Chapter 47: Ricky
Malta Test Station
Malta, NY
My first impression of Ricky? A gentle lamb. No doubt about it.
His calm voice, his kind eyes, his doofy smile. We bonded over our shared love of Los Angeles; for him, specifically Santa Monica. From what I could gather the first time we hung out one-on-one, he dreamed of a beachfront property with views of the Pacific. Being a meteorologist, he could certainly have an easier job forecasting in a place like LA, which by and large has a pretty predictable weather pattern throughout the year, at least according to Reddit. Once, we wound up in Santa Monica at the same time, and I took some brilliant photos of him.
But that was the second time I’d taken his picture. The first time was a few months prior, his face beaming into the camera, standing on a sports field in Malta, NY, sandwiched between the Luther Forest, a slowly-developing suburban wasteland, and the ruins of the Malta Test Station, a former Superfund site, originally a post-World War II military operation that was part of Project Hermes, a missile research program. Over the years, the station served a number of different government agencies, including NASA, the US Department of Energy, and the US Department of Defense. Naturally, by the time the Cold War kicked into high gear, the site transformed into a Soviet-era rocket fuel testing site, though by 1987, the year I was born, the entire property had become a Superfund and removed, mostly, over the course of a lengthy clean-up that is still ongoing.
I should’ve known that a second date with a man that took place on top of acres and acres undetectable toxic waste could never be sustainable.
***
Not to say that getting to know Ricky those first couple hangs wasn’t worth it. Our attraction was never in question; from the second I met him, I crushed. He had this smushy quality about him. I sensed he’d learned to use this to his advantage over the course of many years. Queer people do that, learn to assimilate into heteronormative existence, especially the smart ones. I don’t think it’s as manipulative as it sounds; more so, I think it means people become comfortable in their own skin, and even though Ricky has crippling anxiety, he’s definitely not shy to be himself.
On that first and only saunter through the Malta Test Station, I wondered to myself if this kind of behavior (which, at the time, was still just an assumption on my part) was a way to protect himself against the same cultural oppression that I’d learned to protect myself from, by harnessing the charm that is natural to me, mixed in with the learned sarcasm that was a major component of my upbringing. By my parents’ example, I was socialized to believe that dry wit was a way to show people that you love them, and I was routinely practicing the art of poking fun at my friends by the time I was in middle school, during early onset puberty when my body, like all bodies at that age, began to unfold with intensity.
It was during this time period I learned that charm and sarcasm could be used as shields, a version of code-switching that still allowed me to be myself but in a way that was funny and sincere. If you recall, it was in the 2000s that Hillary Duff became the face of the “Don’t Say Gay” campaign, a series of TV commercials featuring her telling other teens that replacing the word “stupid” with “gay” is hurtful and culturally insensitive.
That was what I was up against as a teenager in the early-to-mid-2000s.
Consequently, every once in a while, both the charm and sarcasm was also used to bully other kids, namely because I myself was bullied and wanted to feel like I was on some higher rung of the proverbial schoolyard hierarchy that looked and felt different to every kid at school who also felt the pressures of that type of behavioral social conditioning. The older I got, though, the more I realized that bullying wasn’t a viable option, so I tried my hardest to trim back the sarcasm and charm and just occupy my skin openly and freely.
Luckily, when I meet people like Ricky, I don’t feel as though I have to be anyone else except myself because I know they find me attractive-for me. “Perhaps,” I imagined, after Ricky and I stopped communicating for a while, “that all that sweetness and softness, though innate, was Ricky’s way of keeping himself from being hurt,” quickly followed by, “or, maybe he just doesn’t see you romantically, and you need to accept it?”
***
We park at the Luther Forest Athletic Fields and start our walk onto the Malta Test property, and I listen as Ricky explains the lay of the land. Donning a Cool Doritos t-shirt that makes his arms look good, he seems nervous, and I can’t tell if it’s because we’re on a date and that’s how some people react to being on a second date, or maybe he’s scared we’ll somehow get into trouble even though there’s no really clear trespassing happening, on this peaceful, early September afternoon in 2021 — or maybe it’s something different altogether.
Or all three.
(Or maybe it’s just something he ate.)
There’s no doubt about it, though. Ricky’s nervous.
“Or maybe I’m the one who’s nervous and projecting because I’m insecure about my own prowess.”
We’re unclear about where the property starts and stops. It’s tough to say since a large portion of the site was demolished in the mid-1990s, after which another company bought some of the property. It seems like they’ve begun rebuilding, though we’re not entirely sure what. I don’t pay too much mind to any of this, though. I’m too focused on Ricky, making sure that he feels comfy enough to keep going. He is, although, even if he hadn’t been, I still probably would’ve taken my time wandering through this wreckage while he waited in the car. I did drive over two hours to get here, after all.
