Playlist - 2. Track 2) Trample Out The Days - Orville Peck

March 2nd, 8:01PM

Sebastian had to admit that it was high time to change out of the t-shirt, boxer-briefs, and comforter-shroud he’d been rocking for his totally justified and not all dramatic 24 hours of sulking. He had to be dressed better than that to face the dreaded “inevitable.”

The “inevitable” was what would follow Audrey’s plan for Sebastian’s night. This story had played out a thousand times on screen -- Sebastian knew this, because he’d probably watched them all.

The shy, often fresh-out-of-the-closet gay man, played in this case by Sebastian Santos, gets his heart broken; the new friend on the block with a bright personality and brighter smile, played by Audrey… whatever-last-name, then takes it upon herself to help the gay man seize his sexual identity. A horrible night of hook up apps and dance clubs awaited him. Then, Sebastian being Sebastian, would have to explain that this isn’t how he wants to be gay. Consequently, the two would come to a better understanding of each other, and Sebastian comes out of the night a more realized gay man because of it, despite any initial missteps along the way. By the end of the night, like it or not, there was about to be some big cathartic connection at hand. Though Sebastian had been out of the closet for not even the better part of an hour, he’d known he was gay for a very, very long time. Those days, months, years in the closet in tandem with keeping more to himself most of his life turned him to television and movies; in them, this was how the story always played out.

So now fully dressed in stylish combat boots, a jean jacket, and a graphic tee-shirt he got from a concert in his youth, he exited his bedroom prepared for the “inevitable.” It was a very safe outfit for a night out in the city.

Hardly a second outside of his bedroom passed before Naveen and Audrey came into the living room, too.

…dressed in shorts, hiking boots, and backpacks.

“What are you wearing?” Audrey asked.

“Are we not going out?” Sebastian responded, defeatedly.

She put a hand on her hip and mused, “Going out on the town doesn’t really seem like your sort of thing. From what I’ve heard.” Her brown eyes glanced to Naveen.

Sebastian raised an eyebrow to his roommate. What on earth did she already know about Sebastian? In fact, what could Naveen know about Sebastian that he felt important enough to tell her?

Naveen just shrugged.

Audrey marched to Sebastian and planted her spindly hands on his back. “You,” she said, “go get dressed for something more mobile.” She started to actually push him towards his bedroom door.

“What are we even doing-- You don’t have to push me! I can walk!” Sebastian clamored.

Audrey took her hands off Sebastian’s shoulder blades. “Right, um, sorry,” she apologized.

“We figured maybe you needed to go for a hike,” chimed Naveen.

Oh.

Sebastian straightened himself up and exhaled. This sounded, at the very least, less trying than a night fumbling through a bar and pretending like he knew what he was doing.

He opened his mouth to ask a question, but Audrey put her hand up and cried, “Abububup! Questions later. Get changed.”

For such a beautiful woman, Audrey was certainly… assertive. Sebastian noted silently that those two traits weren’t mutually-exclusive.

Sebastian wasn’t really much of an active person because he found sweating combined with physical exhaustion unbearable. Emile had tried to get Sebastian to join him on his runs during their last month together, but it never stuck. However, anything was better than forcing himself to be social in a crowded nightclub, acting like he was enjoying himself.

He traded his boots for beat-up white sneakers and a pair of black shorts. Once dressed anew, Sebastian realized that he was sailing off-course. Where the fuck was this story going? He couldn’t help himself and had to ask the two, after meeting back up in the living room, “What exactly is the plan here?”

Naveen was on the far side of the room, distracted and checking the contents of two backpacks. Audrey, who was now finishing tying a red bandana over her hair, looked behind her and asked, “What do you mean?”.

“You said you were making me ‘better,’ tonight,” Sebastian said.

Naveen cleared his throat from the other side of the room. “Seems like you have been bed-ridden all day,” he stated, “which means you must start moving.” He chucked a backpack at to his roommate. Sebastian didn’t have anything close to “good reaction timing,” so the bag fell at his feet. Naveen just did his signature eyebrow-furrow and returned to his business with the other backpack.

Hesitantly, Sebastian reached down and slung the backpack on.

