The Memory Box

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‘So there’s this big box of things that Starsky keeps in their wardrobe in the master bedroom. It’s a stainless steel, fire-resistant box with this gold-and-silver padlock and an etching of a galloping, long-maned stallion on its flat cover and Hutch ought to know, he’d bought the damn thing himself at the Long Beach Antique Market in 1985.’

 

This was a challenge to myself to write a lifetime for Starsky and Hutch in less than 10,000 words. Clocked in under 7000! Just one warning: There is character death, but it’s definitely not Starsky or Hutch.

You can listen to Etta James’ At Last here. It’s a true classic love song!

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So there’s this big box of things that Starsky keeps in their wardrobe in the master bedroom. It’s a stainless steel, fire-resistant box with this gold-and-silver padlock and an etching of a galloping, long-maned stallion on its flat cover and Hutch ought to know, he’d bought the damn thing himself at the Long Beach Antique Market in 1985. It’s chock full of all sorts of trinkets and toys and thingamajigs, stuff that Starsky’s bought and hoarded throughout the decades, stuff like corny snow globes (the Christmas ones always get him going and not in the orgasmic way), stuffed toys (Starsky changes the plastic wrapping around Ollie the teddy bear every year on the anniversary of Terry’s passing, may she rest in peace), really old comic books (“Hutch, I swear some of them are worth millions! And before you smart-mouth me, millions of American dollars, not Timbaktu dollars.”), a multi-cultural collection of necklaces from the countries they’ve vacationed at (when Starsky wears those Australian shell necklaces and nothing else, man, does that get him standing at attention!) and who knows what else, considering they’ve been together for over thirty years.

Yeah, thirty years, and somehow he loves Starsky more today than he did yesterday, and even more tomorrow.

It’s a big box of things, and inside, there’s one compartment that takes up about a quarter of the box. It’s where Starsky puts the things that are really special to him. Really special things, like the die-cast Torino model he’d received as a forty-third birthday gift that Hutch had secretly commissioned a highly skilled, local car model maker to create months ahead of the birthday in 1986. Starsky had quietly wept when he saw it and held it in his hands for the first time, which had made Hutch rather relieved to have given Starsky the Torino model after everyone had left the house. He knew how torn up Starsky had been about having to let go of the Torino a year ago – the real one, the one that had their history tied to it – after its engine died for good and they couldn’t afford a new one at the time, but he never imagined for a second that the gift would move Starsky so much.

“Look, even the bullet holes are there,” Starsky had murmured, smiling bittersweetly, smiling gratefully.

Shocked was the understatement of 1980 for Hutch when he’d surprised a convalesced Starsky with the fully restored Torino. Instead of being ecstatic, Starsky had crossly demanded that Merle the Earl reattach the Torino’s original, bullet-holed fender and doors, like, right this goddamn minute, even if Merle had to go hunting in the city dump for them. Weren’t the scars on Starsky’s chest and back enough? Weren’t the macabre memories enough? Weren’t the nightmares enough?

“She survived too, Hutch,” Starsky had said while stroking the right fender of the car, gazing at its candy apple redness, those big blue eyes so solemn. “She earned them.”

And Hutch got it then, what Starsky was trying to tell him. Starsky didn’t want to forget. Starsky didn’t want to gloss everything over with a blinding, opaque coat, be it of red and white paint or of innocently suggested cosmetic surgery that initiated two whole days of the Silent Treatment from Starsky. Starsky wanted to remember, to learn from the past so that its mistakes wouldn’t be repeated in the present, in the future.

After that, it certainly didn’t surprise Hutch to hear Starsky say in 1983, “Hutch, I wanna go to college. I’m thinking of taking up history. History’s like … it’s like detective work, in a way. Putting all these clues from yesterday together so we can understand it and then understand today and tomorrow. I think I’ll enjoy studying history. Hutch, you went to college before. Ya think I’m cut out for it? Am I too old for college?”

Hutch had kissed him hard, and then made love to him even harder and sweeter on their bed in the seaside house they’d purchased together in 1981 after resigning from the BCPD.

