When it was over (slightly painful, but not nearly as uncomfortable as she had imagined), he leaned on his elbows beside her and whispered in her ear, “I can’t help falling in love with you…”
One year later, sitting opposite him watching him wipe guacamole from the side of his lips, Lexi feels in her heart that she loves him too. In fact she is sure, along with almost everyone else at Pali High who either knows them or admires them from afar, that they will most likely end up getting married. Lexi’s mother has saved her own wedding dress for the occasion, wrapped in delicate layers of archival tissue in an ivory box on the top shelf of her cupboard. “It’s just waiting, my beauty,” her mother has promised.
Lexi can picture their home now (a cozy New England style house, a few blocks from her parents, with whitewashed floors and shabby chic couches), two or maybe three kids (she really doesn’t have a preference for boys or girls) and most definitely a dog, a black Labrador called George. She imagines a fulfilling and creative part time job as well, maybe a teacher or an art therapist, something that leaves her with the freedom to be a hands-on mom. So what if she is only seventeen? It’s just a dream, but life has already proven to Lexi that dreams do find a way of coming true.
NOW
GEORGE
1st November, 2009
Greenwich, England
“George… I love you!” On certain nights this professed love is yelled out a hundred times from men and women alike. Most nights it disappears into the roar of the crowd, but at some gigs a single voice will miraculously separate out and hover above the throng of faceless fans and George hears it and needs it to be true.
George is at the piano finishing the final chords of “Beyond Being,” a poignant ballad based on his teenage existential musings and a lyric which popped into his head one day as he polished off a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream. The audience sways in time and cell phones punctuate the blackness like rechargeable flames. George hangs his head as the song comes to a quiet end, his voice wavering with a sad clarity.
Thousands of fans cheer and whoop in adoration and George looks up shyly with his trademark grin. “Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate you might have better things to do with your Saturday nights, like watching X Factor, and the boys and I really enjoyed playing to you tonight…” This, as intended, whips up the crowd into an even louder frenzy as George and his band mates lope off the stage with a schoolboy charm that has captivated fans across the world from Denmark to Chile, and every destination in between.
George has come a long way from the corner of his brown bedroom. His band, Thesis, stormed onto the music scene with an unstoppable force after his best mate and guitarist, Simon Ogden-Smith, persuaded George to start up a Myspace page and stream some of their music. George, Simon, Simon’s cousin Mark, and Mark’s sister’s friend Duncan from Australia, had been playing local pubs in Islington and had been slowly building up a loyal fan base. But the Myspace page catapulted them into a whole new stratosphere, and with a swiftness which at times found George’s throat closing with unprecedented anxiety, they burst onto the alternative music scene and made their mark. Three months after being signed by a record company they were flown to Los Angeles to record their first album, Twelve Thousand Words. George Bryce, still a sweaty lonely teenager at heart, found himself surrounded by attractive, fawning women called Claudia and Agnes and Nell. They willingly offered their breasts to him without any pleading involved and he indulged in a whole new adolescence at twenty-two.
The band’s first big hit was a rocking anthem called “Grapefruit Girls,” an opportunity for George to get his revenge on those elusive females who had inducted him into the hall of shame. George became an unlikely heartthrob, a self-deprecating lad who wore T-shirts with Grover on them and gave interviews about obscure comic books and rare vinyl. His boyish looks, lopsided smile and thick shaggy black hair, once his greatest insecurity, suddenly became irresistible. Even America, notoriously hard to break for an unheard-of alternative band, lapped up the accents and the awkwardness. Critics either loved or hated Thesis and George made a point of reading every review, because no matter how famous they became, he never stopped caring about what people thought of him.
Tonight they have sold out a third night at the 02 Arena in London. Three albums in six years and each one more successful than the last. George is obsessive about the set list. Simon is obsessive about sandwiches.
