Dan Dorfsman

  Joseph Henke felt sick. It wasn't the strength of the coffee he gulped that had made his nerves quiver. It wasn't the flu that had not yet stung his immunity. It wasn't even the ethnic foods from just hours ago that rumbled through his belly like a thousand earthquakes. Joseph Henke felt sick because he held in his arm the shivering emotionally crippled Mickey Young. Mickey was in pain, so Joseph was in pain.
  Mickey Young was sixteen when his best friend died. Both unexpectedly and expectedly. She was also sixteen. Sarah didn't need the heroin poisoning her blood to thin. But she had it. And Mickey waited for her death quietly. His face graced the cover of every magazine in every state of the nation. His mane, which hung to his shoulders, was on display in the houses of thousands of girls, ages 12-15. But those pictures never spoke. And now his mane hung on the shoulders of the unsettled Joseph Henke.

But that story is sad. And Joseph and Mickey's relationship was rarely sad. And we will return, after better stories.

  Joseph Henke felt sick. He hadn't eaten oysters in years. Combining this with the unsettled gastric war of the drive from Santa Monica to L.A., needless to say, he felt the ocean in his belly. Joseph had found himself in the bathroom of the Fishing Chips, the worst restaurant in all of Los Angeles, California.
  "Hey man, what'd you eat."
  "Wuz that?" Joseph didn't know if he was talking to himself, or another person. He took a safe bet on the former. He thought he heard giggling, maybe.
  "You look damn horrid. I wanna know what you ate, so I don't eat it."
  Joseph gurgled.
  "C'mere kid." Anger, maybe. "Get up damn you."
   Joseph guessed he should obey the orders rolling like thunder through his skull, which he wasn't at all sure was on his head. His stomach, Joseph was, sure was still eating the oysters. He stumbled and rose, maybe.
  Joseph felt the bones below his wrist supporting his upper body, symmetrically on each side of the sink. A hand held to the back of his head, gentle and firm. Warm and comforting, again, Joseph was not sure of this. His mind flashed with lightning as cold water burnt his face, his eyes, and dribbled down his chest through his shirt. Joseph smiled for no reason and fell to his rear on the floor of the Fishing Chip's bathroom. His head, which was now definitely on his neck, he supported on the base of the sink. He felt warmth next to him. Joseph was certain of this as well. Joseph most definitely felt warmth, and he felt better. The warmth spoke.
  "I'm not sure if that's what you do. I watch lots of TV. I think I even did that once in something, a TV movie or somethin'. Whatever, you need anything? It couldn't be something to eat. Damn." Mickey laughed. "You look real bad."
  "Yeah, um, sorry."
  "Why."
  " 'Cause you just dunked my vomit stained chin into a sink. That must've sucked."
  "Sure, maybe. I dunno. I didn't think about it."
  Joseph smiled. "I don't know you." He said. "But you rule, in all respects of the word. You rule."
  "I'm told."

  That was a better story. This was the meeting of Joseph and Mickey, nothing sad about that. This was however, a downward spiral, raring to happen. But not yet, there's good here.

  "Dear god, I love you with everything in me."Joseph Henke lay next to Mickey York, his stomach strong. His head did not ache like it used to.
  "Yeah man, me too."
  It had been months since their meeting. Seven-and-a-half. But who's counting. No, who isn't counting. Both Mickey and Joseph counted, for different reasons. Seven-and-a-half months since Joseph had vacated the vast majority of his belly in a fish restaurant and Mickey showed him warmth.
  They were happy now. They didn't know about the steep spiral awaiting them. That wasn't for another three quarters of a month.
  Joseph had never in his life cried in joy. Not until the night of the bathroom, which Joseph and Mickey lovingly referred to as "The Meeting in the Water-Loo." Both loved English terminology and felt it hilarious and clever to combine the words "loo" and "water closet" to refer to a French historical event. They were, needless to say, aware of the bind that comes with inside jokes.
  Joseph had cried that night, despite the fact that the Meeting from the Water-Loo was the best thing that had happened to him. He cried because their meeting was not the first time that Joseph had known Mickey. He had a horrible crush on him. From the day that Mickey's sitcom first began. Joseph had wanted desperately to reach through the glass of his television. To be there in that room, that despite the eye tricks, was not whole. No one ever really notices, they only see one side of the room. No one wonders about the rest. It doesn't matter to them. It should, there are two sides to everything.
  Joseph lay on his belly that night. He read the prose that he had written for the boy behind the glass. He cried on them, the letters bled. In one-third of a month, so would Joseph, more literally.
  Joseph didn't sleep that night, but Mickey did. He had done this before. With boys and girls, since he was eleven. He had never cried at all in his life. He just hadn't.
  Mickey was interviewed constantly. Joseph would listen to him chat with some magazine representative or another on the phone. He came to the photo shoots and watched the photo guys tell Mickey to look "alternative". He never understood what they meant by that, but Mickey did. He furled his brow, raised one, and mussed his mane.
  "Perfect," the photo guy would say.
  "I'm exhausted," Mickey would mutter. "I hate this."
  "Good," the photo guy would say. "Work with it."
  Joseph knew that Mickey was a former tramp. They joked about it constantly. They also joked about Mickey's job. After photo shoots, Joseph would call him an "alterna-queen".
  "Go sit in a waterloo," Mickey would sneer.
  Joseph never cared that Mickey would lie about them. He knew Mickey's standard answer to the interviewers.
  "I don't have time for a girl friend." Mickey would say. "I'm an actor." Sometimes, Joseph wondered if he wanted one, but it was fleeting. They were together.

  So there.