It appeared that Naveen was actually quite sure of what he was doing for a hike, as Sebastian could see his roommate run through a mental checklist wordlessly. Each subtle bob of his head seemed to be another item off the list.

“Got everything?” Audrey asked Naveen breathily.

Naveen just nodded.

However, Sebastian certainly did not have everything; he was clearly missing a sense of what the fuck was going on. He absolutely loathed going into anything without a concrete idea of what was to come, and clearly this night was already lurking into uncharted waters. “So we’re going for a night hike… where?”

Audrey looked to Naveen once more. Naveen slid his backpack on and said, with probably one of the first smiles Sebastian had ever seen his roommate crack (which downright terrified him), “It is a surprise.”

It was then Sebastian became sure that moping for the rest of time was a far better idea than trusting these two.

March 2nd, 8:40PM

Of course this girl also drove a Subaru.

She wasn’t just pretty, no, Audrey also was cool. What was she doing with Naveen’s stuffy ass?

Sebastian was now somewhere in between grumpily feeling like he was dragged along out of pity and feeling cautious around these two people who just found out his biggest secret.

He was slumped in the backseat of Audrey’s car. Its wagon make did allow for a lot of room, thankfully, but somehow he still felt cramped by the unease he now had for the other two people in the front seats. So he turned his attention out through the window beside him as they sped along the 101.

Los Angeles was beautiful. There was no honest way to sully a description of its splendor. The Hollywood Hills stood majestically in Sebastian’s sight, partially illuminated by the silver moonlight above but mostly aglow from the surrounding city. In the day, the brown of the rocky hills were more visibly decorated with green; hundreds of cacti and other plant species lined along the terrain. Some people didn’t like LA’s intense heat and desert-like climate, and sure, the smog was getting worse by the year. Also, there was a good chance that the city would be wrecked by one of the largest earthquakes in human history within the next ten years. But to Sebastian, the city was home.

They took a turn into a residential area of the Hollywood Hills. Even this area, too, appeared magically scenic. Sebastian became a little more at ease the more the car glided around its winding turns. There was a sort of romance to the unique roadmap of the area that took him out of the total life-upheaval he’d been hardly surviving through.

“You from around here, Sebastian?” inquired Audrey from the driver’s seat.

“Born and raised,” he answered.

“Your family nearby then?”

Sebastian hissed anxiously. Yikes. The “romance” of the Hills quickly faded away. Not who he wanted to be thinking about at the moment.

Audrey faltered, “Right. Probably not the best time to talk about that considering…” her voice trailed off.

“Considering I’ve not told anyone else I’m gay?” Sebastian finished, perhaps a bit too pointedly.

Naveen, in the passenger seat, snorted and Audrey playfully shoved his shoulder.

More upper-middle-class houses dotted by Sebastian's view in the car. Hundreds of palms burst out from between each house, staking their own natural claim from the buildings. Off in the distance, cropped by mountainous terrain, stood the well-lit Hollywood sign. A sort of swelling feeling tickled at his heart once the sign caught Sebastian’s eye; not once could he ever fully shake that sense of wonder no matter how many times he saw the landmark.

Sebastian then realized something. That was the Hollywood sign they were driving towards. Countless big stories always had to have some climactic scene involving it— talk about played out.

“Oh god, please don’t tell me we’re heading out to the Hollywood sign,” Sebastian groaned. “We don’t actually have to make this some sort of moment, you know.” Even more predictably mundane than throwing himself into a gay bar moments after coming out of the closet was visiting the Hollywood sign as a setting for a “moment.”

Naveen scoffed. “Do you think of me as some sort of tourist?” He turned his head around and adamantly said, “You are not the only one here raised in Los Angeles.”

Sebastian blinked. Well, damn.

A few minutes more of drifting through the moonlight passed, until Audrey stopped the car just past the end of a rather inconspicuous street.

“Where are we?” Sebastian asked, fully expecting no clear answer.

Audrey looked over her shoulder and flashed another radiant smile. “It’s where Naveen took me one of the first times we hung out,” she explained.

Naveen unbuckled his seat belt and said, “We better get moving.”

