Go West Young Man

by Robbie Michaels

  Chapter 19

  The Prodigal Returns

  CLASSES that week were good. I was thoroughly enjoying the classes I was taking. Of course, having done so much advance reading over the holidays certainly helped. While others were struggling to get over some tough concepts, I was gliding along unfazed.

  When someone called in sick at Starbucks and I was asked to fill in, I did so without any hesitation. I went to class and worked and got back to my new pattern of running. By the end of the week I was doing damned good. I had phenomenal stamina and was racking up some pretty impressive total mileage. My body was enjoying having the exercise, and it gave me time to lose myself in blasting loud music. The music and the running helped to clear all the extraneous thoughts from my brain. It was good.

  On Friday afternoon I worked and then came home to make some food. Slatter had come home with me, and we were cooking some burgers on the grill. We ate inside because it was cool that evening. He had some reading he needed to do for a class he was taking, so while I cleaned up the dishes and the kitchen, he got started on his reading.

  I joined him on the sofa to do some reading of my own. Before I knew it, it was ten o’clock and we were both just about falling asleep where we sat.

  He started to pack his things to go back to campus, which seemed like a ridiculous idea to me. “Why don’t you stay here tonight? It’s late and we’re both too tired to go out.”

  I could see him hesitate, and I added, “It’s not like you’ve got anything I haven’t already seen. Remember Palm Springs?”

  The man groaned and buried his head at the mere mention of the name of that place. “I used to like you, but then you had to say that name.”

  “Sorry. Stay here.”

  “Your couch is too uncomfortable. I’ll sleep better in my own bed.”

  “Sleep in my bed. I promise to not molest you in your sleep. Your virtue is safe.”

  And he did stay with me that night. He ended up staying the weekend. We went out Saturday and ran along the beach, which was great fun. He showed me some of the quiet, out-of-the-way diversions he had found in his time in the city. We browsed through a bookstore just for fun, drank lots of tea and coffee that someone else made and served to us, and ate lots of good food. All in all, we had a good weekend.

  On Monday morning I drove us to class. Slatter stayed at his own dorm that night, but on Tuesday afternoon we found that we were both on the schedule together again. When we finished work, I invited him to come home with me so we could eat together. He did, we did, and then he stayed and we went to bed.

  Even though we were both gay men in our prime, we had studiously avoided anything sexual. I was getting there, but needed a bit more time yet before I took that step—it somehow seemed like one I wasn’t quite ready for yet. Slatter respected my unspoken position and didn’t challenge or push me. He was being incredibly supportive, and I would be eternally grateful for his understanding.

  The lights were off, and we were both drifting off to sleep, when we heard something. It was the city after all—there were always sounds. Cars. Babies crying. People yelling. Garbage trucks. Horns blowing. That kind of thing. But this was different. This was closer. Both of us stirred from our almost sleep and sat up. Whatever we had heard was replaced by the sound of someone knocking. Knocking? Yes, someone was knocking at my door.

  I never had visitors, so I couldn’t imagine what this was. Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t work this late. My first thought was that Moira was in some kind of trouble and was trying to get my attention to get my help.

  I jumped out of bed, grabbed a pair of shorts that were lying nearby, quickly shoving my legs into them. Without bothering with a shirt, I turned on lights in the living room, turned on the porch light to see what was happening—and got the fright of my life. Bill was standing outside my door.

  “Mark! My key isn’t working for some reason. Open the door.”

  But I didn’t move. How dare he? How dare that son of a bitch come trying to get into my house at this hour—hell, at any hour—of the night?

  Moira had apparently seen the porch light come on (it was a very bright light that illuminated from my place all along the driveway up toward her house—it was kind of hard to miss) because a moment later I heard her back door open and heard her coming our way.

  Slatter was by my side now, also dressed in shorts but nothing else.

  Just about when Moira arrived, I opened the door, and we stepped out. None of us said a word but simply stared at Bill.

  “My keys aren’t working for some reason,” he repeated.

  “That would be because we changed the locks,” Moira explained patiently.

  “Why’d you do that?” Bill asked.

  “To keep you out if you ever had the balls to show your face around here again,” Slatter said. I remained silent.

  “Huh?” Bill asked. “And who the hell are you? What’s going on? Come on, guys, I’m too tired to think. I just want to go to bed and sleep for a week.”

  “Well, don’t let us stand in your way. I assume you’ll be staying in one of your boyfriend’s houses, so you can pick up your crap whenever. Your stuff is all around to the side of the house by the garbage cans. I put it out there when the news broke.”

  Bill shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m missing something. I’m not following any of this. I just want to come in, take a shower, and go to bed.”

  Slatter moved in front of me, and Moira moved over to join him. “Fine. Go somewhere and do that,” he said. “I can’t believe you have the gall to show up here, especially in the middle of the night, after all the hurt you’ve caused.”

  “Wait. What hurt? Huh? What are you talking about? And, again, who the hell are you?”

  I had had enough of this bullshit, so I stepped inside the house and grabbed one of the newspapers (I had around three hundred of them), opened it up fully, and walked back out, thrusting it in Bill’s face. He looked at the paper, his eyes grew wider, and I could see the color drain from his face. “What the…?”

