"You're a funny guy, John," noted Tom from the back seat of my SUV.
With my gaze on the winding road before me, I replied as matter-of-factly as possible, "Maybe so, but I'm serious. If you two still want to go caving tonight with me and Joe, y'all are gonna have to go naked. Let me know now if that's a problem so I can turn around if I need to."
He didn't believe me, "How can you be serious about caving naked?"
I glanced into my rear-view mirror at Tom. He was staring out the passenger window, absorbing the early sunset this time of year over the Cumberland Plateau. Scraggly Virginia pines, fat Virginia junipers, and a few mobile homes sped by at close range.
I didn't know Tom well enough to guess what he was thinking. I had only met him a couple of months earlier after joining a Tuesday night run club that met downtown. Its leader always gave us intersections or landmarks ahead at which we were to stop and wait for everyone to catch up before running to the next landmark. Because Tom and I tended to reach these spots well before the laggards, we had started talking a bit and within a few weeks I had mentioned to him that I volunteered as a weekend cave guide at a state park in the northwest corner of the state. Week by week Tom showed a real interest in caving and asked plenty of questions, including whether there were there blind white snakes in caves similar to cave fish, whether I had ever gotten stoned in a cave with the lights off, and what happened when someone on the tour had to go to the bathroom.
When I told him that an acquaintance who serves on the board of the state cave conservancy had offered to let me lead trips into a private cave on his property, Tom immediately texted me his contact info. Over the years I have met a lot of people who will express a superficial interest in spelunking but when actually given an opportunity to experience it are never free, or never follow up with me, or simply disappear. In contrast, Tom replied the next day to my iCalendar invite for the following weekend when I knew my wife would be out of town and I was not on duty at the state park.
A couple of hours after accepting the invite, Tom messaged me to ask if his bud Mike could come along. I agreed because four would be a good number for a cave trip even though I was a little reluctant to have someone I had never met join us. I suspected Mike was probably Tom's boyfriend. Perhaps I shouldn't have jumped to that conclusion just because Tom had once run wearing an organic foods t-shirt, never mentioned having a girlfriend at any of our run breaks, shaved his legs, and once plugged his ears when an ambulance passed us with siren blaring.
Next to Tom in the back seat (directly behind me in the driver's seat) sat Mike. Whereas Tom was a bit swarthy for my part of the country, Mike was as red-headed as the Irish setter I had in elementary school. Tom's haircut might pass military inspection but Mike's suggested draft-dodger with its long orange curls. Mike's poker face was consistent with his quiet demeanor since I had picked him and Tom up a half hour earlier at a shopping center parking lot where Tom could leave his car. Seeing Mike in the fading dusk suddenly reminded me of a girlfriend from high school which made me wonder whether Tom looked at the tiny fiery hairs that probably sprouted from Mike's asshole before Tom fucked him the same way I used to look at hers.
I answered Tom, "You know I'm serious. White-nose syndrome is like a holocaust for bats and there's evidence that people are spreading it more than the bats are. I think it's great that you were so interested in caving that you and Mike stopped at Hades Hole today to go on the tour, but it's one of those big show caves with confirmed white-nose syndrome. There's no way I can risk spreading the disease into this private cave."
Tom's voice grew agitated, "If you had told me we wouldn't have gone there. Nobody at Hades Hole said anything about white-nose syndrome."
"I'm not surprised because these tour caves would lose money if customers thought they might catch something. And because people can't catch it and they know most of their customers are not cavers, they just keep quiet about it."
Mike reminisced, "Contaminated or not, that glass elevator that took us into the underground lake was fucking awesome."
Tom remembered too, "Did you see those blind fish crashing into the elevator tube? And hear that redneck ask the guide what they tasted like?"
It sounded entertaining to me too, but I was a cave snob, "Well guys it isn't like that at the state park. There's no light and sound show, no ghost stories, and no gift shop. But y'all should still come up some time when I'm on duty."
"Nude?" smirked Tom.
"Too bad they don't offer nude tours on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are so slow. I think the park system could use the extra revenue. Who knows? Maybe the extra ticket sales would fund a cure for white-nose syndrome?"
Tom turned from his window and the twilight, catching my eye in the rear view mirror, "I think I sort of understand why we can't wear the same clothes we wore at Hades Hole today and that you said you and Joe don't have any spare clothes for us, but why can't we at least wear our underwear since it wasn't exposed at Hades Hole?"
"Because the protocol requires all clothing to be changed and decontaminated. It's microscopic so it could have easily gotten on your underwear. You're probably thinking that your skin has to be decontaminated too, but you don't want to ask because you're afraid we can't go, right?"
"Well, it crossed my mind-"
"That's why you're both showering in the waterfall at the entrance before you go in."
"Won't our brand new boots get wet?"
"If you wear them in the waterfall, I imagine they will. Just wait to put them on until you're done. You said y'all bought them after Hades Hole because the tour hurt your feet, right? So they don't need to be decontaminated since they haven't been inside an infected cave."
"Won't we damage our goods scraping them against rocks?" probed Tom.