The fruits of four years of tough albeit relished labor in the University of California’s undergraduate history course resulted in a Bachelor of Arts degree in History for a rightfully proud Starsky. He’d surpassed everyone’s expectations – including Hutch’s – and ended up one of the top five of his class of almost a hundred students, and his diploma bearing his full name and the words magna cum laude is next to the Torino model in his big box of things, physical proof of his academic achievement (while its color copy hangs in Starsky’s home office room). It’s another really special thing that had moved even Nicky who’d attended the graduation ceremony with their mom, as if seeing his older brother accept the diploma on stage to resounding ovation had opened Nicky’s eyes too, opened them to hope.

Just months after the graduation, Nicky called Starsky from New York City to tell him that he’d enrolled in college to study business management with their mom’s blessings and financial aid, that he wanted to be clean now and cut all ties with the scamming and get-rich-quick schemes that went nowhere and hey, Davey, I’m gonna make something good of myself, you’ll see, no more disappointments. Overjoyed was the understatement of 1987 for Starsky.

But a year into his education at a community college in Manhattan, in the middle of winter, Nicky became the victim of a fatal hit-and-run accident as he strolled home after classes.

No one witnessed the accident. No one saw the vehicle – a damn huge one, it had to be – that knocked Nicky down, ran over his torso and crushed half of his ribs and caused three to puncture his lungs, drowning them in blood and fluid. The NYPD had informed Starsky to his face (immediately after a six-hour flight at night from Los Angeles to NYC) that Nicky probably never knew what hit him, that Nicky’s death was abrupt and Nicky probably didn’t suffer. Probably.

It was the one time, in all the years Hutch had known Starsky till then, that he had ever seen Starsky cry in front of others.

Their relationship, eight years and counting, nosedived straight into a lightless ocean of bottled-up grief and uncertainty and rage, so much rage inside Starsky towards the nameless bastard who’d killed his only brother and taken away the only sibling he will ever have. Starsky had blocked Hutch out then, erected towering walls between them that he couldn’t surmount even with all the love he had in his heart for Starsky. In early 1989, Hutch had no choice but to move out of their house in Marina del Rey and stay with Huggy at Huggy’s bachelor pad in the Baldwin Hills in South Los Angeles, if only to maintain what remained of his sanity. His love for Starsky never lessened an iota … and apparently, Starsky’s love for him never lessened an iota either despite the deep-seated anguish Starsky was undergoing, for a mere fourteen hours later, Starsky showed up at Huggy’s doorstep, unshaven, eyes bloodshot and damp, those thick, dark curls a total mess.

The moment Hutch stepped into the living room to talk to Starsky, Starsky had collapsed to his knees and clutched his legs and said again and again in a broken voice that he was sorry, he never meant to say those horrible things, he never meant to take their love for granted, please forgive me, Hutch, I’m sorry, I love you, I miss you so much and I miss Nicky, why did he have to die, why –

It was the one time, in all the years Hutch had known Huggy till then, that he had ever seen Huggy openly weep.

Later, as an exhausted Starsky lay prone and fast asleep on top of him on the sofa, curly head tucked under his chin and a plaid blanket covering both of them from the chest down, Hutch and Huggy discussed with low voices a trip to NYC to visit Starsky’s mom again, see how she’s been doing, and to talk again with the detectives who’d investigated Nicky’s case, to help Starsky broadcast another public plea via television and radio to track down any new information pertaining to Nicky’s untimely demise.

Thirty-one hours after Starsky’s second televised appeal to the public to contact the police if they have any, any information at all about the accident that killed his brother, the young wife of a truck driver named Benjamin Hudson called the NYPD. Her husband had hanged himself two weeks ago and left her and their three children a letter. He killed someone, he’d confessed in the letter, killed someone and didn’t even know it until the next morning when he did his routine check of his truck and saw what appeared like blood spatter on the back bumper and then heard the news of a hit-and-run victim, a college student who’d died on the very route and the very night he’d rushed extra deliveries of factory machinery for his boss. He hadn’t slept for over two days before making those deliveries, but he had to make the deliveries, he had to or there wasn’t going to be enough money to feed his family and they’d starve and suffer and he couldn’t let that happen because he loved them. Who would take care of his family if he turned himself in? Who would take care of his beloved wife, his high school sweetheart who chose him over so many other more handsome, far richer men than he and had so much faith in him? Who would take care of his two beautiful little girls who looked just like their mother and his little baby boy who had the best belly laugh in the world?

