(no subject)

Jul 02, 2007 03:17

Future fic
Completely harmless at present, except swearing
This is my attempt to write over more than one part! I do *intend* to persevere.

Carl is a washed-up rockstar. He's known for long enough, obviously, but now some young tosser from The Deans has been reminding the oblivious world in the NME.

"Yeah, the name is from Jimmy Dean, like. We're all for live fast, die young -don't wanna end up another washed-up rockstar like Noel Gallagher or Carl Barratt."

The NME can't even spell Carl's name right any more.

Cunts.

Carl is a washed-up rockstar, but not like Noel Gallagher. Noel still rakes in the royalties and pretends to work on Oasis's 49th disappointing album; can't even be fucked to play gigs these days, doesn't need to. No-one pays Carl a handsome wage to rest on his laurels and indulge his now artless whims. No-one even keeps him in whiskey & coke anymore.

He's had to find ways to pay the rent - and pass the time - since the music career... faded out. He had hoped, maybe, that acoustic thing they'd spoken about might materialise, but then Peter did, well, what he did. There was a marriage, instead, and a subsequent divorce - a break up Carl blames entirely on his relenting to ring purchases. Then there was the temporarily interesting addiction to valium, and the incomprehensible - and thankfully unreported - fling with Alex Kapranos, who's a fucking arty novelist now with an occasional column in The Guardian. No-one gave Carl a column, but then he's just a washed-up fucking rockstar.

Recently, there's been music production, occasionally independently on crap albums that don't sell, but mostly with Mick Jones, who remains a Punk Legend and gets to present Lifetime Achievement awards about once a year. They did the Arctic Monkeys's concept album together. They'd better not be lined up for The Deans's debut.

And Carl does pass the time well enough, and just about clings to the small luxuries he's now deeply attached to. Fine liquors, taxis everywhere, nice home, unnecessary possessions. Etcetera, etcetera. It's important to have things, to have tools, to dive into one of a thousand books that line tired shelves and push back the voices of the past to where they belong. Gone.

Sometimes they slip out in echoes, like when Carl accidentally-on-purpose drinks enough to put on Up The Bracket. And he sits, and cries without noticing it at the weight of history, and thinks of Peter, where he is now, if he's still alive. But no-one knows, no-one has the answers, so it's ridiculous, really, all these years on. No word for seven long years, when Kate Moss's fiancé disappeared; reports of airline crew serving him vodka on the Moscow plane from Heathrow, odd sightings for a year or so, before apathy won out, for most. For Kate, it seemed, when Carl met her for drinks a few times and she grew tired even of playing the scorned woman. But not for Carl, no, not quite yet, though hope is surely fruitless now, though even Peter's mother tells Carl she must accept the worst, that he, too, must let go.

Except Peter is not dead, but quite alive. And he's coming home.
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