Blue Bayou

by Ian McDuff

Well, maybe you don’t. Maybe I don’t. This is uncharted territory. hurricanemegan wrote me a while back, and said, ‘If you really want a challenge, give us ‘Jambalaya’ from Brit’s POV.’ In its own way, this is it.

When C smiles, it’s for real. You know what? I can’t remember the last time J smiled and it was for real. I thought it was for real a lot when it wasn’t. But, a JC smile – I mean, like, offstage – is a for-real smile, it’s, like, not plastic. Not pasted on. Not part of a pose for a camera no one else can see. When C smiles, it’s because he has something to smile about, and it’s a for-real smile.

Well, unless he’s stoned.

You know what? Hon, I am apparently, like, the b-i-t-c-aitch from Bitchville. That, or stupid. Or both. Chris would say, ‘both.’ Chris has never really liked me. I understand that. I don’t think he does. He thinks he’s being loyal, now. To J. He thinks he foresaw this shit with me and J and that’s why he never really liked me much for starters. Riiiiiight. Well. I’m not mad at him, not really. Maybe because I know why he really hates me, even if he’s never figured it out yet. I wonder what he’ll do when – if – he ever does. I wonder what J will do.

Well, you’d think, wouldn’t you, that I’d be a more popular fag-hag than I’ve turned out to be.

Love sucks. No, literally. It just … it wrings you dry and it sucks all the energy out of you. It’s worse, actually, than the before and the after.

And I’ve always been a little in love with all of them.

Even Chris.

But C, a lot. And Lance. What is it with me and gay boys? And Lance and I were so close. He helped me through a lot. When I was with J, and even after. And without, like, totally getting crosswise with J. You know what, I think Chris resented that, a lot. I think Lance put a lot – a lot – on the line with standing by me when Chris was all, ‘Let’s rally around J and punish her.’

I never meant that to happen.

I never mean a lot of things to happen, but they do. And I don’t mean for them to.

Like this.

I was shopping when C called me about going to, like, the swamps, to eat mudbugs and chill out and sing along with a bunch of crazy coonass relatives of Roy’s. There were, like, a lot of things I should totally have been doing instead, like getting ready for the new release and a tour and all, and, they tell me, coming up with something nasty to counter ‘Cry Me a River,’ which, no, I didn’t want to go down that road, but…. Anyway. I was shopping, okay? It’s a lot cheaper than actual therapy in the long run, and if there ever is, like, a breach of confidentiality, it’s a lot less embarrassing to be caught spending a few thou on a kicky little black dress than to have, like, your psych records published on the Net. I’m not as stupid as people think.

And it was C, okay? He’s going to get a few of us together and he’s babbling about how Lance and D and Nick – and me, too – need ‘spiritual triage’ and just to get away for a while. Like I’m going to say no. So I went.

I never meant for this to happen this way.

You know what? The first few days were pretty awesome cool. Most people didn’t care about us at all. No. That’s not right. They cared about us, not the posters on the wall that people think we are. We were just Roy’s young family and friends, mostly. I mean, okay, there were, like, some guys, there always are, who were drooling. But it was more like they were drooling over ‘that girl’ than ‘Britney Pop-Tart Spears.’ So it wasn’t as a bad as usual. I mean, well, I didn’t feel like I needed a shower every five seconds.

Okay, I’m pretty sure Aaron was about three minutes from whacking off every time we were within a hundred yards of each other, but that’s okay, he’s that age. And he’s going to be totally yum when he gets eighteen, I think. I’d probably actually go out with him then, at least once, if he asked. Of course, I’ll be an old woman by then, to him at least. But really. He’s going to be even better-looking than Nick. Howie is so lucky, as well as sweet, and awful hot himself. But then, they deserve each other, Nick and Howie do.

I’m just glad I didn’t manage to somehow fuck that up too. I mean, is it a force-field or what? It’s not even funny anymore.

But it started okay. It really did. Roy’s always so nice to me, and all very correct. Trustworthy. Maybe that’s why I relaxed too much. But when he went off to get the boys, and left me there alone…. Everyone was nice as could be. But he and C are always doing these ‘surprises,’ so he left me there, and, okay, I get bored. I do. And that’s part of it. I mean, it’s not like I brought anything with me. But I was bored, and some of the other people there my age were bored, because the old folks were totally in charge of all the fun stuff, cooking and so on. And I wanted to fit in. I hate it when people get the idea we’re all stuck-up and shit. So.

I love Lance so much, I really do. I would never hurt him intentionally.

I love Lance, but he does have his issues. Even with cigarettes. I should know, I used to stay at his place often enough. He had a guestroom just for me, which was sweet, totally sweet of him. Well, it was. But, my Lord, he pitched a hissy-fit if you so much as pulled out a pack in his house. He’d shoo you outside like you were tracking mud on his rugs, he really would. And he’d be all, like, ‘It gets in the curtains,’ and you just finally had to go, ‘Whatever,’ and get used to hitting the yard – not even the sunroom, shoot, probably he’d’ve had a coronary if it’d been the garage, even – you’d have to hit the yard for a single drag. And even then he wasn’t happy about it. Not even C was allowed to smoke inside.

