USFS 2019 — Part 2, Chapter 9

If not for the nerve-numbing effects of a long run immediately after I’d returned with Ian and Bridger to the government area, I wouldn’t have lasted an hour alongside my buzzed neighbors without having some kind of a breakdown. Our coworker Ben’s partner Cassie had just outlined the painful process that led her to conclude that I was “actually the fucking GOAT,” right after Bridger had finished giving me shit about only eating grilled vegetables and macaroni and cheese, right after tipsy-but-not-yet-bombed Russ had lectured me on the importance of letting people love me. I knew Ian saw me roll my eyes at that because he looked quite amused. He’d recently confided that since he came on to me, he and Bridger had concluded I was a hicel or a volcel—terms I didn’t know to be dismayed by until I looked them up online. Who knew there were so many names for celibacy, each aimed at qualifying it as if it were a disease? I was somewhat humored by the apparent need to slot me as a way to explain why I wasn’t sexually interested in my philistine coworkers, but hadn’t yet had the will to go further into that conversation with them.

“Anyway, when you walked through the door of the…what do you guys call that hole? The moon shadow?”

Cassie had been going on so long continuously that I’d forgotten she was still talking to me and not just reciting something. “Mmm,” I said, probably looking like I’d just been startled awake (I kind of had been). “The Rain Shadow—”

“Same difference. Anyway, I hated, I mean, hated you. At least, I thought I did.”

“What?” I said, realizing I clearly hadn’t kept up. The assessment felt aggressive, but I had been too over-stimulated to be anxious that I had been misunderstood.

“The thing, the thing about you, MacKenzie,” she said, using her bottle of what I think was Angry Orchard of all things to point at me emphatically. “You walk in a room and, and these boys immediately take you seriously. Like, they know you’re off-limits and that you’re not an object to them. You know what a fucking gift that is?” I noted the interpretation that she, like Ian, made it sound like I was either not into dudes or what the internet called a hicel.

“Russ might have you believe that it isn’t.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“Oh. Well, what I’m saying is I didn’t trust you at first when you walked into Ben’s trailer—”

I laughed involuntarily at the invocation of the word trailer.

“What?” Cassie said, edgy.

“Sorry. We just make a lot of jokes about the fact that Ben’s government digs are a, um, trailer.” I redacted that there was a trending joke about me being a trailer-wrecker in lieu of a home-wrecker, inspired in part by the prevailing sense that Cassie wasn’t a fan of how Ben and I had become fast friends despite the fact that we’d never actually worked in the field together. “Sorry,” I volunteered again when Cassie still seemed uneasy. “You were saying you didn’t trust me.” That revived her train of thought with ease.

“When you immediately volunteered to help with his gear, and his dishes, I thought for sure you were sleeping with him.”

My stomach flopped when she said it. For some reason, it hadn’t bothered me that she plainly said she hated me even though I’d made a habit of bending over backwards to be a decent person, even around the likes of her for whom I had little patience. The insinuation, even if it were bygone, still fucked with me. I didn’t get it. So many guys’ partners had perceived me as a threat to their relationships for some reason or another in my adult life and I never knew what I could’ve done to change that. Evidently, it was unfathomable that I could live around any oaf for a sustained period and feel no deep emotional connection or physical attraction to them.

“And?” I finally managed. I didn’t have the wherewithal to make the question more targeted.

“And then I just figured out that’s just who you are.”

“The person who helps people with their gear and dishes?”

“No. You’re just a generous person. That’s who you are.”

Although the ultimate misunderstanding here painted me in a flattering light, I wanted to correct her. I wanted to explain to her that the reason I was that way—the reason I did those kinds of things, the reason I was “generous”—was because I didn’t feel like I deserved to be alive. I felt like I constantly had to earn my keep, to pay back the planet and the people on it for the number of ways that I made life more insufferable just by virtue of existing. I wasn’t sure that would land with an Angry Orchard-mainliner of any gender, age, or creed. At least not without being encouraged to get professional help, which I had already been doing in some capacity since the beginning of the year.

