Chapter Text
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Mark has a tough year, in 2013, and a lot of things change.
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Eduardo happens, and then his therapist is putting in overtime.
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When he sees Eduardo he cannot not kiss him, is what he tells Theresa, and she shakes her head and he sighs and stares at his cupped palms.
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And somehow they get to the point where it happens, Eduardo gives him another chance, and he does everything right and everything he is supposed to do and it doesn't work and Eduardo leaves, and goes back to New York.
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Mark is miserable.
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He mopes around and he won't talk, and he goes to Target and buys an industrial-sized box of Red Vines and a three-pack of Cool Ranch Doritos and a fountain Coke and sits in his car, eating candy, in the parking lot.
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It fucking sucks.
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Everyone is trying to take him out, keep him interested, occupied.
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He just wants to get away, go somewhere, anywhere, with more sky, and less people, and no fucking internet.
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Theresa has talked to him about compulsive tendencies.
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Now that Eduardo is on facebook, it is all too easy to know what is going on in his life.
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(Mark might, maybe, read Eduardo's messages and chat transcripts, though he keeps this secret, from Theresa.)
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And Mark is pissed off, like, a lot.
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He knows that being physical helps, it gives him an outlet, so he swims and fences, and takes a couple of runs, when it's not too hot out, and uses the free weights he has in his garage, since he still has to avoid the gym when he feels low.
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Mark is not, needless to say, perfect. He never has been, has never claimed to be.
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Eduardo always thought he was so fucking perfect, though, and thinking of Eduardo makes Mark very mad, for a long time.
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He has to stick around for a while, because Dustin goes to be with Clare and Max, and he doesn't trust anyone but Dustin to look after facebook, not really. For little stuff, sure, but not two months, maybe more.
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Dustin he trusts not to fuck things up.
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Randi is fine, but not with technical things. Same as Chris -- but he is not around, and he doesn't know tech stuff half as well as he thinks, not even really well enough to delegate. Sean is good at some things, like pitching -- he's scary good at pitching -- but he sucks at the day-to-day.
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Mark waits. He looks on the internet, because he wants to go somewhere where he can be alone, but not really.
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He looks at hiking tours, cruises, mountain treks, grape-picking.
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It all seems pretty lame.
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However, since he has been contemplating finishing his degree, and he really has no need to get a BA in Computer Science, at this point, he looks at different classes, abroad, in the summer.
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After a lot of looking on the course catalog, and at Google Earth, and calculating points of distance, remoteness, and lack of access to the internet, he signs up for a archaeological dig in central Anatolia, supervised by Dr. Laura Wilkes-Brown, with room for eight students for 12 credit hours.
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There will be seven weeks of digging, at the site, and then the students and the TA will travel around the region for two weeks.
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Digging in the dirt for eight hours a day with no access to running water sounds about right.
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He pays in advance.
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There is a lot to do at the office. The servers don't crash, but hackers from Korea, Russia, Kazakhstan, are getting smarter, more sophisticated.
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Things go on like they have, only he's sadder, and busy like usual, and sometimes responsible for watching the baby, when Clare and Dustin go out.
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Every other weekend, they will leave Mark alone with Max, who sleeps a lot, and is a good tv-watching partner.
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Mark gets along very well with the baby, because unlike his therapist, or his nosy-ass friends, it never wants to talk about stuff.
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He likes the chickens for that same reason. They ask no questions.
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Sometimes, after he has worked too late, or gone online -- which Theresa calls snooping, but, he argues, it can't be snooping if it's not really private in the first place, can it? -- he will look at pictures of dogs, and think about maybe getting one. He has a sneaking suspicion it might kill the birds, though, so he doesn't do that.
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He starts eating candy again, which Chris freaks out about, when he sees Mark crunching green apple Jolly Ranchers between his back molars.
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"What are you eating? Don't you worry about your teeth?"
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Mark shrugs. Whatever.
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They're just teeth.
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Mark is being kind of a dick all summer.
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He argues with Theresa, and they talk about love and friendship and forgiveness but Mark is really not paying attention, like he should.
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He stays in the city, in his apartment, and imagines that he can still smell Eduardo's cologne on the pillows.
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Of course he cannot, it's been months.
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Dustin bugs him, trying to pull faces.
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Randi keeps a wide berth, as she always has. Since he was five and she was eight, she has done this.
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He sometimes thinks Randi is kind of a bitch.
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She's really determined, and she has all these ideas and all these plans, and Mark hates it when she gets pushy.
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If he tells Theresa this she says he has issues with powerful women and he wants to say, yeah, but you've never met my sister.
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He doesn't use that word anymore, or he tries not to.