  “What?” I repeated his question. “Looks to me like you and Derrick, together in bed. But let’s check the accompanying story and see if I’m right. Oh, look at this—I was! It says something about Mr. Derrick St. James busting down the closet doors, leaving his wife, and taking up with a boy toy—hint, that’s you,” I said, pointing to the picture once again. I threw the newspaper at him, stepped back inside, grabbed another one from the next day, opened it up to the bigger spread of pictures, and carried that one out to him as well.

  “And look,” I said gleefully, “the next day there’s more! Here’s you and Derrick playing Frisbee. Or, as they report it, ‘St. James and his new boy toy’. Here’s the two of you enjoying an intimate candlelight dinner for two. Isn’t that sweet. That’s my favorite, after the one of you two cuddling in bed together, of course. A lot of people loved this one of you two on a blanket enjoying a picnic lunch, but I told them I just didn’t buy that one. Only got the one copy of this paper,” I explained, folding it back up carefully and tossing it back inside. “But the first one, I’ve got about three hundred copies of that one. So go ahead, take it, add it to your collection. Have it framed and put it up on your and Derrick’s wall somewhere.” I stopped and thought of one thing. “Actually, I started with three hundred copies, but I’ve sent copies to everybody I know so there aren’t as many left anymore. Although I didn’t need to bother, since the story was picked up by every news service in the world and was reprinted an untold number of times. You got some really interesting mail after that one.

  “Oh, and speaking of mail,” I stepped back inside the house and picked up an envelope which I took back out and threw at him. “School made it official. Since you were a no-show, they’ve given you the boot. But now that you’re the boy toy of a rich and famous and now out, loud, and proud gay man you don’t need that education anymore. All you have to do is lay back and spread your legs and buy things the old-fashioned way.”
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  Bill hadn’t said a word, but had tried to take all of this in. He couldn’t have missed my anger. No. No way anyone could have missed my anger. There were people three blocks over that picked up on my anger. I was not being quiet, and I was not being subtle.

  “And you know what hurt me the most? Huh? The fact that you didn’t even have the balls to tell me yourself. I had to find it out from the newspaper. You had to have someone else do your dirty work and dump me. You had to have someone else make me feel like crap.”

  I paused. “Not one word from you from the time you left the country. Not one word to tell me you got there okay. Not one word to tell me how it was going. Not one word at Christmas. Not one word at New Year’s. Not one word that you weren’t coming back. Not one word. I don’t know how I could have been so stupid! How long had you two been plotting this? Huh? How long have I been innocently stumbling along in the dark under the false assumption that you still loved me? Huh? How long? You know, it does explain a lot about why I never saw you in the weeks before you left. Now I know that you were probably with your boyfriend plotting how it was all going to work. Actually, do I call him your boyfriend? Do I transfer my title to him? You’re his boy toy, but what is he to you? Your sugar daddy? Yes, that must be it.”

  We all looked at one another, and then I turned and said, “I’m going to bed. Bye, Bill. Rot in hell. I wish I had just driven away and left you in the snow in that parking lot that night. To think of how my family took you in and did so much for you—and this is how you pay us back. And by the way, if you think I’m pissed, word of advice—you really don’t want to be anyplace alone with my mom or dad anytime in the next decade or two. To think that my mom and I put ourselves in harm’s way to protect you and your mom.” I shook my head and simply went back inside.

  Slatter stared at Bill for a minute longer before turning and going inside with me, locking the door behind him.

  Chapter 20

  Aftermath of the Prodigal’s Return

  OBVIOUSLY I wasn’t present to hear all of what came next. But Moira and Bill were there, and Moira told Slatter and Slatter told me, so I know it’s all true. Also, Bill told Derrick and Derrick told me, so I had verification.

  After we’d gone back into the house, Moira looked at Bill and said, “You really surprised me, William.” But before she could continue, Bill fell to the ground and vomited. She didn’t move but simply stood and observed. She was a mother of two children—she’d seen people vomit before. And she was not inclined to help out this time.

  Bill rolled onto the ground and groaned before heaving some more.

  “You surprised me, and I’ve got to say, not many people surprise me anymore. I thought by now I was a pretty good judge of character.”

  He lay on the ground and moved from vomiting to crying. “Moira!” he said through his tears. “I didn’t know about any of this! What’s happening? None of this is real! None of that stuff happened!”

  She stood and studied him for a moment. “Come,” she said as she started to walk back to her house. He crawled to his feet and staggered along behind her and into her kitchen. Pointing at the sink, she said, “Wash your face. You’re a mess.”

  He did as told. She made some tea and motioned for him to take a stool at the counter to join her when they were both ready to talk.

  “All right, what happened? If everything we’ve been told isn’t true, then what happened?”

  “It was awful. It was terrible. It was such a mess. We were in the middle of nowhere. It rains there like once a year—except for this year. It rained torrentially. Day after day after day. Rain, rain, and more rain. There were rivers everywhere. It was washing the soil away. The roads were out. No planes could get in. We couldn’t get out. We couldn’t work. We couldn’t film. We couldn’t do anything but sit. Day after day after day we had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

  “The trailers they had trucked in for us to live in while onsite were ancient and started to leak. We were packed in tighter and tighter, trying to stay dry. When we got a day with no rain, everything was so wet that we couldn’t work. We’d try to go out and film something only to get stuck in the mud. Nothing worked. It was only getting worse.

