The Floor is Lava
By: Presley Thomas
Tags: LGBTQ, Fiction

Their nuptials were warm, hot even, as the platform shifted beneath them. Erick, David, and their wedding party had to be lowered down by helicopter. The volcanologists told them they had maybe fifteen minutes to complete the ceremony as they handed them special shoes with soles that could withstand the heat. Most of the wedding guests stood a safer distance away around the mouth of the volcano.

It was what Erick’s fiance called a destination wedding: at a tropical resort up a steep path to an active volcano and, for some inside of one. For Erick, it meant his parents could say they couldn’t come due to cost instead of saying they didn’t want to come at all. At least, he could until he found a canceled money transfer on their account to his parents for the cost of travel just a few hours before the ceremony.

There was a lot of liability paperwork. David’s cousin was crestfallen when this meant her small child wasn’t able to be the ringbearer unless he was able to throw it from a safe distance away into the outstretched hands of the grooms. Erick saw the scene from Lord of the Rings etched in his mind as Frodo Baggins threw the ring of power into Mount Doom instead of a cute wedding story.

The volcano was already a leap for him. David always encouraged Erick to try new things though, and he rarely said no. Their marriage would only happen once even if it did end in flames. Even then there was a lot of talk of safety and a promised future if they made it out alive.

It was expensive, but David’s family had no shortage of money and a personal relationship with Sir Richard Branson who viewed every extreme idea as a challenge. David’s father was a chemist who created the formula that made recent bowel movements smell like flowers or baked goods when sprayed over tepid toilet water before using it. His mother spent most of her time volunteering. They always invited Erick and David on lavish vacations where they didn’t have to pay anything but attention.

Erick’s parents disowned him after he came out in college. He was lucky they had already paid for the semester. In order to pay for his final semester he sold all the old things of his that his parents sent him they didn’t want anymore because, to them, he didn’t exist.

The most hurtful package had been gifts from the day he was born. There was an expensive silver plate with his birthdate and an image of a boy walking across a field of wheat with everything he owns over his shoulder engraved with the words, “Thursday’s child has far to go,” at the time a mirror of his own thoughts as he handed it over the counter at the pawn shop. It was the only truth he could handle: distance, time, and grief.

Erick had thought about inviting his parents, reaching out one more time, even as he held David’s hands and the officiant smiled sweetly through large beads of sweat. David’s mother grabbed Erick’s arm for emotional support or balance, he couldn’t be sure as the platform moved. She had always been kind to him and offered more of herself in his own mother’s absence.

No, Erick couldn’t imagine his parents there as the heat continued to rise, and the helicopter hovered idly nearby, waiting to save them before the platform disintegrated. The rocky sides of the volcano glowing orange with the natural light of magma looked too much like the childhood image of hell they had painted for Erick to deter him from the life he had created.

His parents wouldn’t even visit them in their air-conditioned and comfortable home in California. Their thoughts as a certain kind of Christian only entered one room of their home. Not the kitchen where they cooked meals or the laundry room where the cleaned their clothes or even the larger living spaces where they hosted friends for parties. When they did occasionally call around holidays now they wanted doctrinal statements instead of a relationship, even with their pleasantries:

*ring

Hello.

Hey Dad, Merry Christmas.

So, you’re gay, huh, what about polyamory?

I’m not polyamorous.

Yeah, but you have to have some morals.

We all do, but I’m not polyamorous.

You should, it’s important.

I definitely think polyamorous people should talk about sexual ethics in their relationships. Are you and Mom making a change?

*click

Erick always invited them to come if we were in town for a holiday. That was their rule, but it was always just a phone call. He must have been thinking about his parents too much then because he could have sworn he saw their figures in the white smoke rising, mama stirring her mixing bowl.

“Babe, we need to hurry,” David said squeezing Erick’s hand.

David always squeezed Erick’s hand but never said that he loved him. Though he had been the one to propose, so maybe that counted? Erick always blamed this entertainment news story they had seen early in their relationship where identical twin child stars had grown-up and were so close they never said they loved each other, they just squeezed each other’s hands. David and Erick weren’t identical and they weren’t related, at least not yet, until they signed the marriage contract safely away from the volcano on top of a large metal toolbox in a whirring helicopter.