But the guilt ate at him over the months, piece by piece, until it was finally too much.

As her late husband had not identified Nicky in his suicide note, Mrs. Hudson only put the two and two together when she caught Starsky’s second public appeal on television. When she met Starsky in the Captain’s office in the precinct of the investigators of Nicky’s case, Hutch had been struck by powerful déjà vu as she fell to her knees before Starsky and clutched his legs and begged for forgiveness again and again in a broken voice … and Hutch fell too, fell in love with Starsky all over again as Starsky gently raised her to her feet, hugged her tightly and wept with her and sincerely told her that it wasn’t her fault or her late husband’s. That there were no conscienceless villains here, no malicious demons or wrathful gods. Just tragic circumstances, and people, just people, ensnared in them.

There had not been a single dry eye in that office that afternoon.

And so, next to Starsky’s university diploma in his big box of things is a photo album of his family, of Nicky. Hutch has skimmed through it numerous times with Starsky, on rare rainy days when Starsky is in a reflective mood or on hushed nights when Starsky is struck by nostalgia. He knows many of the photographs by heart now, like the childhood pictures of Starsky and Nicky in their third floor apartment on 84th Street next to the Mays or in their grandma’s apartment above that Italian restaurant Starsky always went on about (and still does!). Like the pictures of Starsky’s father, who resembles Starsky minus the thick curls so much that it spooks Hutch every so often, mostly because Starsky’s father had died from being shot several times in the chest in a robbery when Starsky was eight years old.

Was it just coincidence Starsky would get shot himself decades later and die in the hospital too, before being resuscitated by harried doctors and nurses? Or was it something else, like a curse of premature death that beset the men in the Starsky family?

Whatever it is, Hutch is glad that Starsky didn’t follow his father and brother to the Other Side. Maybe there’s a loophole in the curse, in that it can only claim a Starsky man once and move the fuck on if it fails to do so. It’s just like Starsky to be the one to give it -and death itself – the middle finger and go right back to living in this world, with him.

Whenever they browse through the photo album, Starsky sometimes still gets angry at himself for not spending more time with Nicky, for not being there for Nicky when his younger brother needed him, for not being there to stop that truck from running him over. When Starsky gets that far in his self-flagellation, in spite of Hutch’s consolation, he will gaze at the last page of the album, at the single photograph of the Hudson family in better times, a cutout from a newspaper’s feature article on the tragedy that robbed Starsky of a brother and robbed the Hudson family of a husband and father.

In the photograph, the whole family is smiling. Benjamin Hudson is a blond man of average height, weight and appearance, but has the smile of the king of the world as he encircles his arms around his wife and their children. Mrs. Hudson is leaning back against her husband, and she has the smile of the queen of the world, the queen who has everything for which she ever asked. It is she that Starsky stares at most, not because she has a kind, youthful face or that her long, blonde hair is just like Rosie Malone’s, but because he sees someone who knows exactly what he’s been through. He sees what could still be him one day, if similarly tragic circumstances should ensnare Hutch next.

That almost did occur, in the form of a sudden heart attack in 1993.

The irony was, both he and Starsky always assumed Starsky would be the one to get a heart attack due to his previous chest injuries. Starsky had even joked about it, said that since he’d already been there before, his heart stopping a second time would be a plain breeze. It sure as hell hadn’t felt like a plain breeze to Hutch when it hit, while they were at the beach on a Thursday afternoon in the summer. It’d felt more like an elephant had sat on his chest and wouldn’t let up, like lightning was shooting up and down his left arm and sizzling every vein and artery and muscle in it to boiling point, like he was dying. Jesus, the pain was right up there with his severe heroin withdrawal in 1975 and being beleaguered by the damn plague in 1977.

