Medley: Hold On Loosely / Rockstar Baby / She Wants Me / Love the One You’re With / Working My Way Back to You: Part One

by Ian McDuff

Yeah, yeah. Songbook stuff. You know the drill. For eponymous, otherdeb, and bachelor_girl.

‘You said,’ Aaron whined, ‘you said I could always come to you about stuff, that the guys did that for you and you’d do it for me because we all know Mom would have, like, herds of cows if I went to her, you said you’d be there for me –’

Nick winced. Belated sympathy was not enough; apologies were not enough: if he’d been at all like this at that age, he owed Kev and the guys a whole florist’s shop of apologetic bouquets, and quite possibly blowjobs all around.

Well, maybe not blowjobs. Howie was easy-going about most things, but he had a firm sense of what fidelity meant.

Not that Howie was helping, right now: he was lounging against a wall behind Aaron’s back, smirking, and when Nick threw him a beseeching look, all Howie did was mouth one of the many classic lines from last night’s Blazing Saddles fest: Parson Johnson’s remark to Sheriff Bart as the shooting started, ‘Son … you’re on your own.’

‘Um. Lookit, little bro. I. What’s got you so steamed about it anyway?’

‘Dude. It’s, like, all over the Net now. And all this time you were telling me, you know you were, that you couldn’t help me with, like, advice, because of the gay thing and not knowing what makes the chicks tick, and all this time apparently you, like, have technique –’

Nick blushed a deep, rose red.

‘– I guess you really are “a little too confused.”’

‘Aaron!’

‘What?’

‘That was cheap. Chickenshit. Lookit. Um.’

‘Did you do it with Brit? The fingers thing? When she was, like, using you to make Justin look shabby right after the breakup?’

‘Okay,’ Howie interjected, sternly, ‘that really is enough. Aaron: look at me.’

At once defiant and ashamed, with a sort of adolescent hangdog defiance, Aaron slowly turned to face his brother-in-law.

‘Cuñadito, Nick and I were already together, long since together, when that foolish PR stunt, which was never more than a planted rumor, began.’ Howie was uncompromising: not harsh, but firm and austere. ‘If you wish to continue in this business, you would do well to learn to discern and distinguish publicity schemes and tabloid mierda – especially other people’s PR shit – from reality. Nicky has no more had … relations … with Britney than you have had.’

‘The difference is, I don’t want too, either,’ Nick snorted, ‘while the only thing keeping you from trying it is that she’d toss your jailbait ass on the street.’

‘In a couple of years, mind you,’ Howie said, judiciously: there was no point in undermining Aaron’s self-image: that was Jane’s job, ‘that might be different.’

‘Excuse me! Dodging the issue, okay?’

‘What issue? Huh? Wanna tell me that? Because I think there’s more to this than what I’m hearing, little bro –’

‘Be silent at once, both of you.’ Howie’s voice was dangerously even. ‘Aaron. You have seen – we have all seen, now, over and over – the clip of Nick at that concert. Repeatedly.

‘And you are thinking, of course, what every girl in the audience and every fan on the Net is thinking. To an extent, was meant to think….’

‘Which is precisely what management wants of you, mi adorado. It’s all right. You and I know that that move has its other uses.’

‘I know. That time … I never saw you shoot so much so hard so fast, man.’

‘I have a sensitive perineum, hijito.’

Howie was especially bracing, uncompromising, when he was being frank. He was also, clearly, restraining his irritation, and speaking with some considerable amount of Latin formality. ‘You are not stupid, Aaron. Nor are you unobservant. Surely you know that Nick had had experiences with girls before he came out to himself, and then to me and all of us. It is a common enough experience. Few gay or bisexual men recognize from the beginning, or are willing to acknowledge immediately, without some period of denial and desperate attempts at “making” themselves straight, who they truly are. And if in truth your education has been … neglected, and you have come to us to supplement it? Then I will assure you, if you did not know this thing already, that there are ways to give pleasure to a woman other than with your pinga. Orally. Manually. These arts are common to true lovers, men with women. Also they are used, entiende, by men who are trying to hide from their true orientation, as also by men who are ashamed by their … endowment.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s never been a problem,’ Nick interjected. He looked and sounded defensive.

Howie smiled at him.

