Earth to Me

Like I said, Christmas break was basically a month of pure joy. I slept in every day, half the time I spent the day in my pajamas, and I got to eat a whole lot of home-cooked food while my dad was ecstatic to have me back for a little while.

I had my schedule mapped out for the next semester, and even with the nightmare hanging over my drowsy head, everything felt like it was gonna be fine in my foreseeable future. I got some new shirts and a few CDs for Christmas, but the cherry on top was the fact that Put’emup, Put’emup sent a few hundred bucks to me, Tegan, Chuck, and Riley – they told us to spend it on textbooks or food while we were on our own.

It was little things like that that reminded me of the fact that I was actually friends with celebrities.

It was incredible. Even my dad was in shock over it all – some people who just happened to be mildly famous had decided to help us out a little bit. And honestly, I was so happy that I had to keep reminding myself not to get my hopes up and wonder if they’d pay for my student loans…

That wasn’t the last of the happenings over winter break, though. And let me just say this firsthand: the Internet is crazy. It brings us happiness, it can let us talk to people across the world, and there’s an abundance of cat videos at any given moment.

The Internet is also full of people who lose their marbles at the drop of a hat.

I’m not even kidding here. As a long-time Internet patron who started out raising virtual pets in 2003, I know my way around the Web, and let me tell you, it is not a place where people openly agree and act calmly all the time. That being said, Tegan and I were also users of a blogging website called Mumblr. People would go on this website and share pictures of funny things, important social justice issues, or cats, a great staple of many websites.

There were also people who took pictures and GIFs of celebrities and musicians, posting them and talking about how incredible they were, and some of these people went a little too far.

As you can probably guess, Put’emup, Put’emup had plenty of fans that used Mumblr, Tegan and I included. We limited our blogging to a few pictures every few days, a group photoset here and there, a black-and-white edit of the members’ individual portraits, and a ton of their music. Nothing too insane.

Put’emup, Put’emup was doing a small tour in Australia, which was why we hadn’t hung out that month. They were posting photos and video updates on their Facenook and Cooltube pages respectively, and my God, it was like they were just feeding everybody who wanted to know exactly what was going on at every given second. I watched the videos too, always amused at how similar they acted on camera to the way they were in real life. But at least I stopped there, for crying out loud.

It was a normal night, me laying down on Tegan’s bed while playing handheld video games. She was at her laptop surfing the Web, which basically just meant that she was checking her Mumblr, and neither of us thought too much about it at the moment.

Out of nowhere, she gasped and zoomed back in her chair, scooting over to me with a hand over her gaping mouth.

From the mix of terror and shock on her face, my first instinct was to just yell, “What?! What’s going on?!”

She just jabbed her pointer finger at the computer screen.

There, on her dashboard, were four GIFs. They were pixilated and kind of looked like someone filmed them using a chicken wing, but I could tell what was going on in them, and I could certainly make out who was moving in them.

I squinted just to make sure I had it right.

It was from a video of a performance that Put’emup, Put’emup had just recently done in Melbourne. Someone was pretty close to the stage, and they’d captured Andy and Anthony on-camera during the unveiling of a new song, one called “Keep Around” – I had heard it from a video they shared on Facenook, but I hadn’t actually seen a live performance of it yet.

The fact that they were writing new material came as no surprise to me, honestly. I knew they were go-getters, and I knew they’d be sure to make whatever new album they came out with be even better than “Cooler Than Cool,” their 2011 release.

Now, this didn’t really surprise me as much as it probably should have. Maybe it was because I’d hung around Andy and Anthony for so long that I already kind of had my suspicions about them doing unmentionable things to each other when nobody else was around, but I certainly didn’t share Tegan’s reaction of shock.

In the last chorus of “Keep Around,” Anthony sang backup vocals, while the rest of the song was just Andy’s. Anthony came out from the shadows backstage when his part came up, since it was an acoustic song that made Andy take the stage, and then they’d sing along at the front, side-by-side. It was a cute song, anyway. I don’t know if it was written as a love song, but regardless, it was a nice little ditty.

As the song ended in the video, Anthony took a bow while Andy took off his guitar and handed it off to a roadie, who scuttled offstage again. They hugged for a long time before Anthony leaned over and said something right in Andy’s face. He paused. Then he said something right back at the bassist, and then they broke out into smiles, beaming directly at each other. Anthony held his heart and gripped his microphone tightly in his other hand; Andy reached over and patted his arm.

At the bottom of the GIF set, the caption read, “’Keep Around’ Performance in Melbourne // Allarez in Action.”

Under my breath, I kind of said, “Allarez?”

Tegan grabbed me by the shoulders and squeaked, “That’s what they call ‘em! That’s what they’re callin’ ‘em, they’re making ‘em into stagegays! I can’t stand it!”

“Oh my God,” I groaned, rubbing my face. “Oh God, that’s what’s going on? They’re just gonna take this and run, aren’t they?”

