Missing You: The Lost Chord

by Ian McDuff

viasaintpaul

Nick hated music.

Well, other people had jobs they hated, didn’t they?

Maybe it wasn’t the music. Maybe it was the music he just happened to run into.

Maybe it was his friends’s taste in music. His friends had lousy taste in music. Frankly, Nick hated his friends.

Not as much as he hated being by himself, though. So maybe he should see more of his friends. Because, even though they had lousy taste in music, it wasn’t as bad as the music that got played in bars and restaurants and, y’know, shit like that. Not that he spent much time in bars anymore. He didn’t dare. He might never come back out, if he let himself go in.

Besides, you go into a bar, you have to listen to sucky music.

Really sucky.

Like, all about heartbreak and fights and, y’know, people missing other people, like, people the people who are missing the people loved. Or used to. Or something.

Nick had a feeling that the ‘people’s in that hadn’t added up just right, but he didn’t care enough to try to count it out on his fingers.

Besides. Sometimes the people that people loved had once loved other people that weren’t the people who loved the people involved, and that was a few people too many, right?

Right?

Nick was familiar – sometimes, he thought, a little too much so – with Howie’s pet theory that everyone had a ‘keyword,’ one word that summed them up. Looking over his life, he’d pretty much concluded he knew what his was. It seemed like everything was either sparkly fun-and-games: fame, money, adoration, clothes, and the newest pre-release X-Box and PS2 stuff: or, well, tragical. (Jane, for instance.) It was all either ‘ecstasy or heart’s brakes,’ as he’d once put it to Howie. There was no center in the middle (or, as Kevin had snarked when he said that, anywhere else, for that matter). Nick knew that Howie’s keyword for Sashay – for JC – was ‘stability,’ not because Sashay had had that for most of his life but because he hadn’t had. It. Whatever.

‘On that basic,’ he’d told Howie, solemnly, ‘my word is “ordinary.”’

And it was. Nick hungered and thirsted for the ordinary, his soul panted for it as the hart for streams of running water. When the comic and the tragical both overbore him, he ached to be Just An Ordinary Man, one for whom even the important moments fell on Just An Ordinary Day (as when he’d first met Howie, long before he knew what love was and ages before Backstreet was even a vague notion).

Damned if he didn’t manage to screw up even ‘ordinary,’ he thought, glumly.

It was rarer now, but still ordinary, for him to push Howie a little, even try to pick a fight. And not just for the making-up. He knew perfectly well why he did it; knowing that, though, didn’t actually help him to stop.

And often, the basis, the excuse, was ordinary, workaday, and trivial. Most recently, it had been when Nick had a day free on tour – Howie was discreetly along – and wanted to go clubbing.

‘You have a concert tomorrow, hijito. Wouldn’t you rather stay in?’

‘If I’d’ve wanted to stay in I wouldn’t’ve said I wanted to go out. C’monnnnn, Howie. I wanna go get my groove on.’

‘That’s fine, baby. I’ll be here.’

‘With you, I wanna.’

‘Nick. I’m beat, baby. You go and get down: don’t worry about me.’

‘But I don’t wanna go without you, and I wanna go. So.’

‘Nicky, no. I just don’t feel like going out. Not tonight.’

‘You used to be fun. You used to go clubbin’. And you used to like to spend time with me.’

‘Owning a club takes most of the magic out of clubbing.’

It had escalated from there.

So Howie had not backed down, not this time, and he, Nicky, had stormed off, and then Howie had found an excuse to be elsewhere, and now Nick was touring ‘alone’ in a way that he’d never quite had to face before, and, yeah, ‘majorly with the suckage,’ he’d said on a long-distance call to AJ, who had patiently, fraternally, and lovingly instructed him to get his head surgically removed from the Infamous Ghetto-Booty Nick Ass.

Nick hated his friends.

The problem had been simple. Pronoun trouble. Nick knew that he hadn’t been the first guy-type-person Howie had had sex with. And he believed, even now, if he was honest with himself, that Howie was telling the simple truth: that while Howie had been Nick’s first male lover, and as far as Howie intended, his last and only, forever, so too had Nick been Howie’s ‘first, for anything that mattered.’ He knew that, deep down. And, yeah, okay, Nick had known that Howie never talked about that past he had: those days, so impossibly distant, before Nick was anything but a child whom Howie vaguely knew from the auditions circuit whilst Howie had already been a man, a college student, an adult. Nick knew that Howie simply did not talk about the heartbreaks he’d had growing up, or any of the romances that, y’know, maybe worked, too, but had faded, and were all Before Nick and thus not really important, right? Except that that sort of thing was important in growing up and all and had made Howie who he was and Howie was important to Nick so, sure, those things Before Nick were important that way but not important important because, well, they were Before Nick. Or. Yeah.