And, you know what, it’s not like he’s perfect either. I worry about his drinking, I do. Look at AJ. And Lance drinks more than AJ ever did.

But then, well, maybe that’s my fault too. Everything else seems to be.

So I did some dumb things that weekend. Maybe the dumbest was mentioning NyLa. All of a sudden…. You know what, it was like a dam burst, it really was. It was sweet of C to try getting Lance unwound, but I’m not sure it was a bright idea. By then, he was starving to talk business, antsy, and he was on the restaurant business like a duck on a junebug. He dragged Howie in, and then Nick, and they pretty much got too interested to hang with me and C.

Maybe that’s what C had planned, I don’t know. I do know he wanted to talk to me, and he managed to get Aaron off our backs, too.

So we went to a dock where the bayou opened up pretty much into a lake, and talked. He had a lot to talk about, mainly that model boy, Jesse – I think he spells it the girly way, but I’m not sure. It doesn’t matter – Jesse, okay, who was hanging off of Lance so much. It hadn’t mattered so much when it was Meredith, because, well, obviously. Lance being gay and all. But Lance’s latest project had him worried, because Mr Project was all boy, no matter how he spells his name, and Lance has this ‘My Fair Lady’ complex that can sometimes go a little far, with him as the teacher guy. I didn’t say anything to C, but let’s face it. Lance thinks he doesn’t have ‘a type.’ Bullshit, honey. Lance has had two big crushes in his life, and anyone who can’t see the resemblance between Freddy (that shit) and Joey, and between Jessie-with-an-‘i’ and C in his Cæsar-cut days, just isn’t looking, okay?

So C wanted to talk, and we did. Well, he did. And I listened. I’m very good at that, no matter how stupid some people think I am. And C had brought beer. And later in the talk, well. C was scared, okay. He trusted Lance, it was Jesse-e-i-e-i-o he didn’t trust. Even with the beer he got a little worked up. And I still had a little something left over from when I’d been bored, when he and Roy had gone to pick up Lance and Howie and Aaron and Nick. It was just one joint. One measly joint, and we shared it, okay. And, okay, you know what, it was stupid, but it shouldn’t have ended up the way it did.

But it did. I must have a real golden touch.

So he fell asleep, and I dozed off, and he got burned, badly. I know, my fault again, just like everything always is. All I wanted to do was mellow him out. And it isn’t as if C had never toked before, okay? Some people call him Maurice, if you get my drift. (Maybe that’s why he wrote ‘Space Cowboy.’)

Well, anyway. When we woke up, he was crispy. I don’t mean fried from the joint, I mean sunburnt like a sunburnt thing. He was sick and shivering and I felt just awful. So I helped him back to my cabin, which was nearest, and got water in him, and I was slathering him down with aloe lotion when Lance came looking for him.

God, it was ugly.

I don’t mean there was a scene. I almost wish there had been. What capped it though was when Lance started sneezing. You can never hide smoking-up around Lance: he has a sensitive nose, and he’s, like, allergic. I guess even then we still smelled a little of weed.

And that was that. C had already told me that Lance had pretty much put down an, um, that thingy, an … oh, an ultimatum about it, about C relapsing or anything. He’d had a fit during the Tara Reid days, as everyone knows. And C was still a little out of it, okay, maybe a lot out of it, and he said the wrong thing. About how it wasn’t as if Lance had walked in and found me and C in bed together. (As if. I don’t have the bits C likes.) And Lance said he’d have preferred that to what had gone down. And C went, ‘Well, maaaaan, maybe this gives you your out to start hangin’ with the model cat who wants you so bad.’ And Lance, all soft and precise, went, ‘Not what I was plannin’, but the idea’s lookin’ a damn sight better by the minute,’ and turned on his heel and walked out, not looking back.

You know what, I’ve seen a lot of fits and fights and things, but that was the most ugly, frighteningest thing I ever saw. Even when J and I got into our biggest-assed breakup fight and dragged Wade into it. But this? Well. Give me screaming and throwing things and bitchslaps any day over this. It was so bitter quiet, poisonous, deadly. Lance was hardly out the door before C threw up all the water I’d managed to get into him.

And they talked the next day, and I don’t know what they said, but I know that they agreed not to betray each other publicly. Not to be like me and J, basically. And not to make it to where people took sides, like with Chris versus Lance over me and J. I guess that’s the one thing I’m good for, me and J, an example of how not to handle shit. And I don’t know where they left it. But it’s pretty obvious from the photos and the clips that when Miss Jess hangs off of Lance now, Lance lets him. And when Lance is with C, it doesn’t look the same as it did. And when they went to CFTC right after, things didn’t add up.

I don’t know for sure where they are with this. Nick and Howie don’t know either. And everyone’s pretty worried.

All I know is that, as usual, it’s somehow my fault. You know what, I never set out to be the Yoko Ono of ’N Sync. But apparently I have magic powers or something.

Ask Chris.

END