  This particular night, they lay together. Joseph's nose nestled against the side of Mickey's mane, smelling the sickly mix of pot and shampoo. Mickey did not smell anything, he had lost his sense of smell long ago on the set of "Mysterious Faces", when he had the unfortunate task of playing an irate teen with glue sniffing fixations. The director forgot to replace the real glue with that thick yellow goop they always used. Mickey had trusted him, but there are two sides to everything.
  As they lay, Joseph recalled the time that him and Mickey were caught kissing somewhere in Long Beach, California by Joseph's multi-pierced best friend Taylor. Taylor, clad in black with black eye liner, four holes in one ear, five in another, and the menacing combination of ear, nose, and eyebrow ring found the two swallowing each other head on behind the Hypno-Therapy center of Long Beach. Both Mickey and Joseph had a crush on Tay so rancid, that even Mickey could smell it in the air. The smell of unrequited love is nauseating.
  Taylor laughed out load.
  "Ha," he said. "That's so cool. Joey, kid, you rule."
  "I'm told," said Mickey. "Oh wait. You said Joe. Sorry."
  Taylor laughed again. Joseph didn't laugh.

  And so it begins.

  Joseph noticed things about Mickey. He noticed the way that Mickey would sneer, at everything. He wouldn't feel bad when people recognized Mickey on the street and Mickey yelled at them, cruelly. Joseph understood, Mickey was famous. A week after Joseph lay nestled in Mickey's hair, smelling marijuana and Pantene, they fought, over the phone.
  "It's like you hate everyone. I feel like you hate me," said Joseph.
  "I don't hate you. How could I hate you? You rule. Yer just, um, I don't know."
  "What," Joseph nearly squealed.
  "I don't know."
  "Damn," Joseph said to himself.
  "Hmmm" Mickey sighed.
  The air was thick and suffocating. Mickey breathed freely however, and Joseph fell and cried, harder than ever.
  The air grew thicker and thicker in a cloud around Joseph's head. More bitterness and silence followed. Their fights must have been about something. Neither ever knew what. Joseph would tell Mickey that he felt suffocated by a thick cloud of nothing. Mickey would tell him to shut up and sit down somewhere and be quiet.
  "Like a waterloo?" Joseph would giggle.
  "Like what? It's old, man. It's old."
One third of a month after Joseph and Mickey lay nestled comfortably. Joseph cut his palm with a razor, while cutting white lines for his boyfriend, and he bled.
  Streams of mealy red liquid carried the powder across the mirror. Mickey got mad. He sneered. Joseph pinched his nose inward in apology. A cancer grew right then in his throat, but he didn't cry. Mickey inhaled what was left and fell to the back of the sofa and sunk all the way into it. Almost through it to the floor, it seemed. Joseph's head hurt, as well as his hand. He left to get a Band-Aid and some iodine. He attempted to stop the bleeding with the plastic strip, but it didn't seem to stop. He felt the ooze beating against gauze, and his pulse pounded. Joseph fell to the floor like he had done nearly a quarter of a year earlier in the Fishing Chips. He heard Mickey in the den of his huge house. The house was enormous, and Mickey was a long ways away from the bathroom. Mickey was laughing, screaming and scaring the hell out of neighbors and, more so, Joseph, who whimpered silently. He hated this. If he were an actor the photo guy would've told Joseph to work with those feelings. Joseph couldn't, never.
  While this occurred, Mickey's best friend Sarah sat at home, chopping the hair off her sister's Barbie dolls. She was high as nothing ever before, and was foaming. She threw down the knife she was using to de-girlify the virgin plastic doll. Her blood was thinning as Joseph's pumped through his veins and out through the slit in the skin of his palm. Their pulses beat rapid and hard. So did Mickey's, alone and screaming in the den of his house. As, Mickey's pulse beat faster and faster; Joseph's began to calm, Sarah's pulse, stopped beating altogether.

  There was an Inxs tape playing in the house somewhere. A song called "Baby Don't Cry". Years after that song was recordered, the leader singer died, filled to the brim with various drugs. His super model girlfriend cried, hard.

  "Baby, don't cry", said Joseph, holding the now crippled Mickey Young in his arms. He had been up with Mickey for hours, it was now two in the morning. Through the night, Joseph held Mickey as he threw-up. Joseph held him as he helped him to his bed and he held him now. He thought about how human Mickey looked and how no one knew it. If people knew about them, they would wonder why Mickey was in the worst restaurant in all of Los Angeles. They would heave inward at the thought of Mickey the beautiful, lying tenderly with a boy clad in black, with dyed hair, who was now comforting him. They never understood, there is life in stardom.

  Things changed now. As Joseph Henke held Mickey Young, both sick both in pain and neither longing to comfort the same person. While Joseph comforted the crippled Mickey Young, Mickey Young comforted himself, and Joseph knew it. And soon after, the spiral ended, at the bottom.

  The night after the funeral of Sarah Granger, Joseph called Mickey. He told him it was over, no more cutting lines, no more screaming Mickey, no more abuse. He had seen all the sides of Mickey Young and wanted to return to the safety of the glass. Joseph knew that his boyfriend had cried for the first time two nights ago. He knew that Mickey wouldn't cry this time. He just wouldn't.

  The night after the funeral of Sarah Granger, Mickey talked to Joseph on the phone. Joseph told him it was over. Mickey left and went to work, dressed in his irate teen costume, grew sick and fell to the floor. It wasn't the chemicals in his blood. It was the sickness of human gone wrong. He felt as if he had fallen down a spiral staircase, or been thrown. At the bottom now, a cancer grew right then in his throat. His chest heaved. He gagged, choked sniffled and for the second time in his life, Mickey Young cried, hard.