“Uh, yea, yes.” The voice sounded genuinely surprised, and suddenly very, very young. “Uh, do you…do you know the Starbucks on – on Central Avenue?”
“Sure, uh, when?”
“Now…is, uh, now good?”
“well,” No, now wasn’t good. I needed to call Loretta, Pete, one of them needed to come with me, so I didn’t make a total fucking ass out of myself in front of this kid. So this kid didn’t make a mockery out of me. I didn’t even get the thing, didn’t even necessarily want it, but even then something was screaming at me not to fuck this up.
“What the hell.”
*
So suddenly I’m sitting at Starbucks, glaring down at my hands and wondering when the fuck this guy is gonna get here. I’ve had three skim-milk lattes, and a full-fat cappuccino by the time some skinny, fragile little thing slips through the crack in the door. A box quite possibly bigger than him hiding everything other than a pair of spindly arms that have somehow wrapped themselves around it.
It’s almost half past twelve in the morning by this point, and the night-shift staff have been trying to close up around me for the last two hours.
The box is placed as carefully as possible in the chair opposite me, and I cast eyes on a face that is sort of, maybe familiar, only completely not. He looks even skinnier this close, and I lose all the terrifying possibilities of being bashed or something. I think Paris Hilton’s fucking Chihuahua could’ve taken him down.
He casts me a shaky smile, all badly concealed fragility as he thrusts a long, quivering hand at me.
I shake it, and don’t bother introducing myself. I don’t realise until later that neither does he.
“Hi.” He says, in one slightly heaving sort of sigh.
“Hi.” I say, and his shaky little smile maybe grows a little more steady.
Maybe this kid is excited.
He’s giggling nervously now, collapsing a stack of papers onto the table, rifling through them so quickly that I doubt he’ll find what he’s looking for.
Scratch the maybe, and excitement has always been contagious, especially to someone as ADD as me. Soon we’re both grinning like maniacs, and I sure as fuck have no idea why.
“It’s not…I’ve never…I don’t want to write about bullshit, Brendon, I don’t want this film to be about how many fucking car crashes, shoot outs and sex scenes I can fit into ninety minutes, y’know? I want, this whole thing, it’s just…it’s people, and…”
He’s so nervous, so… shy, and already I can tell its taking all he has to not pass out, collapse into a quaking mess in front of me.
“I’m not very good at this.” He says, running his endlessly spidery fingers through his scruffy hair.
“That’s ok,” I say, “to be honest, neither am I.”
He nods, and casts me another hesitant smile, before glancing around the room. “Is it just you?”
“Uh, yea, I guess.”
“Isn’t that…dangerous?”
I shrug, “Probably.”
Ross gives me a strange look, “Aren’t you worried I’m gonna scam you or something?”
“Not really.”
“Okay, well that’s good…coz I’m not and…Do you have any questions?”
“More of a statement, really.”
“Yea?”
“I don’t get it.”
His eyes widen, and his mouth opens a bit. I don’t think he was expecting that. Years later, he’ll tell me that those four words made his admiration for me as an actor go down about four notches. Apparently I’m supposed to be capable of adapting to any and all situations, able to understand every plausible character, script and scenario.
“Oh. Uhm, anything particular.”
“Uh, well, mostly, all of it.”
“Oh.” He’s taken aback, all that previous excitement that made him go a mile-a-minute is gone, and he’s almost withdrawn into himself. His cheeks flushed and his voice stammers even more than it did before. He’s tired and embarrassed and maybe a little teary.
“Look, I don’t…It’s- it’s not intentional, it’s just…wait.” The way his hair is falling over his face right now, the way he tucks those strands of hazel threads behind his ear, it’s all so, so fucking familiar. The muttering, the long, lanky, bony form, that…that everything.
“Is it George or Ryan now?” I say, before I can even comprehend what I’m saying.
