Sugar-Bear

by 

Anthony Boyd

Then I remembered…

Sugar-Bear; that’s what I lovingly called him. Friends fixed us up because they were sure he was the perfect man for me. They were right. He was only a two hour drive from me. Over the next couple of weeks, we exchanged photos and talked daily, sometimes multiple times, over the phone.

When I finally drove to the small town in Ohio to meet him, I left right after work on a Friday and drove through a hellacious snow storm to get there. When I finally arrived, I went up to the door and rang the doorbell but no one answered. As I looked through the glass door, I saw candles burning and a gray cat and knew this was the right place. I tried the handle and the door opened. I called “Hello?” and closed the door behind me, afraid the cat would get out. No one answered, but the cat came right up to me. I said, “You must be Smokey” as he rubbed against my legs and purred. As the cat and I were getting acquainted, the front door opened behind me and there was the man in the photos. He walked into the room and time stopped. The pictures he gave our mutual friends did this beautiful "Grizzly Adams" type of a man no justice. Those beautiful, sparkling blue eyes combined with his red beard and rusty blond hair melted me on the spot. I said “Hey.”, and smiled. He said with a big smile, “Hey, yourself.” and raced over to hug me. Upon hugging, we felt like our insides became our outsides. This had to be a dream, but it wasn't. We kissed and melted into each other. We both could have died on the spot. Maybe we did.

He said, “God, I’ve missed you!” like we were lovers who hadn’t seen each other in a long time. I felt the same and didn’t hesitate to say it. That night, we hugged and kissed as if the world depended on it. We shared the most passionate sex I’ve ever had with anyone! I've never spent three days in bed with anyone since then. As the candles burned down, we burned up in each other’s presence until we saw our truest essence and how much we meant to each other. There will never be another like him.

We were so in love! The course of our relationship moved very fast and he decided to sell his restaurant so we could spend more time together. I pleaded with him to only do that if it was really what he wanted to do and not to do it for me. He said he understood and that it was for him because that would mean he’d be able to see me more often. Besides, he was tired of always being tied to the restaurant. We never could really go anywhere and he was always stuck in Ohio.

The weekend after he sold the restaurant, he came to visit. That weekend included Mayday. We looked at a few apartments over the weekend, as he was planning to move to Pittsburgh so we could live together. The next day, I took him to the annual Mayday celebration at a local park. It was more than he could handle. He knew that I was a Pagan in my beliefs from before we met. Given our very open minded discussions about it, I never thought it would have been the wedge that it became between us. I wouldn’t have thought he would try to tear my beliefs apart and tell me that my rituals were devil worship. But he did. How dare he? He even tried to gain my mother’s agreement in his case against me when we arrived back at the house. I told him he needed to leave and I never wanted to see him again. I grabbed his bags, put them in his car and told him to go. With tears flowing from those beautiful blue eyes, running down his gentle, red bearded face, he drove away. I was so cruel to him right before then. I said things that I’m still ashamed of, even after all these years.

That night, he called three times and my mom told him I wasn’t there as I requested. The next morning, he called three more times. My mom came into my room and said “Anth, I think you really need to talk to him and hear what he has to say.” She really liked him. I protested until I knew she was right. I reluctantly picked up the phone and said “hello.” He sheepishly said “Hi buddy” and immediately started crying. “I didn’t think I would ever hear your voice again.” he said through the tears. He profusely apologized and told me that I was everything to him and begged me to take him back. Grasping at anything, he risked his own beliefs to try to win me back. “I want to believe what you believe!” he cried. I started crying, because no matter how true that statement was, and I knew it was, I couldn’t come back from it. The damage was done. I tearfully told him that I was truly sorry, but I just couldn’t. I told him that I knew he would find love again, but it wasn’t with me. He told me that he would only ever want me. Hanging the phone up on him seemed the appropriate thing to do because it was as at least as painful for me to have to repeatedly tell him, that our time was over, and mean it, as it was for him to hear it. Time passed, and I came to understand I would always love him.

