by Milton Stern
Michael was feeling more at home in D.C.
* * * * *
Michael spent two weeks every summer in Washington visiting his Nana Mary, his maternal grandmother. She was a tall woman like his mother, and she did everything left-handed but write. The story was that when she was in grammar school, they tied her left hand behind her chair to force her to use her right hand. They tried to do the same with Michael’s mother, who was also left-handed, but Nana Mary complained, and they let Hannah use her left hand.
Nana Mary always wore blonde wigs over her thinning but extremely long gray hair. She also wore thick glasses over her blue eyes and orange tint lipstick. (She was also the blonde, blue-eyed Jewess, who had to read the Jewish Daily Forward backward to the neighbors in Baltimore before she could marry his grandfather.) Nana Mary was also one of the best-dressed women Michael knew. “I never buy cheap drek,” she declared, always shopping in the finest stores. Yet, she was tight with a buck when it came to anything frivolous and lived comfortably all her life. She never smiled, and he rarely heard her laugh as she was the most serious and humorless person he ever knew.
There were pictures of Nana Mary and Grandpa Michael Summers all over the apartment, and in all of them, she was actually smiling. She mourned his death for the entire twenty-five years she was a widow. Arlene, who was a friend and neighbor of Nana Mary’s when she lived in Newport News (where Nana Mary’s family had settled in 1905, and where she returned in the 1950s after living in Washington most of her life,) once told Michael his grandparents were the most devoted couple she ever met, and that his grandfather’s death hit her very hard, which is why she moved back to Washington after his death.
Nana Mary had few friends, or at least that was the impression Michael had. When he visited her, no one ever dropped by. When he would visit Grandma Rose Bern, her friends were always dropping by for coffee or just to chat, but Nana Mary did not have a life like that.
However, she was an amazing woman in that she worked until she was eighty-two as the head secretary for Leggum and Gerber, a large real estate company located in Cleveland Park, even after her eyesight started to fail. In 1968, she had cataract operations on both eyes, when it was still considered a dangerous and major operation. Michael remembered her crying before the surgery because she thought they were going to take out her eyes. She also insisted they leave her wig on during the surgery, and she emerged from the operating room with it cock-eyed. They had compromised; she could wear it as long as she took out the pins. The recovery was six weeks, and she could not look down for the entire recovery period. Whenever she chose new frames for her glasses, she had to put them over her old frames, so she could get an idea what they looked like.
Nana Mary chained-smoked Kent cigarettes, as many as four packs a day, and often would fall asleep, burning a cushion on her Louis XIV furniture right under her tuchus. She often had cigarette burns on her dresses as she could not see the ashtray. Michael asked her if she realized when she burned a hole in a dress, and she said very seriously, “Only after I feel it burning my skin.”
When she moved back to D.C. after Michael’s grandfather died in 1960, she lived at the Kennedy Warren. When they built the Van Ness East in the mid-1960s, she moved there, and in 1970 she moved to Van Ness North with a view of Connecticut Avenue. When Michael visited, their days were pretty routine. They would have breakfast. Then she would send Michael to People’s Drug Store to pick up whatever sale item she found in the flyer that day. Then, he would go to the pool until noon, while she sat in the shade keeping from burning her fair skin. After that, they would go to the Chevy Chase Neiman Marcus to see if the latest styles of Eva Gabor wigs had arrived. They would get home by four, so they wouldn’t miss the Merv Griffin Show. They never missed Merv. Then they would go to the Hot Shoppe and eat dinner, come back home, watch more television, have ice cream sodas, and go to bed. Although it was boring being there with only alta cockers around as no one Michael’s age lived in her apartment building, it was a pleasure to be away from his mother and her husband, Bart, whom Nana Mary hated as well.
The only down side was that Nana Mary would take every opportunity to complain about everyone and even Michael’s father, Adam, saying his grandfather never liked Adam. She would then say, “I cannot believe Florence got a divorce. How can anyone get a divorce? No one in my day got a divorce.” And, every night, Michael would hear this same speech.
One night, she sat Michael down and told him a story that to this day, he has not forgotten:
“Michael, when I was a little girl,” she began, “we lived in downtown Newport News. One day, this girl I knew from shule invited me to her house. When I got there, I noticed potato peels in the corner of their kitchen along with other scraps from preparing numerous meals. I went home and told my mother about it, and she said I could not be friends with that girl because they lived like pigs. I know your mother is not the greatest housekeeper, but she should be ashamed of herself. I never kept a house like that, so I have no idea where she got it from. Michael, you need to be sure your house is clean, or you will never have any friends.”
From that day forward, Michael did all the laundry and cleaned the house, so he would always have friends; ironically, his mother did not allow him to have friends over to the house.
At the end of the two weeks with Nana Mary, Hannah would drive up to bring Michael home. During the entire three-hour drive home, Hannah would quiz Michael about what he told Nana Mary, “What did you talk about?” “What did you say?” “What did she tell you?” He often wanted to say, “Mother, if you’re worried about what we talked about, why don’t you stay up there with us?” But, Michael never had the nerve to say anything, and he never told Nana Mary anything either.
