Towards the date of our departure to Taiwan, while I moped around the house and Gackt stalked the city distributing his seed, I had made a few alarming and overall rather unpleasant discoveries. For instance, the incessant trauma I'd endured for the past several months over trying to successfully bed Gackt (and sadly, not yet being very successful at it) had begun to inflict me with series of increasingly ludicrous nightmares. Okay, perhaps the marginally more suitable term for them would be wet dreams, but their horridness was based that instead of being merely fantasies for the future, the way they used to be, they could (and should) have actually happened in the past.

In one version of my dream, Taki was just reintroducing me to Gackt in his party when upon the first syllable regarding the movie project uttered by Gackt, a huge earthquake ensued and buried Taki's abode as well as the other guests under the rubble. Scarred and battered, I valiantly freed myself from the disastrous remnants, conducted a desperate, heart-wrenching search for Gackt--who in a climatic moment managed to crawl out from under the debris safely, but not without tearing away all of his clothes in the process--and whisked him away towards a dark secluded landscape overlooking the monumental chaos, where we waited for the rescue squad to arrive and engaged in mindless sex.

In another dream Gackt and I were on our way to the dinner meeting with the movie cast when somewhere along a bridge, we came to face with a horrible traffic disaster. (Please imagine stock Hollywood automobile action scenes by yourself.) The accident caused Gackt to be hurled out of the car, fly over the railing of the bridge and get thrown into the freezing depths of the river below. I had to strip off all my clothes, jump into the river after him, tear his limbs free from the reeds which were dragging him down and haul him to the shore, where we wept together in the mercy of our fates and engaged in mindless sex.

In any case, I suspected that my present life and overall sanity would obviously be much more at ease if only I'd begged for Gackt to screw me when I had the chance. Because nowadays, having came to the statistical discovery that Gackt spent a significant amount of his daily schedule shagging top-notch models and half of the rockstar population in the business, his doubtlessly irresistable sex appeal suddenly seemed double the infinite value that it was before. Once I had mentally compiled the mile-long list of witnesses to Gackt's (intolerable but nevertheless still sought-after) bedroom habits, Gackt suddenly didn't seem to be in such attainable distance anymore.

It wasn't so much that sleeping with him would be the ultimate earth-rocking experience compared to how having slept with him supposedly gives an unspeakable affirmation to your mental and sexual status. It was easy to make hysterical fangirls and intellectually challenged models spontaneously combust with lust. But the only sure-fire way you could confirm your self-adequacy regardless of your rank in the business was to have yourself marked by that alienated beauty with a body of a god and a face of a movie star, whose pickiness paled considerably to his uncalled-for impudence towards other people's bodyparts. (And if anyone so much as attempts a cocktail-weiner joke I'll shoot myself.)

I found it a tad worrisome that I was still having erotic fantasies about a certain promiscuous supermodelesque manslut while I was sleeping with Megumi (well, denotatively, anyway), which led to me worrying about my marriage, which led to me worrying about the possible symptoms of an oncoming divorce, which led to me worrying about how I would pay for my trials and lawyer, which led to me worrying about how I would ever able to attract certain promiscuous supermodelesque mansluts if I were a homeless bum having hit a state of rock-bottom bankruptcy in the possible future, and so on with my vicious manic depressive cycle. It got so thoroughly confusing that after days of enduring the aneurysmic effects of pondering these facts and options, I finally came to a startling, unexpected conclusion.

I was thoroughly obsessed with Gackt.

I wasn't used to thinking about another human being outside the realms of my personal space so much. It was truly, excruciatingly eating away at my mind. And my constant thoughts regarding Gackt weren't exactly along the lines of a crush, or a deep, emotional bond concerned with his happiness and wellbeing, or even for a desire to know his needs and wants better. It was more of a what-could-this-guy-be-thinking-about-me-right-now-and-why-the-hell-do-I-care-so-much kind of feeling more than anything else. Gackt's unrevealing presence somehow always successfully preyed on everyone's hidden paranoia about their own selves.

If I could at least convince myself that the significance I bore in Gackt's mind was equal to, if not surpassing, the significance he had in mine, perhaps I would feel a teensy bit less depressed about everything that was happening between us.

I realized that I wouldn't be able to withhold an outstanding position in Gackt's life without first establishing myself a permanent mark in his mind. Problem was, I understood that Gackt's mind was at all hours of the day entirely preoccupied by his own existence and not a damn thing besides.I wanted Gackt to become obsessed with me, but the only thing he could be seriously obsessed about was himself. Which struck me with a truly preposterous but not entirely illogical idea.

To be able to truly invade him, I had to become him.