“Ask Callahan.” That was Ian’s unmistakeable call from the other side of a fire we had built.

“What?” I said speaking up now, and looking in his direction over the fire even though the faces of him and whoever he was talking to were washed out by the blaze. I turned my head to Cassie briefly one more time before rising to walk to the other side of what was more or less a circle of 16 that had converged around the fire. “Good talk,” I said as I walked away, relieved.

Once my angle relative to the fire gave me a clearer visual, I saw that Ian had been talking to Ben. “Oh, hey,” I said in his direction. Ben’s expression telegraphed that he could tell Cassie had unloaded some shit while she’d had me as a captive audience.

“You look like you need a refill,” Ben said.

“I wasn’t drinking, but I’ll start now,” I said.

In the time I’d looked around and back, Ben and Ian had each extended an arm, one with a bottle and one with an empty enamel cup. “Jesus,” I said. When I hesitated to grab either from them, they cooperated to pour a splash into the cup for me.

“Do you want anything with this, MC?” Ben asked.

I declined and said thanks when I finally took the cup from Ian’s hand. Then I asked what I’d been called into interrogation for.

“The disappearance of Glorified G,” Ian said.

“Alright. What about him?”

“Bridge-meister!” Ben called in yet another direction where people were indiscernible through the migrating glow and shadows of the tall fire.

“What?!” Bridger’s voice called back.

“Come tell MC your Ancient Aliens theory about the goat’s disappearance.”

“Oh god,” I said.

“Hey,” Bridger said, his words slurred with more MacLovin energy than his usual hybrid of Pepe and Swedish Chef. “I won’t go into it, but the point is this: Do we know for a fact that Glorified G is a goat?” At 22, Bridger was the youngest of us by a few years. I caught myself feeling wistful just because of his raw wholesomeness sometimes. I had decided some time within the past few years that aging happened on an algorithmic rather than linear scale beginning at age 21. Was there any better explanation for why the difference between early and late twenties felt like a lifetime?

“Do we know for a fact that Callahan isn’t actually the crossword editor for The New York Times?” Ian said.

“Wait, this double life theory might have some teeth, dude,” Bridger said.

“About Glorified G or Callahan?” Ian asked.

“MacKenzie. I’ve been in the kitchen with her when the Sunday puzzle airs on NPR. She gets all of them. What’s the name of the guy? They call him like the puzzle wizard?”

“The puzzlemaster,” I said. “It’s Will Shortz. The actual crossword editor for The New York Times. Also, that’s an exaggeration that I get all of them.”

“Bridger, did you call him a wizard?” Ian asked. “Can we just start calling everyone who’s in charge of something the wizard?”

Russ the dispatch wizard. Kevin the corral wizard. Dave the wizard of timber management. We spent some time cycling through all comparable examples in our district of people who were in charge of something. Somebody naively added the words grand and imperial in front of one of the titles we tested. I said that sounded too much like we were talking about the head of the KKK and made me uncomfortable, a point that was quickly dismissed when it was decided that Ben was the imperial trailer wizard. That one gave me enough of a kick to snarf a sip of liquor. Although I immediately thought of my brother giving me shit about deep-throating another liquid cock of some variety, I somehow managed not to laugh harder. When Ben asked what that was about, I just said I’d tell him some other time. He seemed to understand. I’m sure it was precisely that level of telepathy between us that Cassie had taken issue with. I understood her beef. But I didn’t understand why Ben was even in that relationship. He vocally spoke of her as if she were a nuisance. I always found it confounding that otherwise decent people would hold out on uninspired or straight-up bad relationships to retain the predictability of having an intimate partner.

“Is Glorified G just the wizard?” I asked once I’d felt like we’d exhausted every permutation of potential Neighborhood of Hood Canal wizardry.

