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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
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Channing and Bek, aged six and eight, hand in hand so they wouldn’t get lost. Sent to scour the streets, to find bits and pieces of things that didn’t know they were art yet. Broken fireflies and fragments of music and shackled grenades, and really just cigarette butts, Bek was made to hold the bag, and it felt like an important job. Making sure Chan didn’t get lost was an important job, also, so Bek couldn’t let go of his hand— so it was Chan’s job to pick the items up. All in all, they both felt pretty important, they’d find stuff they both wanted to keep.
The clear winter sun, taco stands, strip malls, parking meters; the coming-going rush of traffic on the street nearby, Channing’s hand tight in Bek’s. Don’t let me get lost, he scooted impulsively close to his brother.
Bek knew where he was going. He held Chan’s little hand with courageous determination, explaining where they were headed next, cause he knew all the streets. He felt it very important to remind him to stop when they came to a cross light, and when it was all right to go; he knew which shortcuts were dangerous and which ones were good, and where you could find the best sort of junk. With uninterrupted admiration, Channing would follow to the ends of the earth.
Bek had saved money in a grown-up wallet he’d got from his dad; it was an old wallet David didn’t need, and Bek kept it in immaculate order. He’d felt very responsible for the coins and bills he’d saved, he had enough to buy himself and Channing snow cones. They’d sat opposite each other at the picnic benches outside the stand, their feet not quite reaching the ground, both small for their age, shaved ice sticky blue all over their faces; they carefully guarded their bag of junk treasures in the midst of the table between them.
It was a mission Al had sent them on, of course, so they both were very mindful of getting it right.
Channing leaned against the airplane window, blue sky over the mechanical flat of the wing, Aubrey mercifully asleep in his lap. He’d really have liked for Beck to have come along, they’d go looking for cigarette butts together again…
For Beck, there was this back and forth between losing his courage and not. There were things he’d wanted to do so badly, he couldn’t stop trying just because they were impossible. He’d persevered much as he could in the face of unspoken discouragement; he’d not speak with others because he knew what they’d say—
Lately, he’d felt deflated, like he’d tried to block it out, but the damage was done; he’d wanted to work on his record, but postponed it without meaning to, he’d had this unconscious resistance to getting anything accomplished.
“That’s okay if you’re dismissed,” someone told Leigh at work, as with wizened understanding, like she ought to grow up and learn from that, “Maybe you could find something you’re better at.”
Like it were anyone’s business. It really wasn’t beneath her colleagues to say stuff like that. What should have been her own, private, humbling moment had not only undergone curious scrutiny, but also clever evaluation by everyone who offered opinion entirely free of charge.
She’d grit her teeth and smiled, and tried to avoid anyone, hoping desperately to disconnect herself from all that stuff others had said.
“So what are you gonna do next? Any plans?”
“Yep,” she’d say shortly, feeling despite all she tried telling herself that she wasn’t entitled to do the work she had to do.
Then her colleague would nod as with mutual acknowledgment of her coming to terms with her failure, and that was all right, yes, very all right with people who saw themselves somehow above her, and who didn’t have to go through it, themselves, and whose business it wasn’t in the first place.
Might not have hurt so bad were it not what she'd dreamt her whole life to become.
It became a very unpleasant environment, and that was where you spent half your day; the best you could do was block it out, but it certainly wasn’t fun.
She’d been made to feel she’d been given a chance by highers-up, who let her do another project after her infamous failures, and there was the pressure of floundering uselessly to undo the damage of before. She’d worked herself desperately, hopeless and terrified, she’d wished she had wanted to do something she wasn’t terrible at. If only she hadn’t worked herself severely most her life to acquire the position she’d then had at work, it wouldn’t be something so devastating to lose.
She couldn’t say, but I don’t see what’s wrong with my presentation, she had to learn from every harsh reprimand and take it as feedback, even when her own highers-up, with utmost compassion, had told her to just quit on her own so it wouldn’t look quite so bad on her record as being dismissed. That’s the real world, sweetcakes, no one tells you to keep going and believe in your dreams. But you should.
What are you willing to sacrifice?
Beck hadn’t pressured Leigh about stuff for his wardrobe, she’d had enough on her hands and he’d felt too deflated to think about the upcoming festival. Would it have been a better use of his time to have called the show off, and gone with his mother and brother instead, it felt tremendously more comfortable to dream about that— but the fact remained that, two months from then, he’d have to showcase all the stuff people had compassionately warned him was not really gonna sell to listeners, and was certainly too risky for a big festival.
There Leigh would work so hard to come up with this sweet set for him, then his performance would totally blow. This wasn’t the packed basement of a deli anymore, he couldn’t get away with the crazy shit he did.
“Dude, come on—”
For once, Justin was gentle. Beck had said they were gonna rehearse, but he seemed too detached at the moment. They remained in Justin’s garage, sat on the concrete step that led from the entryway to the house and to the parking area, staring out into the empty street.
There was something in the air that was heart-wrenching and intangible, Justin regarded his friend with concern, like his feelings went out without his discretion. “What’s wrong, buddy,” he asked, in a tone so uncharacteristically soft it was touching somehow. Out in the street, leaves and dead flowers crunched under wheels of a slow-moving truck, someone else’s garage going open, sprinklers that came on at evening time.
Beck didn’t reply; if it weren’t a close friend who’d asked, he’d have grinned and made some joke of it. They gazed silently out to the road, Justin said nothing when Beck rested his head on his shoulder. Justin turned his head slightly to watch him, his arm coming slowly around his friend’s back.
When Bek and Channing had been in their teens, they’d both audited courses together, under David Campbell’s guidance. Both under the Campbell last name, even though Channing had a different dad. It was of little significance; they’d been raised mutually by both Bibbe and David, maybe because Channing’s dad, Sean, had been very young. Either way, they’d grown up in a gentle environment with the full affection of their family, and full support of their goals.
Then why all the secrecy, you’d be compelled to ask, like it were your business, and you’d think people with secrets were hiding scandalous, terrible things they’d done wrong. You could rationalize all night and all day, but you ultimately did not what presumably made sense, but what you wanted to do emotionally; you did not what people you trusted told you to do, but what you felt comfortable with because it felt like that's what they’d have wanted. It’s entirely irrelevant to ask, were they right or wrong to audit courses, then in their teens, you did stuff, too, before figuring out if it was right or wrong, and you only justified why you presumably wanted to do that stuff after.
It’s not that they’d done anything wrong, but that people would think that they had; either way, it was tremendously personal, even if the Church wasn’t so secretive in the first place.
It was something in which David Campbell was thoroughly involved, Justin, Beck and Channing and Bibbe, and many of their friends. Not everyone, though; not Leigh, and not Channing’s wife, Lisa, and not Al. It was all right to hang out with people regardless, Beck didn’t get all that close to folks either way. There were all these dinners all through his teens, he knew his parents’ friends, he knew the Ribisi twins, too, he’d endured dinner till it was all right to go back to his room and lock himself there with his walkman. Not because he had a problem specifically with that sort of thing, but because he liked being alone.
Beck gazed out into the twilight-dimmed street, eyes glassy, lips parted, head still on Justin’s shoulder. There were so many things he had loved that were going to end. It all came too early, and, for all his independence, Beck still wasn’t ready for that.
“Shh…” Justin whispered, his lips in Beck’s hair, even though Beck still hadn’t made a sound.
By the end of that month, Al will have passed away.
(On to Chapter 4)
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Thom/Beck - Part 2