In the ambulance, he’d somehow found the energy to ramble his mouth off to Starsky and that was what he did the entire trip to the hospital, mutter on and on through an oxygen mask about the absurdity of him having a heart attack when he’s the health freak, the wheat germ and vitamins nut while Starsky’s diet was all burritos and pizza and pasta and every other fatty, oil-drenched food on the planet. Starsky hadn’t said much in return. Starsky just sat there next to the stretcher near his head, caressing his hair, trying so hard to smile at him while that lower lip he loved so much trembled and those blue eyes glistened.

The rest of that day and the next were – and still are – a complete blank to him. He had to hear it from Starsky, about the doctors reviving him with hundreds of volts to his chest after his heart stopped, about Starsky being restrained from accompanying him into ICU because he wasn’t family, because he was just a friend in the eyes of the law that wouldn’t recognize them as partners in all ways. If it hadn’t been for his doctor who’d been at the scene, a lovely, five foot tall redhead called Dr. Cunningham, Starsky would very likely have been hauled off by security guards, forbidden from even seeing him, much less touching him and comforting him in the aftermath of the coronary.

Once Starsky was given permission to stay at Hutch’s side by way of Dr. Cunningham, Starsky was with him every day throughout the one week he was hospitalized. Even slept in the chair overnight when the nurses closed one eye and let him get away with it. After his discharge from the hospital, Starsky took three months off work to help him fully recover.

“There’re so many other police consultants around! The BCPD will do just fine without me for a couple a’ months,” Starsky had assured him with a soft smile. “You’re my top priority, Blondie. Don’t you ever forget that.”

Hutch never has, for inside Starsky’s big box of things, next to the Torino model and university diploma and Starsky’s family album, is an equally significant photo album that is at least an inch thicker and much larger than the family album. Nearly forty years of memories of his love for Starsky and Starsky’s love for him are in that photo album, immortalized in black-and-white and color photographs that, until the arrival of the 21st century, they were forced to conceal from a hateful, bigoted world that would have celebrated their deaths just for loving each other.

“I hate that I gotta hide them from other people,” Starsky had murmured to him one night in 1994, after they made love and were continuing their bonding via reminiscence of the years they’ve had together so far. “I hate that I gotta hide our love, like it’s some dirty thing when it’s the most beautiful thing in the world and you’re the most beautiful person in the world. I wish I could hold your hand and kiss you in public. Shout to the world how much you mean to me and how much I love you.”

“We will be able to do those things, one day,” he replied, kissing the crown of Starsky’s head and stroking Starsky’s bare back. “And when we do, we’ll get married.”

Starsky had smiled against his chest. A sad smile.

“And I thought you were supposed to be the pessimistic one.”

“You don’t think it’ll ever happen?”

“It’s … it’s too much to hope for.”

Something within Hutch’s chest had clenched painfully at the melancholy, the resignation in Starsky’s voice, and that same something had avowed right there and then that he would make it happen, one way or another.

Six months after that night, Hutch led a blindfolded Starsky into The Pits for a very, very special party and a private gathering of their dearest friends and loved ones. Some of Starsky’s trusted co-workers from his current job were there, including Gregory Rogers, another police consultant who lived with his boyfriend in Brentwood. A retired, contented and ever diet-loathing Harold Dobey was there with his wife, Edith, who looked like she hadn’t aged a day. Some of their former co-workers from the Metro were there too, co-workers like Danny Simmons and Kevin Babcock who’d retired from the force three years ago but remained partners in a successful computer business they set up from scratch, like Minnie Kaplan who was now a well-respected senior detective in Vice, Sally Hagen who was also in Vice and Joan Meredith who’d stayed friends with Starsky and retired four years ago due to a hip injury. Kiko and Molly were also there, so grown up and the embodiment of a better, brighter future. Even Starsky’s mom was there, having flown in clandestinely at Hutch’s request and on Hutch’s dime (with which he was happy to part for this occasion).

