Chapter 13: Michael
I’d met Michael when I was seven, his father owned a retail furniture store and his mother sold real estate. Financially, they were very well off. When he was a high school senior, he was hired by our gym instructor to pilot his speed boat. The man was a professional skier and had a severe lisp. Mike had an extremely difficult time understanding him. One of his jobs was to wet down the wooden ski ramp. He forgot. The man is skiing right along and went he hit the ramp, he slammed face down. If he hadn’t been in great shape, he’d been seriously injured. The next day, Mike’s backing the boat into the river, the man’s yelling, “Stop, too far.”” What?”” Stop, you’re backing too fast.”” What?” The water ended up in the back seat of his station wagon. Both car and boat had to be towed out of the river. Michael lost his job.
The summer after my accident, I was off work and receiving compensation. Michael, had moved to the city. He had just graduated from Kent State with a master's degree in journalism, he’d had paid others to take his tests. He’s very attractive with incredible communication skills. He ended up with an extremely high-paying job for a firm that made plastics for numerous corporations. Amana, Whirlpool, Mercedes-Benz, to name a few. He flew to China a lot. I asked him, years after our summer together, exactly what he did. His job was to wine and dine corporate executives, and show them a good time in whatever city he found himself. If they had a technical question, he would refer them to his company's engineering department. He owned an apartment on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. He paid two hundred thousand dollars for two parking spaces. He has also died. Michael’s sister told me he’d committed suicide and no one understood the reason. I feel it was because he had low self-esteem and was always judging himself for not being good enough. If so, he was horribly mistaken. He was one of the kindest, giving, and most caring men I’d ever known. He’d always been his own worst enemy. It’s all cool, Michael’s in Heaven because hell doesn’t exist.
That summer, he showed me a whole new world. He had picked me up from the hospital drunk and driving my car. He took me back to his designer apartment, where he was living with Eli. He proceeded to pour a strong gin and tonic. I had just spent three months in the hospital, my left leg was the size of a man’s arm, and I was on crutches. The alcohol hit hard and fast. He said he had something to tell me. He was very nervous and shaking when he handed over the 2nd drink. “Eli and I are more than friends.” “What are you?” “We're lovers.” I was quiet for a minute and said, “Michael, I've known you since kindergarten, it doesn't matter to me your sexual preference, don't try to seduce me, and we'll get along fine.”
I learned much about the gay lifestyle. Gay men, in my opinion, would be excellent husbands and fathers. Very clean and neat, normally enjoying good jobs, articulate, caring, and certainly knew how to party. We would talk about why he was gay. I’m aware he was not speaking for all gay men, this was his understanding. When young, he played with his sister and her friends. This was somewhat unusual, as normally we play with members of the same sex. As he reached puberty, he ran more with females, who he communicated well with. They all found him very attractive. I'm drinking beer with other male friends. When he was a virgin sophomore at Kent State, he went to a party on a Quaalude, a strong opiate. The first opportunity to have sex with anyone was female, and he did not become aroused. He became convinced he was not sexually interested in females, as they had always been just friends. I never mentioned that his impotency was probably due to the Quaalude. He met Eli at Kent State. He’d just been released from a maximum security prison in Lucasville, Ohio. He’d been convicted of robbing pharmaceutical companies. In prison, he’d been a dog, which keeps the peace between blacks and whites. He was powerfully built, with long brushed back blonde hair. He drove around in a jeep with a white German Shepherd. The first time Michael had ever tripped, he ended up alone with Eli. They had sex.
That summer with Michael and Eli was an experience. One day, Michael and I drove my car up to Youngstown, Ohio. I thought we were going to Kent State, Michael said we were picking up some stuff for Eli. We pulled up to a home in the ghetto. There were four fully tattooed men, three prostitutes, dish’s of numerous pills on the coffee table and several shotguns in the corner. We went around back to a garage, marijuana was packed to the ceiling. Michael bought a pound, one thousand tea tabs which is pure THC and black beauties, strong prescription speed. We left for a party at Kent State, where Michael talked me into taking a tea tab, a strong hallucinogen. This was the first time I’d tripped, the experience was fascinating. I was not to put any weight on my leg. I ended up plopping around with no crutches, thinking I'm in Heaven. This was the summer of disco, beautiful ladies, THC, and black beauties. My very favorite was Grateful Dead LSD.
On a sweltering hot Thursday afternoon, Michael, Eli, myself, Debbie and Barb went to a biker bar called the Sugar Shack. We ordered some beer. 20 minutes later, a huge biker came over and said to Barb, “Why don't you get rid of the sissy and come with a man?” He sauntered back to the bar. Eli quietly said, “Forget him.” Several minutes later, he came back and put his fist on the table, was talking to Barb but looking Eli right in the eye. “Baby, I asked you to dump gay boy and come with me.” I saw Eli’s eyes somehow change, almost like changing color. He walked over to the biker who was taking a drink of beer. Eli punched right through the mug. The biker went down, Eli dragged him outside and slammed his head into a car door. This all took about 3 minutes. The first punch shattered the man's jaw and when slamming his head into the car door, the shoulder blade cracked. The police came and because he was a convicted felon, we thought he'd be doing time. However, witnesses said he had been provoked and was out the next day. You cannot judge a book by its cover, some people are not to be trifled with.
Michael and Eli's relationship ended on New Year's Eve. They wanted to sell the remaining tea tabs and couldn't find anyone in the city with the dollars. I called Bill, who had lifted the weights off. A friend of his had the money, so Eli drove to Cambridge, Ohio on New Year's Eve to meet them. It turns out Bill's friend had borrowed the money from a federal narcotics' agent, all the bills were marked. There was a helicopter, plus three police cruisers. Eli ran over a cop and went back to prison. Bill’s friend lied and turned state’s evidence, he only had to attend drug counselling classes.
Bill and Karen had been married several years, he’s twenty-four with two young sons. He’d completely kept his mouth shut and was sentenced for two years in Lucasville, one of the toughest high security prisons in the nation. The lifers repeatedly raped young men. Knowing this, the 2nd day, he picked a fight with the biggest man he’d seen. He fought hard, wouldn’t give up, but was soundly beaten. He received over 50 stitches and broke his hand. Nobody ever bothered him, he ended up friends with the man he fought, they worked out together. Michael moved to Chicago, I never saw Eli again. My journey into the world of hallucinogens had begun.
I left Buckeye Steel after another year of working in time study, and accepted employment selling appliances at Lucas Appliance in Columbus.
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