EMBARKATIONS (OR, BOATING FOR BEGINNERS): A NOVEL by Marcos L. Martínez A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of George Mason University in Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Committee: ___________________________________________ Director ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ ___________________________________________ Department Chairperson ___________________________________________ Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Date: _____________________________________ Spring Semester 2015 George Mason University Fairfax, VA Embarkations (or, Boating for Beginners): a novel A Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at George Mason University by Marcos L. Martínez Bachelor of Arts Georgetown University, 2009 Director: Susan Shreve, Professor Department of English Spring Semester 2015 George Mason University Fairfax, VA This work is licensed under a creative commons attribution-noderivs 3.0 unported license. ii DEDICATION To my muses this time: Wayne, Cindy, and Richard. For you, because of you. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Wayne B. Johnson, my beloved husband, I could not have accomplished this work without your patience, comfort, and support. Thank you to my dear friends Cynthia Angela Blackston and Arthur Richard Manzer for your emotional guidance and the glint of waves: you inspire me at every turn. Thank you to the mentors who have tended to my work: Susan R. Shreve, Alan Cheuse, Helon Habila, Courtney Brkic, Steve Goodwin, Eric Pankey, Susan Tichy, and Peter Streckfus-Green; and my GMU MFA peers who have shepherded this work for the past two-and-a-half-years, especially: Todd Covalcine, Ah-Reum Han, Brittany Kerfoot, Justin Lafreniere, Elizabeth Deanna Morris Lakes, Alicia K. Padovich, Lina Patton, and Sheryl Rivett. I am ever grateful for the work that Bill Miller has done to expand my writerly-horizons from writer to teacher to editor and back again. To the illuminating Visiting Writers who have jolted my work along: Bradford Morrow, Joshua Furst, Mary Kay Zuravleff, James Thomas, and Liam Callanan—I am better for having worked with you. Revision is grace. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................. vii PART I: THE BOOK OF CAINE ............................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: To the Lighthouse ............................................................................................. 2 Chapter 2: The Rube-Goldberg Equation ......................................................................... 10 Chapter 3: The Crest and Crash of White Caps ................................................................ 15 Chapter 4: Two Conversations, Five Miles Apart ............................................................ 23 Chapter 5: The Spar Deck by Starlight ............................................................................. 28 Chapter 6: Canyons ........................................................................................................... 32 Chapter 7. The Waves ....................................................................................................... 40 Chapter 8. Undertows ....................................................................................................... 45 Chapter 9: Another Goldberg Variation (Sally & Rach) .................................................. 47 Chapter 10: A Confrontation: The Construction of Boundaries ....................................... 54 Chapter 11. Inlets .............................................................................................................. 59 Chapter 12: All Good Things ............................................................................................ 63 Chapter 13: Must End As All Things (Interludes from the Journals of Caine Lance Calletano) .......................................................................................................................... 66 I. How The Composition of American Cents Changed ................................................ 66 II. Thundersnow ............................................................................................................ 68 III. Snow Lightning ....................................................................................................... 73 IV. Abel’s Version ........................................................................................................ 75 V. Epistles to Reinaldo Arenas ..................................................................................... 79 Chapter 14: Origins ........................................................................................................... 84 PART II: THE BOOK OF JONAH ......................................................................................... 99 Chapter 15: Rivers, Lament (1885 – 2025) .................................................................. 100 Chapter 16: A Study of the World’s Flesh...................................................................... 111 I. Water : Agua Bendita (1910 – 1954) .................................................................... 111 v II. Earth : Terremoto (1972) .................................................................................... 122 Chapter 17: Witness Trees .............................................................................................. 125 Chapter 18: A Polyphony (Seeds from the Journals of Caine L. Calletano) ................. 136 I. The Stone Age Heart (A Voyage) ............................................................................ 136 II. from the Journals of Caine Lance Calletano: ......................................................... 142 Dinghying into Dusk ............................................................................................... 142 III. A Telling ............................................................................................................... 142 IV. from the Journals of Caine Lance Calletano: ........................................................ 151 Gacela of Riverflood (for Noah) ......................................................................... 151 V. The Vigil (The Sea) ................................................................................................ 152 The Stone Age Heart (A Jacob’s Ladder) ............................................................... 153 Chapter 19: How They Met ............................................................................................ 156 I. Caine and Noah ........................................................................................................ 156 II. Jonah Meets His Whale .......................................................................................... 160 Chapter 20: The New World ........................................................................................... 163 Works Referenced ........................................................................................................... 166 vi ABSTRACT EMBARKATIONS (OR, BOATING FOR BEGINNERS): A NOVEL Marcos L. Martínez, M.F.A. George Mason University, 2015 Thesis Director: Prof. Susan Shreve In this contemporary recasting of the Great Flood, two couples—Noah and his wife Sarah, Abel and his husband Caine—board Noah’s boat for their usual Fourth of July jaunt. Smooth sailing until Noah and Caine, two married men who have been friends for over a decade, discover comfort in one another’s arms and engage in an affair that affects all their lives. Trouble ensues. Climate change, melting glaciers, broken ice sheets all conflate: the world’s tides rise as these two marriages flounder. In this newly deluged world, how will any of their relationships survive? While Embarkations circles around two men embarking on an affair, this book is less about sexual identity and more about two souls who find comfort in one another. At its heart, Embarkations (or, Boating for Beginners) is a love story set in a drowning world. vii PART I: THE BOOK OF CAINE Flood myths are very potent things; humankind can’t resist them. I knew this was going to happen right from the start. Don’t you know that men always pee on the fire? That’s why they were sent out to hunt in the old days, and much more sensible it was too; but now, have you ever known anyone have the power and not use it? Boating for Beginners – Jeanette Winterson 1 CHAPTER 1: TO THE LIGHTHOUSE The Joan of Ark pitched its song endlessly as we scudded towards the Bay Bridge. We felt Whitman’s “Ships at Sea” working under our bare heels, the roiling motion, the ebb and flow and long pulsation as we set out onto the Chesapeake Bay where the waters had risen five feet in a year. July 4, 2020. We left River Run Marina that morning, dropped off Jonah at Camp Potomac, then headed towards a harbor off Edgewater for a better view of the fireworks. Rain, thunder, lightning all last night had given way and cleared the sky to a bright clean blue. Blue as Noah’s eyes, pale as the cloudless sky on this sunlit afternoon. Earlier, while our spouses loaded supplies and prepped the boat, Noah and I led Jonah up past the cattails and paw paw trees to Camp Potomac. Through the forest—the thin-needled loblolly pines, the mitten-leaved sassafras, tall white cedar, short shadbush—the