For the first time I found myself pondering how to seriously correspond with Gackt. Before, I had always regarded him as an undercover Saturnian, a government-project android, a multifunctional sex object, but now, I tried to understand what it must feel like to be him, think like him. Much to my own worry, I began to manage rationalizing to myself all his inane behaviours in the past into a certain thinking perspective that was not entirely the opposite from seeming relatively acceptable. It got to the point where I actually contemplated about stalking him at home and trying out his clothes while he was away, just to establish the self-serving fantasy I had that we had some sort of mental link going on between us based on the fact that I secretly shared with him his most intimate undergarments.

But the risk of him calling the police and banning me from the movie contract should I get caught was considerably very high.

Not to say that I immediately gave up, though. I had my ways.

I started investing vast amounts of time scrutinizing my wardrobe, fruitlessly seeking for a resemblance, any resemblance it bore to Gackt's. As most of the clothes I ever got around in wearing in the past consisted of designer label attire that were immediately dispatched from me and had to be returned to their respective sources the moment I left the photo shoot, the contents of my personal closet that weren't enforced by Megumi's fashion taste (or lack thereof) were of astoundingly low quantity. I reflected on Gackt's current vein of attire and for three days I inflicted myself with an unbearable amount of torture in expensive boutiques by trying out clothes that supposedly accomodated Gackt's personal tastes in fashion, consisting of several shirts with varying (but all extremely high) degrees of loudness and pants that seemed to be solely manufactured to slowly but surely kill one's sperm. Finally I gave up and ditched my fashion-bandit quest on account of my own self-honor. I was obsessed, but not THAT obsessed.

And besides, Gackt was the taste-lacking fashion designer's dream. He could wear even women's lingerie and look like he was a highly aspiring role model ready to publicly endorse something. (Okay, not giving you any ideas there. *cough*) Nevermind how I would look in Gackt's visually agonizing shirts and testicle-crushing pants. Let's just say I'm sure it would lead to overall results opposing in several respects from unrepulsive.

Later on, I went to my stylist. Gackt's hairdo was notorious for its inability to withstand a couple hours' time without the aid of his trusty hairdryer (which I'm sure he secretly kept with him at all times), at least two buckets of hair gel, and the painstakingly calculated ruffling of strands that only certified graduates of beauty school could carry out. My hairdo was notorious for alternating between the Pasted Straw Look and the Frizzy Roadkill Look, depending which stylist I had for the week. (Invariably, though, I would most often settle for the Roots Are Showing Under Incorrigible Mass of Follicle Damage Look, which managed to annoy Megumi infinitely.) However due to the incessant brainwash my stylist had been enduring from my publicity staff probably since the days that dinosaurs still walked the earth, and also because my public sex appeal was fully responsible for the feeding of several hundred households, my heretical attempts at an image change had to be discussed beforehand with my manager, my entire recording label, and around half the whole staff of Shiseido Japan. These long-drawn, infinitely yawnsome meetings dissected my plans for an image change in explicit and tedious detail, describing the length of my hair, shade of color, levels of poofiness and degree of eye-catchiness in expositions so painfully graphic I was practically thrashing about in death throes of boredom. Then, after everybody was finally assured that my stylist wouldn't make an attempt to publicly humiliate me and not to mention significantly damage my record sales, the reconstruction of my public image was finally carried out.

When the makeover was finally complete, I stared at the remarkably aggressive cuteness of my reflection and didn't know whether I should scream or beam. What I'd originally sought for had obviously been achieved, in any case.

I looked exactly like Gackt.

Ever since that dreadful walk-in I conducted between Gackt's inferior complex inducing talents and Kyoko Fukada's impressive moaning techniques, quite understandably, I found myself facing a tremendous effort to work up the nerve in visiting him at his home again. Which was why nowadays I jumped at every opportunity to meet up with Gackt outside the lairs of his red-walled bordello.

I couldn't bear the thought of walking in on the middle of yet another one of his bizarre mating rituals anymore. I just couldn't. Maybe I really was falling in love with him. Or maybe I was just seethingly jealous how he still managed to sleep around with so many famous people in the business and still has them coming back for more (obviously thanks to the dehydrating effects of his *snort* so-called 'endurance'). The thing was ever since I had been inflicted with the Curse of Gackt's Sex Appeal it often took me every grain of willpower I had to not dash to him frantically to see his pay-per-view face and endure his ambiguous fondlings at all hours of the day. The only thing that subdued me from such efforts was my gothic recollections of the Godfather-type situation on that morning when I found myself in bed with Gackt after disgracefully, literally falling asleep on him the night before.

