So maybe it’s just easy to see what Ryan is here.
Easier maybe, not easy.
There’s something shuffling in the corner, between paper-high-rise and stationary park. Ryan’s a ball of hair and porcelain-skin and cheap clothing. He’s curled in on himself, scribbling chicken scrawl across lines and lines of old, crinkled paper.
"Ryan?" And he doesn’t hear me and how fucking easy would it be to come in here, steal this entire concept, steal Ryan. He’s not big enough to defend himself. He shouldn’t ever, ever live alone. Or without a gun.
I wonder if he has a gun…
"Ryan?"
There’s a twitch, a shudder, and his head whips around so fast that I expect it to roll off, form a boulder like in Indiana Jones, crush the paper city.
"Brendon? What are…why…what?"
He’s on his feet, but only kinda, staggering up on shaky legs and when was the last time he stood up? When was his last human interaction if he’s this unstable, this unhinged?
"Uh, was in the neighbourhood and I…I figured I’d see how you were going." So it’s the biggest load of bullshit that even I’ve ever heard, but Ryan either believes it or just doesn’t care.
"Going good…I – I’m getting a lot done," he stutters out, running fingers through his unwashed hair.
"Thought you were done?" And he smiles at this, just a tiny upward twitch of the lips.
"Working on the Disney sequel."
His voice is really calm and straight, and I can’t help but think is this guy - "Serious?"
"No, nothing’s ever done in this industry, Bren. Always something you can improve on."
"Ah." And so yes, I am an idiot for believing him.
"Yeah." Ryan’s rocking on his heels, he succeeds in crushing the edge of a tiny mound of paper, a car park maybe, or a raised part of the road.
"Yeah," I say, "…nice place you have here."
He laughs aloud at this, and it’s music to my ears, it’s light and pretty and, well, melodic. I like this soft, gentle Ryan with the pretty face and the wit that is kinda a lot sharper than mine.
"It has character. Spencer and I moved in when we first came to LA. We can afford better now, but neither of us have the heart to move out."
He’s grabbed a hold of my hand now, pulling me out of this paper city and into a room of pots and pans and towering dirty dishes. This here is damn near third world, Mexico City maybe, or somewhere in Africa.
"My..." Ryan starts, not looking me in the eye as he grabs glasses and orange juice from the surrounding doors, hand still over mine. "My favourite band is Third Eye Blind, My Chemical Romance and…and other stuff too…Blink 182 and…and Bright Eyes – Conor Oberst, he, as a writer, he just…" Ryan gestures at this, arms and hands and fingers flying wildly (he’s let go of my hand. Why is this all I can think about? ) "…blows my mind, y’know?"
My brow furrows, and the corners of my lips pull sideways, stretch across my teeth. "What?"
"This is me." He says, "You wanted to know stuff about me…this is me. This is what I’m about."
Before I can reply, he’s successfully misinterpreted my expression, misinterpreted my need to catch up still.
"I told you I wasn’t interesting," he says, and he’s a little flushed, his sense of direction a never-ending downward, and his fingers clutch at the bottle of orange juice. Pourpourpour into the plastic cups.
"No, I – I mean, you are interesting, I just, this isn’t what I meant." And I’ve said it before my head can catch up still, "I mean, this is what I meant, I just…" I laugh, "I don’t know what I mean."
Ryan lets loose a tiny smile, something that chases away some of the wayward darkness in his big, hazel eyes. "I got that."
From across the table he shoves a cup at me, full of pulpy tangerine liquid.
Fuck, I hate orange juice.
"Thanks."
And he grins, "I’d offer you something less kindergarten, but the only other drinks we have are milk and water, and the water in this apartment is rarely drinkable."
I grin back as he somehow manages to knock back the whole glass of juice, and before I can stop myself, my own ugly, plastic cup is pressed to my lips.
Drinkdrinkdrink. Ew.
