On our last night in New York, the guys and I sat around the hotel, watching TV. No one had felt like going out; we all had early flights out of the city in the morning. Brian was flying home to Atlanta for a couple of days, before he had to be in Miami for rehearsal. Howie and AJ were headed to Orlando to see their families. And I was going straight to Miami for some much needed R&R before the tour officially started.
After two days of almost nonstop promo appearances following the fan event on Sunday, I was exhausted. Monday had been enough to all but do me in; we’d gotten up at the crack of dawn to do The Early Show, then done an interview for Talk Stoop. Radio interviews followed that, and then a performance at the Apollo Theater for the Do Something Awards. We’d been out late after that, and then today we’d had to tape The Wendy Williams Show and A&E’s Private Sessions. All that in two days would be enough to wear anyone out, but since I was still recovering from chemo and my infection, I was completely wiped.
All I wanted was to go to bed, but it wasn’t even eight o’clock. We had just finished the dinner we’d ordered, authentic New York-style pizza, and I knew it was too early to call it a night without the guys suspecting something was up with me. So I kept drinking Diet Cokes and tried to keep myself awake.
Eight o’clock came and went. Howie, who had the remote, flipped through a round of channels and announced, “There’s nothing good on.” He passed the remote to me. “Put on whatever you want, Nicky.”
“You’re giving me control of the remote?” I eyed him with mock skepticism. “What, did you lick it first to get back at me or somethin’?”
Howie rolled his eyes, smirking. “No, I didn’t lick it, although if I had, you’d deserve it. ‘Tastes like hot sauce!’” he imitated me in a nasally, obnoxious voice that totally did not sound like me at all.
AJ snickered and added, “He just wishes he’d thought of it before you said that, Carter.”
I grinned. “I know. And now I have an idea for later.” I raised the remote to my mouth, stuck out my tongue like Gene Simmons, and acted like I was about to lick the back of it, just to see Howie squirm.
It worked. His eye started twitching, and he exploded, “Nick! That’s sick, man! Sick! Do you know how many other people have touched that thing? Do you know how many germs are probably on that thing? We should have doused it in Purell before we started using it!”
We all started cracking up at his neurotic little outburst, and Brian joked, “Yeah, Frack, you probably just contracted tuberculosis or something just by breathing near it.”
“No, bubonic plague!” chimed in AJ.
“The BLACK DEATH!” added Brian in a deep voice of doom. We may have been Frick and Frack, but he and AJ could go back and forth like that forever.
AJ started quoting Monty Python. “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”
“I’m not dead!” croaked Brian, and they both started laughing again.
“That’s what we should watch,” AJ suggested. “Anyone bring a copy?”
We all looked at each other. No one had. I took over Howie’s flipping of channels and stopped when I heard a familiar theme song. AJ snickered again. “Did y’all know Nick’s obsessed with American Idol?” he asked the others, as Ryan Seacrest started yammering on the TV.
“I am not,” I said, annoyed, about to change the channel when AJ leaned over and ripped the remote out of my hand.
“You totally are, dude. How else did you ‘discover’ Cary Hilst? You’ve probably been watching that show in secret for years and just pretending you thought it was cheap and fake as a cover-up.” AJ snickered.
“Do you watch Glee too, Frack?” Brian added, looking pretty gleeful himself.
AJ laughed harder. “He just watches for the Journey covers.”
See what I mean about those two?
I couldn’t even say anything to defend myself, since it was true that I’d watched American Idol every week since Cary had moved in with me, and, okay, so I’d started watching Glee, too, since it was on right after... But that’s just what happens when you let a chick control your TV! I blamed her.
Howie looked pretty pleased that it was me getting picked on for once, instead of him. “He probably owns all the soundtracks and sings Finn’s solos at the top of his lungs when he’s alone in his car,” he chimed in, but the thing about Howie is, he’s not really all that good at the whole ‘humor’ thing. As soon as he said that, I knew just how to turn it against him.
“Finn? You know the characters’ names?” I crowed. “Who’s the Gleek now, Howie?”
I used to not think it was possible for Latino people to blush, but Howie can. I can make him. His face turned dark red, as he sputtered some kind of lame defense about Leigh liking the show, and I cracked myself up imagining him singing Glee songs around the house. If I was Finn, he was definitely Mr. Schue, with his curly hair and cheesy personality. Or maybe Artie...
Okay, yeah, I did know all the characters’ names. But no way in hell was I gonna admit it!
Once we were done laughing at Howie’s expense, we quieted down and went back to watching TV. AJ had the remote now, but no one bothered to tell him to change the channel. I guess there really was nothing else on, or maybe they were all closet Idol fans now, too. In any case, we sat around and watched American Idol. We couldn’t even mock it much, since it was down to the last two, who were both actually pretty good.
Cary wanted Crystal to win, but I didn’t tell the guys that; they didn’t need to know she’d been living in my condo, watching this show with me twice a week, every week, for the past month. I did look for her in the audience shots and pointed her out to Brian and Howie, who still hadn’t met her in person.