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But Randi, seriously, is pretty bitchy, a lot of the time. They steer clear of one another, at work. Socially it's different, she's more chill, so they can do that, but around the facebook offices she is a brisk blur of cardiganed efficiency, and she bugs him, too.
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And Sean is so annoying and keeps wanting to set him up on dates, to, as he says, get back out there, man.
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Mark has never wanted to punch Sean more.
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Like, never.
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He and Chris fight, on two separate occasions. Once when Mark comes back from lunch to find that his Now & Laters have been replaced by fucking raisins, which are just not the same, and he snaps, you're not my mother, Jesus!
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It's pretty much totally shitty.
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One day when DOS attacks are coming from all inside the Caucasus, Clare comes into the office with the baby, and everyone stands around and stares at him, and pokes him and stuff.
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Mark sees Max enough that he does not have to go stand and gawp with all of the girls.
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And Dustin, who is worse than any girl, trying to make Max smile.
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Mark is certainly annoyed by it, so he figures Max is too.
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He keeps his head down, and opens Starburst wrappers one-handed, as he works, until Clare taps him on the shoulder and says, "Can you take a break?"
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He goes with them to Jamba Juice and then the park, where they walk around a little bit and then sit a little bit.
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She asks him if he wants to come to her yoga class some time.
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He says no, even though she insists it will make his ass look cute.
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Normally he would find that kind of funny, the way she makes jokes about his butt, but he does not want to think about butts, especially not those which do fucking yoga.
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"Thanks, though," he says, and drinks his smoothie.
"Yeah, sure," she says.
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Clare can be quiet, too.
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One would have to be, with Dustin, who is always yammering the fuck on about a new reboot of a not so distant movie-franchise, or how he totally found this store that sells really really tiny punk rock t-shirts, so he got a Ramones one and a Black Flag one, but Clare vetoed the Exploited one, because she said that even punk rock is no excuse for bad grammar and then he snaps at Dustin, too.
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Mark cannot wait to not have people talk at him.
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It's still so tiring.
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He flies to New York, to see his family, over the holidays. His mom watches movies with him, and he sits at the table while she makes dinner and he looks online.
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They are going into the city, to see family, and Mark knows that Eduardo is in the city, in Manhattan, where he lives and attends Columbia University and is studying International Finance.
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He is in New York for the holidays, and then in Big Sur, with everyone, for Thanksgiving, which is nice. They rent a giant house and make a ton of random food, which they have been doing for a couple of years now.
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Thanksgiving, with no family, Mark thinks, is the absolute best holiday of all, because all you have to do is eat, and then lie around and hold your stomach, or nap, or watch tv.
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Mark likes Thanksgiving, so that is nice.
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New Years' is good, it's quiet. They have dinner out, everyone, early, and then he and Dustin and Clare go back to their house and drink a lot of wine and play board games and then watch three episodes of Firefly.
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Dustin is insisting they revisit the oeuvre of Joss Whedon so they are doing that, this year, that is the plan.
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Mark is leaving in June, for two and a half months.
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He trusts Dustin with facebook, the same way Clare and Dustin trust him with Max.
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Mark takes him out sometimes, just the two of them.
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Max is a seriously fat baby, and he is very happy to just drive around with Mark, in the car, in his carseat, in the back seat.
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He makes gurgling noises and babbles, the start of words.
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Mark always checks the rearview mirror.
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This is how he knows that he can trust Dustin with facebook, when he leaves.
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He is going to bring a satellite phone, so in case of emergencies they will be able to reach him.
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Mark wants to be away from a computer for as much as he can. If anything happens he will pay for a taxi to the nearest town and then take a bus to Ankara and then fly into Istanbul, connecting to Hamburg, where facebook has offices.
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That is the plan for the summer of 2014, and Mark is really looking forward to it.
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For the first time in his entire life, Mark has zero desire to be sitting in front of his computer.
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Because the call is too strong, to see what he is doing.
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Mark can, of course, see everything that is on facebook, even content that is set to private.
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That is like, kid stuff.
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There's not a lot to go on.
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Pictures, mostly.
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Of Eduardo in a fucking tuxedo, with his tie undone, kissing someone on the cheek, holding a hand up to obscure the lens.
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Eduardo all stupid and fucking tan in a swimsuit that is seriously, fucking indecently tiny next to Christy Lee, who looks even better than she did in college, which is crazy, and next to her, in a stupid fucking hat the old dude that Eduardo has ended up with.
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Mark supposes that he is attractive, in an forty-something sort of way.
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When he met him, he could kind of maybe see what Eduardo saw in him.
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But he still fucking hates him.
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Eduardo's status no longer says single and Mark is, as always, pissed.
