41. Davis

Davis had liked the art in those books at Jeremy’s house and imagined that it would be neat to see them in person, but it wasn’t something that he craved doing. He didn’t have the heart to tell Jeremy, because he had looked so proud when they pulled into the parking lot and Davis took in the odd building. Davis was brainstorming the ways in which he could pretend to love what he saw when they approached the first gallery, after he had told Jeremy that, of course, he wanted to go to the special exhibition, which was on art conservation science. At least he would like the science.

It was nothing that Davis could ever have expected.

Davis had been speechless before, but that was when he saw astounding locations in nature. The first and only time Davis had seen a sequoia, he had looked up and up and up until his neck hurt, thinking about the amount of time the tree had existed for. He had stayed there, at the base of the tree, for nearly forty-five minutes, thinking about the ways sequoias could only drop their seeds when there was a forest fire. About the ways that enormous tree represented the cycles of life and death. Davis wasn’t religious in any formal way, but he was spiritual, and when he saw a sequoia, it connected him to something larger than himself.

The first time he had stood on top of a fourteen-thousand-foot peak, having crossed the tree line where it was just a collection of sparse flora and the occasional marmot skittering by. There, Davis was reminded that even in the harshest environments, there were creatures that seemed imbued with the tenacity to survive and thrive.

When he had driven through Yellowstone and seen Old Faithful and had been guided on a hike through the bubbling mud pots by a married set of rangers who tossed jokes back and forth. Not only was Davis reminded of the power of the earth beneath his feet, but of the way that love and connection could exist between two people and be shared with others.

Davis had assumed that these moments of spiritual revelation were reserved for the natural world.

Until he stood in front of the painting he had first seen in a book and took it all in.

This was the type of painting that his dad would have seen on the news and said was some big city bullshit. “A toddler could do that. It ain’t special.”

It was just color, a logical part of Davis’s brain said. In the way a sequoia was just a tree. But the color seemed to consume him, flow between his organs and into the spaces between his cells. He felt an ache in his chest, one that alternatively could mean he was tragically sad or ecstatically happy. Either way, it was a big emotion, something that couldn’t be contained in his physical body. Davis touched his cheek and found that it was wet, soft tears leaking from his eyes.

Moving a bit closer, Davis could see the individual brushstrokes, and he had the subsequent realization that a man made this. A real human, with thoughts and feelings like Davis had, stood in front of this giant canvas and made a series of thoughtful, intentional brushstrokes that were able to pull this emotion out of Davis.

This is what people must feel like when they read books and cry, Davis realized. Words had never evoked this emotion in him, but this painting had. In the same way nature did.

Davis worked to have a moment where he wasn’t analyzing his thoughts but just experiencing them, remembering the way his counselor told him that he should think of thoughts floating past him like leaves in a river. And then he remembered that he wasn’t here alone and turned around to see Jeremy watching him. In a way, Davis and Jeremy found the same things stunning, found the same things reminded them of the beauty of this precious, fragile life.

“Sorry,” Davis said, wiping at his eyes.

“Thank you,” Jeremy said.

“For what?”

“For allowing me to experience you having that experience.” He pulled his lips between his teeth to suppress a smile, but his clear blue eyes shone with all the emotion that he wasn’t saying. “I got to see something that no one else has ever seen.”

“Shut up,” Davis said bashfully.

“You know there are, like, hundreds of other paintings in this museum,” Jeremy joked.

“I’m leaving,” Davis said, walking to the next painting, preparing himself to understand what this field of red would evoke in him. They meandered through the first exhibition, slower than Davis ever would have guessed he would be in a museum. The space seemed endless, with a new gallery appearing every time Davis thought he had seen it all. He didn’t grow bored until the end, when the exhibit on conservation was filled with signs with too much writing and big words that stopped making sense in Davis’s brain.

He shook his head and turned to Jeremy. “I think I’m museumed out,” he said honestly.

“Even I have to take breaks sometime,” he joked back, slipping his hand into Davis’s and leading him out of the museum, somehow able to remember what seemed to Davis to have been a maze.

“If I would have known it was this easy to woo you, I would have brought you here weeks ago,” Jeremy said when Davis insisted on going to the gift shop to purchase a sticker.

“Thank you,” Davis said, turning around and lifting up to kiss Jeremy deeply after he paid for the sticker, an outline of the strange building that now meant something to him. “I never would have done this without you.”

“Well, you took me mountain biking.”

“Am I going to be injured here?”

“Only if you trip, baby.”