A Star is Born Read online

  “Who owns the house?” one of the cops asked.

  “Derrick St. James.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Speaking to his partner, he said, “Remember all those pictures of him in the paper a month or so ago?”

  “I do.”

  Before this conversation could go any further, I stopped it dead in its tracks. “All of those photos were fakes. I should know—I read the forensics report. And the innocent victim of that whole mess is in the house right now and is absolutely a basket case because of this nut job. Now, I can’t afford to hire a private security service. What are my alternatives?”

  His radio crackled to life. He gave his partner a shout, dashed back to his car, and they took off before he could answer my question.

  Chapter 4

  Getting Bill to Unwind

  RETURNING to the house, I found Bill exactly where he was when I left—standing at a front window looking out with his arms crossed over his chest.

  “All taken care of,” I said, attempting to calm his fears, not to mention my own. “They know the nutcase who’s been stalking us. He’s a local. He hangs out at the airport looking for famous people and then harasses them. He’s some crazy fundie.”

  “Well, we’ve dealt with them before.”

  “Unfortunately. I hadn’t given them much thought since we left New York.”

  “They’re everywhere. The world is full of people like that.”

  Not quite ready to be as bummed out as Bill, I said, “Enough of this. Let’s go sit by the pool and get some sun.” While Bill retrieved his and my books, I made us some iced tea in the kitchen. We walked out to the pool together and got settled down with our books for a few hours of quiet relaxation.

  It took quite a while, but Bill finally started to unwind a little bit. I can’t say that he completely unwound, because he didn’t. Every few minutes I would look over at him and see him staring into the distance, and I knew he was thinking about our earlier visitor.

  “You’re not going to change it by obsessing about it,” I said as casually as possible when I caught him once.

  “I’m not obsessing.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “I know you.”

  “You can’t know what’s going on inside my brain.”

  “Too late. I can and I do,” I said without looking up from my book.

  “You know, sometimes you really piss me off,” he said without much enthusiasm.

  Looking over at him, I smiled and said, “But ya love me anyway, don’t ya?”

  “I hate you,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to look pissed. He gave up trying when he saw that it wasn’t working.

  “What are we going to do about dinner?” Bill asked.

  “You hungry?”

  “I asked my question first.”

  “And I was just trying to gather more information, like do we need to deal with it right this minute or five minutes from now or an hour from now.”

  “Quit being so damned logical,” Bill complained jokingly. “And yes, I’m hungry. Remember the three hours of time change. I always underestimate how much impact it has on me the first few days here.”

  We decided upon a place that was within walking distance and went inside to change for dinner. It was Hawaii, so one didn’t really have to dress up for dinner. In our case it meant putting on some shoes, a clean shirt, and shorts that were dry.

  Ten minutes later we were headed out the front door for the short ten-minute walk to one of Derrick’s favorite places. We had never eaten there, but Derrick had certainly raved about the place so we thought it was worth a shot. Since it was still early, the place was basically deserted—that is, except for those others like us whose body clocks were totally screwed up.

  We had been seated at a table upstairs on an open balcony, which gave us a lovely view of the ocean. And since we were eating early, there was still daylight—plenty of daylight.

  Between the view, the warm weather, the cloud-free sky, and the eventual setting sun, we both relaxed and had a wonderful meal. The fish was so fresh I’m surprised we hadn’t seen someone walking in with it from the ocean just before it appeared at our table. Spectacular fish done simply. Topped off with a dessert that was absolutely incredible.

  On our walk back to the house, we were both much more relaxed than we had been earlier in the day. We slept peacefully that night. Before climbing into bed, I had made double sure that all of the windows were closed and locked and that the doors were all locked. Satisfied, I set the alarm and then joined Bill in bed. While I had been assuring myself that the house was as safe as possible, Bill had fallen asleep. I stood by the bed and stared at him for a moment. There was something about watching a sleeping man that was so incredibly erotic, especially this man, the man that I loved so very much.

  Chapter 5

  A Visit to Little Beach

  THE next morning we were both up early, again because of the time difference between the West Coast and Hawaii. We had an entire day open and available to us, so we talked about how to spend our time together in this land of magical opportunities. We did not want to be prisoners of the house, no matter how nice a house it might be, so we opted to go for a hike. The previous evening we had read about some nice hikes that could be had up at the top of the Haleakala Crater, but I was a little intimidated by the altitude—it was nearly two miles above sea level. I was in good shape physically, but I wasn’t sure about a strenuous hike so far up where the air was thinner.

  So we opted for something more coastal. Each time we had been to Maui, I had wanted to visit a place called “Little Beach,” a beach that was the most famous nude beach on the island of Maui. We easily found our way to the big brother of Little Beach, called—you ready for it?—Big Beach. There was ample parking. We started hiking along the sand (it is not easy to walk in loose sand) until we came to a huge rocky outcrop that seemed to mark the end of the beach.

