can finally call you my husband.”

“You’re getting ahead of yourself. We have to get married first.”

“Then let’s do it. Tomorrow. Today. Right now.”

They got married a month later, in a small ceremony at City Hall. A handful of close friends, a photographer from the New York Times who promised a dignified spread. The photos showed two men in simple suits, holding hands, smiles cracked wide with relief. Caption: John Linnell and John Flansburgh, married. 37 years of partnership, finally legal.

That night, they went back to the apartment they’d shared for the better part of three decades, sat on the couch with a bottle of bourbon—same brand they’d stolen all those years ago. No Twilight Zone marathon, but they didn’t need it. They had each other.

“I remember the first time I kissed you,” Flansburgh said, swirling amber liquid in his glass. “You tasted like cheap whiskey and bad decisions.”

“The best kind of decisions,” Linnell said. “I’d make them all again.”

Flansburgh leaned over and kissed him, slow and deliberate. Tasted like bourbon, but also like home.

“Me too,” he said. “Every single one.”