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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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Low silhouettes on the hotel room wall, Jon in Colin’s lap, kissing Thom over his shoulder. Thom wanted them both, he held Jonny’s mandible in one hand, grinning evilly. He mouthed, you got fucked.
Jonny laughed, still breathless, still not quite finished with Colin.
“Think you’re about to as well,” he said, and Colin whispered he was too tired.
“I’ll do it, then,” Jon replied, and Col grumbled he sounded too eager.
“I’ll do it,” Colin said, still out of breath, “Get over here, Thom.”
Thom did, he laughed as he pulled Jon by the arm, out of Col’s lap, aggressive but playful. He got Jonny on the mattress, Jon’s long arms coming awkwardly around him, the two of them naked and graceless on the unmade sheets.
There came Colin’s hands on his shoulders, voice strained, he pressed Thom down even with Jonny beneath him.
“Not making it easy, are you,” he asked, and Thom squeaked helplessly into Jon’s shoulder, “How the hell are you hard again?”
“Piss off, you like when I do this.”
“I like a warning ahead of time.”
“Here’s your warning, Thomas,” Col said, breathless as he moved in, and Thom gripped hard at Jon’s shoulders. “Yeah, thanks,” he managed.
--
Frozen night road stretching to where street lights faded dimly to clouded points, parked cars here and there, Thom and Michael stood coyly in Stipey’s garage. No words, only fingers gentle and tentative on the strings, voices softly caressing, innocent and shy.
Next week they would tour together. Both sweetly pleased, avoiding each other’s gazes, reluctant to have words interfere with the harmony between them. Every preparation deliberated with conscious concern for each other, every problem diminished to something they’d surely endure on behalf of each other’s well-being.
No one had ever expressed so much concern for Thom’s veganism; Thom had never considered so seriously to make exceptions for it.
Each gazing shyly where his fingers strummed his guitar, aware without looking they embraced each other with their voices; there came at last a time of serenity in what had been a grueling tour.
--
We like little Beck.
Hole was interviewed for Mtv at the opening of Lollapalooza 1995. A beautiful open expanse at Vancouver, peaceful before the show’s actual opening. Trailers and buses behind a wire fence, grassy lawns and inclines, booths in various stages of construction.
There formed a bizarre friendship between Kim Gordon and Courtney Love, where Kim would have liked a female friend, but Courtney did everything in her power to make you rethink the friendship. At the end of the day, though, she did lead her band, despite all the things you hated her for.
They expressed fondness for the way little Beck spazzed out on stage at rehearsal, you’d never guess he was grieving, or how little he really wanted to be on tour. He’d always sort of wanted to do slow, heartfelt music, but the vivid energy in him played out without his discretion, like he forgot he was actually sad.
Thurston first saw Beck at some backyard barbeque, where he may or may not have thrown an actual German shepherd into the crowd— get two guys together who didn’t exactly draw the line between what happened and how they painted what happened in words, and you’d never figure out which of the two it was. It appeared that since then Beck had cleaned up pretty nice from the baggy jeans and flannel, he was up in a dress shirt and vest, with his band in navy regalia.
He’d told Channing to the bitter end that he couldn’t come, and, to the bitter end, Channing kept asking, why not? And it was because the wind had gone out of his sails, and Beck didn’t really have his defenses in place for showcasing music that sucked before a crowd of thousands. Three weeks before, he received official word he couldn’t sample Super Talk Barbie in his record. It was like adding insult to injury after all the warnings he’d received about unleashing his record on the unsuspecting public. He’d been told with gentle compassion his sound was very unique, but perhaps not exactly the kind of unique that listeners liked. Maybe if he’d been in better emotional form in recent months, he’d have tolerated it better. Maybe he’d say he didn’t really care, and that he was gonna do the record anyway. But he didn’t have a deadline for the record, and he did have a deadline for the festival.
Just go away, Channing, don’t you have anything you need to do?
In the end, Channing came along, just to the opening show of the tour. Beck didn’t like being watched in his most wretched hour, and being watched by people who knew you was worse than by thousands who didn’t, though that was also pretty bad. He watched the other acts at rehearsal, cross-legged on the lawn, flanked by Justin and Chan. Plastic tag on a lanyard round his neck, with his name and show details on it where he had to fill it out before.
He hoped to see that the other acts sucked around as much as he did, so he wouldn’t have to feel so bad, but they really didn’t. You had Cypress Hill who were as good as their studio records would have you believe, and the Jesus Lizard, grown-ups who knew what they were doing on stage. He watched them, expression unreadable, fingers picking at stray blades of grass. Aware that, at his side, Justin knew how far behind these actual artists the two of them were.
They listened speechless to Sinead O’Connor’s immaculate voice, chills running down their spines, really just wanting to go home.
“I think it’s cool you get to play here,” Channing smiled around his baked pretzel.
“I think shut up,” Beck shot back, brushing his hair from where the wind blew it repeatedly in his face and his mouth. He had these nice highlights just at the edge of his hair, where Leigh had patiently tended to him. She took care of him well and gave him a home, even while she was struggling, herself. She produced the wardrobe for their show, even while she resented Justin for it all throughout, even while no one would ever know it was her work.
Beck had been harder on himself than the other acts were, though, but maybe that was because they didn’t really think much of him. There were countless acts in the lineup, you didn’t really think about little Beck.
