I woke up early from my nap and I felt flustered and angry. It wasn’t the right kind of mood for someone who was about to die to be in. I didn’t want to die angry either; I wanted to die peacefully and with the thought that my problems were finally over.
Before I fell asleep, I’d placed my cross carefully on the table so that I wouldn’t lose it. Now I held it in my hands and closed my eyes. I was starting think that it was some kind of magical object with magical powers because of all it had done for me. First it protected me from Greta, now Louie.
I asked the cross in my head what I could do to get rid of the mixed feelings I had inside of me. Somehow I felt that they were bad “karma” to have before I died.
After a few minutes of feeling nothing from the cross, I opened up my eyes in defeat. As it turned though, the cross hadn’t betrayed me. I saw a golden opportunity to vent my anger that the cross had laid out in front of me.
Using the furniture for support, I got up and found my way to the wheelchair. I approached the trophy room and let my anger spill out of my head. I’d thought that the cross was saying that I didn’t need this existence of my ego in a new life. All the awards I’d gotten in the past were trivial now and I felt that the only way that I could get into heaven was if I got rid of everything that said to God that I had an inflated ego.
I thought about George and Mandy, Louie and of course the guys. They could have their portion of flatteries from the music business, I thought, but Brian don’t be surprised if you can’t make amends with God when you die.
At first breaking the trophies was hard because I’d worked a good long time for them. I picked the first one and held it in my hands. It was the gold record that we’d achieved in Europe at the start of our careers. I remembered how ecstatic I was to receive it too.
“This is how it all started,” I whispered to myself, “all the hell ends now!” I cried as smashed it down on the floor. Back then the cover of it was plastic and the backing of it was wood painted a gold color. I didn’t know that until Kevin told me. He said it right after I told him how happy I was to get it and that we were given something GOLD. After he told me the truth, my heart broke and the moment was completely ruined for me. I hid the truth behind my smile because I didn’t want to be called a baby. That night, I crawled as far as I could into the old sheets in the motel that we were staying at. Since we shared rooms, AJ, who was staying with me, right away noticed that something was wrong. I didn’t want him to know that I was crying, but he pulled the sheets back before I could hide my tears.
“What’s wrong little man?” he asked with this sincere look in his eyes. He’s a bad liar, so whenever you doubt if he’s telling the truth, just look into his eyes.
I thought of something quickly. “I miss my family,” I told him. That was only partly true, but I didn’t tell him the other half of it because it seemed as silly then as it does now.
AJ accepted that however and he told me to try and get some sleep. Earlier that morning he asked Donna Wright if I could call home and she said “no” promptly. I wasn’t with AJ when he asked, I was hiding inconspicuously behind a couch in the lobby.
“Why not?”
“Because we simply don’t have the time. You have to respect the little blob of fans you have now, because that blob will grow eventually. Tell Nick not to let it get him down. We’ll go to Canada next week and then after that he can see his family. I’m not God, you’re not God, and we both can’t be in twenty places at once, trying to please everyone. It just won’t work.”
“Well gee, a simple sentence would have been fine,” AJ mumbled as he walked in my direction, “ya didn’t have to give the God speech.”
Those weren’t exactly my fondest memories. And no, Kevin wasn’t intentionally trying to upset me; he was just giving the facts. I asked him why he did it and I told him how it hurt me. He said that he didn’t remember that he did that, so let’s let Kevvy off the hook.
The moment after the award hit the floor, I begun to regret what I done. Not only was it irreplaceable, but it had been a piece of my childhood. It took me quite a-ways back to my childhood. In fact, it took me all the way back to middle school.
I remembered a bully named Johnny, but he preferred to be called “Big Jay”. He was a bulky young man who had failed grade six at least four times. Somehow he reminded me of Louie, because he always had a pack of followers just like Louie had his gang. Big Jay was the type of guy who relied on his followers to back him up in all of his fights. If he was fighting just one particular person, he would do that by himself. But if he threatened to fight a whole group of people, he would ask them to help. They would oblige like slaves, because they were afraid of him. Now here’s where I come in.
Like it says in my mom’s book and in some magazines, I wasn’t the most popular kid in school. I would’ve made the effort to make friends then and I had some, but most of my time was preoccupied by my music career. When my friend Brent didn’t come to school on some days, I was completely alone. I’d sit in the back of the lunchroom, hoping that someone would make an effort to come to me and talk.
When someone finally did, it was Big Jay. I didn’t know much about him then because my family had just moved and I’d already missed a lot of school since we got there. Big Jay approached the table that I was sitting at and I tried to hide the smile on my face. I thought that he was there for a friendly chat.
Instead he said, “That’s OUR table.” In middle school, kids have a thing for possession.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I told him, “but could we both sit here?”
“Umm…let’s see…NO!” he shouted. He grabbed me the shirt and hit me as hard as he could in the stomach. I crumbled to the floor and laid there as Big Jay dumped the rest of my lunch on my head. There was a mixture of fake laughs in the air as I struggled to get up. Big Jay must be kicking himself for doing that to me.