  “Tempers were short and got shorter day by day. It was the most horrible experience of my life. There was no escaping the rain, the mud, the angry, bored people. And when the rain stopped, the flies and mosquitoes came out. They were worse than any flies and mosquitoes I have ever seen anywhere anytime before in my life. They were everywhere. They attacked. They surrounded you. They were vicious. They were biting.

  “I knew it was time for me to leave, but we couldn’t get out of there. Nobody was getting in and nobody was getting out. I wanted to walk out and try to get out that way, but we were hundreds of miles from anything. I had no idea that Australia had such a vast unsettled interior.

  “Derrick stopped me from taking off one day. It had been horrible, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I just wanted to get the hell out of there. I tried to take off walking. It would have been suicide, I know now, but I had to get out of there, or at least try to get out of there. I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit anymore.

  “The trailer I was sharing with six other guys was a mess. After one rough night that featured two fistfights, I finally just took off. Derrick came after me and got me back and into his trailer. Yes, I slept in his bed, with him, but it was not sexual in the slightest possible way. I swear to you that I did not have sex with him. I have not wanted to have sex with him, I do not want to have sex with him, I have not had sex with him, I do not want to have sex with him, I will not have sex with him. He has never suggested it, and I wouldn’t do it even if he had. Period. Mark is the one I want to be with. Period.

  “The picture of me in bed with Derrick wrapped around me. Sure. That looked real. The other pictures, no way. Not remotely possible. There were no picnics. There was no place that was dry enough to have a picnic. There were no other people. There were no cafés and no candlelight—except for the week when the generators failed because we ran out of fuel.

  “Those other pictures are completely made up. That’s all there is to it. I’m not Derrick’s boyfriend or boy toy. I’m not anything to Derrick like that. We’re friends. That’s it. Nothing more. Somebody is playing games.”

  Moira sat back and took in everything he was saying. It was plausible. She had never misjudged anyone so hugely before, and she didn’t see how she could have misjudged Bill so badly. It also was out of character for Derrick. So she agreed that someone was playing games—a very high stakes game that seemed to be solely determined to bring down Derrick St. James.

  After a long period of silent contemplation, she finally said, “Yes, someone is playing games. But we’re not talking fun games. Someone is out for blood. Someone is out to take that man down, and so far they seem to be doing a pretty effective job of it. At the moment I don’t think he could get a job making cat food commercials for late night TV.”

  “Has it really been that bad?” Bill asked.

  “You saw the newspapers. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. This town loves a good bit of gossip, but we’re way past gossip. We’re talking blood in the water with the sharks circling.”

  “We didn’t know any of this back there. We were completely shut off from the outside world. I didn’t know any of this until you guys started telling me what was happening. What can I ever do to convince Mark that this is all just BS? He hates me! You saw the look on his face back there. He hates me!”

  She nodded. “Yes. He does. No use trying to deny it. He’s been hurt—badly hurt. You disappeared—over the holidays—and so did I. And then you don’t come back as scheduled and neither he nor I can get any information out of the studio. And then you miss the start of classes and get kicked out of school.”

  Bill broke down in tears again at that note. “I’ve ruined everything. My life is such a mess.”

  “Yes, dear, it is. But we’re gonna
work on it. But you should know right here and now that we can’t fix this overnight. This is gonna take some time. And a lot of work. And there are no promises. We may not be able to fix it.”

  “Who was that guy with Mark?”

  “Slatter. You should be grateful he’s been around. I don’t want to think what you’d find back here if he hadn’t been around.”

  “Are they sleeping together?”

  “Much like what you described with Derrick. They sleep in the same bed but are not having sex.”

  “How do you know?”

  “A mother knows these things. That, plus I’ve talked with both of them. And like I said, be grateful he’s been around. I don’t think Mark would have come back after their drunken weekend in Palm Springs if Slatter hadn’t been along. He left here so angry and hurt. He had just seen the first newspaper. He told me he was moving out and wouldn’t be back. We got him to reconsider. Slatter took him out.” She chuckled. “I’ve never seen anyone look quite so green as Mark when he crawled back home the next night. From what Slatter told me, Mark was in far better shape than he was. They’ve both sworn to me that they will never touch a drop of alcohol again as long as they both live. By all accounts, they were very popular at the gay resort in the springs. They drank and danced until they got thrown out when the party shut down.”

  “I don’t like him.”

  “I didn’t think you would. But you should still be grateful to him. He’s been here doing your job. We didn’t know where you were or even if you were alive. You might have been in hell, but so were we.”

  “What do I do now?”

  “You go upstairs, first door on the right, and go to bed. Bathroom is just off the bedroom. I’m gonna go out and try to talk to Mark a little. I don’t expect to get very far, but I’ll start laying the groundwork. So. Shower. Sleep. And let me work my magic.”