(to hate or loathe intensely)
§
For a few long moments, you just
don’t move, staring at the door that Bobby has just breezed through on his way
to wherever he was going. You are still
on the bed, propped up on your elbows, completely dumbfounded by what has just
happened to you. You think back, but
you can’t remember a single other instance in which someone has just blatantly
walked out on you like that, let alone when you were actually being
genuine. You can’t decide if you’re
shocked more than angry, or angry more than hurt. The only thing you’re sure of is that you’re not sure of
anything. Except that you’re not happy.
You pull yourself to your feet,
absent-mindedly brushing a strand of blond hair out of your face. You get all the way to the door and have the
knob in your hand before you realize that going after Bobby is the last thing
you want to do.
It isn’t that you don’t want to
finish what the two of you had started, although somewhere in your mind you
know what a phenomenally bad idea it would be.
It isn’t that you’re angry with Bobby.
Hell, it isn’t even so much that you’re angry with Rikki; although the
next time you see him you plan to make quite sure he thinks you are.
It’s that you know exactly where
the bassist is going, know exactly whose room he’s running to, and you don’t
want to see it. You don’t need to see
it. You already know what’s going to
happen. The thought of the two of them
together makes your stomach clench violently, and for a moment you have to
resist the urge to run to the bathroom.
There’s nothing in your stomach, anyway, besides the bile that’s
collecting as a byproduct of this whole vicious situation.
Thoughts begin to swirl in your
head, thoughts that don’t connect and don’t all make sense. The only thing they have in common is that
none of them are pleasant.
The tortured, pleasured look on
Bobby’s face when you had first put your mouth on him is still fresh in your
mind. You wonder if he makes Rikki make
that same face. You close your eyes,
willing the image away, but it doesn’t work.
The idea just grows on itself.
What does Bobby give him that you
can’t?
But you know the answer to
that. The answer is love. Bobby’s love for Rikki is written all over
his face. You had unknowingly witnessed
it a million times: every time you were on stage, every time Rikki’s name was
spoken, it was there. From Bobby, Rikki
got the kind of love you’d never been able to give.
And you did love Rikki. You loved him more than anything else in the
world – more than the fame and the fortune and the glory, and although you
could never admit it, more than you loved yourself. Why couldn’t he see that? Why did he need to run to someone
else’s arms? Someone else’s bed?
You take a deep breath and look
down at your bare chest, your unbuttoned jeans. For some reason, the sight repulses you. You quickly shed your pants and go into the
bathroom, where you turn the shower on as hot as it will go. As the water heats up, your eyes light on
the various pill bottles scattered on the counter. One of the many perks of being a rock star is that there is no kind
of drug in the world that is unattainable.
Not really caring what’s inside,
you grab one of the bottles and wrench it open, dumping a dozen or so pills
into your palm. You look at them for a
moment. They’re small and blue, and
some distant part of your brain remembers that small and blue means
Valium. You glance at yourself in the mirror, which is starting to steam
up. There’s a look in your eyes so
foreign that it almost scares you. You
toss a shrug at your reflection and swallow the handful of pills dry, letting
the open bottle fall. You watch,
disinterested, as the remaining blue pills scatter across the tiles.
You step into the shower, and the
water is so hot that it feels as though it is actually cutting into your flesh,
but you don’t care. You suddenly feel
dizzy.
Despite how much you try to fight
them, thoughts of what Bobby and Rikki might be doing right now come into your
head. You wonder if Bobby will tell him
about what happened tonight. You wonder
how the drummer would take it. Would he
yell? No. Of course not. That’s not
in his nature. Instead, he would be
happy. Happy that Bobby had resisted
you, something that very few have ever done.
Happy that when it was all said and done, Bobby had come back to his
room.
