BAD MOON ON the RISE

Ian McDuff

There was nothing unusual in the guys’s teasing each other. Nothing unusual, either, in their teasing each other through music. When the on-again-off-again Put a Bass in Space project was back ‘on’ – once a tease wouldn’t raise a welt, as it would have during that unpleasant period when the Russian space program and Mircorp were feuding, leaving an innocent Lance caught in the middle and made to look foolish, again, to his incandescent fury – but when the project came back ‘on,’ the usual banter kicked in. On movie night, Joe kept making smartassed suggestions ranging from Close Encounters to Space Jam. Chris kept nicknaming Jamesnjosh™: ‘Buck Rogers and Ming the Merciless’ (Lance had of course delighted in correcting him: ‘Flash Gordon, dude. Flash was in the flicks with Ming’); ‘Duck Dodgers and Marvin Martian’ (everyone except Justin was a huge Chuck Jones fan), and the like. ‘Here come George and Judy,’ he’d grin, and then start singing the Jetsons theme. And the musical jokes, in which the guys would have leitmotifs cued to play, or would burst into song, when Lance and JC least expected it, were equally typical. They’d be having some quiet time only to be startled witless by Joey’s bursting in, crooning Moonlight becomes you…. At odd moments, CK would cue up Space Cowboy – the original one, what Chris called the ‘real’ one, the Steve Miller Band one – or the other Steve Miller chart he thought appropriate, The Joker (he’d been known to call Josh ‘Maurice,’ anyway, for years, and make wise about ‘the pompatus of love’). Joey would blast some Francis Albert Sinatra their way, unexpectedly: Fly Me to the Moon. Or Elton John, of course: Rocket Man. Then he’d start poking fun at Justin for having done the This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore video. ‘Musta been some set,’ he’d say. ‘First the guy hires ya to play him in his flaming disco-slut days, then after workin’ wit’ ya, he goes, tells the press how much he hates all boybands. You turn him down or sumpin’, J? I mean, ya musta pissed in his cereal pretty bad, one week of ya makes him a boyband-hater.’

This did not sit well with Justin.

There was nothing unusual in the guys’s teasing each other. Nothing unusual, either, in their teasing each other through music. What was unusual was when Justin got into the act, in a way that was mean-spirited even for him. Justin’s darker moods were the band’s ‘elephant in the living room,’ never mentioned, never confronted, always endured: mainly from a sense of guilt, a feeling on everyone else’s part that it wasn’t just The Business that had obscured the boy they’d all fiercely loved and brothered, it was somehow their failure, their inability to protect him, that had layered a thick patina of ugliness over what they were sure was still the inner core of the sweet young man they cared so deeply for. With each passing year, the youth he had been was further obscured, and with each passing year, their feelings of guilt, their belief that somehow they had failed him, grew.

They didn’t talk about it much.

Of late, though, the situation had worsened, and grown more volatile. They walked increasingly as upon eggshells – or, rather, like soldiers walking point through a minefield. There were still moments when J was recognizably yet the young man all of them cherished, sweet, fun, capable of self-mockery, cuddly as a puppy. But he could turn on a dime, now, and more and more the next moment would see him arrogant and spiteful and filled with an unfocused rage no one wished to become the object of. It wasn’t fear: they had, in keeping with the role of elder brothers they had all taken on, all confronted him, and forcibly gotten some points across, in the past. It was their guilt and self-condemnation that stayed their hands, now, their assumption of fault for the way he’d turned out. That, and perhaps a fear of pushing things to the stage of breaking up the band, and quite likely a feeling, also, that he was an adult now and they had to let him stand on his own two feet, even if that meant letting him step on a few mines himself.