And Nick had known that somewhere in there Howie had had that first gay experience, and that he’d been in college, and – okay, fine, fine, Nick was an idiot, fine, okay? Like he shouldn’t have been able to figure that out on his own. The thing was, Howie played the Official Gay Pronoun Game – it was always ‘they,’ not ‘he’ or ‘she’ – when he talked about getting heartbroken Back Then, and Nick hadn’t put two and two together after all. And yeah, fine, all right, it was his own damned fault, because Howie – Howie, the most private of men – had offered, when they first admitted their feelings for one another, to tell Nick everything ‘so he’d be comfortable with it,’ and Nicky had actually said no, had declined, and that had been that. And now. Now it all came together in the middle of one of his stupid, stupid arguments that he’d started, and, well. Shit.

‘Chris Kirkpatrick?’

It was Nick’s own fault. He’d bitched and pissed and moaned and whined and finally said, ‘I bet when you were in college with whoever that was, you went out when they wanted to!’

And Howie, after all these years of careful self-censorship, had been tired and ragged and beaten enough to answer incautiously, ‘Even Chris wasn’t this pissy, Nick.’

And there they were.

Nick’s mouth was still agape, except when he was ranting. ‘Chris Fucking Kirkpatrick, Howie?’

‘I think his middle name is “Alan,” but, yes. Chris Kirkpatrick. My height? Sings in the same range? Has a similar job to ours?’

‘I’ma kill him. He. He’s the one that fucked you up, right? The one that dumped you? I’ma kill his ass –’

‘No you are not, Nickolas Gene. I’ve told you a thousand times it was my own fault. I went into it with my eyes open, agreeing to “nothing more than fuck-buddies” terms, and knowing that he was so barely bi that this was basically just experimentation on his part. Chris is not to blame.’

‘You are shitting me, Howie. Spearminting or not, he…. Fuck, Howie. And. Chris. I mean. Comedy, okay, but sex? He’s –’

‘Nick, don’t you dare. Don’t you dare. You see him now and you think he doesn’t measure up, and baby, there’s a truth to that, because no one does compared to you, but – no. No. Don’t you dare be arrogant that way about that. And you didn’t know him then. You can afford to think he’s unattractive now, because you don’t know how blest you are with what you have. And, verdad, the years have been hard to him, maybe, but –’

‘You’ve kept –’

‘Nick, just shut up if you’re going to mouth off about things you don’t understand. I’m the one who fell for him back then, and if you think I have bad taste, you might want to rethink that given who I’m with now. And you didn’t know him then. He’s been through a lot over these years, and, Nicky, what he’s been through, it would break you. It would me. So. No. Do not speak this way of Chris.’

‘You. The. I don’t fucking believe this. You wouldn’t defend me that hard. What, you still carrying a torque for him?’

That really blew it, right there. Within fifteen minutes, Nick had stormed off to go clubbing, alone, with Howie’s stern final statement, ‘Let me know when you’re ready to try being mature for once,’ ringing in his ears the way concert noise did for hours after a show. Within twenty minutes, Howie had packed, and gone to catch a flight away from there. And when Nick had come back an hour later with his tail between his legs, it was to an empty tour bus.

The problem with his friends – aside from sucky music tastes and meddling and being right, which just made it worse – was that they were all on hiatus. Nick really thought they should have coordinated it better, so boyband teenpop – sorry, Kev, sorry, no, didn’t even think it – so male vocal harmony groupage didn’t completely go off the radar screen. They could have, y’know, taken turns, or something. But. Anyway. All on hiatus. Everyone he knew and liked – everyone except Timbers – was on hiatus. And that meant either they had to come see him or if he was touring near them, he had to see them, on the road and stuff.

And it’s not that he wanted to talk about The Thing With Howie. It was just that he didn’t want to be alone even morer. More. Whatever.

Of course he could call them. But. Sucky music. He’d called AJ and the fucker was out. Which meant, yeah, voicemail. Which meant listening to John Waite. ‘(I Ain’t) Missing You.’ Bastard. (AJ, not John Waite. Before this, he’d thought about covering it. But.)

