Chapter 10 Kylie #2
Okay, okay, looking back at everything I said, I know I was kind of a dick the way I talked about me and Ryan in our early days.
But I was genuinely glad to hear from her.
Seeing her again for the first time . . .
I don’t know, it did jar me. I had this version of her that I remembered from middle school and this version I’d seen in the media since, and neither of them matched up with who she really was then.
Things had been tough in my first year at UCLA, I can’t lie.
I felt like everyone around me had more money than me.
I’d brought my cousin’s junker car out west, and it broke down the first week of school.
Taking the bus in LA is a bitch, man. The whole city is built on cars, and while I was able to bum rides from my friends, it didn’t feel great.
My parents said they’d help me pay for a new car, but I had to raise half, and the jobs I could find hardly paid anything.
I was really hoping to land something with one of the film studios; I’d been working hard on my screenplay and, yeah, I know now that it was a naive dream, but I thought if I could just get some studio exec’s eyes on it, maybe it would have something.
Instead, I found myself flipping burgers and working for the university’s telethon call center.
I must have cold-called hundreds of alums that semester who rarely picked up the phone.
I was hoofing it in the meantime. When Ryan said we could catch up, I offered to meet her downtown and take her to the beach, to In-N-Out. I thought that maybe I could get away with just walking everywhere. That maybe she wouldn’t notice.
But instead she sent a car—a literal tinted-window sedan—that brought me to this big house. I still thought I might be getting punked.
But Ryan came out and smiled and hugged me, and said, “Hey, William!”
No one had called me that old nickname in years. I liked the way she said it, I don’t know. Like she’d been looking for me the whole time. She had a way of making you feel that.
Ryan had kind of a lot of guys in rotation, but that was fine. I was just glad to be able to spend time with her. And I wanted to be there for her when these other guys let her down.
Because something told me that they would.
Tyler Michaels, music producer
I would say my one regret is dating Ryan Holding. The whole thing was a game to her, man. We met at a party, and she was all over me, laughing and talking and touching my chest—she knew what she was doing.
She always knew. This disappearance? I think it’s a whole publicity stunt, man.
You wait, she’ll pop up in Dubai or some shit as soon as some trendy little pop star is about to steal her title and drop the hottest album of 2036 or whatever.
Ryan never did shit unless she could see dollar signs. Mark my words.
Sure, I was into her at the time. She was hot. Before I knew it, we were going everywhere together: Santa Monica, Les Deux, Beacher’s Madhouse. Photos of us all cozy in the tabloids. Ryan was always kissing me in public, in full view of everyone.
Then I say one little thing about how her lyrics could be more mature, that some of the harmonies on Firebird sounded muddy—just my professional opinion—and she goes ballistic. Full-on tears at the Bourgeois Pig sidewalk café on Franklin. Everyone’s staring.
The next day, bam, what do I see? Trouble In Paradise splashed across every goddamn newsstand, me glaring at Ryan like a monster while she’s crying these big beautiful tears and struggling to keep her chin up.
It was a racket. I’ll say it: I don’t care what her cronies think.
It was a publicity stunt at my expense. You’ve heard “Count Your Days”—I stared at your red flannel / While you pared me down, pushed me to the ground / Well, I’m not going to let you walk on me / Leave me in the street / You’re not so special now.
Yeah, Ryan, real subtle when I was wearing a red flannel at the café. Don’t fuck with Ryan Holding, they say, or she’ll write a song about you. I was one of her first victims.
What?
Oh—the DUI? Yeah, I regret that too.
Braden Petri, former cast member on The Big Bang Theory
I don’t want to generalize. But Hollywood women? They all want something out of you. And Ryan was no different.
I went into my acting career with an open heart and an open mind.
I knew Hollywood was morally bankrupt when I set out, but I thought I could do some good and bring some wholesomeness to cable TV.
And I was really excited when Ryan showed me some interest at a concert we both attended—she was such a sweet girl when she started her singing career, and I’d been as concerned as everyone else when she started down that dangerous path.
When will women get it into their heads that partying and serial dating just isn’t attractive? Fame corrupts all.
Anyway, I invited her out on a real date to a nice restaurant, and thus began our relationship.