"Uh," Ryan’s saying, and he’s dropped his cup into the overflowing sink, the polluted waterhole that’s gonna kill a hundred World Vision kids. "Uh," He’s saying again, and before I know it he’s leapt from the third world state, back through to the clean-cut, solar-powered paper city.
He’s rummaging, knocking down buildings and parks and roads, filling the creeks, dams, lagoons, spreading enough paper bricks and rubbers and stationary to fill every pothole.
Somewhere along the lines the paper crane got crushed.
"Uh," he says again, but he’s found what he’s looking for, and is bounding back into the kitchen, endless legs miles above the wreckage of the city.
"Thank you for the book," Ryan states, cheeks flushed from the wanton destruction he left in his wake. He waves something at me, something that is undoubtedly my Mother’s/Catherine’s book, only it’s something I hardly recognise. These pages have been dog-tagged, bookmarked, littered with unruly post-it notes and scrappy pieces of paper. Phrases, sentences, words have been highlighted, underlined. There are endless arrows and Ryan’s chicken scrawl has forced itself into every gap, every nook and cranny and…and this isn’t the same book that I gave him.
"Uh…" I say, and suddenly Ryan’s way more flushed than he was a few seconds ago, now he’s positively crimson.
"Sorry," he mutters, fingering some of the florescent post-it’s with his spidery fingers. "I get carried away sometimes…"
"Right, okay, it’s fine, y’know." But if it was anyone else I would’ve gone insane right about now, off my fucking rocker at the bitch who messed with my stuff. Whether I cared or even wanted the thing to begin with was trivial. "I mean, I leant it to you, and stuff and, yea."
Ryan still isn’t as certain as he was before, but he shots me another soft look, another tiny, barely-there smile. "I read the whole thing the night you gave it to me, and I’ve read it so many times since, it’s like…it’s addictive."
And I wouldn’t know, my head is screaming, I wouldn’t know.
"It’s just, like, your mother, she was just, she’s an amazing character."
And wait, what? Where has this come from? How the hell does he know it was my mother’s?
"She was so unhappy." Ryan whispers, his breath hitching ever so slightly in his throat. His eyes are wide, and his eyebrows are slanted in the perfect imitation of sympathy.
"No she wasn’t. She was always smiling." I say, but it isn’t forceful. I wasn’t trying to prove anything, because I knew Ryan didn’t know what he was talking about.
Ryan just sighs though, and he plays with the bangs that hide his ears and forehead. The bangs that maybe are supposed to hide a helluva lot more than just the physical.
"Just because people smile and laugh…it doesn’t mean they aren’t broken." Ryan whispers, "Doesn’t mean they aren’t hurting."
And he’s staring at me now, staring at me with such intensity, such a shameless desire for me to see something that I’m just not seeing. "All it means is that they’re trying with everything they have to be invisible."
But I’m staring at him now, eyes squinting just enough so that I can only focus on Ryan. RyanRyanRyan. "That’s bullshit."
"Invisible," he’s whispering now, tiny, breathy voice nothing more than maybe a different shade to the wind. "Invisible to whatever’s hurting them."
The silence sets in as the breezy voice stops, and everything is suddenly heavy, air is thick and tired and the gravity is beating down on the space between my shoulder blades. Poundpoundpound. My head is aching and Ryan can’t even look at me. Won’t look.
This is all wrong, this isn’t what I came here for, and somewhere, some nagging little voice in the back of my head says, well, what did you come here for?
"You know shit all about my mother, Ross." Because it’s the first thing that pours out of my mouth, the first thing that actually makes sense in the entirety of this situation.
Ryan’s sighing again, all squinting, pathetic eyes, and lips that fall down his chin.
"You never read this, did you?"
And really, what can I say to that?
*
The entrance to my apartment is choking on the smoke erupting from my head, my ears, my fucking heart.
To be blunt, I’m angry.
To be honest, I have no idea why.
"I’m not doing it, I won’t fucking do it."
Loretta seems to have appeared out of nowhere, hair tousled and face painted with a look of part-shock, part-something-else-entirely.
