Unadulterated Loathing

The next day, Randy sat in the make-up trailer, his mind racing above the usual chatter and the musical soundtrack whirring in the CD player. Today's selection was "Wicked"; the cast had more or less gotten over Randy's bit part in it from the summer before last, but the songs remained a staple of wardrobe. Randy didn't mind it that much, but he knew being force-fed Broadway tunes made Hal especially prickly. He suspected it was infringing on Hal's painstakingly fought for heterosexuality.

Gale waltzed in a few months later, dressed only in a terry cloth robe. They'd be filming a sex scene later, and likewise, costuming was rather minimal. "Yo," Gale greeted Randy, plopping down in the chair next to him. He leaned close to give Randy a peck on the cheek, and the distinct smell of pot lingered.

"Starting a little early, aren't you?" Randy smirked. Usually, Gale held off at least until afternoon, preferring to smoke his way through a pack of cigarettes first. But Gale just chuckled.

"Brian's supposed to get baked a little later on, and I thought I'd make it more authentic. Method acting, you know." Randy rolled his eyes. "So what's up with you?" Gale continued.

Randy paused momentarily. He really wasn't finished ranting about exacting his revenge on Rosie yet. And while it was normally bad form to bring interpersonal issues with co-stars onto the set, Randy knew the gossip wasn't going past Gale's ears. It wasn't that he was particularly trustworthy, or anything -- it was just that he usually ended up getting too stoned to remember what anyone told him in confidence.

"So, okay," Randy whispered conspiratorially, after flashing an innocent, disarming, truly Justin-esque smile at Patrick to get him to stop staring curiously over at them. It worked. "I really don't like Rosie being here. She's a fucking bitch."

"You and Bobby both," Gale said cheerfully. Randy looked at him, puzzled. "I guess Rosie introduced herself to Bobby and then was all, 'oh my God, it's you, the guy with AIDS!'" Gale mock-screeched in a high-pitched tone.

Randy snorted incredulously. "No shit?" he balked, feeling validated enough now to continue his tirade. "She called ME Justin the other day," he complained. "I fucking hate her guts." The next track on the 'Wicked' CD was "Unadulterated Loathing", and Randy immediately found a kinship with Elphaba. "What do you think I should do?" he asked.

Gale blinked, looking like he was trying to wake up. "Huh? Do?" he asked fuzzily.

"To Rosie," Randy said impatiently. "You know, to get my revenge."

"Do you need to get revenge?" Gale queried, still confused. Obviously, five minutes of unscripted coherence was about all anyone could ask for from him.

Randy sighed, exasperated. "You sound like Simon." Clearly, nobody understood his tormented genius. "Just forget it," he snapped. "I'll take care of it myself."

"Okay," Gale shrugged good-naturedly. A short silence passed between them. "So like, later on, you wanna come toke up in my trailer?"

*


Time passed slowly during filming, as it always did. The long days bled into even longer nights, and with each crawling minute, Rosie pissed Randy off just a little bit more. His rage knew no bounds; it even managed to keep him up long after his nonconcentional work schedule allowed him to go home.

Such was the way Randy found himself surfing the Internet in the wee hours of the morning. Simon had bought him an updated laptop for Christmas a year or so prior, with all the whistles and bells that people apparently found absolutely essential, but he'd mostly used it to e-mail his mother once a week or so. Quite frankly, the Internet, in all of its vastness, frightened him. He remembered having to use it for a couple of projects in high school and college, and being horrified when a research paper on education in different countries had brought up numerous Google searches about Spring Break in Cancun, schoolgirls who weren't really schoolgirls at all, shoving kitchen utensils and small animals up their twats, and pretty much everything BUT information on Japanese university entrance exams.

But! Tonight, Randy was consumed with insomnia and hatred for Rosie O'Donnell, and this helped him to push his fears of the World Wide Web aside. He was on a mission. Clicking the Google bookmark near the location bar, he drummed his fingers on the keyboard momentarily and pondered exactly how to phrase his search. Eventually, he keyed "rosie o'donnell blog" into the query and pressed the button. He still didn't know what a 'blog' was, but two seconds later, a link to Rosie's appeared at the top of the list. 'This is it', Randy thought, and bravely forged ahead.

He quickly realized that blogs were a sort of online journal that people wrote their deepest, most insecure thoughts in and others read and commented on them accordingly, sometimes with derision. Rosie's blog was decoated with a puke-yellow background, and contained what formatically looked and read like really lousy attempts at haiku poetry. Randy gaped at what he saw, and eventually, started counting how many times the word "yellow" was used as a nonsensical metaphor for optimism and inner-beauty. He also scanned the blindingly cheerful pages for anything about himself or the show, feeling slightly miffed that Rosie apparently had time to promote her shitty made-for-TV movie and rant about "American Idol", but not about "Queer as Folk", which would surely be the most noteworthy thing she'd ever do as a failed actress for the next decade.

He clicked on the TV movie entry, though, and read through the comments, ranging from excessively punctuated and repetitive declarations of love ("I luv u, Rosie!!! I want to have ur fifth babie!!!1) to inflammatory messages critiquing everything from Rosie's alleged genitalia to her alleged talent. Randy wondered if Simon had only ever "read" the blog and not contributed to its continued trafficking.

