Go West Young Man

by Robbie Michaels

  Getting into his role, Bill fell to his knees and bowed his head in a worshipful attitude. “Forgive me, grandfather.”

  “We’ve got to work on your sucking up skills.” Bill jumped back to his feet, and Derrick came over and put his arm around Bill’s shoulder. “Now, tell the nice people who I am.”

  “Sure, E…,” Bill started to say, but stopped when Derrick punched him in the side and said, “and be nice about it too.”

  “Sir, yes, sir!”

  “That’s what I’m talking about!”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is a high honor and my distinct privilege to introduce you to one of America’s most famous actors, star of stage, screen, and back lots everywhere, winner of countless acting awards, Mr. Derrick St. James.” Bill bowed slightly to the man. “Your eminence.” Turning his attention to the tourists, he said, “You might want to step back a little. These superstars have egos the size of Montana.” He held his hands far apart to indicate the size of the ego in question.

  “Thank you, Bill,” Derrick said, again putting his arm around the younger man’s shoulders. “Are you folks having a good tour? You’ve got the best tour guide. Are you enjoying your time in our beautiful state? Where’s everybody visiting from?” For ten minutes Derrick kept the tourists riveted while he talked with them, asked questions, answered a few of their questions for him, and posed for countless photos.

  When Bill’s cell phone vibrated, he knew who it was before he ever looked: his boss telling him that he was running behind schedule. “We got delayed.”

  “Well, un-delay it and get them back here. Now!”

  “Yes, sir,” Bill said, disconnecting the call.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Bill said, “but I’ve just been informed that we need to wrap this up. Mr. St. James, thank you for your time.”

  As Bill started to shepherd his people on their way, Derrick whispered, “You in trouble?”

  “Sounds that way,” Bill said, never taking the smile off his face as he motioned people onward.

  “Well, we can’t have that,” Derrick said, walking along with Bill as he took his charges back to the point where he had originally picked them up an hour earlier. Bill and Derrick said farewell to all of the tourists, Derrick posed for a couple of final pictures, and then Derrick walked into the office with Bill. Rather than wait to be recognized, Derrick just launched. “Don’t blame the boy. It was all my fault. I got talking with some of the tourists, and they were having the time of their lives.”

  “It didn’t sound like ‘talking’ from the reports I’ve been receiving. You do know that we’re not insured for injuries from sword fights, don’t you?”

  “They were stage props! You don’t seriously think I would play with real swords, do you? I’m the most valuable commodity this studio has at the moment. Over the last ten years I’ve earned untold billions of dollars for this place. They work extraordinarily hard to keep me happy. You don’t want to make me unhappy, do you?”

  Realizing that he was trapped, Bill’s boss agreed. “No, sir. Never.”

  “Good.” Turning back to Bill he put his arm around Bill’s shoulder and asked, “You gonna be home tonight?”

  “Plan to be. Why?”

  “I might stop over for a minute.”

  “Oh, sure. We should be around all evening.”

  “Good. See you then.” Derrick shook the hand of Bill’s boss and thanked him for his understanding, smiling up a storm. “Bye, Bill.”

  “Bye, Derrick.”

  When they were alone, Bill’s boss looked suspiciously at him. “You know him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You called him ‘Derrick’. His name is Mr. St. James. I’ve never heard him identified in any way other than Mr. St. James. His trademark is that he absolutely insists that he always be identified as Mr. St. James.”

  “He has insisted that I call him Derrick from the very first time I met him,” Bill explained, which, while technically correct, also omitted the fact that Bill had only met him one other time, and that he consented to being called Derrick to keep us from calling him Elmer.

  His boss considered him for a moment and then wished him a good evening. “And if your friend asks, you can tell him that I didn’t give you any trouble whatsoever.”

  “Of course, sir. Good night,” Bill said as he took off for the day.