The idea of their mutual happiness
increases your dizziness and you reach up with one arm to steady yourself on
the curtain rod. When the rush passes,
you begin to go through the motions of cleaning yourself. Once, twice, three times you lather your
entire body and rinse the soap away, watching the bubbles swirl down the
drain. It doesn’t help. You feel dirty. More dirty than you’ve ever felt.
Your eyes light upon a brush on
the floor of the shower, the kind of scrub brush that is used to clean the
bathtub and floor tiles. For a moment,
you just stare at it, and then slowly, mechanically, you pick it up, turning it
over in your hand.
For the first time, you allow
yourself to fully acknowledge the fact that what you have with Rikki is not
what you want. It is true that there is
a certain satisfaction in owning the life of another. It appeals to the greed and egocentricism that are as much a part
of your wardrobe as tight jeans and bandanas.
It is true that there is nothing quite like the feeling you get when he
says that he is yours, when you see that look in his eyes that encompasses fear
and lust and submission.
But it is also true that these
things, like so much of your life, are superficial and meaningless.
You want to be able to tell Rikki
that you love him the way that he loves you.
You want to be able to be with him in the way you were almost with Bobby
tonight. You want to run your fingers
through his hair instead of pulling it, kiss his face instead of slapping it,
vocalize your pleasure instead of your false disappointment in him. You want to, but you can’t. You can’t because that’s not how the game is
played.
But you’re the one who made the
game. You’re in charge of the
rules. And still, you cannot defy
them.
You glance down and notice you’ve
been rubbing the bar of soap against the scrub brush for long enough that
you’ve eroded nearly half of it away.
Slightly startled, you drop the bar of soap and it clatters against the
bottom of the tub before sliding towards the drain. You look down at the brush in your hand.
An image of Rikki and Bobby’s
intertwined limbs flashes through your head.
And then you begin to scrub. You scrub as hard as you can at your arms
and your legs and your chest in a desperate attempt to wash away a million
invisible layers of sin. It doesn’t
take long for your flesh to turn a bright red from the mixture of heat and
pain, but you’re not paying attention.
It is only when tiny red beads of blood well up in the path of the brush
that you finally stop, letting it fall to the floor. You watch as the soap bubbles turn a soft pink before swirling
down the drain.
Your head is a labyrinth of
unanswerable questions all leading to a central point that you are incapable of
grasping. How did this start? How did it get so out of control? What are you going to do now?
Why can’t you just go find Rikki
and tell him the truth?
What is the truth?
What if none of this was even
real? It doesn’t seem to make a
difference anymore.
You don’t even notice as you turn
the water off and climb out of the shower.
The mirror is completely fogged over, but you don’t want to see
yourself, anyway. A glance down shows a
maze of tiny cuts from the bristles of the scrub brush, all still bleeding, but
not too much. Not that you’d care. Ignoring the blood, you wrap a towel around
your waist without bothering to dry off, and go back into the bedroom.
Before you have a chance to do
anything, not that there’s anything to be done, the door to your room flies
open and Smoothie walks in, looking concerned.
You regard him with a blank stare.
“You were screaming,” he
says. He sounds far away and it seems
as though you’re looking at him through binoculars. Dimly, you realize that such things should frighten you.
You realize that he’s expecting
some sort of response, and you blink.
“Was I?”
His eyebrows furrow. “Yes.
I heard you from all the way down the hall.” His eyes sweep up and down your body. “Jesus, Bret. What
happened to you?”
He takes a step toward you, but
you take a step back. “Nothing,” you
reply.
“Nothing? What the hell are you talking about? You look like you’ve just had sex with a
piece of sandpaper.”
You shrug. The first slight effects of the Valium are
starting to wash over you. “I just got
out of the shower,” you say, as if this is any sort of explanation. You want to tell him everything, the whole
convoluted story. You want to close
with admitting how much in love with Rikki you are. But you say nothing else.
He shifts his weight
uncomfortably. “You sure you’re all
right? Is there anything I can get
you?”
You shake your head, still
regarding him with a blank, indifferent stare.