Bridger stood ceremoniously and raised his can. “Glorified G, grand wizard of the Neighborhood of Hood Canal. Rest in power.” And with that, we drank to the vanished goat. The disjointed chatter seemed to cease after that. Some people dispersed but there were probably about 10 of us still outside.

“Okay, okay. But real talk,” Bridger said. “Is it fair to say that we’ve neglected to name the obvious suspect behind Glorified G’s disappearance?” He’d clearly worked on the dramatic pause he deployed before signaling toward a stand of trees with the hand he held his drink in. Ben was in his line of fire and got splashed in the process. It cut the tempo and we laughed as Bridger apologized and attempted to pat Ben dry with some grimy towel he’d found by the wood pile.

It took us a while to regroup. Once we did, somebody on the other side of the fire spoke up. “Bridger, I’m not following.” It was Dave speaking, newly-christened wizard of timber management.

“I’m just saying what about Sasquatch?” Bridger said.

All residual snickering from Ben’s surprise beer shower halted audibly. Of my coworkers, I had only talked with Ian about Sasquatch off the cuff—and then, only because he mentioned he’d done a summer season at Happy Camp, which happens to be the terminus of a highway the state of California bills as the Bigfoot Scenic Byway. Though I had thought to connect the creature to Glorified G’s disappearance in abstract terms, I had never felt brave enough to come out and properly espouse the theory. Judging by the contemplative silence, the theory resonated. Bridger’s insinuation had hit a collective nerve with several people who, at various intervals, had spent days alone in the coastal forests of the Olympics—most over the course of several years.

Bridger was the one to break the silence again. “I mean, like, what if he’s out there? What if he ate Glorified G?”

“Sasquatch doesn’t have to be a dude,” I said.

“I mean, no. Okay, MacKenzie, what if they’re out there?”

I rose to throw more wood on the fire. “I mean, I want that shit to be real. Ian and I have talked about this,” I felt the need to rope in a second voice. Not so much in the spirit of putting him on the spot as covering my ass. I didn’t feel self-secure in any of this. Perhaps on account of the liquor-addled sentimentality, I wondered if I was getting a taste of the shame my dad may have felt being a lonely voice in the academy on this subject.

“Hey, I ride for that shit,” Ian said. “I think it’s real.”

“Not to go all ‘I am Spartacus’ here, but same,” Bridger said.

“Hey, raise your glass if you believe.” I couldn’t see him, but I recognized that as Russ’ voice.

Everyone still there raised their drink.

I thought I had made a successful Irish exit of fleeing the fireside mingling only to be unwittingly tracked back to the Rain Shadow by Ian, Bridger, and—after making sure a struggling Cassie made it to bed—Ben. I had planned to graze on some chips and salsa at the kitchen counter, but when it was clear that my company wasn’t just passing through, I suggested migrating the provisions over to the table positioned about the same distance between the kitchen and front door.

“How elite was it that Callahan just got up and left without saying anything?” Ian asked as we sat down.

I asked what he meant by that, and he explained that anybody else would’ve felt the need to announce that they were leaving and say goodnight rounds before taking off. I said I guess he had a point, but it didn’t really feel necessary in groups large enough to sustain multiple conversations.

“If you hadn’t been so game about the Sasquatch part of that conversation, I would’ve thought that’s why you bailed,” Bridger said.

“Because I seem like the type to roll my eyes at that stuff?” I asked.

Ben and Ian, who were sitting across from Bridger and me, nodded. In my left peripherals, I saw Bridger’s silent struggle with a chip come to a head when he fumbled and leaked salsa all over the front of his shirt. I handed him the roll of paper towels we kept at the table.

“I think my relationship to Sasquatch tales is a little bit different than most people’s because I grew up with Pete and Ayla,” I said. Though I felt like I could’ve also mentioned the recent discovery of my dad’s connection to the creature with those three casually enough, I think my new insecurity about being written off just because Sasquatch was something of a family affair stopped me.

