Ooh Baby, Baby
by Veva ©2001
One
It wasn’t so much that Lance didn’t like children, but Lance certainly hated Brianna.
“Get her away from me, she smells weird,” he would grumble when Chris would hold her out to him in a moment of ‘pass the baby around the bus.’
“She’s a baby,” Chris would laugh, blowing raspberries into her belly. “They’re supposed to smell weird.”
“Well, I don’t wanna hold her.”
And then he would storm off to the back of the bus, climb into his bunk, and sing profane songs loudly at the top of his lungs, purposefully off-key. Kelly would come back, slowly pull back the curtain, and ask him to stop because he was disturbing the baby.
“Sorry,” Lance grumbled with his back to her.
“Sweetie, are you okay?” she rubbed his back gently and Lance realized that he might hate Kelly almost as much as he hated the baby.
“Fine. Tired,” he grunted. Kelly got the hint and left him alone. So Lance stayed in his bunk, coming out twice in the span of six hours to use the bathroom, all the way to Kansas City.
“I don’t see why they have to be here,” he snapped when Johnny asked what was bothering him before soundcheck. “This isn’t the fucking family circus.”
Johnny pointed out that Lance kept his ferret on the bus.
“It stays in a cage,” Lance moaned. “And it doesn’t shit every twenty minutes and scream and cry and have fifteen fucking people all over it every second.”
Johnny asked Lance if maybe he could be a bit less profane now that they had a baby on tour with them.
Lance told Johnny where he could stick his newfound morals and subsequently ended up locked in the green room, grounded for telling-off Johnny.
“It’s all the stupid baby’s fault,” he spat out as he walked by the rest of the guys, all adjusting their microphones, all on the verge of asking Lance where he was going and why he wasn’t getting ready for soundcheck.
“I mean seriously, guys,” Johnny stormed past, Lance’s collar gripped firmly in his fist. “It’s not like you can’t sing the song without Lance. It’s soundcheck, for crying out loud. You were fine when he was out for three days when he said his ankle hurt.”
“Stress fracture!” Lance blew up. “It was a stress fracture! One that would never have happened if the goddamn baby hadn’t left her goddamn pacifier in the middle of the hotel room!”
And all were silent. It was true. Lance had slipped on a pacifier that had been left in the middle of Joey’s hotel room. Kelly was in the hotel lobby on her way up, Lance was frantic to pull clothing back on, Joey was lying back on the bed, trying to catch his breath and calm his body down, and Brianna was next door with Chris. As Lance ripped his t-shirt down over his head and tried to simultaneously slide his shoes on, his foot came down on the pacifier, his legs flew out from under him, and he landed crumpled on the ground, looking up at the ceiling, his ankle pinned beneath him. Joey decided after the incident, that fatherhood and illicit affairs shouldn’t mix, and told Lance that ‘they just couldn’t do this anymore… it’s just not right.’
Lance didn’t speak to Joey for eight days after that. He missed three shows and could barely walk for a week.
“Come on, man,” Joey pulled him aside gently, before the Cleveland show. “I have a baby now. Please tell me you understand…”
“Yeah, I understand,” Lance looked away. Joey seemed satisfied with this response and moved onto the catering table.
But Lance didn’t understand.
He didn’t understand how Joey could go both ways, he didn’t understand how Joey could keep lying to Kelly, he didn’t understand how Joey could be willing to give up what they had, for a girl who was neither cute nor thin and a baby that just smelled bad all the time. It just didn’t make sense. Most of all, Lance didn’t understand how he could be dumped by his best friend.
So he sat in his ‘time-out,’ as Johnny so affectionately called it, in the green room, sulking because he missed Joey, because he hated the stupid baby, and because he wanted to play his X-Box. But Johnny had unplugged it and taken it out of the room as part of Lance’s punishment. So instead, Lance threw nuts from the bowl of mixed ones at the wall and cursed loudly as each one made contact and smashed into bits.
“Fuck you, JOEY!”
“Fuck you, KELLY!”
“Fuck you, BRIANNA!”
“Fuck you, JOHNNY!”
…until the bowl was empty and Lance began to cry.
