7. Marsh

SEVEN

Marsh

Here's the thing you need to know about Data: when he's tense, he drives with his hands at ten and two like a model automobilist. They could use him as a model in driver's ed manuals. But as he gets more relaxed, his hands slink down the wheel to a chill six-thirty. Once in a blue moon, like on our vacation in Palm Springs three years ago, he'll even drive one-handed.

Currently, his hands are at about four thirty-eight. Low, but not as low as I'd hoped. There is a needle of tension lingering in our haystack. I supposed that's to be expected post-breakup sex.

I can't believe I just had breakup sex with Data. A dullness settles in my chest. I wish I'd known it was breakup sex. I really would've pulled out all the stops. Maybe kept my heart in check and stopped myself from confessing how much I missed him, which obviously isn't a reciprocal feeling. Perhaps stretched a little beforehand.

I didn't take Data for the cum-and-go kind of person. Perhaps he isn't the same guy from six months ago and he really is moving on.

Despite being in the same small save-the-planet car we took to the general store, our knees never touch.

"I suggest we start with the closets. Clear out linens, towels, old junk stored away. First thing tomorrow morning, we can dive into the kitchen since that has the most fragile items. The closets and kitchen are the two most high-density parts of the cabin. If we can knock those out first, then it should be smooth sailing for the rest of the weekend."

"Aye-aye captain." I give him a salute.

A beat of silence hits the car, the staticky sound of the local radio station fills the void appropriately with "Comfortably Numb."

Data glances over at me quickly, then back to the road.

"What?" I ask, knowing full well when he has something on his mind.

"Nothing." His voice rises slightly as if part of him is asking a question.

"I think it's something." Being in a long-term relationship is like being a PhD student doing research for a dissertation on your significant other. After eight years, I can translate any tic, any eyebrow raise, any grin.

Data scratches at his beard. It was recently trimmed, which means the hairs are extra-prickly. And explains the reddish burn on my cheeks that I clock in the sideview mirror.

"Out with it," I command.

"Back at the store, you said you haven't been with anyone since … is that true?"

"Yeah, I wouldn't lie about that." I shift in my seat.

"Were you just talking about sex?" His hands climb up to nine and three. "Sorry. It's none of my business."

"I haven't. For the record." I went on one date, grabbing coffee with this recent NYU grad who wanted to "pick my brain about comedy." That statement was a dick softener right off the bat. He was so skinny, one hardy sneeze would snap him in half, and even worse, he didn't know who Chris Farley was.

"Oh." Data's mouth stays in that O shape for a moment. "Because I thought … "

"What? "

"Nothing." His gaze stays focused on the road.

"I know you don't do bits, but this feels like a bit."

Data turns off the main road onto the unassuming access road marked only by a reflective circle. It will be another few miles until we reach Marshmallow Mountain. The cabin lives way off the map.

"I thought that's what you wanted. To play the field," he says.

I know he doesn't mean it as a dig, but I can't help but feel a sting.

"You think that's why I ended things?" I ask.

"Well, your reasoning was a bit nebulous and … steeped in cliché."

Oy. I feel myself blush with a kind of shame different from the run-of-the-mill Jewish shame mixed with the classic gay shame. I once temped with a Tony-nominated playwright. I should've asked her to script a better break-up speech for me.

Sure, the break-up wasn't my most eloquent moment. But did he think these were excuses and that I just wanted to fuck a bunch of new people? What if his question was really a reverse psychology trick to get me to ask this question and he was about to spill that he's dating some hot guy named Evan who's an ear nose and throat doctor with a corgi named Maxwell?

"I take a Willy Wonka approach to sex, Marshall," I say. "I want to make sure a guy has the golden ticket before I give him the keys to the chocolate factory."

"Somewhere in heaven, Gene Wilder just threw up in his mouth."

"Nah. He and Gilda are having a good laugh."

Data chuckles under his breath, and it soon turns into a full honking cackle echoing through our small car.

We met when I was doing a play called Glengarry Glen Coco in some dingy basement theater. I'd leave Harmony Pianos and schlepp into the city for a ten o'clock show. Me and other gay comedians were performing David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross as characters from Mean Girls . Groundbreaking stuff. (Not to brag, but my turn as Regina Roma received positive notices.) Data was the only person in the crowd laughing, and I couldn't take my eyes off him. He had the cutest laugh I'd ever heard—it was manly, but also soft, like caramel. I had to know who this person was. I had to know everything about him that led to him having this beautiful laugh. It was like his body was one big magnet and the laws of physics would not let me turn away.

My heart thumps in my chest. I truly don't know how I went six months without getting to hear his laugh. It dawns on me that once this weekend is over, and the final link is severed, I'll never get to hear it again.

We pull up to the cabin. I clap my hands loud, silencing the dread pooling in my stomach.

"Let's get packing!"