Benjamin Alire Sáenz: Hello. My name is Benjamin Alire Sáenz, and I am the author of Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World. When I finished Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, I thought the book was done. I thought I was finished with Ari and Dante, but Ari and Dante weren't quite finished with me.

It's not so hard to fall in love. It's not easy to stay in love. I think love is a decision and it's also a commitment. It's not just a feeling; it's so much more than that. It's discovering the person and who they are and just looking at them and seeing them. And even if not understanding them, at least appreciating the mystery of them. And so I wanted to write about what it would be like to develop a relationship with two boys in 1987, '88, '89, when this is simply not acceptable at all. In the middle of the AIDS pandemic, gay men were never more hated or feared.

One of the things that is difficult to deal with a book like this is because we don't really write about it, is the desire of young men when they fall in love for each other. And the desire is also emotional, of course. It's also bodily, and that's really difficult to write about because we're still uncomfortable with expressing in literature or even in person about that desire, but that's part of their relationship. Ari discovers that it's not just a heart thing, it's a body thing. And then he realizes that he's starting to understand this thing called desire.

I just want to read this little section when they go away on a trip near the beginning of the book, and they've never really been alone together, and they're going camping. And on the way to camping in Southern New Mexico, there's this place called White Sands, and I'll just read you the section as they walk along.

"Did you know this used to be an ocean? Imagine all that water."

"I could have taught you to swim in that ocean," says Dante.

"And you could have taught me to dive into those waters."

He nodded and smiled.

"On the other hand", I said, "we might've drowned in those waters."

"Really? Did you have to go there?" He took my hand.

We walked into the forever white sand dunes, and soon we were far away from all the people in the world. Everyone had disappeared from the universe except the young man whose hand I was holding, and everything that had ever been born and everything that had ever died existed where his hand touched mine. Everything: the blue of the sky, the rain in the clouds, the white of the sand, the water in the oceans, all the languages of all the nations, and all the broken hearts that had learned to beat in their brokenness.

We didn't talk. This was the quietest moment I had ever been in. Even my busy brain, it was quiet. So quiet that I felt that I was in a church. And the thought entered my head that my love for Dante was holy, not because I was holy but because what I felt for him was pure.

No, we didn't talk. We didn't need to talk. Because we were discovering that the heart could make music. And we were listening to the music of the heart. We watched the lightning in the distance and heard the echo of the thunder. Dante leaned into me, and then I kissed him. He tasted of sweat and the hint of my mother's burritos. Time didn't exist, and whatever the world thought of us, we didn't live in anybody's world but our own at that very moment.