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So, yeah, he checks on what Eduardo is doing.
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And he is always doing something, like being on fucking vacation all the time, and either smiling, when he is standing next to the man Mark has met one time and hates with all his guts, or if he is alone, making this sort of pouty face at the camera and looking all perfect.
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Mark is not sure which are worse, the pouty pictures or the smiley ones.
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One thing, though, he is sure of.
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He knows that if he does not get away from the internet, he is going to drive himself fucking insane.
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The group meets once before they leave, on the Berkeley campus, in a departmental lounge.
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There are seven students besides Mark, a TA, and Professor Wilkes-Brown, who has a very serious face.
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There is Eli, who attends Pepperdine and wants to go to graduate school. He has wispy hair and glasses and a weak chin.
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Anna has a whole lot of dark hair and has been on a ton of digs, this will be her fourth time going to the Middle East.
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There is Preeti, who goes to Penn, and has never been on a dig before, either, like Mark.
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Zeke has very frizzy hair and a weird laugh, but he appears to be smart. He is going to be attending the University of Chicago, in the fall, for archaeology, and Mark can see Anna glare at him, when he says this.
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Karl is older. He seems maybe okay, possibly like he's a burnout from way back, though. He talks super slowly.
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Susan and Robert are an older couple, from Grand Rapids, Michigan, who do things like this during the summer. They are both teachers. They seem nice enough.
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The TA, Hassan, is also from Michigan, from Dearborn. He is wearing a black t-shirt, he is beginning preliminary research for his dissertation project, and he smells, very faintly, of almonds.
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Theresa actually gives him a hug at their last session before his trip, and tells him the time away will be good for him, especially with all of his control issues.
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Mark packs his things, but not his laptop, which he has not traveled without ever, in his life. He packs a bunch of books, including a Latin dictionary and a Turkish phrase book. He brings some candy, too, though he thinks it may get confiscated at customs.
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They have a farewell dinner, at Clare and Dustin's house, the night before he leaves, just after his thirtieth birthday. Everyone is there, and he is going to miss them, but he is not going to miss all the looks of pity, or concern that they keep giving him, and the way everyone asks, condescendingly, "You okay, Mark?"
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The summer group meets at the San Francisco airport, fresh-faced and excited, laden with backpacks and duffel bags.
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By Chicago they are a little more rumpled and a bit more grouchy.
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They have a lot of drinks at O'Hare, waiting for a connecting flight to Istanbul, and eat nachos at a Chili's.
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Mark buys a bunch of overpriced candy and some glossy tech magazines, in a news store, figuring he won't see either for a while.
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The flight to Istanbul is a long one. A lot of people sleep.
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Mark curls up under a thin blanket and tries to sleep.
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He hates flying, and he really hates flying coach, but short of paying for an upgrade for the whole group -- which he did contemplate for about five minutes, waiting on check-in, but decided would be presumptuous and maybe kind of jerky -- there's nothing he can do.
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The Istanbul airport is a blur, because he is so tired. Their flight to Ankara is delayed, so they set up camp at a coffee bar. The TA, Hassan, does the ordering for all of them, since he is the only one fluent in Turkish. Mark gets a soda, because he doesn't like coffee.
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Hassan also speaks Arabic, because his family is from Lebanon, and French, a bit, for the same reason, and he can read German, and he really wants to study Coptic, but so far he hasn't had any time to fit it in his schedule.
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His own eyes are raw and red, and the inside of his nose is dried out and bloody, from plane air, and he looks like crap, and smells even worse, and his hair is probably all fucked up, he's sure of it.
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Hassan has day-old stubble, and his hair, while messy, somehow looks perfect.
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From Ankara they take an even smaller and scarier plane to Kayseri, and then a van comes to pick them up, with another car for all their stuff.
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It is a long drive to the site, and Mark nods off a bunch of times, because he did not sleep super well on the plane. His insides have no idea what time it is.
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They have to set up before they can rest, though, and then there will be a party to welcome them, later on.
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Mark has a very fancy tent, which pretty much sets itself up, and then he helps out Eli, with his, which is not so fancy.
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There is an encampment of actual workers, who go home to their families on Thursdays, and come back on Saturdays.
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The nearest town is an hour away, where there is a hammam and a shop.
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They can buy watery beer and excellent cigarettes in town, where they will go once a week, on their day off.
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Mark goes into his fancy tent and sits down. This is maybe the longest he has gone without his computer, and it makes him antsy. He has the phone, though, if they need him.
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No one is supposed to call unless it is really an emergency.
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Mark takes his shoes off and lies on top of his top-of-the-line sleeping bag and passes out until long after the sun has set.
