Kwik Stop, written and directed by (as well as starring) Michael Gilio is now available for renting (or purchase) on iTunes. I meant to write a thing about this when it happened in December, but that was when everything started going to shit, and I couldn’t.
I included Kwik Stop in my Under-rated Movies thing I used to do. Here is my review. I recommend the movie with no hesitation. Follow all the links in that review, to see the words of the bigwigs who championed this small film – Roger Ebert, Charles Taylor. Great stuff.
In recent months, things have sort of heated up for Michael, intensifying and accelerating, due to his inclusion on the famous “black list” of 10 Best Unproduced Scripts in Hollywood (and his script won’t be “unproduced” for long)!
Anyone who is a regular reader knows who Michael is to me.
Michael is a man who has a permanent place of affection in my heart. Indelible ink. I will never get rid of him, and I am thankful. He is a true gentleman, honest as the day is long, he’s also a pain in the ass, a brat, and a kick-ass disco dancer. Obviously.
We met when we were both in a play in Ithaca – an insane out-of-town experience which we still laugh about to this day (I also shared what I think of as “my best day” with him). Early on, within a couple of days of dating, we discovered that we share a passion for the films of John Cassavetes. We felt like we were members of a sacred and bizarre little sect that nobody else understood. We talked about Cassavetes and his muse, Gena Rowlands, for hours. We still do such things, finding things in common, shared obsessions, and plumbing the depths of them (Mickey Rourke?) We didn’t date for long, but that was it. We are friends for life.
It’s kind of funny (and interesting) when you get to a place with an ex-boyfriend where you have no boundaries (Examples abound). It’s rare. I wouldn’t want it with all of my ex-boyfriends, because it can be kind of annoying, but for whatever reason, Michael and I just have no bullshit. It is a true connection. You know, he came to New York and crashed on my floor and we talked or didn’t talk for hours on end. The connection existed when we dated, and it exists now still. In a different form, but no less welcome and awesome.
Here is an example of a conversation we had recently. This is how it went:
Me: I’m old-fashioned. I need him to make the first move.
Michael: It’s not old-fashioned. It’s a test of character. And don’t sleep with him on the first date, but then you already know that.
Me: Iron-clad rule. As you may remember.
Michael: Good.
We lost touch for a couple of years after I moved away from Chicago. I was in grad school, he was busy, we lived in different cities, there was no Facebook. If you wanted to get in touch with someone you had to pick up the damn phone. When September 11th happened, he called Mitchell to get my new phone number, and left me multiple messages on that first day of trauma … which, of course I did not get. When I finally picked up all of my messages when my phone worked again, and I heard the 70+ messages I received on that one day (I’m not kidding … it was a voice mail system I paid for, so there was unlimited space) … I felt like my heart would burst. Every single person in my life had called me. And there was Michael’s voice, a couple of different calls over that day and the next. “I have no idea why you would be down in the financial center, because you’re an actor … but … just call me … okay? I’m sure you’re fine, but just call me.” Friends for life, man.
One of the main things I recall, is my last night in Chicago, before taking off to New York to start my new life here. It was a soft quiet end-of-summer night. I lived a couple blocks from Wrigley Field with Mitchell. A beautiful tree-lined peaceful street.
My last night before I left, before I ripped up my Chicago roots and moved back east, was full, and sad, and rich. I went out to dinner with my core group of friends. Michael had been invited but he couldn’t show. He had been vague in his refusal: “Maybe I’ll be able to make it … I might be done in time …” Hello, Pisces, how are you. I knew that this probably meant I wouldn’t see him before I left. But there was too much else to be glad about, to be thankful for, to have regrets. I had had a nice goodbye with M., my main flame in Chicago. I had just come off a terrible illness, with a fever of 103, and I had spent a couple of days recuperating at M.’s apartment, and we watched TV and hung out, and ordered in food, and by the end of that time, I certainly felt better, but I also knew that I was ready to leave M. as well. It was good. Everything happened in the right way. No loose ends. Or at least I didn’t think there were.
On my last night, we all sat around outside at a restaurant, and had pizza, and beer, and talked. Everyone at the table told their favorite Sheila story from Chicago. (And there were many.) We laughed until we cried. Sometimes we just cried. A beautiful acknowledgment, and a perfect way to close. It was achingly difficult for me to leave Chicago, but I had to. Saying goodbye to my community of friends was painful. But we did it the right way. We didn’t rush it, or pretend it wasn’t happening, or try to smooth over the moment with trite, “Oh, we’ll all still be friends”. Of COURSE we’ll all still be friends, but it cannot be denied that the dynamic will change.
Our night ended, and we all parted ways. Mitchell and I came home. Ann Marie was with us, too. It was so quiet. There was a melancholy in the darkness, a piercing bittersweetness, but there was also joy. The kind of joy that is unbearable. We sat on the front porch, drinking grape ginger ale … why do I remember that? I don’t know. I never drink grape ginger ale but for some reason that night I was … and every time I see a big ol’ bottle of it at Pathmark I think of my last night in Chicago.