‘Yeah, yeah,’ Aaron snorted, ‘we all know how impressed we’re all supposed to be.’

‘Hey, squirt! Don’t mock the Mighty Thor!’

‘Baby, how many times do I have to tell you, it would be “Mjöllnir.” Thor was a Norse god, Mjöllnir was his magical war-hammer. You are a Norse god, so….’

Nick remembered something Lance had once said about JC: ‘Great, I had to marry the literary one.’

‘Yours, hijito? Hmmmm? You say this is yours?’

‘Oooh…. Oh, God, Howard!’

‘Aaron.’ Howie was implacable, impatient of nonsense, but his voice was gentler, now. ‘You know, I know you know, that Nicky would never lie to you. And that is not what this is about, is it? Digame, muchacho. What is really going on here?’

Aaron turned red, then white, and stuttered a little. ‘It’s. All this. It’s. I’m scared, okay? It’s like I don’t know anymore who’s real and what’s true and, and, I can’t trust anyone anymore, okay?’

‘Fuck,’ Nick said, shoving his chair back and starting to pace. ‘I knew Mom and Dad would manage to let this shit between them slop over, I knew it –’

‘It’s not just them! It’s everybody!’

Howie stilled Nick with a glance. ‘Who is “everybody” else, other than Jane and Bob, Aaron? Me? Nicky? Who?’

Aaron hung his head. ‘Not you. Never you. Not either of you guys, really, I guess.’ He looked up, his eyes troubled. ‘What’s the deal with Lance and JC these days?’

Nick opened his mouth, then closed it, shaking his head. So that was the last straw, was it. Aaron had always regarded Lance and JC, as he had Nick and Howie, as an example of how things could work, a counterweight – along the lines of Kev and Kris, Bri and LA – to the mess that was Jane and Bob Carter’s marriage, or the far more public tarpit that was the Britney - Justin breakup. Lance had once, in happier days, said that Brit and Justin had given everyone hope that romances did come true, and in a strange way, it had been the Lance-JC relationship, as much as Nick’s and Howie’s, that had, along with the Richardson and Littrell marriages, reassured Aaron that the Carter family’s dysfunctions were not the norm, were not his own inevitable fate. He’d felt that way ever since he had been entrusted with the secret, when he was mature enough to handle it and its necessary discretion. With the ’rents loudly and messily divorcing, this was a bad time for Aaron’s faith in the Bass-Chasez ménage to be shaken as well….

Nick looked hopelessly at Howie to salvage the situation. But all Howie said was, ‘Aaron…. I don’t know.’

‘Well,’ Aaron said, with a shaky laugh, ‘I always said I could always, like, get total honesty from you.’

‘Maybe….’ Nick trailed off, then squared his shoulders and bulled his way on. ‘Maybe Lance finally had enough. Maybe JC did.’

Howie shook his head, decidedly. ‘You know I love JC.’ Of course. Everyone did, just as everyone loved Howie, and for the same reasons. JC wasn’t on the ball the way Howie was, or Lance, he had some disconnects (and manufactured more, as camouflage) just like Nick did, but when cut came to shoot, he was as much a leader as Howie was, and more to the point, you had to love them both, not just respect them, because, well, they were the two sweetest guys alive…. Howie cleared his throat, and Nick came-to with a guilty start, returning his attention to his lover.

‘I love JC,’ Howie went on, ‘but I have never pretended he doesn’t have failings. Some of them the same as AJ had, and Justin has. But – much as I love and respect Lance, too – though I can see Lance finally giving up as a result, I can’t see Lance leaving him in such a way that … damn it, we spent all that time in Louisiana, and. If Lance…. It is simply impossible. Nonsense. Disparo. To have been together then and there and within forty-eight hours for Lance to have dumped JC and hooked up with some square-jawed model twink…. No, no, it is senseless. And JC doesn’t look like a man who has just been dumped….’

‘Both of them swore,’ Nick said, incautiously, ‘that Fred-fuck didn’t, um. Was never. You know.’

Aaron hooted, derisively. ‘That dickwad.’

‘Aaron!’

‘Chill, bro.’

‘Well,’ Howie said, ‘Nicky … he really was a dickweed. And no, JC never believed that Fred-ass was any threat or that there was anything between him and Lance. And JC,’ he forestalled them, ‘is not a fool, even when he plays the fool.’

