37. Jeremy

Following a dinner of mushroom carbonara, after Davis had shared stories about hunting for morels and sheepshead mushrooms, the two men walked out to the back porch of Davis’s small cabin to a pair of rocking chairs. Davis held a can of seltzer with a peach shrub added to it, Jeremy cradling a steaming cup of tea. He had started bringing up small stashes of his favorite seasonal flavors with each work visit, just to make sure they were always around if the work session was extended late into the evening or even into the next morning.

Jeremy and Davis were quite committed to the success of this visitor center redesign as of late, the nights where spring was burning off into summer.

“You know how old couples love a set of rocking chairs on a porch?” Davis asked. Jeremy did not. He knew that old people in certain neighborhoods in the cities loved stoops and public parks, diners and chess tables, but he assumed the concept was the same.

“A place to gossip and learn everyone’s business?” Jeremy joked.

“Somethin’ like that.” Jeremy loved the way that the longer Davis talked and the more he got away from work, the looser his speech got. When he dropped letters off words and let his vowels elongate, Jeremy knew he was relaxed. Davis, in those moments, was more introspective, unraveling his thoughts through speech. Jeremy, a child who’d spent most of his evenings watching documentaries or sketching, liked that Davis was happy to take the burden of the conversation.

“Are you imagining being an old man, baby? In your rocking chair?”

Jeremy had meant it as a joke, poking Davis for being a couple of years older than him, but instead of the quiet chuckle he expected, Davis let out a sigh.

“Jeremy, I don’t think you know a lot about where I’m from, and that’s on purpose. Anthracite Springs is, well, it’s a place you move from. It’s a place that ages you. Everyone was either in high school or old. You take a job at the mill or the mine or Walmart if you stay, and all of a sudden you’re twenty-four with a child and you look old.” Davis took a sip of his seltzer. “And so when I imagined being old, it was with a wife and children, and I was probably the age I am now.” He looked over at Jeremy. “I never allowed myself to think about sitting on a porch with another man, or even someplace that wasn’t West Virginia.” A smile. “I like it.”

“Oh,” Jeremy said, because what exactly did you say to something that vulnerable?

Another sip of seltzer while Jeremy blew a cool stream of air over the top of his tea. He was reminded, as he often was in quieter moments, of his parents. The Rinci family had been three only children who often existed in individual spheres in a shared space. Jeremy was often sprawled across the floor in his parents’ apartment sketching while his mother painted on the easel that was in the sunroom. It was an open floor plan, so they could always see each other, and occasionally, she would look over her shoulder and give him a soft smile while he got a peek at what imaginative landscape she was creating. And, usually, at the dining room table, was his father, who was working on his ham radio or reading an article, humming softly to the faint strains of the public radio station that was a constant presence in the kitchen. As an adult, he liked working on his own thing, but alongside other people. Different from Emmy, also an only child, who preferred solitude. Different from Phoebe, who needed constant noise and energy. Different from Foster, who was constantly juggling seven things and doing none of them well.

But Davis seemed to operate at a similar pace. In the mornings, he would make coffee for himself and tea for Jeremy, and they would each scroll on their phones, sipping their individual drinks, quietly together.

“Do you have siblings?” Jeremy asked, breaking the silence.

“Two, but we’re not close,” he responded. “But three if you count my cousin who came to live with us when my uncle died.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy said automatically.

“Don’t be. He was a piece of shit,” Davis said tersely. “But my cousin is amazing. He was the first person I told. About me.” Davis waved a hand between them.

Jeremy knew that he needed to tread lightly with the next question, knew that there was some sort of hurt that Davis was nursing behind the wall he had built up around himself about his family. Jeremy knew, because he recognized it. The way that, for years, he had quickly pivoted a conversation away from the topic of parents, because there were days where even thinking about the change in verb— his parents were alive and now they weren’t— felt like pouring salt into the wound.

“How did that go?” Jeremy asked gingerly.

“He was fine with it,” Davis replied, beginning to gently jiggle his left leg. Something he did, Jeremy knew, when he was nervous. It was miraculous how many little things he had picked up about Davis, how many bits of minutiae he’d discovered about a man that he had firmly filed under the category of friend. “He laughed and punched me in the arm when I told him, actually.” Davis chuckled slightly. Jeremy didn’t know if he should laugh. “I had to be like, no dude, I actually like guys and then, like, back it up with the name and a photo of the first guy I had hooked up with.”

