It’s funny how you don’t notice how much time has flown by
you until something happens to bring your world to a screeching halt. I mean, I
looked into the mirror this morning, and couldn’t believe how old I looked.
Wasn’t it just yesterday we started all of this? I didn’t even recognize the
man looking back at me. He looked worn and haggard; someone who had been down a
long and trying road that was about to get the better of him. That wasn’t me. I
was supposed to be young and vibrant, ready to take life by the horns and run
with it. What happened to that person? Where did he go?
This isn’t the first time
I’ve had that reaction. The first time was when Brian sat us all down and told
us he had to have heart surgery. Said if he didn’t, his heart problems would
get the better of him, and, well, we’d lose him. That really woke me up. The
thought of Brian dying just seemed so impossible. He was so healthy. But
then he finally went into St. Josephs, and it became painfully real. That was a
hell I never wanted to go through again. I took a good look in the mirror that
night, and noticed a few things I hadn’t before. Some of that brashness was
gone, and I never got it back.
Then I got that phone call
from Dad, the one that made me afraid to answer my cell phone for about two
years. I’ll never forgive myself for not getting to Caroline before she died.
Never. I took a step back then to rethink everything, because it was my job
that kept me from getting to her, and it was my job that put me back on a plane
out of town only three hours after the funeral. When I looked in a mirror then,
I hated what I saw. I thought long and hard about walking away from it all.
But I didn’t. The five of
us kept going, with no end in sight. The years started bleeding together, and
before I knew it, we’d ditched our management and started fresh. We’d smashed
record sales. We’d sold out stadium tours in a matter of minutes. We’d won
three Grammys. We’d put out five more albums. I’d been to three Backstreet
weddings. It would have been four if Nick hadn’t eloped. Good times, bad times,
and everything in between just flowed right on by, bringing change and growth
with them. But through it all there was always Backstreet, whatever that meant.
Before, I never really
needed to know. With this thing called the Backstreet Boys, I could reach out
and touch the world, although to me that wasn’t even the important thing. The
important thing was that I could devote myself to four friends who would walk
through fire for me, and together, the five of us could make a difference.
Together, we were five brothers, held together by something deeper than we were
capable of understanding. No one could hold us back. That happened because of
Backstreet. That was all I needed to understand.
When Brian went into
surgery I was all set to end it, for him. For his sake. We were so tired and
so…beaten, that I thought that was it. But when the five of us sat down
to think about the future, I could see it in his eyes. Things needed to be
different, that was painfully obvious, but I knew that he was far from
finished. We all were.
This was different.
Looking into A.J.’s eyes
as he sat across the table from me, so grief-stricken that he was shaking, I just
knew it was over. I didn’t think about it much until later, but I knew right
there and then. Looking at him was no different from the mirror; I saw someone
I had never seen before, or at least not paid attention to. The man in front of
me wasn’t A.J. McLean, he was just Alex. A.J. was gone. I doubted we’d ever see
him again.
“Shouldn’t it be like,
rainy and cold?” he asked me as he stared out the window. “At least cloudy. You
know.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. You’d
think that when something like this happens, God would cooperate and at least
try and set the mood. We’ve found out the hard way that that’s not the way it
always turns out.
God, he looked so lost. It was like someone had completely
ripped his life out from underneath him, and I couldn’t stand it. He was
drifting, so overwhelmed by Tasha’s death that he couldn’t even register what
had happened. He just kept babbling about the sky, and how it should have been
raining. I had no idea what to do. I was as stunned as he was, and I just felt
so damned useless. It seemed so unfair; they had all seemed to know exactly
what to do for me when Caroline died. But I didn’t have a fucking clue what to
do for him, and I’d even been through it. Some friend I was.
I’d never been so happy to see Nick when he came screeching
into the driveway. I remember my heart going into overload in less than a
nanosecond; with the terrorized way he was driving he could have gotten himself
killed on the trip over, and that…I can’t even think that. I can’t even think
it.
I was afraid to even look
at Nick on the drive to the hospital. He looked just as shocked as I felt, and
I found myself suddenly very afraid. If he wasn’t handling this, and I wasn’t
handling it, and Alex sure as hell wasn’t handling it, then how could we expect
Brian or Kevin to?
“I’m assuming you called
the others,” Nick said quietly, reading my mind.
“I called them,” I
replied. “I called them this morning.”
“Not last night?” he said
sharply, sounding upset.