A few years later, we reconnected online and he came to my apartment for a weekend stay, after he broke up with a man who treated him horribly. Upon seeing him in person, all the emotions I still had for and about him were brought up. I wondered, how it could be that I still loved him and wasn’t able to move beyond the events of the past. He left earlier than expected on Sunday to beat the snow storm that already was starting to come down. As we hugged goodbye in my kitchen, we stood there holding each other for a moment and looking into each other’s eyes. I said “Bye Sugar-Bear.” He let out one of his signature, sexy growls at me. “Grrr” he said as he rubbed his beard on mine. We gave each other one last kiss and he left. I could have stayed in that moment forever. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted to tell him I still loved him, but I was afraid. I was feeling too vulnerable already. Besides, I was going to be moving to Boston. Speaking of my feelings for him would have thrown a wrench into all of my plans.

One day, a couple of years later, I got a phone call from him and I could tell he had recently been crying. I was living in the Boston area by that time and in a horrible relationship. I asked him what was wrong and he started telling me of his own relationship woes. This man he was with was downright abusive. My heart sank as he told me what this man said and did to him. We somehow got off the topic of them and onto the topic of us. I’m so very thankful that we did. Nothing was left unsaid. We talked about how our relationship was somehow frozen in time and how much we still loved each other. We laughed about memories, we cried about the pain that we caused each other, and we resolved to our unfaltering love for each other. That was ours I told him. “We get to keep that Sam. It’s ours and no one can ever, ever take that away from us.” We cried at the idea that life had taken us so far away from each other. “Maybe next time we’ll get it right” I said hopefully. He sadly said, “Yeah, but why can’t we have it now? It doesn’t have to wait until next time.” I explained to him that for whatever reason, it just wasn’t to be this time around. What were we to do?
          We were both in relationships that somehow seemed important and lived twelve hours away from each other. We both had dream jobs. It just seemed like the sacrifice one of us would have to make was too high. At the end of our phone call, I said “I love you, Sam; Sugar-Bear.” And I giggled. He said, “Grrr. I love you too, buddy. I’ll always be your Sugar-Bear. You hear me? Always.” After we hung up the phone, instead of feeling good, I felt a sadness that I couldn’t explain at the time. It felt like a chapter in my life was closed but still unfinished. I didn’t know that would be the last time I talked to him. In time, I would find out just how lucky I was to have that conversation with him.

I got a phone call a month or so later from a friend in Pittsburgh very early on that cold, October morning. I excitedly answered the phone. “You’re calling early! What’s up? How are you doing?” He said he was good and that he had some bad news. My heart started pounding as I wondered if it was about our friend Joe who was battling cancer at the time. “It’s about Sam, Anthony” “What’s wrong?” I frantically asked. The tears had already started making my vision blurred. “He’s gone Anthony. I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you. I thought you should know.” “NO! No. No-ho-o-ho-o!” I wailed through the sobbing, as I fell to the floor from the kick to my gut and the jagged knives of loss and regret cutting out my heart. I almost couldn’t catch my breath as the well of tears overflowed in my soul and poured out of my eyes. I almost didn’t want to, either. Then I remembered…

I called him Sugar-Bear and he loved me.

The endless river of tears flowed from me, and the forces of grief and sadness relentlessly pummeled me. There was nothing I had inside my personal arsenal that could combat this. The great love of my life was dead. He was only 44 years old.

I flew back to Pittsburgh for a couple of days and rented a car to go to the wake in Ohio. With much difficulty, I read his obituary to my mom and aunt. My mom cried right along with me and my aunt soon followed. They adored him and were deeply saddened by his death. In the short time we were together, he did a lot of kind things for them. He would do things like bake pies to send home with me, especially for them and when he sold the restaurant, he gave them some of the wrought iron fixtures from the restaurant.

As I drove to the wake, the familiar roads brought back so many memories; things I wouldn’t have remembered unless I made that drive. Reeling with sadness, I had to pull over several times from crying so hard. At the wake, there was a line that wrapped all the way around the funeral home and into the parking lot. I have never seen so many people come to pay their respects at a wake. Many familiar faces and old friends were there and luckily two of those friends were towards the front and called me over. We hugged, laughed, and cried together as we tried to wrap our heads around the fact that this jolly, good hearted man was no longer with us. When we got into the funeral home, the three of us walked up to the casket and there was the body of the man I loved so fiercely. It didn’t even look like him, which I think cushioned the blow. It was evident to all of us that the body was simply the vessel because there wasn’t a trace of who we loved left in that body. I asked his mother if it was ok to put something in the coffin with him. She nodded her head. I slipped a silver coin a bit larger than a half dollar with a wolf on one side into his cold, stiff hand that rested closest to his chest as I wept and whispered “This is in case you need to pay the ferryman. Remember me.”