Nana Mary retired in 1985, and within a few months, she was dead. Nana Mary should never have retired as work, buying wigs, watching Merv, and complaining about how Bart never worked, was all she had to keep her alive. Michael often thought he inherited his work ethic and some other quirks from Nana Mary.
She left half her estate to Michael, but while on her death bed, Hannah had her sign numerous papers giving her power of attorney and access to all her accounts. When all was said and done, Michael received a check for $2,170 from her estate three years after she died, and he later learned that his mother blew through the remaining $180,000 in less than a year as Bart never had any money, and what he did have he drank or gambled away. Nana Mary worked hard all her life and saved money on a secretary’s salary, only to have her daughter squander it all and rip off her only grandchild.
Chapter Five
Sharon and Michael spent the majority of the next few months e-mailing the script back and forth, refining, re-writing, deleting, and adding, until they had a first draft around mid-September to submit to the studio. Michael pondered going back to California early, since he wasn’t needed in Washington anymore, but Sharon said they would probably send it back for re-writes over the next few weeks. However, Michael was not looking forward to spending a Washington winter re-writing a script.
His life was pretty routine at this point. He would get up at four-thirty, go to the gym, come home, have breakfast, work on the script or other writing assignments Sid had secured for him, re-writing scenes for movies, and writing monologues or other bits and pieces for various TV shows. He ghost wrote so much stuff that summer and fall that he wondered if anyone realized how busy he really was, rather than lamenting the end of a great career. By six, he would turn off the computer, have some dinner, watch some television, and go to bed, but Michael was beginning to miss the Hot Shoppe, shopping at People’s Drug Store, and watching The Merv Griffin Show.
By mid-October, the director asked for a re-write of the ending of Romancing the Capitol, so he was stuck for a while. One morning, he had just arrived home from the gym and was bored. He turned on the computer to check his e-mail, and he saw one from someone named MrDCFalcon2005. At first Michael thought it was an advertisement, but the na
me rang a bell, and he realized it was Steve Smith. He had not heard a word from him since the night they met in June, and here it was four months later, and he received an e-mail.
Michael opened it, found it was short and to the point, and the time and date stamp indicated it had just been sent. “Hey big guy, how ya been? What are you up to? Woof to you.”
Michael thought a few minutes before replying and eventually sent back, “I’m home from the gym and getting ready to do some work. What made you e-mail me out of the blue?”
Michael figured Steve wouldn’t reply right away and checked his other e-mails when a reply from Steve arrived almost immediately.
“Want to meet up?”
Michael frowned at the screen. He hadn’t heard from the guy for four months and now he wanted to meet. Michael also noticed that Steve didn’t say why he e-mailed out of nowhere, so he wrote back, “Now?”
“Yeah,” Steve wrote back. “Can I come over?”
Michael thought for a moment. He got up from the computer and walked into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee when he heard his cell phone ring. He saw it was Steve who was calling, and he waited a few seconds before answering it.
“Hello, Steve,” Michael said in a monotone manner.
“Hey big guy. So, you want to get together?” Steve asked again.
“One, it is six-thirty in the morning, and two, what about your boyfriend?” Michael asked.
“I’m always up this early, and he and I broke up,” Steve answered. “So, should I come over?”
Michael thought for a moment. It had been a while since he had sex, but he also knew that this was not what he wanted, especially this early in the morning.
“Michael, you still there?”
“Yeah, I’m still here,” Michael answered.
“So, what do you say?” Steve asked.
“To be honest, Steve, I don’t feel like fooling around right now …”
“Who said I wanted to fool around? I just want to come by and say hi,” Steve assured him.
Michael wasn’t sure if Steve was being entirely honest, but he invited him over anyway.
He decided not to change from his jeans and sweatshirt he had put on after showering at the gym, and it was a good thing he didn’t because there was a knock on the door within five minutes. He looked through the peep hole, and it was Steve. Michael opened the door, and Steve walked in wearing black sweat pants with a white stripe down each leg and a black sweat shirt.
“How did you do that? Weren’t you sitting in front of your computer?” Michael asked.
“Oh, I got in my car after I asked if I could come over, hoping you would say yes,” Steve answered as he walked into the living room.
“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you?” Michael asked. “Want some coffee?”
“Oh, I don’t do caffeine. Nice place, really clean,” Steve said as he looked around.
Michael took his coffee and sat down on the futon, placing his cup on the table next to it. Then Steve took off his sweat shirt and stood right in front of Michael.
“I thought you just wanted to say hi,” Michael said as he admired Steve’s hairy, muscular body. “By the way, nice body.”
Steve ran his hand over his stomach and said, “I’m fat. I think I need liposuction.”
Michael looked at Steve’s belly, which wasn’t quite a washboard, but wasn’t fat either. It was as if he had been temporarily transported back to Hollywood, where someone who was one pound overweight was considered obese. Steve then sat sideways on Michael’s lap, and Michael didn’t protest as Steve put his hand behind Michael’s head and leaned in to kiss him.