"Won’t do what?" She says, forehead furrowed down, slanting her eyes into a look of perfect curiosity. "Won’t do what?" She repeats.
"Fucking Ryan Ross." I say, "Fucking Build God. "
Loretta’s expression has fallen off her face, imprinting itself on my expensive rug (handmade in Vietnam), she hasn’t quite processed this yet, hasn’t quite gotten angry enough.
But wait, the red is creeping across her neck, up her jaw line and straight into her round cheeks.
She’s about to explode from the pressure that has managed to build itself up behind her cheeks and eyes and jaw in the last few seconds. About to spew and overflow like those volcanoes you see in grade nine science.
Only, she’s caught on, (I never give her intelligence enough credit really) but this doesn’t seem to have released the anger, it just gives it a cause, a purpose, a direction.
Before I can even pull away, flee from the room, her mouth is wide open and she’s probably three times as pissed as I was…am.
"You don’t get involved personally with the fucking script writer, Brendon!" Her cheeks are still big and red, and her eyes are bloodshot and a little puffy.
She’s a dragon, and I’m the fucking knight…you know, the one that comes before the hero. The one that gets burnt to a crisp in the first few seconds of battle.
"Do you know what a script writer does, Brendon?" And she may look and sound a little calmer, but she’s not – eye of the fucking storm.
"They write a fucking screenplay."
"Yes, and this is all they do! " She states, and she runs fingers that are much shorter than Ryan’s through her cropped hair, before proceeding to glare at me. Great. "They write a damn good screenplay, and they whore it off to the best producer they can get their paws on. It is then out of their hands. Unless the producer actually likes the writer, which is rare, they do not come on set, and they do not see the whole fucking film happen. Their job finishes at writing. If they want to be involved more, then they become a writer-director or a writer-producer."
Stop, deep breath, try again. "Ryan needs to finish the fucking thing, and then we will have nothing more to do with him until the fucking Oscars which that motherfucker will more likely than not win."
And this doesn’t change a thing, and maybe it kinda makes it worse, coz the thought of never seeing Ryan again makes me feel something and I can’t quite place what it is, only it’s uncomfortable and maybe hurts a little, and as much as it brings out this feeling, it doesn’t change the fact that I don’t really want to see him. I don’t want to do Build God, I never did. I just want to go back to chick flicks or maybe do something with Brad Pitt…
Loretta can see right through me, she can always see right through me, even nowadays, a bajillion years after the dreaded now of these happenings she can see right through me.
She tosses her hands up in the air, in an elaborate gesture. "For fuck’s sake, Jon!" He’s sitting behind the sofa, I hadn’t noticed him before now. "Jon, you sort this out, you do this, I can’t deal with assholes anymore."
It’s a matter of seconds before the door is slammed shut behind her, but for some reason, it is drowned out by Jon’s agonising sigh.
He stares at me for a few minutes, facial expression strained, before he gets up and leaves the room.
By the time you hit eighteen, you will not remember your first crush. Hell, in the cynical reality we live in, it’s unlikely you’ll remember your first ever crush at fourteen.
First crushes may last five minutes or five months…I’d say the rest of your life, but that much is incredibly unlikely. Point is, that despite the period of time, you are unlikely to remember this person, this prominent figure who was likely in your life sometime before your fourth birthday and has not been since. Point is, that despite this you will never, ever forget how this person made you feel.
Even if you want to, hell, even if you try.
You will never, ever forget the sweaty palms or the pounding heart or the heat that somehow manages to find its way into every cavity of your body. Won’t forget the watery eyes or the siege of rampaging butterflies with their armoured wings and their mission to make you feel as ill as possible and as unbelievably alive as you’ll ever feel.
It will make you believe in Cinderella, and Beauty and the Beast and all the fairy-tales that end with those three little words that surpass every cliché. Those three little words that are the cause of many an eye roll, and a never ending supply of ‘yea, till the divorce. Fuck happily ever after.’