His head bounces up so fast, I’m convinced it’ll snap off. He stares at me a second, before the most natural grin I’ve seen all night spreads across his face. “Always been Ryan, really. You still God, or just Brendon, now?”
And yea, that just confirmed everything, and how the fuck do I remember him, and why the hell isn’t he still waiting tables in no-where land?
“A lot happens in three years.” He said, and I hadn’t realised that I’d asked that question out loud.
“Yea.” I say. “Yea.”
And I don’t know what makes me do it, say it, don’t know why or how or anything, just before I can stop myself, before I can even begin to think about taking my eyes off that tiny, honest grin, my mouth has opened and I say the five words that is really quite high on my list of regrets.
“Hey, you wanna come over?”
Maybe this was another beginning. Maybe, as I grabbed a stack of Ryan’s papers from across the table, I was about to delve not into a new chapter, but into an entirely different book altogether. An epic of angst and scandal and…and love (as fucking corny as that sounds).
In reality, there aren’t too many ‘maybes’ about it.
Things were about to fall apart really, shatter into more little pieces than I would ever be capable of counting. Pages were being torn from the book of my 19-year-life, everything was about to be wrong and right and just different.
But of course, back then I didn’t know this. Had no idea as to the extent of what I was doing, no idea as to the chain of events I was about to unleash on not just my own life, but the lives of a whole bunch of other people as well.
And that’s just it, isn’t it? No one ever knows.
It’s probably wrong, that this is my reasoning. That this is the fact that I pin the blame on.
That night, I smiled at Ryan, and held the door open for him as we left Starbucks.
*
It’s a big fucking lie to say that only those with low self-esteem ever feel self-conscious. Seriously. I had – have – the ego of a fucking…well, celebrity, but that didn’t stop me from feeling uncomfortable as we slid into my million-dollar-car towards my multi-million dollar apartment complex. None of this was helped by Ryan’s blatantly awed expression, the wide eyes, the slight ‘o’ his open mouth made.
As I head to the complex-car park, bellboy waiting at the door with drowsy eyes, Ryan’s appearance hits me harder than it should. He doesn’t belong here, not with un-styled hair, ripped jeans and a clingy no-brand t-shirt.
Fuck, he probably got his shoes from K-Mart.
“Uh, wait.”
Ryan is staring at me now, eyes still wide, but hey, at least he’s closed his mouth.
“Uh, here.” I pull off my jacket (Gucci), and thrust it at him.
“I’m not cold.” He says.
“Yea.” I say. Pleasejusttakeit pleasejusttakeit. Don’t make me explain. Don’t make me be an asshole.
But Ryan’s bright, and he’s caught on. He’s flushing a bit though, red in the cheeks, but he takes it, fingers the material before slipping it over his shoulders.
Now he looks like an LA hobo who stole a too-big jacket. Splendid.
The bellboy opens my door first, eyes still droopy and sleep-ridden, and all I can think of is how much I don’t want him to see Ryan right now.
I get out, and race past him to get to Ryan’s door, but Ryan’s let himself out, is eyeing off the other cars, the entrance to the apartment building, taking it all in, taking everything in.
“That’s it.” I tell the bellboy, shoving a fifty at him and grabbing Ryan’s frail arm, dragging him through the foyer and into the glass elevator.
“It’s huge.” He mumbles, although I am starting to think that this is his normal speech intensity, chronically uncertain. He doesn’t look at me, just fingers the cuffs of my jacket, the shoulders are too wide, and the sleeves a little too short. He’s so thin.
“It’s not…” Only it is, this whole building is brilliant. I know, because I wouldn’t have chosen anything less after my first big pay check. Cue the awkwardness again.
“It is.” He says, “But that’s ok.”
“Alright.” I reply, and stare out the glass as we head on up to my penthouse suite.
*
“Do you have any pets?”
This is the first thing that he says to me when we get to my apartment.
“No.”