“What good would it have
done? They wouldn’t have been able to find a flight until this morning, not
even a red eye. You know the two of them. If any of us could make a career out
of worrying ourselves sick it’s Brian and Kevin. Kevin would have gone dad on
us, especially since it’s A.J., and Brian is Brian.”
“Yeah,” Nick said
despondently. “Panic Brian.”
“Exactly. Better to wait
until there was something they could do about getting here.”
“How did they take it?”
I shuddered at the memory.
I would rather have shoved a few very sharp objects through my eyes than make those
calls, but I hadn’t had a choice. “’Bout how you’d expect. They were pretty,
um, well, shocked.”
That was an
understatement. I’d actually been surprised; Brian had dealt with it better
than Kevin had. After the initial shock, he’d swallowed back any hysterics,
which I’d kind of been expecting, and concentrated on Alex and his well being.
Immediately started asking me how he was, what he was going to need, started
talking about plane reservations, stuff like that. He had it all under control
right off the bat. I was impressed, because I could detect at the edge of his
voice that hint of panic that usually meant he was about to come unglued. There
was a lot that Brian dealt with inhumanly well, but death and hospitals weren’t
included. This time though, he made an exception. I think he knew that until he
got here he would have Kevin Duty, because Kevin was going to go ballistic, no
two ways about it. Both of them couldn’t go schizo, and Brian knew it. I
thought pretty hard about asking Brian to call Kevin, but I knew I couldn’t do
that to him. That responsibility fell square on my shoulders, as much as I
hated it.
I’d never been so happy to
hear Sarah’s voice when she picked up, because if she was there that meant that
Kevin would have someone to go nuts on other than me. Seriously, when that man
worries about someone, no one within three states can have any peace. In this
case it was even more than that, because Kentucky is a hell of a long way from
Florida. His overprotective nature just skyrockets, especially when he really
can’t do anything, such as now. Nick, Denise and I were the ones who could
really do anything, and we couldn’t exactly do much.
“Hello?”
“Sarah?”
“Yes. Wait, Howie? Oh my
God! What did she have? We’ve been waiting by the phone all night!”
You know, I’d managed to
keep from crying until right at that moment. “Um…”
That was all she needed.
“What’s wrong?” Her voice took on this sharp, anxious tone with a touch of
dread. She knew something had gone wrong. If only she knew how wrong.
“Is… is Kev there?” I
managed to croak out.
“Yeah,” she said quickly.
“Do you want me to put him on?”
“Um, yeah. Please.”
“How bad is it, Howie?”
“Bad.”
“Okay,” she said, although her voice had dropped below a
whisper. I closed my eyes as I heard her call for Kevin. I did not want to do
this. I did not want to do this. I did not want to do this…
“Hello? Howie? What’s
wrong? Sarah looks…well I hate that look. Is everything all right?”
“No,” I said softly. “It’s
not.”
What followed is a haze
that I doubt I’ll ever try to filter out. I think I was on my cell phone more
in that twenty-four hours more than I had been in the last month. And coming
from me, that’s staggering. When I wasn’t on the phone, coordinating with Brian
and Kevin, the hospital, the funeral home, or what have you, I was doing my
best not to cry. Whenever Alex wasn’t in the room, I said fuck it and did. I
cried for her, I cried for the baby, but mostly I cried for him, because he is
probably the best friend I’ve ever had, and to see him hurting this bad was
killing me. The confidence and strength that made him who he was had been
yanked out from underneath him, and all I could do was watch.
Three days. Tasha died
three days ago. I really couldn’t believe it when Nick mentioned that, because
as far as I’m concerned it’s only been one really long never-ending day. Alex
brought the baby home yesterday. We’ve hardly seen him since, except for during
the funeral. He virtually locked himself in that nursery. Denise hovered over
him and helped him out with certain things, giving him helpful hints on feeding
and stuff like that. She tried to open him up with stories that usually started
with “When you were a baby,” and every now and then he gave up a smile that
wasn’t real. But for the most part he was off in his own desolate little world,
and the rest of us weren’t invited.
The funeral passed us all
by in a blur, though there were parts of it I would never forget. Alex never
shed a tear. He looked completely vacant, empty. Like Tasha had taken whatever
it was that made him A.J. with her when she died. The five of us stood together
right before the service started, right there in the isle way of the church,
hands joined, and Brian prayed aloud, putting into words things that I could
spend a lifetime trying to say. That serenity of his helped all of us, I think.
I squeezed Alex’s hand during that, but he just remained still and silent, like
he wasn’t really even there.
Then there was Mr.