So then he’d just gone out to chill by doing some power shopping. Man but there was a lot of sucky music Out There. Well, okay. Not sucky maybe another time. But – sucky, with the missage and stuff. Between the mall and the elevator and the canned music suckage … so far, he’d suffered through twelve renditions of Avril LaWhatshername’s ‘Missing You.’ And two of their own damn ‘Missing You’ – which, fine, good that it was still being played, but still. The final straw was when some place or other he was at, piped in Aaron: ‘I’m Gonna Miss You Forever.’ Jesus; his own brother. It was at that point he’d given up and, basically, fled, back to the hotel.

Thank God for the Northeast. Everything was near to everything else, really. Compared to Florida, or Cali. So. New York. And the strike, yeah, shame about that, but. It meant Kev was free when he wasn’t, like, walking the pick-it line or whatever.

Kev had leased a really neat, funky loft, too, that he’d been dying to see.

Which was fine, and they’d both resolutely avoided talking about The Howie Thing. And then Kev wanted to show off the sound system. Which was cool. Except. Kev had gotten all into the history of Broadway. And the Roaring Twenties and all that Chicago jazz. (Fucking Fatone. Bad influence, man.) So. Gershwin. His first big hit or whatever. ‘Swanee.’ Heavy with the missage.

Nick bailed.

Turned out Fatone was in New York that weekend, too. And it wasn’t as if Joe would even know about The Howie Thing. Right? And, okay, there were sure to be more show-tunes. But really, how many of those could there be that were about people missing people?

‘Heyyyy-hey, Nick! C’mon in, man. Damn, it’s good to see you. Touring agrees with you.’

‘Hey, Joe. ’Sup?’

‘Just checking on things up here. Hey – I got something cool from Pops. Don’t worry, it idden Broadway, I wouldn’t do that to you.’

‘Neat,’ Nick said, with unfeigned relief. ‘What is it?’

Joe beamed. ‘“The Complete Perry Como,” man. Italian suave. You’re gonna love it. Here, have some grappa, I’m gonna cue the track my ’rents fell in love to –’

It was, of course, ‘How I Miss You Tonight.’ Nick whimpered.

After that, Nick decided to keep himself to himself until the tour swung South and he could see Bri and LA and Baylee. A nice, close-knit family unit. No more heartbreak and missing-you stuff.

Brian picked him up at the airport, beaming. As soon as they got in the car, the radio came on, tuned, predictably, to a country station: Bri always got very down-home when he was at home, and out of the spotlight.

‘What the –’

Brian looked at him. Injured. Disappointed in him. The only thing, in Nick’s experience, that could rival the effect of a good, solid Howie-Look, as far as making him feel small and loutish and beseeched, was an Injured Frick-Pout. It had Aaron beat by miles.

‘I wasn’t aware you’d taken against bluegrass.’

‘No,’ Nick said, his teeth grinding. ‘It’s fine. What is it?’

‘“Miss You,” by Lee Morse and the Blue Grass Boys.’

The song, mercifully, was in its last few bars. The announcer came on, all cornpone jollity: ‘And we’ll be back raht after thisahere commercial break, with that Kitty Wells classic, “Have Ah Tol’ You Lately That Ah Love You?” Don’t y’all go touchin’ that dial, now….’

It was going to be a long weekend.

It was peaceful, on the bus. And, hey, maybe after all Jane’s and the label’s nagging, maybe he was trimming down. The bus sure seemed bigger and emptier. Echo-ey, even, like an empty heart-, shit, an empty warehouse.

It could be even emptier if he took down all the pictures and snapshots and mementos that had Howie in them. But then again, if he took down everything with Howie in it, he wouldn’t have much of a life to show for it.

California. Sun and perfect teeth and oiled bodies and all that stuff. In between shows, he called Sashay. After all, if Nick wanted an ordinariness he couldn’t have, why not talk to JC, who was forever in search of a stability that had been so long denied him. Sure, it was a package deal, he’d have to deal with the Snarkmaster, Bass; but. This was not exactly the time to resume polite relations with AJ, who was still lecturing him about the lodgment of his head in his ass.

Unfortunately, when he turned up at C’s place – despite confirming the engagement at least five times – his host had, predictably, managed to forget about him completely. It was James Lance Bass who opened the door.

Worse yet, from inside, he could hear the last voice in the world he wanted to hear: ‘“Your mother was a hamster –”’

The Bass grinned, ushering Nick through the doorway despite Nick’s best attempt to turn on his heel and make a run for it.

‘Yeah, Chris! “– And your father smelt of elderberries! Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time!” Hi, Nick. C’mon in.’

