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Thom/Beck - Part 2	By : VinylTap Category: Singers/Bands/Musicians > Radiohead Views: 1975 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not know Beck or any of the members of Radiohead, Sonic Youth, or REM. This story is a work of fiction, and I make no money or profit from it.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
Back in LA, Leigh leaned over her small kitchen table, knees up on her chair, pages turning. She had two friends over, both named Jessica, all three mentally exhausted from the planning they’d been at for days. Carefully reviewing their finances. Assigning unto each other tasks about what to research and whom to consult, leafing carefully through their mostly-completed business proposal, aware there were no fun or games to be had.
It was hot now during the summer months, she had her windows open all the way, gross and sticky with sweat. Shouts and laughter from the neighbors’ kids running outside, bicycle horns, music from somewhere in Spanish; she had a fan on, but it was fanning mostly hot air. After a while, you got tired of the constant feel of air fanned in your face.
Been a few days since Beck had been gone, and it was nice to have time for herself— but she was aware she wasn’t getting laid anytime soon. Funny how you miss that once it becomes a regular thing. You take having a boyfriend for granted.
Weirdly, she found she missed Justin’s company, too. She still worked at the café, and had more shifts now that he was gone, but she missed the familiar way he made her pissed off. She missed how he looked in tight jeans while mopping her kitchen.
Beck had left a message on her machine the night before, about the opening show coming up. He’d done a festival before, not like he ought to freak out about this, but he’d sounded pretty down, Leigh wondered if it was good for the two of them to spend some time apart. It was his career, after all, that he was working on, and while Leigh never pressured him, she didn’t want to see him let it decay. Not like you got fired, she thought humbly, though Beck had nowhere to be fired from. In his message he went on and on about music stuff, things she couldn’t exactly relate to, and she listened out of compassion, out of awareness that he was scared.
She told him about work, as well, and about her plans for starting a business. She and her partners were applying for a loan, they had rented an office space, they were gonna call it Dark Bloom. Beck asked if he could model clothes for her, and she smiled fondly against the receiver, you’re getting ahead of yourself, she said. Who knew how well this would work out.
She hung up with tenderness in her heart, feeling suddenly lonely that her friends had left, as though she hadn’t lived alone for years. The air in the apartment felt stuffy and hot, even with the windows open, the buzz of the fan still going, iridescent patterns on the TV. It had been years since she’d been with anyone other than Beck, she’d sometimes think about other guys; she’d ask him to get with the guys she couldn’t get with, and, for her, he did. Much as she wanted to remain independent and cerebral, she loved him profoundly, she fought not to succumb to her emotions. She loved him even if she looked at other guys, even if she’d got bored of the routine, even if, somewhere inside, commitment had her terrified.
Funny, how when you’re in a relationship there seem to be so many hot single guys around. She felt she was suffocating before her time, like she already was betrothed to be married, and it intimidated and weighed down on her despite how much she loved him, with the full extent of her heart.
The neighbors knew them together, the people who worked at the pizza place and liquor store and butcher shop, there’s Leigh and Beck, broke but friendly and familiar. Always hand in hand. No one had reason to suspect Beck’s family wasn’t as broke as he and Leigh appeared, but whose business was it, anyway?
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Opening day, Lollapalooza 1995.
Sound reverberating alive through the open expanse, like everyone’s relatives at some birthday party at Lincoln Park, like the loudspeakers before a baseball game, like some sticky public event with food wrappers on the lawn and the fluttering aftermath of plastic flags, filthy with grass and dirt and color.
Too many young people squinting against the too-hot sun, and blankets you weren’t allowed to bring that you bought, instead, then whined about what a rip-off it was; shows playing midday, like it was a peace rally, without the mystique of stage lights at night. So you got to see that musicians got sweaty out in the sun, too.
You got to see they had to walk around with plastic tags round their necks, had to stop to drink water, pulled at and aired the fabric of their shirts because they’d got too uncomfortably sweaty and hot.
Thousands in the audience, body surfing and smoking weed, picking fights with security guards. If you were performing, you’d got over your anxiety and qualms, because you were part of the whole mess, too. Multiple acts at once, on three separate stages.
Years of little shows, little venues with some larger gigs in-between, boomboxes with disco balls, vintage inflatable kitsch, samples and banjos and synthesizers, and months of self-restraint and doubt. It was compelling to think you were talented after all and everyone else was just dumb. They discouraged you because they were stupid, and you would prove them wrong.
It takes much more maturity to try and understand why someone else would believe you should know when to quit.