  But it was not the end. No. The rocks were not the end, but were the doorway into an entirely different world. We spotted signs of others having gone before us. There was clear evidence of many dozens, hundreds, thousands, perhaps more, of feet having climbed along those rocks over the preceding years. So we followed those who had come before us and climbed up and over the rocks. And am I ever glad that we did! The sight that lay before us once we got to the top was absolutely amazing. The beach was fabulous. Of course, the dozens of naked men who adorned the beach didn’t hurt any either. It wasn’t a busy day, and it was also early in the day, so the beach was not at all busy yet. I assumed that most of the guys out on the beach were like us—mainlanders who had woken way too early and wanted something to do.

  We climbed down from our perch and walked hand in hand along the beach, admiring both the natural and man-made beauty. The guys that hung out on Little Beach were some of the least inhibited men I think I had ever seen. To our right was a couple that were both naked, one lying atop the other, making out.

  Farther down the beach by a few dozen feet was a gorgeous young guy who was… how to describe what he was doing? The closest words I can find are that he was doing a combination of body surfing and humping the wet sand. It looked both erotic and enticing, as well as potentially painful. The man had an absolutely gorgeous butt, which captured my full attention to the point that I stopped walking and simply stood and watched his butt flex as he became one with the wet sand. I returned to reality when Bill gently pulled me along with a smile on his face.

  “He really caught your interest, I see,” Bill observed.

  “Well, yeah. Did you see his butt?”

  “Kind of hard not to.”

  “Something like that almost makes me believe in God.”

  “Almost?”

  “Only yours can send me over the edge and full belief in a deity.”

  “You sweet talker, you!”

  Much to my shock, surprise, horror, excitement—take your pi
ck—Bill stopped and unbuttoned his shorts and let them drop to his feet. He pulled off his shirt, picked up his clothes, and walked a few feet ahead of me, turning his head to look back over his left shoulder before he said, “Is this the view you wanted?”

  “Bill!” I yelled in a whispering voice. “Put your clothes back on! Someone will see you!”

  “So? I’m on a nudist beach. Being nude kind of goes with the territory on a nudist beach. Especially one like this that looks like it is 95 percent male.”

  “Bill!”

  “I’m out, loud, and proud. If someone wants to see my dick, they can just take a look.”

  He turned and started to slowly walk away from me. I couldn’t believe my boyfriend. After all the time I had known him he still amazed and surprised me on a regular basis.

  Catching up with the man with the gorgeous butt, I tried once again, even though I knew it was a waste of breath.

  “Bill! Put your clothes back on! At least your shorts. Please!”

  “Nope. I think I want to get wet. You want to get wet?”

  “I don’t have a swimsuit…,” I started to say, only to realize that it was a waste of perfectly good words.

  I dropped my head, closed my eyes, and quietly contemplated how to handle this circumstance. Taking a deep breath, I opened my eyes and said simply, “Fine.” Before I had time to reconsider my actions, I dropped my shorts, pulled off my shirt, took Bill’s hand, and we walked out into the water.

  It was a morning of mixed emotions. I felt both liberated—more liberated than I could ever recall feeling—and at the same time constrained by custom. Bill saw the full array of emotions play across my face. If there was anyone alive who could read me, it was my boyfriend. He took it as his personal mission in life at that moment to distract me from my worry of what others were seeing or doing or thinking.

  Bill stopped, turned to me, and with our feet in the warm water of the Pacific Ocean, brought his face to mine and kissed me. Now, even though I’ve known Bill for a long while, the sight of him naked and being all sensual with me never failed to set my hydraulics in motion. In other words, he was getting me excited. Now, if I had been embarrassed before, simply being naked, being naked and aroused in public made me really embarrassed.

  I noticed that I wasn’t the only one aroused. I felt my counterpart rising to the occasion as well. When Bill dropped to his knees, I thought he was going to do something I really didn’t want him to do—at least not in public—but he dropped so that he was lying face down in the wet sand. The gentle waves washed water up, first over his feet, then his knees, this his thighs, then that gorgeous ass of his that really should carry a warning notice—Warning: Arousal Ahead. Then the water lapped a little higher, touching his belly.

  As the guy down the beach had done, Bill started to sort of hump the sand in time to the water washing ashore.

  “Oh, Mark! You’ve got to try this.”

  Desperately wanting to hide my erection from the eyes of anyone who was looking our way, I dropped down beside Bill and tried the same experience. And I have to say, it wasn’t a half-bad experience.

  Slowly—yes, slowly—I started to let my inhibitions down and started to relax and enjoy the feel of the water and the sun on my naked body. I felt the sand as it was moved by the water washing ashore from the deeper ocean. And it felt good. There was no way it was going to let my erection go down, but it felt damned good.

  Chuckling, Bill turned toward me. I turned toward him until we lay face to face, and he asked, “Aren’t you glad you tried it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  “Yes, maybe.” I found myself smiling uncontrollably at Bill. Without realizing that he had done it, somehow Bill had gotten me to let down my guard and actually relax. Damn, but the man was good.

  Unfortunately, though, that good feeling didn’t last. It had been a good five-minute run. But then I heard our stalker start another tirade.

  “Sodomites! You will burn in the everlasting fires of hell, cast into the cauldron. Turn your back on the Lord Almighty and you will reap torture in the fires of hell for all of eternity.”