I picked up the next award and shattered it without hesitation. It was a platinum award with our first CD (the Canadian and European one) incased inside of it. The CD smashed into four large pieces on my hardwood floor.
The rest of the destruction went by faster. I struggled to take apart the MTV video music award with my fingers. When that didn’t work, I brought a knife in from the kitchen and proceeded to stab it murderously. The astronaut’s flag detached itself from the man and I broke it in two using only one of my hands. I removed the odd little spring from my MTV European award and played with it for a while. Then I broke that too, by stretching it as far as it could go.
It took me a long time to break those awards, most of which fans had dedicated themselves for us to get them. If you thought about it as long as I did, you wouldn’t have to feel guilty. In the beginning, it was about the awards. I would be so proud when I got them because they symbolized something that I had. You didn’t actually vote because you wanted us to get the award. You voted because you wanted us to win the award. It was just to beat everyone else and to make us seem superior. Not that I’m bragging or that I’d ever want to feel that way. But when you win so many awards, that’s what it feels like after a while. It feels like it’s all about the winning.
It took me three hours to finish off the room. The last award I disemboweled was my diamond award for Millennium. We’d reached diamond status in Canada and Kev, Howie and AJ accepted it for the group. I was left in the states, although I really wanted to go to Canada because I hadn’t been there in a while.
After I finished, my fingers had clenched tightly into fists because I had been clutching the knife so hard. It took a while before the blood flowed correctly into them again and I waited patiently for it.
While I waited, I looked around the room to see if there was anything I’d missed. There was nothing, the only thing left standing and unbroken in the room was an old picture of B and me. The inscription said, “To our friendship, from Rok” and it was a picture of him and me goofing off on the set of “We’ve Got It Goin’ On.”
I thought about tearing the picture off of the wall and breaking it, but that was unnecessary. Instead, I got a better idea. After my fingers got all of their feeling back, I went to the kitchen and grabbed a black marker. Below the picture I wrote, “What friendship?” in capital letters. When he came to my house to pay his respects, hopefully he would see it.
At seven thirty, according to my watch, I hailed a cab from my house and went to the beach. ‘This is it, don’t get scared now,’ I kept telling myself. I decided against bringing the cross because I was afraid that someone would steal it. I didn’t think that I’d need it either.
When I got to the beach, I struggled to get my wheelchair across the sand and to my thinking spot. Once I got there, I ditched my chair and laid down in the sand. I memorized the ocean, the sky and the people in my life. I’d forgotten to write a note to my mother, but I’d written something in the will.
As much as I didn’t want to end my life, I felt that I had to. There was no turning back now.
I took out my jar of pills and took a deep breath. The ocean’s waves were strong that night and they seemed to be telling me not to do it. Even the trees whispered my name.
I’d forgotten to bring water to take the pills with. I couldn’t possibly swallow thirty pills just like that. Now that I was determined to end my life, I decided that I would just use seawater. I didn’t worry about pollution or chemicals because I wanted to die anyway. There wouldn’t be time for side effects to settle in.
Luckily for me, I’d decided to commit suicide in the wintertime. That way I’d have no spectators and the only people who could possibly find me were Angie and the attendants that took care of the beach. I hoped that Angie wouldn’t find me, but I had no choice. The attendants I didn’t care about because they did a lousy job cleaning anyway. They could at least clean up SOME of the condoms.
The first pill trailed slowly down my throat because my throat was so dry and the water tasted terrible. I tried not to get my shirt wet because I didn’t want to die of pneumonia. The winter breeze was taking its toll on every wet spot on my shirt. I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t have to suffer much longer.
When I took the second pill, the tide moved back and I got a mouthful of sand. The unpleasant grains stuck to my gums because they were sticky with blood. I tried to wash it off with water, but because it was so salty, it stung like hell.
For a while I just laid in the sand, my long hair protruding out of my head. I didn’t like having my hair that long, but the less I looked like myself, the better. After all, I didn’t want my death to be announced right away. I wanted to be found, identified, and kept a secret. I knew that it would never work that way, but it didn’t hurt to dream.
The two painkillers I took were slowly getting into my brain. I felt the numbness go away and I felt the urge to throw up. As much as my stomach encouraged me, I couldn’t because I needed that second pill.
Before I gave into my senses, I took ten pills consecutively until my body collapsed. I knew that if I passed out now, I would wake up later, and that’s not what I wanted.
Instead, I forced myself to get up and I took eight more pills. I was up to twenty then and I was starting to feel “high.” My mind was spinning faster than the world was and the sky had taken on an odd green color. I felt like getting on my feet and dancing in my underwear, but somewhere in my mind my sanity had regained conscience.
Now I was ready to finish the job. I rolled over to my side and took ten more pills. Just for good measure I took an extra, because I wanted to be really dead. The last thing I saw was my pill jar – it was half-empty. All those pills I’d taken and the bloody thing was still half-empty. Then came the darkness.
Chapter 25
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