“I do. I have a dog, a beagle called Dorian, a cat called Isabella and a lovebird called Roger.”
I don’t know what spurns this, but looking him over, still standing there awkward, I think it might be because he doesn’t like silence as much as he lets on.
“Ok.”
I busy myself with the lock, swiping my card, entering my pin. Safety measures, all of it, no one can get in, no one can get out.
“We should be quiet…my friend Jon will probably be asleep. I don’t want to wake him up.”
“Jon Walker?”
“Yea.”
“Ok.”
Staring, I wait for him to continue, gesture even, but he doesn’t. He’s just waiting for me to open the door.
So I do.
It takes a while, a bit of fumbling around in the dark, but we make it to my bedroom, which I kinda figured was the best place to talk without disturbing Jon, who was currently sprawled over my leather sofa, ice-hockey game playing softly in the background. The apartment wasn’t that big really; well it was, just only my bedroom and the bathrooms were properly closed off.
“Make yourself at home.”
Ryan just stands in the doorway though, sizing it all up, imprinting these first impressions on negatives, developing them somewhere in the darkroom of his mind.
“Right.” I say, throwing myself down on my king-size ultra-awesome bed. Comfort to the max. When it dies some five years later I will miss it more than I thought possible.
“Scarlet’s just scared really.” He says, “She’s very young and has been thrown headfirst into something she doesn’t understand. She’s Catholic and is actually sincere about it. She…she’s just scared, scared of being surrounded by a million people but really just being left there, suffocated by bodies that mean nothing to her. She’s scared that she’s alone. That’s why she sleeps with him. Paul.”
“What?” I say, but I know what he’s talking about. He’s talking about the girl, from the concept, the script, whatever the fuck it is.
“Paul’s married though, to Jelena. Jelena isn’t from America, but when people ask she always says she’s from Texas. She doesn’t remember where she’s from. Jelena’s not happy, Brendon, her heart is in shreds, but she loves Paul. Paul only loves his job though. Loves his job and maybe might love Scarlet if she sleeps with him enough.”
“Paul’s a lawyer.” Ryan says, and he must’ve lost his momentum, because he’s trailed off, and looks so fucking tired and drawn out and like he genuinely wants me to get this. “Paul works with Timothy. Timothy loves nothing. Timothy’s empty.”
“Ok.” I say, and Ryan sits on the floor, like a child who’s never been asked to come sit at the big person’s table. “Ok.” I say again.
A few minutes later he’s still sitting there, not looking at me, just staring at the floor. It sounds funny to me, these characters, because Ryan doesn’t sound like he’s explaining fiction to me…he sounds like he’s trying to explain himself. He sounds like Scarlet and Jelena and Paul and Timothy, like a huge bundle of all these people that love everything and love nothing at the same time.
I still don’t get the concept, but now I’m starting to wonder if it stems more from the simple fact that I don’tget him.
But maybe I’d already suspected that. LA’s full of cardboard cutouts, carbon copies, replications of the latest thing, latest fashion, trend, style. This is what sells. Ryan isn’t cardboard (even if he’s as thin as it), and Ryan still doesn’t belong here, Ryan will never belong here in a world that cares more about sex and drugs than they do about passion and love and words.
Ryan cares too much about the idle things or…maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe it’s everyone else.
“What’s this?” He asks, and out of nowhere he’s found that fucking book.
That leather bound- thing of Catherine’s and of Mum’s, that thing I hadn’t so much as glanced at over the three years since I got it, yet had managed to launch itself at a boy who hadn’t been in my room for more than thirty seconds.
“Nothing.”
But he’s opened it, is flicking through the pages, smiling even. “There’s a whole lot of it.”
“Just something my sister gave me before I left.”
“Must be special then.”
“Not really.”
Ryan doesn’t look at me, just keeps skimming, smiling and touching words, letters with his spidery fingers.
