Fic: Songs About LA | popslash | Chris
Remember that bitter!Chris fic that I wasn't going to finish? Well, madame_d said I should, and then I did. It's still bitter, and not really funny at all. You've been warned. In news that IS funny, Congress Ave is closed here today because they found a bunch of dead birds in the street this morning and had to send the HasMat (sp?) team out to make sure it's not, like, some sort of anthrax invasion. My roommate didn't have to go to work. I did. I will also be very sad if this keeps us from getting tickets to see David Lynch premier INLAND EMPIRE. But anyway. Fic!
Songs About LA
Fandom: popslash
Pairing: vaguely Chris/Lance, but mainly just Chris
Rating: Adultish
Disclaimer: All lies.
Notes: Thanks to everyone who commented before and encouraged me to keep going with this, and to wendy and anasuede for reading the original fiction version of it for me. You can read that right here, if you're so inclined. Based on the Dan Bern song 'Wasteland.'
Broken up in the wasteland
Broken up in the promised land
Broken up in Disneyland
Broken up in the plastic land
When people write songs about LA, they're never those happy-go-lucky songs about how great it is to be a celebrity or see celebrities walking around or live in the city of Angels or whatever. Okay, so maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers have written happy songs about LA, and Tom Petty, but really, those songs are about skateboarding, and they were written in a happier time. Like, the early 90s.
Chris desperately misses the early 90s. Sometimes he wonders whatever happened to The Heights and those kids from Kriss Kross, but that only depresses him because he still remembers all the lyrics from 'How Do You Talk to An Angel,' and sometimes he sings it in the shower.
But there's Elvis Costello and Weezer and Sublime and Elliott Smith, although he tries not to listen to too much Elliott Smith because really, he's depressed enough as it is. He's thirty-four and he's stuck in LA because for some reason (he thinks maybe he was stoned at the time) he agreed to be on a reality show with someone from 98 Degrees he's never even heard of before. It all pretty much sucks, and he hates LA.
All the songs about LA that aren't also about skateboarding agree: LA is a lot like hell. Last month Chris found a mixed tape on the floor of his car, and he's been listening to it ever since because there's this one song, this one perfect song, that turns out to be the most accurate description of Chris's life he's ever heard. VH1 ain't got nothing on Dan Bern, apparently. They've never met, but Dan Bern has Chris down cold. Had him down cold years before there was anything to know. It's pretty freaky. Chris doesn't stop listening to the song, though.
They're all in LA. It's weird. They're all living in the same city for the first time in five years, but it doesn't really make a difference, Chris thinks. He still doesn't talk to anyone unless he absolutely has to, like on birthdays or once, when he runs into Lance randomly at the Whole Foods on Santa Monica and they have to make forced, polite conversation about the weather and Justin and JC and Lance's boyfriend. Chris only mocks him distractedly, and he knows that Lance knows his heart isn't in it. Lance is going to report back to Joey who will tell JC who will tell Justin, and a month from now Chris will maybe get a call from Justin, who will pretend it's just a casual check-in but will secretly be hoping that Chris is over whatever by now, so Justin doesn't have to actually deal with it.
So yeah, Chris hates LA. It's not just a wasteland, Danny boy. It's pretty much hell. Maybe they're the same thing. Chris never pretends to be smart about these things.
*
I saw the best of my generation playing pinball
Maked up and caked up
Looking like some kind of china doll
With all of Adolf Hitler's moves down cold
As they stood up in front
Of a rock and roll band
Chris goes to see Justin perform.
It's a bad idea. He knows it's a bad idea, but he does it anyway, argues himself into one of Justin's shows in Anaheim. He still doesn't need to buy tickets or, worse, ask for them, which is sort of comforting in a way. It feels like old times, schmoozing up to the security detail, disappearing into the crowd. Darkened club, press of bodies, everyone hot and sticky and screaming for Justin. Yeah, pretty much just like old times. The floor crowd is ninety percent women. Young women in tube tops who don't recognize him at all, and Chris wonders what they think they're trying to prove with their high heels and fake tans.
The same thing as everyone else in this town, probably. He shouldn't blame them for making the attempt, but he does.
Chris sticks to the floor, hits the bar. He's on a vodka kick at the moment, vodka on the rocks, so that by the time the ice melts in the glass he can barely feel his own tongue. It's sort of a long kick. Like, three years long. Chris blames Lance, mostly because he can.
Lance. Lance is there like a good little former band mate, up in VIP with his modest entourage of hangers-on. Chris doesn't know why Lance bothers anymore, because it's not like he ever enjoyed the music or the shows when he was actually performing in them. Lance doesn't even really like Justin, or he never pretended to anyway, so yeah.
It's as much a performance for Lance, he thinks. Seen and be seen and all that shit. Chris takes a long swallow from his glass, hits ice. Time for a refill.
Justin comes out, finally, and the crowd goes insane. It's sick, actually, and mindless. Like a herd of wild animals, stampeding rhinos or something, definitely something ugly and skin-thick. Justin commands them to bounce with him, and they do. Adolf Hitler's moves down cold. Dan Bern strikes again, and in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely.
*
And I watched as everyone I knew
Spent their lives
Trying to be watched on stage
Watched on film
Or listened to on a record
And they thought
"Well, maybe that way
I could get a little love out of this life"
And I watched as the best of my generation
Abandoned their dreams
And settled for making a little money
Chris will never really understand JC. Not that anyone really understands JC, but Chris really doesn't get him. At all. Chris will never understand anyone who puts themselves out there over and over, rejection after rejection. He'll never understand loving something so much that you're willing to risk that much ridicule just to have it.
Not that Chris is afraid of ridicule. But he doesn't put himself out there, either. Not in the ways that matter.
He talks to JC on Wednesday. He knows it's Wednesday because it's nearly JC's birthday, he's almost thirty and he's so fucking cheerful about that fact, it makes Chris sick.
"Does it ever piss you off?" Chris asks, flipping through the latest People with one hand, the other tight around his phone.
"What?" JC sounds tired. Tired but cheerful, because he's working. Like he somehow doesn't get the whole part where Jive is pretty much guaranteed to fuck him over. Again. That people will never like or understand his music, that he'll never have a hit single. He doesn't say this to JC. Maybe that's why he doesn't know. No one ever says it out loud.
"The Justin frenzy."
"Nah, man. I'm happy for him. He worked hard on his album. He deserves it."
"I'm not fucking Entertainment Tonight, C. You don't have to say that shit to me."
"I mean it."
"How can you?"
"How can you not?"
Chris hangs up on him, and doesn't think about it. He made it a rule ten years ago to never think about anything JC says, and it's worked really well so far. He just doesn't get JC. He probably never will.
