Stormy Weather

by Ian McDuff

Another Songbook entry, and part of the medley that includes ‘Sexual Healing’ and ‘Sailing (Somewhere, Beyond the Sea).’

For my dear Megan.

Kevin could have warned them. They’d gotten past the fight. Live Show 4 and Wango Tango had sealed that, surely (the love and pride in James’s voice, introducing him at WT – and Lance was finally his James again, as he was finally once more his James’s Josh – well, gee, the whole stadium must have noticed it). And they had all managed to steal a few days and sail away into the Pacific sunset, and down the Baja coast, during which he and his James Lance had made their own voyages of rediscovery, precisely as the others had plotted.

Wasn’t that enough?

They were not only back to normal; they’d stopped calling each other, in private, by their impersonal, merchandised, trade names.

When James Lance Bass had first signed on, JC had gone out of his way to make him feel comfortable, welcomed; probably because it seemed to him, subconsciously, that they had adopted Lance. But when it became clearer to him that if he didn’t erect every wall he could, he was going to fall uselessly and hurtfully in love with Lance, JC had become distant, then cold (fear carves strange façades on the mansions of the soul); had become increasingly defensive and cutting, just when Lance had tried to reach out, to find his place in the group. And because Joe liked to call him ‘Josh,’ sometimes, just to one-up Justin by reminding them all that he, Joe, was JC’s friend from longest back as amongst them, and because the Lance of that day had had a tin ear for social relationships, Lance had taken that name as being a sort of ‘inner circle’ password, and – disastrously – used it himself. JC had erupted.

But that very eruption, and the way his heart twisted within his chest when he had savaged Lance, had shown him once and for all that he was never going to shake the hold Lance had on him. Within the week, he had broken and surrendered, and combined groveling with his first-ever declaration of love for Lance. As James Lance had since observed, Josh had the adoptee’s tic of re-imagining the past, and Josh had tried, over the years of their intimacy, to learn everything about James Before the Group, as if he wanted to download and share his love’s memories. And when Josh had surrendered to James and to love, he had told James that he wanted to be ‘Josh’ to him from then on, to have James call him by the name of his childhood, before Disney, before the scarifying lost months in Los Angeles.

‘Besides,’ James had said through his blushes, ‘y’all already done renamed me once. “Lansten,” mah ass. Only the public’d be stupid enough to swallow that….’

But now they were back to being James and Josh to each other. Wasn’t that enough?

Kevin could have warned them. Warned them that was not going to be considered sufficient by at least one of their friends. Warned them that Howie – sweet, mediating Howie – was relentless. Inflexibly determined. Impossible to refuse. Impossible to resent, worse yet.

Howie was determined, convinced unalterably, that the Bass-Chasezes needed to do some Serious Talking. Not just apologies on both sides and make-up sex, that was just papering over the rift, but serious talking about the relationship, to heal the wounds (there was a simple division of labor in the Bass-Chasez household: James mixed the drinks, Josh mixed the studio tracks and the metaphors). Because. Yes.

‘You could have warned me.’

‘Why in the Sam Hill would I need to? Y’all double-date all the damn time; hell, some ways, y’all know D and Nicky better’n we do.’

Kris, who was listening idly (the phone was on ‘speaker’), stifled her giggles. Kevin and James probably didn’t even recognize it, but when they got to talking, they both tried to hit the lowest, manliest bass notes, competitively. A confirmed ‘Are You Being Served?’ fan, Kris always pictured each of them, successively, as Mr Humphries, answering the phone in the men’s-wear department and straining to sound butch.

‘If I’d have knowed we were double-dating with John Grey and Leo Buscaglia, I doubt I’d have done it,’ James muttered.

‘Oh, yeah, D’s done a number on Nick long since. Times I liked it better when he was all emotionless and untouchable. Now … boy goes around kissin’ and huggin’ ever’body in sight like a granny at a church social.’

‘It was anybody else pushin’ this idea, I’d beat ’em like a rented mule.’

