Date: Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:15:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joseph Smith <gaymormonwriter@yahoo.com>
Subject: Love and Death in Venice  adult/youth

(Author's notes: This is story is copyrighted 2006.)


Chapter 4


It's not like it was the first time I thought of Chase after the years
since I had last seen him. I have thought of him everyday. I worried about
him; scared he might have done something to himself, hoping he was happy
and safe. Many times I thought of calling his parents, but I still wasn't
convinced in my mind that they didn't know about me.

Here I lay in an ICU room, surrounded by machines and monitors and the
noisy TV. I looked around at the empty room, depressed, then closed my eyes
and tried to go back to sleep.

I thought of my son who had lost his mother only eleven years earlier and
how he was dealing with this. He had been in Guam for a while, working for
a government contractor. I assumed he had already flown home when he
learned I was in the hospital.

I wasn't in any pain. I assumed I was on meds strong enough to numb me. I
was told later it was morphine.

I thought of Chase. I thought that he would never know if anything happened
to me. I knew he cared about me, even loved me in his own way. I felt we
had some kind of bond, a connection that would bind us together. I knew I
had to find him.

At the same time, I knew I wasn't going anywhere. Not for a long time. I
spent seven weeks in ICU while they worked to get rid of all of the
infections in my body. Little pockets lingered for a couple of weeks. As
soon as they were gone, I was released to rehab to learn to walk again. I
had no body strength, and the slow process to regain it began. After four
weeks in rehab, I was stir crazy and ready to be released. I was still
light footed; uncertain movements kept me slow and unsure.

I moved in with my parents to recover. My brother and son had moved my
belongings into a U-Haul storage unit.  I greatly missed my computer and
the Internet, so one of the first things they did was set up the computer
in the bedroom. I logged on for the first time in nearly three months. One
of my Yahoo accounts had been deleted. The other had nearly a thousand
emails in it.

The first month, I slept a lot. I was tired all the time. I tried walking,
but couldn't go more then three houses before being too exhausted to
continue. I ate little, but I slowly developed my appetite again. I went to
doctors' appointments. My Dad drove me until I was cleared to drive. I
fought continually with the colostomy, trying to find a way to be
comfortable with all the necessary medical supplies for it. That took a
year to accomplish.

During the summer, my therapist convinced me to file for Social Security
Disability Insurance, believing I would never work again. He recommended an
attorney and we started the long process of encountering and bucking
against government resistance. I was turned down twice. The lawyer failed
to meet the deadline for the 'hearing request' and so I believed the issue
was dead.

In January of 2004, my mother fell and broke her hip. She spent a month
away from home, and my father and I rarely spoke. He even complained to her
that I wouldn't talk to him. I simply told her that I had nothing, really,
to say.

While she was gone, I came to some conclusions. They couldn't afford for me
to stay.

It was time to look for a job.

During the past year, I had met only a few guys for sex. It wasn't anything
to brag about. My concern was the bag hanging off my belly. For some guys,
that was too much to deal with.  Some didn't care. Since accepting my
homosexuality, I still hadn't had a real relationship with a guy. I have
never counted Stephan as a boyfriend; he was just a roommate I slept with.

I thought about Chase even more during this time. I would look him up on
the Internet to see if I could find anything. There were pay sites but I
couldn't afford that.

I found the Social Security Death Index site and found my wife there. I
looked up Chase. I had his full name and birthday; enough information to
locate him if he was there.  Thankfully, he wasn't.  I looked up a guy on
whom I had my first crush and he was there.

During the months of recovery, I found in the Nifty stories a way of
passing time, so much so that I entertained writing one myself.

Throughout my life, I had always wanted to write, but never could get past
ten pages or so of anything. I feared I had terminal writers block.

So, one day in February 2004, I began a single chapter of a story that
would tell about Chase and me. It had to be fictionalized, though, with
names and places changed to protect the real people I wrote
about. Eventually, the story of Chase and me was to be nothing more than a
subplot.

It was called "Spiritual Awareness" and the message I wanted to write about
was that you could have a spiritual relationship with God and still be gay.

When I began to write it, I had one purpose in mind: to find Chase. I knew
in my heart he was gay and that maybe, just maybe, he read stories on Nifty
too.

When I began the story, I had no idea where it would go or if I would ever
really finish it.

I found a job at a two-screen theater here in Venice.

It was a start.

A lady from California owned the theater; she had married a wealthy man and
allowed her brother to run the company.  Together they had purchased this
theater several years earlier. It had to be closed, gutted and
renovated. Her brother hated being in the theater business and
micro-managed every facet of it.  I hated that aspect of working for
him. He never did read my resume.

But it was a job.

For the next several months, I saw guys for sex, but nothing developed from
those meetings. I soon became depressed about being alone.

I worked on my story sporadically for a while, still unsure of the
direction of the story. I had no plot outline. I wrote to see what would
happen next.

Though I wrote very sparingly of the real story about Chase, I kept
thinking about him. The fictional story had him coming to rescue me like a
Prince would his Princess after I was sick. I knew it was just a fantasy in
my mind, with no chance of realizing any of it at all.

Since my credit report was so bad, I couldn't get an apartment, so I moved
into a converted garage. My medical bills had grown to over $400,000 and
the medical insurance that I had had with Wal-mart had been capped and they
refused to pay my bills.

I soon discovered that the owner of the house where I lived liked drugs. I
never caught him doing them, but he acted like he was on something. He had
his own business and was able to maintain his job and his drug habit. I
wasn't out to him so any ideas of bringing anyone in with me were left
outside.

