Idolism (27 page)

It wasn’t until after take-off from Paris that Tholen told us what we’d already figured out by ourselves. He was taking us to America where he had booked us on the
Today Show
and the
Tonight Show
and about a dozen other shows. Because apparently there was no better way to get us out of the UK media spotlight than putting us in the U.S. media spotlight, because in the UK nobody ever pays any attention to what happens in the U.S. or something. It was probably the stupidest idea he’d ever had. And we didn’t like it.

Ginger didn’t like it because she felt like she was being kidnapped and held hostage. She said that if Tholen had asked her, ‘Would you like to go to America and appear on some of the biggest TV shows in the world?’ she probably would have said yes. But being just put on a plane and taken there without her consent was kidnapping and a violation of her human rights, and it was objectifying women, and she demanded to talk to her dad right away who was a lawyer and would sue the crap out of Tholen’s arse. Her words, not mine.

Michael didn’t like the idea either. But unlike Ginger he wouldn’t even have liked it if Tholen had asked him pretty pretty please with a cherry on top. He thought that the former land of the free had lost all its credibility in the fight against terror by de facto stripping not only its citizens but every person on Earth off their civil liberties, and that the U.S. had turned into the kingdom of evil. As a future revolutionary there was no way that Michael would give the enemy his fingerprints, as was the required procedure upon entering the kingdom of evil, and he thought he reserved the right to one day overthrow all imperialist governments, starting with the government of the United States, and until then he would like to keep a low profile for tactical reasons, thank you very much.

He also thought I didn’t know these things, but I did.

I didn’t like the idea either, albeit for less rational reasons. You can accuse me of thinking with me dick instead of me brain, but how many more times do I have to say it? I was a 17-year-old who was in a secret sexual relationship with one of the hottest chicks on the planet, and I wasn’t going to give that up or even just put it on hold for the two or three weeks our trip around the U.S. would have taken. Two or three weeks in the real world were an eternity in the life of a teenager. Momoko was expecting me in London, I was on me way to New York, and I had no idea when we’d be able to see each other again. Maybe in three weeks when we got back home. Maybe in three days if she decided to follow us to America. Either way, it was more of a wait than I was prepared to handle. I wanted to go back home now.

And Julian? Oh well, Julian. He loved the idea. For him the choice was to go back home and hide from the cameras, as Tholen would have told him to do, or go to America and get in front of every camera he could find. It wasn’t much of a contest between the two. Julian had been on an adrenaline high for weeks now, and he didn’t want it to end. He’d become a junkie, and he was ready to kill in order to get what he needed. He was ready to kill Puerity, but not by himself. Oh no, Julian was a smart kid, so he let us kill it for him. We were all pretty pissed off at him, because he didn’t even seem to want to listen to our opinions, our reasons why we didn’t want to go to America. It had never been easy for him to empathise with other people, but until now he had at least always tried. But now he wasn’t even trying anymore. He was completely lost in his own world, and there was no way for us to get through to him. And that’s when we gave up on him. Or rather, Michael and Ginger gave up on him, and I just went with the majority opinion as always. I don’t want to make any excuses for meself. Of course I could have tried harder to convince the other two to stay the course. Julian would have deserved it. He always stood up for me, and the least I could have done was to stand up for him when two of his friends suddenly turned their back on him. But there was nothing I could say or do that would have changed Michael’s or Ginger’s mind, so what was the point of joining Julian for his grand tour of America? I was just the bloody bassist. In the past few weeks it had become evident that the media didn’t give a shit about Puerity. Puerity didn’t boost TV ratings, Julian did. The only reason Ginger, Michael, and I were on TV was because we were part of the package. In every box of assorted chocolates there are pieces that everybody likes and there are pieces that nobody likes. Ginger, Michael, and I were the coffee mocha pralines in Puerity. Nobody wanted us, at least nobody in the media. The fandom was a different story of course. Each of us had their own set of fans, and that was fine. But in America we weren’t going to play for fans. We were going to play for the media, and since all the media only cared about Julian, there really wasn’t any point in us being there.