But what sucks is that as long as that infatuation lasts, you won’t be saying ‘Fuck it’, you’ll be saying ‘Fuck, I want that…want it with him, with her. ’
The first time you’ll feel it is when you’re too young to know any better. Too young to understand or acknowledge it as anything more than the need to pull that girl’s hair, or pinch that boy’s arm or watch that kid with the intensity of a dying man looking at his last fuck.
You won’t get it, you’ll just realize that really, there’s nothing quite like it.
Life goes on though, and that tiny child of whom your heart depended on for a while will fall off the face of the earth, and you’ll be left with normal feelings, average happiness and average grief and just the normal, unarmoured butterflies, butterflies with no mission, or direction or purpose. Christ, it’s boring.
It is highly, highly unlikely though, that you will live the rest of your life without a new infatuation.
Most don’t feel anything quite as intense again till high school. Making every chick flick cliché an endless film of reality. Then again, happily ever after is scarcely ever laid bare in these films, only ever implied because the odds of marrying your high school sweetheart are slim to none. Because, seriously, at sixteen you still don’t understand the depth of what you’re feeling. You’re too young to understand what any of it means, too young to make a move or to pounce on the person who is making you feel this way, too young to understand that really, you should never, ever let this person go.
Some people feel something like it everyday, but aren’t capable of feeling it for the same person forever. They’ll be so fucking infatuated with someone new so often that the passion and the intensity loses all meaning, it drains away to the slums of the body. None of it matters.
But, and this is probably the worst one of all, sometimes the person you get sweaty palms for, doesn’t get sweaty palms back. And this, this hurts. This hurts more than bullets or knives or someone ripping the nails off your toes. This hurts like a clawed fist tearing open your ribcage, fisting your heart and wrenching it free, throwing it and watching as the blood dripdripdrips down the plaster walls of the room. This hurts, because as you stand immobile, your ribcage split open in front of you, you can only watch as the butterflies escape, fly off into the distance only to be splattered by some child with clappy, little hands.
I’m being dramatic though, overly so, because sometimes, and it is just a few though, a few find that one person, find that feeling and…and the person that they feel it for does feel the same…and well, if they’re lucky, they keep that feeling, that person, forever. If they’re lucky.
The reigning majority though, at least here in LA, doesn’t want to feel this. Doesn’t want to feel the passion or the fire, doesn’t want the butterflies in their belly to ever have such cause or direction.
It might be out of fear for getting hurt, but mostly, mostly it’s due to greed. The knowledge that hey, if you live in LA, if you’re good-looking, even if you’re not, you are capable of fucking half the city. LA’s slutty like that.
At this point in my life, this is the category I fall under. But things change, and right now they are changing faster than I can keep up.
Ryan makes me want happily ever after more than anything else in the world…just not yet.
*
LA thrives on vices. Thrives on wants and needs and obsession.
It’s unhealthy; however it does explain the numerous Starbucks that seem to pop up throughout the city on a regular basis. Explains the mass amounts of marijuana and ecstasy and cocaine and heroin on tap, explains the obsession with sexuality and lust.
But this is LA, and most people know this before they move here.
So maybe it makes sense that not only LA thrives on vices, but so does the majority of its population. So do I. Loretta told me actually, when I’d first arrived here, that I had an addictive personality.
And I do, but I don’t really think of them as vices or addictions, more as wants and needs, like this morning, this morning I need coffee.
Which leads me here, to Starbucks.
Like I said before, the majority of LA has these addictions as well, so maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that Ryan is here too. But I am, coz it’s been a week since our…our argument? Can you call it that? Disagreement. I don’t know.
He’s sitting in the corner, spidery fingers curled around the mug of coffee, seeking a warmth that shouldn’t be needed in the LA heat. There’s not much on the tiny, round table in front of him: a teaspoon, a menu, a sharpie which, from what I can see, he has used to colour in his fingernails, draw on his long, skeletal arm.