JC loves LA. It figures.
*
I'd had the wind at my back
Now I felt it cold in my face
And for an awful long time now
You were the only one who ever
Called me late at night
And I really never noticed
Till after you stopped calling.
He hasn't talked to Justin in years.
That's not true, exactly. They've exchanged words. Pleasantries. They've sung together a few times. But they haven't talked, not really, not about anything Chris can actually remember.
Justin used to call him all the time. Daily. Hourly. But at some point Chris stopped answering his phone, and then Justin stopped leaving messages, so now it's been years since they had a real conversation of substance. Chris doesn't miss it, he thinks. Or he didn't back in Orlando, but now that he's here, in LA. Now it's different.
LA changes everything.
It turns out that Dan Bern has written a lot of songs about how much LA sucks. Not all of them are quite so accurate descriptions of Chris's life as the first one, but Chris ends up making a mix of them anyway. He listens to the CD over and over again, and wonders if maybe he couldn't be a folk musician after all. To make those Cadillacs dusty dogs. He's depressed and bitter enough, he thinks, but he'd probably have to be more political.
Politics take too much work, and Chris is lazy in his bitterness. Ignorance and apathy, he thinks. I don't know, and I don't care. Except that's Jimmy Buffet, but Chris thinks Dan Bern would probably approve.
In the city of models, you're invisible, so it's okay to stare. It's the story of his fucking life, and he really hates LA.
*
And I wanted more than anything
for I t to rain for one whole day like it used to
but all there ever was was sun
relentless sun, hot beating sun
and everyone wore their sunglasses
and walked around like flies with their eyes removed
He's on the radio the day that Lance comes out.
It sort of figures. Chris doesn't do much anymore. He has his band that he's sort of half-assed about, and otherwise he just lives his life like a mostly-normal, filthy rich person. And not the way that Justin is always telling people that he's just a normal guy, because Chris actually knows what it's like to be a normal guy. Justin's been famous since he was eleven, he has no fucking clue, and every time he tells someone he's just a normal guy, Chris wants to punch him.
Chris has anger issues. He knows this.
So anyway, he's on the radio the day that Lance comes out. And yeah, okay, he knew Lance was gay. It's sort of hard not to know. Hell, the fans have been saying it for years. But Lance is an idiot and a coward and he never even bothered to tell Chris. Lance has never been all that invested in the group, but it's pretty much the last thing Chris is ever going to do, and once it was over he just thought, "Fuck it" and booted Lance out of his closet. It was fun at the time, just seeing the expression on his face. It's hard to surprise Lance these days. Chris thinks maybe he's the only one.
The radio program is pretty hellish. He doesn't want to talk about Lance, and he definitely doesn't want to talk about what Lance and Justin may or may not have got up to on the bus. They didn't even ride on the same bus, for fuck's sake, and Justin is so deeply entrenched in denial that he's come all the way back around to flaming. Like fascism, only pretty.
He calls Lance after. "You fucker," he says.
"Hey, Chris."
"You could've told me, you fucker."
"You already knew."
"You know what I mean, asshole. You could've told me."
"Sure," he says. Chris hates it when he's agreeable. Lance is not agreeable. "I could've told you, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Like you'd ever get your hands dirty enough for that."
"Have you killed, then. It would be good press for the rest of us. We could all mourn the loss."
"Whatever, fucker." Chris hangs up. He doesn't care. He has to go back to LA.
It's JC's birthday, and he has to go back to LA. He runs into Joey at some club, drunk as hell and all he wants to do is go home and pass out, or maybe throw up and then pass out. And Joey, that tricky asshole, takes advantage of the situation. Promises are made, plane tickets arranged, and he has to go to LA. JC is turning thirty.
August in LA is even more hellish than LA in any other month. All there is is sun, relentless sun. It makes Chris miss when he used to live in places that had actual weather. Cloudy days and snow and rain and fog. How can people write songs in LA when it's always so fucking perfect and clear? They write songs about LA, he thinks, and wonders what Dan Bern is doing right now and if he's touring. Maybe Chris can catch a show, although probably, that's the worst idea he's had in a long time. Justin would never stop laughing if Chris became a folk musician.
The afternoon of JC's party, Chris heads down to Melrose to find some sort of gift-shaped object that JC can make happy noises over and then burn when he gets home. It's hot and bright and dry, and everyone wears the same Oakley knock-offs, even the thirteen year old girls in their tiny white skirts, shoplifting five hundred dollar jewelry that probably cost three dollars to make in Taiwan. Chris wonders when it became acceptable for kids to dress like whores and hopes he didn't have anything to do with it. He really misses grunge. He thinks about moving to Seattle. Wearing flannel and drinking coffee in the slow grey drizzle and hiding from the television producers who might be upset at him for reneging on his contract.
The party sucks. Justin and JC pretend to be best friends and take shots and all that. Well, maybe JC isn't pretending, he really believes all that brothers forever shit, but Justin is high out of his mind and Chris just drinks and drinks and hits on women and stares at the stripping midgets. It's like a party designed by David Lynch. It's like the Black Lodge meets Club Silencio, and Chris is just waiting for his evil twin to show up.
Lance and his boyfriend sit in a corner booth with their friends. Lance looks happy, and Chris doesn't like it. The boyfriend is the embodiment of everything Chris hates about LA, and he really wants to go home. You know, wherever that is.
*
With the smartest of them all moonlighting as a word processor
And the strongest of them all checking ID's outside saloons
And the prettiest of them all taking off her clothes
In front of men whose eyes look like they were in some
Little hick town near Omaha watching the police chief
Run his car off the side of a bridge
He's not sure how it happens, exactly, except that he somehow, for some reason, agreed to go on the radio again, and he thinks he might actually be getting paid this time, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he's wearing a shock collar at seven in the morning and Joey is sitting there, laughing at him. And not silently, either.
Joey seems to think they're still famous and that really, really annoys Chris. Because they're not. Actually. Actually, he and Joey never were famous. At least they still got rich with the others.
Joey hates LA too, but since Chris hates Joey, it doesn't really count. It doesn't make him feel any better, and sometimes he wonders what Joey would be doing if it weren't for Chris. He'd maybe be one of those bartenders you see downtown on weeknights. The really sad ones who don't get any of the good shifts and let people watch, like, fucking Lost or American Idol instead of sports or sports-related programming. Chris hates those guys even more than he hates Joey, so it's probably good about NSync.