‘Uh. Hi. Chris. Where’s Sashay?’

The door being shut, all vestiges of the public Lance were gone: it was Josh’s James who answered him, green eyes dancing, a smile of fond indulgence on his face. ‘You know he can never keep track for shit. Sometimes think the whole reason we’re together is so’s I can do that for him. He’s out in his damn home studio sanctuary, looking at rearranging something for a cover medley for us.’

Nick carefully declined to ask, but James went on and told him anyway. ‘Old Blenders tune f’om, oh, 19-and-59 or so, “I Don’t Miss You Anymore.” It’s that or we do some swing tunes as a medley, next tour –’

By now, Nick was resigned to it.

‘– One he has his eye on, by Hal Kemp and his Orchestra, which damned if I ever heard of, ain’t like it’s Miller or Ellington, but Josh likes it, ’s called “How I’ll Miss You (When the Summer Is Gone).”’

‘Yeah, yeah, Bass, you just want him to do a kicker medley,’ Chris grinned, bouncing in place.

‘Ain’t nothing wrong with a little Willie Nelson,’ James grumbled.

‘“I’m so ashamed of my eyes ’cause they still cry for you,
After they both watched my hand wave goodbye to you;
I’ve told them time and time again that this will never do:
And I’ve told them how you always laughed at teardrops;
I’m so ashamed of my arms for missing you,
Last night I woke up just in time to see them reach for you,
And now my heart confesses it still wants you too –
I’m so ashamed of them all for loving you.”’

Chris’s ironic golf-claps were interrupted when Nick collapsed into the nearest chair and simply started crying.

Nick had never wanted anyone to see him like this. Not, as a rule, even Howie. Certainly not anyone else, even his and Howie’s gay double-date partners, James and Josh. And never in a million years Chris Freakin’ Kirkpatrick.

With unexpected delicacy, Chris had gone – or maybe James had sent him – off to fetch Josh, as Nick just sobbed, chokingly, into James’s shoulder. When he could breathe again, and looked up, face mottled, he saw Josh hovering over them, concerned, and Chris looking helpless and confused, leaning against the furthest wall.

‘Nicky?’ Josh’s voice was gentle, so much so that, it reminding him of Howie, Nick nearly lost it again. ‘We’re here, man. Tell me what we can do.’

Nick couldn’t.

It took some time and not a little in the way of gently leading questions, but in the end, Nick had told them everything. About the argument, the fight, the distance. The reason. All the reasons.

‘Nick.’ James was subdued. ‘After D left the ball in your court…. You ain’t called him a-tall?’

Nick shook his head, not looking up.

‘I know why you push, sometimes,’ Josh said. ‘You need the reassurance you get by testing limits. Howie knows that too. But you know, also, we all know that Howie … Howie’s tougher than damn near any of us, man. Sweet or not, he is one tough cat, all right? But the one area that he … look, you know he’s always insecure about, well, losing you, about you leaving him. God only knows what he thinks now, if you haven’t called him in all this time.’

‘I c-couldn’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘He. He said. He said call him when I was mature enough. And. I mean, look at me. I’m an idiot. I can’t say things right, not ever. I – it makes sense in my mind but when I open my mouth I sound like the dumbest dumbass ever to talk.’

‘That’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ Josh said, with a wry quirk of his mouth that in other circumstances would have been a self-deprecating grin. Nick just snuffled, moistly and disgustingly.

‘I want. All I really ever wanted was to be an ordinary guy with an ordinary life and an ordinary love, and, y’know, I’m not even that, I can’t even do ordinary, I’m subordinable.’

‘You ain’t ordinary,’ James said, ‘on account of you’re extraordinary. Howie wouldn’t settle for anything less than the best.’

Nick couldn’t help himself at that. He glanced sidelong at Chris, who had slid down the wall into a sitting position, arms around his knees and head down, when Nick had recounted his fight with Howie over Howie’s brief college fling with Chris.

Chris felt the gaze, and raised his head just enough to peep over the barricade of forearms and knees. ‘Nick. I. God, I am so sorry. Man. Listen, you have to believe I never knew. I mean, I knew D had some issues before you. But – you know D. Nick, who do you think broke it off? It was Howie who took me aside one day – spring semester, man: I can see it like it was yesterday – and told me to stop kidding myself, I was basically straight. He actually pushed me into my next relationship, the girl I dated after he and I stopped messing around. Hell, he introduced us, set us up. And you know how private D is. He never let on any of this, and all these years he’s acted perfectly naturally. I just couldn’t connect our time together with any issues I saw in him later, I –’

‘It’s okay, Chris. No, I mean it. It isn’t your fault. He told me you weren’t to blame, and he was right. And I don’t. Blame you, that is.’