Since it had been confirmed that I was securely bound to the movie contract and none of any possible regretful angst-attacks or bawling fits I might have in the future could change that anymore Gackt had begun lavishing me with less personal affection than he did in the first days we worked together on the script. I rarely even saw him anymore nowadays unless the rest of the Moon Child cast surrounded us at a close distance (half of whom, I noticed, spent the better length of staff meetings trying to have sex with Gackt). Much to my shame, I had descended to the level of the Unrequited Lover and wished I could spend some more time with him alone, if only to confirm that no one else could have his undivided attention at the moment but me. I missed Gackt's twisted humor and criminally lame jokes, I longed for more countless hours of being drilled with his insipid tales of childhood complexes, I yearned for him to stroke my face and gaze at me deeply and dabble nonsense even when we were in lone company together, and I STILL WANTED TO HAVE SEX WITH HIM DAMMIT! Discouraged by being eavesdropped by the other horny actors if I were to approach him at the workplace, as yet I hadn't quite found the perfect timing to conduct a quiet conversation with Gackt regarding my worries of the sleazy vibes between us meddling with our lives as respectable public figures. If thing carried on like this even throughout the movie shoot, I supposed it would only be a matter of time before I would go berserk at the location and roam the streets of Taiwan with a wild look in my eyes, frothing at the mouth and occasionally humping Gackt-resembling objects along the way.

By this point Gackt had often invested significant portions of his time (and ours) in the mostly fruitless attempt to integrate members of the cast in foolish bonding rituals of his choice. This painful routine was ideally attended by me, Gackt, Wang Leehom, Zeny Kwok and Suzuki Anne and consisted of frantic marathons frequenting the most prestigious eating places in Tokyo, inside which the Cantonese-speaking actors and I deliberately jammed our windpipes with food to rid ourselves from the social tension while Gackt and Anne alternately molested me inbetween eating and rushing back and forth to the restroom during meals (presumably conducting their private bulimic competition). Then after dinner we would usually, mercifully partake in much booze-glugging, significantly releasing ourselves from the burden of language barriers and sexual humilities, and I would almost always spend the rest of the night contemplating about the cleanest and quickest method of suicide available amidst the irretrievably ongoing indignity around me--the sort that has Anne assaulting me ferociously while Zeny belted out Cantonese anecdotes at a breakneck pace to the accompaniment of Gackt's and Leehom's thunderously assembled guffaws. In any case gatherings that compiled me, Gackt and practically anybody else in the same room with us were precisely the kind of events that should be avoided like a galloping case of cold sores.

But when Gackt called me up every other weekday to inquire whether I was feeling up to join him with the other cast members to party, I found that I was never capable of refusing him. As whatever arrangement he'd had in mind never failed to be orgies of social embarassment I was doubtlessly being very masochistic by continuously succumbing to his whims. Nevertheless, everytime he rang around, within minutes I'd be desperately doggie-paddling through the hideous mass of clothing in my titanical wardrobe, searching for a dress code that for the occasion of meeting Gackt presumably wouldn't make me lose more face than if I were naked. Then after being vaguely assured that my appearance wouldn't get me arrested in any way I'd jump into my car and tumble out into the streets towards the appointed venue, complete with my newly bleached, pansy-assed haircut (my attempts at a drastic image change which, tragically, Gackt had generously taken note of by enquiring whether I had put on some weight) and my shockingly, actually laundered and ironed clothes--no doubt a tasteful combination for suffering hours of sexual tension on my behalf.

My instinctive impulse upon facing Gackt in the past was always to drive him against the wall and shove my tongue in his mouth, but lately, impressively, I've always managed the habit of giving him a brisk hug and a manly pat on his shoulder whenever I got around in seeing him. This was partially because at this point I had exercised an admirable amount of self-control on my part, but also because most of the time I'd get glomped by Suzuki Anne before I managed to commit anything towards Gackt that would publicly announce me as a qualified pervert.

The only thing that made up for my agonies of enduring Gackt's failed attempts in event organizing was the thrillingly possible chances that he might get himself drunk afterwards. From my one and only experience of having an intoxicated Gackt at my expense, apparently Gackt was actually capable of letting down all his mental defenses under the rare circumstances that he was too deeply immersed in alcohol to give a damn about who he was and how good he should be looking. His unusual lack of idol-consciousness, astonishingly, would then render him to become very cute in the process and eventually, very horny.

Not a safe combination, as you can tell.