Sebastian opened the car door and hesitantly put one foot out onto the ground, like he were a kid dipping his toe in the pool to check the temperature. He caught a glimpse of Naveen looking on with a blank expression, and then he felt his face go hot. Audrey exited from the other side.

A lone street lamp beamed above them and cast mighty shadows of their silhouettes around them. Sebastian watched his own creep into the dark, wooded area in front of him.

“Wait a minute, there’s not gonna be any light for this hike,” he cautioned.

Naveen walked up to Sebastian and put his hand out on his shoulder. Sebastian thought he was about to share a sudden heart-to-heart with Naveen, which put him further on edge, until he realized his roommate was not touching his shoulder to connect with him but rather to push an electric lamp on one of his backpack straps. White light then stretched forward into the shrubbery. Naveen glinted his own lamp on as well. Sebastian assumed Audrey had one, too.

He gave a shaky half-smile to Naveen and said, “You do this a lot, don’t you?”

“I do,” Naveen prided. “This is a short hike, though, as something tells me you do not do these sorts of things.” Naveen more-than-likely intended to sound considerate, but his flat, even tone made the words come off a touch critical instead. Sebastian tried not to shrink.

Audrey rounded from the opposite side of the car. She was re-tying her red bandana around her voluminous hair as she added, “I think there’s water in his bag, too, right?”

“Yeah. One in each of ours. I might have overpacked for such a quick trip.”

Audrey stepped to Sebastian’s side. She stamped her feet on the ground like she was readying the earth for her arrival. “This is gonna be easy,” she chided.

A heavy breath departed from Sebastian’s nose. Maybe Naveen was right; getting up and moving might have been the right idea. He hardly thought about Emile since confiding in his roommate and his girlfriend… or whatever Audrey was to Naveen. Also, now standing out in the quiet of the night even began to quell much of the anxiety he had over his big secret. Plus, gay people went hiking all the time; Sebastian had seen enough photos on Instagram of E-list “influencers” to prove it. Audrey and Naveen seemed eager, so why couldn’t he be as well?

March 2nd, 9:25 PM

Something Sebastian forgot to consider about those Instagram gays’ hikes were the fact they were all barechested in their pictures and subsequently showed that they were all clearly active men. Sweat on their bodies was just a photogenic accentuation of their well-toned figures rather than a sticky inconvenience. They probably lived for the rush of exerting themselves through the SoCal crag.

Sebastian, however, wasn’t one of those men.

“Easy” was not the word Sebastian would have used for such a trek.

However short the hike was to be, Naveen and Audrey failed to mention much of it was uphill. Actually, uphill was putting it mildly; several times the party had to use their hands and feet to balance themselves on the steep dirt ridges to continue forward. Sebastian winced once sweat began to pool in the grooves of his forehead.

On top of that, there were many spiny thickets they had to maneuver around which probably was difficult enough to manage when in the clear of the day. At night? Sebastian swore that the brambles leapt out at his legs from the cloak of the darkness. Fortunately, Naveen packed some cartoon dinosaur Band-Aids for that very scenario.

“Are we… are we… there… yet,” Sebastian puffed after climbing a particularly steep ledge.

Audrey, who was now patiently waiting a few feet ahead with Naveen, beamed, “Just about.”

Fortunately for Sebastian, it seemed the worst of the inclines were over with. Their lamps illuminated a long, flat dirt path ahead of them. Somewhere between desperate pants of exhaustion, Sebastian let out a sigh of relief. He fished around for the water bottle Naveen considerately packed for him and gulped down a huge swig.

Audrey, too, seemed to be fishing for something from her own backpack, but she did not take out a water bottle. In her hands was a tiny pink speaker. She called back to Sebastian, with a twinge of knowing in her voice, “You don’t mind if I play something, do you?”

“Only if it’s good,” he teased back.

Of course Sebastian didn’t mind. On the list of things that made Sebastian himself, music cemented itself in the top position. His room had countless vinyl records scattered in crates and boxes, he always had a tune buzzing in the back of his brain, and there was the very pertinent fact that he worked in the music business. At least one of those facts about himself Audrey seemed to already be privy to, if the delighted hint in her tone was of any indication.

She selected something from her phone and a sentimental, Western-like guitar track hummed out of the speaker at a low volume. A deep, rich voice crooned over the music.