“ If only for today,” He mutters, reading, “I am not afraid. ”
He looks at me now, with those big doe eyes, and he’s still smiling ever so softly. Maybe it isn’t that he doesn’t belong here, maybe it’s that everyone else doesn’t. I don’t know.
I don’t think I really looked at him before now. Well I did, but I didn’t really see him. I saw skinniness and hair and spindly limbs. But suddenly there were these eyes that just seemed to appear out of nowhere, like he blinked and suddenly those old, dark things were gone and in their place were these big, bright almonds that weren’t so nervous or uncertain. These eyes were steady, and weren’t a thousand years older than they were supposed to be. They were young and beautiful and certain.
All of a sudden, he wasn’t this nervous boy, and suddenly I’m thinking that he never really was, he was just unsure of me. The photographic first-impressions were still developing in that petite little head of his, he was still deciding if I could be trusted with these ideas. That’s why he only gave me a part of the concept. He didn’t want me to get it. He wanted me to track him down, to want this whole thing as much as he wanted it.
“Hey,” it’s another one of those situations, where my mouth is moving before my brain can process it, “do you wanna stay the night? It’s too late to call a cab.”
Ryan stares at me, (he does this a lot), and then nods, crawling onto the bed beside me, all restrained confidence.
“ If only for today,” He whispers again, “I am not afraid.”
*
I wake up alone. For some reason, this comes as no surprise.
Only, on the door is a post-it note.
Tell your manager we’ll talk.
*
I’m pretty sure I mentioned earlier the utterly terrifying force that is an angry Loretta.
This morning, you might want to multiply that by a bazillion.
“Fuck.” She says, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK!”
“Calm down” says Jon.
“Shut the fuck up.” Says Loretta.
I’m sure you’re sensing a pattern by this point.
By this point, I had set up house in the corner, praying to the God that I don’t believe in that maybe Loretta won’t be mad at me. Of course, this is a false hope, or maybe God’s just pissed off that I’m working the atheist scene.
“Brendon.” She screeches, “Just…just fuck, seriously. Do I need to buy you a fucking leash? Just… fuck!”
She stormed into my apartment at about fourteen minutes past ten o’clock, fuming something fierce, with the only notable cause being a scrunched up wad of paper (a magazine?) in her hand.
She’d been screaming ever since.
It was now thirty five minutes past ten o’clock.
“Calm down.” Jon says again, only this time he’s a little more serious, a little less teasing.
Suddenly she stops screeching, only now she’s heaving, which is also quite scary if you ask me, and before either Jon or I can say another word, she’s slapped the wad of papers down onto the table in front of us.
Ah.
The thing with tabloids is that they have their spies everywhere. This is bad. Very, very bad. Especially when you’re a young male celebrity, who half-snuck a boy into his apartment at ass-o’clock. Especially when you’re name is Brendon Urie and this boy is wearing your jacket, and your hand is quite possibly latched onto his arm.
This is bad also, when they have photos of the same boy leaving your apartment in the early morning, looking tired and dishevelled.
Basically, this is bad. Especially when you – I – didn’t actually get laid.
“Brendon…” Loretta starts, and the throbbing vein in her forehead has started to die down a bit – this is a good sign. “Baby, my job is to protect you. Not just that, but also your career. This is what I am paid for.”
I start to say something, but Loretta puts up a hand. “I help you chose films, make sure that you don’t chose anything that’ll, you know, fuck up whatever chances you had in this industry. I guide you into cliques and girlfriends and social circles, Brendon, this is my job. My job, unfortunately, also involves ensuring that the media doesn’t eat you alive. Ok?”
Everything she said was slow and paced, like she was talking to a small child or someone with severe mental disabilities.
“So, baby, sweetheart, next time you wanna go out with this, or any other pretty young thing with no boobs and a cock, make sure you take fucking Audrey, because at least then the headlines will be ‘Brendon’s kinky threesome’ as opposed to ‘Brendon’s homoerotic affair’!”