Off stage Simon squeezes George’s shoulder. “What a night, huh? The best of the three, my boy. You were rather on form this evening.” Simon is like the brother George never had. He loves him unconditionally, with an unspoken tenderness.
George, distracted, calls over to Duncan, their drummer, who is dripping like a tap. “What happened to you in ‘Under the Radar’? You came in so late? It threw me.” Duncan blows his nose on a manky Kleenex dug up from his jeans pocket.
“Chill out, George. I’ve got man flu—I told you that before. It was cool—no one noticed. They were crazy for us out there.”
“Correction,” chips in Mark, the bass player, who has worn the same pair of lucky orange socks during every performance for the last twelve months, “they were crazy for George, Dunc. We’re just the wallpaper.”
This is a running joke in the band, and while George secretly knows it might be accurate, he also realizes he would be nothing without his mates. The thought of being on stage without them makes him feel queasy, like approaching a bungee jump with no harness. Inevitable destruction. Confidence smashed to smithereens. He needs these three men to keep him in one piece. It is only here, in this group of four, that he has ever felt a sense of belonging.
They have two songs yet to perform in their encore and the audience is going wild chanting the chorus from “Grapefruit Girls.” There is a fine line between being off stage for too long and reappearing too quickly.
“I’m wondering about that smoked turkey and cheese baguette I had before the show,” says Simon thoughtfully. “I’m thinking some mustard next time, you know, to add a bit of zing.”
“Did you just say zing?” asks Duncan.
“Try a sharper cheddar,” offers Mark.
“That’s an idea,” says Simon, beckoning to Zac, his guitar tech who promptly appears with his trusty red Fender.
Thesis are both renowned and rebuked for their clean living. Of course the scathing half of the media revels in slamming them for their cautious approach to a rocker’s lifestyle, accusing them of making music to knit to. George recoils from the criticism but is truly dedicated to his fans. He genuinely believes that in one way or another, the music they make impacts the lives of the people who listen to them. He knows only too well what it feels like to be a fan locked in relationship with one album or even one song. Playing it incessantly. Never enough. He only wishes that he had the same experience with women.
George’s endless conundrum—girls. The irony of being adored by thousands but never truly known by one. Sometimes George feels that no amount of recognition will ever erase the sense of rejection indelibly tattooed on his ego, leaving him painfully thin-skinned. Even with the opposite sex flocking around him now. Even though he’s had a string of short-lived “girlfriends.” Even though Fanny Arundel, one of the most seductive and quirky singers of his generation, has recently been sending him suggestive texts on a weekly basis. He still feels faulty, and the women he meets just don’t fill the gap. In fact they seem to dig the hole deeper and deeper.
Back on stage for the final two songs, George faces the screaming crowd and murmurs affectionately into the microphone, “We missed you,” before launching into the opening lines of “Grapefruit Girls.” The band follows tightly behind: Simon, buoyantly one with his guitar; Mark lingering and soulful on bass, and Duncan brandishing his sticks with a momentous energy. The entire audience bounces in anticipation of the addictive chorus.
I wanted you, wanted you, wanted you
I needed you,
You needled me,
Bleed bittersweet, I faced defeat
Soured Hours, love left scoured
Oh, oh, oh squeeze me tightly
Myyy Graaapefruit Giirls
Myyy Graaapfruit Giiirls…
George, soaked with perspiration, feels the adrenaline coursing through his veins like a frantic blue stream. The auditorium is a seething mass of love and adoration. He knows they feel connected. Understood. Couples will return home on the tube smiling and still be up at two a.m., entangled, ears ringing, recounting the events of the unforgettable concert. Misfit teenagers with acne and lank hair will reignite their ailing hopes, believing they too could be like George Bryce one day, a talented loner who has crossed over into cool without even trying. Forty-something women will imagine George either as their son or their lover and both fantasies will leave them warm. Hundreds of others will head straight to their laptops and download blurry pictures from their mobiles, blogging on fan forums or obsessively comparing notes in chatrooms. There is no question that George is at the top of his game. Everyone feels it. Everyone except George.