She flopped back in the chair. “Yup. That’s all they ever do and that’s all they’re gonna do with this one.”

None of the dudes in the band were strangers to weird people on the Internet who thought the band should just have an orgy. They knew about it, of course, but they kept their distance.

“What fucking sucks about it is how they’re just…making a fetish out of it. It’s like they don’t even realize Anthony’s actually bi, and they just obsess over it for no reason,” Tegan sighed once more. (She got riled up over this kind of stuff and I never blamed her for that.) “God knows we need more queer people to look up to, but making this sort of bad scene about it just…no.”

I just got quiet and nodded. I had my hunches about Andy and Anthony, that’s for sure, and they never let up with their behaviors behind the scenes, but this was ridiculous.

Tegan rolled back over to her computer and switched a tab over to Facenook. She clicked a few times and then she opened a chat window; I leaned over her shoulder and saw it was just her, Chuck, and Riley. After copying the link to the GIFs, she sent them over to our Florida counterparts.

She looked back at me and growled in exasperation, showing her teeth. I smiled, not sure what to say or do, and then she just huffed a laugh and said, “I swear to God, if they do end up becoming a ‘thing,’ they better keep it under wraps, or else shit like this is gonna happen a lot more often.”

“Well, what if Andy came out?” I asked.

She blinked. “That…might make things a little weirder for them, but I could see it happening. Then they’ll have three non-straight dudes in the band.” She smirked at nothing and bit her lip.

Suddenly, the webpage blooped, prompting Tegan to fly over to the keyboard and prepare to type a response to whatever was just said.

Riley had just messaged, “THEYRE SOOOOOOOO GAYYYYYYYYYY”

Tegan snorted and I had to laugh too. She instantly replied, “I KNOWWWWWWW”

“????? I usually stay away from that part of mumblr,” Chuck finally said, breaking his silence.

“i just think its funny how they do that shit onstage too,” Riley added.

“of COURSE they do it onstage, thats who they are and they are GAY as hell,” Tegan typed. She laughed as she said it, too. “but seriously fuck all the people who think theyre just doing it for fans”

“tbh tho it kinda looks like they are. Lets be real.”

“I don’t think they’re like that, i think theyd at least be real about it,” Chuck put his two cents in.

“im just thanking my lucky stars that anthony’s actually bi or else this would be a lot grosser.” Tegan cracked her knuckles. “&that’s all I have to say about that.”

“i still think there all gay and just have giant sex parties all night but thats just me,” Riley said, and with that, he signed off.

“good night tegan :)” Chuck wrote, ever so polite.

Tegan shut her laptop and sat back in her chair, blowing hair out of her face. It was just like old times – me and her hanging out in one of our rooms, though this time there wasn’t nearly as much stuff in it, thanks to our dorm housing most of it. We’d find a topic to talk about for the night when we weren’t watching a movie or stupid Cooltube videos, and then it would snowball from there.

This was kind of new, though. Little instances would pop up – someone would raid the band’s social networks and find all sorts of suggestive photos, most of them involving Anthony being flamboyant either by himself or with other equally-flamboyant people. They’d find pictures and post them all on Mumblr, plenty of them gaining thousands of shares.

Those two were no strangers to showcasing their friendship on the Internet. That’s the bottom line here. People could misinterpret it all they wanted, but at the heart of it all, it was between them, just them.

Tegan punched my arm and said, “So, let’s make a bet. How long ‘til they come out, you think?”

I laughed. “Dunno. If they’re actually a thing, they might not even tell anyone. I wouldn’t blame them, either.”

She started to say something, but then she paused. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she looked me in the eye before asking, “Now, okay, be honest – did you ever have a mancrush on Andy?”

“No!” (That wasn’t the first time she’d asked me that.)

A slow blink. She actually gave me a slow blink.

“Oh my God, we talked about this, Tegan.”

She broke into a smile and shoved my arm. “I’m just messing with you. Now, Murray on the other hand – what about him?”

I squinted at her. “…What about him?”

She shot me a look that made me feel about ten times dumber than I already was.

“Are you implying something? Because I don’t have a ‘mancrush’ on my roommate either!”

“He’s totally up your alley,” she said oh so matter-of-factly. “I’m gay and even I think he’s pretty nice-lookin’.”

I rolled my eyes. “Teeg, I love you, but you keep saying things that…just don’t make sense.”

“Aw, I say these things because I love you too, Osh. C’mon, I’m just kidding around with you. You know if you ever wanna talk about that kinda stuff, I’ll be here,” she smiled, curling a knee up to her chest.

I just ignored all the nonsense she was making and ruffled her hair. “Thanks, at least.”

And that was it for our pretty-much-biweekly “moment.” In an instant she had ripped a fart and I couldn’t keep myself from laughing into a coma, and then she broke down into snorts as well, and any trace of maturity we had just displayed went right down the drain.

Then she slung her arm around my neck, tackling me down onto the bed. “So, let’s get talking about all the ways you think they organize their orgies…”