by Lola West
“What do you think…”
He answered before I finished my sentence. “Don’t know.”
We were both kind of flabbergasted. We weren’t scared exactly, but news vans on the thrive didn’t make sense. News vans at my house didn’t make sense. It might be nothing bad, but it was something, and it pulled us away from our afternoon at the lake. Unable to deny our curiosity any longer, we started walking toward the house, but we moved slowly, tentatively, savoring the walk because it felt like change was at its end. I couldn’t help myself. I just wanted to hold on to all the feelings that came before the news vans for a little while longer.
“Joe?”
“Yep.”
“What were you going to say about my snatch?”
3
Drew
It took like two weeks. There was Bonnaroo, and then there were two weeks of peace, and then the first YouTube video appeared. I wasn’t sure how they realized it was me, but once the media caught wind of it, once people knew I was at Bonnaroo, clearly tanked, there were thousands of little delightful treasures posted. Drew Scott puking, Drew Scott sobbing, Drew Scott drooling at the moon, Drew Scott punching a tree, Drew Scott humping a tree. Amazing stuff, a fucking laugh riot. Senator extraordinaire, Drew Scott Sr. certainly thought so.
Being a senator’s son isn’t the same as being someone’s regular son. When you're the son of an average citizen and pictures of you looking like an asshole get splashed all over the internet, people worry about you and your future. How will you get out from under this? How will you save your reputation? Who will hire you someday now that you're a laughingstock and a suspected druggie delinquent? When you're a senator’s son, it’s all about the senator, the spin, and the next election. Fuck your feelings of embarrassment; you’re the asshole who got the senator into this situation. Your shame, the jokes people are making about you, fuck that; nobody cares about that. All they know is that this shit needs to be contained before the polls reflect the possibility that the senator isn’t a good family man. So, when the media picked up the story, no one hugged me; no one coddled me. They cornered my ass. They interrogated me. They fed me my story over and over until I shit what they wanted me to shit.
It started at dinner. Senator Scott has dinner with his family at least three times a week. Attendance is mandatory. My mother, my younger siblings, Molly and James, me; we all must be there. Nothing in our lives trumps him. Not a parent teacher conference, not a choir recital, not a soccer match, not a final exam. I’m required to come home from college at least once a month for dinner. If he commands it, we are present. He calls us his soldiers. These dinners of his aren’t for family intimacy; they’re for show. They’re so he can get in front of a podium and say he believes in good ol’ family values. He rarely talks to us while we’re eating. He’s on his phone or his computer, and we need to stay quiet and give him his space to work. If by some miracle he is talking, he’s talking at us, he’s pontificating. We, all four of us, are always silent. He doesn’t see us. He doesn’t ask us questions, nothing. Unless there’s a camera, then suddenly he’s all smiles and compassionate shoulder gripping. How’s soccer, Molly? Got your eyes on any girls, Jamie-boy? What’s happening in those poli-sci classes these days, Drew? We are accessories. And when we fuck up, we’re liabilities.
The night that the video of me lying by the tree dropped was no different. My father came home. He draped his suit jacket over the couch, loosened his tie, poured himself a scotch, and took his seat at the head of the dining room table, laptop strategically placed on his right-hand side, multiple cellphones on his left. My mother scurried around him, laying out a fucking feast he would never thank her for. Like droids, Molly, James, and I were in our seats at seven p.m. on the dot. My mother sat to his left. Molly and James are on his right, and I sat across from him. His call, some bullshit about being the man of the house in his absence, first-born son and all. It sounds like an honor, but it’s not. It’s a way for him to point out my failings, a way for him to tell me I’ll never be good enough for the position I am meant to occupy.
That night, as usual, the only sounds were the clattering of silverware, the slippery slosh of chewing, and him tapping at his laptop keys. One of his phones rang. He answered it. The other phone started ringing. That’s never good. Tension rippled around the table as we prepared for his anger. And then he glared at me, his eyes wild. Better me than one of the others. His face tightened, and he had barely hung up the phone before he snarled through his teeth at me, “You are fucking less than useless, Drew.” Every word was deliberate, and he emphasized the F in fucking, his teeth gripping and then popping off his lower lip.