For Beck, there was this back and forth between losing his courage and not. Between the significance of feedback from others and the fundamental awareness that this was what he'd wanted to do.
The people who said I wish you luck in something that isn’t music, and the people who said I don’t want to see you give up your goal just yet.
Mattel didn’t let him sample the Barbie, but he got away with the first few lines from Mr. Rogers’ theme.
Fully aware by then he ought not inflict his sort of uniqueness on the listening public, little Beck stepped out in-between Elastica and the Jesus Lizard, with a makeshift band in navy regalia, and 400 blows and two turntables and a microphone.
Leigh’s steady hands. Thurston’s lips still sweet on his, the pulsing momentum of color and light that was him alone, and also Al and Channing.
Even the smallest person—
Early as the first few notes, there were thousands singing along, like Novocain was public property.
Heavy heat of summer sun, cross-armed security, background noise blaring through the park. Beck and Justin playing side by side like it still were a two-car garage, like it were the basement of a deli.
Kids who came for Pavement and the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and Hole and Cypress Hill, shouting for the loser, moshing into each other, body surfing and singing along to stuff Beck had only sent to college radio. It didn’t hit him, what this was.
He’d paused at the conclusion of High 5, brushing back his hair, still doubled over from the jumping and flailing he’d been doing. Only gradually becoming aware of the magnitude in the crowd’s response, not yet grasping what it meant, how it marked irreversibly the beginning of pivotal change, for better or for worse—
Somewhere in the crowd, Nigel Godrich smiled with heartfelt determination, even when Justin had long since forgotten he’d asked him to come once upon a time.
Somewhere in the crowd, Thom Yorke of Radiohead held tight to his own inspiration of breath, tearful without understanding what for; brittle with emotion under the encompassing weight of an artist’s full potential, having forgotten long before and moved now to poignant realization, complete with desperate heartache and humbling admiration all throughout.
He’d come to the festival because Michael had passes, through Sonic Youth who toured with REM before. Under the excruciating demands of recording and touring this past year, he’d all but forgot about Beck.
Holy hell, until now.
It was raw talent, with all gauges and valves tuned to the right frequency and caliber, something Beck, himself, hadn’t really begun to comprehend.
Justin surveyed the shouting audience as though momentarily confused, uncertain what to make of it. Beck’s attention diverted from where he’d been partway to convening with him, as though annoyed about having to admit there really was something different about this sort of reaction.
He’d been prepared that they’d be cool with it, the way crowds got excited about anything at a big show, but had gradually begun to see his performance had taken a life of its own. The audience didn’t merely tolerate High 5; the feel of it pulsed through the crowd, with its own power and energy.
“I know him,” Thom murmured shakily in Michael’s ear, it felt cheapening and very surreal to say, we slept together once. There was distant longing inside him he couldn’t quite place.
We have to play together. Nigel felt it, too.
So had Nardwuar.
Thom felt possessively almost like he had a right to Beck somehow, because of what had happened last year— and even as he kicked himself mentally for thinking such a thing, he found himself helplessly undone with respect.
Puzzled and amused, Beck still was Beck. Still hesitant and introverted, guarded, hyperactive but a loner at heart. He gave a crooked smile, momentarily spaced out before proceeding to the next song, muttering awkwardly about it beforehand.
“Yeah,” Michael grinned, “That’s Beck.”
“No—” Thom said, voice drowned in the music and crowd, “I mean, I know him.”
But did he, really?
There was some encompassing, shimmering power that came to life in him even without his control— which had been too overwhelming for Beck, himself. Beck liked to think he was still in his living room, or singing in front of a mirror.
And there was something else. Did you know that, up on stage— and especially on television— people sort of forgot you had a height and size—
The awareness that Thom Yorke was 5’6" only made him boyishly charming.
The awareness Beck was 5’7" bore no real meaning, once he stopped dressing grungy and you realized he was actually very pretty.
You never considered he’d stopped dressing grungy because there was some significant other who'd told him, you need a hotter look than that. You never considered his band’s wardrobe was pretty sweet because his girlfriend was a designer who’d said, I’ll hook you up.
You only knew you suddenly woke up to this realization that this guy was pretty cute, and you thought only you saw this, yourself, and that, in your head, he was yours.
Thom didn’t think that, exactly; he was only aware that here without question was a worthwhile musician, and that was what mattered—
—and that never changed, had it. That remained true regardless of what you didn’t know.
(On to Chapter 12)
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Song: Where it's At by Beck (Odelay 1996)
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Thom/Beck - Part 2