Have Kids, Then We'll Talk

Beauty magazines were not doing good things to my ego.
Neither were celebrity tabloids or Pete asking me to be a model for his Clandestine shit thing. As much as I liked to complain about fame, as much as I despised being something worth knowing about. Or rather the product of something worth knowing about that had spawned a little piece of shit like me.

God. Like you should care.

Perhaps it was a random spurt of narcissism, like Shay. Was Shay now in my mind? Ew. Gross. Maybe it was a growing sense of insecurity, the overwhelming idea that I was no longer the only kid at a school with a famous last name. As much as I hated it, I also loved it. Masochistic, maybe. I wasn't sure. I'm still not sure. I would never be normal and I would never really want to be normal, just on some days I fooled myself into thinking I would want to be normal.

But no. I was not special anymore. Or not as special as before. There were Ways, McCrackens, Ieros, Wentzes, Lees et cetera.

I sighed and slapped my fashion magazine onto the floor, taking one last look at the models who starved themselves to stay so damned thin when all I had to do was be born.

"Addie!" my door opened and in popped my dad, Ryan, "Brendon's ordering takeout. Want anything?"

"Uh...no," I mumbled, kicking a majority of the magazines under my bed. Gaymo daddies and Vogue don't mix safely.

My dad was quicker than my foot. Before I knew it, he had a copy of one of the magazines in his hands and was appraising it with a grotesque look. "Who the fuck is that?" His hand pointed accusingly at the cover figure.

I told him the name of a useless, boring, teenage pop star who would probably be back on crack and alcohol in a matter of years anyways.

"Well she looks like shit," he tossed the magazine back on the bed, "Her hair is worse than Brennie's when I first met him..." Brennie. Oh how I loathed the nickname.

He shot the magazine on last glare. Did I not say that gaymos and Vogue do not go well when you're trying to seperate yourself from the family? Well if I didn't, and I'm aware that I did, I'm saying it now.

"That's great dad." I nodded and he rolled his eyes like a teenage girl and left. Fag. And I meant that in only the most affectionate terms. Really, I do.

I sighed and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling from my position on the floor. It was way to early to go to bed, too late to do anything else. If only Las Vegas still beckoned to coax my dad from the deathly writer's block that was so cleverly adhering to his brain. If only, if only.

So many "if"s. So many things I would have liked to go different in my life, in my conception, in my whatever. If only Daddy was straight. No Shay, less Brendon. If only Mommy wasn't such a whore. Daddy, Mommy, Addie. If only I weren't so skinny. If only, if only, if only.

Deciding the ceiling held nothing for my musings anymore, I rolled back onto my side and let my fingers stretch out and grasp through a bag of shit fro my Sidekick. Past makeup, iPod, book, pen, wallet and finally there. My hand grasped the the cool black plastic of my beloved telephone. I had two new messages, three new voicemails. But those could wait. Las Vegas Calling? New York called to me stronger than Vegas.

I did what any person with a brain should do when they're bored. I called the son of the world's single biggest egotist, the only person I knew who had failed their ninth grade year, the boy I proclaimed my best friend. Not that I was his, I couldnt keep track of his. Childhood with Dick Wentz had taught me never to ask anything in a way that could be considered graphic. He could, and would find a way to twist the very words that came out of my mouth.

"Do you ever get enough of me?" he answered.

"Cocky."

"It's Dick, actually. Close, though."

I laughed, played with my hair and sighed, "Dick, I'm bored."

"Well that makes two of us."

"What are you doing tonight?"

"Going out with Jay. Why?"

I sighed, weighing my chances. Knowing the younger Way boy, it wouldn't be somewhere nasty and filled with naked women; but it could be a coffee house full of Bob Dylan types. However, knowing Dick, it would be somewhere where he'd get noticed, where his dad would see. Somewhere chic, fancy, exclusive, the kind of place you couldn't get yourself into if you sold your children. But knowing the two of them, they'd compromise somewhere. So I was fairly safe.

"Can I come?"

"Dunno. Jay texted earlier, said he wanted to go out. I'm getting ready now, you're on my way to where I'm meeting him. I'll get you."

I took this as a yes, "Uh-huh. How long?"

"Ten minutes, at most."

"You are so lucky I know exactly what I'm wearing." I didn't. Not really, but I liked saying things like that to Dick. I fingered some of my clothes and sat up, mulling over my wardrobe in my mind, the question of what to wear reverberating like a drum.

"I swear if you wear those gold leggings, I will fucking murder you!" Dick complained.

My mind darted to the gold leggings. "I'm not going to. I got the message last time, god!" I looked at the leggings, considered wearing them to piss hm off.

"Bye."

"Bye, Dickwad."

"Originally, really."

I sighed at the click of the phone and took of my T-shirt. Yelled something to my dad about leaving, put something else on, did my makeup and looked for shoes. So I started out my evening whining about abnormalities of my life. And I surely end it somewhere in a gutter (or Dick's house, knowing myself) laughing at the blank and barren lives that everyone else posessed. And I would start the next one, by reading my name in The New York Post.

Adelaide, meet the press.