Ian McDuff

Okay, so maybe a little ambition was good, a drive, a fire in the belly, it kept you focused: okay. They’d all had that, had to have it or acquire or adsorb it from the dream, even those who had come late to the dream, even those whose dream it wasn’t, not to start with, for whom it was a borrowed dream they accidentally got rapt in. Sure. They’d had to have it just to get anywhere.

But.

This sort of ambition? Dunno about that, actually. Looks iffy.

The ambition that burned within them, that branded itself on their faces and bodies: a hot searing brand, a cauterizing iron that drew their faces wry and scarred and twisted their once-innocent smiles: this was something else. Dangerous.

Chris, now. Fu Man was a goal, but not an ambition. Not like this. Wringing every last drop out of N Sync - that was an ambition. Making it as big as it could be until burst, making it bigger than and overshadowing Backstreet (though Chris never, ever, even when things had been at their ugliest, never once did Chris let it affect his friendship with Howie). Making it a byword. Because it was and would always be to all who mattered Chris’s project, his baby, and its success was his vindication. Vindication. Payback. For all the cold charity and the homeless Christmases and his dad’s betrayal and his stepdad’s loss and all the years of taking crap from everyone until he could lever his project into something that was, that made him, the biggest baddest mofo around and he to never have to take no more crap from nobody no way no how nowheres. And after the thing with Dani … well, Chris was more driven even than before.

Actually, that worried Joe, actually.

And the Infant. Infantile ego and personal ambition grown monstrous, deformed. Hurt to watch, actually. Partly it was like Chris’s inner demon: a way of shooting Randy the Biggest Finger In the Universe. Take that, Dad. See what you walked away from? Hope ya like it. And maybe there was some white-hot determination to make up for everything Lynn hadn’t had when the marriage failed and Justin hadn’t had just by being caught in the middle, and all the things Jon and Stevie were gonna by-God have even though no Timberlake in history had had it that good until now. Mules past, Mercedes future. And partly, too, it was to fill a void, the hole in Justin’s heart that came from having shucked off all he had still had to hold on to, a rootedness, a faith, a place, all the things he’d gleefully and hastily sacrificed in order to Blaze In Lights - back before he found out that those lights didn’t warm you so much, and that he’d sold his birthright for a pretty thin soup. And now he had no roots and no faith and no sense of belonging, and all that he’d thought he was buying with that price was empty, drum-hollow. Joe saw that every time the whole Fatone family descended on him in a cloud of garlic and wine and cheese and loud laughter, and Justin watched with hooded eyes that couldn’t quite mask the regret. And sure, yeah, there was the I’m A Grown-Up thing, too, partly. They’d babied him. Joe because Joe was a born dad. C because he’d had to be there for Justin when Randy wasn’t. Chris because he was the eldest and had been the man of the family since he was barely potty-trained. And Lance because, while Lance wasn’t so much older, he was a lot smarter in everything but street-smarts and emotional IQ (and boy did Lance so obviously know it), and he was like several steps, really big steps, up socially from the Timberlakes, the way that mattered to Southerners. They’d all babied Justin, and Justin had something to prove now. Sure that was part of it. Partly, though. Yeah. Partly it was testosterone swagger. Worried Joe a little. What the fuck was Jupe always so hellbent on proving, anyway? Give it a rest already. But yeah: insecurity feeds ambition, sure, gotcha. Understood.

Maybe it was all about insecurity. Various kinds, ya know? Lance.... Actually, Joe wasn’t the idiot people thought he was, actually. Starting with the Virginia Dynasty and then Jackson and Polk and them, Southerners had always been like that. And as soon as Reconstruction was over, they were like that times two, crafty, driven, determined to get back all they’d lost in the Rebellion and then some. Joe knew some damn history, okay? And Lance did too, you could tell. One thing Lance knew for damn sure was what Aristotle’d said. At high enough levels, power and money become the same thing. And Lance - Lance didn’t give a fuck about money. Cars and jewelry and bling-bling. Kid’s stuff, better left to J. What consumed Lance was a lust for power. Sure, okay, partly it was for the power to do good, for his family, his ‘people,’ and of course for C: to be able to make one call and hand C, if he wanted it, the successorship to John Williams as far as scoring the soundtrack to the next Star Wars flick. Like Gandalf being tempted to take the One Ring with the highest of ideals and motives. But it wasn’t all that damn pure, anymore’n Lance was himself. Lance wanted power, period. Was it to make up for things? To be able to look back at the bullies and bashers, Lou and the fans and the gossip and all the people who had already learned how dangerous it was to piss Lance Bass off, who still smoldered and singed and smoked from the blast of Lance’s anger? To be able to look down at them and pee on them from a great height? Maybe. Joe never really knew, with Lance.

And that scared him. Sometimes. Of all of them, he thought, he loved Lance the best (not like C did, but still). And he knew he understood him least. And he knew he feared Lance the most.

With C, his oldest and mostly closest friend, though, it was fear, not of C, but for C. Josh got too hurt too bad too often too easy, actually. And a lot of the wounds were self-inflicted. But the drive that ground C even as it ground down any obstacles in his way…. He didn’t want ice and flash and being the sole cause of mass adolescent female orgasms in packed stadiums. He didn’t want power, not like Lance did, he didn’t drive himself to be the Caesar - hell, the unchallenged sole god - of the entire entertainment industrial complex, the Master of the Universe. He didn’t want to flip the whole world off and force people to acknowledge they’d been wrong and they owed him now. Nope. C just suffered from the last infirmity of noble mind. C wanted immortality. Not respect, not to finally be taken serious and stuff, but the Big Time, for himself and as something he could present, all pretty and wrapped and with a bow, to his green-eyed Mississippian lover. C wanted, burned, bled, ached to make it to the point where his name was a possession for all time. C was driven to one goal: having his name mentioned in the same breath with Gershwin and Irving Berlin. Ellington. Hell, Bach and Mozart. Joe worried a lot about the kid he still, sometimes, called - from the mists of Life Before the Band - Josh (a name otherwise allowed to be used only by Lance).

Joe worried a lot.

But hey. At least Joe hadn’t succumbed to these monstrous, these over-inflated ambitions. Sure, he had a drive and work ethic - Papa Joe, and still more Mama Fatone, had hickory-switched that into him. But he wasn’t a slave to ambition. He didn’t want the ride to go on forever. He didn’t want power and glory and stuff, material or otherwise.

Naw. Joe just wanted the simple things. He wanted to keep his buds grounded. He wanted to make sure they could, at least sometimes, turn it off, be their own, old, true selves. Be mortal. Joe wanted to ground them and protect them and make sure that at least when the damn red-eye camera wasn’t glaring, they could keep it real and be human and at peace. He was a friend. It’s what friends do. He just wanted his bros to be defended from all that threatened them, including, ya know, the stuff that threatened each of ’em from the inside.

Joe didn’t have any crazy, overarching, damn-near-delusional ambitions. He didn’t want anything nutso. All he had was one simple goal, actually. Was that too much to ask?

All he wanted was, truly and fully, to be Superman.