LEXI
November 1st, 2009
West Hollywood, Los Angeles
“Lexi, get over here! This one looks good…” Andrew’s shriek reaches Lexi in her bathroom where she is dutifully applying concealer to the dark circles under her eyes. She pushes her nose close to the mirror scanning for wrinkles and instead notices a very fine, but decidedly black hair growing from the tip of her chin. She lunges for the tweezers.
“Lexi, get your butt out here!”
“It’s official,” she yells back, “I am morphing into a witch. Or a crone. Or possibly both?”
Andrew appears in the bathroom doorway, eyebrows dramatically raised.
“Morphing into?”
Lexi pulls her thick brown hair into a low ponytail and squints at her reflection.
“Very funny. It’s thirty-two. Thirty-two hates me.”
“Welcome to my world. Heston just told me the other day that he thinks I’m getting a muffin top,” he lifts his t-shirt to reveal a perfectly chiseled six-pack, which he lamely attempts to squeeze.
“Heston is weird, Andrew. Why don’t you find yourself a nice older man to settle down with? You’ve got it all backwards. You should be the toy boy.”
Andrew and Lexi are roommates. They share a duplex in West Hollywood just south of Melrose with lots of charm. In other words, the shower leaks incessantly and they have to plead with the oven to persuade it to work. They each have a small bedroom with a walk-in closet, of primary importance even in dumps. It was Andrew who walked out of the closet four years after they parted.
Weeks after graduation from high school, their relationship just seemed to fizzle. He was spending far too much time with his basketball friends (still now, she wonders about all the extra “practices” he needed to attend). Even at eighteen, their sex life had become predictable and sparse. It felt like they were brother and sister. Looking back, he spent more time advising her on what color lipstick to wear than he did kissing her.
The plan had been for Andrew and Lexi to attend Columbia University together, her parents’ alma mater. The polo shirts were packed. Lexi was a girl who stuck to a plan, so when Andrew decided to stay on the west coast and accepted a place at UCLA instead, she was crushed, but determined to appear unruffled. She was Jeanette Jacobs’s daughter after all, hardwired for optimism. Lexi bravely boarded that plane in September with a smile on her face and a firm belief that her four years at Columbia would set her on an even better track, revealing to her the life she was meant to lead, and perhaps the new man who was meant to lead it with her.
It took some time for her rose colored glasses to warp and crack, eventually becoming so loose at the screws that they fell apart completely. She tumbled in and out of bad relationships with boys who were too young, men who were too jaded, or tutors who were arrogant and balding. She failed her European History final. She broke her wrist kickboxing. And she was mugged on Amsterdam Avenue walking home one night from volunteering at the Braille Institute for the Blind. It was on that particular night that the thought occurred to her that she too had been blinded by the fuzzy glow of her adolescence. Could she really have peaked at seventeen?
Only this morning she had asked Andrew that question for the thousandth time as he scanned the job opportunity pages for her on the LA Times website.
“Lexi, you were hot at seventeen and you are even hotter now. You’re just in a bit of a slump…”
“Yeah, so hot that I turned you gay.”
“Don’t start taking responsibility for that again. I’ve told you—it’s genetic. I’ve traced back three generations of McClouds and I’m almost positive there was a flaming uncle on every branch of my family tree. You were put in my path as sweet temptation. And you were—so sweet—still are…”
“Andrew, this isn’t a slump. This is more like a bottomless pit.”
“Enough! Today, we are finding you a job!”
Andrew pulls the tweezers out of Lexi’s grasp and thrusts his iPhone under her chin instead. “Look at this!” he says triumphantly, pointing to an ad halfway down the screen. “I’ve found it—your ladder back into the land of the living. This looks perfect!”