Besides, there was one media person who actually did care about me, but she was back home in the UK, and I wanted to be with her. And that’s why I went home back with Ginger and Michael. We didn’t even go through immigrations when we arrived at La Guardia, so technically we never even set foot on American soil. Tholen just gave us a new flight crew and a couple of sandwiches and off we went.

The flight back to Heathrow was very different from the flight to JFK. Nobody talked. We were all busy thinking about the impact the decision we had made would have, and I can only speak for meself here, but I think we were slowly coming to terms with the fact that the life we had grown used to in the last couple of weeks was over and would never be the same again. I was wondering whether we’d really done the right thing, and by the time we arrived at Heathrow I was pretty sure that we hadn’t. I thought I was going back to be with Momoko, but it wasn’t Momoko who was picking me up at the airport. It was me mum. And she was pretty pissed off. I hadn’t seen her in two or three weeks, and even though she may not have been the best mum in the world, she was still me mum. I smiled and wanted to hug her when I saw her standing there, it was just a natural reflex. But me mum didn’t seem to have a similar reflex. She didn’t smile when she saw me. She didn’t hug me or say hello or ask me how I’d been.

“Get in the bloody car!”

That’s all she said.

The ride home from the airport took about 40 minutes, and they were the longest 40 minutes of me life. Mum still didn’t talk to me, and she didn’t even turn on the radio. It was a deadly silence interrupted only by her frequent cursing at other drivers.

“So how’s dad?” I asked her at one point.

“You’ve ruined his career, how do you think he is?” was her reply, filled with the usual invocation of guilt that me mum’s religion—and, in fact, her whole life—was based on. I didn’t bother to pursue this conversation any further. Nothing had changed, and nothing ever would.

Except for the fact that I didn’t really care anymore.

I had always, me whole life, tried to be a good boy. I had always tried to please me mum. But nothing I had ever done had been quite good enough for her, and nothing ever would. I was only 17, but maybe it was finally time to grow up and live me own life, independent of me family. I wanted to call Momoko, but if I took out me mobile now, I’d probably have it taken away, so I decided to wait until I was back home in me room. It was a smart decision. It was a grown up decision. It made me feel proud and chuffed, because at that moment I knew that I would not let meself be bullied by me own family any longer.
Fuck them
, I thought.
Fuck them all
. They didn’t want me, and I didn’t need them. So for the rest of the ride I just sat there in the back of the car, smiling because I had finally grown up, and it felt great.

The Gospel According to Michael – 13

It was late in the evening when we arrived back at Heathrow. There was no limousine to pick us up, so we had to walk a hundred metres across the tarmac to the terminal.

“So what are you guys gonna do next?” I asked as we were waiting in line for passport control.

“Stay inside,” Tummy said with a wry smile. “I’ll probably be grounded until me 30th birthday. There is no way me mum is gonna let me get away with ... all this.”

“Right,” I said. “Well, keep in touch, will you?”

Tummy nodded. “If she doesn’t confiscate me mobile as well.”

“What about you, Ginger?”

“I don’t know.” She looked tired. “Now that I’m rich, maybe I’ll take a little vacation in the sun somewhere. I don’t know.”

“I see.”

“So what about you, Michael?”

I shrugged. “Don’t know. Go into hiding, I guess. I’ve spent way too much time on TV recently. I’ll probably just lock myself in my basement for a couple of weeks to work on MINDY and only come out to eat and poop.”

“Eww,” Tummy said in mock disgust. “TMI, Michael. Way TMI.” I could tell he had been waiting for an opportunity to use that newly learned expression on someone.

As we walked out of customs and into the arrivals hall, we saw Tummy’s mum and Ginger’s parents waiting for us. Mrs Lewis completely ignored Ginger and me, and snatched Tummy away so quickly that we didn’t even have the time to say good-bye. Meanwhile, Ginger ran straight into her parents’ arms and hugged them both.

“Need a lift, Michael?” Mr Saunders asked.