At the time, I had no idea what I’d done. It could have been any number of things, really. It could have been any moment from anywhere in my past. It could have been the truth or lies. It could have been a girl saying she was pregnant or a guy saying I was his gay lover. It could have been drugs or drinking or hazing. The only thing I knew in that moment was that it was public. Something I had, or could have done, was part of the news cycle because that was the deal. I could frequent hookers and be shitty blitzed out of my mind 365 days a year as long as no one caught me on camera, as long as my actions never touched him. It was never about my health or my safety. It was about the senator.
“Well,” he spat. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
I didn’t dare utter a sound. Since I didn’t know what was going on, I was not going to incriminate myself. I learned long ago to never offer any info. Getting it wrong meant getting fucked twice. I put my fork down and stayed quiet.
“Nothing to say? Nothing!” He grabbed his scotch glass and threw it. It shattered against the wall behind Molly and James. James flinched. He’s the youngest at fourteen. Molly’s seventeen, so she’s somewhat steeled herself by now, but tears were creeping up in the corners of her eyes. At almost twenty, I was unbreakable. He wouldn’t see me shatter. Ever.
I kept still, waited. He would give it to me.
He put both hands on the table and leaned toward me, his voice low and cold. “Bonnaroo was a blast. Wasn’t it, Drew? What are you, some fucking hippie rolling around in the mud, drugged out of your mind? You’re on camera. Dr-ew. You’re on camera, lying in your own vomit with “dickhead” and “pussy” scrawled on your fucking skin, Drew!”
There it was. And for the first time in forever, I didn’t have to spin anything. I could just tell the truth. So I looked right at him, my voice steady, and said, “I was doped.”
“Bullshit. You weren’t doped. You’re a fucking loser. That’s not even a good spin, you little shit.”
Rinse and repeat, my voice still solid, I said, “I was doped, Senator.”
“No one’s buying that, Drew.”
“I bummed a cigarette off a group of lowlife shits, burnouts, and it was laced. I can describe them to a sketch artist if you want me to.”
He lifted his hands from the table and crossed his arms over his chest. I knew he didn’t believe me, but I could see in his eyes that he had started to think I might look believable on camera. All he needed was public doubt and a strategy that made him look like a savior.
After that night, there were meetings with PR specialists, political strategists, and the kind of people who poll to see what haircut makes you look the most believable, desirable, or upstanding. I felt like I knew what happens to someone in boot camp or when you’re brainwashed. They stripped me, peeled me, acid-washed me, until I was what the camera wanted. Drew Scott, all-American boy, raped on the cusp of his manhood. Okay, maybe I’m being a little dramatic. But they took things from me and I let them. I always let them.
My experience at Bonnaroo had become an index card. It was a four-by-six white card with a series of blue lines and then one red line at the top. Pasted to it was a cut out piece of paper that read:
On the night of June 13, I made a perfectly legal choice to smoke a cigarette. The overall thematic ideas that were presented at Bon
naroo, a sort of peace, love, and happiness vibe, reminiscent of Woodstock, duped me into believing that all people in attendance were in that mindset and could be trusted. So, when I decided to smoke, which is not a regular practice for me, I walked up to a group of strangers and asked to bum a cigarette. The cigarette was laced. I have no memory of the things I did after smoking the cigarette. I am a victim of cruelty, and an act that could have been even more dangerous than it was. Those delinquent young men who doped me with illicit drugs made me unknowingly break the law, and perhaps if I had a less durable constitution, their drugs could have killed me. After my experience, I can see that environments that tolerate drug use, like Bonnaroo and other music festivals, are dangerous and potentially deadly. For the safety of good young men like me, they need to be stopped.
I didn’t write one word of it. It vaguely sounded like I could have written it. I saw the attempt at youthfulness, words like “bum” and “vibe.” At night, I sometimes pictured the thirty-something-year-old guys that sat around a board table trying to make a one-minute comment sound like it was written by a twenty-year-old senator’s son. I wondered if as little boys they hoped they’d grow up to be the voice of a senator’s son.