The thick plant-life seemed to grow thinner as the trio pressed on to one last hill. A mighty tree perched at its peak. The moon was seated behind its branches, allowing only for half of it to be in sight. Between each of the crooning notes swimming out of Audrey’s speaker, Sebastian could make out the gentle rustle of the tree’s leaves.

“It is called the Wisdom Tree,” Naveen exalted.

Audrey pointed towards its side, down a different path, and explained, “If we were to continue over down that way, we would be at the Hollywood sign.”

Sebastian could sense there was more to the sentence. “...but?”

Naveen turned backwards, still continuing to keep his pace, and said, “But I think the tree would be a fun place to chill tonight.”

Sebastian took another drink from his water and Naveen returned to face forward.

The song Audrey was playing bled into a different track: a girl sang in a low, solemn voice over a powerful bass’s melody.

“You know,” Naveen uttered, “there was a fire here.”

“There are always fires here,” Sebastian noted. Los Angeles brush fires were about as frequent as each new cycle of the moon.

“Of course. But this park was scorched, allegedly, and most of the plant life here burned up. Except, people say its sole survivor was…”

They all looked up at the tree, ever closer as their trek upwards continued.

The trio fell into warm silence for the remainder of their journey, apart from the music and Sebastian’s still-panting breath. Sebastian’s eyes stayed glued on the Wisdom Tree. As the seconds passing by turned into minutes, the tree’s strong figure grew and grew until...

“Haha!” Audrey exclaimed after shutting off her speaker. She threw her arms up at the moon and spun in a circle. “That felt great!”

The Wisdom Tree really was just a plain old tree. Sebastian wasn’t necessarily disappointed by it, no; how interesting could a tree be? It just sat there, surrounded by parched dry earth, unfazed by its guests.

The wind picked up for a moment, again rustling its prickly leaves. Naveen took a deep breath in, turned off his lamp, and started to advance towards the Wisdom Tree.

“Uh, wait up!” Sebastian called out after him then pursued, though he took a moment later than his roommate to shut off his light as the dark unnerved him.

Audrey’s voice exclaimed from behind them, “Oh, are we gonna show the other surprise?”

“Eh, give me a minute,” Naveen replied.

Naveen crouched down by the tree’s base and opened his backpack. He pulled out and unfolded a massive blanket. Its striking Southwestern Native American pattern and bold colors stuck out even in the cool moonlight. Audrey, now with her lamp off, too, settled on the blanket first. She unzipped her own backpack and started digging around, muttering, “I probably should have done this with the light on.” She gave up after a moment, content with relaxing on the blanket.

Sebastian was getting tired of asking what was going on, so he, for once, kept quiet.

Out towards the left, over the ridge, the skyline of Los Angeles twinkled pleasantly. Sebastian drank the scene in as he hardly ever saw the city at night from this angle. The packed lines of traffic streamed dutifully between the buildings-- the veins of the light that kept LA alive. The view looked like one of pictures you’d find on the back of a postcard, but he was actually looking at it.

Then he noticed something far too large for any of them to have stashed in their backpacks just off to the side of the tree. It was an old military ammo box, opened up and filled with…

Sebastian peered harder at its contents.

…Notebooks?

Sebastian plucked one up and, using the glow of his phone screen, read its contents. A person had written: Some days you’re going to feel like crap. Like garbage. Total trash. Today was not one of those days. Because you climbed up here to the Wisdom Tree. Celebrate that!

On another page, there was a funky looking heart with a mystical-looking eye in its center. Below it, in different handwriting than the previous page, someone had simply written: You are loved.

Sebastian turned his head up to his roommate. “What are these?” he asked, wiggling the book around.

“Bring one over. Preferably with a lot of blank pages.” Naveen, now seated next to Audrey, beckoned him over with his hand.

So Sebastian placed a notebook in front of them and sat on the blanket to make a triangle formation.

Naveen pulled out a pen and instantly began to write something on the page.

“It’s like a tradition,” Audrey explained musically. “People come up here. And when they finish their hikes, they leave positive notes for the next person to read.”