‘You mean to tell me the Indomitable Bass done finally met his match, it comes to hard-headedness, and is actually throwin’ in the towel?’

‘I may be a mite perserverin’ –’

‘Obstinate –’

‘Determined.’

Kevin snorted. ‘Independent as a hawg on ice.’

‘Resolute, is all.’

‘More like uppity as Missus Asher’s hoss.’

‘Pot, kettle; kettle, pot,’ Kris said audibly from where she was running a JWR Foundation spreadsheet.

‘Resolute it is,’ Kevin said, hastily. ‘Fact remains, D can out-hardhead anybody, he takes a notion.’

‘Ain’t that,’ James said, ‘it’s, how can you disappoint the boy? Be like kickin’ a puppy.’

‘That’s what he wants you to think. That sweetness routine … gets ’em ever’ time.’

‘Uh-huh. Speakin’ from experience?’

This time, Kris’s uncontrollable laughter could be clearly heard on both ends of the line. Was he ever, she thought, her sides aching. D has every one of us twisted around his manicured finger.

‘He cancelled out on the game?’ Brian was incredulous.

‘Just a rain-check, darlin’,’ his wife said.

‘LA, Nicky ain’t never –’

‘He and Howard are spending some time with Jamesanjosh™ today. They think those two need to talk through their problems, not just cover over them.’

‘Oh dear Gawd.’ Brian shook his head, with a sort of resignation: there was nothing he could do to avert the impending doom. ‘Bass is hosed.’

LA whapped him on the bicep, she being a great believer in Howie-style relationship-communication.

The Bass-Chasezes, having believed – until Howie and Nick told them otherwise – that they had fixed their problems by the time-honored method of apologizing abjectly and fucking like a couple of grass snakes, had no longer felt constrained not to involve their bandmates, for fear of sides-taking. When Joe and Justin heard the news, that D wanted their buds to, Idunno, Joe put it, sit aroun’ with their shoes off an’ share, they both had the same reaction: ‘D is such a girl.’ Chris whapped them both over the heads with his game controller, he being a great believer in Howie, period.

‘Yo, I watched Cribs, dawg. Love the hell outta D, but, he is such a girl.’

‘Shut up, Infant.’ If Chris had doubts about his old college choirmate’s notions, he wasn’t about to share them with the Callow Youth and the Guido.

Howie was not, in fact, much into any New Agery: that was more Kev’s deal: Fr de Guzaman would have his hide, Howie thought, if he started being a heretic.

But regardless of motive or philosophical underpinning, in form, at least, most ‘interfacing-mediating-conciliating-facilitating-insert-happy-horseshit-of-your-choice-here’ sessions are the same. And Howie and Nick were prepared.

‘Aidge? Has he lost his fucking mind?’

‘Well, well, hello to you, too, Kirkpatrick. Me? I’m fine, thanks. You? Good. It was nice of you to call just to chat –’

‘Yeah, yeah, can it, McLean, this is urgent. I’m the unlicensed shrink in this bunch; what the fuck is D thinking?’

‘I don’t demand that my sponsor – or anyone at my chapter – have letters after the name, man. Look. Howard and Nickolas have both been through the mill. Caro’s death? Worse yet, maybe, Nick growing up a Carter? Think about it. They got life-experience here. And D’s a born peacekeeper. Oughta send him to the Mideast.’

Howie had patiently explained to Nick, as they planned their little intervention in their friends’s love-life, that soft music would not be a useful atmospheric addition, because it was a lead-pipe cinch that C would start harmonizing, and things would slide downhill from there.

It was, therefore, very quiet in the Bass-Chasez kitchen, as the four of them sat around the table. Howard had known that it would take main force to get the Bassman to ‘set on his ass on the floor in his stocking feet like a damn hippie,’ or whatever it was that his friend feared about the indignity and touchy-feely-ness of the operation. It wasn’t worth trying, under the circumstances: The Bass could be a teense pigheaded. Howie would have preferred a better layout – if not a circle on the floor, then at least beanbags: a faint subliminal air of regression to the openness of childhood could be useful for such a session – but he could live with this, so long as James didn’t try to turn it into a board meeting: as, given half a chance, he surely would.