I accepted the fact that the theatre was going to be just a job. I made a
living as best I could. I was able to change things about the theater for
the better. But I always felt like I was walking on eggshells around my
boss. His choices in movies were usually wrong, but he had a booker that
tried to keep him in line, up to a point.

Stanley liked to smoke and drink. It was nothing for him to have the staff
see him drunk. That was my boss. He had no patience for teenagers and so I
was usually forced to fire those he didn't like, sometimes without
cause. His wife was incredibly sweet and personable. I liked her a lot and
figured she put up with a lot.  She liked the way I popped popcorn. It
wasn't too salty. Stanley insisted on excessive salt in the popping. I did
it my way and he sold more popcorn because of it.

The more I worked on my writing, the more I thought about Chase. Though my
writing took a hiatus in the summer while the theatre was busy, Chase was
always in my thoughts. It had been five years since I last spoke to him. I
have replayed that last day we were together over and over again. Regrets
about that day began to slip into my mind.

I was receiving great emails about the story. I wasn't big on proof reading
my writing. Though I would read through it before posting it, errors
occurred throughout. I was always quick to post a chapter after it was
written. A couple of emails from guys who liked the story offered to edit,
but I declined. I should have accepted one of them. Rarely did I get stuck
on a chapter, but it would happen.

Many emails wrote of their own struggles with being gay and their feelings
towards God. I felt empathy for many and soon realized that my story was
touching other people in a way I hadn't expected. I never included any of
their stories in my writing.

I knew it wasn't the typical 'stroke story' for Nifty. I did put some sex
in the story, but it was always between two people who loved each other;
there was a purpose to their relationships.

But beyond the sex, I was finding myself writing about love. Love of the
characters for each other and the love they had for God. I got excited when
I introduced new characters.  Still, after ten chapters, I still had no
clue where the story was going. I knew it had plot, and it had conflicts,
but I had no ending in sight; I wrote to find my ending.

It was September in Florida and the hurricanes were busy that month. The
theatre was closed some days because of power outages. Fortunately, where I
lived, we didn't get outages. The last week in September, I finally decided
that I had to find Chase, so I paid a website for information about him.

There must have been a dozen addresses listed for him in the last five
years. I decided I would write him a letter and send it to one of the
addresses listed, figuring it would be forwarded if the didn't live there
anymore.

I debated on the letter for a few days; unsure of his present living
situation.  I wondered if he had married, and if he had realized his dream
of being a minister. I finally settled on something short.

I wrote:

Dear Chase, Hope this letter finds you well. I miss our friendship.

I signed it simply, "Dan".

I thought that, if he was married and his wife read the note, I didn't want
to give anything away and cause him any problems. I included my yahoo
messenger I.D., email address, and phone number.

I didn't mail the letter for several days. I kept debating with myself if I
really wanted to do this.  Did I want to know what happened to him? In the
end, I did, and mailed the letter.

I spent the next few days working and wondering. I was nervous and scared;
apprehensive about the truth, wondering if he would even respond.

On the following Tuesday, I rented a movie and was watching it after
work. When it finished I went to check my emails.

There it was; an email from Chase.

He wrote that he had been thinking about me as well; that the last few
years had been hectic and that we had a lot to catch up on.  And that we
would.

I felt hopeful and scared. I had found him after five years and four months
or 1874 days.

The Yahoo messenger signaled a message; it was Chase. I had mixed emotions
as I began to consider just where this might lead. Would it lead anywhere?

I had the strongest desire to find out everything. I had gone this far; I
had to go all the way.

"Hi there," I wrote.

"Hi."

"It's been too long."

"I know. How are you?" he asked.

"I've been better. You?"

"I'm doing good."

I always hated instant messaging; it always seemed too impersonal.

"Where are you now?" he asked.

"I'm in Florida, again. Running a two-screen theatre."

"Only two screens?"

"Yeah. I got sick two years ago and I was out of work for a year and a
half. It was all I could find at the time. So what are you doing?"

"I bought a house about a year ago. I'm running my own landscaping
business. It's called 'Chasing Lawns'."

I laughed and wrote, "Very clever."

"Yeah."

"Did you realize all those dreams you had, Chase?"

"No. I didn't."

"What happened?"

"I took your advice and moved out of the house three weeks after I last saw
you. I moved in with a guy that I thought I was in love with."

"Where did you meet him?"

"In the park."

"How long had you known him?"

"Two weeks."

I reread those last entries. I was stunned, saddened and hurt.  The idea
that he chose to be with a stranger over me hurt, but I let it go.

"I see."

"Dan, I was freaked that day we were together. I thought you offered me a
relationship and I couldn't handle that.  I don't remember a lot about that
day. I do remember our having sex. I do regret that. I don't remember much
about that whole year with the meds I was taking."

I reread those words as well. The truth was biting and sour. I had been
rejected for something I never expected, and he had gone for some one
else...a stranger. The feeling in the pit of stomach was dread.

"You regret the sex?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Looking back, it didn't seem right."

I was wondering about the logic of that statement considering he would go
to the city park for pickups.

Again, I let it go.

"Tell me about the guy you moved in with."

"His name was Ed. We were together for about three years. The relationship
fell apart after a while; he would hit me."

All I could think about was what he gave up in me and ended up with. I
would never have touched him that way.

"I'm sorry you went through that."

"We're still friends. He comes over and does my laundry for me."

"So you have accepted the fact that you are gay?"

"I don't like to put labels on myself. I still have sex with men."

"I have regrets about that day we had together. I regret not sitting you
down and talking to you, making sense of what was going on. I knew
something wasn't right before you left, and I've kicked myself for not
doing something about that."

"What difference would it have made?"


The end of Chapter 4