  Derrick was standing outside waiting for Bill, giving him a questioning look when he stepped out of the building. Bill smiled. In true jock fashion they bumped fists and then walked off toward the employee entrance together.

  “Is your husband picking you up, or how do you get home?”

  “Yes, he should be outside waiting for me.”

  “Good. I’d like to say hello if you have no objection.”

  “None that I can think of.”

  Bill spotted the car with me in it. Needless to say, I was rather surprised to find Bill walking off the lot with America’s Number One Male Heartthrob walking beside him in full pirate costume. I stepped out of the car to kiss Bill. Derrick greeted me like a long lost friend. “Mark! So good to see you again.”

  “You, too,” I said somewhat skeptically.

  “Can we hop into your car for a minute before someone recognizes me out here?”

  “Sure,” I said, and we all got inside, Derrick in the backseat.

  “Thanks, guys,” he said. “I just wanted to apologize for the other night. I hope I didn’t come on too strong. And I also hope you know that it was all just teasing play. Moira told me about your relationship. I respect that and would never, ever do anything to cause that relationship any trouble. That’s not my style. Please don’t hold the other night against me.”

  He paused for a minute before continuing. “I don’t have very many friends in this town. Well, no, that’s not quite right. I have no friends in this town. I have an endless supply of people who want to be my friends. But I don’t have anybody who can be my friend and say the things that you did the other night, Mark. That was more refreshing than I can ever begin to tell you. You weren’t treating me like a movie star, but just like some guy who was being rude. I don’t know you guys in the slightest beyond that, and beyond our sword fight this afternoon.”

  “What?” I yelled. “What sword fight?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way home,” Bill said.

  “All I’m asking is, please be my friend. I don’t have any, and I’m desperate for gay male friends where I can simply be myself, where I can be honest, and where I don’t have to worry about someone sucking up to me or saying only what I want to hear.”

  “We’ll think about it,” I said, knowing that Bill and I would talk on the drive home.

  “Great! Thanks. And I’ll see you later this evening.”

  “Wait! What?”

  “We’ll talk about that on the way home too.”

  Derrick laughed and said good-bye. Bill drove us home, answering all of my questions about sword fights and home visits from everyone’s favorite heartthrob.

  At the end of Bill’s explanation I had just one question: “You couldn’t have found a stray dog along the highway to rescue instead?”

  Chapter 11

  Mr. Hunk Comes to Dinner

  THAT evening, as anticipated, Mr. Hunk came knocking at our door. We were actually sitting around the pool just finishing dinner so he joined us at the table. There was plenty of food—I was my mother’s son, after all—so I offered him dinner, which he graciously accepted. While Bill got a plate and silverware from the house, I poured him a glass of iced tea.

  “Are we okay?” he asked me sheepishly.

  “I suppose,” I said. “Don’t worry—Moira’s told me where she buries the bodies and where she keeps the shovel.”

  As the man hungrily ate, we talked. “So, Derrick, where are you from?”

  “Middle of nowhere upstate New York. You?”

  “No way! You’re kidding us, right? That’s where we’re from too.”

&nb
sp; “Really? I didn’t know. But there’s a whole lot of area in upstate New York, so I’m sure it was nowhere near where I was. Trust me, nobody would want to be where I was. Where are you from?”

  We gave him the name of the town. He stopped eating, set his fork down, sat back in his chair, and glared at us. He said in his most stern voice, “Enough with the fun and games, guys. That’s really not funny. Where are you really from?”

  “We just told you,” I said, confused.

  “No. It’s not possible,” he said, shaking his head vigorously.

  “Sorry, but that’s where we grew up and where we just came from. Why is that such a big deal?”

  “Because I’m from a little place about eight miles outside of that town.”

  “No way! Where?” Bill asked.

  He told us, and we were both absolutely flabbergasted—it was the same little crossroads where Bill had grown up.

  “What road?” Bill asked, his voice so low I could barely hear him.

  “Oak Hill Road,” Derrick answered, his voice equally low and difficult to hear.