They had started with a moment of silent prayer, which, James Lance had thought, was a nice concession: it made him feel slightly less like he was at some half-wit Californicating Noo-Age idiots’s party, of the sort Justin doted on. He had a suspicion that Howie, although Howie was after all a devout Catholic, was humoring him slightly; but as he considered that his participating in this cockamamie scheme, at all, constituted his humoring Howie, he figured they were about even.

Howie had then made what was almost a ritual statement to the effect that everyone was loved, that everyone at the table was equal, that what was said there not merely stayed there but was forgotten as soon as they were done, and so, rather boringly, James thought, on. Then he’d said, ‘Now. Let’s clear our minds and think about what has brought us here,’ and James, after a few brief peeks at the other three, who had shut their eyes and assumed Expressions of Great Profundity, had dutifully closed his own eyes to humor Howie.

Now he opened them again, recognizing immediately the perfectly familiar sound from across the table. His tone, when he spoke, was at once dry and affectionate; indulgent and exasperated. ‘Be damned if Josh ain’t asleep.’

It was at that point that Nick concluded, firstly, that this was going to be a long day, and, secondly, that there was another reason than substitution-and-transference for why coffee was a staple at AJ’s Meetings.

Three hours later, no one was finding any comedy in the proceedings, though.

There had been tears. Joe, traditionally, cried as freely as he laughed, as his father did, though neither often saw any reason to, being naturally sunny of disposition: still, Italian ideas of manliness did not extend to the Anglo-Saxon repression of all emotion. For a very long time, Justin had pretended to be above or beyond tears, though he hid them poorly and they were frequent enough, especially in Germany; but in private, amongst the ten of them, he now embraced them, when they came up, as part of being an integrated being, yadda-da yadda-da, ‘insert extended New Age / West Coast / holistic / pseudo-Buddhist ramble here,’ as the Bass sometimes snarked. Chris, of course, was sui generis as always, though he had his own snarky comment on the fact that Justin always managed to look pretty and manly and poised and properly lighted when he cried, whereas it just made the rest of them, Chris included, look ugly. ‘Besides,’ he would say, ‘it gets salt in the beard-horns, man.’ Still, for all that Chris kept inside, and had for years, he knew when to release in private, as an alternative to going wholly mad.

But tears embarrassed James Lance to this day, even though he was sometimes unable to express his rage any other way (and when he wept, it was always from rage, not fear or pity or any catharsis). And tears humiliated Josh. He had dealt with more than enough in the way of being thought effeminate, thanks all the same, and if Big Jim Bass was a Mississippian who had taught his son what was and was not manly by Southern standards, well, Roy Chasez was a scion of the Acadien bayous, and had passed on similar inhibitions to his son in turn. Even now, there was the uneasy combination of dork and jock still within Josh, years after the ‘Sporty Spice’ jokes had been put to rest.

Still, there had been tears, scalding and shameful and resented by Josh who shed them, agonizing (and embarrassing) to James who was forced to witness them.

It wasn’t the tears so much that had slowed Josh’s rambling explanations as it was Nick’s incessant hugging, but in the end, Josh had dredged it all up.

‘It’s, it’s just always been this way, and maybe it always will be, I don’t know, maybe I need help to change, maybe I need to change, no, I’m sure I do, because this isn’t fair, not to me, not to you, but I can’t help it –’

It had been Howie’s first principle that interruptions be stifled, nipped in the bud, but Josh sometimes needed to be slowed down and forced to breathe.

