*
Loretta was right, Monique was a rising star – one that would fall, so don’t worry if you have no clue as to who she is – which became apparent faster than I could comprehend. Suddenly, everyone knew who I was.
I was Brendon Urie. I was Monique’s latest trinket.
The film was a disaster upon cinema release, and was quickly covered up. Monique’s name wasn’t even attached, and her hair was swiftly dyed back to its original colour so as to lose whatever connection still existed.
Her publicist made up a fairytale on the spot, so as to not reveal the film. We’d known each other since we were very young of course, met in elementary school, grown up on the same street and all. In fact, I’d been insanely in-love with her since I was 9.
I am not ashamed to say that I used Monique, and yes, that is a terrible thing to say.
I am slightly more ashamed to say that in the seven months I dated Monique, that I used a lot of people.
Used hundreds of heads and hearts and souls so as to claw my way to the top of the LA circuit. Socialite by evening, bitch the rest of the goddamn day.
Script after script poured through my door, desperate directors seeking newest Hollywood star. Likes long walks on the beach and snorting cocaine.
Suddenly I was famous, famous in my own right. Not Brendon Urie, Monique’s trinket, Brendon Urie, LA’s newest star, stealing the spotlight from Heath Ledger, Orlando Bloom, Ashton fucking Kutcher.
I was it.
*
“Loretta.”
“Yea?” She said, pencil tucked behind her ear, deep, red polish on the table as she painted her nails with the intense care that she took with all her actions.
“How would you go about breaking up with someone who you can’t really ever remember agreeing to date?”
Loretta looked up at me with a quirked eyebrow and an upturned lip, “What the fuck are you going on about?”
“Monique.”
“What about her?”
“Do you actually ever remember me saying that we were dating?”
“Am I supposed too?”
“You’re my manager.”
“So?”
I gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes, placing the tiny brush delicately back into the glass bottle. “You breaking up with her?”
“Looks like.” I replied, staring at her as she blew on her fingers.
“’bout goddamn time, that bitch annoys the fuck outta me.”
“You should try dating her.”
Loretta shot me a grin. A month ago she’d cut her hair, so it now fell in soft dark curls around her face. She might’ve been pretty if she wasn’t such a snarky whore.
“Glad I don’t really.”
I threw myself back into the sofa across from her, letting her sigh in that condescending way that only intelligent women can really pull off.
“Brendon, when it first became apparent that you and slutty were ‘together’, do you remember what I told you?”
Shrugging, I tilted my head to look her in the eye, “I think I recall hysterical cackling.”
“As your friend, I said that you needed someone smarter than her. As your manager, I listed the advantages of dating someone like Monique in this industry. Hatred of the bitch aside, Monique is a teen-starlet, by dating her you made a name for yourself. Now you are a teen starlet. Either dump her or impregnate her. That’s all that’s really left to do.”
I stared at her for a bit, and Loretta just shrugged and let loose an insane little grin.
“You’re shit at giving advice.”
“I’m your fucking manager, Bren, what did you expect? Want love advice or a pity fest then go to fucking Jon.”
So I did.
He told me to dump her. Getting her pregnant probably wasn’t worth the trouble.
*
With the scandal that leaving Monique caused, it seemed my notability in the tabloids doubled. Now, not only was I a hot, teen-starlet, but I was a single, hot teen-starlet.
My fanbase doubled instantly, as did the scripts pouring through my LA flat.
So I did all that was left for me to do, I worked. Acted. I delved in the good and the bad and the teen and the horror and in the everything that peeked my interest.
I was a star, and really, that’s all there was to it.
*
To my mother, first impressions were very important.
My mother said that my father gave a good first impression. That he was strong and kind and wore the imprint of his good heart on his sleeve. She said that the moment she met him, she knew he was the man she was going to marry.
She told me this when I was 12, and I wasn’t really sure what she meant. I asked Catherine.
Catherine told me that Dad had two hearts, a good one and a bad one.
She told me that Mom knew she was going to marry Dad.
She told me that just because she knew, didn’t mean she wanted too.
Have you ever read something so unbelievably moving that it somehow succeeded in changing your life? Well, not necessarily moving, maybe just pretty, touching, maybe fucking confronting, so in your face that you have to re-read it a few times just to grasp that yea, it actually said that.
And alright, yeah, perhaps it didn’t change your life, didn’t alter you all that dramatically. Maybe it just changed your outlook, changed your perspective, changed that day, that week. If you’re lucky (or maybe unlucky), maybe it changed you.
