Chapter_4_P-Town

Happy gays. Proposing to each other. In our favorite place on Earth.

This is so not what I need right now.

Not while Wyatt and I are this disconnected. It’s stirring up a lot of emotions for me.

I’ve floated the idea of getting married to Wyatt a few times before, and I’ve never really gotten a straight answer why he doesn’t want to get hitched.

As our baby’s due date draws closer, marriage is on my mind a lot. Maybe this is why things between us seem forced. It’s funny how I’m the spontaneous one and yet here I am wanting to plan our wedding.

Wyatt is amazing at so many things but sometimes communication isn’t his strong suit. I’m an open book and I’ll say what’s on my mind. He bottles it all up until he’s ready to explode.

Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror, I resolve to let the marriage thing go for this trip. I don’t want to keep pushing Wyatt on the idea and I just want to enjoy this time we have together before our lives change forever.

Maybe along the way we can rekindle our mojo.

That will make me a better dad anyway, right? Right?!

I check my phone and see a bunch of work emails. My boss knows I’m on a babymoon—I’m lucky enough to take advantage of my company’s paternity leave.

If he needs new story ideas, there’s a team of writers who can cover me. It’s not that hard to come up with Italian food articles like:

“Top 24 Bomboloni to Eat Poolside.”

“17 Veterans Day Pasta Recipes.”

“The Perfect Anti–Valentine’s Day Caprese Salad for One.”

These articles are some of my finest contributions to society. You’re welcome.

I do have work hanging over my head though. Right before I left, I pitched my boss a new feature that I could write so I wouldn’t feel guilty taking so much time off.

“Where to Eat Italian on Your Next Road Trip.”

It’s during these pitch meetings that I remember this is not the job I’m destined to have. In high school, I told all of my friends I wanted the career trajectory of Ryan Gosling. I’d start on a kids’ show, then grow up and move between meaty indie dramas and studio films. I have the kids’ show under my belt but somehow my career has devolved into a writer for a food magazine on the Italian beat.

I’m admittedly pretty good at it.

Even my boss, Trent, can’t hide his envy for the way I just rattle off fully formed clickbait headlines. Trent, with his graying beard like a divorced Gandalf, is a Harvard graduate and former artist and staff writer on the Harvard Lampoon humor magazine, facts that he loves to remind his underlings at least once a week.

In any case, I decide I’m not even going to look at work emails right now.

When I return to the table, the engagement party is seated next to me and Wyatt.

Of course.

They’re going around the table, as everyone makes poignant toasts to the grooms-to-be.

I can choose to feel bad that it’s not us celebrating our love with friends, but the truth is, these guys look SO HAPPY that it fills me with hope. My eyes cloud over watching them soak up each other’s love.

Wyatt and I share a faint smile as I dig into my fillet and press on with our night.

The next morning, I wake up to the scent of fresh coffee with a symphony of birds outside our bedroom window.

I stumble up the spiral staircase like a drunk baby.

Wyatt is sitting on the balcony, awake before me as usual. He turns as I enter, and I can see a million plans are already on his mind.

“We can pick up our bikes this morning before the beach, and I have lunch tentatively booked at the Lobster Pot but we can skip if we want to stay at the beach longer,” he says, overcaffeinated.

“It’s too early to use the word tentatively,” I say, taking a sip of coffee, squinting, trying to wrap my head around all the sunlight pouring down on us.

Wyatt abruptly finishes his coffee, stands and walks back inside.

“What?” I can’t tell if he’s upset or refilling his mug. “You can use the word tentatively. I was just kidding,” I call back into the cottage to no response.

A second later, Wyatt returns holding a beach umbrella. “Look what I found,” he says like a little kid, opening it to display a giant white anchor on a blue background. “This house has everything.”

I make a conflicted face.

“You don’t like anchors?” Wyatt asks.

“You really want to go to the beach?”

“Of course. That’s why we’re here,” he says, collapsing the umbrella.

The beach is nice. But the pool is fun.

The town pool is where everyone congregates when they arrive. Like a floating party.

“Cool,” I say, stifling the urge to protest and trying to bridge the gap between us. “The beach it is then.”

Later, walking through the streets of P-town feels like a self-guided tour of the Museum of Us. We pass by all our greatest work together.

Our favorite ice cream shop where we geeked out over talking with the filmmaker John Waters, the cute house we shared with our friends and their Australian friends, Café Heaven where Wyatt and I spent four hours one cozy lunch watching a torrential downpour outside.

Waiting for our bike rentals, we’re stuck behind a group of guys taking their time to decide between mountain bikes or road bikes. It suddenly clicks that it’s the engagement party from last night. I didn’t immediately recognize them in their beach outfits and towels around their necks.

The grooms-to-be decide to rent a tandem bike. Then I notice they’re wearing matching purple T-shirts that say, “I’m Engayged.”

I turn to see Wyatt spot the guys, with a flash of recognition on his face, but he quickly averts his gaze. He pretends to admire the selection of bikes. He doesn’t want to acknowledge it’s the newly engaged guys. Maybe he doesn’t care.

If I bring it up, he’ll find an excuse not to talk about getting married like, “Why are you fixated on getting married when we have a baby to focus on,” or “We’re on vacation,” or “It’s a Tuesday.”

It feels like complete freedom when we finally hop on our mountain bikes, wind in our sails, pushing us along the winding stretch of road toward Herring Cove Beach.

After locking our bikes to the old wooden fence, we begin the famous trek to the actual beach. We wade through an epic expanse of beautifully green marshes in water that’s anywhere from a foot deep or up to your shoulders, depending on the tide.

“Leave it to the gays to find the furthest beach possible,” I say every summer with our day packs slung over our shoulders and flip-flops in hand.