My friends wanted to introduce me to Bill, the man who was currently in a relationship with Sam. I reluctantly walked over with them because I wasn’t sure how I’d react to seeing the man who struck Sam in a cocaine and alcohol induced rage. The man in the burgundy suit turned around with tears running down his face and before I could say anything, he said “Anthony…” with almost a sigh of relief. He grabbed me and gave me a great big hug that seemed to last just long enough before becoming uncomfortable. He said “I’m so sorry.” What could I say? Any anger I had towards him dissipated in that instant. I told him I was sorry for his loss too and I wished we were meeting under better circumstances. I asked, “How did you know it was me?” He answered, “From all the pictures Sam had of you two.” He continued, “I used to get so jealous…” He stopped himself as the tears welled up in his eyes. With his arms still on my shoulders, he looked me in the face with nothing but sympathy and compassion on his face and said the words I will never forget. “Sammy loved you so, so much Anthony. He spoke very highly of you and the time you and he had together. I just want you to know you meant the world to him and that he still loves you, wherever he is.” At that moment I died a little and we wept together and consoled each other for a few minutes. He gave me his number to call if I needed to and I gave him mine.

In the parking lot as I was leaving, Sam’s best friend most of us endearingly named “Haroldeene” due to his southern twang, walked out with me to have a cigarette. We hugged and talked for a little while. I told him that I always thought that somehow, some way, Sam and I would get back together. His reply was “You know, I think Sam always thought that too. You were the great love of his life. He talked about you all the time and I would tell him that he had to move on, but he never really did.” To hear those words from his best friend; the sadness he felt and continued to feel through all these years felt like a dull serrated knife ripping my flesh and cutting out my heart. At that very moment, I knew Sam died of a broken heart. I would have bled out right there and sacrificed everything life might bring, if I knew it would turn back time and allow me to fix this horrible imbalance and give me a do over.

I left that place of sadness, but it clung to me as I drove by his old house and the attached restaurant. I drove by all the places we used to go and sacrificed tears at every one of those now sacred sites that burn eternal in the light of memory and the dark of what should have been. The love we shared made them sacred, not the tears. The tears seemed to be akin to Forget Me Not’s put on a grave.

The weeks following were surreal. I would be driving to work and see him clear as day, sitting next to me in the car. I felt haunted, but was not in any hurry to make it go away. One day, I was crying on my way to work with my iPod plugged in to the stereo, his apparition was sitting there and said “Please don’t cry buddy. Skip three songs ahead, there’s a song I want you to hear.” I pulled over to the side of the road because at this point I thought I might be losing it. I skipped three songs ahead and as the music started I cried harder than I was before. The lyrics hit me like the crushing blow they were intended to when the artist wrote them.

“I remember the nights I watched as you lay sleeping, your body gripped by some far away dream. Well I was so scared and so in love then; and so lost in all of you that I had seen. But no one ever talked in the darkness. No voice ever added fuel to the fire. No light ever shone in the doorway, deep in the hollow of earthly desires. But if in some dream there was brightness. If in some memory some sort of sign, and flesh be revived in the shadows, blessed our bodies would lay so entwined.
[CHORUS] “I will oh I will not forget you. Nor will I ever let you go. I will oh I will not forget you.”

A week or so later, I was talking with Bill, Sam’s recent partner, and he said “I’m losing it, man. I know you are still talking with him Anthony. Please tell him I love him.” As I spoke the words “I will” I heard Sam’s voice say “Tell him I know. Tell him when he passes, to meet me by the river. And when you pass, meet me by the fire.”

That was the last time I heard from Sam. I have often felt that we were star crossed lovers and we will meet again. In the meantime, I look back with fond memories on the great love of my life and vowed that if I was ever graced with a love like that again, I would hold onto it and never again allow myself to foolishly let it go. To love and be loved so passionately and deeply is a rare gift in life. To be open and honest about that love is vital. Tell those you love that you love them. Don’t let stubbornness win. You may never get another chance. So love. Love fiercely, madly, deeply, passionately, and lovingly. Take a chance. You never know if it will be your last…or theirs.

Until then, I’ll remember what I called him…

Sugar-Bear.