It was then Sebastian realized that he was, indeed, having one of those “moments.” The “inevitable” had actually begun to arrive, but in a far different form than what he’d ever expected. He couldn’t help but chuckle to himself a little.

Naveen passed the book to Audrey. She balanced the notebook on her knee. With the butt-end of the pen tapping thoughtfully along her chin, she seemed to consider her words far more carefully.

“My dad took me up here when I was a teenager,” Naveen said. He smiled again, warmly, but Sebastian felt like it was a smile meant to be kept for himself.

Audrey started to scrawl on the page and spoke aloud, “Was he sick at that point?”

Sick?

“No, not yet. Not until I was in college.”

“Right, right.”

Sebastian suddenly found himself talking before he even realized it. “Is… Is he…?”

Naveen tightened his shoulders and furrowed his eyebrows. There was a quick, solemn nod and then silence. Sebastian decided not to press further, as it seemed now blatantly obvious the passing of his father was a sore spot.

Audrey poked one of the dinosaur Band-Aids on Sebastian’s knee gently with the pen.

“If you want to, you can read mine,” she said. “Naveen’s too.” Kindly, she handed both the pen and notebook to him.

Sebastian glanced at his roommate, who shrugged and commented, “Not like they are secret.”

The suggestion was probably for the best anyhow, as Sebastian had absolutely no idea what to write. This was a moment, right? It needed to be something grand. This was the time when the protagonist of the film writes something that articulates the grand realization that he’d been searching for his whole journey. So why did it feel like the story was all jumbled up?

His eyes scanned down Naveen’s first:

This is such a beautiful place you have come to. Cherish it. There will be a time where you may not be able to physically reach here. I want you to know that there is a lot of beauty in this world and each time you are able to take in a piece of it is a gift. You earned this.

Damn, Naveen.

Audrey’s was a lot longer, however. She had written:

A lot of people worry about someone not liking them. Here is a hard truth: people won’t like you. Either because of their own bitterness or perhaps some miscommunication that you just cannot do anything about. That sucks. Sure, this isn’t really on-brand for the whole positivity thing this spot is known for, but you should also accept that there are people who do like you and that living honestly, openly, and lovingly means that you deserve to be liked by them. Every person on this earth has had someone say something bad about them behind their back. Another fact of life. So let me leave you with some advice. If they ain’t paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind.

Oh fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Was Sebastian actually tearing up? Oh god, he was.

Heat swelled inside him. He looked up at Audrey, who made a guilty face and said, “What?”

“Y-You wrote some good shit here, Audrey,” he complimented. Then a thought crossed his mind about the last sentence. He glanced back down and asked, “Wait a minute, did you quote a RuPaul song at the end?”

Her face got even guiltier.

Sebastian tried to stifle a laugh. His wet eyes dried with the bounce of his shoulders.

Naveen leaned back and looked up at the skyward moon. “You still should write something, Sebastian,” he said.

There was no way that he was going to be anywhere near as eloquent as Naveen nor as honest as Audrey. Now the two of them were anxiously waiting for him to jot something down, which inadvertently added more pressure onto him.

“While I think,” Sebastian diverted, “Did I hear something about another ‘surprise’ earlier?”

His roommate smirked and Audrey let out a gasp. Her hands zipped towards her backpack and started digging through it like a small animal burrowing into the earth. Then, she pulled out a small plastic bag with some familiar vegetative contents, dry and a faded-olive color. “I know you like to smoke,” Audrey explained.

Oh did she now? Sebastian felt his face go hot again. Even though it very obviously wasn’t the case, he couldn’t help but feel like a teenager whose parents were confronting them about their child’s hidden weed stash: like he was caught red-handed.

“How’s that?” Sebastian asked, meekly.

Naveen let out an uncharacteristic chuckle, which made Sebastian tense his back. His roommate then jovially commented, “You do know I have a sense of smell, Sebastian?”

He hadn’t really considered the fact that Naveen more than likely had a working nose… which subsequently made Sebastian feel even more embarrassed.

Due to the many stressors in his own life, or maybe just boredom, Sebastian did enjoy sparking up a joint or something within his bedroom. He was starting to realize that despite not having any sort of real camaraderie with Naveen, his roommate still was able to see parts of him. This prompted Sebastian to consider, for just a moment, what bits of Naveen he had been oblivious to since he’d moved in.