Aside from having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, though, Chris kind of likes the radio. Having his own show would be fun, he thinks. He's a funny guy, he could do it, as long as he didn't have to do it with Joey. He's even maybe enjoying it a little, especially when the shock collar is on Joey and he's screaming like a little girl, until. Until some bitchy Lance fan calls in and accuses him of being a fucking homophobe. He's not homophobic, he's funny. People should be able to recognize the fucking difference.
Joey defends him. Chris hates him even more for that. He calls JC after.
"Lance doesn't care about that," JC says. "He thinks it's funny." JC doesn't sound like he thinks it's particularly funny, but JC's never really understood Chris's sense of humor, so it's not something to take to heart. Chris tries to imagine what JC would be doing instead, but it's like a wall. JC fits perfectly in LA, just as he is. Chris can't imagine him as anything else. Justin, he imagines doing everything else. And Lance is Lance. It's not something he does.
Chris doesn't think about himself. He knows what he'd be doing, because he was doing it, before. He was grown, already. He was already grown when it started.
*
And every single block looked like every single block
Looked like every single block looked like every single block
Looked like every single block but you kept driving
Cause everyone else kept driving and cause gridlock
Is evil and not knowing your way is evil
Chris and Lance have never really gotten along. Chris likes to say it's because they're just too different, like-Lance is a flaming fag, and Chris isn't; Lance is a wanna-be science geek and Chris likes hockey; Lance cares what other people think about him and how their behavior reflects on him, and Chris really, really doesn't. Except for the part where Chris has spent too much of his life analyzing himself and the rest of the guys to be any good at pretending that's not a huge load of bullshit.
The real problem is that he and Lance are the same, and Chris hates that. Lance does too.
"What are you even doing with your life," Lance asks, and this is why Chris doesn't see him that often, because Lance is always asking these questions and it's not like Lance actually expects answers. He asks them to hear himself speak, and to feel superior over Chris because Chris is the only one he can do that with. Chris knows exactly what Lance is doing, because Chris does the same fucking thing.
Chris doesn't answer. He shrugs and eats his soup and thinks about Freud, how Freud would say that they're classic sado-masochistic personalities. He thinks about Jessica Benjamin and The Story of O, and how he couldn't get past the barrel-raping scene, but Benjamin probably had a point about him. It's about need and agency and a whole bunch of other crap neither of them ever had.
They both blame Justin for that. Just another thing they have in common.
"Seriously, Chris. Because I heard this rumor about some reality show and man-when did you sink that low, huh? It's not like you need the money."
"Say that to your boyfriend," Chris says, eats his soup. It's good, a little bland like everything in LA, but good. It has meat in it, at least.
"That's different," Lance says, frowns. "Are you. Is there something going on with you that I should know about? Drugs? Or, um. Do you need to see someone?"
Chris just looks at him. "You think I'm on drugs because I want to do a reality show?"
"Well."
"Christ, Lance. I'm just bored, and I'm only thirty-four, for fuck's sake. That's not old, okay? Maybe I just want something to do with my life for a change."
"And it'll piss Justin off."
Chris smiles so hard it aches. "And that."
*
I saw dead Marilyn Monroe strung up on every street corner
In Hollywood like some two bit whore offering a discount rate
And I wondered how Joe Dimagio felt
I saw dead James Dean's ghost wandering the sidewalk
Looking troubled and I wondered how his mama felt.
Britney is a mess when Chris sees her again for the first time in fuck knows how long. She never liked him and it never bothered him before when she was dating his best friend, but now she still doesn't like him and that kind of pisses Chris off. Because, okay. Women who flash their vaginas to the paparazzi and hang out with Paris Hilton and have openly, on national television, admitted to loving Kevin Federline's dick shouldn't be able to look at Chris with quite that mixture of disgust and superiority. They just shouldn't, it should be pretty much impossible, but if there's one thing Britney's always been good at, it's self-deception. She dated Justin for three years, after all. She cheated on him for at least two.
Maybe that's why Chris likes her so much.
He sees her in a club that he only gets into because he's with JC, and he's only with JC because he wants to drink and he maybe feels like taking some drugs. JC doesn't do drugs unless he's with Justin, but he knows someone who knows a guy who will be at this club. This is JC's way of forcing Chris to do something instead of sitting in his hotel watching porn on pay-per-view and getting quietly drunk alone-by promising him drugs. It's a nice thought, maybe, but Chris just thinks it's a different kind of pornography, and infinitely more depressing.
So he sees her at this club and he's wasted out of his mind because it turns out JC actually does know a guy who knows a guy. Chris buys some pills and doesn't ask what they are. They don't make him feel happier but everything is blurry and slightly soft around the edges, except Britney. Britney's always been hard, all sharp edges and paper cuts and glitter bright smiles. She doesn't smile at him. She gives him a superior look, takes a shot, and turns her back on him like she's too good for him.
She's such a bitch. Chris really likes her.
*
But I still felt out of touch so I stopped watching TV
And reading the papers and listening to the radio
And making the fancy scenes and saying the right words
And wearing the right clothes and knowing the names of the hip people
And I felt more out of touch than ever but I didn't care anymore
What happens next is, he accidentally fucks Lance.
It doesn't just happen. Of course it doesn't just happen, that would be stupid. That would be like something out of one of Lance's many low-budget television production ventures on the Family Channel, which certainly won't be having him back now that he's gay. The trick, Chris thinks. The trick is to just stop thinking so much, or maybe not thinking, but paying attention, anyway. The trick is to stop caring. It's something Lance got a crash course in last summer, and Chris thought he already knew, but then, he's almost always wrong about these things. When it comes to himself.
So, yeah. What happens next is, he accidentally fucks Lance. The boyfriend is gone, or at least Lance kicked him out of the house for a few days and Lance is angry as hell. He calls Chris and doesn't say anything for a long time, just sits on the other end of the line while Chris tries to play Halo with his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, but they make cell phones too tiny now and it doesn't really work so he just keeps dying, over and over. He tries really hard to pretend he doesn't think it's a metaphor.
"Come over," Lance says finally, so Chris does, and then there is fucking. Well, not fucking, because Chris really isn't gay, but he hasn't gotten laid in a really long time so he lets Lance give him a blowjob and pretends it's Christie Turlington circa 1989. He gives Lance a lazy hand job after, just for the fuck of it, because it's not cool to leave someone hanging like that, and then they smoke up. Lance has really good weed.
"Seriously, though," Lance says, takes a hit. His shoulder presses against Chris's where they lean back against the couch, comfortable and warm. Chris's hand is still a little sticky but he doesn’t really care. It's hard to care when you're smoking. He wipes it on Lance's jeans.
"Seriously, what?"
"You're not doing this reality show thing."
"Joey's going on Dancing with the Stars, but I'm not allowed to do a reality show?"
"Dancing with the Stars is sort of respectable, though."