“How’s that?” Ben asked.

“Well, with the Quinault. Seatco—their name for them—is all over their stories. That’s common up and down the coast. It’s not like a fetishized thing in cultures that don’t separate humans from the rest of the living world. And you guys might not know this about Pete, but he’s an anthropologist by training. He’s spent a lot of time with the First Nations in BC and it’s the same thing. The names and functions are a little different in each oral tradition, but the wild-man beings are always there.”

“You guys have been out here for multiple summers,” Bridger said, looking at Ben and Ian. “Have you ever seen anything that’s made you think it’s out there?”

Ben and Ian considered the question earnestly, but couldn’t think of anything definitive between them. Nonetheless, they did say there was always a hitch or two every summer that felt off—not in a purely good or bad way. Just different.

“I have to say that Bridger’s theory on the goat disappearing though—I don’t know. There might be something there. It’s probably the most notable unexplained thing that’s happened since I’ve been coming out to Hood Canal,” Ben said.

“Well, unexplained over this long of a time,” Ian added.

“Yeah, that’s what I mean,” Ben said.

We mulled on that silently for a while before Ian asked if we could continue discussing whether I was a volcel or a hicel. Ian asked if I had looked the words up and I reluctantly admitted I had and that the Wikipedia entry for incel had been quite an unforeseen education on the different real or perceived motivations for celibacy. To my dismay, my coworkers had already speculated at some length as to the reasons for my lack of sexual urgency. I let them go for a while without interrupting and was surprised that Ian fully owned up to coming on to me before explaining his contention that I just had high standards when it came to mates, at which point I intervened.

“Alright, Ian, so that right there is what I think is wrong with this—the assumption that sex is the end to which humans exist and that you’re diseased somehow if it takes a lot to rouse your sexual interest in someone. That seems to be why these words exist. I mean, if sexual disposition is primarily how a person wants to define themselves, that’s fine. But as somebody who doesn’t, I think slotting me based on my lack of interest in any of the philistines I work with is a little fucked up.”

“Notice she’s not implying that she’s celibate,” Ben said to Ian.

“Hey, can we not talk about me in third person while I’m right here?”

“Are you two—?” Ian started the question, looking at Ben, then me.

“Jesus Christ. Not you, too,” I sighed.

“So Cassie told you tonight?” Ben asked me, cringing a little. “I thought that might’ve been what that was.”

I nodded.

“Cassie told you what, Callahan?” Ian asked.

“She thinks Ben and I have something going on because, I don’t know, we’re buds.”

We clarified for Ian that there was nothing there. But he was still confounded by my lack of sex drive and pressed me about it. If it had been most any other time in my life, I would’ve been peeved that I had to explain myself and probably shot down the conversation long before even looking up what any of these things meant. But after a point, I suspected that Ian’s fascination with my motives had little to do with his damaged ego over a declined proposition. I honestly think Ian had some fragility around his own sexuality, and I wondered if what I had noticed as an uptick in his curiosity actually started when I said that most people weren’t exclusively hetero or gay. I wasn’t inclined to give myself this kind of credit at the time, but I think I might’ve been the first person Ian knew in a multidimensional way who challenged the prescribed heteronormative system of attraction and intimacy he had been socialized with. Even without recognizing that, I guess I sensed enough sincerity in his questions that I was inclined to humor him.

After some back and forth—with Bridger intermittently nodding off, all the while refusing to go upstairs to his room to sleep—Ben and I were able to tease out a premise at the root of much of Ian’s confusion. He thought my temperament skewed masculine in enough ways that he assumed I’d be more motivated by sex. I’m still not sure if I object to that as a gendered generalization, but it ended up taking the conversation to a place that ultimately helped me appreciate how complicated a human’s attitude toward physical intimacy can be. For my part, the best rationale I’d get for my general indifference toward anything shy of charisma on the magnitude of Montgomery Clift was directly related to my long relationship with suicidality. The same French surrealist that I thought of when Elliott explained Dad’s choice of Borah for his ashes had a theory about this. He had it that those whose first temptation was suicide were less affected by other forms of desire later in life. This checked out with my experience. People always seemed to want me to want something, or assumed I did when I didn’t. I had never thought to attribute it to an impoverished ability to experience desire.