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When he wakes up, he is basically late to the party, but that is okay with him. He eats some carby stuff and drinks some drinks and talks to people.
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It's all kind of a blur, but a nice one. Professor Wilkes-Brown tells everyone to call her Laura and she tells them all about what they'll be doing, and some more about the history of the region.
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Everyone is talking to one another, excited, but Mark just feels very tired, and so he tells everyone he's going back to sleep, and no one tries to stop him.
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Now would normally be the time of night, sometime past midnight -- when he would start to feel itchy, lonely, curious.
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And that would be how he would feel, and he would try really hard to ignore it, although, truth be told, maybe not as hard as he should, and pull out his laptop, or his iPhone, or his iPad, and skulk around.
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Mark has never hated the internet so much in his entire life.
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Like, Mark really fucking hates the internet.
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Because he takes it for granted that everyone will be on facebook, these days. His fucking Mom is on facebook. His Aunt Sylvia is on facebook.
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Women over fifty are a huge growth demographic, is what Randi says, perkily.
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Eduardo Saverin was not on facebook for so long. There were only two pictures of him anywhere, circulating in public.
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He heard that actor, the one who played him in that weird movie, talking about there only being the two pictures.
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Even Mark didn't have any pictures, of Eduardo.
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So now that there are so fucking many of them -- his life laid out, totally on display for everyone and their mother to look at -- it is just really hard (as he tells Theresa really hard) not to look.
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Out here in Anatolia, where there is no real bathroom, and no light, at night, Mark is unable to get on the internet and prowl around.
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The man he's with, Peter, is like Eduardo used to be. There's not a lot out there about him. He went to Cambridge. He works for a bank. He always has his stupid hand on Eduardo's back and he makes this stupid smirky face at the camera.
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Mark can hear music and laughter, from outside the tent, and without headphones in his ears (because there is nowhere to charge anything, even the flashlight he has is crank-operated, as is the battery for the phone), it takes him a long time to sleep, because it is honestly, hard to fall asleep when you are angry.
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By the end of the first week it is easier.
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Archaeology is simultaneously really fucking interesting and incredibly fucking tedious.
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He spends a lot of time hunched over in the dirt.
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It's not like actual labor, like the digging the real workers do.
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There are all these tools, some of them exactly like the ones dentists use.
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He is always dusty, and hot, and his nose is getting sunburned.
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He commiserates with Eli, who is pasty like him.
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Preeti doesn't even bother putting on sunscreen, because she's so dark, and Mark wishes he didn't have to, either, because it always gets in his eyes when he sweats, and then it stings like a motherfucker.
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He has a bunch of blisters, and his hands are sore, and his joints hurt.
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At night everyone sits around a fire and drinks crappy beer, and people talk and tell stories.
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Mark was right about Karl, who is a stoner from way back when and has a buttload of crazy stories to tell. Laura, the professor, who he still doesn't feel comfortable calling that, also has stories, about her earliest fieldwork, about cultural encounters gone awry.
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Mark listens intently.
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For most of his life he has always been convinced that everyone except him is speaking a different language.
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That is what a lot of Laura's stories sound like.
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Anna talks a lot, too. She knows a whole lot of things, she's smart.
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She's bossy, though, in that way that bugs him.
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She comes and hovers over him and Preeti like she's in charge, and Preeti will stick her tongue out at her, when she leaves.
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They are both very slow.
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Robert and Susan work together, and sit together, her between his legs, in front of the fire at night.
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It gets cold at night, in the desert.
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Mark feels slightly less anxious.
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There is no internet, so there are no pictures.
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Unfortunately, there are always going to be pictures in his stupid mind.
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He stares at the flickering flame of the fire and thinks about kissing Eduardo, still, over a year later, over a decade later.
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Mark really missed kissing Eduardo, and he was really glad to get to do it again.
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There is still a big part of him that hopes Eduardo will change his mind once more.
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Even just for a little while.
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That is definitely a fucked up thing to think.
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Theresa told him he should journal, for the ten weeks they're apart, every day, so when he starts to feel sad and queasy, he ducks into his tent, which is kind of like a coffin but also kind of cozy, and he'll write in his notebook, by a circle of light from his flashlight, which he will have to crank fifty times whenever it starts to dim.
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He fills up a lot of pages.
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By the second week he is thinking he should have brought another notebook.
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By the third week he is brown since the fine layer of dirt covering him is sandy colored. He is not the color Preeti is. He decides he is about the color Hassan is.
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He is a very nice color.
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Especially the back of his neck, where he is pinky-tan, from bending over.
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Sometimes the neck of his shirt will hang low and Mark can see where he is not so tan, paler, though not, of course, as pale as him.
