11. Davis

Davis said the absolute stupidest things around Jeremy, he decided. Things that, in his head, sounded smooth and flirtatious, but felt awkward and clumsy when he said them. Jeremy had followed Davis into his office and had sat down in the chair he had settled into last time, the one that had a tiny table next to it. Jeremy flipped open his tablet case and performed a series of what seemed like complicated maneuvers to set it up so it displayed a well-designed presentation.

Davis, once again not enjoying the comparisons that seemed to spring up between himself and Jeremy, fumbled with his clunky government-provided computer. Jeremy had a sleek iPad that could probably easily send a spaceship to Mars. Davis’s computer seemed to have been designed to operate a bomb shelter during the height of the Cold War.

“Uh, Jeremy?” He always felt weird saying someone’s name, especially when it was someone he was attracted to. What if they could tell by the way he said it? Like maybe there was an advanced version of gaydar that Davis wasn’t equipped with as a bisexual man.

“Hmm?”

“What are you presenting on?”

“New exhibit idea,” Jeremy said, and then launched into a deep discussion of how he planned to connect the architecture and history of the grand national parks of the west to the national forest.

And while Davis wanted to hear this handsome man— who talked with his hands and had one piece of hair that was curling around his ear in a devastating manner— continue to talk about the fact that the National Park Service had demolished the Gettysburg Cyclorama (“which was designed by Neutra!” he had huffed), he had to stop him.

Because it wasn’t about linking this patch of trees to something else.

Because the National Forest Service wasn’t the National Park Service.

Because Jeremy was wrong.

Because this wasn’t the type of exhibit that this forest needed.

Davis cleared his throat. “Uh, Jeremy?”

“Yes?”

“I work for the Forest Service.”

“Of course, yes,” Jeremy said, nodding in agreement. He wasn’t getting it, so Davis continued.

“I work for the Department of Agriculture, with the national forests. National parks are under the Department of the Interior,” Davis explained carefully. “They’re different offices of the federal government.” Davis remembered when he learned that, the complicated diagram in his text book listing interior, state, treasury, defense, labor, justice, agriculture and about a dozen others.

A light pink flush spread across the top of Jeremy’s cheeks. “Oh,” he said simply.

“Yeah, and…” Davis swallowed, tried to remember that he was the expert here and that he did actually know what he was talking about. A reminder, this time from a therapist he still talked to occasionally through video chats, that he was enough. Confident. In charge of his own choices. “I actually disagree with this approach.”

Jeremy looked at him. Actually, it was more accurate to say he studied him, and Davis felt like he was under the microscope, like the lichen in his ecology class.

Lichen were critical to the ecosystem.

So Davis continued. “It’s not about tying our forest to other, more famous natural spaces. It’s about allowing people to see that what they have right here, right now, is special and important. There’s enough here that’s amazing, you know, like—” Davis’s brain pulled for something that he could talk about in depth, something that would convince Jeremy that what looked to be an average forest was full of nuance and wonder. “Lichen.”

“What is a lichen?” Jeremy asked. It took a moment for Davis’s brain to catch up with the reality of the situation. Part of Davis’s upbringing was loud. Even when people agreed with you in West Virginia, they yelled at you about it. Jeremy, however, was calm and measured, which, sometimes, Davis mistook for the type of sullen anger that took over his dad after another round of layoffs at the mine. But Jeremy wasn’t angry, not by his body language or his tone of voice. He had simply cocked his head, hair moving in a distractingly attractive way, and given Davis a small smile. A small smile that Davis hoped meant keep talking, I’m curious.

So Davis took a deep breath and did. “Well, lichen aren’t well known to a lot of people, but they’re the cornerstone of ecosystems all over the globe, including right here. They don’t fit into the classification systems that we have, because they’re both fungi and plants. It’s an example of a healthy symbiotic relationship. They’re potentially the oldest living organisms on the planet, and I think there’s something to learn from the fact that two species working together like this have lasted the longest.” Davis took another breath and continued, somehow recalling things that he had learned from his favorite professor, Dr. Bibee. “They’re beautiful and add this fascinating spark and life to a forest, even on boulders and old logs. They’re so old and so unchanging that we can date some by seeing them on tombstones from the 1800s in historic photos. They can tell us when glaciers melted from the last ice age. Plus, they’re able to be used as an indicator of air quality. Back home, there are some places that are using them to see how superfund sites are faring and other places that are using them to monitor emissions.”

“Where’s home?” Jeremy asked.

“West Virginia,” Davis replied.

“I have a friend from eastern Ohio. You could bond about running away from steel mills,” Jeremy said. Again, Davis was worried that he had given too much of himself away, that he had somehow become the bitter person he worked hard to not be, but again, he realized Jeremy was joking.

“I didn’t run away,” Davis said, trying to inflect some lightness into his voice. “I simply moved to find a better opportunity. Plus, the mountain biking out here is way better.”

Jeremy gave a small sniff, and Davis couldn’t tell whether it was to indicate a positive or negative emotion. “I ran away here. It’s not so bad.”

Davis recalled that Jeremy had lived in cities that seemed, to him, full of life and opportunity and community— New York City, Philadelphia. He had seen the Liberty Bell on a school trip in 6th grade and was more shocked by the number of people around him than by the fundamental part of American history. Davis didn’t know how to respond to someone who admitted running away from that, so he defaulted to what was comfortable— silence. “Anyway,” Jeremy said, “that’s good to know. Keep it local. Keep it intimate.” Hearing that word from this man’s mouth was a bit too much for Davis right now, so he excused himself, offering Jeremy a seltzer from the mini fridge he kept in the corner of his office.