The Road to Amazing (9 page)

Basically, Vashon was an
overalls-and-dreadlocks kind of town.

Kevin parked the car and we all
climbed out to look around. It was late in the year, well past the
tourist season, but the streets were pretty crowded.

"Now what?" Kevin said.

It was actually a good question. I'd
been acting as if by driving into town the answer would become
obvious, like a bush would start burning and announce the perfect
alternative wedding venue. But even if the Vashon Groove was a real
thing, I couldn't imagine any of the restaurants in town letting us
use their backrooms for a wedding, not without paying them (a lot)
for the privilege. So what to do?

Saturday happened to be the day of the
island farmers' market, which was taking place in a vacant lot
along the main street.

"Let's check that out," I said,
pointing.

We reached the market, which was
mobbed, and started walking the aisles, past booths and tables with
homemade cheeses and artisan breads, and assortments of local
vegetables — mostly leafy green stuff like kale and spinach, and
lots of pumpkins and squashes. The booth selling free-range eggs
didn't just have chicken eggs, they also had duck, goose, quail,
ostrich, emu, and "heirloom," which I was pretty sure was another
kind of chicken.

I passed a table selling marijuana in
all its glorious forms — buds, joints, pills, brownies, chocolate,
topical oils, and, of course, gummy bears. (I wanted to say, "What,
no marijuana Swedish fish?" but I didn't have the
nerve.)

"Island grown!" called the man behind
the booth — plump and ruddy-faced.

"I've read about this," Min said to
me. "Since marijuana was legalized here in Washington, Vashon
Island farmers are trying to become sort of the Napa Valley of
pot."

"There's just one problem," said the
man behind the table. "The only way off the island is by air or by
sea — both of which are regulated by the federal government, which
still considers marijuana illegal."

"Oh, that's interesting!" I said. "So
what do you do?"

"Make damn sure we don't get a
Republican president!"

Min immediately perked up.
"Exactly! I don't know why more people can't see how it's all
connected — how the issues
matter
. But no, we have to
make
our
elections all about personality."

"Russel?" Kevin said, growing
impatient.

"Right!" I said. We really did have a
tight time-limit.

I forged onward, but now I noticed
that people were glancing our way.

People are staring at
Otto,
I thought. It happened every time I
was out in public with him, and it pissed me off how obvious people
could be, how oppressive it felt. At least it wasn't very often
that people actually said insulting things — called him a freak or
anything like that.

Someone stepped right in front of
him.

"You're Otto Digmore," the woman
said.

"Yeah," Otto said.

"I love you on
Hammered
."

All around us, eyes brightened and
smiles blossomed. People were staring at Otto, but not for the
reason I'd thought. They recognized him from his television
show.

"Can I get your autograph?" someone
else said.

"Sure," Otto said, as smooth and
graceful as all the celebrities I'd seen living in Los Angeles. He
even carried his own pen.

He started signing things
— papers and pamphlets, a rolling paper someone had just bought at
the marijuana booth. And of course everyone wanted a selfie with
him. Best of all, no one said anything stupid or patronizing like,
"I can't believe how
brave
you are!"

I was sort of in awe of how Otto
managed all this, how non-flustered he was. Before I knew it, his
crowd was even bigger than the one around the old-fashioned cider
press up ahead, where people were juicing their own apples. In
spite of my stress about the wedding, I couldn't help but take a
moment and appreciate how incredibly cool it was that my friend was
an actual celebrity, especially since he was a person who had spent
almost all of his life drawing stares for exactly the opposite
reason.

As quickly as it started, Otto tried
to wrap things up.

"Okay, thanks a lot," he said,
quietly, but firmly. "I've got to go now."

As most of the people drifted away, I
leaned in close to him. "I'm so impressed!" I said. "Look, that guy
is filming us with his phone. Wave! One trip to the farmers' market
and you're going to be all over social media."

He groaned.

I looked at him. "What's wrong with
that?"

"Nothing, it doesn't
matter."

"No, seriously."

"Russel, it's nothing. Let's just find
you a place for your wedding."

"Wedding?" someone said. It wasn't the
guy who was filming us, or anyone Otto had signed an autograph for,
but someone who'd been passing by. He was loaded down with cloth
sacks full of stuff from the market.

I stared, trying to decide if I wanted
to tell him what we were talking about. I was pretty sure he wasn't
one of Otto's stalkers.

And, well, he wasn't unattractive
either. He was older, in his thirties, tall and reasonably brawny.
His face was unshaven, and his hair grew long, but not unkempt. His
shirt and jeans were old and faded, only a cut or two above
"homeless," but that wasn't that unusual here on the
island.

"My boyfriend and I are getting
married tomorrow," I said, nodding toward Kevin. "But we can't do
it where we thought, so now we have to find somewhere else on the
island to hold a wedding for sixty-seven guests."

"I have a place," he said.

I sensed my friends all looking at
each other, curious. Meanwhile, I glanced at Kevin. He seemed as
intrigued-but-skeptical as I felt.

"And we don't have any money," I said
to the man.

He laughed. "That doesn't matter. We'd
be glad to have you. It's our barn. We're an intentional
community."

Most people might have been taken
aback by the words "intentional community," like he was talking
about a commune or something. But even if he was, I didn't care.
Two years earlier, Min had briefly considered herself polyamorous.
And back in high school, I'd sort of dated a guy in a commune.
True, some of his friends turned out to be eco-terrorists, and
people had almost died because of them, but that's a whole other
story.