I shook my head. “No, thank you, Mr Saunders. My dad just texted me. He’s on his way.”

“All right then.”

Ginger and her parents waved good-bye to me and left. I dragged my feet through the arrivals hall. Dad had texted me to meet him at the information point at the south end of the terminal. The airport was still rather busy at that time of the night—it was the summer holidays after all—so I carefully negotiated my way through the crowds of arriving passengers and those who we there to pick them up. When I came by a waiting area where a giant flat screen TV was tuned to MMC News24, I stopped. They were showing that now infamous scene from St Peter’s Square with Mario and Luigi wrestling Julian to the ground and handcuffing him. It was the footage that I had shot myself with the camera on my mobile, the footage that ended with Luigi walking towards the camera and saying, “Basta!”

I made a mental note to check my emails again for messages from various news organizations asking to license our copyrighted content, because apparently I had missed those among the flood of emails notifying me of new tweets, YouTube comments, and music purchases through our website.

Next they showed our release from the police station in Rome. That footage had been shot by Cameraron, and it showed Momoko talking into the camera as we got into the limousine in the background and Tholen walking up to her and kissing her on the cheek. The report ended with a long shot view of Tholen’s private jet taking off from Fiumicino. Momoko and her crew must have followed us to the airport.

Suddenly I felt someone tugging on my sleeve. I turned around and looked into the freckled face of a 14- or 15-year-old girl with long blonde hair and a big toothy smile. She was wearing a school uniform which seemed rather out of place at an airport at 10:30 in the evening in the middle of the summer holidays, but then I remembered that new fashion trend that had inadvertently been created by Julian and that our fans had so eagerly taken to. The girls held a notebook and a pen in her hands.

“You’re Michael,” she said excitedly.

“What?”

“Are you Michael Carling?” From Puerity?”

And I just said, “No. Sorry.”

I turned around and walked away, pulling the hood of my jacket over my head to prevent other people from recognizing me. I felt miserable. I felt sorry for that little girl who probably just wanted my autograph, and I felt ashamed that I had reached a point where I would publicly deny who I was. Once again I felt anger towards Julian, simply because it was such an easy and convenient thing to do.

I made my way to the information point and waited for my dad with my nose on the ground, trying not to make eye contact with anyone until finally a big, strong hand landed on my shoulder and made me turn around.

“Hey, dad,” I said.

“Hey son.”

I flung my arms around him and gave him a great big hug that probably went on for a bit too long to be inconspicuous. When I finally let go of him, my dad looked around and asked, “Where’s Julian?”

“I guess you haven’t been watching the news, have you?”

“Not since your concert for the Pope, no.”

“Right,” I said. “He decided to stay in America with Tholen and, you know, milk his fame some more.”

“I see.” Dad took my chin in his hand and forced me to look him in the eyes. “You all right, son?”

“Yeah,” I said as convincingly as I could manage. “Just a bit tired. Can we go home?”

“Sure.”

Dad took me to our car and onto the motorway towards Finchley. By the time we passed through Brent Cross I had told him everything, from our spontaneous detour to Rome, our first encounter with Mario and Luigi at the Colosseum, our arrest at St Peter’s, our night in jail, to our flight to New York and the discussion we’d had with Julian about whether or not we should go through with Tholen’s impromptu plan of touring the States.

The more I told Dad about it all, the better I felt. It was a great relief finally being able to talk to someone who was close enough to me to understand me but not so closely involved with the band himself that I had to edit my story and hold anything back out of consideration for somebody else’s feelings. There were things that I couldn’t tell Ginger or Tummy but that I could tell my dad. However, just because I could tell Dad everything doesn’t mean that I did. There were some details that I held back even from him. I didn’t want to tell him that I did feel jealous about having to share Julian with the rest of the world, and I didn’t want to tell him that I felt abandoned by Julian and his decision to stay in America. Dad noticed that I didn’t tell him everything that was on my mind. He noticed how I clenched my fists and how my voice became shaky every time I mentioned Julian, but he was kind and considerate enough not to pry.