He’s not the best singer I have ever heard, technically speaking. But he’s my favorite. And no one can get my dick to fill, leaking for attention, with just their voice like this man can.
Music should make you feel things. And a guy singing about love so soulfully and sexy sets my hair on fire.
Back when life was him and I joined at the hip to play dive bars, we would celebrate our modest gig money with sex. Baylor would sing little lines he had written. Never actual songs, just little one-off lines he had for some future song. He would sing them quietly, sharing them just between us, brushing them into my skin with his lips. His mouth close to my ear or singing into my shoulder. It was indescribably hot. Otherwise, I only heard his voice on occasion. A line he sang on a duet that I didn’t. His voice tangled with mine in a song.
In bed, that’s where it wasjusthis voice. The only place.
Those one-off lines would come back in songs. Sometimes intact, sometimes modified. And when I sing them in concert, every once in a while, one will sneak up on me unaware and I lose focus. Instead of the crowd, I see his hooded eyes, feel his body over mine, and hear the line the way he sang it to me when we made love.
Just that small moment of him holding the end of the line longer than I do here in his studio brings it all back, too. He might as well be pressed against me naked and hard, breathing the song against my ear.
My face flushes and I shift to adjust myself without giving anything away.
We go back and forth for a while, brainstorming some sounds and a few lines here and there, the process coming back smoother than I would have thought it could.
A few hours in, we finally take a break, stretching and grabbing water, just like we used to.
Except we aren’t crammed in a dorm room or a shitty apartment this time around.
Baylor idly plucks away at a tune, one of the songs River sang in the movie we watched together. In fact, according to the biography I read, it is one he actually wrote for the movie.
“Do you think they will leave the childhood part as it is in the script?” I feel Baylor’s eyes on me as he asks the question, but I just shrug and scribble nonsense to avoid his gaze. I know where this is going.
“I don’t know, since I’m not playing young River.” Someone else will cover theStand by Meyears. Instead, I will be ten years older than the character I am playing — as happens so often in Hollywood.
What I don’t say, but Baylor probably hears anyway is that I haven’t read that part of the script.
“We have to write a song for it, Cas,” Baylor says gently, even softening out the notes he is lightly strumming.
“I know. I just. . .” I look at him. “You know that part hits a little close to home. The parallels people will draw with River’s childhood and mine is the only thing that gave me pause on this. Someone will write something about how I was raised in some cult or something.”
“You were raised in a cult.”
“I was raised on a commune of hippies. Trust me when I tell you it’s not the same.”
Baylor raises an eyebrow. He has opinions about my family, and he’s not wrong, but I’m glad he doesn’t bring them up right now.
“Maybe you should take a stab at some lyrics first then, for that. I don’t think I would do it justice, really.”
I huff and fall back from where I was sitting leaned against a couch to fully sprawl on the floor. If I’m face up to the ceiling, I don’t have to avoid looking at him.
“You talk to your parents lately?”
I give a little giggle. Not even Nix will ask me about my parents.
“You know I haven’t.”
A pause.
“I don’t know that, actually.”
“Last talk I had with them was after the lastGrammysand they asked why I didn’t bring awareness to their latest cause when I was on the red carpet. Then it was how they need a few more million for some building project at the commune, and as always, I am letting them down.”
People in interviews also like to ask about my parents and my “unconventional” upbringing. I always say the same thing: My parents always know what house Saturn is in. They can make of that what they will.
“What cause is it this time?”
I roll my head enough to see him. “I don’t remember, actually. I was too busy bending under their disappointment at being so mainstream to hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100, yet again. Not to mention they found out about my retirement account and my investment in companies that are not on their approved list. Didn’t stop them from taking the money I sent, of course.”