Chan rose from the ground, brushing grass off his behind and crumpling the bag he had for his pretzel. “I’ma go get autographs,” he announced, and Beck pulled him immediately back down by the wrist.
“Dude, what the hell!” Channing said. Beck glared, hitting him hard on the arm. “No, dumbass,” he said, “Just stay here, all right.”
“What, why?!”
“This is why I didn’t want you tagging along, Channing!”
“I’m not doing anything!”
“You’re acting like a dumb kid— oh, I’m gonna go get autographs, you’ll make me look stupid.”
“You already look stupid.”
“You look stupid.”
Justin observed as Beck and Channing proceeded to beat each other up on the lawn, it wasn’t really far from the sort of stuff you’d see going on at the festival anyway, on a smaller scale.
Beck had Channing belly-down on the grass, sat on his back with one arm round his throat, asking him to apologize— when Justin tentatively tapped him on the shoulder, because their turn in the queue was coming up.
“Get off me, lardass,” Channing muttered, and Beck looked up at Justin, then at the main stage, and he grumbled, “Fuck.”
He let Channing go, hair and clothes disheveled, prepared to make his way backstage to set up their instruments.
Channing slowly got up from the ground, grass stains all over, carefully massaging his throat. “Can I come?” he asked, and Beck called back “No” without turning around.
He was the sort of act that was mildly amusing to others now during rehearsal, for the minimal novelty of a little boy jumping around. His music wasn’t exactly good, and what crowds had gathered for the previous act had mostly cleared the lawn. It was around three songs in that he began noticing some feet away from the stage someone grinning at him, with a beret and a mic, and a tape recorder in a little bag. He might not have been so noticeable if he wasn’t the only audience he had, and if he didn’t seem somehow off even without saying anything.
Beck wasn’t certain he was all right with the guy holding the mic up to him while he played, with the tape recorder running, “Who is that guy?” he muttered to Justin; they both gazed curiously down.
Chan had watched too, from a long distance away, rocking out a little in place but not telling the guy at the Greenpeace booth that Beck was his brother. He’d get beaten up for that for sure. He’d been mid-conversation with him when Beck and his band had stopped playing, Beck on his knees at the edge of the stage and speaking with what appeared to be an insistent fan with a tape recorder and a microphone. It was kind of cool until it appeared they were arguing, Chan could hear Beck raising his voice, Justin actually holding him back, it occurred to him his brother was pissed.
The rest of the band had abandoned their instruments, watching this play out, Justin had turned around and was speaking with a stagehand, and soon there came security—
Chan remained frozen in place, eager to know what exactly he was watching, but aware he might make Beck upset if he interfered. Few things got Beck so upset as someone delving too deep into what was personal, he wasn’t aware how enraged he was until older, wiser Kim Gordon stepped in and coolly had security escort Nardwuar away from the stage.
She grinned knowingly, well-versed at dealing with the likes of him by then. Well-versed with the sort of unorthodox madness that sometimes went on at this sort of show. Sonic Youth had not been very nice to Nardwuar at all.
Thurston was still blowing him kisses on his departure.
“Okay, all right…” Kim aid calmly, she and Thurston had Beck in their midst, his hair messy, still glaring at where Nardwuar was amicably waving him goodbye even while being shown out. “Dude, he’s not worth getting so pissed off over.”
“Why me?” Beck sputtered, “Why, out of everyone here, why me?!”
“It’s not just you, dude, he’s like that to everyone,” Thurston said, trying to straighten the wrinkles in Beck’s shirt. “Go like this,” he said, demonstrating a motion with his wrist, and Beck imitated the gesture, and Thurston buttoned the cuff of his sleeve.
“Then why wasn’t he coming up like that to everyone else? I was here the whole time, he only came up to me.”
“Dunno.”
Channing was practically wetting himself with excitement; he wanted badly to trot across the lawn to the stage and beg Sonic Youth for autographs. Soon Kim and Thurston were walking off with Beck, though, and now Channing was really impressed, there was so much he wanted to ask about what exactly had happened. There was the stagehand, clearing the instruments along with the rest of Beck’s band…
Beck glared petulantly from over the soda he’d been given. Kim and Thurston’s trailer was pretty cool, if you weren’t too pissed off to think about it; in the two days they were there, they’d managed somehow to fill it completely with junk. There were places they’d drawn on the walls with what looked like nail polish, they’d given names to some of the chairs. Beck caught his reflection in the wardrobe mirror, surprised he still appeared put-together and elegant somehow.
They were very nice to him, but Beck wouldn’t dare tell them the stuff Nardwuar knew; it was infuriating. Beck never imagined the guy would actually come to the show just to piss him off.
“You want, like— pizza?” Thurston asked, already folding a slice in two for himself.
“I want pizza,” Kim said, and Beck said he didn’t want any, but they still gave him some.
He sulked in their trailer for the remainder of the afternoon, and felt secretly better for it. They were nice and didn’t pry, Thurston didn’t delve any deeper into who Beck was since that time on Mtv. It made Beck feel consoled, he gazed curiously out the corner of his eye at the dude Leigh had said she would do.
“Careful,” Kim said, gently mussing Beck’s hair, “he’ll take apart your guitar.”
(On to Chapter 10)
- 8
- 9
- 10
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Thom/Beck - Part 2