Things were wonderful at first. She was beautiful, and she was really interested in my work on Big Bang.
I could talk to her for hours about the stage play I was writing and my childhood growing up on the ranch.
But then Ryan started wanting more. She wanted to go out dancing—I do not dance—she wanted to take day trips, she wanted to go shopping on Rodeo Drive.
I told her, I simply cannot afford to do all this.
She said she could pay for it. She said her income was three times what I was making.
Can you believe that? She took every opportunity she could to humiliate me.
I finally had enough. I had to tell her it was over. And let me tell you, I did not feel remorse when she continued on her downward spiral, spinning her little web of lies.
Have you read my book The Big Braden Petri Theory as part of your research? I would highly recommend it. There’s a full chapter in there about Ryan.
I would love to believe that she saw the light, like when Justin Bieber spent a year off the grid in 2019 to reconnect with his faith.
Maybe Ryan realized the error of her ways and left it all behind to live in simplicity and humility.
She did say, “I hope this has all been worth it” in her VMA speech, didn’t she?
If her fame cost her her soul, well, I don’t think it was.
I hope that she’s okay wherever she is, and that she didn’t end up—you know. Down below.
Teen Star Magazine, August 2010
Barely “Holding” it Together?
Country music star Ryan Holding stumbled as she left a party at best friend Kylie Cameron’s Calabasas summer home this week, a telltale red Solo cup in hand.
The “Shoes on the Dash” singer owes her soaring fame to young girls all across America who have followed her swinging and upbeat bluegrass music from Hamilton, Massachusetts, to Austin, Texas, to the City of Angels.
“She’s my role model,” says Kennedy Robins, age 7. “I asked for silver cowgirl boots for my birthday. I want to start banjo lessons, too, just like Ryan.”
Ryan’s popularity is without question. But do her recent appearances at LA’s most infamous clubs—and her never-ending roster of beaus—spell trouble for her young fans?
“I see her turning a new leaf, and it’s not one I appreciate,” says Donna Meyers, an Orange County mother of three.
“My daughter and I used to sing her songs together on the way to school. Now my girl comes home from school every day with gossip about who Ryan’s dating. I mean, what’s that teaching her?”
“Ryan’s got a responsibility to these girls,” says Kathy Perkins, school counselor at Long Beach Preparatory. “They are watching her every move. And right now, the message is, ‘It’s okay to drink at parties. It’s okay to behave badly. It’s okay to date more guys than anyone can keep track of.’”
Sadly, it appears the steady, wholesome relationship these women hope for will have to wait.
Ryan and her latest fling—The Big Bang Theory’s Braden Petri—seem to be on the rocks.
The stunning starlet is rumored to have been seen leaving Club Blue hand in hand with actor Evan Henderson, an older man.
It remains to be seen whether he can lock Miss Holding down.
In the meantime, Teen Star looks forward to hearing the song that Ryan writes denouncing Mr. Petri.
Mari
The press would never give her a fucking break.
First of all, Ryan could have had anything in that Solo cup, and what she did in her love life was her business.
Tyler Michaels got an actual DUI, did you ask him about that?
He nearly hit a person flying down North Garfield with a blood alcohol level of 0.
14 percent and there was, like, one story about it.
Ben had to hear me rant about it until I was blue in the face, and he’d always say, Yes, Mari, you’re preaching to the choir. In fact, he’d endured seeing my own unflattering paparazzi photos in the press alongside Ryan’s, which jarred him quite a bit.
But it was true. Ryan walks out of Hyde looking slightly tipsy, and oh, stop the presses, shame shame shame, how could she do this to America’s girls?
She just . . . broke down one night. I was having dinner at her place, and she was paging through an issue of People while our pasta boiled. Ryan flipped to an article and suddenly yelled, “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” and I knew she was raging mad.
“What?” I asked.
She didn’t answer—instead, she marched to the living room and back, slapping an LA Today magazine next to the other one. “Look.”
I compared them. Both were fashion blurbs; one had a picture of Ryan in shorts and a crop top while shopping on Rodeo Drive, and the caption was something like Rodeo Risqué—Is Ryan showing too much skin for a Tuesday shopping trip?