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Chapter Two - It Was Like Jordan Was Yoda


Nick

“Jesus, who pissed in your Cheerios, little brother?” Jordan Knight, my current copartner in crime, looked up from some weird card game he was playing on one of the little tables in front of the so-called couch on the tour bus we were taking north for the last leg of the Nick & Knight tour into Canada. His Boston accent was getting thicker the colder it got outside, like his body temperature barometer directly tied to his place of birth.

I shook my head as I walked by and threw my backpack into my bunk. I sat on the edge of the weird little mattress and took a deep breath.

“I know you better than this,” Jordan said, “You’re being sullen and that can’t mean anything good.” His playing cards made clicky-thwappy sounds as he hit the table with them.

It was the day after Testing Day and Lauren had decided at the last minute not to come along on the last leg of the tour. She’d sprung this information on me twenty minutes before we’d been supposed to leave to get on the bus.

“But why?” I’d whined, “I need you.”

“You don’t need me, what do you need me for?” she’d asked.

“So I won’t be lonely on the tour bus,” I whined more.

“Are you kidding me? You and Jordan will be so busy fucking around you won’t need me there to keep you busy. You’ve got other things that’ll keep your mind preoccupied. And I’ve got stuff I need to do, too.”

“What stuff?”

“Just stuff, Nick, I have friends I need to catch up with and I need a mani-pedi like nobody’s business and I gained a few pounds, I need to focus on getting some serious workouts in so my BMI doesn’t climb. I need to figure out where I’m going to volunteer on Thanksgiving and all that, too. That stuff doesn’t do itself, you know.”

But I had this feeling like maybe it wasn’t anything to do with all the stuff she had to do as much as it was to do with wanting to be apart from me. Tension had been rising slowly one Testing Day at a time, but this one had been especially rough. I think mainly because we’d been kind of half expecting a miracle of sorts for the holiday. We’d half discussed this idea for doing a baby announcement for Christmas and this had been our last chance for that. It was like just one more dream that had slipped out the window because my sperm didn’t wanna crawl up inside her uterus the right way or whatever.

And I was afraid maybe me letting her down was hurting us more than she was letting on.

Jordan leaned over his table, one eyebrow raised, looking down the length of the bus at me. “C’mon Nicky, you can talk to me,” he said in a beckoning tone.

I got up and walked out to the couch and sat down next to him.

“How long did you and Evelyn try to have kids before you knocked her up?” I asked.

“Jesus, Carter, let’s get personal, shall we?” he laughed, nudging me. I gave him a pleading look. All I wanted was an answer, not a giggle. He got the message and settled back into the seat, rubbing his chin. “Aw man, I mean, let’s see. I don’t know if we ever really tried, I mean, we weren’t actively not trying. Just… you know, Dante was a pleasant surprise, I guess.” Jordan patted my leg in a guy-friendly way, “You guys thinking of trying?”

I sighed, “We’ve been trying since fuckin’ June.”

Jordan blinked in surprise. “June? You know you gotta stop wearin’ condoms to make that work, right, Nicky?” he smirked.

“Dude, we have been doing everything.”

Jordan pouted out his lower lip, thinking. “You seen one of them sex doctors?”

I nodded. “This older than dirt guy who gave us a way too detailed description of how to do a hand job,” I answered. “I’m still having nightmares of this guy, Jor.” I shook my head, “And I’m really gettin’ nervous about it, like what if I’m, like, broken down there somethin’, like I got low grade sperms or somethin’? What if I ain’t never gonna get her pregnant? What if we can’t have kids? What if she leaves me ‘cos she wants to have kids and thanks to my defunct sperms I’m basically a pretty, but useless, meat stick?”

A smirk danced on the corners of his lips.

“It ain’t funny, dawg,” I whimpered.

“Well, first of all, I’m pretty sure Lauren loves you for more than your -er- pretty meat stick,” he said.

“You forgot useless,” I grumbled, leaning back and folding my arms over my chest.

“What’s the issue?” he asked, “Can’t get it up?” He used his index finger to illustrate the ‘getting up’.

I took a deep breath. I wished Howie was around I could talk to him. Jordan was cool and stuff but I’d looked up to him for years and years, even before I met the guy, so it felt kinda weird talking to him about my sexual dysfunctions. But Howie was clear across the country, getting ready for Christmas with his family, enjoying some much needed, and well deserved, time off before we got back into the Backstreet Working Schedule at the end of January. Jordan was all I had. And he did have the advantage of being old and wise, like Kevin kinda.

“I think… I think it might be… like… bored.”