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No one but Eli is as pale as him.
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They have to share the SPF 60+.
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Sometimes Eli will put this white zinc oxide on his nose, and he tries to get Mark to use it, too.
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He has always refused, even though he probably should.
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He has a very strong suspicion that he will look pretty stupid with that on his nose.
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Mark does not know why he is suddenly worried about looking stupid in front of everybody.
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He doesn't know why at all, but he does know that his nose gets badly burned, twice, and starts to peel.
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It hurts really fucking bad.
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He has already read all of his books, and Eli's books (terrible scifi) and Preeti's books (fiction, all of them, which he did not really enjoy, because he doesn't see the point of made-up-stories) and has heard all of Karl's stories three times so he is going stir-crazy.
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He sometimes wakes up, in the middle of the night, because his fingers are trying to type as he sleeps.
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His hands are still not convinced about working with tools.
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He is bone tired from the sunshine and the work, so he falls asleep faster than he did a while back.
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Without the internet, even stooped over a ditch nine hours a day, Mark suddenly has a whole lot of time to fill.
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He bought a second notebook, when they went into town.
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The girls went to the baths for women and the guys went to the baths for men and Mark got clean, for the first time in a while, and had his body bent and his joints popped by a man who walked on his back in a room of humid, drippy, tile.
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Mark has always liked steam a lot.
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He is pasty, though, like Eli, and he is maybe not as scrawny as he once was, but he's not exactly filling out his t-shirt.
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When they were in the steam room Mark asked Hassan if he had anything to read, which is how he has ended up here, in his tent, looking at his books.
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Hassan has academic stuff full of diagrams, a book by Bourdieu and one about Byzantine Christianity, a book by Orhan Pamuk, and some poetry by Rumi. He says Mark can borrow any of them, if he wants to.
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He and Laura share a workspace, so their tent is a lot bigger than Mark's.
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He takes the novel and one of the academic books.
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He leaves the poetry alone, and goes to read, somewhere shady.
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Later that afternoon everyone has coffee, except for Mark, who drinks mint tea so sugary it makes his tongue feel fuzzy.
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Drinking boiling hot tea when it is a hundred degrees in the shade is scientifically validated, of course, as it makes you sweat and sweat cools you, but most afternoons Mark would throttle someone for a Big Gulp.
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Or a Slurpee.
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Or a Matcha Green Tea Blast from Jamba Juice.
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Or a milkshake.
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Or a soda.
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When they go into the village and everyone gets beer or wine, all Mark ever wants is a Coke.
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Everyone finds this amusing, but he doesn't even care.
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It's not even cold.
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But it's the highlight of his week, usually, these two or three sodas drank at a long table full of people, in varying degrees of suntan or sunburn, eating olives and flatbread and fruit and sitting in chairs for a while.
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Mark still misses his laptop, but he is having a pretty good time, actually, without the internet.
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Hassan wears beige cargo pants and dusty workboots and a black t-shirt.
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Mark is not sure if he owns any other t-shirts, or, if he has been wearing the same shirt for three weeks straight.
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Mark seems to remember that when they went into town, the first week, he had on a different shirt, with buttons, but it was still black.
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At night, when they are drinking cognac around the fire, stirring up the sparks with sticks, when it is cold, at night, Mark will wear one of his hoodies.
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Hassan also wears a hoodie at night. It is black, with one of the sides of the front pocket starting to peel away.
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It is one night when everyone is sitting around a fire, complaining about their blisters, getting excited about the travel part of the trip, that Hassan, who is wearing his black hooded Wu-Tang sweatshirt and drinking a beer, looks at Mark sidelong and smiles at him, and Mark spends the rest of the evening and at least two hours the next day trying to figure out what color his eyes are.
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He returns the novel, and they talk about it a little bit.
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Mark doesn't love fiction, it must be said.
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Mark decides that his eyes are blue, with hazel-brown flecks in them.
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He takes the book about Byzantium and reads that in three nights.
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He is still wary, it has to be said, of the poetry.
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Eli and Karl and him are working at one of the tables, cataloging things, when Hassan comes over to check on their work, leaning over Mark's shoulder to look at the numbers he is writing, to mark coordinates.
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Anna and Zeke have started hooking up, and Preeti says maybe now she's getting some she'll mellow, yeah? and Mark shrugs.
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At night by the fire they all pass around a joint, Laura included.
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Archaeologists party harder than Sean, even, because they are hardcore.
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They don't get bottle service, but it's, frankly, a whole lot more fun.
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Mark and Sean go out sometimes, though, because even if Sean is kind of massive tool, he is still Mark's favorite person to go out with.