However, in that July 3 conversation with Ian, Ben, and a semi-lucid Bridger, I had different, if less complete, ideas about the causes for my atypical apathy toward intimacy. I had been forthcoming with them about having a personality disorder, but hadn’t named it for them before then. I explained to them that if it were just for my indomitable self-loathing, I might have been accurately described as an incel. However, I had through conversation with Tully started to reflect on the extent to which my hatred of myself had subconsciously leached into my feelings toward other human beings. So, it was probably true that there was a bit of misanthropy at play that hindered my capacity for attraction or arousal. But, I explained, there was also a concurrent reality where I was pretty certain that I had been assaulted by a physician when I was 6 or 7.

I remembered it only because in 2017, my brother had been reporting on a scandal wherein a few doctors in New York had been outed for performing unnecessary pelvic exams on pediatric patients from poor families and essentially fingering them. I read the story the day it published, and the day after, it clicked that something similar had happened to me when I was in first grade. Some teachers had noticed I was using the bathroom frequently and encouraged my dad to get me checked out for a UTI. At the doctor’s, after I had handed off a urine sample, I was physically examined without Dad in the room. I pretty much browned out because it was so uncomfortable.

Elliott’s story inspired me to look into it, and everything I found online seemed to indicate that only a urinalysis was necessary to confirm a UTI. I emailed Elliott because I wasn’t confident I’d get him on the phone and just asked if any of those unnecessary pelvic exams he’d reported on had involved pediatric UTIs. He surprised me by calling back within minutes and just kept apologizing without much else to say. Because he was older, he remembered the surrounding events better than I did. He read between the lines and knew exactly why I’d asked about UTIs in that context.

“Contrary to popular belief, I was a child once,” I said to my coworkers after briefly recounting the UTI incident. “I haven’t done trauma therapy or anything, but I know I’ve filed some abuse-level stuff in the wrong box when it comes to human intimacy. That’s no joke. But that’s just one factor in how I relate to other human beings.”

I was pleasantly surprised by how undramatically my account of assault had gone over with my coworkers. It wasn’t as though they weren’t visibly upset by it, but they also didn’t look squirmy and panicked in that way that makes recalling trauma so much worse. In fact, they continued their machinations about the mechanics and criteria of volcel, unicel, hicel, and whatever other epidemiological terms they had for celibacy with relative ease from that little tangent. By that time, I found their obsession with the labels entertaining. But I couldn’t really identify with any of it.

It all seemed to hinge on another misleading binary between sexual activity and celibacy. That was one of the last times Ian would truly probe about my sexuality that summer, though of course we’d recycle some of the material for bits. I think the reason I remember the conversation with inordinate clarity is because it made me ask questions. It’s true that I didn’t feel the need to define myself by sexual disposition or, really, any kind of human connection. But I hadn’t hesitated to claim my personality disorder once I’d had that explanation for my neurodivergence.

There seemed to be both a risk and a benefit comprising two sides of the same coin with names. On one hand, I’d discovered there was a way to identify so strongly with a designation that you undercut your potential to evolve as a dynamic, living organism. On the other, there was clearly something to naming phenomena as a way of bringing people out of isolation in their experiences. That summer, it seemed more probable to me by the day that evolution and collective reciprocity were the two fundamental forces all forms of life hinged upon. In that stroke of Mufasa wisdom that hit me when Ian had come on to me in June, I’d implied that we all have the power to make life easier or harder for people. By rejecting both connection with other human beings and my inherent adaptive potential as one of them, I’d been making it harder for myself for years.