When he resumed, less tearfully, he was more coherent. ‘It’s. Mom and Dad did everything, everything … Heather, Tyler, no one ever failed to treat me like I was a hundred percent a part … but. I’m always. I never feel sure, safe, secure, not, I don’t mean unsafe, but, y’know, that I fit, that I fit in, that I’m part of things, and that, well, that I won’t be sent away, that I won’t fuck something up, something I don’t even know what it is and I didn’t mean to but I do and it’s something and they send me away, not, not the family I mean, I don’t really think that, not anymore at least, but, friends, and producers and the industry and the label and it was that way on the Mouse Club and, it’s just I’m always waiting, always waiting for the other shoe to drop and I never really fit in, sometimes not even with the guys, honestly, I know I’m always somewhere else in my head or whatever or I’m asleep and I just know I’ve missed something and I’m not quite in the group and, yeah. So. And so when they say, “Do this” or “let’s do that” or whatever, and if I don’t, I mean, as long as they think I fit in they won’t send me away but if I don’t go along, then what, y’know? And. Well. See?’

James and Howie were silent for a few, disastrous beats, because there were so many things to say to that that they couldn’t figure out quite where to start, but Nick wasted no time in jumping in with both feet. ‘I get you, man. Growing up with Jane for a mother – and she is a mutha, all right – you don’t never feel safe. Only time I feel safe, ’s when I’m with my bros or my sibs, man, or maybe on the water. I mean, even if we’re like half a continent apart, knowing I can call, knowing it’s real that I have them behind me no matter what even if they’re not in the room, that’s it, that’s what makes me feel secured. That’s the safeness-y thing.’

‘I. When James holds me. That’s all.’

‘What about when you got the rest of the guys around? Or me an’ D?’

‘Kinda, yeah, but, not so much as when I have James. But more, too. Because.’ Josh was addressing the table now, head bowed, unable to meet anyone’s eye, least of all James’s; his voice was almost inaudible. ‘I care too much, with James. I know that someday I’m gonna fuck it up, and.’ James started to splutter, but Howie had a quick hand clamped over his mouth before the sound could quite register with Josh. ‘And I think sometimes I subwhatsitly try to go ahead and push and make it end, now, so he can move on and I can start recovering, since, y’know, it’s bound to happen sooner or later.

‘I know that’s stupid. I know it’s not right. And I try to make myself know it won’t ever happen that way. But. I can’t help it.’

Josh had placed his hands on the table top, clenched in fists. Howie placed his in the air just over them, and when Josh relaxed his hands just enough, Howie clasped them.

‘Josh…. Somewhere, deep down inside me, there will always be the feeling that somehow, Caro’s illness and Caro’s death were my fault. That God was punishing us all for my being gay. It’s irrational; it’s also ineradicable, at some level. “Los pensamientos son como pájaros,” my abuelo used to say: “thoughts are like birds. You cannot stop them flying overhead. But you can keep them from nesting in your hair.” I know that I cannot let my guilt control me. I know that I cannot let it influence me, even, because it is irrational. And mostly, I know that I must not let it poison things with Nicky, because that, that is what matters, what keeps me going.’

‘But you’re stronger than I am, Howard. You’re a leader. I’m not, never, if we did this all over again J or Joe or Chris or James would be in front, never me, no matter how many times we replay it, because I’m not –’

‘Josh.’ James’s voice was grave, almost stern, but loving. ‘When I fell off the back of the melon truck and landed in the middle of this crazy dream y’all four had. All y’all had more experience’n me. Not singin’, per se. But entertainin’. Damn dancin’ around and all.’ There was a ghost of a grin on his face, and it summoned answering flashes of humor from the others. ‘Now, sure, Joey he’ped me a bunch. Justin knew instinctively what to do. Chris was the ramrod, it was his idea from the get-go. But you know damn well who it was, was in charge. The faultless dancer, the strongest singer, the instinctive showman; stage manager, choreographer, composer … that damn warehouse was the next thing to a circle of Dante’s hell, but ain’t no question who was the Vergil, the guide. You were our leader, always. My leader especially, even at the worst. Ain’t nothin’ happened since to have changed that.