“Bored?” Jordan raised an eyebrow.

“Well ‘cos, like, okay. So. When we first started, it was like… I was gettin’ lots and lots of sex and it was awesome ‘cos… I like sex. But then it was like I was gettin’ too much sex, and it was really predictable and like, I dunno, I thought it’d work quick. Like the first time, maybe. And it didn’t. And I kinda felt like a failure and then I was worried about it, like maybe my dick doesn’t work right, and now it’s just like I’m scared to try again ‘cos I’m scared to have it not work and confirm that I’m broken down there or something.” I stared at Jordan.

He nodded. “That makes sense.”

“Does it?”

He nodded again, “You got so much damn pressure on you, you’re stressin’ your wiener out. You need to calm the fuck down. That’s way too much thinking to be doing when you’re trying to have sex, man. Way too much thinking. Your boner’s gonna get tired thinkin’ that much.” Jordan swept the cards up off the table and stood up, sliding them into a box he’d left on the counter. He turned to face me, shaking the closed deck at me with emphasis, “You need to have a good lay where you ain’t thinkin’ about it and once the pressures off you, you’ll be a’ight, man.”

“But the pressure’s always on,” I said, “We only have sex to make babies these days.”

“So you gotta change that.”

“How?”

“When we get back from this leg of the tour, you walk into the house and you grab her by the hips and you tell her you’ve done nothin’ but dream about her naked body all the time you’ve been gone and you say you gotta have her right now and fuck ’er brains out.”

It was like poetry.

It was like Jordan was Yoda and I was learning how to use my Lightsaber.

“And then what? After that I’ll be able to keep it up long enough to make a baby for real?” I asked.

Jordan shrugged, “I ain’t got a clue. But at the worst you get laid. It’s worth a try.”

“Yeah.”

He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Sam Adams. He held it up to see if I wanted one, but I shook my head, so he popped the cap on the edge of the counter - a talent that I’d tried to copy a few times with no luck. He closed the fridge door and sipped the beer. “Here’s the thing, though,” he said, lowering it, his hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, pointing at me as he spoke, “You gotta stop being so stressed out about it. Even if you can’t get her pregnant, it ain’t the end of the world. There’s other ways to have kids, man. There’s like in vitro and all that Star Trek medical type shit you could do, and then there’s always good old fashioned adoption.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean hell, you can have one of my kids if you want,” he said, “I got two of’em.”

I laughed.

Jordan grinned, “You like that, huh? You’ll be sorry when I give ya Dante. He’s been a little bitch lately. Driving Evy nuts. He’s gettin’ to that whole I’m-fifteen-and-the-world-owes-me stage. I don’t remember being that much of a little bitch when I was fifteen. Do you?”

“Yes,” I replied honestly, nodding. “I was obnoxious as fuck when I was fifteen.”

Jordan sipped his beer, “Good then, it’s settled, you take Dante and we’ll be good.” He smirked. “Nawh seriously, though, man, there’s always adoption.” He shrugged. “There’s plenty of kids out there need a family. Maybe there’s a reason you and Lauren can’t bomp-de-bomp-de-bomp one out, maybe it’s ‘cos you’re meant to help some kid that ain’t got nobody else.”

“Maybe.”

“Either way, though, you gotta stop pressuring yourself. It ain’t good for you.” He put the beer down on the counter.

I sighed.

Jordan smiled, “Now you gotta relax. We’re about to wrap up this tour and we don’t need it ending on no sour note, we’ve had way too much fun for that shit.” He held out his hand, looking for a fist bump. I bumped and he did the jazz-hands-explosion thing. I raised my eyebrow. “See Dante hates it when I do that. Says I look ridiculous. Like a dork, he says.”

“You do look like a dork when you do that,” I replied.

“Jesus,” Jordan shook his head. “Ain’t no respect.”

“It’s a’ight, old man,” I said.

Jordan chuckled, his eyes sparkling, “Hey don’t you be callin’ me old man, limpy, or you’re gonna find your bad self in trouble. I know where your bunk’s at.”




I tried to push the thoughts of babies and pregnancy tests and all that out of my head for the next week as Jordan and I did our last few dates on the tour. Every stop of the way the air seemed to get colder and colder ‘til we’d crossed the border into Canada and I was making jokes about icebergs and penguins. Jordan’s Boston was so thick he couldn’t even pronounce his own name right.

Jawd’n.

On the very last day of the tour, we were gettin’ ready to leave Calgary, me headed back to LA and Jordan to Boston, when he pulled me aside at the airport. “Good luck tonight,” he said, fist bumping me again.