  Needless to say, our stalker had caught the attention of all of our fellow beachgoers that morning. Since we didn’t know what to do to respond to our own personal crazy guy, we froze.

  We might not have known what to do, but others apparently did. With no hesitation, a couple of guys jumped up from their spot on the sand and started moving toward the crazy guy. The crazy guy made it easy for them, because he had climbed over the rocks separating Big Beach from Little Beach and was striding across the sand straight toward us, preaching and scolding up a storm.

  Seeing what was happening, a couple of the other sunbathers jumped up and started to join the first two—power in numbers. Our stalker had been totally fixated on us, and completely missed the fact that he was quickly being surrounded by a half dozen naked and very pissed off men.

  By the time we were on our feet, the little man was fully cognizant of what was happening. He was quiet now, turning in a circle, checking out the faces and stances of the six men that surrounded him. I wanted to slip our shorts back on before joining the party, but Bill simply grabbed my hand and pulled me along to join the circle.

  The little man, of course, spotted us and said, albeit in a more conversational voice, “Sodomite.” His statement lacked the conviction of his earlier tirade.

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” one of the men demanded.

  Another one picked up the baton and said, “Why is it that all you fundies think you have the right to judge people? Huh? Huh, little man?”

  The six men who surrounded the man were rapidly transforming from pissed off to really, really pissed off. One of them shoved him backward into another man, who shoved him into another man. The little man was becoming a substitute beach volleyball, batted from person to person in a new and very different game.

  “You know,” one of them said as he held onto the little man, “in my experience, it’s the ones who complain the loudest about sin and depravity and stuff like that who are the biggest closet cases. Is that your case, little man? Huh? If I hold onto you real tight and then grab your crotch, you know, I bet I’ll find a little tiny hard-on, won’t I?”

  Part of me wanted to let this play out, but another part of me was remembering being bullied, and even though I was torn in two diametrically opposing directions, I stepped into the melee and said, “Okay. Enough. Break it up.”

  “You defending this little twerp?” one of the guys asked.

  I don’t know what would have happened if the six naked men hadn’t suddenly realized who was in their midst. Not me, of course, but Bill. There were times when it was handy to be the boyfriend of someone that people recognized, even if they didn’t remember why.

  Bill held up his hand to put their questions on hold for a minute.

  “Why are you doing this? Why have you been hounding us, stalking us, being such a prick ever since we got here? Huh? We’ve never done anything to you. So why?”

  “It’s my job.”

  “Your job?” Bill asked.

  “Yes. Please don’t hurt me.”

  “What is your job?” Bill asked, trying to pry some more information out of the little man.

  “To harass homosexuals.”

  “And do you get paid for this job?”

  “Yes. Quite well.”

  “And who pays you to do this job?”

  “Rev. Perkins,” he said. “He pays me $50,000 a year.”

  “To harass the homosexuals.”

  “That’s right. And I need the money. I’ve never earned so much before in my life. I don’t mean any offense. I’ve got nothing against you. It’s just business.”

  “Ah,” Bill said, “just business. You think that excuses everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry. You picked the wrong faggots to harass this time. This faggot fights back,” Bill said as he leapt t
oward the little man. I grabbed Bill’s arm and held him back. It wasn’t a hard task because I don’t believe he actually intended to touch the little man. The guy gave a high-pitched shriek and took off running across the beach toward the water and away from the only way off Little Beach. It would be quite entertaining to watch the man in the coming hours as he tried to figure out how to get out the only exit from the beach without being seen.

  We all stood around in a circle, chuckling at the entertainment.

  “I always thought it was just a touch too convenient that that old right-wing windbag could just happen to have people everywhere to harass gay folks.”

  “All you have to do is pay really well and have someone else do your dirty work.”

  “Too bad we’ll never be able to convince anyone of what he said,” I observed, a bit frustrated.

  “Not necessarily,” another man said as he walked over to join our circle. He held up one of the new ultra-compact video cameras and smiled. “I recorded the whole thing—from the waist up, of course.”

  We all shared a victorious laugh.

  Bill then shook hands with all of the guys and talked with them for a few minutes. Someone finally figured out where they’d seen him. A couple of them wanted their picture taken with Bill. Fortunately, I had retrieved his shorts by then, and he did not argue when I suggested he pull them back on before the cameras came out. With shorts back in place, Bill posed with anyone and everyone who wanted a picture taken with him. It never ceased to amaze me how many permutations and combinations people could come up with for photo opportunities.

  Before it seemed possible, a couple of hours had passed. We had laughed heartily while watching the little man try to make his exit, foiling him repeatedly. Bill and I were starting to get a little toasty, as well as thirsty and hungry, so we excused ourselves and grabbed our stuff so that we could head back to the car and return to the house.

  All in all, an enlightening and entertaining morning. That evening, the video of our little encounter on the beach made the local news. The next morning it was on all of the national network morning news programs. That evening it rounded out the circuit by appearing on all of the network evening news programs as well. It was great fun over the days that followed to watch the minister in question try to squirm out of his current predicament.