“All good,” Naveen chided. “I told you I was also raised in Los Angeles, so I have always been around weed and shit.”

“We don’t have to smoke, though,” Audrey quietly acknowledged.

“No, I’m happy to,” breathed Sebastian.

“Good because I already finished grinding it all up.” She dumped some of the now-grinded-up weed into a glass smoking pipe, decorated with pink and purple swirls all around its body. She briefly added, “I don’t really want to get stoned because, hello, driving.”

Sebastian put his hands up and affirmed, “Hey, ‘s not my weed.” Unfortunately, Sebastian’s stash had run dry recently; though, it was probably for the best had not been able to get any weed to cope with his break-up.

Naveen helped light the bowl and each took turns pulling long drags. Inhaling. Exhaling.

Bitter smoke clouded around their heads. Some sank down around their knees and some rose above to the reaches of the Wisdom Tree. The earthen, somewhat-stale scent of weed soaked into the air surrounding them.

A vapid wave of happiness washed over Sebastian’s skin. He chucked away the last of the blackened ash and laid his head back on the blanket. His eyes passively watched the sky. What little starlight could pierce through all of the city lights below blinked down at him.

Audrey joined Sebastian, lying back on the blanket. Her large curls bunched around her head like a natural pillow. Naveen slowly peered above her head and pecked gently at her forehead, which made her giggle. She placed her hand onto his chin and pulled him in for a brief, but tender, kiss.

Sebastian looked on with a bittersweet smile, as distance grew between him and them despite only laying a few inches away. So, his mind reached elsewhere, over to the notebook resting next to this head.

His mind didn’t go back to thinking about the candor of Audrey’s note nor the humility of Naveen’s. In fact, he didn’t actually think about their notes at all. The apparent affection of Naveen and Audrey reminded him of what he shared with Emile. In the moment, it felt like their relationship was years ago, even if Sebastian was dumped just a day before; now his face was blurred in Sebastian’s memory and his voice, a strained echo. Sebastian wondered if what he felt for Emile was what Naveen and Audrey felt for each other -- whatever it was that the two shared.

Sebastian’s brain warped into a knot of confusion. Did it matter that he did not feel love for Emile by the time of their break-up? Or was it love and Sebastian just didn’t know? Was “three months” actually a serious relationship checkpoint? Why was Sebastian more bothered about the break-up itself rather than losing Emile?

The dinner with Emile from the previous night replayed over and over in his head, out of sequence, as if someone pressed “shuffle” on a DVD’s “scene selection” menu.

Lost in space, he mechanically lifted himself up to take the stray notebook and pen. When his mind snapped back to earth, he found he wrote on a crisp, white page:

Be yourself. There’s a whole lot more world out there when you start.

“Oh, what’d you write?” Audrey warbled, now propping herself up to meet Sebastian’s eyes.

He swiftly shut the book and chucked it back in the box. It landed with a hasty THUMP in with the other notebooks.

“That wasn’t part of the deal,” he said.

“Oh boo. Boo!” she jeered and gave him an emphatic thumbs-down.

Sebastian leaned back down on the wide woven blanket. Audrey and Naveen followed suit. Together, they lay in a Y-shaped formation and gazed up at the California sky. Branches of the Wisdom Tree inched their way through the blueish-blackness of the dark.

A few minutes wandered by, until Sebastian shifted his eyes back to Audrey. He turned his head and asked, “You two came here for one of your first dates?”

“Yeah,” breathed Audrey.

“Did you write something then?”

Audrey kept her face turned to the sky. Moonlight reflected off her glasses radiantly, then she admitted, “Naveen wrote something really heartfelt, which ironically, got me too scared because I thought he would judge me.” Sebastian remembered her more recent note about living “honestly, openly, and lovingly”: a far cry from her concerns during her first date, it seemed.

Naveen let out a brief grumble and said aloud, “I would not have judged you.”

“You can come off a bit judgy, Naveen,” Sebastian snickered.

“Hmph,” Naveen grunted.

And so it was that the “inevitable” had come and now had gone, drifting away with the clouds into the stillness of the night.