I'd begun carrying out my secret mission of trying to get Gackt drunk at all costs after the umpteenth-or-so gathering with members of the movie cast around a week before we left for Taiwan during which, I remember distinctly, I'd guzzled down an ungodly amount of burgundy for the night so as to restrain myself from pulling out Leehom's toenails. Wang Leehom was Taiwan's answer to obscenely talented deity-status musicians resorting to the slovenly ways of moviestardom. From the first moment I met him since Gackt had recruited him for the movie I had instantly acquired a glaring dislike for him, mostly because I couldn't find a single reason in the world at all for anyone to NOT like him. Leehom was reasonably good-looking, reasonably articulate and reasonably appealing towards men and women alike, and unlike Gackt, his charisma wasn't of the kind that immediately made you wonder what it would be like to see him naked the moment you laid eyes on him. Since I knew approximately six phrases in Cantonese and Leehom's Japanese was rusty enough to give a man lockjaw, our correspondence was normally conducted in the English language, inside which he always succeeded in giving me hours of hell by taking his definitely better commands of the language when compared to my three-word sentences to his sadistic advantage. The nights we went out barhopping together were always carried out in this same behaviour, with Leehom unsheathing his best American-Pulitzer expressions that always left me gobsmacked so as to steadily and deliberately drive me to the brink of tears. My kindergarten-level English skills never failed to cause every bout of forced civility I mustered towards him to eventually lead to my intellectual desecration.

At one of Gackt's favorite bars that night, after which my brain temperature had reached boiling point due to Anne's incessant groping and Leehom's incessant verbal torment, I had refrained from exhausting my four-letter-word English vocabulary to respond to Leehom's tongue-twisting quotes only due to my realization that Gackt was oblivious to the social disaster taking place around him and had been snoring softly against my shoulder for quite an incomprehensible while. For a few moments I was torn between the choices of using Gackt's subdued state as an excuse to escape myself from the venue at a rapid pace, and finally granting myself the sought-after chance of rearranging the features of Leehom's smug face now that Gackt positively wouldn't yak on me. However, after a wise, burgundy-based contemplation, I finally settled for the first option, and as a bonus partook great joy from slapping Gackt's face around until he mustered up the willpower to peel himself off the pub's furniture and allow me to drag him to the parking lot. Leehom and Zeny, as it turned out, proved themselves to be of immense help as they took the initiative of opening a new bottle of chardonnay and force-feeding its contents down Anne's throat, thus cutting off her night-long mission to engage me in a public foreplay session and stopping her from clinging to my ankle as I hauled Gackt towards the exit. At this point Gackt had gained just enough consciousness to mutter incomprehensibly while following me to my car with doddery legs, and he curled up passively over the passenger's seat as I started the engine and drove us throughout the mile-long journey towards his house.

To my intense relief, Gackt remained relatively quiet throughout the drive (as even a sober Gackt babbling his head off throughout a car trip would sometimes be enough to perk one's desire of crashing the car into a lamppost just to shut him up, let alone have him ramble while he was drunk). We managed to arrive at his property without any airbag-inflating experiences nor unexpected encounters with breathalyzer tests, and as I led (a slightly swaggering) Gackt off my car and towards the front door my mind had begun to get preoccupied with disturbing visions of Gackt's celebrity shagfests that were presumably still taking place inside. However when we walked inside I found that the place was miraculously empty, and aside from the usual sight of Gackt's obscenely huge self-portrait and eyesore-inducing walls nothing inside the door was of particularly revolting sight. For whatever reason, apparently Gackt's weekly adventures with nude dorama heroines were to be postponed until further notice.

Then, shortly after we had disposed ourselves in the living room and sprawled our forms over his couch, something... happened.

Before I continue, let me give a brief warning that what will happen shortly depicts scenes of a particularly disturbing nature. Never shall I be able to look back on that night when I first got Gackt drunk without feeling an intense surge of something welling up inside of me. In other words, for the faint of heart, please stop reading NOW.

The moment I sat down beside Gackt on the sofa I immediately took note of how adorably different he looked from usual, complete with his (for once, incidentally) tousled hair and slightly glazed eyes, away from the world, away from his masks and demands of perfection. There was a certain blithering innocence to his presence that I had never really taken note of before, perhaps because most of the time he would bury his unguarded wonder beneath his pretentious, melodramatic approaches. But seeing him like this, blissfully unleashed from his own self-demands, it seemed to display him with a pureness that was genuinely and intriguingly strange, not childlike or even remotely angelic, just so... Gackt.

There was no other word to properly convey it, really.

"Gackt?" I addressed, and I found that I had reached out my hand to brush away his hair from his face gently, "What are you like, I mean, you know, really, deep inside?"

He looked up at me with a soft smile playing on his lips and all of a sudden it was as if he were ten years younger; not so much the appearance than the radiant sincerity, his genuine self-expression inside. "I'm who I am. Don't you know me?"

"Yeah, but not.... you know... like this. Other times, you're different. It's like there's actually another you inside."

"I don't get it."

I couldn't resist it. He just looked so gratingly cute at the moment it should be downright illegal. There would never be any other chance for me to see Gackt like this again, possibly ever. Before the situation even allowed itself to dawn on me completely I had committed the truly most preposterous, most disgustingly sappy act ever.

I leaned over towards him and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, like a pre-school tot upon stealing his first kiss.