  “I grew up about a mile from where Oak Hill crosses Hemlock Hill,” Bill said.

  “You’re joking, right?” I said, not believing that such a thing was even remotely possible. This had to be some kind of joke.

  “No.” Derrick answered with a very sad look.

  He looked down and was very quiet for a long time. “Derrick?” I asked, concerned. “Is something wrong?”

  He refocused and looked up at me. “I was just remembering how miserable I was back then. It was a different time, a different world, a different life. Those were not happy times.”

  “Was every man from that area miserable?” I asked, never guessing that I was opening yet another can of worms.

  Derrick answered. “No. Only the gay ones, I suspect.”

  Bill was as quiet as Derrick had been. I could tell that this entire conversation had stirred up old memories for him as well. He surprised me by asking Derrick a question. “What was it that you went through back there?”

  Derrick thought for a minute before answering. When he spoke, his voice was a little shaky. “I… I can’t believe I’m letting this get to me again after all these years.” He shook his head and then blurted out, “My dad used to beat the crap out of me. He didn’t want some fucking faggot for a son, and he thought that if he beat me enough I’d get over it and ‘fly right’. That’s what he used to call it. He wanted me to ‘fly right’. All I wanted was for him to fly into a pitchfork, pointy end first. He’d beat me and keep yelling at me to start to ‘fly right’. I can’t stand that phrase.”

  “What happened?” Bill asked quietly. “How did you get out?”

  “It got so awful. I wanted to die. I just wanted it all to stop. I couldn’t take it anymore. I kept telling him that I hadn’t decided to be gay—it was just who I was. It was a part of me from birth, just like my eye color and hair color and height. But I was just wasting my breath. He wasn’t listening to anything I said. He just thought he needed to beat me more and harder to beat the ‘perversion’ out of me.”

  He was quiet for a moment, and then he said something that struck both Bill and me speechless. “And then an angel from heaven appeared and saved me. I don’t even know her name. She was someone from town. I couldn’t believe it. I just wanted to die so that it would all end. And then she appeared one day. I didn’t get much time to talk with her—I was in such shock. But I remember her telling me that she’d been abused too, and when she heard talk about me, she couldn’t just stand by and let it happen. I’ve wanted to thank her for so many years for giving me life, but I don’t even know her name. The day she appeared, it all happened so fast. She was there, she got me out, and she passed me on to others who got me to a safe house in another part of the state.”

  There were honest-to-God tears in his eyes at that point. Bill stood up from the table and went behind him, wrapping his arms around Derrick’s shoulders. And Derrick did cry then, real tears, cathartic tears, tears that he had obviously held inside for a very long time.

  I stepped into the house for a moment to grab my laptop. When I came back out, Moira was approaching, clearly very confused and concerned about what was happening in her backyard. She didn’t say anything at first. I held up one finger, asking her for a minute before she joined the conversation. I opened up my laptop and found a picture that I showed to Derrick.

  “That’s her!” he shouted, pointing at the screen. “That’s her! That’s her! That’s the woman! Why do you have her picture? What’s going on?” Looking at Moira, he asked, “Did you put them up to this?” He sounded excited and angry and confused all at the same time.

  “How could I, Elmer? You never told me anything about your life before LA.”

  I showed the picture to Moira, motioned for her to sit down at the table with us. I nodded to Bill, who knelt down beside Derrick and said, “Derrick! Look at me! Listen to me. No one put anyone up to anything. That woman—she’s Mark’s mom. And she saved me too.”

  Derrick cried some more, looked up to the sky, looked back, shook his head, cried some more, and let go of some more of the pent-up grief that had consumed him for so many years. Bill shed tears at the more recent wounds for him. I quickly and quietly caught Moira up to date on what we had just learned. She was silent, stunned that we were all woven together in such a way. The chances of such a thing happening were astronomically small—infinitesimally small.