The story had dimmed a little but not enough for the senator so since the video dropped, I was obligated to travel on the campaign trail with the senator, dressed in a monkey suit, reading the statement and taking no questions. Most days were the same. Up at dawn. Ride in a car alone. Gather before a rally. Stand on the podium looking clean and somber. Read the statement. Smile. Smile. Smile. Clap. Clap. Clap. Ride in the car again to a hotel that wasn’t much to speak of. Eat whatever fast food an assistant brought me to the room for dinner. He didn’t want me to talk to anyone about any of it, so he sequestered me. I was always alone.
Some nights in an empty hotel room surrounded by fast-food wrappers, I would stare at the ceiling and remember the truth. I would remember that Bonnaroo mattered, that the last day and night of Bonnaroo mattered. Yeah, I was doped. Yeah, there were pictures of me embarrassingly out of control all over the internet, but there were also glimpses of her. Split seconds of her hand, the curve and roll of her waist, a corner of the screen filled with her ass. Sure, some ignorant little shit doped me, but that didn’t matter because she was there, because she saved me. Because she existed. Because there was someone who didn’t judge, someone who was just kind, and she was out there. And she was happy at Bonnaroo, so it wasn’t true that it all needed to be stopped. It was just a media package. The story that made the YouTube videos of me acceptable for the senator. In my head I would tell her that none of it was true. I would tell her I’d do it all again just to see her dance.
Then there were other nights, when I would troll the internet looking for her. I would click through clip after clip of “Drew Scott Fuk’d Up!” videos looking through the comments, hoping to find her. Hoping to see her saying, “OMG! That girl in the video, it’s me.” And even though I wanted to find her, even though I wanted to know her name and mash my face into her skin, to fucking smell her for Christ’s sake, I was always relieved that she wasn’t there. That she was really what I thought she was, not some media hungry idiot.
On those nights when I searched for her but didn’t find her, I would get consumed by her. She’d still be on my mind once the laptop was closed and the lights were off. And it was then, only in the glow of the alarm clock, that would I let myself really remember what it was like to watch her. I’d get hard thinking about the movement of her hips when she danced in the sun. I’d reach down under the lip of my boxers and stroke myself, thinking about her breasts bouncing while she waited in line for a cheesesteak. Pressure would gather in my balls when I remembered the warmth of her face against my chest, and I’d come all over my hands and my stomach remembering the little sound she made when I took her earlobe between my teeth.
Alone in the dark in a strange hotel room, she was mine. I thought I would never see her again. I still had the green bandana she gave me, and I thought I could just keep it stuffed in my pocket, grip it while I spun their stories, and hold her in my memories, a talisman to what I wished I was, a shard of hope that there were people who weren’t like my father.
And then it all changed. It was just another day, another twenty-four hours of being the senator’s puppet. I woke up. I wore my suit. I read my index card. I washed down my fast-food burger and fries with little bottles from the minibar. I showered. I watched a dumb movie. I turned off the lights. I closed my eyes. I woke up to the phone ringing. I looked at the clock—2:17—and reached for the phone without sitting up, still all twisted and sleep heavy in the sheets.
I was dehydrated from the little bottles. My mouth thick with dryness, I clawed annoyance into the receiver. “What?”
It was Gloria, my father’s campaign manager. “He wants to see you.”
“It’s two in the morning. I’m sleeping.” She wouldn’t argue with me or give me any sympathy. I was to do what he said, no questions.
“Now.” She was cold and clear as a bell, calm and collected in a way that didn’t say middle of the night. It was possible that Gloria was a vampire or some other supernatural evil that didn’t need sleep.
I sat up. “I need to get dressed.”
“He’s waiting,” she warned before she hung up.