Huggy had blown everyone away with a fantastic array of dishes (aptly named Starsky Specials) and drinks, and by the time Hutch walked with guitar in hand onto the recently built stage perpendicular to the bar, everyone was sated and amenable and all ears for Hutch’s outwardly impromptu musical performance. The truth was, he’d written a song specifically for tonight, for a certain ebullient, grinning, curly-headed imp who sat nearest to the stage and clapped the loudest as he sat on a stool in front of the microphone. When he strummed his guitar and then sang of the destiny of two souls meeting and uniting as one, of love eternal, and gazed into Starsky’s eyes, Starsky’s grin had faded into something both exquisite and heart-wrenching, something that was all Hutch could see in the gleaming of Starsky’s eyes and achingly dazzling smile as he told his world of his love for Starsky, at last.

Another round of emboldening applause greeted him as he walked off the stage towards a stunned Starsky, as he knelt on one knee and flourished a candy apple red-and-white, square box he’d kept in the inner pocket of his leather jacket and opened it to reveal two magnificent titanium-and-silver rings with solitaire diamonds.

He had to swallow once before saying clearly for all to hear, “David Michael Starsky, will you marry me and make me the happiest man alive?”

“Thought I already am making ya the happiest man alive,” Starsky rasped, smiling sideways, and everyone laughed good-humoredly, even Hutch. Up close as he was to Starsky, he was the only one who could see how close Starsky was to bawling his eyes out.

Then, a silence of anticipation reigned as everyone awaited Starsky’s answer with bated breath.

Two seconds passed. Three, four, five and –

“Yes, ya big, beautiful, blond lummox. Yes, I will.”

And amidst deafening claps and euphoric cheers, Hutch had embraced and lifted Starsky off his feet and swung the laughing, wet-faced man around and round, and felt their hearts soar.

So in that equally significant photo album in Starsky’s big box of things are photographs of him singing on stage and of his proposal to Starsky, shot by Huggy. Photographs of him kissing Starsky before their loved ones for the very first time, of their loved ones’ acceptance of who they are, of their love. Photographs of Starsky’s mom hugging an emotional Starsky and bestowing upon them her blessings.

“I once had two sons,” she’d said to Hutch after the proposal, while Starsky was being congratulated by the others. “Now I have only one, and all that matters to me is that he is truly loved by someone who knows him and loves him for him. I’m glad that someone is you, Ken. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner for David.”

There are photographs of Dobey and Edith hugging him and Starsky as well. Regardless of their Christian beliefs (or perhaps because of them), Dobey and Edith had passed no judgments upon him and Starsky and had only the best wishes for them and their future.

“There’s already too much hate in this world, Hutchinson,” Dobey had said, his brown eyes as authoritative yet compassionate as ever. “Too much hate and not enough love to go around. You, me and Starsky, we’ve been through a lot together. You two laid down your lives for my family. I have never forgotten that. It says in the Good Book that there’s no love greater than when a man lays down his life for his friends, and knowing just how many times you and Starsky have done that for each other, over and over … I knew long ago just how much you two have always loved each other.”

Rogers, a burly, bearded bear of a man, got the trophy for the most memorable funny comment from a guest, with, “Boy, Hutch, am I glad my man’s out of town, ‘cause I don’t know how I’ll be able to top that proposal! And I sing like an undead, tone-deaf walrus with bronchitis!”

Drunk and high, so high on bliss and love, Starsky had wonkily sidled up to them and drawled to Rogers in a really botched Bogart accent, “Schweetheart, jus’ tell Jimmeh ya love him every day and mean it and give Jimmeh the – hic! – the dickin’ a’ his life! Daily. Daily! And hit the SPOT!” Hutch and Rogers guffawed so hard that tears rolled down their cheeks.

Seventeen years on, Starsky still swears up and down that he never said that to Rogers and had come up with such convincing justifications sometimes that Hutch would have questioned the validity of his memory … if not for Rogers having called them up the next evening to say drolly to Starsky, “Jimmy just wanted to say thanks for your sagely advice last night. He’s sorry he can’t come to the phone at the moment, he’s had the dicking of his life since he came back from San Francisco this morning and will talk to you when his sore spot’s recovered. Bye!”

Hutch had rug burns on his cheeks from crumpling onto the living room floor and rolling on the carpet laughing his ass off, while a blushing Starsky wearing only an iridescent robe gaped at the phone receiver and squealed in mortification, “What the hell did I SAY to Greg last night?!”