So they walked warily, usually. Joe dropped the Elton John comments, though he still played Rocket Man when Lance arrived on the bus. Because J not only didn’t like and didn’t get Chuck Jones, but actively resented the fact that the rest of them did, Chris stopped referencing Warner Brothers cartoons. They all did. The private, unmasked men behind the Lance and JC personæ , James and Josh, no longer participated – at least in front of Justin – in their ongoing Morning, Sam / Morning, Ralph routine. Josh avoided referring to James, when James was playing mogul, as ‘Wile E. Coyote, Su-pah Genius,’ and no longer was it a set-piece of a mildly buzzed evening for James to sing ragtime in his Michigan J. Frog voice. Justin had never objected – except on reasonable grounds of over-repetition – to the ongoing Muppet gags, though, so no one thought twice about it when Chris put together a highlight DVD of all the old ‘Pigs … In … Spaaaaaaace’ skits from The Muppet Show.

Within a week, though, James was getting more than tired of Justin’s incessant references to him as ‘Link Hogthrob.’ And gritting his teeth whenever J called Josh ‘Dr Strangepork,’ too. At least Justin sometimes still generally called Josh by name (or, rather, by accepted nicknames, ‘C’ and ‘Jayce’ and ‘JC’). From the instant CK had hit the ‘Stop’ button at the end of the highlight compilation, Justin had not called James by ‘Lance’ or by ‘James,’ except, in the former instance, publicly. Not once. Only ‘Link.’ Or, ‘yo, Hogthrob.’

Josh didn’t particularly mind the ‘Strangepork’ bit. (Chris and Joe weren’t altogether sure he noticed. C could be that way, sometimes. Oblivious.) The little brat’s smarting off to James, though, was a whole new ball of wax. It took all the strength that was in Josh not to haul off and bust the kid’s lip; but he and James had long since reached an agreement about over-protectiveness, on both sides. It was for James to call Justin on this one, and so far, James had been more than patient.

James’s patience, and Josh’s, were tested the next movie night. When they were all tossing out suggestions, Justin’s came with an overt sneer: hostile suggestions, such as Apollo 13, and Alien, and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

But it was when J got into the act in terms of music – always the deepest and most meaningful level of communication for the five, for obvious reasons – that things blew up. Suddenly, whenever James turned around, Justin was smirking evilly and playing Bowie’s Space Oddity and Peter Schilling’s Major Tom.

The ninth time was the last. They were all in one room, fortunately. James came in last, having, as always, had to deal with a FreeLance crisis at the last possible minute. As he entered, J, who was listening to his MP3 player via headphone, started singing along. Major Tom again.

In three swift strides, James was nose to nose with the smirking Justin, his face grim. Wordlessly, he ripped the headset off his bandmate, who sprang to his feet, lithe and angry as a big cat, and pushed him. James’s voice was cold and menacingly quiet as he recovered his balance. ‘This ends now,’ he said.

‘Fuck you, faggot.’

Josh snapped and went for J’s long column of throat with both hands, intent on throttling the life out of someone who had in that instant ceased to be his baby brother and long-time friend and shadow. James grabbed his lover half a pace before Josh could quite reach Justin, and Joe, himself angry as a fighting bull, grappled Justin away and down.

‘What the fuck is your problem, man?’ Chris’s eyes were equally hard.

‘Astro-Fag is my problem,’ Justin snapped, still struggling to break Joe’s pinioning.

‘You little –’

Justin looked hatefully at Josh, himself restrained physically from renewing the fight. ‘Fuck off, princess.’

Joe backhanded him. Justin’s eyes glittered with malice. James shot one, stern look at Josh that pinned him in place, then released him and turned his full attention to J.

‘Dicking with me is one thing, boy,’ he rumbled. ‘You keep your damn smart mouth shut, it comes t’ Josh, you hear? Shut up: I’m talkin’ now. I don’t mind some raggin’ ’bout this space deal, even if it is my childhood dream we’re dissin’ here, but ever’ time you mouth off about it, it’s been past raggin’. Everwhat comes out your mouth lately all but says you’d as soon I never returned. You want me dead, that it?’

‘It’s not like you contribute t’ da band anyways, dawg.’ Justin’s tone was distilled spite. ‘We can spare your can’t-dance-don’t-sing ass seven months, we can spare it for good.’

Chris started to speak and Joe drew back his fist, but James stilled both of them with a glare. ‘“We”? Or do the others not count either with you?’