"It's reality television, Lance," Chris says, takes the joint from Lance's lax fingers. "None of it's respectable. That's kind of the point."
Lance smiles a little. "Don't you, like, care? At all?"
"Nope," Chris says. He's only sort of lying.
*
And I felt more out of touch than ever but I didn't care anymore
And I felt you slipping away, and I felt myself slipping from you
And I wanted more than anything else for it to rain for one
Whole day like it used to but all there ever was was sun
Justin calls him on a Thursday. Or at least, Chris thinks it's a Thursday, but it's hard to keep track because someone-Lance, he thinks, Lance is the only one bitter enough to understand the irony-sent him all five seasons of Angel on DVD for his birthday and he's been watching them in a marathon over Christmas to avoid his family. He has too many sisters and he'll only try to beat the crap out of boyfriends if he sticks around, so. So he's watching Angel, and it's pretty ironic. Like a black fly in chardonnay, only actually ironic, and not just gross. Like a black fly in the poisoned chardonnay of someone you really want dead, only now he won't drink it because, like, the one thing he's really afraid of is black flies. Or something. It's more ironic, anyway, and sometimes Chris wonders about the Canadian educational system.
Angel is actually a good show, because like, okay. Sunnydale may have been on top of a hellmouth, but LA actually is hell, and Angel doesn't try to be subtle about it. There's something really satisfying about watching a Los Angeles-style apocalypse. Everything goes dark. It feels right. Plus, the chick who plays Cordelia is hot. Chris wonders if Justin could get her number. This is what he says to Justin when he answers his phone.
"Can you get me Charisma Carpenter's phone number?"
"Um, probably. If I knew who she was." Justin sounds surprised. He should be. Chris hasn't taken a call from him in almost a year. On the screen, Lindsey sings a song about LA, playing guitar with his evil hand. A song about the apocalypse in LA. It's. It's a good song. Chris kind of loves it, he hums along, picks up the harmony. The actor has a nice voice. Chris wonders if he's done anything else.
"What're you. What song is that?"
"It's nothing," Chris says, hums, The sky's gonna open, people gonna pray and sing.
"Okay um. So look. It's been a while."
"Yeah, it's been a minute."
"You stopped answering the phone."
"You stopped calling." Pretty as a picture, she is like a golden dream.
"So it's. We're both at fault here, you know? And I miss you."
"Do you." Chris thinks, no. No, Justin doesn't miss him. He's too busy being world-famous to miss anything except his momma.
"We used to be friends." That's a song too, Chris thinks. A long time ago, we used to be friends. But it's not about LA.
"We used to be in a band together, too. Things change. I don't think you'd like me much anymore, Justin."
"People change, too, Chris."
"I know. That's what I said."
"Then we're in agreement." Justin pauses, hums a little. "Seriously, what's that song?"
"It's nothing," Chris says, presses pause on the DVD player. He wants to watch the scene again, when Justin hangs up.
"Okay. I'll call you later. Tomorrow. And you'd better fucking answer, dickwad."
"Watch the language, kid."
He hangs up on Justin's surprised laughter, thinking, it really wasn't that funny. He watches the scene again, listens to the song. Dan Bern would approve, he thinks, and shuts the television off.
*
And those that had money looked good but weren't too happy
And those who didn't have money didn't look so good
And weren't too happy either and in a city of three million
two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four
Everyone was lonely
It turns out that even if he wanted to go see Dan Bern play live, he couldn't, because Dan Bern is only playing shows in Alaska now or something. He must really, really hate LA, Chris thinks. Maybe even more than Chris does.
He goes to see the guy from Angel instead. He has a band and Lance knows them, of course Lance knows them because Lance knows fucking everyone now. Lance knows a guy who knows them, anyway, and Lance takes him. The songs are good, mostly, but only one of them is about LA and it's not the one from the show.
"I'll introduce you," Lance says after, but Chris just shakes his head, thinks it's probably a bad idea. Instead they go back to Lance's house and have sex. It's not a thing, but they're both lonely and Lance gives really good head, so Chris tries not to think too much about it. He really is straight. Lance is like his brother.
He calls Justin after, when Lance goes out on the back porch to smoke.
"I had sex with Lance. Again," he says.
"It's three in the morning, asshole, and you're calling because-wait. When did you have sex with Lance before?"
"When we were living in that house in Orlando back before the European tour."
"Really?" Justin sounds intrigued. He's a pervert.
"No, jackass. Lance was like, sixteen then. I'm not a pedophile. A few months ago. It's just blowjobs. It's nothing."
"Well. But, it's Lance."
"He's just a stand in for you, baby."
Justin laughs. He has a loud laugh, and it's maybe the only ugly thing about him. "Fuck you. Okay, I have to go. I have to sleep. But um. Thanks for calling. It's, uh. It's cool. You know?"
"Yeah," says Chris. He waves to Lance through the sliding glass doors. Lance just lifts his cigarette to his lips and inhales. "Yeah, it's cool."
*
Sometimes I walk and wish LA
Was some small town near Monterey
I close my eyes and ask the gods
To make those Cadillacs dusty dogs
I close my eyes and live
I close my eyes and live another day
There are lots of songs about LA, and hardly any of them are happy. Even the ones about skateboarding are sort of melancholy. Chris sort of hates the Counting Crows, but he finds a copy of Recovering the Satellites in Lance's closet and ends up listening to 'A Long December' on repeat for a week, until the guy's droney sad voice makes him want to commit suicide and he has to stop.
It's one more day up in the canyons, and it's one more night in Hollywood, but Chris is getting by, he thinks. They're scattered again, who knows where Justin and JC are tonight, but it's not LA, that's for fucking sure. It's just him and Lance now. Him and Lance, and he makes Lance watch all of David Lynch-Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, even if Lance can't properly appreciate the lesbians the way he should-because even more than Dan Bern, David Lynch really gets LA.
"Is it really that bad?" Lance asks, brushes his fingers against the back of Chris's neck. Chris shrugs. It's LA, it's pretty fucking bad. He still hates it here, it's still hell. But it's just a city like any other city. It's just concrete and lights and traffic and homeless men with their hand-written signs on the side of the overpass. Will work for food, Chris thinks, and shrugs again. He still hates LA, but it's just a city. It doesn't mean anything. It's just LA. He hums that to himself a little, Lance's fingers on his neck, and thinks, maybe that's a song, too.
Songs About LA:
01. California Love - 2Pac feat Dr Dre
02. California - Rufus Wainwright
03. California - Weezer
04. We Used to Be Friends - The Dandy Warhols
05. Like I Love You - BellX1 cover
06. Live Another Day - Dan Bern
07. LA Song - Christian Kane
08. Wasteland - Dan Bern
09. California - Phantom Planet
10. City of Models - Dan Bern
11. Long December - Counting Crows
[download songs about l.a.]