However all dreamy notions of Gackt's apparent cuteness was brought to an abrupt end as within two seconds after I'd initiated the innocuous physical contact, Gackt had languidly reached out for me, pulled me over swiftly until I partially laid on top of him and for the next fifteen minutes engaged me in the mind-blowing act of a passionate, steamy furenchukisu.

And I assure you that nothing about it was cute at all.

Now anyone who's ever kissed Gackt should know that the pleasure derived from his kissing skills was the rough equivalent to getting a free handjob from the world's most talented call girl, and the pleasant tranquility that the burgundy had caused upon my brain was all that subdued me from breaking into paroxyms of shock and desire the moment I felt his tongue delve into my mouth. Mind you, at this point I was still sober enough to take note of everything that was happening and still manage to stop or to initiate anything that I wanted by my free will, but I was pretty much drunk enough to not give much damn about any of it. Everything about Gackt's kiss, even drunk-wise, was slow, gentle, sensual and an immensely pleasurable feat in itself, that I wouldn't have cared for all the world should any natural disasters ensue at that moment and attempt to interrupt our snogging session by burying us under the rubble. That was just how good Gackt was.

A few breathless moments later, inside which I'd already dissolved into a steaming puddle of Hyde-goo during the first half of it, Gackt broke the kiss and looked into my eyes deeply, his skin flushing attractively as he bit his lip in a way that would have doubtlessly earned him some big-time dosh if he were to do it in a magazine photo shoot.

"Hyde," he murmured as he ran his thumb over my bottom lip, "how would you like to go to my bedroom?"

Hallelujah!

From the moment he said 'bedroom', I had a concrete erection. Finally all these agonizing, embarassing months of waiting, flirting and ogling in my routine encounters with Gackt would be put to a merciful end. I almost created a whole new chapter in the history of premature ejaculation by spunking in my trousers as we rose from the couch and made our way out of the living room, but just managed to keep it in.

Gackt's bedroom turned out to be... quite nice. Rather disappointingly, it was a relatively normal place, and in all respects wasn't too different from how I'd pictured it all along. The sheets were definitely crisp and white, the typical full-length window overlooking city lights spanned across the opposite wall, and there were the odd artpieces here and there that I'm sure must have equalled the price of my first mortgage. But the truth is that I can't be buggered to describe the place any further since the moment we walked inside the room Gackt had begun the priceless ritual of getting himself undressed, and I would be damned if I were to spare any of my attention during it by marvelling at the room's decorative details.

Then, as I was still standing around with my mouth agape after having watched Gackt forcibly tug down the collar to his own shirt open until several buttons popped out in the process, Gackt had swiftly knelt down in front of me, glanced up at me lusciously with his face level with my crotch, slowly pulled down the zipper to my pants and gave me the most superb amazing incredible fucking fantastic blowjob ever.

Or maybe I dreamed about that once.

The real deal was, the moment Gackt had taken off his clothes I immediately grabbed him by the shoulders, turned him around and pushed him until he was lying face-down over the mattress and rapidly started fucking him without so much as bothering to fully rid myself from my own clothes, or for that matter, give the tiniest bout of damn concerning the rules of safe sex.

Yeah.

Uhh...

Okayyy, so while this technically did not happen, I'd planned this scenario thousands of times in my head before. Allow me to subdue myself for awhile, will you?

Because unfortunately, the truth isn't half as exciting as all these. What happened was that we got ourselves undressed, did a little bit of foreplay before briefly interrupting the session by fishing out some condoms and lubricant from Gackt's bedside drawer, assured ourselves that all preparations were complete, then jiggled about for around five minutes before Gackt dismounted me, jerked me off, then disappeared into the bathroom to clean himself up while I restlessly laid on my side and waited for the slightly stinging discomfort in my backside to wear out.

There. Quite boring, actually.

Um...

Actually that one's a fantasy, too. I was hoping I might be able to fend you off with the unerotic, cynical imagination-is-better-than-the-real-thing description, spiced up with the stereotypical seme-uke roles to make it sound a bit more realistic. But no.

I am finding this part very difficult.

Look--it will be far better for all of us if you agree to let me lie about this. I'm far more practised at it. It's infinitely more interesting. And it will definitely put a much sought-after end to my seemingly eternal quest of trying to get into Gackt's pants.

At this point, dear reader, you might be thinking to yourself, "Good Lord, this talented, good-looking, incredibly popular man has been working with Gackt for several straight months in a row--is he going to tell us that they still haven't had sex?"

Well...

In that case, allow me to explain.