Erick knew for sure David’s mother loved him. He talked to her on the phone more than her son did, and he wasn’t about to push away a mother’s love the way his own family had gone. It always seemed that David could never do enough for her even though she never said it out loud. He managed a large apartment complex that his family had bought as an investment, but he didn’t have anything that was his own.

Erick had worked his way through school and taught a rowdy class of teenagers History at a local high school. It was exhausting but exciting. David’s mom always pressed him for details even though she learned all her pedagogy from reading Anne of Green Gables as a child, and she would not stop talking about the new TV series if you let her, “That poor gay teacher,” she would say, “I’m so glad you and David have each other.”

“But I AM a gay teacher, Carol,” Erick would respond and she would laugh and laugh and laugh.

Erick wanted to be on the phone with her now, or maybe six months earlier before David had popped the question, so he could ask her, “Do you think I should marry your son?” There would have been a long pause or maybe, in some strange act of mercy, the call would fail, and he would never hear her answer. He probably would have jinxed it and called her in the bathtub where his calls always failed.

If Erick wanted to be told no he could have just called his own mother. Whether or not she answered was like Russian roulette with only one bullet missing. A non-answer felt like a loss, another bullet leaving the chamber and breaking through bone.

Her number languished somewhere in his phone wondering, perhaps, if it would ever be redialed. Their address hadn’t changed on the packages they sent, they hadn’t moved or changed numbers. They would still send him things occasionally. Using, he guessed, the return address on the Christmas cards he always sent out of duty. It was the only indication he got that they ever received them.

The floor, he thought, is lava. That playground game where your friend yells, “The floor is LAVA!” and you find the nearest thing that is not lava and yet somehow survives its liquid heat: a fence, a chair, a bench, or your neighbor’s overlarge dog. The floor is lava, and he had nothing to hold onto but David but maybe that was the point.

“I love you,” Erick said. He could almost see his words burn in the fiery air.

“Me too,” David said.

Yes AND…Erick was projecting loudly in his head. Except this was not Improv, it was his future, and David was about to be his husband.

The officiant’s words sent pearls of sweat flying off her lips, “We are here today to witness the union of two people in love. It bonds each of us as we choose who to partner with. Their love is no different and we celebrate it here inside of one of nature’s most volatile creations. David and Erick have written their own vows to each other.”

David’s hands were in Erick’s, his eyes looking deep into Erick’s eyes, “On our first date Madonna Rage put her hands on our shoulders as she sang Love Don’t Live Here Anymore at the drag bar and screeched that we had something special as we handed her our dollar bills. Later, she set off a glitter bomb in our direction. I was washing it off my body for days, wishing it would never leave because it reminded me of you, of myself and when I am with you. The way I see other people embrace you. They suddenly become warmer and softer, and I want that too — forever.”

“You asked me to marry you on a Tuesday. I thought it was just dinner that night, but when I looked up from the table about to use the restroom I realized all our friends were there. I didn’t say anything but when I came back, my hands still wet from washing them, you were on one knee, and before you even asked my hands were over my mouth, tears in my eyes and our friends were cheering and ran up to grab our shoulders urging us to kiss. It reminded me of the crowd noise I hate when you watch basketball or football, it isn’t real, and I can’t even remember if I said yes, but I do know you have never said you love me,” Erick replied not even looking at the page where he had written his vows. The platform was quiet except for the lava bubbling.

No one realized how loud it would be inside of a volcano until they were in it. The wedding party had huddled too close to one side to hear their vows and the platform lifted a bit on one side, all their bodies shifted with a few gasps to punctuate it.

“Everyone needs to leave the platform as soon as possible and walk calmly into the basket,” the helicopter pilot yelled through an external speaker.

To avoid looking at David, Erick looked above. He heard the clank of the basket as it landed on the platform. The wedding party ran toward it as David and Erick stood there, sturdier now. Erick fingered his ring in his pocket. David squeezed his hand and pulled him toward the basket as Erick dropped his gold band into the lava.