Songs About LA
Fandom: popslash
Pairing: vaguely Chris/Lance, but mainly just Chris
Rating: Adultish
Disclaimer: All lies.
Notes: Thanks to everyone who commented before and encouraged me to keep going with this, and to wendy and anasuede for reading the original fiction version of it for me. You can read that right here, if you're so inclined. Based on the Dan Bern song 'Wasteland.'
Broken up in the wasteland
Broken up in the promised land
Broken up in Disneyland
Broken up in the plastic land
When people write songs about LA, they're never those happy-go-lucky songs about how great it is to be a celebrity or see celebrities walking around or live in the city of Angels or whatever. Okay, so maybe the Red Hot Chili Peppers have written happy songs about LA, and Tom Petty, but really, those songs are about skateboarding, and they were written in a happier time. Like, the early 90s.
Chris desperately misses the early 90s. Sometimes he wonders whatever happened to The Heights and those kids from Kriss Kross, but that only depresses him because he still remembers all the lyrics from 'How Do You Talk to An Angel,' and sometimes he sings it in the shower.
But there's Elvis Costello and Weezer and Sublime and Elliott Smith, although he tries not to listen to too much Elliott Smith because really, he's depressed enough as it is. He's thirty-four and he's stuck in LA because for some reason (he thinks maybe he was stoned at the time) he agreed to be on a reality show with someone from 98 Degrees he's never even heard of before. It all pretty much sucks, and he hates LA.
All the songs about LA that aren't also about skateboarding agree: LA is a lot like hell. Last month Chris found a mixed tape on the floor of his car, and he's been listening to it ever since because there's this one song, this one perfect song, that turns out to be the most accurate description of Chris's life he's ever heard. VH1 ain't got nothing on Dan Bern, apparently. They've never met, but Dan Bern has Chris down cold. Had him down cold years before there was anything to know. It's pretty freaky. Chris doesn't stop listening to the song, though.
They're all in LA. It's weird. They're all living in the same city for the first time in five years, but it doesn't really make a difference, Chris thinks. He still doesn't talk to anyone unless he absolutely has to, like on birthdays or once, when he runs into Lance randomly at the Whole Foods on Santa Monica and they have to make forced, polite conversation about the weather and Justin and JC and Lance's boyfriend. Chris only mocks him distractedly, and he knows that Lance knows his heart isn't in it. Lance is going to report back to Joey who will tell JC who will tell Justin, and a month from now Chris will maybe get a call from Justin, who will pretend it's just a casual check-in but will secretly be hoping that Chris is over whatever by now, so Justin doesn't have to actually deal with it.
So yeah, Chris hates LA. It's not just a wasteland, Danny boy. It's pretty much hell. Maybe they're the same thing. Chris never pretends to be smart about these things.
*
I saw the best of my generation playing pinball
Maked up and caked up
Looking like some kind of china doll
With all of Adolf Hitler's moves down cold
As they stood up in front
Of a rock and roll band
Chris goes to see Justin perform.
It's a bad idea. He knows it's a bad idea, but he does it anyway, argues himself into one of Justin's shows in Anaheim. He still doesn't need to buy tickets or, worse, ask for them, which is sort of comforting in a way. It feels like old times, schmoozing up to the security detail, disappearing into the crowd. Darkened club, press of bodies, everyone hot and sticky and screaming for Justin. Yeah, pretty much just like old times. The floor crowd is ninety percent women. Young women in tube tops who don't recognize him at all, and Chris wonders what they think they're trying to prove with their high heels and fake tans.
The same thing as everyone else in this town, probably. He shouldn't blame them for making the attempt, but he does.
Chris sticks to the floor, hits the bar. He's on a vodka kick at the moment, vodka on the rocks, so that by the time the ice melts in the glass he can barely feel his own tongue. It's sort of a long kick. Like, three years long. Chris blames Lance, mostly because he can.
Lance. Lance is there like a good little former band mate, up in VIP with his modest entourage of hangers-on. Chris doesn't know why Lance bothers anymore, because it's not like he ever enjoyed the music or the shows when he was actually performing in them. Lance doesn't even really like Justin, or he never pretended to anyway, so yeah.
It's as much a performance for Lance, he thinks. Seen and be seen and all that shit. Chris takes a long swallow from his glass, hits ice. Time for a refill.
Justin comes out, finally, and the crowd goes insane. It's sick, actually, and mindless. Like a herd of wild animals, stampeding rhinos or something, definitely something ugly and skin-thick. Justin commands them to bounce with him, and they do. Adolf Hitler's moves down cold. Dan Bern strikes again, and in a city of three million two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four, everyone was lonely.
*
And I watched as everyone I knew
Spent their lives
Trying to be watched on stage
Watched on film
Or listened to on a record
And they thought
"Well, maybe that way
I could get a little love out of this life"
And I watched as the best of my generation
Abandoned their dreams
And settled for making a little money
Chris will never really understand JC. Not that anyone really understands JC, but Chris really doesn't get him. At all. Chris will never understand anyone who puts themselves out there over and over, rejection after rejection. He'll never understand loving something so much that you're willing to risk that much ridicule just to have it.
Not that Chris is afraid of ridicule. But he doesn't put himself out there, either. Not in the ways that matter.
He talks to JC on Wednesday. He knows it's Wednesday because it's nearly JC's birthday, he's almost thirty and he's so fucking cheerful about that fact, it makes Chris sick.
"Does it ever piss you off?" Chris asks, flipping through the latest People with one hand, the other tight around his phone.
"What?" JC sounds tired. Tired but cheerful, because he's working. Like he somehow doesn't get the whole part where Jive is pretty much guaranteed to fuck him over. Again. That people will never like or understand his music, that he'll never have a hit single. He doesn't say this to JC. Maybe that's why he doesn't know. No one ever says it out loud.
"The Justin frenzy."
"Nah, man. I'm happy for him. He worked hard on his album. He deserves it."
"I'm not fucking Entertainment Tonight, C. You don't have to say that shit to me."
"I mean it."
"How can you?"
"How can you not?"
Chris hangs up on him, and doesn't think about it. He made it a rule ten years ago to never think about anything JC says, and it's worked really well so far. He just doesn't get JC. He probably never will.
JC loves LA. It figures.
*
I'd had the wind at my back
Now I felt it cold in my face
And for an awful long time now
You were the only one who ever
Called me late at night
And I really never noticed
Till after you stopped calling.
He hasn't talked to Justin in years.