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He is sure as fuck not going out with his sister, because that is weird.
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Chris and his Sean don't go out so much, anymore. Chris is so fucking busy, flying back and forth. Clare was good for that, but with the baby, not so much.
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When Eduardo said I'm going back to New York he had tried, very hard, to make the case for doing it long-distance.
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Which Eduardo did not want to do.
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That also fucking pissed Mark off, because he had been doing his own long-distance thing with that other guy, that Peter Andrews guy.
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Which means it was not the distance that was the problem.
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It was Mark that was the problem.
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So, yeah, he goes out, with Sean, who is always hovering halfway between total tool and totally awesome, and going out with him is a whole lot better than going out alone.
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Sean is a good wingman, it must be said.
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They go out in the city, or San Jose, not in Palo Alto and not in Menlo Park, because Mark does not like to fraternize like that with his employees.
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People know, but he's not appearing on the cover of the Advocate, or whatever, like Chris.
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(Good on him, of course.)
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So, yeah, he goes out and hooks up with people, sometimes, but it's not like that big a deal.
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He has not slept with anyone since Eduardo, though.
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Like, he is not a fucking saint okay?
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And in between the many times that Eduardo was almost but not quite there, he would go out, on occasion, and make out against a bar.
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But nothing bad, nothing compulsive.
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He sometimes thinks they end up going out merely so that Sean can hone in on the two straight girls who are there, whether to prey on their insecurities, or shock them that he swings that way.
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Sean skews young, though, which does make Mark uncomfortable.
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And Sean never has a girlfriend for more than three weeks at a time.
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Mark thinks that being with so many different people, like, not sex, but having to find out stuff about them, and remembering the right stuff about them, has got to be really hard.
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Which is actually why being on the dig is nice.
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It's like Dworkin, or the early days at the Palo Alto house.
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It's like, a lot of people who are focused and passionate and determined and curious making something happen, and living in close proximity.
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And in is in circumstances like that -- no more than a dozen people, a group just big enough but not too big, not big enough to separate into strata like - well, like rock, actually -- that Mark feels much more comfortable.
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He feels very comfortable, because it is just these people, who have been working shoulder to shoulder all day and then are hanging out, drinking shitty beer and passing around a joint, and, weirdly, it feels like the beginning of facebook, and that makes him smile.
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"Oh my God," Preeti says, poking him in the ribs, "do that again."
"Shut up," he says back, but he feels really light, and floaty, and like he can see a shitload of stars and it's insane to be smiling, but yeah, he is smiling.
*
He does end up borrowing the book of poems, which Hassan presses into his hand one afternoon during their break time, when the sun is scorching overhead.
*
Mark has always been a very fast reader.
*
Really fast.
*
This does not go so fast, though, because it is very different.
*
It is kind of like listening to a conversation in a foreign language and listening for the words you think you know.
*
It takes concentration to read poems.
*
So when they are sitting around the fire, one night, drinking some more shitty beer and smoking some more excellent hash, and is is Thursday, which means that Hassan has a six-day growth of dark beard (Fridays are when they go to the hammam and get shaved, all the men, except Karl, who has a beard), because he has really, really dark hair, and really dark eyebrows, and incredibly dark eyelashes.
*
Whereas Mark, by day six, still looks no better than a fuzzy chick.
*
He tried, this one time, to grow a beard, and Clare made him shave it, after Dustin called him chin pubes -- and eyes that look like he has on makeup or something, looks over at Mark and says, "You finished with that book yet?" and laughs, with his very white teeth when Mark says, "No, man, it's taking me forever."
*
He has really nice teeth for someone who likes candy.
*
Mark knows this, because Preeti sold him out, and told Hassan about his secret American candy stash, and since then he has been in Mark's tent like, four times a week.
*
Everything else Mark will share.
*
He makes sure there is always extra beer and bottles of water and cigarettes, just in case someone runs out.
*
Mark does not even smoke.
*
So he was pissed at Preeti, because he figured there would be a flood of people trying to make off with his Jolly Ranchers (some of which have melted in the heat, into deformed shapes), but that is actually not the case.
*
No one else asks him about the candy.
*
Anna and Zeke are totally hooking up, and kiss by the fireside at night, now, and Susan and Robert smile at them, and hold hands, like old married people.
*
By about the fifteenth time Hassan is in his tent, hitting him up for a sugar fix, Mark starts to think maybe he has been set up.
The fifth Friday they are there they go into the bigger town, an hour and a half away, because there is talk of dancing and a restaurant and local experience so they ride in two white vans to the bigger town, and go to the hammam there, to get clean, and then everyone goes out, to a restaurant with vinyl tablecloths and plastic flowers in Coke bottles, and Mark realizes that while he does not like vacations, like most people do -- where you lie on a beach and read something dumb and look at people more attractive than you -- he likes this.