It wasn’t a secret that no one liked Lance when he first joined the group. Justin said that hanging out with Lance was bad for his rep, Chris said that Lance was too pretty and too queer, and JC thought that Lance was judgmental and uptight because he didn’t drink or smoke with them. Joey didn’t have a problem with the kid, but didn’t want to be the only one who liked him, lest they think him un-hip, queer, and square too. But he could sing bass and his name fit in the lettering scheme of the group. So he got to stay. Joey was the first one to see him cry.
“Sorry, man,” Joey started, walking into the empty dance studio that wasn’t empty because in it was a skinny blonde kid from Mississippi, who was wearing gym shorts that were far too short and high-top sneakers that had gone out of fashion in Central Florida about eight years before. He was maniacally repeating the moves to ‘I Want You Back,’ and didn’t notice Joey entering the room until Joey opened his mouth.
“Oh… uh… I… sorry…” Lance rushed, running over to the stereo to shut of the music when Joey raised an eyebrow. “I was just trying to get this,” he continued, catching his breath and wiping sweat off of his head with a towel.
“That’s, um, that’s okay,” Joey looked around the room. “I just left my jacket here and it’s getting cold outside so…” and just as awkwardly as Lance spoke to him, Joey swallowed and collected his jacket from the windowsill.
“Well…”
“Well…”
And there was silence. Joey motioned with his head and began to walk out the door.
“Actually,” he sighed and turned around. “We’re all gonna go out tonight and grab a bite to eat. You wanna come with?”
Lance shook his head no and looked down. “My mom’s gonna be here to pick me up in a little bit, so I probably shouldn’t.”
“Oh. Right.”
“But thanks for inviting me anyway.”
“Oh, no problem, bro,” Joey waved his hand in dismissal. “You can hang with us whenever you want.”
“I can?”
“Yeah… I mean, you’re a part of this group, aren’t you?”
Lance shook his head no again, still looking down. “I just sing. Y’all are friends though. You’d go out even if there was no group.”
“Well, yeah,” Joey admitted.
And then Lance began to cry. Because he missed Mississippi, because he was tired of having no friends, because he was tired of not being able to dance, because he was tired of being the un-hip, queer, square one, and because this was just so much more work than he’d thought it be. New Kids looked so much easier.
Joey’s eyes widened.
“Bro… you okay?”
Lance nodded.
“You should probably go now,” he sniffled, wiping his snotty nose with the back of his hand.
And Joey did go. After that day, he didn’t really have a problem with Lance.
Lance was finally no longer alone in the green room, but he still couldn’t convince Johnny to plug the X-Box back in.
“Come on…” he whined, writhing around on the couch. “I said I was sorry!”
But Johnny said no dice.
“Dude, he said he was sorry!” Justin argued in Lance’s defense. He wanted to play X-Box too.
But Johnny’s no was a firm no, and so for the magic hour before the show, there was no video game playing and they were all forced to talk to each other.
“Bri started cutting a tooth,” Joey grinned, taking a big gulp from a can of Britney-endorsed Pepsi that Justin had in bulk. “It’s so cute.”
“I remember when Stephen started teething,” Justin smushed himself back onto the couch next to Lance, who was still sulking. “He cried all the time. It was not cute.”
“Ice cubes,” JC offered shyly. “If you rub an ice cube gently on her gums, it’ll numb them a bit and she won’t scream as much.”
“Really?” Joey’s interest was piqued. “There’s this stuff that the pediatrician gave to Kel, but it’s not working and the poor baby’s still in pain.”
“Nonono, the ice definitely works.”
“Stephen had an icy teething ring… those work too.”
“I think Mom bought her one of those but she hasn’t seemed to like it yet.”
“Well, if that doesn’t work, then there’s this new product called--”
“STOP!” Lance screamed, causing everyone to stare at him wide-eyed. “What the FUCK is wrong with you guys? This isn’t fucking Oprah! Does anyone care that Game Seven was last night? Or that Michael Jordan’s returning to the NBA? FUCK! This isn’t a club for new fucking mothers!”
Silence again.
Finally, Joey spoke up silently.
“I thought we were going to work on the language we used, Lance,” he swallowed, speaking very much under his breath. “Because the baby’s now on tour with us.”
The two faced off in a staring contest before Lance shook his head angrily. “Fuck this,” he muttered. “I’m having a drink.”
