by Milton Stern
“Leave before I call the police and have you forced off my property, Bob Essex. Don’t say another word unless you want me to call Sid right now and tell him everything you just told me,” Michael said without looking at him or raising his voice.
Sam stood up and grabbed his jacket, “How can I get a cab this time of day?”
“I don’t give a shit … walk,” Michael said.
Sam hesitated then opened the back door and walked through the house, and when Michael heard the front door close behind Sam, he put his head in his hands and cried.
After a few minutes, he sat up, wiped his eyes and looked out into the yard. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the box he intended to give Sam. He rolled it around in his palm before opening it. Once he opened it, he pulled the gift out and held it in front of his face. It was a key ring with the keys to his house and the Corvair on it.
“What an asshole,” Michael said as he returned the key ring to the box, stood up, and walked into the house shutting the back door behind him.
Chapter Fourteen
On a Friday night in May 2007, Michael came home around 1:00 am from a day of taping Mickey’s Life. He had forgotten about the long days taping a one-camera show. The show was about a mixed-race gay couple, one a writer and the other a former actor, who adopt three kids and live in Los Angeles, so they filmed a lot of exterior shots into the night.
He took a shower and climbed into bed, hoping to get a few hours sleep since he would not have to be at work until Monday morning.
Around 7:00 am, there was a knock on the door. Michael opened his eyes and saw the time. He thought it must be a delivery or something, but he quickly realized it was Saturday. Michael jumped out of bed and didn’t even bother putting anything on figuring his white briefs were enough of a cover up. He looked through the window in the front door, and he could not believe who was standing on his porch. Michael opened the door and stood there with his mouth wide open.
“Michael, I can’t believe I actually found your house,” Steve said as he walked in. He gave Michael’s crotch a quick squeeze as he passed by him. Steve was wearing jeans and a green T-shirt, and Michael thought he looked sexier than ever. Michael closed the door and walked back to the bedroom without saying a word. He grabbed a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt and, after slipping them on, returned to the living room.
“Can I get you some coffee?” Michael asked as he walked back to the kitchen.
“You know I don’t do caffeine,” Steve yelled from the living room.
Steve walked into the kitchen as Michael prepared the coffee, and he hugged Michael from behind and pressed his head on his back.
“I’ve missed you, big guy,” Steve said. Michael didn’t say anything just focusing on his task of making coffee. “What’s the matter? Aren’t you glad to see me?”
After plugging in and turning on the coffee maker, while Steve continued to clutch him, Michael shook him off and turned around.
“I haven’t heard a word from you since I visited you in the hospital,” Michael said.
Steve hugged him again and pressed his head on Michael’s chest.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,” Steve said as he began to cry. “I’ve been a bad friend. I know. I didn’t mean to shut you out.”
Michael pushed him away and walked over to the refrigerator. He reached into the cabinet above it and pulled out a pack of Salem Lights.
“You smoke?” he asked.
“I started smoking when I moved to Washington, and I quit the day after your surgery,” Michael answered.
“When did you start again?”
“What time is it?” Michael asked.
“A little after seven.”
“That is when I started again,” Michael replied as he sat at the kitchen table.
Steve grabbed the cigarette from Michael’s hand and then the pack. He then placed a hand under Michael’s chin. “Don’t do this to yourself,” he said. “It will kill you.”
“So will steroids and human growth hormone,” Michael replied.
Steve sat down opposite Michael at the kitchenette. He looked into Steve’s gray eyes remembering the first time they met. He was so sexy, so beautiful, so into himself.
“I’ve been through a lot this past year and have worked on a lot of issues,” Steve said as he stared at him.
Michael continued to stare at him and picked up the pack as Steve had laid it on the table. He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. It had been over a year since he had one, and the first few drags made him dizzy.
“Michael, I miss you so much. You mean so much to me,” Steve continued.
Here we go again, Michael thought. What timing.
“We had a connection, and well, you kinda weirded out on me, and I kind of weirded out on you,” Steve continued.
Michael continued to stare at him puffing away on the cigarette. Part of Michael wanted to fuck him right there on the table, and part of Michael wanted to throw him out of his house, realizing how dangerous it was for his mental health to even be in the same room with Steve.
“Michael, say something,” Steve pleaded as he got misty-eyed again.