She slams the magazine down in front of me and storms into the bathroom. Her screams are still audible.
Jon picks up the magazine before I get the chance to. “Christ, Ryan’s skinny.”
I just nod, eyeing off the tiny-probably-not-actually-there spot of dirt on the table.
“Loretta’s not that mad, just Pete and your fucking publicity agents have been up her ass all morning about it.”
“We didn’t fuck. We were just talking.”
“I know.”
“Huh?”
Jon rolled his eyes, “Ryan and I talked before he left this morning. Besides Bren, you’ve never been quiet when you’re sexing it up.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
The bathroom door creaked open, and Loretta strides back into the kitchen, looking maybe a little less homicidal.
“Ok.” She says, taking in a deep, meditative breath, “Brendon, I’m not going to sugar coat this, ok? This is bad. This is astronomically bad, and if you are gay then you need to tell me now, that way I actually stand a chance of ensuring that you are not typecast as a homosexual for all your future roles and thus stand a somewhat fulfilling career.”
Wait, what? “No! I – no. ”
Loretta shoots me another long, dark look. Still questioning.
“ No. ” I say again, “I’m a boob and pussy guy.”
Loretta’s silent for a minute, still watching me with a level of intensity I’m not actually used to from her.
To divert her attention, I pick up the magazine and thrust it at her again. “Meet R. Ross.” I say, “He wants to talk to you.”
It takes a certain type of person to be an effective reporter. A specific personality with definitive, dominant characteristics.
It’s not just the obvious either, not just, y’know, nosy, in-your-face…shameless. It’s more than this really.
These people have to be capable of crawling beneath your fingernails, under your skin. They have to tiptoe their way through your digestive system, small intestines, stomach, seep into your blood, scour your lungs. They have to creep and edge and talk their way into your head and your heart until your mouth elopes with them, says things that you don’t want to say.
This is their job.
The bad ones, the crappy reporters, they’re a dime a dozen. Everywhere. They don’t even breach the dirt beneath your nails, can’t even talk their way past the dead cells layering your skin. The good ones though, they bury themselves so deep into your respiratory, your nervous, your circulatory system that they’re inside you, you’re sharing your body with this parasite.
They’re reading you like a book, using every nervous twitch or spasm or blink, every moment of weakness to their never-ending advantage.
Fuck, I hate reporters.
“Are you ready, Brendon?”
This is, without question, the thing that all celebrities loathe about their own fame. The press.
The people and microphones and the cameras and the flash! Flash! Flash! of everything.
The people and technology that eat up your glory and spit out whatever makes you human.
“Brendon?”
“I’m ready, Kal.”
Kal was my publicity agent at the time. He wouldn’t last long though, on account that he was an asshole. But that’s another story, really.
The thing with personal lives when you’re famous is the fact that they are actually non-existent. They are taboo, contraband, they are not allowed.
The thing with a pretty boy leaving your apartment at 6am, however innocent that the meeting may have been, is that it automatically means I fucked him.
Which, apparently, means the public has a right to know. To hear the denial or affirmation from the parties involved.
The parties involved being me. People don’t really give a shit about Ryan yet.
This is all familiar though. Being thrown down the hallway, propped on a pedestal to sit above a sea of soul-sucking, body-invading reporters.
Kal, Loretta and Pete figured a press conference would be good to promote my about-to-be-released film, my future career, to confirm the rumours about Audrey (however untrue the fact of her being my girlfriend was) and to dispel the ones about Ryan.
Right.
“Mr. Urie!”
Fuck, I hate reporters.
“Mr. Urie! Mr. Urie!” A pretty blonde is screaming for me, more a groupie than a professional interrogator. “Mr. Urie, there have been many rumours about a dramatic set-back in the post-production of your latest film ‘Red Wine’. Is there any truth to this?”
Not even the fingernails.
“No. The film is on schedule and is due, I believe, for release by the end of the month.”