But when he opened the fridge, he found no hard lemonade, no hard liquor, nothing to indicate that five grown-men had run of the dressing room. Instead, he had his choice between orange, apple, papaya, and orange-papaya juices.
“What the…?”
JC cleared his throat.
“We all agreed that it would be best to cut back on our alcohol intakes. Because…”
“…we have the baby on tour with us now,” Lance finished his sentence, slamming the fridge.
Silence followed.
This time no, one broke it.
Everyone joked that Lance was gay. That he was pretty and queer and liked boys and dressed up as girls. He spent a lot of time with Britney, but wasn’t trying to get in her pants. His obsession wasn’t with hair gel, but a ‘defrizzing serum that also deep conditioned.’ And while he certainly loved Lucy, it was Desi that seemed to make him laugh the loudest and blush the deepest.
But it wasn’t until the end of their first Stateside tour that anyone thought that there might be truth in their joking with Lance about his ‘preferences.’
“Did you see the way he was checking out the DJ?” Justin whispered to Joey across the hotel room. It was 3am and they’d just gotten in from clubbing. They were just beginning to enjoy the status that came with fame, and for Justin, getting into the best club, while wildly underage, was part of this. And though all night, he had been surrounded by the most beautiful of women, all in black and red and gold, with cleavage and full lips and short skirts, he couldn’t stop noticing the way that Lance was flirting with the DJ. How he was gently touching him on his bicep and laughing and making bedroom eyes. And how the DJ was a man.
“Yeah, I did,” Joey agreed sleepily. He was tired and sort of drunk and just wanting to go to bed and not debate the merits of Lance being, or not being, gay.
“I mean, he was hitting on him!” Justin gasped, incredulous. He was sixteen. He didn’t know of any boys in real life that liked other boys, and certainly not shy, church boys from Mississippi who still wore plaid if he had his way.
“So Lance is probably gay,” Joey sighed, rolling over and pulling the covers over his head. “Justin, I wanna go to sleep.”
“But Lance is--”
“Justin. Shut. Up.”
And Justin shut up and Joey closed his eyes. Joey wasn’t surprised by Lance’s brazen show of affection for the record spinner tonight. He had Lance pegged the moment he saw him using Mixed Berry Lipbalm when they were in Spain.
“It really works,” Lance shrugged shyly. “Plus, it tastes good too.”
And Joey had no doubt that it did. Because Joey had kissed a lot of girls who used lipbalms with flavors like ‘mixed berry’ or ‘creamy coconut’ or ‘smoochworthy strawberry.’ He liked the way the sweet flavor mingled with his seemingly always sweaty lips and how it made lips so smooth that his just slid over them gracefully. He wondered if Lance’s lips were that sweet and that smooth. And then he stopped that line of thinking because it just seemed wrong to be thinking about Lance’s sweet and smooth lips.
But he couldn’t deny that he was curious nonetheless.
Lance didn’t really feel like singing about bodies starting to rock, because baby you can’t stop. But he did, looking pissed every second of the way. He didn’t feel like faking it tonight and he felt like half-assing his performance.
‘Passive aggressive’ was what Chris had called him once, opening an old psychology book. Because Lance liked doing things subtly that would get everyone’s attention so they could all ask him what was wrong and he could storm away and scream ‘Nothing!’ That’s what he wanted tonight. So Joey could feel like the bad performance was all his fault, because he had to have that stupid baby with Kelly, which caused Lance to fracture his ankle, which in turn caused Joey to break up with him, and which led to Lance’s sub-par performance in Kansas City.
So Lance sucked that night in Kansas City.
Except during ‘Selfish,’ though not because he wanted to know why Joey was runnin’ from a real good man and why he wanted to push him away when all Lance wanted was to give him love forever and ever and ever and ever.
It was because he saw a guy in the audience with black hair and dimples and clear skin and bright smile. And because the guy winked at Lance. Lance winked back.
At the break, Lance sent Lonnie into the audience to find Dimple Boy.
Joey just eyed him carefully, shook his head, and said, “I can’t stop you.”
Lance wanted to open the fridge and find alcohol and drink himself into a coma.
And he wanted to make the stupid baby disappear. Because it was her fault that all he could drink tonight was papaya juice.
fiction...home...email
