by skeabs
I may be disturbed but won't you concede
"I see your bandages are off." "Yeah." "When do the stitches come out?" "How many weeks have I been coming here?" "Two." "Next week." "Have you ever had thoughts of hurting yourself before?" "God, no. No, never." "Never?" "You know sometimes, when you're driving down the road at night, like, really late. And there's one other car on the road, headed your way?" "Yes." "I've wondered, sometimes, what it would be like to just, I don't know, steer into it." "Into what?" "The oncoming car. I've never really wanted to do it. It was just a day
dream."
Up up and away
"What are your other dreams like?" "Good or bad?" "Both. Start with good." "Lance would love me and he would be my home or I would be his home, or both, on and off tour. The fans would even know about us but they wouldn't care. They would support us. And the guys would know, but nothing would change the five of us." "Any more?" "Just variations of the same. Lance and I would grow old together. We would raise Brianna together and adopt more children together. We would just enjoy being together." "And what are your bad dreams like?" "What's that movie? Jimmy Stewart? The angel comes and makes it so that he never lived and he ran around trying to find all the people that knew him?" "It's a Wonderful Life?" "Yeah, that's the one. My nightmares are kind of like that. Where one day I wake up and I'm nothing." "You don't exist?" "No, I'm still here. I'm still alive but no one knows who I am. Not JC, Justin, Chris, even Lance. But I know them. I remember. And they don't. They're still N Sync, only they have another 'y'. They don't know me. Don't need me. They're still there, but they aren't with me." "Where are you?" "I'm still at home, working at Universal. I'm just hanging out with the losers from high school and thinking about making it big." "And what is the most painful part of this dream?" "That they don't need me. Not just that they don't know me. They don't need me." "Now? In your dream?" "Either. Both."
Its all right
"How long have you been having this dream?" "I don't know, six months?" "That long? Can you think of the first time? What happened that day?" "It was the day after I hurt my leg at rehearsals, for this tour. We were filming a video the next day, but I obviously couldn't dance in it, because of my leg. So Wade did it." "Wade?" "Our choreographer. He got some new official title, but whatever. He also wrote a shit load of songs with Justin. Some are on the album." "How did you feel about him taking your place?" "It had to be done. We had to shoot it then, it was the only time we could. And I was a dumb ass for getting hurt. And he obviously knew the steps. And could dress to look like me. Well, a skinnier version of me." "But how did you feel?" "Fine I guess. It needed to be done, and he did it." "Joey." "What? What'd I say?" "You have to be honest with me." "It sucked. It fucking sucked all right? I sat on my ass all day and they did it without me. They didn't need me, you know? They didn't need me at all and Wade did fine and I'd never realized until that moment how replaceable I was. And that night I had the dream for the first time." "How frequently are you having these dreams?" "First it was once a month, then once a week. This past week, it's been every day. I can't sleep anymore. I stay up all night, you know, thinking. It's weird." "What is?" "Sometimes I sit up, right? Really late, really early, whatever. And I start thinking about all the people in the world. And how half of them are asleep, and the other half are awake. And then I wondered..." "What?" "I want to know, really want to know if there's any given moment in time
when the whole world is asleep. You know? If there's one instance, one
second in time when the whole world rests."
I'm not crazy or anything "What would that moment be like?" "Be like?" "Yes. What would that moment look like? How would it make you feel?" "It would be a moment of perfect peace. You know? When nothing mattered anymore. Differences, likenesses, white, black, gay, straight. Nothing. Absolutely nothing would matter because no one would be awake to impose their ideology on anyone else. It's a unifying factor, the need for sleep. It erases all these boundaries, but no one knows it. You've got all this unity, all this peace, and no one's awake to realize it, and I guess it makes me sad. Because it'd be the one time everyone's the same, and no one would know it." "Mm hmm." "Does this make me sound crazy? I'm not. Really, I'm not." "No. No it doesn't."
Men weren't meant to ride
"Have you ever told anyone else about your dreams?" "I tried a couple of times, to tell Lance. He's my best friend, and we used to be able to talk about everything. And I guess I figured I could tell him, and he would laugh, and the moment would be past and I wouldn't care anymore, wouldn't dream anymore." "What kept you from telling him?" "A million things. Steve would come up from the back of the bus. The movie would start. He would laugh at something and the moment would pass. There was one time, I woke up in the middle of the night, in a fucking cold sweat, just shot up in bed, and he woke up too, looked over at me, and wanted to know what was wrong. And I just couldn't open my mouth and tell him. Just a million different things that would remind me that I was chicken shit." "Why?" "Why what?" "Why are you chicken shit?" "Because I had to wait for a fucking stage to be set to talk to the man I love about dreams, fears I had. Good dreams or bad dreams, I couldn't tell him either. And there's the fact that my whole life freaks me out right now. "Because people are watching?" "Waiting for me to fuck up. I'm just not made for this. This pedestal isn't for me. You know? I've discovered that I have a fear of heights." "I'm assuming that's metaphorical." "Yeah..."
I'm only a man in a silly red sheet
"... It's like...I'm Superman, and I keep, I guess, running into the thing that makes me weak. But instead of identifying it, getting rid of it, I embrace it, dwell on it, hold it to me. But it's kryptonite, and it's killing me." "What do you think your kryptonite is?" "I don't know. Lance. The fans. Sometimes..." "Yes?" "Sometimes, I think it's me. I'm my own kryptonite." "Do you know why you're here?" "I tried to kill myself."
[end]... only, I've written a sequel now. [Blind Wise Man] |