As they parted lips, Michael looked into Steve’s eyes and wondered what he was doing with this thirty-year-old, and he knew that keeping it casual, if they proceeded to the bedroom, would be for the best.
“You work fast,” Michael said.
“Yeah, I know what I like,” he responded.
“It took you four months to see what you like, then five minutes to go after it,” Michael said as he stroked Steve’s thigh.
Steve got up from Michael’s lap and walked toward the bedroom, slipping off his sneakers and sweat pants, and standing in only a black jock strap, which hugged the roundest, hairiest butt Michael had ever seen and said, “Tom and I were in couple’s therapy most of the summer.”
Michael did not move from the futon as he asked, “What would your therapist think of this?”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re on another break, and we decided to open up the relationship,” Steve said as he turned and removed his jock strap and settled on the bed, yelling to Michael, “So, are you going to join me or what?”
Michael stood up and removed his sweatshirt slowly revealing a body that he had worked to perfect for more than two decades, then bent down and removed his shoes and socks before walking into the bedroom where Steve was lying on his back and sporting a nice, thick, long erection.
“Damn!” Steve said upon seeing Michael shirtless. “For a guy in his forties, you are smokin’ hot.”
“For a guy in his forties?” Michael asked with a smile as he unbuckled his jeans and dropped them along with his white briefs.
“I guess it’s true what they say about Jewish boys,” Steve said as he sat up and ran a hand down Michael’s torso and grabbed his stiffening organ, which was thicker and longer than Steve’s. “You ever measure this thing?”
“Please, yours is pretty huge,” Michael said as he leaned down and grabbed Steve, milking a bit of precum from the tip.
Steve then slipped his mouth over Michael’s erection and proceeded to give him the slowest and most sensual blowjob he had experienced in a while. Michael also knew that if Steve kept up what he was doing, he would blow any second, for it had been a while since he got laid. He put his hands on Steve’s cheeks, easing him off his dick, then bent down and kissed him passionately. Michael sucked on Steve’s tongue, then ran it over his lips before shoving into Steve’s mouth, doing things with his full Semitic lips that Steve had never expected. When they parted lips, Steve was speechless and looked up at him with wonder. Michael then got down on his knees and grabbed Steve’s hard dick, gave it a couple of strokes, then put his warm mouth on it.
“Oh my God!” Steve practically yelled, but Michael was not surprised because he was known for two things he did better than just about anyone, kissing and sucking dick. “You are fucking amazing … holy shit … I don’t know what you’re doing … but God damn …”
Michael would have preferred to edge Steve, but he did have work to do, so he brought him to the brink pretty quickly and released his cock only a second before Steve came in shudders. Michael then stood up and stroked his own cock, coating Steve’s torso only seconds later, having enjoyed giving pleasure to such a hot man with such a nice cock.
It took Steve a few minutes to recover, and afterward, they showered together before Steve left. The whole thing lasted no more than fifteen minutes.
The next morning, Michael went to the gym as usual. As he walked in the door, he heard his cell phone ringing. He never took it to the gym, figuring no one would call that early, proving that after all those years in Hollywood, he had not become so entrenched in show biz habits that he was tethered to his phone twenty-four-seven.
“Hello, Steve,” he answered after looking at the ID.
“Hey, Michael.”
“Steve, what are you doing calling me again this early?” he asked a little annoyed.
“Open your front door,” Steve said.
“What?” Michael asked turning around to face the door.
“Open your front door,” he said again, insistently.
Michael walked over to the front door and looked into the peep hole and saw Steve stepping out of his truck still talking on the cell phone, so he opened the door.
“Surprised to see me?” Steve asked into the cell phone.
“Yes,” Michael said as he hung up the phone.
Michael
let him in, and Steve was dressed in a suit with an ID tag around his neck. Michael chided himself for not looking at it before Steve put it in his pocket to see if Steve Smith was his real name.
“What are you doing?” Michael asked as Steve walked toward the living room.
“I was on my way to work, and I thought I would drop by and say hi,” Steve said as he turned around and smiled.
“Where exactly do you work?” Michael asked as he followed him into the living room, wondering why Steve would stop by a day after having sex with him. Tricks never did that. There was the seventy-two-hour rule, and one never stopped by unannounced. Had the rules changed, and no one told Michael? Was this an East Coast thing?
“So, what are you doing?” Steve asked, ignoring Michael’s question, as he sat down on one of the chairs and removed his shoes, not waiting for an invitation to make himself comfortable.
“I just got home from the gym, and I’m going to have some breakfast and get to work,” Michael answered as he stood there watching him.
Steve then stood up and walked over to Michael, his head coming to Michael’s chest as there was at least seven inches difference in their heights. Steve started running his hands up and down Michael’s torso, but Michael pushed him away. “Listen, Steve, I like you, but I’m not comfortable with you coming over unannounced, when you either have or don’t have a boyfriend.”
Steve ignored Michael and proceeded to undress and said, “Hey, like I said, we’re on a break and probably breaking up anyway. Besides, I can’t seem to separate sex from friendship.”