*
There is a shitload of food, and even more wine.
*
At some point there is folk dancing.
*
Mark is so drunk that he actually drinks coffee, when they are done with dinner, because he thinks without the caffeine he will have to spend the night in the van while they all go out dancing.
*
It doesn't sound like a bad idea, actually.
*
Dancing, though, in Kayseri province, is definitely nothing like San Francisco.
*
It's like 1984 in there, and absolutely no one looks cool.
*
And no one gives a shit.
*
There are coaxing attempts made for Mark to dance, though, which he still will not do.
*
"I should take you to a hip-hop club," Hassan says, over the terrible Eurotrash dance music.
"A what?" Mark says, because it is loud, and smoky -- so smoky -- that he could live without, actually, and his eyes start watering, and he starts coughing and he thinks he might be ill, so he goes outside, where it is cooler and he can catch his breath.
*
It is when he is outside, hands shoved in his pockets, leaning against the van, that Hassan comes over and slides open the passenger-seat side and says, "get your ass in the car, Zuckerberg."
Mark hesitates for a second, because he is not quite sure if he has done something wrong.
*
Hassan sits next to him on the seat and slams the door and says, "okay, seriously?" and he says, "what, seriously?"
*
"Are you the single most oblivious person ever to exist, like, ever?"
*
"Am I what?"
*
"Seriously, Mark?"
*
"What?"
*
"Nothing, forget it."
*
"Oh, okay."
*
"Wow, yeah, no, you just are that oblivious."
*
And then he puts his hand on Mark's knee and says, "fuck it, whatever," and kisses him.
*
Mark of course, splutters because he is totally surprised.
*
Or not, entirely, surprised.
*
Or, it must be said, totally indignant.
*
He has, of course, totally been set up.
*
But unlike all the nice Jewish boys his mother wants to introduce him to and the smoking hot new intern for Places Sean knows or the endless supply of friends Clare and Dustin and Chris and Sean and Randi keep producing, where he has to fucking call someone and meet someone and go on stupid dates with someone, this, as far as a set-up goes, is really, not all that bad.
*
He smells winey, sweaty, and he kisses Mark for what feels like a long, long time.
*
When he pulls back he wipes his hand with the back of his mouth, and then opens the door and hops out.
*
He has weirdly long arms.
*
He ducks his head back in, though, and smiles, with those super white, super straight teeth.
*
He probably totally had braces, with teeth like that.
*
Mark is still pretty stunned.
*
"Come have a drink," he says, "I promise I will never try to make you dance again. Well," and there is a pause, "not to that shit, anyways."
*
And then he goes back inside.
*
He waits a little while.
*
When he does go back in, Preeti gives him finger guns, though, and then a double thumbs-up.
*
He flips her the bird.
*
No one makes him dance, though, which is good.
*
Zeke thinks he can grind, which is totally embarassing.
*
What is nice, though, is that no one else who is there seems to care.
*
It's just a Friday night in a small town where he is a visitor, and he's not expected to pick up on most things.
*
Granted.
*
He probably should have picked up on that.
*
Mark has, it must be said, a whole hell of a lot of input.
*
And for all that he knows he is a genius and a revolutionary and a forward-thinker and a visionary and all that shit.
*
He very often fails to see what is right in front of him.
*
Like, under his fucking nose.
*
Oh, Jesus.
*
Jesus.
*
He feels epically dumb, but then he is having to do shots with locals and eat some sort of pizza-lamby thing and then having more coffee forced upon him and then being bundled into the car, for a long bumpy ride home, he feels maybe less dumb.
*
They sit next to one another, on the ride back to their encampment, and their legs press together, and after they are on an open, not so bumpy road, Hassan puts his arm around Mark's shoulders.
*
He keeps it there until they get back, really late, or perhaps very early.
*
Other people peel off to their tents and he catches the sleeve of Hassan's one, lone, button-down shirt between his thumb and forefinger and says, "I finished that book, finally."
*
That sounds so lame.
*
So lame.
*
But Hassan smiles, and it is maybe too dark to see his teeth, but Mark kind of imagines that he can and he says, "Should I come get it tonight?"
*
"Okay," he says.
*
"Cool."
*
He waits for a little while, in the darkness, with a hand behind his head.
*
He actually drifts off to sleep, for a little while.
*
The zipper opening wakes him up.
*
He is in his sleeping bag, and his legs feel clammy hot.
*
His face also feels hot when he unzips the side of the sleeping bag and gets in next to Mark.