That's not true, exactly. They've exchanged words. Pleasantries. They've sung together a few times. But they haven't talked, not really, not about anything Chris can actually remember.
Justin used to call him all the time. Daily. Hourly. But at some point Chris stopped answering his phone, and then Justin stopped leaving messages, so now it's been years since they had a real conversation of substance. Chris doesn't miss it, he thinks. Or he didn't back in Orlando, but now that he's here, in LA. Now it's different.
LA changes everything.
It turns out that Dan Bern has written a lot of songs about how much LA sucks. Not all of them are quite so accurate descriptions of Chris's life as the first one, but Chris ends up making a mix of them anyway. He listens to the CD over and over again, and wonders if maybe he couldn't be a folk musician after all. To make those Cadillacs dusty dogs. He's depressed and bitter enough, he thinks, but he'd probably have to be more political.
Politics take too much work, and Chris is lazy in his bitterness. Ignorance and apathy, he thinks. I don't know, and I don't care. Except that's Jimmy Buffet, but Chris thinks Dan Bern would probably approve.
In the city of models, you're invisible, so it's okay to stare. It's the story of his fucking life, and he really hates LA.
*
And I wanted more than anything
for I t to rain for one whole day like it used to
but all there ever was was sun
relentless sun, hot beating sun
and everyone wore their sunglasses
and walked around like flies with their eyes removed
He's on the radio the day that Lance comes out.
It sort of figures. Chris doesn't do much anymore. He has his band that he's sort of half-assed about, and otherwise he just lives his life like a mostly-normal, filthy rich person. And not the way that Justin is always telling people that he's just a normal guy, because Chris actually knows what it's like to be a normal guy. Justin's been famous since he was eleven, he has no fucking clue, and every time he tells someone he's just a normal guy, Chris wants to punch him.
Chris has anger issues. He knows this.
So anyway, he's on the radio the day that Lance comes out. And yeah, okay, he knew Lance was gay. It's sort of hard not to know. Hell, the fans have been saying it for years. But Lance is an idiot and a coward and he never even bothered to tell Chris. Lance has never been all that invested in the group, but it's pretty much the last thing Chris is ever going to do, and once it was over he just thought, "Fuck it" and booted Lance out of his closet. It was fun at the time, just seeing the expression on his face. It's hard to surprise Lance these days. Chris thinks maybe he's the only one.
The radio program is pretty hellish. He doesn't want to talk about Lance, and he definitely doesn't want to talk about what Lance and Justin may or may not have got up to on the bus. They didn't even ride on the same bus, for fuck's sake, and Justin is so deeply entrenched in denial that he's come all the way back around to flaming. Like fascism, only pretty.
He calls Lance after. "You fucker," he says.
"Hey, Chris."
"You could've told me, you fucker."
"You already knew."
"You know what I mean, asshole. You could've told me."
"Sure," he says. Chris hates it when he's agreeable. Lance is not agreeable. "I could've told you, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Like you'd ever get your hands dirty enough for that."
"Have you killed, then. It would be good press for the rest of us. We could all mourn the loss."
"Whatever, fucker." Chris hangs up. He doesn't care. He has to go back to LA.
It's JC's birthday, and he has to go back to LA. He runs into Joey at some club, drunk as hell and all he wants to do is go home and pass out, or maybe throw up and then pass out. And Joey, that tricky asshole, takes advantage of the situation. Promises are made, plane tickets arranged, and he has to go to LA. JC is turning thirty.
August in LA is even more hellish than LA in any other month. All there is is sun, relentless sun. It makes Chris miss when he used to live in places that had actual weather. Cloudy days and snow and rain and fog. How can people write songs in LA when it's always so fucking perfect and clear? They write songs about LA, he thinks, and wonders what Dan Bern is doing right now and if he's touring. Maybe Chris can catch a show, although probably, that's the worst idea he's had in a long time. Justin would never stop laughing if Chris became a folk musician.
The afternoon of JC's party, Chris heads down to Melrose to find some sort of gift-shaped object that JC can make happy noises over and then burn when he gets home. It's hot and bright and dry, and everyone wears the same Oakley knock-offs, even the thirteen year old girls in their tiny white skirts, shoplifting five hundred dollar jewelry that probably cost three dollars to make in Taiwan. Chris wonders when it became acceptable for kids to dress like whores and hopes he didn't have anything to do with it. He really misses grunge. He thinks about moving to Seattle. Wearing flannel and drinking coffee in the slow grey drizzle and hiding from the television producers who might be upset at him for reneging on his contract.
The party sucks. Justin and JC pretend to be best friends and take shots and all that. Well, maybe JC isn't pretending, he really believes all that brothers forever shit, but Justin is high out of his mind and Chris just drinks and drinks and hits on women and stares at the stripping midgets. It's like a party designed by David Lynch. It's like the Black Lodge meets Club Silencio, and Chris is just waiting for his evil twin to show up.
Lance and his boyfriend sit in a corner booth with their friends. Lance looks happy, and Chris doesn't like it. The boyfriend is the embodiment of everything Chris hates about LA, and he really wants to go home. You know, wherever that is.
*
With the smartest of them all moonlighting as a word processor
And the strongest of them all checking ID's outside saloons
And the prettiest of them all taking off her clothes
In front of men whose eyes look like they were in some
Little hick town near Omaha watching the police chief
Run his car off the side of a bridge
He's not sure how it happens, exactly, except that he somehow, for some reason, agreed to go on the radio again, and he thinks he might actually be getting paid this time, but that doesn't excuse the fact that he's wearing a shock collar at seven in the morning and Joey is sitting there, laughing at him. And not silently, either.
Joey seems to think they're still famous and that really, really annoys Chris. Because they're not. Actually. Actually, he and Joey never were famous. At least they still got rich with the others.
Joey hates LA too, but since Chris hates Joey, it doesn't really count. It doesn't make him feel any better, and sometimes he wonders what Joey would be doing if it weren't for Chris. He'd maybe be one of those bartenders you see downtown on weeknights. The really sad ones who don't get any of the good shifts and let people watch, like, fucking Lost or American Idol instead of sports or sports-related programming. Chris hates those guys even more than he hates Joey, so it's probably good about NSync.
Aside from having to wake up at the ass crack of dawn, though, Chris kind of likes the radio. Having his own show would be fun, he thinks. He's a funny guy, he could do it, as long as he didn't have to do it with Joey. He's even maybe enjoying it a little, especially when the shock collar is on Joey and he's screaming like a little girl, until. Until some bitchy Lance fan calls in and accuses him of being a fucking homophobe. He's not homophobic, he's funny. People should be able to recognize the fucking difference.
Joey defends him. Chris hates him even more for that. He calls JC after.