All they are are simple letters sketched out on a page, written however, with so much thought and intention that it somehow bridges that ocean-wide gap between author and reader and touches something within you. Words that run races past your eyes and down the tubes and roads in your brain to make contact with something so deep inside you that you hadn’t even known it had existed – something that maybe hadn’t existed before you’d read it.
These words are rare, and in reality, have more similarity to an illicit drug than plain literature – these words are like cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, one taste and all you want, all you can think about is how to get your next hit. All you want is more and more and more until the first crappy Disney remake brings you hurtling back down to earth.
This script didn’t hit me like this. It didn’t do anything for me, no butterflies or tingles, no furious sweats or throbbing heart. If you asked me my first impressions…well, they were less than grand.
Despite my sceptical opinions of it, everyone else was taken with it. They seemed to believe it was air. People were breathing this thing, these words, they loved it. They were addicted to the words of some nameless atrocity.
And just for the sake of furthering my point, it was hardly a script, more a wad of what couldn’t be more than 20 A4 pages. These were the words of some fucking kid who had more imagination than he could handle. This was some kid’s fucking hand-written concept that had somehow ended up on my dining room table.
…Sorry.
Yeah, you probably guessed it, I’ve gotten a bit ahead of myself, a bit too far into this long story. Sorry, just give me a second.
Oh yeah.
The next few years pass me by in such an obscene haze of blinding lights, tabloid gossip, quick fucks and friends who in any other lifetime, I wouldn’t have called friends.
In other words, six feature films and a cameo on Scrubs later, I’m 19.
19 years old, and so fucking famous that my head resembled that of a deforested site. Loggers had come and cut down my insides, killed off the green growth and planted seeds of a totally different personality. Seeds of disrespect and arrogance and a blatantly large ego. The sort of personality that I had always hated in other people - that I still hated in other people.
It’s been three years since I came to LA. Three years of being the ‘it’ boy of American film and TV, the talk of the town, what all the girls wanted and what all the boys wanted to be. So yea, maybe the ego was understandable…not right, but a little understandable.
Things that come along with being this, with being everything I was, was job after job. The mountains and mountains of scripts sent my way, the millions of phone calls and pitches and people just dying to work with me.
And then there was that script, that pitch, that person who maybe didn’t care if he worked with me or not (which was a first at the time).
On May 13th, a thin bundle of papers that really couldn’t pass as a script – not a complete script anyway – made its way onto my dining room table.
A wad that could be no more than 20 A4 sheets wide, 20 sheets with a blank coverpage.
Not blank, on second glance.
In tiny, tiny font were the words ‘Build God, then we’ll talk.’
Nobody knew how it got there, not Loretta or Pete or anyone.
I didn’t read it. At least, not right away.
*
“I dunno.” I said, meeting Loretta’s dark eyes as she glared at me from across the room.
“What’s not to know, Brendon? This script is un-fucking-believable. If this thing is pulled off-“
“But that’s just it, isn’t it? Whose to say this will be pulled off? It’s a few fucking pages of bullshit trying to sell us a half-finished concept. We don’t know who else the author has sent it to, who’s attached, all we know for certain is that R. Ross is a fucking no-name in a world that is all about the god-damn names.” Oh mum, if you could only see me now.
Loretta shot me another scathing glare as she lifted herself from her seat behind the wooden desk. She was all refined rage today, first hints of withdrawal from the cocaine-words. She was being deprived of her next hit.
“You were a fucking no-name, Urie, so do not give me that bullshit, I don’t want to hear it. If you got as much talent as this kid clearly has pouring out of his fucking ass, you’re gonna-“
“Ladies,” To be honest, I think we’d both forgotten Pete was in the room (ironic, considering it was his office), “Loretta, love, sit down.” And she did, she just grumbled obscenities whilst doing it. A common occurrence for her.
“I agree with you, Brendon.” Loretta gaped like a fish suddenly being told that it was actually supposed to live on land. But before she could speak to clearly state (yell) her conflicting opinion, Pete put up a hand and continued, “to a certain extent.”
“You’re right, we don’t know what attachments this project has, we don’t know, specifically, who sent this to us. However, Mr. Urie, if there is one thing that I have learnt in this city, it’s that talent, particularly young talent, is like a wet towel.”
I don’t think I’ll ever forget the look on Loretta’s face. The total downward fall of her red, lower lip, the snarl of her upper one, and of course, that completely comical widen of her eyes. In a few days, I’d make an astounding connection between this face and that of Jim Carey’s in The Mask.