“Thanks,” I answered.

“You need to talk, you gimme a call, a’ight?”

“I will,” I answered. “And thanks for the advice.”

“The shit you learn after you turn 40, I swear.” Jordan grinned. “Anyways, hopefully next time we chill you’ll have a lil potsticker to introduce me to.” He winked. “Happy holidays, man.”

“You, too,” I answered and I waved as he walked on to his gate. I sat myself down by my own gate, Mike across from me in the waiting area, reading a magazine. I sighed and put my feet up on the seat next to Mike. “You gonna protect my kids, when I have’em, Mikey?” I asked.

Without even looking up, he asked, “You gonna pay me extra?”




I was nervous as I climbed out of the car that was dropping me off at home. I grabbed my bag and started walkin’ up the driveway to the house, my stomach kind of flippety-flopping around. I’d talked myself up into a mood the whole way home, thinkin’ about Lauren’s skin and the smell of her and all the things that got me excited and now I could feel Thor stirring, ready to join the party, and I pushed open the door of the house. “Baby, I’m home,” I called out.

“Hey,” she called back.

I followed the sound of her voice. She was in the kitchen, standing at the stove, watching a pot of water that was just below the boiling point, a fistful of pasta in her hand. I dropped my bag at the doorway and stepped up behind her, my arms snaking around her and pressing my face into her hair. “Mmm, you smell like heaven,” I mumbled into her ear, nibbling the skin at the top.

“I smell like cleaning chemicals is more like it,” she replied. “I just finished doing the bathroom. You need to do some target practice, mister.”

I ignored the comment and slid my hands down her sides to her hips. “The whole time I’ve been gone I couldn’t stop thinking about your naked body… I gotta have you right now.” I tried to spin her to face me, but I only succeeded in making her trip a little and she dropped the spaghetti in her palm and one of the pieces hit the burner and lit on fire.

“God damn it,” she grabbed a pair of tongs in the utensil drawer next to the stove and pulled the piece of spaghetti off the burner, blowing it out, and quickly started gathering up the other wayward pieces. “Nick, what the hell?”

“I just was sayin’ I missed you and I wanna have sex,” I whimpered. “I didn’t mean to start a damn fire.” I paused. “At least not a real one. I was trying to start one… you know… without bodies.” I said the last part in a Barry White kinda voice.

Lauren tossed the pasta into the pot and turned the heat down. “It’s not time yet, I have another couple days.”

“I just wanna have sex,” I said, “Not like for business, just for pleasure.” I pouted.

Lauren sighed. “Nick.”

“Lo,” I said in the exact same tone she’d just said my name in.

“Baby, I love you, I’m glad you’re home, but I don’t feel like it today. Save it for the weekend. We’re gonna have plenty of sex then.” She grabbed a spoon from the drawer and stirred the spaghetti gently, then leaned it on the chicken shaped spoon rest on the stove. I was pouting, so she took a couple steps towards me, ran her hands across my cheeks and said, “Don’t you wanna make a baby?”

“Yes, but, Jordan said --”

“Shhh,” Lauren whispered, and she kissed my chin. “We’ll have plenty of sex this weekend. For now, did you take your vitamins I packed you?” She stepped around me and opened the fridge, pulling out the spinach and some cream and other stuff she needed to make a white pasta sauce. I grimaced at the spinach. “Because it’s really important that we both stick to the regimen or else the chances go down really quick and the next thing you know we’re looking at steep odds of conceiving this month and I don’t know about you but the negative tests are really starting to be disheartening…”

I watched as she mixed the stuff together, adding extra-extra spinach and I thought about all that zinc and all the disheartening pregnancy tests and I felt my resolve starting to melt away, like snow in sunlight.

“...and I found a soup kitchen,” she added, as she stirred the pasta and my brain tuned back into the stuff she was saying. “It’s downtown. I told them I’d do the early dinner shift, so they scheduled me from like ten in the morning until like four. I figured that’d be good because then I could get up early and make the turkey and everything before I go, then I’d be home around five to reheat it and you and I can have Thanksgiving together for dinner. Is that okay?”

“Sounds good,” I answered.

Lauren smiled and put some pasta in a dish for me, “Sit down, baby,” she said, putting the bowl down on the table. She reached in the bag of spinach and garnished the bowl with it, winking, “Lots and lots of zinc!” she said like she was giving me chocolate. She put a finger on my chest, “We’re gonna do it this month, baby. I can feel it.”

“Yeah,” I answered and I sat down.

If I never ate spinach again in all my life I’d be okay with it. Just saying.