"Lance doesn't care about that," JC says. "He thinks it's funny." JC doesn't sound like he thinks it's particularly funny, but JC's never really understood Chris's sense of humor, so it's not something to take to heart. Chris tries to imagine what JC would be doing instead, but it's like a wall. JC fits perfectly in LA, just as he is. Chris can't imagine him as anything else. Justin, he imagines doing everything else. And Lance is Lance. It's not something he does.
Chris doesn't think about himself. He knows what he'd be doing, because he was doing it, before. He was grown, already. He was already grown when it started.
*
And every single block looked like every single block
Looked like every single block looked like every single block
Looked like every single block but you kept driving
Cause everyone else kept driving and cause gridlock
Is evil and not knowing your way is evil
Chris and Lance have never really gotten along. Chris likes to say it's because they're just too different, like-Lance is a flaming fag, and Chris isn't; Lance is a wanna-be science geek and Chris likes hockey; Lance cares what other people think about him and how their behavior reflects on him, and Chris really, really doesn't. Except for the part where Chris has spent too much of his life analyzing himself and the rest of the guys to be any good at pretending that's not a huge load of bullshit.
The real problem is that he and Lance are the same, and Chris hates that. Lance does too.
"What are you even doing with your life," Lance asks, and this is why Chris doesn't see him that often, because Lance is always asking these questions and it's not like Lance actually expects answers. He asks them to hear himself speak, and to feel superior over Chris because Chris is the only one he can do that with. Chris knows exactly what Lance is doing, because Chris does the same fucking thing.
Chris doesn't answer. He shrugs and eats his soup and thinks about Freud, how Freud would say that they're classic sado-masochistic personalities. He thinks about Jessica Benjamin and The Story of O, and how he couldn't get past the barrel-raping scene, but Benjamin probably had a point about him. It's about need and agency and a whole bunch of other crap neither of them ever had.
They both blame Justin for that. Just another thing they have in common.
"Seriously, Chris. Because I heard this rumor about some reality show and man-when did you sink that low, huh? It's not like you need the money."
"Say that to your boyfriend," Chris says, eats his soup. It's good, a little bland like everything in LA, but good. It has meat in it, at least.
"That's different," Lance says, frowns. "Are you. Is there something going on with you that I should know about? Drugs? Or, um. Do you need to see someone?"
Chris just looks at him. "You think I'm on drugs because I want to do a reality show?"
"Well."
"Christ, Lance. I'm just bored, and I'm only thirty-four, for fuck's sake. That's not old, okay? Maybe I just want something to do with my life for a change."
"And it'll piss Justin off."
Chris smiles so hard it aches. "And that."
*
I saw dead Marilyn Monroe strung up on every street corner
In Hollywood like some two bit whore offering a discount rate
And I wondered how Joe Dimagio felt
I saw dead James Dean's ghost wandering the sidewalk
Looking troubled and I wondered how his mama felt.
Britney is a mess when Chris sees her again for the first time in fuck knows how long. She never liked him and it never bothered him before when she was dating his best friend, but now she still doesn't like him and that kind of pisses Chris off. Because, okay. Women who flash their vaginas to the paparazzi and hang out with Paris Hilton and have openly, on national television, admitted to loving Kevin Federline's dick shouldn't be able to look at Chris with quite that mixture of disgust and superiority. They just shouldn't, it should be pretty much impossible, but if there's one thing Britney's always been good at, it's self-deception. She dated Justin for three years, after all. She cheated on him for at least two.
Maybe that's why Chris likes her so much.
He sees her in a club that he only gets into because he's with JC, and he's only with JC because he wants to drink and he maybe feels like taking some drugs. JC doesn't do drugs unless he's with Justin, but he knows someone who knows a guy who will be at this club. This is JC's way of forcing Chris to do something instead of sitting in his hotel watching porn on pay-per-view and getting quietly drunk alone-by promising him drugs. It's a nice thought, maybe, but Chris just thinks it's a different kind of pornography, and infinitely more depressing.
So he sees her at this club and he's wasted out of his mind because it turns out JC actually does know a guy who knows a guy. Chris buys some pills and doesn't ask what they are. They don't make him feel happier but everything is blurry and slightly soft around the edges, except Britney. Britney's always been hard, all sharp edges and paper cuts and glitter bright smiles. She doesn't smile at him. She gives him a superior look, takes a shot, and turns her back on him like she's too good for him.
She's such a bitch. Chris really likes her.
*
But I still felt out of touch so I stopped watching TV
And reading the papers and listening to the radio
And making the fancy scenes and saying the right words
And wearing the right clothes and knowing the names of the hip people
And I felt more out of touch than ever but I didn't care anymore
What happens next is, he accidentally fucks Lance.
It doesn't just happen. Of course it doesn't just happen, that would be stupid. That would be like something out of one of Lance's many low-budget television production ventures on the Family Channel, which certainly won't be having him back now that he's gay. The trick, Chris thinks. The trick is to just stop thinking so much, or maybe not thinking, but paying attention, anyway. The trick is to stop caring. It's something Lance got a crash course in last summer, and Chris thought he already knew, but then, he's almost always wrong about these things. When it comes to himself.
So, yeah. What happens next is, he accidentally fucks Lance. The boyfriend is gone, or at least Lance kicked him out of the house for a few days and Lance is angry as hell. He calls Chris and doesn't say anything for a long time, just sits on the other end of the line while Chris tries to play Halo with his phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear, but they make cell phones too tiny now and it doesn't really work so he just keeps dying, over and over. He tries really hard to pretend he doesn't think it's a metaphor.
"Come over," Lance says finally, so Chris does, and then there is fucking. Well, not fucking, because Chris really isn't gay, but he hasn't gotten laid in a really long time so he lets Lance give him a blowjob and pretends it's Christie Turlington circa 1989. He gives Lance a lazy hand job after, just for the fuck of it, because it's not cool to leave someone hanging like that, and then they smoke up. Lance has really good weed.
"Seriously, though," Lance says, takes a hit. His shoulder presses against Chris's where they lean back against the couch, comfortable and warm. Chris's hand is still a little sticky but he doesn’t really care. It's hard to care when you're smoking. He wipes it on Lance's jeans.
"Seriously, what?"
"You're not doing this reality show thing."
"Joey's going on Dancing with the Stars, but I'm not allowed to do a reality show?"
"Dancing with the Stars is sort of respectable, though."
"It's reality television, Lance," Chris says, takes the joint from Lance's lax fingers. "None of it's respectable. That's kind of the point."
Lance smiles a little. "Don't you, like, care? At all?"
"Nope," Chris says. He's only sort of lying.