“Tell me something, Nick,” AJ said, out of the blue. “Are you bangin’ her?”
“Excuse me?” I forced myself to laugh. “Why would you think that?”
“Uh, cause you practically begged us to make her our opening act for the summer, and it seemed like you were seeing a lot of her in LA.” AJ shrugged. “It’s a fair assumption.”
“Yeah, well, you know what they say about people who assume, AJ,” Brian jumped in, coming to my defense. He was still the Frick to my Frack, after all.
“I’m not bangin’ her,” I answered truthfully.
“Yet!” the three of them chorused in perfect unison. Yeah, so much for Brian defending me. They all thought they knew me so well.
To be perfectly honest, though, it didn’t really bother me. It would make it a lot easier when I had to sneak her into my hotel room to hook up my chemo or onto my tour bus to draw my blood if they all thought we were an item. I just hoped Cary wouldn’t mind the assumption.
But I played along. “Hey, like you should talk, AJ. Remember Kaci Brown? That name ring any bells?”
AJ grimaced. “Don’t mention that name.”
“I’m just sayin’. You’re the one with the track record for bangin’ our opening acts.”
“What about Mandy? Or should I say... ‘Willa Ford?’ That name ring any bells?” AJ shot back.
It was my turn to shudder. “Hey, I was bangin’ her before she was our opening act. Totally different.”
“This is why we should only have male opening acts,” joked Brian, and Howie chuckled and nodded in agreement.
“Maybe we should only use male models in our music videos, too, then - right, Rok?” teased AJ, winking in Brian’s direction.
“Touché,” said Brian with a good-natured grin.
We all laughed and returned our attention to the show. I was glad it was only an hour long that night; the big, two-hour finale extravaganza was the next night. At nine o’clock, when it was over, I yawned and said, “Well, fellas, I think I’ma bow out for the night.”
Howie and Brian exchanged surprised looks. “At nine o’clock?” asked Brian incredulously. “And you call us old men.”
“Hey, I’m jet lagged!” I lied. “You wouldn’t know; at least you didn’t have to change time zones to get here.”
AJ snickered. “It’s only six p.m. in Cali, dude.”
“Yeah, and it was four a.m. in Cali when I got up this morning,” I countered, doing the math. I’d been up for fourteen hours; I had every right to go to bed at nine. I couldn’t understand how AJ wasn’t exhausted, too.
“Well, now he knows what it feels like to be in his thirties,” said Howie. “No more teasing us about that, right, Nicky? Get some rest.”
I loved the way he could acknowledge that I was thirty and then proceed to talk to me like I was a little boy up past his bedtime. Howie took Kevin’s “Daddy” role far too seriously sometimes. “Sure, Dad, I will,” I replied sarcastically, as I got up. “’Night, guys.”
“’Night, Nick,” they all chorused, as I left the room and dragged myself back to my own. My body felt heavy and sluggish; my head was pounding with fatigue. Even my eyelids were starting to droop, like they had lead weights attached.
Relieved to have made my exit, I let myself into my hotel room and didn’t even bother to turn on the lights. I undressed in the dark, felt my way to my bed, and collapsed onto it. So this was it, I thought, as I closed my eyes and burrowed my face into my pillow. This was what it was going to be like. I might not be throwing up, and if I was lucky, my hair wouldn’t fall out, but I was going to spend the rest of the tour feeling like this, fighting this fatigue. I could use jet lag as an excuse for now, but after we had been on the road awhile, that excuse wouldn’t fly anymore. I had to find some way to get my energy back, or at least act like I had.
I thought I’d done a pretty good job of it so far. If the guys suspected anything was wrong, they hadn’t grilled me about it. I thought I could sense their eyes on me sometimes, watching me, but I was probably just paranoid. Keeping secrets from your closest friends will do that to you.
I felt like shit, in more ways than one, but even though I was tired, even though I wished I was in my own bed instead of this hotel one, I was glad to be out of town, away from the hospital and all the reminders of my diagnosis, just hanging out with the guys like old times. It wouldn’t last; soon, their families would be with them, and we wouldn’t be able to just hang out in somebody’s hotel room like we had that night. Soon, it would be time for my next round of chemo, and I’d feel even shittier than I did now.
At some point, they’d find out; I couldn’t keep this from them forever. I didn’t want to. Just as long as I could, hopefully through this first leg of the tour. And maybe by the end, if things kept going the way they were, I’d be better. It would be nice to finally tell them the truth as I was finishing up my chemo, with a clean bill of health. They’d still be pissed at me for keeping it a secret from them, but at least they wouldn’t be as freaked out.
That’s what I’ll do, I thought vaguely, as I started to drift off. Flopped on my stomach, with my face buried in my pillow, I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears. With every beat, I imagined my heart battering against the tumor that was so near it, pumping whatever was left of the chemo drugs in my system through my bloodstream to attack it from the inside.
I dreamed of the war that was going on within me, the little Nazi chemo soldiers invading every region of my body to cleanse it of the cancer hidden among all the healthy cells, while the outside world remained oblivious.
And then I woke up from the dream, disturbed and still exhausted.
***