Lexi remembers how that word perfect used to invite her in, offering her countless opportunities to prove it true. Now she wishes that it never existed. Surely such a word should be banned permanently from the dictionary?
GEORGE
4th November, 2009
Maida Vale, London
“Are you? You are, aren’t you? OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Emma is going to die. It’s you, George Bryce—can you… I mean, can I? I mean… oh my God, I can’t breathe…”
George is standing in line at Tesco holding a four-pack of toilet paper, a box of PG Tips and three Crunchies. The teenage girl in front of him is beginning to hyperventilate. He’s not certain how this has happened. After their second album, he was still able to go out relatively undisturbed, usually wearing a baseball cap or a beanie pulled down over his eyebrows. He could have been anyone. But since the release of their third album, Corners and Tables, his image seems to have seeped into the consciousness of far too many members of the general public.
He quickly puts down the toilet paper (thinking why now? Why this?) and rests a calming hand on the girl’s shoulder, “It’s okay, take a deep breath.”
What he really wants to say is, “George who?” Unfortunately, his gesture appears to have the opposite of the desired effect and her breathing gets heavier and beads of sweat are starting to drip down her forehead.
“Oh sweet Jesus, are you touching me? Are your hands on my shoulder right now? I’m never, ever going to wash this sweater again for AS LONG AS I LIVE!” George is beginning to worry how long that might be if she continues to stay in close proximity to him. He wonders how Chris Martin deals with interactions like these. He most likely comes up with some amusing comment and defuses the situation with ease while making a quick escape. George, on the other hand, feels rooted to the spot.
The girl has managed to fumble in her oversized bag and pull out her mobile phone.
“My hands are shaking… look,” she holds out a trembling limb as proof. “Can you just take my phone and call Emma, and tell her that it’s you, and we’re standing together in Tesco and that we… you and I… are talking? She’s under F.”
“F for Emma?” he can’t help but wonder.
“Yeah, because she’s Fucking Gorgeous Emma… she’s my best fucking mate.”
“Oh, right,” George compliantly accepts the phone, hating himself for noticing that the histrionic teenager in front of him is really quite pretty. When he was fifteen he would have run a mile and wished the whole time that she was running after him. But now he wants to get back to his flat and have some tea and eat a Crunchie. He wants to watch two episodes of Flight of the Conchords and think about the lighting for the upcoming US tour. He has an idea.
“L
ook, Emma’s not going to believe it’s me if I call her. Why don’t I just take a picture of the two of us and you can text it to her?”
The girl smiles and it dawns on him that she will live on this moment for months to come, possibly longer. He leans in next to her face and holds up the packet of toilet paper between them. With a big cheesy grin he presses capture, checks the shot, and hands her back the phone, pointing her towards the front of the line.
“It’s your turn to pay.”
“You are amazing!” she says, staring at him adoringly.
“I can but try…” the words sound right enough, but underneath them he feels a familiar tug. The longing to be accepted when he was growing up. The fruitless attempts to fit into his family when it was clear that he was never going to. The realization that the young stranger in front of him with the scraggly blond hair and the blue nail varnish probably thinks more of him than his parents ever did.
Even now they struggle to approve of his chosen profession, having hoped that their sullen little Georgie might have outgrown his youthful sensitivity and pursued computer programming or a management position like his father.
“How can you stand all that smoke?” his dad asked recently, as if he was still gigging in small pubs with flaky ceilings.
“Ah, Dad—they banned smoking in all public venues a while ago. You should get out sometime—come to one of our shows. I’ll get you good seats—I’ve got connections.”
At fifty-nine George’s father is in a permanent sense of humour failure. “Too much noise, son. I don’t know how you haven’t lost your hearing yet.”
“What?”
George has condensed his visits to Oxfordshire down to two a year, Christmas and his mum’s birthday. They’ve refused his offer to buy them a new house, insisting instead on remaining in the cottage where he grew up and driving an old Ford Granada.
Playing Along Page 2