Schweitzer. I’d only met Tasha’s dad a few times, but the look on his face when
they buried his daughter…I can’t even talk about it. You know? I just can’t. I
never want to have that look. I’m so afraid that one day I will.
It’s kind of funny in a
sick and twisted sort of way how hard this hit all of us. Anything of this magnitude
that affects one of us is like a chain reaction. When you’re as close to
someone as the five of us are to each other, it doesn’t happen to just one of
you. It happens to all of you, no matter what it is. Sometimes you can’t even
remember who it was that was at the center of it in the first place. But in
this case it was even harder, because Tasha was one of us. A.J. met her on the
tour, with us. We were there from the start. The four of us watched the two of
them grow together, fall in love, and decide to spend their lives together. She
went on the road with us more times than I can count. She was always there. All
of us were fairly close to her. We saw her more than Sue, Whitney, and Sarah,
because they were balancing careers and family in addition to being Backstreet
Wives. Her death was a giant slap in the face for us, and a knife through the
heart for Alex.
Kevin and I were sitting
in the living room after the wake, facing each other. Just about everyone had
left. The wives had taken the kids back to the hotel. Brian was helping Denise
with…well, something. Alex was with his son.
His son.
God. It’s amazing how so
much can change so fast. What were we going to do now? We were supposed to
finish an album in a few weeks. Plans for the next tour were already in the
works. Now things just seemed frozen in place, and I had no idea how to start
them back in motion again. It scared me that I didn’t really care to, either.
I glanced up at Kevin, who
seemed lost in some little world of his own. His eyes were troubled, and he
looked utterly torn by something that was outside of our current hell. Kinda
like he had another bombshell up his sleeve that he was deciding if he should
continue to keep to himself. By all means, I thought to myself, do. We don’t want
it. Take it somewhere else where it can explode without us hearing it. He
caught me looking at him, and a startled look flitted across his face. Kevin
was definitely distracted if he let his guard down like that.
“You ok?” I asked him
hesitantly, not really wanting to hear the word ‘no.’
He shifted uneasily, and I
knew for sure he was hiding something. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ok. Still just…you
know.”
I let it go that time,
mostly because he looked like a scared rabbit, and I’d never seen him look like
that before. Oh I’d seen him scared before, but right then he looked scared of me,
and that was most definitely a first. Whatever it was that was bothering him
was not something I was prepared to deal with, though. Alex was the important
one. I had to concentrate on him. Once I knew he was okay I could move onto the
next problem, Kevin, then the next, the whole matter of the tour, which was
weighing over my head like a few tons of bricks, then the next problem, then
the next, and the next…
I can’t do this!
For the love of God I am
not this strong! I never have been. How the hell I managed to survive
this long I’ll never know, because I swear this whole time I’ve faked it. I
just wanted to curl up in a ball and hide in some dark corner where no one
could find me, not even myself. I really thought for a moment that we were
going to be okay until I saw Kevin walking around in the same haze as the rest
of us. I’d wanted to look to him for what to do next, and when he didn’t know
that did it for me. You want the truth? I was scared to death. I had never been
so scared in my entire life. I didn’t have a wife to turn to, I didn’t have
kids of my own, and my ‘significant other’ as she was so called…I don’t know. I
was suddenly scared of her too. Christ, if this was me, imagine Alex. The
future seemed so black.
I could feel Kevin’s eyes
on me, and I realized just how close I was to snapping. I could hardly breathe,
and I had to clench my hands to keep them from shaking. Abruptly, I stood up
and left the room, intent on finding Alex. I needed someone in worse shape than
me so I could concentrate on them and not myself.
The first place I looked
was the baby’s room. I knew that’s where he’d be. Sure enough, he was sitting
in a rocking chair watching the infant sleep. Every now and then he would rock
a little, then drift to a stop and be motionless. The room was dark, and the
only sound was the occasional swish of the rocker or a muffled noise from the
crib. I don’t know how long I stood there, just inside the door, before he
noticed me. He smiled halfheartedly before returning his gaze to his child. I
sat down cross-legged in front of the door and leaned back against it, hoping
no one decided to walk in and mow me down.
Just sitting there relaxed
me a little, and I calmed down. We didn’t speak; we didn’t even really look at
each other. Somehow though, I think my just being there helped. Maybe not much,
but a little.
“Will you look at him?”
Alex’s voice scared the
shit out of me, even though he was so quiet I had to strain to hear him. When I
got a grip on myself, I did what he asked.
“I still can’t believe
that he’s my son. That blows me away, Howie.”