I got dressed in the dark room, picking yesterday’s clothes off the floor. It was quiet all around me and my movements stirred the stillness, the huffs of my breath, the jingle of my belt buckle, the fabric rubbing against my skin. Pants on, shirt on but unbuttoned, I crossed to the bathroom and flicked on the light. The brightness stung my eyes and took the low hum of a headache from nuisance to nightmare. I looked shitty. Tired and gray. I splashed water on my face, took two aspirin, and patted at my hair, trying to tame it. My eyes were red and dry, so I passed on my contacts and grabbed my glasses. Good enough.
On my floor, the hotel was eerily quiet. But the senator stayed on the top floor in the best suite and as soon as the elevator doors opened, I could hear them, the senator’s team. It wasn’t that I knew what they were saying. It was that they were milling about. The senator’s suite was alive and bustling. There was movement and voices, the muffled sounds you’d expect to hear if it were possible to press your ear up against the door to the floor of the New York stock exchange, voices clamoring, bells, ringing phones, televisions, just a cacophony of noise and movement.
I stood outside the door for an extra second, trying to calm the tightness that was forming in my chest. What now? What could he want from me in the middle of the night? I knocked. An intern, a blond girl who reminded me of Candice, opened the door. She smirked at me, shifting her weight so that her chest heaved in my direction. Even as king of the losers, being the senator’s son meant girls like this wanted me. They wanted access to the people I knew and the places I could help them gain entrance to. I didn’t smile at her, so she stepped back, holding the door open for me to pass through. Part of my father’s team was sitting at a long antique-looking table, laptops in front of them, eyes glued to their screens. The others, including Gloria, were on phones, voices cooing, calling in favors. I focused on Gloria.
“Come on, Trevor, we are all going to know who she is by tomorrow. What’s the harm in giving us a little heads-up?”
I heard the rush of water from a faucet, and then the door to the bathroom flew open and the senator entered the room. All eyes turned to him.
He looked to Gloria. “Anything?”
She covered the receiver with her hand. “Not yet. But we’ll get it.”
He looked at me and gestured for me to follow him into the other room. He was ushering me away from prying ears. I knew this tactic. Standing here among his staff, he looked professional, human even, but once we were in the other room and the door behind us was closed, his disgust would twist his features. Hatred would coat every word he uttered. I wasn’t up for it tonight.
I stayed where I stood. “What’s happening
, Dad?” I only ever called him dad in front of cameras, and he knew it. It was one of the only tools I had in my arsenal, the constant reminder that I was of him, that he was partially responsible for my existence.
He turned to the intern that had let me in and said, “The photo.” She picked up an image, crossed the room, and handed it to him. In turn, he held it out in my direction. I crossed from where I was standing to take it from him.
I don’t know what I thought it was going to be. Something else stupid that I had done, maybe, but as soon as my eyes landed on her face, I felt my stomach curdle. The photo was taken from behind my shoulder. The photographer must have used a flash. How did I not notice this happening? My seated form was the blurry foreground and the focal point to the image was her face. Her fucking gorgeous face, her eyes looking at me, radiating concern. This was the moment when she first touched me. You couldn’t see it in the image, but her hand was on my leg. I could feel it, the electricity that ran through me when the warmth of her palm pressed into my shin. How did I not lurch for her lips right then? In the image they were so full and pink and parted just enough that I could make out the little gap between her front teeth. I wanted to feel my tongue pressing against that space; I wanted to invade her mouth, claim her, catch her lower lip between my teeth and suck. Fuck, I was going to be bulging against my zipper if I looked at her for one more second.
I tore my eyes away and looked up to find the senator studying my reaction. I didn't want this for her. I didn’t want them to find her, use her, corrupt that moment. I hoped I hadn’t given myself away.
“So?” I asked. “What does this have to do with anything?”
His nostrils flared. “Apparently, the press is interested in her. Why are they interested, Drew?”
Because of me. They were interested in her because of me, and there was nothing I could do to save her from this, from him. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t change it. I couldn’t do anything to change what would have to happen next. She would never know that for me, Bonnaroo mattered. That she mattered. It all mattered. Instead, she would see their version of me. The version that fucking shat on everything that happened because they wanted me to, because I was nothing, less than useless.