Pete seemed oblivious however, as he ran a hand through his dark hair. “When first wet, the towel is heavy, laced with copious amounts of moisture and ability and talent. If left unnurtured, the towel becomes stiff and dull – useless, unless someone has the knowledge to cherish it, care for it, y’know, keep it moist.”
“Pete, is there any fucking point to this analogy?”
“When I met you, Brendon, you were a very wet towel, and for the past three years I have kept you moist. R. Ross, whoever he or she may be, is a fucking sodden towel, and I will find Ross, and I will wring him or her dry until this premise becomes the next Lord of the fucking Rings. Have I made myself clear?”
With that, Pete slammed his folder shut, pressed down on his intercom and demanded large volumes of coffee from his pretty little secretary down the hall. Loretta rolled her eyes skyward, and grabbed her own numerous folders (as well as those 20-pages worth of concept), grabbed me, and stormed down the hall.
Once safely in the elevator, she turned on me.
“Look, Bren, Pete may be a fucking fake-tanned twat, but I shall ignore that – and his bullshit analogy – if he gets you this project. Why? Because R. Ross is that good, and it is my job to get you to take the projects that will take you to the next fucking level.”
She was glaring at me now, all enflamed eyes and magenta face. Maybe it’s ironic, that when they meet in person, her and R. Ross don’t get along nearly as well – at least not in the beginning.
“I just don’t see what the big deal about this whole thing is-“
“Did you even read the fucking thing?”
“Skimmed.”
Loretta sighed, long and drawn out, “Brendon, this is not fucking milk, we don’t take things skimmed, we go full-fucking-cream. Capuche?”
*
That night I was to attend a party.
Like, a really, really big party.
Sadly, this wasn’t that far out of my daily agenda. One had appearances to uphold, events to attend, people to know, women to fuck.
I’d met Billiam when I was 17, and in reality, he probably had a bigger influence on my socialite status than I’d willingly admit.
William Beckett is an actor, flamboyantly art-house (he doesn’t rightly approve the mainstream bullshit), and for some reason took a liking to me in my very early days. I can’t really remember how I met him (I need to work on that), but maybe I remember being thrust into him, the words ‘anyone who is anyone knows William Beckett’ running races through my head.
William Beckett is known to some as Billiam. Only the good ones get to know Billiam…or so he says.
That night, however, I was to attend William Beckett’s party.
He was sprawled on some outrageous, leather sofa, complete in skin-tight jeans and a tight shirt that looked painted-on. Two boys lay lounging either side, young and petite and fragile, just the way he liked them.
“Bill!”
His eyes lit up when they fell upon me, and he threw himself out of that sofa (and the now-glaring boys’ individual embraces). “Bren-baby. Darling. Do you have word from the outside?”
“More questions actually.”
“Ah.” He said, looping an ever-skinny arm around my neck, and leading us both out of the flood of bodies and onto the balcony of his LA mansion.
I don’t know what attracted me to him (in solely a platonic way, I assure you), but he was a character, and a brilliant actor and someone that I had – and always would – draw strength from.
“A concept was left on my dining room table this morning.”
Billiam quirked a brow, removing his arm from me, and using it to prop himself against the ledge of the balcony. “Go on.”
“This fucking…I dunno…it was a few pages of bullshit. I mean, it was hand-written, not even fucking typed, this isn’t the way to cast a good first impression, y’know? I just, everyone is really hyped about it, they all want me to do it.”
“Do you want to do it?”
“I dunno, it’s just a concept, a few sketched out sentences of script, and a whole fuckload of characters who I don’t get, because I don’t have a fucking storyline or finished script or anything.”
“Brendon,” He starts, all raised eyebrows and inquiring gaze, “Brendon, no one can make you do this project if you don’t want to do it. You’re the star, not Loretta, not Jon and not Pete fucking Wentz, ok?”
“I know that, fuck knows I’ve denied the more substantial plots that Loretta in particular has wanted me to take on. I mean, mainstream has never failed me right?”
William nods, “Yeah, but y’know, it’s not the same as doing something alternative. Like, they don’t compare. Mainstream is mainstream, some people get off on it, but for the more… unique person, it doesn’t hold a candle to the art-house films. What you’ve got in front of you is a good concept, I mean if people, Loretta I’m assuming, is hyped about it…well, you haven’t got a half-star bomber on your hands.”
“I know, but-“
“Well, what is it you don’t like, character-wise, plot-wise or whatever? Is there a gay scene you’re worried about, because seriously, your worries aren’t unfounded, one guy-on-guy fuck and you never go back.”