We really did get around in reaching his bedroom, I'll give you that. And the undressing part really did happen, to the point where we had sprawled ourselves naked over his bed, kissing and fondling. And the making out part over his deceivingly untainted bedcovers actually did take place, or at least up before the activity became actually connected to intercourse in any way. To tell the absolute truth things were actually carrying on in a gentle, quite enjoyable manner and there was really nothing embarassingly frantic about what we were doing--up to this point I still sensed that everything was going along steadily, successfully and definitely under control.

Then Gackt momentarily ceased our amorous activity to look at me within a particular kind of deep-set expression I'd seen him do so often in the past, his gaze visibly wavering from the effects of the alcohol. I was about to heartily suggest that we take out the condoms before he uttered a word on the subject but then, stroking my face fondly, he piped up in advance, "Hyde... do you like me?"

Wha--?

The question caught me so off guard that I had to ask for him to repeat it, which he did. Straining not to scratch my head in confusion, I stammered, "Why... well, yes, of course I like you, Gackt."

"You actually, really like me?"

"Yes, Gackt." And a certain part of me down there also likes you very very much and very very badly, and unless you start properly acknowledging its existence soon it will probably be condemned to a tragically wasted death in the very near future. However, soon I made my first disastrous error of the entire night by curiously asking back, "Why do you ask?"

Gackt shrugged and snuggled--YES THAT'S RIGHT HE ACTUALLY SNUGGLED--against my chest. "It's just... it just occurred to me how good you've been to me this whole time. I couldn't have achieved so much in the past few months without you, you see. You've held a position in my heart deeper than you may ever come to realize. I find it hard to believe that you've been willing to go through all this... you know, for me."

Oh. No.

The very last thing I needed from Gackt was for him to conduct a thank-you speech on the premises where explicit suggestions of raunchy sex should have undoubtedly taken place instead. This was even worse than the awkward-handjob situation taking place in my bedroom earlier on. Nevertheless the nightmarish possibilities the situation had began to take on had yet to reach its maximum toll.

Misunderstanding my negligence to answer as a holy emotional moment of silence on my behalf, Gackt sighed and said, "Of course. I shouldn't have made myself sound so needy. Forgive my self-degrading drabble. I wouldn't have doubted your equal love towards me in the least. Why else do you put up with so much of my intolerable antics?"

He paused after his own statement, then perked his head up and said, "Why do you put up with so much of my intolerable antics?"

Okay, this was it. This was my one and only opportunity of salvaging what little chance I had to get laid for the night. I would praise his artistic talents infinitely, console whatever inner conflicts he might have secretly withheld, and afterwards hopefully achieve some success in concluding the night's passions by many blissful hours of hip-grinding and condom-using. "Um... because I want to have sex with you?"

He stared at me blankly. "Why would you want to have sex with me?"

I could hear Psycho music in my head.

"Well..." I reached up and scratched my head for real this time, more out of feeling my sanity slide beyond my reach rather than mere confusion. It was strange how I still hadn't adjusted to Gackt's speech patterns even after all this time. "...for one, because you're Gackt."

"And?"

Perhaps the reason why conversations with Gackt always seemed so surreal was because I always found it hard to believe that I was responding to them. "And... and everyone wants to have sex with you, Gackt!"

Silence. (Cue horror movie sound effects: ching! ching! ching!) Finally, after a brief moment of tension, "Everyone?"

I struggled not to climb out of the window and run down the length of Gackt's street, screaming and naked. "Yes, EVERYONE."

Gackt snorted with laughter, much to my disgust. "Aww, get out of here."

"Listen to me, Gackt." Visions of men in white lab coats herding me away to the mental ward danced before my eyes. "I am being deadly serious. Every single female in your fanbase, without exception, plus every single member of your band, half of the members of MY band and most of the other actors and musicians who have or will continue to work with you are ALL, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US, DESPERATE TO JUMP INTO BED WITH YOU AND SCREW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS OUT!"

This took him a while to digest and he pondered the revelation silently, ignoring the inaudible screams of my hard-on begging for his attention. "You really think so."

"YES. Now, about the screwing part--"

"Oh, Hyde," he crooned, haphazardly engulfing me in a sudden embrace--not a sensual linger, but a wide-armed kind of bear hug that instantly killed my mood. "That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I don't know how you've managed to put up with me after so long. Sometimes I can be a really terrible person. I boss people around too much, I blame others for the miserable outcome of my works, and I get fat way too easily."

Eek. Who would have guessed that Gackt, of all people, could resort to such hideously melodramatic self-conscious issues when drunk? What a pansy! I dutifully, awkwardly returned his hug with the grim rigidity of a person who was denied from an urgent and alarming need for sexual release.

"That's not true, Gackt," I consoled him lamely. "I think you're a great person. And," I hastily added, "you're not fat."