‘Fuck this,’ Justin said, his voice rising. ‘Get Fat Ass off me and let’s take this outside, if you got the balls, faggot. I ain’t gotta answer to your pansy ass.’

Again James quelled the others with a long, ice-green look. Joe, who was indeed effectively pinning Justin down by sheer weight, plus a strategic grip with his left hand, had been minded to knee the little punk in the crotch.

‘Wrong answer, boy. You do have to answer to my pansy ass. What the Sam Hill is your problem?’

‘You are, cocksucker. Why not? It’s always about you, isn’t it? Your business, and your movie ventures, and your butt buddy, and your fame, and your “crew,” and your image, and your small-town Mississippi gay-boy issues and manners, and your fucking dreams! We dance to your tune, we run on your schedule, we ask, “How high?” when you say t’ jump, you run the show, you pull our strings, you pull Johnny’s and Clive’s strings, you’re the next fucking Lou, ain’t that right? It’s all about you, and you wouldn’t, wouldn’t none of y’all wouldn’t, be nobody without me!’

He’s insane. He has totally gonzo lost it. He’s a freaking professional case study. He’s a final exam problem in an advanced Psych seminar, Chris thought.

The fuck is he on, anyways? I can’t smell nothin’ and he looks straight, but he’s gotta be fucked to hell and high as a kite, Joe thought.

He is dead meat, was all that was in Josh’s mind. He is toast.

Justin was shouting now. ‘And you’ve worked it so well! Sweet, shy, innocent little Southern mama’s boy, ain’t you? And while you were blushing and grinning that shit-eatin’ possum grin, you country-boyed your way to where you call all the shots! Motherfucker! You worked it to where you have everything you want and we ain’t got shit! You git it all and I got jack shit! I got nothin’! Nothin’ –’

‘Nothing?’ Chris scoffed, openly.

Joey was actually offended. ‘“Nothing”? – gimme a fuckin’ break!’

‘You? You stand there and say you have nothing? What the fuck do you not have?’ Josh had stood, and started forward. James stopped him with a firm hand pressed against his chest, and Justin sat him down, stunned, with his response.

‘You got C,’ Justin fumed, ‘and what have I got?’

Josh subsided with an audible, ‘Whoa.’ Justin went on, oblivious to what three of his four bandmates had just thought they heard.

‘Huh? What have I got? You got all your dreams, on my fucking nickel, my coattails, and where are my baby-days dreams? Where the fuck did my childhood go? What happened to my dreams? You have yours sitting right there, and you can’t wait to leave him, to blast into fucking space, and what do I get? I get my hopes and dreams telling a bunch of London tabloids that she ain’t in no “intense relationship” with nobody! God damn it, what the hell is anything worth, what the fuck is fair, when a couple of pussy-boys have what y’all two got and I ain’t got shit for love?’

‘Holy fucking shit,’ Chris breathed. ‘So that’s the deal.’

James had never blinked in his locked staring contest with Justin. Now he nodded, slowly, as if this merely confirmed a conclusion he had long since reached.

‘Let him up, Joe.’

‘What?’ Joe, Chris, and Josh were not only in unison, they were unconsciously harmonizing.

‘Let. Him. Up.’

Uncertain, dubious, but never thinking to question James’s judgment, Joe slowly levered himself off of Justin. The others expected an explosion, Justin rising in wrath and renewing the fight. He didn’t. He went limp, after the long, locked-muscle struggle against Joe, then curled into a fetal ball and began to shudder with silent tears.

James looked at the others. ‘Out,’ he said. Joe and Chris wavered, but went, unwilling to meet James’s gaze. Josh hung in the doorway, irresolute. James looked at him with a tenderness he had not shown to Joey and Chris. ‘You too, babe. Go on.’ Their eyes met and they said all they needed to say, silently.

As the door closed behind him, slowed by his own persistent reluctance to leave, Josh saw his lover sit down on the floor next to Justin, with the air of a man settling in for hours; and he saw, at the last, Justin roll sobbing into James’s strong embrace.

END