“What do you want me to say? You don’t call or write and then you show up at my door at seven in the morning, three thousand miles from your home. I’m in shock more than anything else,” Michael said.
Steve grabbed a napkin to dab his eyes. Michael hated seeing him cry. Steve was such a little boy when he cried. This hulk of a man with his tough leather persona was the most vulnerable person Michael knew. If only he had let him into his world, he would understand what made Steve this way. Why was he so unhappy? What did he want?
“How is Kurt?” was all Michael could think to ask.
“Oh my God!” Steve began. “He was so full of drama.” There was that word. Drama. Steve, the most dramatic guy Michael knew, always accusing everyone else of being full of drama. “He wanted to be my husband. He told me he was in love with me and couldn’t live without me. He wouldn’t leave me alone. He was always at my house. Always wanting to do everything for me. I couldn’t be alone. I told him I needed my space, and he wouldn’t give it to me. He tried to cut me off from all my friends,” Steve said between sobs. “I had to get a restraining order once he started threatening me. How can a thirty-nine-year-old doctor be so fucked up?”
“The same way a thirty-two-year-old leather queen or, for that matter, a forty-four-year-old Oscar nominee could,” Michael answered. “And, he was only thirty-nine? He looked much older.”
“You were nominated?” Steve asked.
“I won,” Michael answered offering no further explanation as to the category. He got up to pour himself a cup of coffee. “Are you sure you don’t want anything? I have juice. I could make you breakfast,” Michael asked against his better judgment.
“That would be nice,” Steve said.
Michael pulled out a frying pan and began making breakfast while Steve talked.
“So, how are the boys out here? Have you met anyone? Having any fun lately?” Steve asked.
Michael remained silent, figuring Steve never answered his questions, so why should he all of a sudden answer Steve’s. “My, my, with all the questions,” Michael finally said reversing their roles for the first time. “Not even a how are you?”
“You’re right, Michael, I’m sorry. How are you? Have you been well?”
Michael proceeded to fix six eggs and put four pieces of bread into the toaster, figuring he would join him. He decided to say nothing until the breakfast was ready. He placed a plate of eggs over easy in front of Steve, then grabbed some silverware and poured him a glass of orange juice.
“Oh, could I just have water. The acid really irritates my stomach,” Steve said as he pulled up his shirt to show him the scar. So much for liposuction, the scar went from three inches below his navel all the way up to his sternum. Steve had also put on a little weight, returning to the man Michael first met in October 2005, almost two years earlier.
&n
bsp; Michael poured him a glass of water and sat down at the table, but he wasn’t really hungry, so he pretty much pushed his eggs around the plate. He never seemed to have an appetite when he was around him. Steve, on the other hand, ate as if he had not seen food in a week, and Michael realized this was the first meal they had ever eaten together.
“Steve, why are you here?”
“To see you,” Steve answered between bites. Then he smiled with those perfect white teeth, although there was a piece of toast stuck in between two of them.
“You flew all this way to see me?” Michael asked.
“No, I live here now,” Steve answered.
“Since when?” Michael asked, his heart skipping a beat.
“About two weeks ago,” Steve said and looked up at Michael waiting for a reaction.
“Great, now I have to move,” Michael said. They both laughed at the comment. “Where are you working?”
“I’m working as a consultant and a writer for a new TV show about the CIA,” Steve answered. He must have sensed the surprised look on Michael’s face, especially after he almost choked on his coffee. “Yeah, I was actually contacted by a head hunter, who asked if I could write also,” he said as he continued to eat.
“What studio?” Michael asked.
“HTO,” he answered.
Michael could not believe it. He had moved out here, and now they were going to work in the same building.
“Now, I definitely have to move,” Michael said seriously.
“Why?”
“Because I work for HTO. They produced my picture. I’m now the executive producer and writer of a sitcom I created for them.”
“Oh my God. We can be lunch buddies,” Steve said with a smile.
“You had no idea I worked for HTO?” Michael asked.
“No, seriously, I didn’t,” he answered even though Michael could have sworn he told him about his association with HTO when they first met.
He sopped up the rest of the eggs on his plate with the toast as Michael watched him. Michael realized then he knew so little about him, nor the other way around.