Well, it wasn’t like he hadn’t given Starsky the dicking of his life too after the party and long into the following day. He’d expected Starsky to crash in bed and sleep like a log after all that alcohol, but Starsky was like an animal when they reached home at one in the morning, a lusty, sexy, gorgeous animal that ambushed him the instant their home’s front door shut and was locked. Age became a mere number as they made love continually that night, first on the couch with only half their clothes off and Starsky clawing at his back and shouting pure pleasure while he pistoned in and out of Starsky, then in the shower attached to the master bathroom where they sucked each other off, and then on their king-sized bed, him heeding Starsky’s every desire, every entreaty as they sat facing forwards and Starsky lowered himself onto his still incredibly rigid cock and they gazed up at the mirror above the bed, at the perfect joining of their lithe, well-maintained bodies, at the light from bedside lamps glinting off their wedding rings on their left hands’ fourth fingers.

“I love you, Hutch,” a sweaty, satiated, smiling Starsky had whispered into his lips after that bout of lovemaking, as they rested for a few hours before resuming their lovemaking in the morning. “I love you.”

Seventeen years on, Starsky still does that every night before they slumber. Even in sickness, like when Starsky got that really nasty flu in the winter of 2006 and was reduced to a sniveling, sneezing, shivering mound under three blankets for nine days. (Amazingly, he didn’t contract the flu from Starsky.) Even when they’re physically apart, like when he had to tour the country to promote his very first music album in 1984 (which went platinum two years later) and Starsky was almost half-way through his history course but couldn’t accompany him. Starsky would tell him via phone then, with that sultry, titillating tone that had transformed more than one innocuous long-distance call into blood-boiling, toe-curling phone sex in which just listening to Starsky moaning and panting as he came was enough to set him off like fireworks on the fourth of July.

Seventeen years, and their wedding rings are still exultantly worn for all to see while the rings’ candy apple red-and-white box is stored in Starsky’s big box of things, as important to Starsky as the titanium and silver around the fourth fingers of their left hands. But decades ago, before the rings became an intrinsic part of them, when Hutch was just beginning to break into the music scene, things hadn’t been so simple.

Hutch’s first talent manager was a fashion-crazy, domineering man who wore only Armani and other likewise pricey brands, had several model girlfriends and drove a Maserati. He told Hutch straight up on their third meeting that Hutch was explicitly forbidden from making his relationship with Starsky public. That Hutch had to lie to the press, tell them that he was single, available and totally straight, kapish?

In reply, Hutch had given the guy an adios with a big, mirthless smile and his middle finger and stormed out of the jerk’s office.

His second talent manager (who is still his manager today) was much more suited to his tastes and principles, a friendly, no-nonsense man called Sean Harmon who hailed from Kentucky and moved to LA ten years ago to work in Hollywood.

“Ken, I know exactly how you feel about having to be quiet about your relationship with David,” Harmon had said, expression sympathetic and genuine.

Work wasn’t the only reason he’d left Kentucky. He’d also left because he realized he was gay at the age of twelve and knew his very conservative, Baptist family would never accept him as he was. And they hadn’t. In a very violent, traumatizing manner. It had been a sobering reminder from reality for Hutch when he listened to Harmon’s life story over drinks in his seaside home, his and Starsky’s shelter from the world.

“But I’d be lying too if I said that keeping it on the down low won’t be a helpful boost to your career. Right now your music appeals mainly to the female demographic, and female fans tend to connect more with a male celebrity if the celebrity is single and straight.”

“You mean, they tend to connect more with someone they think they have a chance with, right?” Hutch replied, and Harmon had chuckled and said, “Yeah. Hollywood’s all about illusions, honey. It’s what you intend to do with those illusions that counts.”

“What if I don’t want any illusions?”

“Then you’ll have to accept the fact that there will be people who’ll reject your music simply because you’re in love with another man.”

“You know what? I wouldn’t want homophobic, delusional people buying my CDs anyway.”

