Mitch Grassi is a Beautiful Man

KEVIN DOESN'T LIE

SCOTT'S POV:

It's been a couple weeks since "The Thing" which is what we call Mitch's  beating and rape. He said all the STD tests came back negative and he was very relieved that the clinic was pretty loose and kept giving him some primo pain medication. He takes them every night but I don't think he will get addicted. First, he really doesn't like sleeping as much as he does with the pills. Second, he's honestly in pain and really needs them.

I had the unhappy chance of seeing his chest and back just a couple days after The Thing. We were in a hurry to get to a production meeting and he got back late from some errands. He ran into his room and quickly changed shirts. I was hurrying down the hallway and I saw. I could see his full back and in the mirror his full front. His chest and back were almost a solid wall of dark blue and black bruises with a truly horrible green around the edges. There were also some very angry and deep looking cuts that had to have been with a knife or cutting instrument of some sort. The cuts were stitched together and ran from his upper shoulder all the way down across his back and it seemed to continue down into his pants and also from his upper shoulder all the way down across his chest into his pants. There were at least 3 or 4 cuts on each side. I froze, saw and then walked straight to my room and threw up. I quickly pulled myself together and with the stress of almost being late, I'm sure Mitch didn't see or hear me.

*****

Several months after The Thing, Mitch isn't eating or sleeping. He is off his meds and antibiotics which is good. But now his sleep, no longer artificially induced, was regularly interrupted with nightmares and screaming himself awake. At almost every meal, he was yawning and not eating. He was dropping weight at an alarming rate. This couldn't be healthy.

"Mitch, you need to get help."

"I did. I went to several doctors. They gave me pretty pills, I got better. They took them away and now I feel like crap. This is my life now. You want me to move out?"

That was his go-to answer. He said it so often we translated it into a false foreign phrase, "Idee sevdoc peelz bitr. Theelz crapzee moov et?"

"No, you need to go to head doctors, not body doctors."

"No."

Well that one translated into the same word in every language, real or made up.

****

"Oh gawd. No, really?!" Mitch was not happy. We were having a Mitch intervention.

"Mitch, people are asking questions. You look sick."

"Thanks Esther. You are normally a nice person and your brother, standing right there, can beat the crap out of me. So how about I just don't respond to that."

"Mitch, you are a fantastic looking man, but there is a right way and a wrong way to look like that." Said Candace Lambert, our stylist.

"Yes, you see the hoards of admirers who are begging to take me out?" I waved my hand to the room of just Pentatonix, Candace, Esther and Jonathan.

Silence.

"What? Look I know I look like some muscle challenged, half-eaten, spit out baby crow. Why do I have to be fat too?"

Kevin, of all people, walked over to me where I had sprawled myself out on the couch like some pouting diva and got down on one knee in front of me.

"Mitch. This is really hard to believe. On stage, you have so much confidence. It is even hard for some of us to continue singing instead of just watching you. But off stage, you just don't have a clue."

He sighed heavily, looked down at the floor to compose his thoughts, took my hand in his and looked straight into my eyes and said, "Mitch, you are a beautiful looking man. You have the perfect eyebrows, your eyes are not dark brown, they are some inhuman glistening soul-sucking black matched by the most perfect lashes I've ever seen on a man or woman. Your cheek bones look like they are carved from stone, your nose is aquiline and leads to the most perfect, pink, soft lips. There is nothing you can do to your hair and nothing you can wear that could possibly take away from your incredible, god-like, good looks. In fact, the more outrageous and daring your look, the more of your beauty is accentuated.

Your only flaw is that you are hurting yourself and your friends by not eating in a healthy way. You don't have to get fat. You need to get healthy. For you and for us."

I was stunned. Kevin doesn't lie. I kept staring at him trying to find a lie in his face, but it's Kevin. He just doesn't lie. I can't figure this one out. I swing my feet to the floor. I get up and walk to the mirror. I try really hard to look at my face the way Kevin described it. It was all there. Everything Kevin described was there. It wasn't until I saw each piece individually that I was able to put it into one whole face together. There was a part of me that was screaming that it wasn't true. That Kevin was a liar. But the scream was moving further and further away until it was so soft I was able to hear another voice. "Not bad Mitch Grassi. Really. It's not a bad face at all."

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I am so happy that Kevin gets a moment in this. Sometimes I don't feel like a writer but just a typist. I didn't expect Kevin to be the one to help Mitch out here. He just stood up and walked over.  Kevin, I love you!