“All this time, and you never knew where I worked. Steve, we never knew each other at all did we?” Michael asked.
He finished chewing and looked right at him, stunned as Michael was at that comment. “We never did get a chance to know each other,” Steve said.
“Correction, you never gave us a chance to get to know each other,” Michael said as he looked at him.
“Do we have to travel down that road again?” he asked as he sipped his water.
Michael sat back and lit another cigarette, giving up on his breakfast. Steve looked at Michael’s plate, and without even asking, Michael placed it in front of him. He then proceeded to finish Michael’s breakfast as well. He wondered what it was that made him fall in love with Steve. Was it purely physical? They talked, but it was mostly about Steve. Michael was never the subject of their conversations. He worshipped him, fed his ego, and gave him what he wanted and needed, but he never became Steve’s caregiver. He refused to become Steve’s mother. Yet, here they were after all this time, sitting across from each other – practical strangers. Steve ate in silence for a minute then looked up at Michael again.
“What are you thinking?” Steve asked.
Michael took a puff and answered, “Why I fell in love with you.”
Steve stopped eating and put his fork down. He rested his elbows on the table and his head in his hands. “I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
Michael furrowed his brow and asked, “Why I fell in love with you?”
“No,” he answered, “Why I fell in love with you.”
Steve fell in love with Michael? Michael knew that was impossible. Guys like Steve never fell in love with anyone except themselves.
“Michael,” he began, “I’m still in love with you.” Michael was silent and stared at him. “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you, but I’m not sure this is all happening. This is my imagination right? I was up filming into the wee hours of the night,” Michael answered.
Steve laughed at him, finished his breakfast and sat back in his chair.
“All this time, I thought you were not in love with me. I wanted to retreat because I knew I had to get over you. I tried like hell to get over you, and I did. I truly came to terms with the fact that we would never be together, maybe never see each other again. Yet, here you are, telling me you were and still are in love with me. I’m at a loss. I don’t want to say anything stupid, yet I don’t want … I really don’t know what to say,” he answered, more confused than he had been in a long time.
“Don’t say anything,” Steve said. “I understand. You really opened yourself up to me back then and although I said I would stick around, I shut you out. I was scared. I didn’t know what I wanted. I was going through a bad breakup then I met you. Then you freaked out on me. Then I met Kurt. He freaked out on me. Now, I’m here telling you all this and expecting you to be happy about it, but I guess it all may be too little, too late.”
Michael got up from the table and walked out the back door, taking his coffee with him. Steve got up from the table and poured himself another glass of water. He sat in one of his deck chairs and placed his coffee on the table next to the ash tray, which sat there waiting to be filled ever since he returned to Hollywood a year earlier. Steve put his glass next to Michael’s coffee cup and sat in the chair next to him. They did not talk at first. He placed his hand on Michael’s leg. He then worked his way up Michael’s thigh, but he stopped Steve just short of the prize. Michael grabbed his hand and looked at him then he removed it from his thigh.
“This is what screwed us up in the first place. You cannot separate friendship from sex, and I can’t separate sex from love,” Michael said.
“So, if we were to have some fun, you would fall in love with me again?” Steve asked.
Michael looked right at him and said, “We don’t have to have ‘fun’ for me to fall in love with you again.”
“Really?” he asked almost excitedly.
Michael placed his hand on the back of Steve’s head and stroked it a few times. “I told you at the hospital, ‘I do and will always love you.’ Remember that?” Michael asked. Steve nodded yes. “That should give you your answer,” he said. “But, Steve, I don’t want that. I have been really happy this past year without you in my life. So, I think it would be a good idea if you leave.”
Steve stood up and put his hand on Michael’s shoulder. “I don’t get you, Michael. Isn’t this what you always wanted?” he asked, looking down at him.
Michael looked up at him and smiled. “It was what I wanted … but it is no longer what I want.”
Steve didn’t say another word and just walked back through the house.
As he heard the front door close, Michael looked toward his yard and said to himself, “I think it’s time I got another dog. Who needs the drama of a boyfriend when you can have a dog?”
The End
Milton Stern resides in Washington, D.C., with his toy parti-poodle, Serena Rose Elizabeth Montgomery, where he works as a writer and editor and volunteers for a gay antique car club. He is the author of four books and numerous short stories.