Without meaning to, Nick started humming, a Pavlovian reflex.

‘Nicky.’

‘Sorry.’

‘But, Howie!’ Aaron was all indignation. ‘That Jessie. I mean, yack.’

‘Loyal of you, but. The dude isn’t homely, Aaron. Trust your big gay brother on that one, ’kay?’

‘Dude. Have you – I mean, look at him, he’s a tool, all over Lance – in public – like a cheap suit, at Challenge, while C’s in the same hotel as J, not the one Lance and Joe and Chris are in! And. Is it just me, or does the mofo look like Carson in the face?’

‘Oh, ick,’ Howie and Nick said, in unison.

‘See? See what I mean?’

Nick winced, because, really, he did, and he had the same fears as Aaron did for their friends.

‘Lentamente, lentamente. We have to stop acting like fangirls, okay?’

‘Fangirls?’ Nick was insulted.

‘Verdad. Let’s think about this. We know these guys. We know what JC is like when things are going badly. I love him, and he does his best, but. Chris, okay, Justin, of course, to the point we never see his real one anymore, Lance always, but – JC? He has no game-face, no matter how hard he tries.’

‘Open book, yeah. Big print, too.’

‘And we know how obsessive Lance and JC always are about maintaining one last layer of deniability about the relationship, especially when JC’s contemplating a career move. Lance has distracted attention from that by all-but-outing himself before, hasn’t he? And what else do we know? That Jessie is part of the Ron Davis stable. That Lance … whether it’s singing, which, face it, he should solo but never will, or acting, which was not his brightest idea, Lance has always tried the spotlight first and then convinced himself that his real talents are in managing, moguling, producing or promoting. Right? I can see his taking on Jessie as a project.’

‘Rather than as, well, a boy toy?’

‘It’s easier to believe than it is to believe that he is cheating on JC and JC doesn’t know, or that they have broken up and we don’t know. I tell you, I don’t have the answer. But I can at least see other explanations, including Lance’s using CFTC to network for his newest talent and play Mr Hollywood. Arliss Bass.’

‘I hope you’re right,’ Aaron said, obviously still far from reassured.

‘So do I, Aaron. So do I. But for now, that is what I believe.’

‘But you don’t know.’

‘No. But that is what faith is. Trusting that the best of the plausible options, the one most in character, is what is happening, and not the worst.’

Nick and Aaron were quiet, digesting that, Nick thinking of all the trust Howie had extended to him over the years.

‘Howie?’

‘Babe?’

‘What if you’re wrong, though? I mean, no matter what JC may have done, like, if he’s off the wagon again, that wouldn’t excuse Lance playing him. Leaving him, okay, ’d be sad but not, like, cruel, but – nothing would excuse Lance cheating. If you’re wrong, what then?’

Howie’s voice was even, his tone unthreatening. ‘Then? Then I cut out his heart, grind it up, and make alcapurrias with it.’

Aaron gulped. ‘Now I really hope you’re right that there ain’t nothing wrong.’

‘We’ll just have to see,’ Howie said.

I’m not sure I want to, Nick thought, but he didn’t say it. Knowing his Howie, knowing how Howie knew him, he was pretty sure he didn’t need to.

‘Hello? Hon?’

‘Hey, babe.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘Okay. I think I may have something for the kid. How’s post-production?’

‘Okay, I guess. Pissing me off. Taking forever.’ JC paused. ‘Lonely.’

‘Monday, baby. The redeye from the coast, I promise.’

‘I. I love you, babe.’

‘And on Monday, darlin’, I’m going to demonstrate just how much I love you back.’ Lance hesitated. ‘You okay until then?’

‘I’m in the studio. I won’t know it’s not Monday until it is, and you come in. Look, you have stuff, I know. Go. I’ll be okay.’

‘I’ll call.’

‘I know. I love you.’

‘Love you, too.’

‘Go on. I know you’re busy.’

‘Never too busy for you.’

‘Go,’ JC said, forcing a chuckle. ‘Later, dude.’

‘Okay, okay. Bye, hon. Love you.’

JC hung up in time not to hear Jessie in the background, asking, insinuatingly, if Lance was ready for dinner.

TO BE CONTINUED….