‘So why don’t you call him, like you both surely need you to do?’ The Bass was gentle, but uncompromising. Well, Nick had met Diane, so he knew James came by it honestly.

‘He said to call when. When. What if I’m never mature enough, what if I never –’

‘The Sam Hill do you think he’s been doin’ all this time, Nick, fartin’ around? You weren’t good enough for him, y’all wouldn’t never have hooked up to start with. Call the man, Nick.’

Nick had called every number he had for Howie. Had called, and had had to leave messages.

Now he waited, exhausted, emotionally spent. After the first hour, he’d sent Josh away, to go back to his keyboard, but Josh had just smiled mysteriously. Nick had been too distracted to notice, though Chris and James had, that Josh had taken his cell when he left the room.

After another three-quarters of an hour, Nick’s insistence that he had accepted every one of Chris’s repeated, breast-beating apologies had finally gotten through to Chris, and the three of them remaining had sat quietly for a while. Chris had begun to fidget, though, until James asked if music would bother Nick. ‘Not as long as it’s not about missing people and stuff,’ he’d said, and as he drifted off to sleep on the long couch, Chris and James watching a golf match on ‘mute,’ he’d been able to accept the Beatles in the background: We can work it out….

When he woke, an hour or so later, Chris and James were back to their long-running vaudeville act, though quietly.

‘Hey,’ Chris said. ‘How you feeling, Nicky?’

‘Okay. Any … any calls?’

‘We would have woken you for that,’ James said.

‘I know.’ Nick sighed. ‘It’s just. I’m on tenderhooks, here.’

Beat. ‘Oh, why not,’ Chris muttered, unable to resist. ‘Tenterlake gets that way too. Of course, with him it’s timberhooks.’

‘I thought as how that was what the critics said was the only strength to the “Justified” album.’

‘Shit, Bass, those aren’t hooks, they’re tridents.’

Gum? Nick thought, his brow creasing.

‘Oh, riiight, on account of how most all the good tunes are –’

In unison: ‘Nep-tunes.’

‘Um. You two are seriously wigged, dudes.’

‘I’ll have you know this is all my own hair, youngster.’

The Bass leaned over to Nick and stage-whispered. ‘The Braids of Dread were extensions, though.’

Chris broke out the Daffy voice. ‘“That, thir, ith an inmitigated frabrication.”’

There was no telling how long this might have gone on had not the doorbell rung. Nick startled, then steeled himself, refusing to hope.

It was AJ, though, who walked in, at the same time Josh, mysterious smile still in place, emerged from a back hallway.

AJ looked at Nick over his glasses, shaking his head. ‘Junior, you do have a gift.’

‘I know, I know,’ Nick muttered.

‘No, seriously. Here’s half the gift now.’ And AJ tossed him an oblong piece of plastic.

‘What?’

‘Keycard. Room on your floor at your hotel. Should be occupied by, oh, about seven or so. He caught a decent flight, did our Howie, though by this point, fucker sounded like he’d’ve happily chartered one.’

‘He what? He’s? Where – here – tonight – I mean, shucking fit, I mean –’

‘To quote a Certain Bounteous – if Sometimes Dense – Blond in the most notorious of all Making the Video episodes, “He came to show his love,” yadda-da, yadda-da.’

Nick sprang up and actually twirled, right there in the Bass-Chasez front parlor. ‘Thank you,’ he babbled, repeatedly, to them, to God, to the Unseen Presence of Howie D: ‘Thankyouthankyouthankyou –’ And he started for the door, almost tripping over his own feet.

‘Wait,’ Josh said, laughing. ‘There’s still the other half of that present.’

It was a CD, freshly burnt. ‘Don’t open it until you get that universally idolized ass of your’n in the car,’ James grinned. Nick quickly embraced each of them and thundered out.

As soon as he sat down behind the wheel, he looked at the CD. Obviously, James had been in on it as well as Josh: the handwriting on it was in James’s idiosyncratic scrawl.

‘Here,’ it read. ‘Something to listen to as you head out to see D.’

Nick popped it in the CD player and floored the SUV for the Beverly Hills, the Four Tops echoing in the cavernous interior. No more sucky music about lost loves and missing anyone:

All lyrics and soundbites are the property of their respective copyright holders and used pursuant to the Fair Use Doctrine.

END