On Friday morning, I woke up in Vegas. It was the day of our last show, and I couldn’t believe it.
In some ways, I was relieved. The next day, I’d be able to go home and get some much-needed rest. I could spend all day in bed or just lying around on my couch if I wanted to, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting up and performing when I didn’t feel good.
But at the same time, I was sad to see the tour end. This would be my last chance to perform for awhile… and if I got bad news next week, maybe forever. I wasn’t ready to face the possibility of this being my last concert… not just of this leg of the tour, but the last one ever.
Either way, I was determined to make it a good one. We were performing at The Beach at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, which had to be the coolest venue we’d played the whole tour. The stage was an island, set above an eleven-acre manmade beach outside the hotel, with real sand and a huge wave pool. The show was general admission, since there were no seats, only water to wade in and lawn chairs in the back. We’d had to adjust our blocking, since the stage was smaller than we were used to, but no one really minded. The last show of a tour was always a little more laidback than most, and it was fun to be able to change it up a little and do something different.
It was ninety-eight degrees outside when Cary went out to open the show. She wore a light, Hawaiian-print sundress, but even so, by the end of her three-song set, her bare skin was shiny with sweat. “Take it easy out there,” she warned me, as we crossed paths backstage. “Drink as much water as you can. It’s really hot.”
“I’ll be alright,” I replied, and truthfully, I wasn’t too concerned. I’m a Florida boy; I’m used to the heat and used to performing summer concerts in too many layers of clothes. And besides, the guys and I had a plan.
By the time we took the stage, the sun had gone down, but the temperature was still in the lower nineties. We started the show in our usual stage outfits – black pants and dress shirts, Brian and AJ in jackets, Howie and I wearing vests – but during the first wardrobe change, we traded them for jeans and t-shirts. We were sweating buckets already, and no one felt like putting on our tour hoodies. By the last set of songs, we were in swim trunks. The crowd went crazy as we came out, one by one, for “All of Your Life.”
“Since we’re performing at the beach, we thought we better get in our swim trunks,” Brian joked with the fans later, showing off his crazy, turquoise, Hawaiian-print shorts. He, Howie, and AJ had on thin, plain, white t-shirts with their trunks; I wore a white button-down over a wifebeater, to make sure the bump of my port stayed hidden. It didn’t matter, though; I was comfortable, and it gave the end of the concert a fun vibe, like we were really at a beach party. We were pretending… like I’d been doing the whole tour, like I had the guys doing now. Pretending everything was carefree, pretending nothing was wrong. The whole thing was an act.
It really hit me when we got to the end of “Bye Bye Love.” As we sang, “I’m saying goodbye to you… I’m saying goodbye to you,” and waved to the fans down in the water below us, I realized I was saying goodbye in more ways than one. It wasn’t just a lyric in a song; it wasn’t just the end of a show or even a tour. This was my farewell to all the fans and the incredible career they’d let me have, in case there wasn’t another concert, another leg of the tour, in case the news next week was bad and I never got another chance.
It was hard to go on and act like I was having fun, with that depressing thought in my head, but somehow, I did it. I did it the same way I’d made it through all the other shows before this one: by faking it, by forcing myself to stay in the moment, forget everything else, and focus only on performing. This time, I knew Brian, AJ, and Howie were having to do the same thing.
We gave the fans a finale they’d never forget, busting out Super Soakers for the second half of “I Want It That Way” and spraying the crowd. “Tell me why,” we sang, and I shot a stream into the first few rows. “Ain’t nothin’ but a heartache. Tell me why…” Then I turned the gun on Brian and Howie and squirted them, too. “Ain’t nothin’ but a mistake. Tell me why…” I did the choreography with the Super Soaker in one hand. “I never wanna hear you say… I want it that way…”
I nailed AJ while Howie was singing his solo. By then, Brian had a squirt gun, too. I expected him to retaliate, but he sprayed the front row, instead of me. Again, I was reminded of how much things were going to change, of how much they already had. Before they found out I had cancer, I’d never have gotten away with squirting any of the guys without taking a shot straight to the face as punishment.