Producing a noise which sounded suspiciously like a sniffle, Gackt's ludicrously drunken state of the night reached its crescendo as he looked up at me with piteous puppy-dog eyes and said, "Stay with me, Hyde. Don't ever turn away from me, promise? I couldn't bear it." Then he stuffed his face into my chest again, forcing me to descend to new levels of indignity as I stroked his hair and rubbed his back gently until he was subdued from his seizures of sap.

"That's okay, Gackt," I heard a voice say in soothing concern inside the room, and discovered in a jolt of horror that it was mine. "I'll always be here for you. You can count on that." When I warily peered down at his face to check whether he had left any snot streaks on my chest, I found that he had fallen asleep.

I watched Gackt's peacefully sleeping form for a long while--admiring the way his immaculate grace carried on even throughout his slumber, rendering his features to take on a serene approach to his immense beauty. Definitely a far cry from the patently combined traits of snoring and drooling that other males would obviously acquire in their sleep. I covered up his body with the duvet and slid underneath it beside him, finally giving in to my woes and exhaustion of the day's events as I finally fell asleep with one arm slung over Gackt's bare shoulder and a suffering erection on my part which persisted all throughout the night.

I woke up in the morning with a severely aching penis and the realization that Gackt was nowhere to be found in the bedroom. I put my clothes on and lurked about the house for a few moments before I finally encountered Gackt inside his dining room, which was roughly the size of a private airfield. He was contently perched atop one of the chairs in a manner that made him seem like he'd been there since the beginning of time, complete with assorted croissants surrounding him and the effortful display of mixed fruits. Gackt was trying unnaturally hard to be Caucasian, even down to his daily meals. When I entered, he was nursing a cup of coffee and scrutinizing the stock market section of the newspaper, as if he were an office-bound, Wall Street employee working his ass off for the sake of the national balance rates and not a money-laden superstar who got paid to make teenies scream on a regular basis.

Looking at Gackt's freshly pampered face and clothes, I wondered 1) whether Gackt's curious and unnatural lack of a hangover had anything at all to do with a recent consumption of illegal drugs, and 2) where it was possible for me to get some ASAP.

"Morning," I drawled.

Gackt looked up and soared to outrageous heights of perkiness when he saw me, breaking out in a strangely shrill, high-pitched greeting. "Hyde! Good morning! How was your night? Did you sleep well? Sit down and have some breakfast! Toast? Jam? Cereal? Miso soup?"

I regarded Gackt's abnormally chippery getup and had a sneaking suspicion that, not unlike so many alcohol-induced cases, Gackt's morning had begun with him waking up naked next to me without any recollection whatsoever of how he'd gotten there, nor what he'd gotten himself into the night before. Gackt was nervously bustling around the room while speaking loudly and incessantly, making a really obvious show of trying to prevent me from approaching him regarding anything that presumably happened last night so he wouldn't be forced to acknowledge any of it.

"Hyde, come here sit down here's some really good soup I'll switch on the telly there might be something good on and would you like another cup of tea I'll put on the kettle anyway or would you prefer to listen to the radio in the kitchen yes come to the kitchen and let's turn it on anyway and oh you've met my dog isn't he the most adorable thing you've ever seen don't you like animals Hyde oh I remember you have one at home too that's just fantastic do you think you could bring it over sometime so we could take them for a walk out together and come now Hyde why aren't you eating already I'll yell at my cook if it's not good enough for you and if there's anything else that you might need Hyde..."

If he was currently trying to build an illusion of distant civility towards me to conceal the fact that he might have engaged in shockingly indecent and possibly embarassing activities with me the night before (and in desperation, finding that he couldn't remember any of it) then he was doing a pretty lame job of it.

In any case, I wasn't going to let him get away after having ruined my last night's plans of getting laid and not to mention do a total deconstruction of how he representated his image to me. Thanks to Gackt's undue (and untimely) therapeutical breakthrough the night before I had actually begun regarding him as a real person, one with feelings and possibly even a soul, as an unwanted substitute for the dashingly flawless sex icon he'd taken on inside my mind for so long before.

It just wasn't right.

Then I had an idea.

While Gackt paused for a breath, I sauntered over in his direction and--severely restraining myself from twitching in glee--in half-tiptoe, leaned forwards to catch his lips in a slow, wet kiss.

After awhile I finally broke the kiss, gaining view of a stone-cold, deathly petrified version of Gackt's face. "Why so fidgety, love?" I said hoarsely, seductively sliding my arms around his neck. "You weren't half this nervous when you were begging for me to take you up the ass last night."

Hyde, you kinky, gutter-mouthed whore. You are a God.

Now just WHERE THE FUCK DID THAT BULLSHIT GARBAGE COME FROM???!!!

For the next few seconds time stood completely still. (I mean, it didn't really stand still, it just stopped for a few seconds, I mean--dammit, you know what I mean.) I stood in front of Gackt still with that leery, seductive look plastered on my face, all too ready for the chances of him either laughing me out of his kitchen or immediately firing me from the movie deal.

