He just ordered ice water. This is good — I know how to make that.

“On the rocks, sir?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

We stand there a minute, he on his side of the bar, me on mine, taking in the marina scenery. It’s a blustery day for the wedding expo open house aboard the yacht. This expo happens to be for same-sex marriages. The yacht routinely sails into Canadian waters where same-sex marriage is no big whup. But the cold wind on this day — like American politics on same-sex marriage — is all pointless bluster. And because no one wants Nature’s I-SO-messed-up-what-you-did-in the-mirrors-look, the bar is pretty lonely. I chat up the hydrator. 

“What brings you aboard, sir? Are you getting married?” 

“No, but I’d like to,” he says in a shower of spit.

He speaks in a spit fountain. Bubbling saliva bursts forth from his teeth, arced like the peeing angel on an English lawn. 

“Oh?” I ask, grabbing a Sani-wipe to discreetly clear the droplets from the bar. 

“I’d love to be married, but I can’t find any candidates,” he says. He’s joking, yet serious. 

“Well, you might get lucky here,” I say, helpfully. “You won’t find any commitment-phobes at a marriage expo.”

“No. I won’t. It never works. I can’t meet the right kind of people,” he says. “I see who my friends set me up with and I say ‘who do you think I am?’ One of my friends set me up with a Republican! I didn’t speak to him again!”

More spit accompanies the speech but now I’m keenly interested in his predicament. I instantly want to defend his friends and the concept of opposites attracting. 

“Well your friends are just trying to help, right? And maybe opposites attract? I mean, it’s possible that people with different politics can make it work, right?”

He considers this, reconsiders and parries. 

“My parents are opposites and they’ve been married over 50 years,” he says. “But they both are Democrats.”

Hmmm. It’s a toughie. But you got to keep trying to connect, right? Even with people who are your opposites. Otherwise you get too lonely, too uncompromising, too set in your ways. I ask his opinion, trying not to focus on the white blobs collecting at the corners of his mouth. 

He says he agrees. Then sighs.

“It might be too late for me. But I have to keep trying. It’s freezing up here.”

He wanders away with his glass of ice water, carrying his lavender marriage expo goody bag.

I feel bad: bad for him, bad for his friends who likely bear the brunt of his ire, bad for his dates who probably can’t get past the overactive salivary glands.

I feel bad for thinking childish thoughts like “Say it, don’t spray it! I want the news not the weather.”

And yet, this man inspires me. For all his cynical talk, he came to the marriage expo, his romantic nature obviously intact.  He came up to the sun deck on a windy day when everyone else stayed inside.