We were all armed with squirt guns when we came back out for the encore, and we completely nixed the choreography to “Straight Through My Heart” and just played around onstage, instead. There were beach balls bouncing over the heads of the audience, and the fans in the first few rows were screaming wildly as we drenched them with water. It was fun, the perfect end to our last show. And when it was over, we set down the Super Soakers and grasped each other’s hands.
As we took our final bows, the fans’ screams making my ears ring, I suddenly thought of the quote I’d included in my thank yous for Millennium. Thinking I was clever, I’d put it in code: 5483-5433-86-843-3855378-367-843-388873-47-722723. Live life to the fullest, for the future is scarce. At the time, I’d been nineteen and on top of the world. I’d had limited experience with death – most recently, the passing of our producer, Denniz Pop, to cancer – but like most teenagers, I still felt invincible, untouchable. The saying sounded deep, and the code thing was cool, but when they were decoded, the words were still just words to me.
Standing on that stage over a decade later, at the ripe old age of thirty, with the same disease that had killed Denniz inside my body, I realized truer words had never been spoken.
That night, I’d lived by them.
***
“Thank you,” I told the guys later, as we walked back up to our hotel rooms. “Thanks for letting me do this… and for doing it with me. It meant a lot to me.”
I’ve never been too good with words, and it’s weird for me to really say what I feel when it comes to the emotional stuff, but I wanted them to know how important our finishing the tour together had been to me. They all nodded and hugged me, one at a time, and Brian said, “Now that it’s over, you just need to go home and focus on getting better, okay?”
I nodded, too. “That’s what I’m gonna do.”
We were all staying one more night in Vegas, and if things were normal, we would have spent most of it in the casinos, drinking and gambling, partying and celebrating the end of another leg of the tour. But the guys must have known I was completely wiped from the concert, because no one invited me out. That was just as well with me; I had already played in the casino at Mandalay Bay before soundcheck that afternoon, and I was ready to call it a night.
Cary was waiting for me with a bottle of sparkling grape juice when I let myself into the room. “Congratulations,” she said, filling two glasses and handing me one. “You made it.”
“Thanks to you,” I replied, smiling sheepishly, raising my glass to her.
She shook her head. “Thanks to your own stubbornness. If I’d had my way, I’d have sent you home weeks ago. Lucky for you, you’re persistent, and I’m a pushover.”
I grinned and clinked my glass against hers. “I’ll drink to that,” I said, taking a sip of the grape juice. I guess I could have been an ass and ordered real champagne, since our whole deal was off now that the guys knew the truth, but I knew she had my best interest at heart, and I respected that, even if I hadn’t always shown it. “Seriously, thank you,” I told her, wiping my upper lip with the side of my hand, “for putting up with my bullshit and… well, for everything.”
Cary smiled. “Thank you, too. For the experience. It’s been a roller coaster, but…”
“You love roller coasters.” I smirked, remembering her telling me so at that theme park in Georgia, where Zombieland had been filmed.
Her cheeks got pink as she laughed. I loved the way I could always make her do that – giggle and turn colors. The effect made her even prettier; her cheeks got rosy, her eyes got big and shiny, and her hair bounced on top of her shoulders. It occurred to me again that, under different circumstances, I probably would have tried to sleep with her by now, but I quickly suppressed the thought. I’d taken enough advantage of her already.
“Sorry it wasn’t what you expected,” I added, feeling a surge of guilt when I recalled how I’d basically tricked her into coming on the tour. “I hope you at least liked the performing part… and hopefully you’ll get to open for us again, if we do the second leg.”
“Are you kidding? I loved performing!” she gushed, still smiling. “I loved everything… being on stage every night, seeing the country, meeting you guys…” She blushed a little darker. “For me, the whole experience was worth the not-so-pleasant parts.”
Thinking of the long days on the tour bus, the long nights in hotel rooms, doing chemo in secret and feeling like shit and trying to hide it all so I could drag my ass on stage and perform, I nodded. “For me, too.”
***