I laughed at that, because that’s just what he does, turns a situation which potentially has you throwing yourself off this fucking balcony into a whole fucking joke.
“To be honest, I still haven’t read the whole thing.”
“Well,” Billiam says, rolling his big eyes in a move that mirrors Loretta this morning, “that would be a good place to start.”
*
“Whaddya think?”
I hadn’t even picked up the thing yet - it was still lying in my lap as I tried to gain some motivation to actually read it properly - and Jon was already hovering anxiously, eager to hear my thoughts.
“Fuck off.” I said, and rolled onto my side. I was on one of the sunshine-yellow sofas in my three million dollar apartment, and yea, motivation was lacking.
Jon heaved, and hovered over the back of my seat, absorbing the title in again over my shoulder.
“Have you read it?” I ask casually, I hadn’t heard his opinion yet.
“Yep. Ages ago.”
“And by ages, you mean yesterday?”
He scoffed, “No, I mean ages ago, like months. He’s actually written a lot more than that, you know.”
My brow furrowed, and I eyed him strangely as he backed away, once again feeling the urge to raid my fridge apparently.
“No, I don’t know.”
“Hmn.” He said, “Do you want a sandwich or something?”
Everything was falling together all of a sudden, it was like someone had dumped a whole bunch of different jigsaws in a box together, and that same someone had just sorted through them. Put each different puzzle in a different pile.
“You put this on my dining room table?”
“Yea, who do you think did it?”
“Geez, I dunno, maybe Loretta or Pete or Bill or, I dunno, fucking Audrey.”
“Why the fuck would Audrey show any interest in your career?”
“She’s my girlfriend.”
Jon scoffed, and continued with his elaborate sandwich design.
“Do you know this guy? The writer?”
“Kinda. Not really. He’s just a kid, he rooms with a good friend of mine, Spencer. They’ve like, known each other forever. Spencer gave me that, he said that the guy he lived with wanted me to give it to you, blah, blah, blah.” He was eating now, so talking to me was clearly down the list of priorities.
There was maybe a bit of reason to this thing now, I mean, I knew where it came from, and it came, as far as I was concerned, from Jon. That gave me as much motivation as I was probably ever going to get to read the bloody thing.
So I read it.
First impressions, people would ask me later.
I didn’t get it.
*
Half an hour later, I read it again.
Not intentionally, I’d put it down with the strong, kinda unshakable belief that I would never pick it up again. I would let that wayward chicken scrawl fall out from behind my eyes, out of my head and mind and thoughts. I had no intention of ever looking at the bizarrely unfocused and out of place ramblings of R. Ross again.
Only, maybe a part of me really did want to see what Loretta and Pete and everyone saw, feel what they felt. Maybe I genuinely wanted that rush, that hit, that uncontrollable yearning for more.
Or maybe, more likely really, it was my ego talking. My huge sense of self-worth that somehow called everything to a stop, called a ‘wait-a-minute, what the fuck, I should get this. I will get this.’ This is, of course, more likely.
So half an hour after I finally got around to reading it for a first time, I read it again.
I still don’t get it. Huh.
I tossed the wad on the table beside me, letting out a growl from the deep recesses of my chest. It’s not like I cared or anything, not like it truly mattered, so without further adieu, I wandered to my kitchen suite, and busied myself with lunch. Hoping adamantly for Jon’s return from wherever the hell it was that he’d gone.
It was only twenty minutes this time, before I found myself sitting down to read it again. I honestly can’t answer as to what exactly kept forcing me back down into that leather sofa, what kept compelling me to pick the papers up again. I can’t say if it was truly Loretta and Pete and Jon’s influence, if it was my ego, or if maybe the words had already, completely unwittingly on my half, been sprinkled with powder-cocaine.
Maybe I was already addicted.
Already lusting after these people that were painted so perfectly and so intricately by the writer that my head couldn’t quite wrap itself around them. Not quite capable of understanding these brain-children that R. Ross had given birth too.
I remember flicking through the pages that third time, eyeing off the tiny letters scrawled furiously, there were arrows everywhere, scribbles, and every so often there would be a tiny little sketch, a character or scenario. Names were littered everywhere, Scarlet, Jelena, Paul, Mihai, Timothy. People were everywhere.
Finishing it off with a sigh, I readied myself to throw it back down on the coffee table, only maybe I hadn’t seen the back of the last page before, hadn’t seen the tiny, tiny R.Ross and…and a phone number.