Pens are scribbling, fingers typing, cameras flashing. Rush, rush, rush, ru-
“Mr. Urie, Mr. Urie!” Dark-haired, nervous bloke. “Are you able to tell us anything about your next step? I mean, you’re such a recognised name now; films must be coming left, right and centre. Anything sitting at the top of the pile?”
Doesn’t even scrape past the dead skin cells.
“Well, there are a few titles that have…worked their way up, peaked my interest, y’know? However, I’m not at liberty to talk specifics until things have been confirmed.”
The man nods, and we’re back to the scribbling pens and thinking heads.
“Mr. Urie.” It’s a pale, petite woman, dark-haired, suited in baby-pink. Her pen is in the air, relaxed, she knows she’ll get her turn. “Mr. Urie, are you open to discussion of the young man leaving your apartment two days ago?”
She’s polite.
Fuck.
She’s dangerous.
She’s at my skin already, digging away with the ease of…I dunno, something that digs with no difficulty. A shovel.
“Of course.” Smile sweetly, don’t let them see a weakness, they’ll pounce, these vultures.
“Who was he?”
“A potential colleague.” This is rehearsed, pummelled into my head by Loretta, “I’m actually interested into committing to a script he’s written, and-“
“Strange time for a meeting.” She says, and she’s smiling as well. Everything’s fine, everything is good and well, so long as she smiles, says please-and-thank-you and never, ever, raises her voice.
But I can feel her inside me already, crawling just under the surface of my skin. This tiny, bony woman is more than capable. She’s good at being a reporter, she knows what gets to people, and this whole Ryan-discussion is getting to me more than I thought it would.
“Well, it was the only time that both of us were available in the near future.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Me too. “Those hours are exceptionally awkward.” I know.
“Yes, well, I live an exceptionally awkward lifestyle, Miss…”
“Doherty.” She says, “Laura Doherty.”
I nod, and gesture for the next question. A man a few paces from her opens his mouth, but Laura isn’t ready to give in that early.
“Mr. Urie, there’s rumours that this relationship is more than strictly professional.”
Smile, smile, flash a snapshot of white teeth.
“Well, it’s not, Miss. Doherty.”
And she’s there before I can move on again, working her way up my oesophagus, into my mouth, back down my trachea, into my lungs. I can feel her brushing against my cilia, she’s breathing for me already. Fuck.
“That’s not what I’ve heard.” She mutters, although it is clearly meant to call attention.
“What?”
“Mr. Urie, a witness who, well, chose to remain anonymous for…obvious reasons, states that not only did they see you take him into your bedroom,” What the fuck? “But they also heard you and him begin to perform sexual acts.”
“What? No! I’m not - I have a girlfriend.”
But I’m stuttering, I’m flushed. LA doctors would diagnose these symptoms to be that of a particularly nasty parasite.
“Right, Miss. Doherty, is it?” Loretta’s my knight in shining armour, my vaccine, all toothy grin, and terrifying slits for eyes.
Laura nods again, pen leaving an inky stain as it is held to the paper.
“Right, see, it’s one thing, to be using cutesy grins and bright blue eyes to squeeze a story out of someone, it’s another to act like a press-whore and use obviously faulty rumours to get a rise out of a career person with a reputation to uphold. Shut your mouth, or pack up your shit. Seriously.”
Loretta’s eyes are wide and welcoming now, and she glances back over the crowd.
“Next question please.”
And Laura packs up her shit.
*
Audrey wasn’t my only casual-fuck-turned-friend.
Realistically, I had a few.
I’d met Susannah Warpole backstage at a Pussycat Dolls concert. We’d fucked in the girls’ toilets, and afterwards she had given me a half-smirk and written her phone number on my arm.
Дата добавления: 2015-11-04; просмотров: 28 | Нарушение авторских прав
| <== предыдущая лекция | | | следующая лекция ==> |