The main factor that led to Hutch eventually moving out of the house after Nicky’s fatal accident transpired was that the press – or to be more taxonomically precise, the tabloids – caught him arguing with Starsky outside a popular shopping mall two months before the accident. They’d snapped pictures of him chasing Starsky into the car park and hugging Starsky and running his fingers through Starsky’s hair, and then they’d gone wild, splashing those pictures on the front page with obnoxious headlines like ‘IS KEN HUTCH A CLOSETED HOMO?!‘ and ‘WHO IS KEN HUTCH’S SECRET GAY LOVER?!‘

Harmon had done some seriously superb PR work after the gossip explosion, planning all of Hutch’s announcements regarding the pictures and appearances on TV and radio talk shows while respecting Hutch’s wishes to honestly speak his mind through the announcements and talk shows. Hutch did just that … and the irony of ironies was, when he said that he really loved Starsky, that, yes, Starsky was his partner in the truest sense of the word and that he didn’t care if the world labeled his relationship with Starsky as homosexual, the public was persuaded that he and Starsky were anything but homosexual.

“It’s your police history,” Harmon said to him after his appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, as they flew back to LA from Chicago and had privacy in the First Class cabin. “You and David were partners in the truest sense of the word when you were still in the BCPD. Add all the open affection you’ve shown to each other throughout the years of working as cops, all those times you’ve saved each other and all those women you two had dated and had relationships with … and you have what I call ‘flawlessly hiding in plain sight’. That, and well, you are the guy who arrested James Marshall Gunther. I wouldn’t want to piss you off either!”

They’d both chortled at that, and Hutch had presumed that damage control was done and everything was going to be normal again.

Then Nicky died, and Starsky hated that the press’ eyes were on him all the time and he just wanted to be left alone to grieve in private and they were always around because of Hutch and Hutch couldn’t understand him, couldn’t goddamn understand anything and maybe if Hutch left, they’d leave for good too and … they did. But only because Hutch stomped up to the stalking reporters and paparazzi and roared in their faces that Starsky’s only brother had died and can’t you fuckers find it in your damn hearts to leave us alone and let him MOURN in PEACE?

He’d waited till all of them were gone before he himself left the house in his car, a two-year-old Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Drove around the city in circles too before heading to Huggy’s home, to make sure nobody tailed him.

Huggy was, therefore, the very first person in his and Starsky’s inner circle of friends to discover that they truly were best friends and lovers. Until that day, Huggy had thought nothing about them buying a house together and living together. They’d done it before. (Well, Starsky did, with their five thousand dollars for a back-bruising dump.) Huggy had also thought nothing about the pictures in the tabloids and newspapers. That was what he and Starsky were always like, after all, long before the sexual aspect of their relationship bloomed.

“You have no idea how displeased I am that you had hidden it from me, you blond turkey,” Huggy had said to him with a glower, a few months after Nicky’s case was solved and closed and life was moving on again. “For years! Years! How come your talent manager got to know it first before I did?”

“I’m sorry, Huggy. Really, I am. Starsky and I, we did talk about telling you, but …”

“Let me guess. You figured I’d never see you two macho men the same way again.”

“We figured your friendship is far too valuable to us to just spring it on you.”

Huggy had shook his head then, his glower altering into an affectionate smile.

“You two dumb turkeys, you deserve each other. I admit it, I’d suspected for a long time, even before you two quit the force, but I never asked. And I’m still displeased, by the way. Oh, you’re gonna have to make it up to me big time. Like, say, paying your tab.”

“Tab? What tab?”

And even as Huggy punched him on the upper arm, he’d laughed and then smiled over Huggy’s shoulder at Starsky who’d come home from work and was standing at the entrance of their home’s living room, leaning against its arched door frame and smiling with all the love in his soul in return. Starsky, older, with more lines at the sides of those big, blue eyes, more weight at the waist, but more and more attractive with each passing year to Hutch’s vision and heart. Starsky, happy again … and then happier still when the day came that they no longer had to mask their love for each other from the world, a world that’s now beginning to accept gay people as people, in June of 2008.