  I grabbed my cell phone and dialed my mom and dad’s home number. My mom answered on the second ring. “Mom!” I said, excited to hear her voice but also because I was able to make someone so happy. “I have someone here who wants to talk to you. Here he is.”

  Derrick took the phone I was holding out to him but looked… what? Scared, I guess. The great and mighty Mr. Derrick St. James was at a loss for words for once in his life. “Hello?” he said, very tentatively. “Hi, you don’t know me, but I’ve wanted to find you for more than ten years now… to thank you for saving my life!” he cried, unable to continue the conversation. I took the phone back and tried to explain to my mom that we were with someone she had rescued years earlier and how very grateful he was for what she had done for him, but that he had never even known her name.

  My mom and Moira had spoken once before on the telephone before we moved out here from New York. But that was quite some time ago. Moira asked for the phone and stepped away from the table for a moment. All I could hear was Moira asking, “Is this Mark’s mom? You have got two fabulous boys, let me tell you. They are giving me a whole new outlook on life, and I understand that I have you to blame for this!” she joked. They talked for a while, Moira asked her several questions about her rescue work, the safe houses she had, and how she paid for such things. She grabbed a pad and pen and asked my mother for her name and mailing address, telling her that she wanted to send a check to help out with her work. My mother also gave her the name of the foundation that she operated as a clearinghouse for fundraising for her rescue work. “From everything I’m hearing, you are doing phenomenal work. Keep it up, sister!”

  She handed the phone back to me. “I love you!” I said. Bill reached for the phone and simply said, “I love you too. We’ll talk more soon. Bye.”

  Eventually Derrick cried himself out, collected himself a bit, and apologized profusely for his loss of control. We assured him that he had nothing for which to apologize. To lighten the mood of the gathering a little bit, I went into the house and got some ice cream, which always seemed to lift my spirits when I was down. Sugar and fat have their uses. Between the four of us, we polished off the entire container, even though everyone protested that they only wanted a bite.

  Eventually everyone had to call it a night. Derrick promised to return the next evening and hold it together to have a conversation with my mom. Derrick and Moira walked back to the big house together, quietly talking. She wrote something down and handed it to him.

  The next day
I received a phone call from my mom, who was screaming something. It took me a minute to figure out that she was screaming, “Oh my God!” over and over and over again.

  “Mom! Calm down! What’s wrong?”

  She kept repeating the same words, so I let her, knowing that she would wind down before long.

  When I sensed that the time was right, I said, “Mom! Take a breath and tell me what’s happening.”

  She did as instructed and said, “You will never believe what I just learned about! Never! Never in a million years!”

  “Okay. So tell me.”

  “I just got a call from the bank I use for my rescue foundation work. And they told me that this morning they received a wire transfer for one million dollars! I cannot believe it! I told them it must be a mistake, but they assured me that it was no mistake. The only information they had was that it was from ‘Derrick’ and that I should call my son for the details.”

  I chuckled. Damn, he was good. I filled her in on everything that had happened the previous day. I gave her Derrick’s original name, and she instantly recognized it. “Oh, I remember him! That was one of my first rescues. I was so scared on that run that I nearly wet my pants. But I had to get that boy out of that situation because it wasn’t going to change—it was only going to get worse, until his father finally beat him to death. I went to school with his father so I knew how stubborn the man was. You were too young then to tell about any of my work. I can’t believe you met him. What’s he doing now? Apparently something that makes some money.”

  I explained Derrick’s new Hollywood name, and she also recognized that. “You’re kidding me, right? He’s that famous actor! The good looking one! That’s Elmer? Dear God! He looks so different now.”

  “He cut, dyed, and styled his hair; got rid of the glasses and replaced them with contacts; and spent a lot of time in the gym building up his body while also building up his self-confidence and self-assurance. He got one lucky break, and the world saw his talent and he’s risen straight to the top.”

  “Hang on a minute, baby, I’ve got another call coming in.”