‘Now, I may be just a good ol’ country boy f’om Miss’ssippi, but it don’t take me all that long to look at a hot horseshoe, and ain’t nobody a-fixin’ to persuade me that you weren’t in your element, runnin’ things and doin’ it right and well. Nor yet that you ain’t in your element minute you take the stage or set yourself down at the board in the studio booth. You didn’t have the drive and confidence of a leader in you, you’d be doin’ something else for a livin’ after growing up all your life in Bowie and getting’ through U of M and goin’ to see the Terps everwhen they played football.’

‘Well, but, James, when I’m. Out there it’s different. JC maybe can lead kinda, some ways, some things. But. Me. Josh. I’m not a leader the way you are, I’m not, all the things you can do, the business –’

‘Sheeeeeyit. Look at me, Josh. My God. I’m the laughing stock of the space program in two damn countries, I managed to drag down a whole damn film despite great work f’om Joe and Em and the folks behind the camera, I done run two companies into the ground faster’n Grant took Richmond, I done twicet the damage Chris did in tanking a company, and with less excuse…. You want a tycoon for a husband, you try and steal D away f’om Nicky, ’cause I don’t hardly meet the bill.

‘And, you know what, f’om the time I was in short-pants, ever’ time I left the house, Momma or Daddy’d say to me, “Remember whose child you are.” Partly they meant that as “don’t embarrass the Bass family name,” but they mostly meant that I should always remember I was a child of God, washed in the Blood of the Lamb and all. To this day I still have the same inner conflicts as Howie does, tryin’ to reconcile that – on account of it is true and that is who I am – with who and what else I am, not least bein’ gay. If I’m a leader, neighbor, it’s a sure-’nough case of the blind leadin’ the blind, I tell you what. And in case you forgot, you let me step in and become the point man for group bidness, all the which you were doin’ afore I got there, on account you could see I needed to feel like I wasn’t the fifth wheel, even though I was, sure as the dew falls on Dixie.’

‘I. I’m not arguing with you. You’re … I know you wouldn’t lie to me, I know that, and if you say that’s how it was…. I just. I don’t remember those things. Inside. Inside, I don’t see them, I don’t feel them. I don’t remember who I was, I don’t know who I am….’

‘And I think,’ Howie said gently, ‘that perhaps you haven’t for a long time. This business, it grinds us up. To sausage. People tell us lies, all the time, good and ill, and the iteration, alone, makes them seem true. Palabras de boca, piedra de honda: the words people say can be like stones from a slingshot, and it only took one such to kill even the giant, Goliath. Mas enseñan los desengaños, que los años, as the proverb says.’

‘Where do I go, then, to get myself back?’

‘Where is home, Josh? To you, truly, where is home?’

‘Wherever James is.’

‘Then that’s your answer.’

‘We could,’ James said, with rare diffidence, ‘we, um. I think maybe a little break in Chicago? Or Mississippi?’

‘Mississippi. The ’rents can come see us there, it’s their turn. Chicago’s too … I, I think I need country. Space. Quiet.

‘D? Nick? Would you – would you two want to, um, come with us for a bit?’

‘I don’t think you need a mediator or a facilitator any more, Josh.’

‘Um. But. We can always use friends? James?’

‘I’d be more’n happy to have y’all come along. And stand with us.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘We’re sure,’ Josh said, his voice stronger and his determination more evident than in years.

‘Then we’ll be there,’ Nick said. ‘Maybe we can even get up a foursome.’

The other three just looked at him, open-mouthed, stunned.

‘Oh, never mind,’ he pouted. ‘Why you three don’t want to play golf like Frick and Aidge and J and CK, I dunno.’

‘Golf,’ Howie sighed, with evident relief.

Nick looked puzzled for a moment, then, visibly, the penny dropped, and he turned beet-red. ‘Oh, Jesus, you guys! That’s just sick!’

So it ended in laughter beyond the tears, after all.

END