I have no intention of going over to him, and from what I can gather he hasn’t seen me yet, hasn’t seen anyone, so absorbed in the cup of coffee, so absorbed in that place inside his head that I just can’t seem to get to. This understood, I have no idea how I came to be sitting in the chair opposite him at his table.
Right.
He still hasn’t snapped out of his daydream and maybe he sorta looks dead. He’s pale enough; those eyes that are normally wide and conscious almost aren’t alive at the moment.
The patterns on his arm are, I don’t know the word, beautiful doesn’t seem right. There are lines that creep up the hair follicles, race their way up his arms, under his K-Mart t-shirt. Lines that, on second glance, make two exceptionally long, jagged trees with branches that seep into his skin and curve around his biceps. Bats are escaping from the hem of his shirtsleeve, maybe (maybe) from the cavern of his armpit. This is all in black, but a white, grey, yellow moon practically shines from behind the toothed branches on his left arm.
“I was going to go to art college,” He’s out of his daydream, is watching me with those almond-shaped eyes. “Didn’t think I was good enough,” he says.
“They’re…they’re pretty awesome.” And okay, that sounds better than ‘beautiful’, less flowery.
“Thank you.” Ryan’s back to curling his hands around the mug of coffee, hands that are covered in the intricate details of tree roots.
Wow, I think, wow. I would never have the patience to do that.
“Uh,” I say, and Ryan looks at me from over the rim of his Starbucks mug. “Uh, about the other day…”
“I’m sorry,” Ryan states, “I shouldn’t have said that about your mother.”
“Right.” I grin.
“Even if it was true.”
My face falls, but Ryan’s eyes are crinkling with amusement. He runs root-hands through his hair, and shoots me a grin that sets off the army of butterflies through my stomach. I want to hit him, or pull his hair.
A subject change is my best option.
“Have you found a new lead yet?”
“What?” Ryan asks, his brow is furrowed, and his head tilts to the side, one hand still clamped adamantly around the cup of coffee.
“New lead, y’know, my replacement for Build God?”
“Oh,” Ryan says, “I’m holding out for someone still.”
“Still?”
“You, dumbass.” And I do feel like a dumbass, but Ryan’s grin is, despite being almost devious, gentle and warm.
Right, I think, okay. “Ah. Well, I haven’t chosen another job yet, y’know.”
“Okay.” Ryan says, and he grins a little more.
And when I look back on it later, I’m pretty sure here is where it all went to shit.
Mostly because suddenly, and don’t doubt it was sudden, because I don’t think either of us were expecting it, suddenly we’re kissing. Like, for real, my lips are on his, and his lips aren’t soft, they’re chapped and warm and taste like the Starbucks coffee he’d just been drinking. They aren’t plush and soft like a girls, don’t taste like fake fruit, aren’t sticky and don’t leave that unpleasant aftertaste of cheap gloss. They’re just…they’re just an extension of his flesh, almost salty, but…but it’s probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever touched in my life.
I think I should be surprised when the fireworks start going off, not behind me or above us, not even on the television in the corner, these illegal stacks of gunpowder are erupting in my stomach, my lungs, my heart. They make the butterflies just seem petty and ineffective. Boomboomboom. And…and fuck, there isn’t even any fucking tongue, this isn’t pashing or making out this is just, this is just our lips pressed together, and suddenly, suddenly he’s ripped away from me.
His eyes are big and wide and his pupils are dilated, he’s shaken, off-course, panic is settling in behind his irises, and before I can even move quickly enough to stop him, he’s pushed back his chair so quickly he’s almost fallen, almost tripped over an influx of emotions that I’ve never, ever seen from him.
Before I can react he’s out the front door and down the street and out of my line of sight.
Well, fuck, I think, and the last of the fireworks are burning out with a sizzle and a wheeze. They’re the retarded ones, the ones without the motivation to actually explode, and fuck, I think.
Fuck.