Then, after a strangled gulp which reverbrated throughout the kitchen, Gackt croaked, "I begged you to--you--I--we had sex last night!"

The tactfully ambiguous tone in his voice was making it very careful to balance the saying between being a statement and a question.

I couldn't believe this. It was fucking incredible! He really was buying this crap! "We had sex last night," I confirmed.

"Yes," he numbly said, incredulously still not admitting to his memory loss. "We did." Slowly, he sat back down at the table, nursing an intensely perturbed look in his eyes as he audibly wracked every brain cell he could muster to scrape up any sort of relevant memory whatsoever.

At this point I was standing at the far end of the dining room, my shoulders violently shaking as I faced the window sill and clamped my hand over my mouth to prevent my howls of mirth from blowing the room apart. Being the perpetually sentimental being he was, it was in no time before Gackt took note of my suppressed emotional outburst and rushed to my side before collecting me in his strong, fragrant, muscular embrace.

"Now, now, Hyde, what's wrong?"

I suffocated myself into his chest, my shoulders never ceasing to jiggle with my laughter, or as Gackt interpreted it, my heart-rending sobs of inner pain. It was quite some while before I managed to peel my face away from him and gasp for air. Obviously mistaking my snuffle as a sniffle, Gackt carried out his yet most preposterous attempt of consoling me by sympathetically clucking his tongue like an ovulating chicken--"Tsk! Tsk! S'alright! S'alright!"--which, as you can tell, was not doing much to prevent me from breaking into yet another round of hysterical shudders.

"It's just--" I managed to choke out finally, adding the bonus of wiping my (definitely moist) eyes for a more convincing effect. "It's just that--that you seem to be a bit of... regretting the whole thing."

My God. I was actually enjoying this! I should have made it big in the acting business since a long time ago! Un-fucking-believable.

Gackt responded by emitting a long, soulful sigh--no doubt his cue for the beginnings of a long-winded speech. My bouts of hilarity were subdued as I realized that another one of Gackt's decade-long verbal ostentations was ready to soon drown me in giant waves of gut-wrenching boredom.

"Hyde," he began, "What we have between us is... something of exceptionally and extraordinarily rare nature. Don't ever think that I don't adore you at every moment of day. You musn't think that I don't care for you with all my heart. I cherish you just as much as I cherish all those other men and women who have been granted the insurmountable fortune of bedding me in the past. (Uh oh!) Some people are men of passion--but us, we are both men of duty, with the burden of responsibilities we must carry to prevent us from running away from ourselves. (Huh?) I have always found a tender, soothing balm for the wounds of my soul in your passionate presence. (Vomit) Our love is unique, unmatchable, and shall eternally be embedded in our hearts. (Bucket number two, please.) But although there is a fiery spark between us, there are other, more permanent bonds that I have with myself and my career, bonds which cannot be easily broken. I salute you for what you have taught me, but I hope you will be able to accept these unbreakable rules in my lessons of love as well."

"Oh," I said. "Okay."

"And..." He was silenced with the painful effort of pondering how he was going to get around in asking me the Big Question without admitting himself to be a total flake in the process. I delightfully allowed him to take his time. "Last night you... er... how do I say this... did you enjoy... I mean... what was it like... to... er... you know..."

"How it was like to screw your lovely butt?" I helpfully concluded. "Damned enlightening experience, if you don't mind my saying."

"Er... yes." Cringing, Gackt unconsciously lifted one hand to rub at his (technically, unmolested) bottom. "Well... it certainly provided some helpful insights for me as well."

I decided I'd inflicted him with enough torture for the morning as it was. "By the way, you're right. Using condoms wasn't really that bad a deal after all."

He significantly sagged against my form as a tremendous wave of relief swept over him. "No. No, it isn't."

"After all," I purred, "there's only so much that can take away from the qualities of your marvelous ass." Then with an appreciative slap on his butt I sashayed to the dining table to have some breakfast, leaving Gackt to embark on the beginnings of a major seme-complex anal-phobia homosexual identity crisis by himself.

So there you have it. That's the whole, uncut, uncensored truth truth. Statistically embarassing feat it may be that I have never even metaphorically laid a hand on Gackt's ass, that was how I managed to persuade him into a relationship where, even up to the day of our departure towards the movie set, he was thoroughly convinced that he'd once been the sufferable bottom of my guttural bedroom endeavors. Anyway--as I've quoted from one of Gackt's immortal sayings in the past--bottom is as bottom does, and besides it was all I could do to stop Gackt's super-gigolo shows of parading his treacherously inaccessible limbs around me to further taunt my self-inadequacy issues in the future.

The trip to Taiwan was going to make for a very promising one indeed.