*
And I felt more out of touch than ever but I didn't care anymore
And I felt you slipping away, and I felt myself slipping from you
And I wanted more than anything else for it to rain for one
Whole day like it used to but all there ever was was sun
Justin calls him on a Thursday. Or at least, Chris thinks it's a Thursday, but it's hard to keep track because someone-Lance, he thinks, Lance is the only one bitter enough to understand the irony-sent him all five seasons of Angel on DVD for his birthday and he's been watching them in a marathon over Christmas to avoid his family. He has too many sisters and he'll only try to beat the crap out of boyfriends if he sticks around, so. So he's watching Angel, and it's pretty ironic. Like a black fly in chardonnay, only actually ironic, and not just gross. Like a black fly in the poisoned chardonnay of someone you really want dead, only now he won't drink it because, like, the one thing he's really afraid of is black flies. Or something. It's more ironic, anyway, and sometimes Chris wonders about the Canadian educational system.
Angel is actually a good show, because like, okay. Sunnydale may have been on top of a hellmouth, but LA actually is hell, and Angel doesn't try to be subtle about it. There's something really satisfying about watching a Los Angeles-style apocalypse. Everything goes dark. It feels right. Plus, the chick who plays Cordelia is hot. Chris wonders if Justin could get her number. This is what he says to Justin when he answers his phone.
"Can you get me Charisma Carpenter's phone number?"
"Um, probably. If I knew who she was." Justin sounds surprised. He should be. Chris hasn't taken a call from him in almost a year. On the screen, Lindsey sings a song about LA, playing guitar with his evil hand. A song about the apocalypse in LA. It's. It's a good song. Chris kind of loves it, he hums along, picks up the harmony. The actor has a nice voice. Chris wonders if he's done anything else.
"What're you. What song is that?"
"It's nothing," Chris says, hums, The sky's gonna open, people gonna pray and sing.
"Okay um. So look. It's been a while."
"Yeah, it's been a minute."
"You stopped answering the phone."
"You stopped calling." Pretty as a picture, she is like a golden dream.
"So it's. We're both at fault here, you know? And I miss you."
"Do you." Chris thinks, no. No, Justin doesn't miss him. He's too busy being world-famous to miss anything except his momma.
"We used to be friends." That's a song too, Chris thinks. A long time ago, we used to be friends. But it's not about LA.
"We used to be in a band together, too. Things change. I don't think you'd like me much anymore, Justin."
"People change, too, Chris."
"I know. That's what I said."
"Then we're in agreement." Justin pauses, hums a little. "Seriously, what's that song?"
"It's nothing," Chris says, presses pause on the DVD player. He wants to watch the scene again, when Justin hangs up.
"Okay. I'll call you later. Tomorrow. And you'd better fucking answer, dickwad."
"Watch the language, kid."
He hangs up on Justin's surprised laughter, thinking, it really wasn't that funny. He watches the scene again, listens to the song. Dan Bern would approve, he thinks, and shuts the television off.
*
And those that had money looked good but weren't too happy
And those who didn't have money didn't look so good
And weren't too happy either and in a city of three million
two hundred and sixty nine thousand nine hundred eighty four
Everyone was lonely
It turns out that even if he wanted to go see Dan Bern play live, he couldn't, because Dan Bern is only playing shows in Alaska now or something. He must really, really hate LA, Chris thinks. Maybe even more than Chris does.
He goes to see the guy from Angel instead. He has a band and Lance knows them, of course Lance knows them because Lance knows fucking everyone now. Lance knows a guy who knows them, anyway, and Lance takes him. The songs are good, mostly, but only one of them is about LA and it's not the one from the show.
"I'll introduce you," Lance says after, but Chris just shakes his head, thinks it's probably a bad idea. Instead they go back to Lance's house and have sex. It's not a thing, but they're both lonely and Lance gives really good head, so Chris tries not to think too much about it. He really is straight. Lance is like his brother.
He calls Justin after, when Lance goes out on the back porch to smoke.
"I had sex with Lance. Again," he says.
"It's three in the morning, asshole, and you're calling because-wait. When did you have sex with Lance before?"
"When we were living in that house in Orlando back before the European tour."
"Really?" Justin sounds intrigued. He's a pervert.
"No, jackass. Lance was like, sixteen then. I'm not a pedophile. A few months ago. It's just blowjobs. It's nothing."
"Well. But, it's Lance."
"He's just a stand in for you, baby."
Justin laughs. He has a loud laugh, and it's maybe the only ugly thing about him. "Fuck you. Okay, I have to go. I have to sleep. But um. Thanks for calling. It's, uh. It's cool. You know?"
"Yeah," says Chris. He waves to Lance through the sliding glass doors. Lance just lifts his cigarette to his lips and inhales. "Yeah, it's cool."
*
Sometimes I walk and wish LA
Was some small town near Monterey
I close my eyes and ask the gods
To make those Cadillacs dusty dogs
I close my eyes and live
I close my eyes and live another day
There are lots of songs about LA, and hardly any of them are happy. Even the ones about skateboarding are sort of melancholy. Chris sort of hates the Counting Crows, but he finds a copy of Recovering the Satellites in Lance's closet and ends up listening to 'A Long December' on repeat for a week, until the guy's droney sad voice makes him want to commit suicide and he has to stop.
It's one more day up in the canyons, and it's one more night in Hollywood, but Chris is getting by, he thinks. They're scattered again, who knows where Justin and JC are tonight, but it's not LA, that's for fucking sure. It's just him and Lance now. Him and Lance, and he makes Lance watch all of David Lynch-Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive, even if Lance can't properly appreciate the lesbians the way he should-because even more than Dan Bern, David Lynch really gets LA.
"Is it really that bad?" Lance asks, brushes his fingers against the back of Chris's neck. Chris shrugs. It's LA, it's pretty fucking bad. He still hates it here, it's still hell. But it's just a city like any other city. It's just concrete and lights and traffic and homeless men with their hand-written signs on the side of the overpass. Will work for food, Chris thinks, and shrugs again. He still hates LA, but it's just a city. It doesn't mean anything. It's just LA. He hums that to himself a little, Lance's fingers on his neck, and thinks, maybe that's a song, too.
Songs About LA:
01. California Love - 2Pac feat Dr Dre
02. California - Rufus Wainwright
03. California - Weezer
04. We Used to Be Friends - The Dandy Warhols
05. Like I Love You - BellX1 cover
06. Live Another Day - Dan Bern
07. LA Song - Christian Kane
08. Wasteland - Dan Bern
09. California - Phantom Planet
10. City of Models - Dan Bern
11. Long December - Counting Crows
[download songs about l.a.]