The Los Angeles County clerk’s office on South Compton Avenue was already packed by nine in the morning, with jubilant gay couples so excited and so glad, glad to finally have their opportunity to marry the ones they want to be with and live with and love for the rest of their lives. Starsky and Hutch had dressed in their finest suits and gotten fresh haircuts for the Big Day, and they had drawn many admiring glances and smiles as they danced their way up the long, stone stairway to the building’s main entrance, hand in hand, cheek to cheek, and Hutch emphatically sang his rendition of Etta James’ At Last as accompaniment to their graceful steps and spins:

At last, our day has come along
Our secret days are over
And life is like a song, oh yeah, yeah
At last, the skies above are blue
My heart was wrapped up in clover
The night I looked at you
I found a dream that I could speak to
A dream that I can call my own
I found a thrill to press my cheek to
A thrill that I have never known, oh yeah, yeah
You smiled, you smiled,
Oh, and then the spell was cast
And here we are in heaven
For you are mine at last

Oh yes, in Starsky’s big box of really special things, next to the die-cast Torino model, university diploma, photo albums and ring box, is their official and legal marriage license, with its baroque blue-and-white border, government logos and the words that have changed their universe forever: I hereby certify that on June 17th 2008, at 7807 South Compton Avenue, California, under authority of a license issued by the County Clerk of the County of Los Angeles, the undersigned, joined in marriage Kenneth Hutchinson and David Michael Starsky in the presence of Huggy Bear, residing at Los Angeles, California, and Rachel Starsky, residing at New York City, New York.

“We’re married, Hutch,” Starsky had murmured as he stared at the license in hand, eyes glimmering with contentment and a smidgen of disbelief that had yet to dissipate from the day’s exuberant, historic event. “We’re really married.”

“Wasn’t something too much to hope for after all, was it?”

And Starsky had leapt on him and kissed him stupid then, just like Starsky is kissing him right now, while they settle into bed for the night. It’s late 2011, and today was a relaxing, sunny Sunday of walks in the park, lazing on their porch swing bed with their two loyal German Shepherds and then a small dinner party with an ageless Huggy, Kiko and his wife, and Molly and her long-time girlfriend, Sharon. The four youngsters (definitely young compared to him and Starsky and Huggy!) had been present at their wedding as well, and are pretty much their children in all the ways that matter. Kiko will be a father himself in four months’ time, which will make him and Starsky … grandparents.

“Stop worrying about the car, Blondie. We’ll get it fixed tomorrow.”

Starsky is smiling at him, salt-and-pepper, wavy hair all tousled and still so thick and vibrant.

Hutch kisses him again, then says, “I’m not worried about the car. I just realized we’re going to be grandpas.”

“What’s your point?”

“Starsk, we are going to be grandpas. That’s how old we are now.”

“You’re only as old as you feel, ya know.”

“Says the guy who recently threw his back trying to … what was it you were trying to do with that bucket and all that water and that white, gooey stuff?”

Utterly deadpan, Starsky looks him in the eye and says, “I was trying to make a cast of my gorgeous butt.”

Hutch lets out a snigger, then asks, “Really?”

“Yeah, really. I mean, it’s something special, ya know?” – Oh, Starsky’s lips are tremoring now. – “I wanna keep a mold of it in the box so that you’ll have the closest thing to the Real Deal whenever I’m away and you miss me and ya need to feel my gorgeous curves -”

Hutch kisses Starsky again and again, swallowing Starsky’s mischievous snicker, and then they make love under the covers, slowly, sweetly. It’s just like the very first time, so deep and hot and good and wonderful, and after they’ve rocketed to nirvana and floated back down to earth, when Starsky smiles that humongous, breath-taking smile up at him, that spell that had captured him thirty years ago is cast once more, capturing his heart for the umpteenth time.

“I love you, Hutch,” Starsky whispers into his lips, just before tumbling into a serene slumber.

“I love you, Starsky. Love you so much.”

And as Hutch kisses Starsky for the last time tonight, as he follows his partner, his husband, into a serene slumber, he stows Starsky’s umpteenth avowal of love for safekeeping in his own big box of really special things, gratified with the knowledge that there will be many more memories of love in the decades to come to fill both their boxes of really special things.

 

Fin