“I’m fine,” you lie. “I’m just
going to go to bed, Smoothie. I wasn’t
screaming.” You don’t doubt that you
had been. Lately it had seemed as
though there was at least one other person living in your head. You wonder which one is the real you. If either one is.
He frowns. “Well… if you’re sure,” he says warily. He looks at you for a moment longer before
leaving the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.
You stand there for a long moment,
looking at the closed door, then you peel the towel off, wincing as it pulls
away from your fresh cuts. The Valium’s
effects are increasing dramatically, and suddenly the room blurs dizzily out of
focus, and you’re lucky the bed is right behind you as your legs go weak and
you fall. It takes all the energy you
can muster to crawl to the top of the bed and climb under the covers.
Somehow you manage to reach over
and turn off the bedside lamp. Darkness
has never before seemed so tangible, like a force that is very much alive and
evil. You roll over on your side and
feel something digging into the flesh of your arm. Upon examination, you realize it is the remote control for the
stereo that you carry with you on tour, and reflexively you pressed the button
marked play. A harmonica begins to play
softly.
You curl into a fetal position,
closing your eyes as tightly as you can, even though you know that doing this
is effectively trapping the demons in your head and drawing them only closer to
you. You wonder if Rikki and Bobby are
asleep by now, curled up with each other like some kind of rock and roll Romeo
and Juliet, and you wish you had a warm body wrapped around you tonight.
You’re Bret Michaels. You can have your pick out of a million
people. And you’ve never felt so alone.
The onslaught of remorse and
loneliness is like a kick to the stomach.
Guilt is something you’d learned to check at the door years ago; it had
no place in your lifestyle. You’d
gotten through every night of bizarre sex with groupie after groupie by telling
yourself that you didn’t have to feel guilty because of who you were, because
they expected you to be that way, wanted you to be that way. Rikki expected you to be that way, and until
now you’d allowed yourself to believe that he wanted you to be that way,
too. You hate yourself for being so
arrogant and foolish as to believe such a thing. To believe that your best friend wanted to feel the sting of your
palm against his cheek, to be told that he was a worthless queer. And worse than that, you hate yourself for
never telling him otherwise. It was too
late now, too late to tell him that he is just as important to you as you are
to him. Too late to put your hands on
his face and express everything just through your eyes. The only thing he had ever seen in your eyes
was disgust and power.
Too late now. You wrap your arms around your knees and
bury your face in a pillow as the first hot tears spill from your eyes.
You have never felt this way
before. Ashamed, guilty, scared; all
emotions that seemed distant and foreign, and on top of them all, empathy. Suddenly you know how Rikki must have felt
all those long, sweaty nights. Suddenly
you know what thoughts lingered just behind that terrified look in his eyes
when your fist was raised. It is a pain
you cannot imagine and one that you’d give anything to take back.
Things hadn’t always been this
way. Rikki was your best friend. Rikki was the person you could tell
everything to. What had happened? Where had the road forked?
Where were you? Where’d you go?
Your shoulders shake with quiet
sobs. You know that he is just a few
rooms away, but there is a vast ocean of unforgivable sins between your body
and his. And there is nothing you can
do about it. Nothing you can do about
anything. The emotions and Valium swirl
in a nauseating spiral in your brain, and suddenly it feels as though you are
falling, falling through layers of time and mistakes and broken promises. The same nonsensical questions repeating
itself over and over in your mind. Who
did this? Who are you? What have you become?
And my script’s been rearranged
You think that the volume of the
music is growing steadily louder, but then you realize that the increase is
only in your head. The lyrics and the
questions and the accusations all together in a steady, rising beat, speeding
towards a terrifying crescendo.
You can’t do this anymore.
And then suddenly everything
stops. Your eyes open and you realized
you’ve stopped crying. It is just you,
the dark, empty room, and the soft music.
All at once you notice how exhausted you are.
And you let go of the reins.