I finish my coffee, I finish Ryan’s, I pocket the sharpie he left behind in his rush to escape and pray to the God’s I don’t believe in that no one saw what just happened. I don’t think I want to wake up to any front-page Brendon-Urie-scandal at the moment. Almost don’t think I’d be able to handle it, coz I’m fucking confused as is.
Fuck, I think, because something in me is still whirring and buzzing and alive, something that is getting closer and closer to my cock.
Fuck, I think, and then I go to Audrey’s.
*
“I think I kissed him,” I say, twenty minutes into a round of Dance, Dance Revolution.
Jon scrunches his face up a little, stares up at me from under his growing bangs, an action that sorta reminds me of Ryan. He squints, before his eyes widen and he asks, “Ryan?”
I let loose a terse nod, hardly noticeable if you don’t know me all that well, just, Jon does know me that well, and he whistles, low and long like they do in the old-fashioned films.
“It’s not a big deal.”
“Why would you tell me if it wasn’t a big deal?” Jon asks, and this, this is a very good point. It’s not like I tell him about my…my escapades with Audrey or any of the other girls I fuck.
I just shrug in reply, rub angrily at my bleary eyes. Maybe if he thinks I’m really tired he’ll let me fuck off and pretend I never said anything…maybe Wizard of Oz really happened, and the red, sparkly shoes I keep hidden in the back of my closet will suddenly snap to life and take me home.
Wherever the fuck that may be.
“You like him?” Jon asks me slowly, a hand rubbing at the back of his head.
“I…do you remember your first crush?”
Jon shrugs, casts me a strange look and moves the hand at the back of his head down his neck, as if he isn’t exactly sure what to do with it.
“Neither do I,” I say, and Jon just laughs aloud at that.
“But…Ryan makes me feel like I’m young and…and I don’t feel like me when I’m with him. I don’t talk right, I don’t act right, I don’t do what I’m supposed to and…”
“And that scares you.” Jon finishes for me, a grin so wide that it strains across his teeth. I like Jon.
“Maybe.”
Jon just cracks up laughing, it’s all warm and hearty, not anything like Ryan’s gentle, melodic one, and did I say I liked Jon, coz really I don’t. He’s kinda an asshole really.
But for that matter, so am I.
“You’re such a moron, Bren.” And I don’t just not like Jon, I really sorta hate him.
Stupid Jon.
“I don’t know about my first crush,” Jon starts, and he shoots me another wide grin. “But there was this girl in my freshman year of high school, Daisy Stuart. She was really fucking hot…smart and nice too. I, y’know, liked her for the whole of highschool, freshman through senior. Like, all I’d think about was her, all the time, she was just, brilliant. Amazing. I never said anything, and we only spoke once or twice in passing. I graduated without telling her.”
Jon’s voice is unnaturally quiet, gentle and poignant almost. “I was invited to her funeral two years later. Turned out she’d been dating this asshole who beat her up and shit…”
“I’m…” I start, but Jon just holds up a hand, pays my interruption no heed.
“Her sister said that she’d liked me all through highschool.”
Jon’s eyes are slightly more glassy than normal, the way the light hits them, well, it almost looks like he could cry. He won’t though, because Jon’s stronger than most people, and from what I can see, I think he’s probably cried enough about her already.
“I was pretty fucking pissed at myself, I mean, if I’d asked her out, if we’d been together instead of the fucker she was with…well, maybe…” But he trails off, and I know he won’t say anything more about her. Can’t maybe.
“Point is, Brendon, is that, I dunno, you’re gonna gain shit all if you don’t put yourself on the line sometimes.” He laughs. “I think…to be honest, I’m not sure if there was a point in the first place.”
“Point is,” Jon will say later that night, Thai-take-out dinner and 19 games of Mario cart later, “point is you shouldn’t let Ryan slip through your fingers.”
“And on Loretta’s behalf,” Jon says, “you shouldn’t let Build God go either, coz…well…you just, you can’t let anyone else win your fucking Oscar.”
Loretta will spend forever telling me that she has been married twice.
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