Phone number?
Loretta had told me that they hadn’t found a way to contact Ross yet, were still searching the LA databases for any hint of an address or a…a phone number.
Was I the first to notice this? Why was I the first to notice this?
Without a second thought I picked up the phone, dialled the first couple of numbers, only…only I stopped, because honestly, what the hell was I thinking?
Grade A-actors don’t call sleazy little nobody concept writers. That was Pete’s job.
“What are you doing?” A voice was breathed out, crawling down the back of my neck. The stench of a half-consumed taco wafted through my nostrils, and a hand ruffled my hair in an almost affectionate gesture.
“Nothing, Jon.”
He shrugged, stuffing the last half of the taco in his mouth, and making his way down the hall to my half-a-million dollar entertainment room.
*
I saw Audrey that night.
Audrey who was all bleached hair, and hoop nose-rings and short-shorts and long legs and a sort of beautiful that made the cameras happy as they snap-snap-snapped all around her.
Audrey was Audrey Kitching, not an actress, not a musician, not a model, just the sort of pretty face who always seemed to be in the right place at the right time with the right people. With me.
We weren’t dating, weren’t an item as far as we were both concerned, we’d fuck around a bit, but really, it wasn’t all that much more. It wasn’t like I was her only attachment in the sky-high kingdom of fame.
Audrey was Audrey and I was me, and to this day she remains a series of happy memories.
Audrey was one of the people who in any other universe I could’ve fallen in love with.
She was slouched on her bed amongst a million soft toys by the time I opened the door to her small LA apartment.
“Audrey.”
She waved me off, but quickly retracted it, gesturing instead to the bed beside her. Conversation clearly fell down the list of priorities when Fashion House was on the wide-screen television in front of her.
I collapsed beside her, allowing my lips to latch onto her neck.
“Not now, Bren, Maria Gianni is about to be shot.”
I moaned, wrapping an arm around her tiny waist, “ngh, sex.”
She shoved me off the bed, along with half of her hideous stuffed animals.
This results in what normally happened when I’d go over to Audrey’s, we’d rough house a little, I’d pull her hair, she’d bite me. We’d giggle and laugh and flush and grope. And then we’d have sex. Utterly mind-blowing sex.
Some 25 minutes later, Audrey lets out a content sort of sigh, pulls the sheet up over her bare chest and throws herself over my skinny frame.
“So, what’s up?”
“Huh?”
“Yea, you’re more pouty and horny than normal.”
This probably increases the pouting, as I lean into her slight body.
The problem with my relationships with people I had known for too long was that I ended up never knowing what to say to them. Often I would say something that I didn’t mean, just to make them happy, to make them smile at me with a glow and a warmth and a sincerity that I could latch onto.
This is why I would tell Audrey I loved her.
“’love you, ‘Drey.”
I didn’t, but I loved how she looked that evening, sprawled beside me, all hair and eyes and feather light-heart.
“’Love you too, Bren.”
She didn’t, but maybe she loved how I looked beside her too.
“But I’d still like to know what’s up.”
I leant over, didn’t kiss her, just placed the shadow of my lips over hers.
“Work-stuff.”
“Yea?”
“Yea.”
“Specifically…” She asked, running dainty fingers over my cheeks.
“Problems with a script.”
I didn’t say anything else about it, and she didn’t ask, just kept petting my cheeks, my neck, my back.
If I had stayed with Audrey just a few more hours that day, maybe things would’ve been different. Maybe my life would’ve been different. Maybe I would never have left, stayed with her forever, married her, had a family with her, set up house somewhere in Illinois (Jon loved growing up there), complete with white picket fence and numerous Labradors.
Only I didn’t stay for the next few hours, and I definitely didn’t stay forever. Instead I went home, and dialled that goddamn number.
*
Five rings in, and it was answered by a tired, almost monotonous voice.
“’llo.”
“Uh, hi, uh, I’m…I’m Brendon, is this...is this, R. Ross, or-“ Why was I so fucking nervous?
“Yea.”
“Right, uh, well-“
“Wait, Brendon Urie?”
“Yea.”
“Are you…” His voice had dropped a few notches in volume, he was quiet before, but now he was almost inaudible. “Are you calling about ‘ Build God’?”
“Yea, I guess…Uh, I’d like to…discuss it with you. If you’re willing or whatever.” This was getting out of hand, he should be asking me this, not vice versa. That’s why this is Pete’s job, Loretta’s job, Jon’s job (to be honest, I have no idea who normally does this, how it normally works).
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