“I know.” It sounded like
a really dumb thing to say, but I don’t think I’ve ever been known for my
amazing words of wisdom, so I didn’t worry about it too much.
“I’m not going to be a
crappy father.”
“Of course not,” I said,
horrified. He sounded terrified, and not for the first time I wanted to find
his biological father and slug him. Alex was so terrified of screwing up and
being a rotten parent that he and Tasha had put off having children until now,
all because of him. That asshole didn’t deserve the son he had. Alex on the
other hand, did. I’ve tried to tell him that over and over, but he was always
still afraid.
“I got a call from Jive
today.”
He looked over at me then,
and I couldn’t believe the anger in his eyes. It was the first real emotion I’d
seen from him since Nick had flown into the driveway, and it scared the living
hell out of me.
“Jive?” I asked in confusion.
Why the hell would they be calling him? I’d been telling them to fuck off for
the last three days.
I sensed a break coming,
and stood up. I motioned with my head towards the door, and thankfully, Alex
got up to follow me. I knew better than to take him to the master bedroom, he’d
refused to go in there since That Night, so I lead him into the guest room
Brian was staying in and shut the door.
“Okay,” I said. “What the
hell did they want? I’ll get them on the damn phone and tell them exactly where
they can shove it, if it had anything to do with the tour. I swear to God
Alex…”
“Yes it was about the
tour!” he exploded. “Of course it was about the fucking tour! But I have to
give them credit, they at least asked me how I was doing first. Wasn’t that nice
of them?”
“Shit, I’m sorry. I tried
to tell them to back off…”
“What, and you thought it
would work? They don’t care! No one cares! I’m supposed to suck it up, and get
on stage like nothing has happened! Like I haven’t just lost my wife. Like I
don’t have a newborn son that I have to raise by myself. All they care about is
how much money we can stuff in their pockets.”
“They wanted to force you
into touring?” I exclaimed. “They can’t do that! It’s our call, and they
know that!”
“Of course they do. They weren’t
going to make me do shit. They wanted a ‘timeframe.’ They wanted an estimate on
how long before they could expect us back in the studio, and when we could meet
for a promo tour.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I have given everything
I am to this, Howie. Everything. My whole fucking life. Do you know how much
time I lost with Tasha because of my damn career? I can never get that back!
Never! I have to live with that now! And here they want a goddamn timeframe! ”
In a fit of anger he swept his hand across the dresser, knocking Brian’s
personal items to the floor. “What do they want from me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, they can go burn in
hell for all I care. The record company, the fans, everyone. Everyone
can burn in hell. I don’t care anymore. Do you hear me? I don’t care!”
“Okay,” I whispered. “Whatever you want Alex, that’s what
we’ll do. I mean it.”
“You know what I want?”
“What?”
“I want to be a Dad. I
want to watch my kid grow up. I want to surround him with all of my love and
Tasha’s. My mom did it for me, and I am going to do it for Alex. That means no
touring, no fans, none of it. I’m done. I’m fucking done!”
His face kind of went pale then. I think it was the first
time he had said the words out loud, even though I know he’d been thinking
about it quite a bit. But now they were out in the open, and they were
real. The beginning of the end happened
right there in that moment, in that room, and we both knew it.
At that point, I could hear pounding feet outside the
door. I already knew whose they were, and when the door came open I saw I was
right. It was scary how Brian just knew when things were about to get
really bad. He always showed up to try and pick up the pieces. I guess it
wasn’t just insight this time though, Alex was yelling loud enough to be heard
two blocks away.
Brian didn’t say anything at first, he just stood inside
the door, making sure it shut behind him without removing his gaze from Alex. I
could tell by the look in his eyes that he had heard every word. Alex looked
back and forth between the two of us, trying way too hard not to cry. When he
spoke, he was all choked up, and his chin was tilted down as if that would hide
the fact. He raised one finger and shook it at us. “I’m done,” he repeated.
I thought Brian would be shocked, stunned, outraged, pleading,
panicked, terrified, or something along any of those lines. I thought he would
tell Alex he needed to think it over, to not make any rash decisions, to wait
until he had had some time to heal before he tried to think about it, or that
it wasn’t important right now anyway, he was what was important, and we’d talk
about it later. But you know, after all these years, most people (including
myself) would think that there was nothing any of my band mates could do to
surprise me, except for maybe A.J. Not so. Brian, the bastard, can always find
something that I’m not ready for. This time, it was his one-word, completely
bullshit free answer to Alex’s statement.
“Okay.”