Commitment Issues by Wynn Wagner Page A

fragile. He needed the space to concentrate on getting sober and staying sober. Wyatt would need protection from the hawks of AA. Even Adonis was breakable.
    When we all stood up to hold hands and close the meeting, Wyatt ducked out the door. By the time I could get outside, he was gone. There was no trace of him. I ran to the street, but I already knew it was hopeless.
    It was hopeless, but maybe not forever, because he had shown that he wanted to be sober by showing up for a second meeting. So many guys just come to one meeting, and you never saw them again until their face was put into an obituary in the local gay newspaper.
    I could live with this. I could wait another day. Maybe Chico... no, that was stupid, because I didn't want to have sex with Chico. Even if I wanted it, my ass hadn't recovered from the last time.
    * * * *
    "ORGY” came a one-word message on my phone. I didn't even have to look to see who had sent it. It was Saturday night, I was at an AA meeting, and nobody had to work the next day except preachers, nurses, and radio announcers. I didn't have to work weekends, but nobody turned radio transmitters off for things like weekends and holidays.
    I couldn't even lie to Chico about my schedule. Hello: he was my agent and would know I didn't work on Sunday. Or if I did work on Sunday, he'd probably send his lawyers around. Lawyers or muscle or something.
    "TFTI 2M2H” was my message back to him. Would he even know that shorthand? I had been texting with a friend for a few years, and I never knew if we had developed too much of a private set of abbreviations or if any of them were understood by others.
    "LOLO,” he answered. Yeah! He knew that “TFTI” meant “thanks for the invitation” and “2M2H” was my way of saying he was “too much to handle” so soon after he ripped me a new one. “LOLO” is some kind of laugh mutation, but I'm not exactly sure what it really means.
    My tits were hard and perky after texting Chico. I was thinking about Wyatt and texting Chico, and my tits were hard. It made me laugh at myself.
    I was ready for Wyatt's last-minute entrance. I sat strategically in a chair directly behind the one he liked. It was where he always sat. Well, it was where he sat twice before. I had the evening carefully planned and choreographed.
    Just as the meeting started, a guy whom I'd known for a year or two came in to sit in Wyatt's chair. No! Fuck! Damn it. All my careful planning and arranging had been ruined by some animal cracker that I suddenly really didn't like. Didn't the cretin know that he had plopped down in Wyatt's chair?
    Wyatt came in and looked right at me, and oh my God . I froze. If he'd said anything, I don't think I could have responded. He walked to a chair behind me, so I got the entire hour to “process” the memory of his image.
    Oh my God. I mean, oh my God. Shit . Wyatt's eyes were green and had a slight almond shape. His skin was pale white, so whatever was causing his eye shape was somewhere in his distant background. If I had to guess, I'd say his ancestors came from Russia. That's in the ballpark of Mongolia, which could account for the epicanthic fold of his eyelid. The fold was really slight, but it was there, and it made him seem completely exotic.
    All of that was from a glance that lasted two or three seconds. He glanced at me without even acknowledging that I was a life form. Wyatt was concentrating on staying sober. I know because I've been there. His image got etched into my memory in the couple of seconds I could see him. It was like somebody had a big spotlight pointed at his blond hair. He glowed, and the room felt more alive. I wanted to write poetry and send it to his parents out of my gratitude for their work. Did I mention to you that I thought he was the most stunning man I had ever seen? I mean, oh my God.
    Nobody called on him at the meeting, and he didn't volunteer to say anything.
    "Anybody else?” the meeting's leader said. I was looking