*
They make double-sized sleeping bags, but Mark just has a regular one.
*
He has not ever dated anyone long enough to go camping with someone else and want to share a sleeping bag.
*
There is a lot of kissing, though, sleepy kissing and not much else, because even though it is incredible, they are both really wasted, and really tired.
*
And they have to be very quiet, as the night inches into dawn.
*
They just touch one another, the rhythmic rustle of the sleeping bag loud like an echo in the empty gray of morning.
*
They fall asleep tangled up, like that, and they wake up, like that, excruciatingly hungover, to boot.
*
Mark's head is killing him.
*
It is bright outside.
*
And when they come into the communal breakfast space, together, it is Karl, of course, who is the first to say, "Called it."
*
Now, of course, Mark feels even stupider.
*
But everyone knows, and everyone thinks it's awesome, and they make jokes but no one asks him anything, anything at all, about his feelings.
*
And, it's so weird.
*
So weird.
*
Because now that he is not always talking, all the time, about the feelings, he is kind of like -- feeling them?
*
"Are you high?" Preeti asks. "Are you holding out on me?"
*
"Shut up," he says, passing her the Twizzlers.
*
It is nice, though, that everyone knows.
*
Because now at night, around the fire, they get to sit like Susan and Robert, or Zeke and Anna.
*
Mark always blushes, if they are caught kissing by someone, especially if it is Laura, who is Hassan's advisor and like, won't he get in trouble for that? Isn't Mark, like, technically, a student?
*
"You're older than me," he says, four nights before they are due to leave, in Mark's tent, doing what they always do, just this, as quietly as possible.
*
They try to be quiet, because Mark does not want everyone to hear him when he has an orgasm.
*
They kiss through it, usually.
*
"Did you seriously, not get it when I gave you this?" he asks Mark, holding up the Rumi.
*
"I don't know," he says, and he's being honest.
*
Mark has so much input.
*
Like, all of the input.
*
He just needs the right algorithm.
*
He kind of tries to explain this, like he has tried to explain it, before.
*
"I don't give a shit," Hassan says, "come over here."
*
He cannot read Persian, either.
*
Languages, Mark thinks, is exactly what programming is.
*
It's all just code.
*
This is the kind of stuff they talk about, at night, when they have had dinner with everyone and wine with everyone and sat around the fire with cognac and spliffs and everyone said what they wanted to see most, the next two weeks, or, for after that, what they wanted to eat, as soon as they got home, or who they wanted to see.
*
Mark has a plan to go to In-and-Out, or perhaps Del Taco.
*
He misses Mexican food, and beer that doesn't taste like camel piss, and he would maybe, quite possibly kill someone for a plate of crispy orange chicken and a Sprite with ice.
*
"Is there ice in Istanbul?" he asks, later, curled up in the sleeping bag.
*
They have zipped their two sleeping bags together, so for the last two nights that is how they sleep.
*
It is much roomier.
*
Mark thinks, actually, that he almost liked it better, before.
*
"I almost failed out of grad school," he tells Mark, when they are lying side by side, "because of fucking facebook, you know that?"
*
He is three years younger than Mark is.
*
Twenty-seven.
*
He looks young but he has a life that has been crazy.
*
Crazy in a way Mark cannot even begin to imagine.
*
His family came over, during the civil war, and went to Michigan.
*
He has six siblings.
*
Six.
*
He put himself through community college for two years and got a transfer scholarship to Michigan where he graduated with honors and then got an offer at Berkeley, for a doctorate.
*
He likes West Coast rap, and burritos, is what he says, when Mark asks why California?
*
He is smart, Mark can tell, though he has literally, no idea what half the words he uses means, words like deconstruction and habitus and governmentality, words he does not use, with Mark, but will at lunch or dinner, talking to Zeke and Eli and Laura and Anna.
*
Mark is sure they are talking in code.
*
"It's all made-up bullshit," he tells Mark, the next day during the afternoon break, which, for the last week has really meant break to make out in Mark's tent and Mark says "What is?" and he says "Academic jargon."
*
Mark thinks, to himself, that there are enough complicated words without making more up.
*
But whatever.
*
There is a lot of kissing, and a lot of touching, and Mark has never kissed someone with so much stubble, before, and now he unequivocally refuses to put the zinc oxide on his nose, because he does not want to look stupid, like Eli.
*
His nose is peeling and he has some kind of rash thing on his neck and sides of his face.
*
When Anna starts pestering him, Hassan says, "It's just heat rash, right, Mark?"
*
When he says that, his cheeks probably turn red, too. He can feel himself blush.
*
It has to be said.
*
Things can be a whole lot of fun.
*
If you're not, always, on the internet.