Still I was a competent enough actor to embody the character that had been created for me, and I played the part well. To all those sobbing little girls, Bodhi Beckett was da bomb. And really, who was I to burst their sheltered little bubbles? If they wanted to worship the ground I walked on, I was inclined to let them. After all, there were worse things in life than being adored. Besides, the fan devotion had made me a millionaire many times over and afforded me a lifestyle anyone would be envious of. As long as no one dug too deep into my personal life, I really was the perfect fantasy guy to bring home to mom and dad.
Sometimes I wished I were as fearless as RJ, who lived his life like he’d be trampled by a rhinoceros at any moment. I’d never been so carefree, not even when I was young, although it was up for debate whether I’d actually ever been a child. By the tender age of two, I was already supporting my family, although again, it was debatable whether my dad and I constituted a family. For all intents and purposes, he’d been more my manager than my father. Our dinner conversations were about business, not pleasure. The closest I’d ever come to a real family was playing the dutiful son on television.
Don’t believe me? I lost my virginity to a twenty-year-old prostitute my father had hired when I was seventeen. Not that I was aware she was a prostitute at the time. Apparently he felt I was taking too long to close the deal on my own, so he did what any responsible father would do – he found me a sure thing.
We’d met at a party and one thing led to another. Suddenly the pretty girl I’d been flirting with turned into a fucking porn star before my very eyes. It had never occurred to me at the time that she might actually be one. I just assumed I was a really good lover. But no. It was all smoke and mirrors leading to years of anxiety over my sexual partners not being who I thought they were. Thanks, dad, for the lifelong phobia. Way to parent!
Stellar moments like that peppered my childhood, closing me off to real, honest relationships, especially with women. I never knew who to trust so, as a general rule, I trusted no one. It was just easier being alone than finding out years later the woman I married was the star of ‘Debbie Does Dallas.’
It’s not that I was complaining… okay, maybe I was. Even though I’d lived my life in the spotlight, it had never really been by choice, and the older I got the more I wondered if this was truly the road I wanted to follow. I found myself looking forward to AnyDayNow’s inevitable demise. I mean, how long could a bunch of twenty something guys pretend to be bubble-gum chomping teenagers? Not that getting out of my commitments would be as easy as stepping off the beaten path and walking away. I was bound securely around the man who’d made me a star, my father, and cutting myself loose from him promised to be a bloody affair.
Maybe someday, long after the euphoria faded, I’d be one of those dreaded cautionary tales of the ‘former child star’ struggling to find his place in the world. God knows I’d be a prime candidate for self-destruction. But I thought more of myself than to become just some footnote in history. Damned if I would meet my end overdosed on some park bench.
When the time came, I’d bow out gracefully. No point in trying to hold onto a fame that didn’t want me anymore. Besides, it would give me the chance to live the quiet life that had always intrigued me. The idea of showing up at some dive bar with just my dependable guitar playing ‘poor me’ songs to a crowd of twelve hammered assholes was strangely appealing.
Shaking off the inevitable, I focused my attention back on task. I had a job to do. There were thousands of girls who had to fall hopelessly in love with me before the end of the show, and I aimed to please. Allowing the excitement to die down some before repeating my earlier words, I called out, “I see you - in Section H. Yes you… girl wearing the AnyDayNow t-shirt.”
Squeals erupted as every female in Section H wearing a t-shirt with our band logo on it assumed I was speaking directly to her.
“The guys and I, we can’t thank you enough for coming to see us. All of you are like our family and when you’re here, it feels like home.”
You could almost hear the hearts bursting throughout the arena… and RJ’s cynical gagging. Okay, it was a cheesy line. But this was a young crowd who hadn’t fully developed the bullshit gene, so I could get away with sounding like Ferris Bueller here and no one would give a shit. Even if I might occasionally cringe at my own words, my audience gobbled it up like a bag of Sourpatch Kids.
I looked in the general direction of Section H, pretending I could see each and every person in it, though binoculars probably wouldn’t even do the job. These were the nosebleed seats, after all. But really, it didn’t matter whether I could see them or not. What mattered was every girl wearing one of our t-shirts and sitting in that unfortunate section truly believed I’d locked eyes on her for the briefest of moments. It was all about guiding the fans through a fantasy and making them feel like they’d made a special connection with their idol. Their parents paid good money for the privilege and I’d learned long ago never to bite the hand that feeds.
Unlike RJ, I respected our fans enough to give them a performance worthy of their devotion. Yes, they were young and loud and excitable, but they were also responsible for our meteoric rise to fame. If it weren’t for these girls and their moms, and the few courageous men and boys who braved the embarrassment of being seen at one of our concerts, we’d just be five guys standing on stage pretending to be something special while everyone else made fun of us.
At least now when we were ruthlessly mocked for being talentless wastes of space, we had a wad of cash in hand to make the poison go down easier. Would I like to be respected for something other than having nice hair? Sure. But that’s not how boy bands worked. It didn’t matter how many of our songs soared to the top of the music charts or how many shows we sold out, to our critics we’d always be dismissed as a manufactured group of minimally talented guys making a living off prepubescent fantasies. As long as we remained in the band, we’d never be taken seriously as artists, singers, and songwriters.
Five years ago, when we’d been handpicked for AnyDayNow, the distinction between performer and artist hadn’t bothered us. We were all teenagers, eager for success. Our goal back then had been simple – work hard, give the best performances possible, and ride the wave as far as it would take us. We’d accomplished all three objectives, and then some.
As the final song began, the guys and I took our positions, standing side by side at center stage, belting out the words to our most popular song to date, Wait For You. Unlike other boy bands, we weren’t dancers, even though the producers had diligently tried to make that happen. At the beginning of our rise to fame, our dance routines had been so painful to witness that in one scathing review, we’d been compared to a family of three-legged giraffes suffering from ear infections. After that, we were allowed to do our own thing, and it turned out we had just enough spasmodic moves to entertain the fans just fine, thank you very much.
Fireworks exploded overhead as we finished our final encore. Smiles plastered on our faces, we waved to the crowd as the stage descended, shielding us from view. A half a dozen tech guys swarmed around us. We stood silently under the stage while they removed our earplugs and mics, having learned the hard way that anything we said after the show would be broadcast live into a stadium filled with innocent ears. You only had to drop one f-bomb into a crowd of preteens to learn your lesson.