We laugh and talk the whole time, exploring this vacant, strange piece of American history that crumbles away into nothing. As we saunter down pathways soaked in trichloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, and polychlorinated biphenyls, I think about the EPA and Superfund sites across the country, many of which are interwoven with abandoned factories and warehouses, power plants and slaughterhouses, a vast poisonous wasteland under the greedy hands of climate change and environmental protection deniers.
We poke our heads into small bunkers built inside mounds of earth and climb down ladders into smaller bunkers and push buttons on old control panels, and I marvel at Ricky’s dimples, his squinty-eyed smile that is so sincere, his generous way of talking about my work on All-American Ruins which is still so new, largely an ambiguous idea that’s slowly forming of its own volition. Though it has nothing to do with meteorology, Ricky is enough of a dork to comprehend and respect the way I geek over abandoned buildings the way he geeks over the weather. He looks radiant, the soft blue Cool Doritos shirt reflected softly against the golden hour of the late New York summer. I feel a slight disconnect in his body language, more so than on our first date.
At one particular building, I spot graffiti of a microwave wedged between a Satanic star and a message that says, “You got 2 minutes.” I find a worn suitcase, brown, aged, discarded, forgotten, and Ricky manages to snap a series of photos in which I’m walking away from the camera. I investigate an open yellow door that leads into a large, chilled room boasting a ladder that pushes up through the top of one of the many aforementioned mounds of earth. I have no clue what these rooms were for. When I reemerge, I catch Ricky curiously inspecting a small fire extinguisher that’s been left to rot in another doorway. I ask him to look towards me, to capture this moment. He looks so small and innocent in the frame.
I discover a Swastika painted on a black door that leads into yet another tiny control room with a chalkboard on the wall and a Rice Lake Weighing System, model number RD300, which boasts a California pop. 65 warning label, also known as the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, legislation signed into law in 1986, citing a consumer’s “right-to-know” about hazardous chemicals buried in products, toxins that are known to cause all sorts of cancers and reproductive harms and birth defects. I close my eyes and drift back into 1986 as I watch Christa McCauffe fly up into the sky inside the Challenger which bursts into a million pieces on national television. The year turns over into my imagination, and it’s 1987, my birth year, and I hear Ronald Regan, murderer of thousands of gay men, famously pleading with Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down this wall!” before I hop another 365+ days ahead, and it’s 1988, and CNN has just called the United States Presidential election for George HW Bush.
I see a flight of emergency stairs attached to the side of a building. I run up them with Ricky close behind. We mosey to a landing as he starts to open up, slowly, about all kinds of things, his likes, his dislikes, fights that he’s currently in with various friends. I observe his meek behavior, nestled amongst this scarred and disembodied military site, and I begin to wonder if this little crush will amount to anything substantial. I’m fond of him, but he seems unwilling to travel the two-ish hours between us to make anything happen. I suppose it’s a state-of-being that feels foreign to me, a willingness to take small voyages to see a person I enjoy.
Then again, that could simply be the human in me who’s still slightly afraid to be alone, which is strange, considering how much I enjoy alone time.
Either way, I start to wonder, “Does Ricky have a crush on me too?”
Because, if he does, goddammit.
Then again (again), if we had tried it out, it would’ve been a losing battle. My codependency doesn’t need to be a narrative that’s forced onto people. That’s why I’m medicated and (sometimes) go to therapy (should go more, will when bank account allows).
After Ricky takes a photo of me jumping down the metal staircase and we’ve talked about our sexual interests, I decide to ask if he wants to hang out again. He does, but then the communication fizzles. Between our next hang over three years later, demolition resumes at the Malta Test Site. It feels appropriate. Here I am, writing about the abandonment of something that never was, a relationship that was not meant to happen. If it doesn’t happen, then it doesn’t happen.
I can’t say that it rained if it didn’t just rain.
When we do meet, in Hudson, over three years later, we share a nice meal. Ricky catches me up on his life. He also apologizes for ghosting. It’s sweet. He hasn’t changed an inch. Neither have I, but my circumstance has. I’m in a healthy relationship with boundaries and autonomy, which I need — and secretly like. The attraction to Ricky, though, as with many other lovers in my past, hasn’t faded, and I sincerely doubt it ever will.
I’m sure we’ll hang out again, maybe.
And, if nothing else, I still get to find glee in the fact that I dated a meteorologist, even if only for one hot minute.