The point is, it took a lot to shock
me.

"A barn, huh?" I said. That was the
real sticking point here, not the commune. Who wanted to hold their
wedding in a barn?

"It's not like it sounds," he said.
"We have a couple of animals, but we can move them out for the
wedding. And it's clean. It doesn't smell. We've held weddings
there before."

Given that the only alternative venue
right now included six tons of rotten sushi, I liked the sound of
that a lot.

"You're really serious about this?"
Kevin asked him.

"Sure, why not?" the man said. "Hey,
it's the Vashon Groove."

So this
was
a real
thing.

I exchanged another look with Kevin.
The skepticism in his eyes was mostly gone now, swept away like
cobwebs in an attic.

I looked from Min to Otto to Ruby, all
questioning them with my eyes to see if they agreed this was a good
idea. (I didn't look at Nate, because I didn't care what he
thought.)

Everyone seemed to agree that we
should at least check it out.

"I'm Russel," I said to the man. "And
this is Kevin." I introduced the rest of our little group too.
Everyone grinned stupidly, even Min.

"I'm Duane," the man said,
and somehow he even made
that
name sound sexy. "Do you guys wanna come out and
take a look right now?"

"Sure," I said. "Where are you
parked?"

* * *

In our car, Kevin followed Duane
across some back roads, then down a twisty gravel road through some
woods. It was a little like the road to the Amazing Inn, except we
were in the interior of the island, not anywhere near the
beach.

The trees fell away, and we found
ourselves in the middle of a couple of acres of grassy hills. Ducks
and geese floated lazily on a little pond, and I spotted a pretty
impressive vegetable garden, though it looked pretty picked over.
At the end of the road, a large green farmhouse loomed, alongside,
yes, a big barn that had clearly been restored.

I don't want to overstate things: the
house was a little dumpy, and I saw rusted cars here and there. But
all in all, it was pretty seriously charming.

"What
is
this place?" Min said.

"It's perfect," Kevin said. "That's
what it is!"

I was agreeing with him,
even as I was also thinking:
This
seems
too
perfect. What's the catch?
Angry
ghosts like that farmhouse in
The
Conjuring
? A band of violent local rapists
like in
Straw Dogs
? It really did seem too good to be true.

We parked the car and all climbed out.
The air smelled like cut grass and drying leaves, and over on the
pond, a goose honked.

The barn greeted us like a giant
Buddha: big, fat, and welcoming. The outside was done in cedar,
still so new that it had barely begun to fade. The big doors were
open, and the inside beckoned, bright and clean. It was easily big
enough for sixty-seven people!

In the barn, a goat bleated, but it
sounded rustic and adorable, not annoying.

Duane walked back toward us from his
car, a grin etched onto his bristly face. "Whadaya
think?"

I looked at Kevin, who was beaming
like I needed to wear sunglasses.

"I don't know what to say," I said.
"It looks perfect."

"Fantastic," Duane said.

Two people stepped out onto the
wrap-around front porch of the farm house, a man and a woman —
older than Duane, probably in their forties or fifties, both a bit
chubby.

The man was wearing tighty-whities and
the woman was completely naked.

They waved — very friendly, even if it
made the woman's breasts and the man's fat wiggle.

Tentatively, we all waved
back.

Then we looked at Duane.

"Oh, right," he said. "We're a
clothing-optional community." He didn't say this like he'd been
hiding it from us and now wanted to get some kind of prurient
thrill by shocking us. It was more like he'd forgotten. "I hope
that's okay."

* * *

As we were driving away from the farm,
it was impossible not to laugh.

"I would've loved to see your mom
there!" Min said to me. "Can you imagine?"

"I know!" I said, even as
I also thought,
It meant I would've gotten
to see Duane naked.

But alas, having our
wedding in Duane's barn really was out of the question. If it had
only been Kevin's and my close friends, that would have been one
thing, but we had a lot of our relatives coming. We knew most of
them had never been to a same-sex wedding before, and the last
thing we wanted was to make people feel even more uncomfortable.
Yes, yes, our wedding was all about us, it was
our
day, about whatever
we
wanted. But come
on.

I noticed that Kevin wasn't laughing
with the rest of us.

"You okay?" I asked him, looking
across the car with Min between us.

He clenched the steering
wheel.

Finally he turned to me. "What about a
church?"

"What about it?" I said.

"For the wedding. Maybe we could find
an actual church."

No one said anything for a
second, and I thought it was funny that it wasn't until now that
anyone had even
considered
holding our wedding in an actual church, despite
the fact that this was where weddings were usually held.

On the other hand, it's not like we
were crazy. Given what complete babies most churches had been on
the subject of same-sex marriage over the last few years, who could
blame us? Why in the world would we want to go somewhere we weren't
welcome — or, in some churches, where we're now maybe sometimes
grudgingly tolerated.

Thanks, but no thanks.

(Plus, there was the fact
that neither Kevin nor I was religious. I was raised Catholic, but
it never really took. It was partly the anti-gay thing, but that
was only part of it. By the time I was fourteen, religion mostly
seemed silly, like believing that the characters in
The Lord of the Rings
are real. But I tried hard not to stereotype, because I knew
reasonable people who thought otherwise.)