As we walk, I try to steer us into a fun memory. “Remember the Vikings?” I ask.

Wyatt takes my cue, happy to connect about something. “We melted!” he says with a laugh, remembering the first summer we went to P-town together for Fourth of July.

We didn’t yet realize just how seriously people took their theme weeks in P-town.

“I think there must be a Viking-themed boat party?” Wyatt said, walking onto Commercial Street that summer morning and seeing every other person dressed in a cheap plastic suit of armor, short shorts and sandals, waiting in line for their iced lattes.

Everyone, it seemed, received the memo except us.

After we scrambled all over town to put together makeshift sexy Thor costumes, laughing inside each quaint shop along the way, we finally fit in with the costumed throngs. We bought day passes to a boat party where we were held hostage for three hours in the middle of the water on the hottest day of the year.

We desperately tried to find shade and slathered on so much sunscreen that we looked like ghosts with helmets basically melting onto our heads.

We finally make it to the beach, with its long stretch of sand and smattering of pebbles, navigating past a few clumps of people to set up camp.

Wyatt throws down his towel. I throw down mine.

He pulls out the nautical-themed blue umbrella he found at the house and stakes it into the ground.

It’s just big enough for two of us.

We’re both sweating from the walk, ready for some shade.

Lying there next to Wyatt, all I hear are gentle waves rhythmically splashing hello.

Sometimes I wish Wyatt would use his directing skills and tell us what to say, when to say it and how to feel.

This strain between us is dampening the soul of our special place.

I stand to spray on some sunscreen. Anything for some action.

“Want some?” I ask Wyatt, hoping for a chance to make a physical connection.

“I put some on at the cottage,” he says. So much for that move.

After covering my whole body, I turn to the left of us and see the husbears-to-be and their entourage again sitting right next to us. Colorful towels, umbrellas and a giant inflatable raft in the shape of a pizza slice.

We’ve run into them too many times not to say anything. “Looks like we’re on the same schedule,” I call out to their general direction.

The bigger one of the pre-marrieds wears a silver chain around his neck and a fluorescent green Speedo. He interrupts his sunbathing and turns to me. “Oh, hey! It’s the Red Inn guys.”

Wyatt and I both wave back. “Do we know them?” Wyatt asks quietly.

“They had their engagement party next to us last night,” I whisper out of the corner of my mouth, reminding Wyatt. I’m surprised they remember us, the quiet ones in the corner.

“Are you two handsome boys having fun?” Speedo Bear asks. I’m paranoid that he detects we aren’t exactly having the time of our lives.

“A blast so far,” I shout back, overly enthusiastic. Wyatt turns to me, lifting an eyebrow, the sweat from the hot day making his face shiny. “Congrats on your engagement,” I add.

“Thanks!” they both say with huge smiles, flashing their engagement rings at us. The smaller bear throws his arm around the bigger one and they fall back into the sand, a chaotic, hairy kissing machine.

I turn back to face the silence between me and Wyatt.

“Are we having fun?” Wyatt asks.

I nod but want to say not really. This gorgeous day doesn’t deserve us. But I don’t want to escalate whatever tension is circling us like a shark.

After the sun has had its way with us, we march back through the marsh to retrieve our bikes before having a late afternoon lunch.

The tide has risen to our hips so we carry our bags above our heads.

I feel my phone vibrate. Once. Twice. Three times.

Wyatt is way ahead of me, so I let him go and decide to check my email.

Fourteen messages from work. All from “Quipple.”

Quipple is an all-knowing interoffice app that informs your managers of vacation time, updates your meeting calendar and monitors exactly how many bowel movements you’ve had that week, probably.

Trent is most likely trying to annoy me on vacation with his thoughts on my road trip piece.

I remind myself to tell Wyatt that I have a writing assignment. I’m sure he’ll enjoy sampling all the Italian food in every town we hit.

Opening my email, I see the messages are, in fact, from Trent.

SUBJECT: Staffing Changes

As you’re aware, we’re in the process of restructuring.

I’m frozen. I slide my Ray-Bans onto my head for a closer look, plant my bare feet firmly in the watery, sandy muck and read on.

I’ve had the unfortunate task of choosing to let a few colleagues go and...

This can’t be happening. I’ve been there for eight years.

The rest of Trent’s email goes fuzzy and I just see words and letters lose all meaning.

Something about the parent company of the magazine becoming more fractured over the years. Migrating to digital this and the print version hanging on by a thread that.

I’m sure you understand...

This isn’t easy...

I’m going to have to invite you to leave the company...

“Invite me to leave the company?” I ask out loud. There’s no one around me as far as the eye can see. Wyatt is disappearing into the distance, not even turning around.

I can only imagine Trent typing his email as he eats a tuna sandwich, uncaring. His hairy gray mess of a beard catching god knows what food particles, trapped forever.

Surely there’s something homophobic going on, I can’t help but think, grasping for answers. I wonder if I have a case to bring to HR, especially because I’m on paternity leave. Or maybe it’s just my time to leave.

I can’t see who else is on the mass email, feeling bad for any of my coworkers finding out in such a cold way. I take another quick peek.

I’ll be sure to give any referrals to your next employer...

This layoff stings, in a group email while I’m on vacation no less. A breeze brushes past me and I decide I can’t let this sunlit slice of heaven where I’m standing now forever remind me of this news. I’m already moving on in my head. Because that’s how I operate.

I slowly feel liberated that a food magazine won’t define my identity anymore. Like a hundred pounds of rigatoni is lifted off my back.

I shut the email and close out of Quipple forever.

And then it sets in. Even before the baby is born I’ve already let my family down.

We’re now a single-income couple about to have a baby in New York City.

How am I going to tell Wyatt?