He flexed his fingers, brainstorming his own contribution. He'd only ever written one fan letter in his life, and praising J.T. Leroy was a far cry from baiting Rosie O'Donnell. He hmm'd and hah'd and muttered to himself for nearly forty minutes, trying to come up with suitable words for the situation. The result was gratifying:

i'm sorry you had to come to toronto. i'm telling ya, i think you're an exception to that whole 'absence makes the heart grow fonder' thing. i really hate your stupid haircut, and your stupid movies, and really, just stupid, fat, loud-mouthed you. i'm not really a fan. i'm actually someone who hates your work. a lot. like a stranger who wants to wring your neck on some really intense level that haunts my soul everytime you mistakenly assume that i'm the fictional character that i play on tv. i've quit obsessing over it and moved on, though. rage gives me indigestion and makes me poop a lot, and i know that can't be healthy. i also need to stop smoking pot with gale, but it makes sex really hot. random: i hate yellow. it reminds me of urine and justin's hair and now your blog, all of which are extremely unpleasant and, seemingly, linked in a karmic way. the irony will plague and haunt me. i've said it before but it's true: qaf has completely fucked up my life. i guess i'll keep on wearing really large hats to avoid my fans, or at least, attempt to avoid them. i don't know, whatever. it makes me really horrified to know that you're famous and should know how it is and still act just as annoying and retarded as they do. it will probably give me ulcers in a fe years. you can post what i wrote if you want. i mean, my boyfriend didn't exactly ask permission before he called you a big, mean dyke in one of his articles, so i guess i'm fair game.

randy - not justin!

Satisfied after proof-reading, Randy hit 'send' and sat back with a sated grin on his face. On a whim, he went back to Google and typed his own name in. Three hours later, he was still engrossed in a fictional story in which he and Gale were having sex for the seventeenth time or so. He wondered if Simon knew hiw fans regularly referred to his boyfriend as Simon Flamenco or The Dumbass or pontificated on his unfortunate resemblance to a monkey. And then he decided that maybe it was best that he didn't know.

*


Rosie's stint on the set was finally, mercifully over after she'd successfully wiped her ass on four separate episodes of the final season, and on her last day, the crew gathered around for the send-off. It was something they'd done with all the guest stars (although Randy had felt kind of bad that he and Gale had decided to have a quickie in Brian's loft during Fab's; he'd always been meaning to write the guy a quick e-mail about that), and usually included lots of obligatory smiling and reminiscing and tears. Randy left it to Sharon and Michelle and Thea and hung off to the side, scowling.

He noticed Bobby looking similarly aggrieved, and fought the urge to ask him if he were relieved that she was leaving. He also noticed that Gale, Hal and Harris all looked to be in suspiciously high spirits. It wasn't all that uncommon for Gale to inhale before embarrassing public appearances and goodbyes, but Hal and Harris surprised him. Maybe having more than one "comedian" on the set had been too much for Hal to bear, Randy thought, and walked around smirking and probably looking rather evil.

Eventually, Patrick Antosh gathered them all up for a group photo. Randy tried to stand apart from the group until Michelle forceably tugged him closer with a bony arm around his shoulders. He grimaced when Patrick instructed them all to yell 'buttsex', and wondered idly if it was true about camera flashes eating your soul. And then he decided that Rosie O'Donnell probably didn't have a soul, and felt a little better.

Season five filming eventually wound down, taking with it the last time Randy would ever again be paid to have somebody call him Justin. He celebrated by hanging out at the wrap party just long enough to get sufficiently drunk. He wanted to pull Gale off to a corner somewhere for one final go, but his drag-queen girlfriend seemed to have his arm in a vice-grip. He was about to go when he was spotted by Sharon, who was chatting animatedly with - who the fuck else - Rosie. "Randy, come give me a hug," Sharon demanded with what she'd long ago termed her 'mom grin', and Randy begrudgingly obliged. He met Rosie's gaze briefly, and realized with a shiver of excitement that she was glaring. It filled his heart with glee, and after stopping off to make amends with Fab, he hurried back to his apartment. Most of it was packed up, but he threw on some pajamas and sat on the battered couch he'd purchased at a thrift store way back in season one, cradling his laptop, the glowing black box warm against his flannel-covered legs.

He had long since bookmarked Rosie's blog so he could check for updates, and drummed his fingers impatiently while it loaded. His eyes seemed to have adjusted to the shitty yellow background, because he hardly squinted, even with the room's minimal lighting. His eyes skimmed over the heading on the top entry: 'to justin', it read.

there once was a boy
a strange little boy with fake yellow hair
trying to mask the darkness in his soul
but not succeeding
very well

randy harrison, u r pale
not sunshiney or warm or full
of smiles and love like justin
i hate u
with the fire of a thousand suns
even brighter than justin's smile

and simon dumenco, you are seeping out yellow
like the fake hair color of your boyfriend
when he's kissing another man
does that make you mad?
you're a gigantic fag
normally i would not be so crass
but you called me a fat dyke so ha ha

And for the first time in months (probably not since he'd heard from Showtime's big-wigs that he'd be subjected to thirteen more hours of Being Justin Taylor, as a matter of fact), Randy Harrison laughed.