Ann and I sat on the front steps in the dark. We were quiet. We were going to see each other early early the next morning, since she was helping me pick up my rent-a-car at, oh, 5 oclock in the morning. There was just the darkness, and the quiet. I wanted to soak everything in, imprint every single physical sensation onto my brain. Forever. My wind chimes. God, those wind chimes. The thick grass of the front yard. The plaintive Meows of my insistent codependent cat Samuel. He could not BELIEVE that I was sitting outside, RIGHT IN HIS PLAIN VIEW THROUGH THE WINDOW … and he couldn’t come out and join.
And you know what? I think I did a good job with “soaking everything in”, because I remember every sensory detail. I can close my eyes and conjure up that street, that night, the feel of the soft night air on my skin, the taste of the grape ginger ale.
The street was empty, but at some point, I became aware of a lone figure approaching. He was in shadow, darkness surrounding, but I knew … I knew it was Michael. He had come to see me off. At midnight.
It was the final loose end.
I was barefoot, but I jumped up and ran down to meet him, running along the sidewalk, my heart in my throat, my soul on the OUTSIDE of me. We hugged and hugged and hugged, and Ann Marie quietly slipped away to leave us alone.
Michael and I had stopped dating about a year prior to this point, but that was no matter. There was a powerful thing to say good-bye to here. We both knew it. I was so glad he showed. So glad. It just made everything complete, a closed circle. No ragged edges for my departure. And we sat on my front porch, and we drank grape ginger ale. Not too many words were said, actually. What was said was brief and tender and poignant. We kissed for what felt like an eternity. Lost in each other. I felt looked after, cared for, like … things were okay. It was hard, but it was okay.
Seeing him strolling towards me in the darkness, showing up after the crowd had dispersed … showing up for his own private good-bye … It was good and right. Maybe Michael knew that a group event, a group dinner, wouldn’t have been appropriate for the two of us. We could never have said what we needed to say in that environment, we could never have completed our own little special circle.
No matter how long it has been, how many years has gone by, when I hear from him, I get that same sensation of when I caught a glimpse of his shadowed figure coming towards me on that last night, and I leapt up and ran to him in my bare feet. Unafraid to show him my joy, unafraid to let him know how happy it made me that he had come … I didn’t have to hide my intensity with him, I never did. I still don’t. If it sounds like I’m carrying a torch, that is not quite right. We have completely separate lives, but there is something that we found together that is important to us, singular. We don’t need to touch base with it often. That would be torture. But we are connected on a deep level. I had a crazy freakout recently about something that had happened on Facebook. I made it mean something that it wasn’t (and I will be honest: I was not in my right mind at the time – this was in January) – and with anyone else I might have suffered in silence, tailspinning into insecurity. But with him, I blasted him a CUH-RAZY email saying, “Why did you do what you just did on Facebook? It hurt my feelings, yo – please don’t do that to me – talk to me – this is insane – I’m really hurt!” Poor Michael. But – unlike most of the ex-boyfriends I have known, instead of belittling me, or ignoring me, or rolling his eyes – he said, “Woah! Slow down!” It had been a complete misunderstanding, and he let me know, in no uncertain terms, that he would never do what I had thought he did (and of course, if I had been thinking straight, I would have known that … but I couldn’t think straight then. I was incapable of it. He knew that and took that into consideration) – and he said that I was obviously sensitive right now because of obvious reasons, but I needed to relax, and everything would be okay.
There is a cuh-razy about me. I spin off. I get manic. And being able to BE that (and I do work to not be like that all the time, but sometimes I can’t help it), and not be punished or cut loose – but also to be talked off the ledge by a calm and invested friend … I was so glad I had said something. Even though it just revealed my own craziness to me (and to him) … It was a relief to be told, “No. You just made that up. You’re fine. We’re good. Relax, dear.”
To say I “need” that kind of energy is to understate what the word “need” means.
It’s also reciprocated. He emailed me recently – February – just a regular touching-base “How you doing” email, and I didn’t respond. Things were going on with me, real-life stuff, book stuff, other stuff, and I became a bad and negligent correspondent. Michael emailed me again, and I thought, frenzied, “Oh yeah … gotta email him back … make a note of it …” And then, yet again, forgot to email him back. Shit happens. Finally, he sent me an email to my regular email as well as to my Facebook page, saying, blatantly, “Why are you ignoring me? What do I have to do to get you to respond?” Oops. Emailed him back immediately. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
No standing on ceremony. No politeness. Friends.
This has felt good to write.
So, to re-cap:
Kwik Stop: AVAILABLE ON ITUNES. Go rent or purchase it now. And again: my review here.