“Why wouldn’t he just believe you?” Jeremy asked.

Davis shot him a look. “Anthracite Springs isn’t San Fran, Jeremy. I was home from living in Morgantown, and I had only gotten the courage to go to a bar in Pittsburgh because someone had told me that’s where Queer as Folk was set. I didn’t— I don’t— exactly look like what people in my hometown thought queer men look like.”

“What are they supposed to look like?” Jeremy asked again, a bit absentmindedly.

“Have you looked at yourself in a mirror recently?” Davis resounded wryly. “You’re all thin and pretty, and I’m what people back home refer to as a brick shit house.”

“I think you’re pretty,” Jeremy said defensively.

“I know, baby,” Davis said, and Jeremy’s insides turned upside down at the use of the pet name he loved to use on him. “But yeah, I ended up spilling all my secrets to Bruce over half a bottle of Seagram’s Seven, and at the end, he just shrugged and said hope that Henry guy is cool and isn’t a Pitt fan. Which, for where I’m from? That’s as good as it’s gonna get.”

“What was Henry like? Did you date?”

Davis gave another snort that previously, Jeremy would have read as dismissive, but he knew now was a unique brand of self-deprecation only Davis embodied. “Date, heh. I barely dated girls in high school and during community college, trying to not fail out of school and pay my rent. No, Henry was, well—” A soft, wistful smile grew on Davis’s face, and Jeremy immediately regretted ever asking about stupid Henry from stupid Pittsburgh. “Henry was a friend who taught me a lot over a few years.” Davis’s smile turned into a slight frown when he added, “We stopped hanging out a lot when I stopped drinking. Some people can’t handle a mirror to their own behavior, you know?”

Jeremy remained silent.

“Anyway, Bruce kept my secret and didn’t even tell Gram or Pap, and he tells them everything. When I told my dad, though— shit.” The last word was extended, drawn out, and Jeremy was reminded of an iconic scene from The Wire. “That didn’t go well. Ended up crashing with Barry for the rest of the time I was home.” He swallowed, his eyes a bit misty. “After that, when I went home, I stayed with Bruce or Tiff, but Tiff had her kid to worry about. So, yeah. I ended up not going home much after undergrad. I worked for a few state parks and only went home for Pap’s funeral. And then the world shut down, and then I moved to Colorado.” He made pointed eye contact with Jeremy. “And then I met you. And you feel safe.” Jeremy would not cry. “What was it like when you came out?”

“I mean, my parents knew,” he said, laughing.

“How so?”

“Straight little boys tend not to beg their parents to go to school as Delta Burke from Designing Women in first grade. Here, I have a photo saved on my phone somewhere.” He dug around in his pocket and, with a few swipes, had a photo of himself, a gangly little boy with hair so light it was nearly white, dressed in a sequined muumuu with bright eyeshadow.

“My aunt and her best friend loved that show,” Davis said. “They’ve been roommates for years…” And just like that, Jeremy saw the lightbulb go on behind Davis’s eyes. “Holy fuck, do you think Aunt Susan is gay?”

“That’s for Aunt Susan to decide.” Jeremy gave a bit of a chuckle. “I’m lucky. And it’s hard to say, because, you know, it’s not safe to be openly queer everywhere, but…well…I’ve never experienced that. My high school was super accepting, and then I studied art history at NYU, then earned a master of fine arts.” Jeremy gave a laugh and an exaggerated limp wrist. “Vanberg isn’t exactly Castro Street, but no one looks at me differently.”

“What’s Castro Street?” Davis asked, and Jeremy felt stupid. Stupid to assume that every queer man knew the same references or cared about the same shit that he did.

“It’s the center of the gayborhood in San Fran,” Jeremy explained.

“Have you been?” Jeremy nodded. Davis smiled. “Tell me about it.”

“Why?”

Davis gave a faux-exasperated sigh. “Because I’ve never been further west than Yosemite, so I don’t know what San Francisco is like.”