Black
Chick, White Guy
Chapter
24
“So he’s a completely different person -- he doesn’t remember anything -- because he ran the car they were in into a tree?” Justin asked in disbelief.
“Yeah,” I whispered. It was later that day and my voice still hadn’t returned. Justin, Mike and I were watching ‘General Hospital’, my favorite show in the world. “See, he was drunk. And before the accident Jason was really good and kind, so he jumped in the car to try to save his brother. The accident made him evil and uncaring.” To me it all made perfect sense, but I was beginning to see how someone just tuning in would be confused.
He studied the TV mounted on the wall. “This is the dumbest show I ever heard of,” he complained. “First you have a mobster who never gets convicted after how many years? Like, ten? And then the bald cop has been up his ass all this time and never got any evidence? And why is that lawyer who acts all smart representing him if he’s so bad? I thought you said she was a member of that family with the creepy guy dressed in black and was rich, so why is she even working? Because--”
“Shhh!” Mike and I said in unison and Justin looked irritated.
Who knew Mike was a die-hard fan like me? I guess it never came up in conversation before but when I tuned in to the ABC soap line-up, he sat right down and we’d been discussing the plots all day, giving our personal opinions. Unfortunately we got a little too involved and that meant Justin had no idea what was going on. Up until that show he occupied himself with playing the Game Boy he gave to me as a gift, but he remembered Luke and Laura and decided to try to watch.
“You guys are weird,” he told us, then watched the last few minutes of the show in silence. “I don’t get why people were ever obsessed with this show. Luke is, like, ninety years old, and Laura’s fat.” He had a point, but they were Luke and Laura. You don’t talk sh*t about them!
Mike and I exchanged knowing glances. He said, “You don’t remember the glory days, man. They used to be the sh*t,” he said fondly, and I nodded in agreement.
“I remember watching their wedding,” I reminisced. “Remember when Elizabeth Taylor was Helena?”
“Yeah,” Mike said, all excited, “and remember when Scotty caught the bouquet? I still think he was justified in being pissed after they--”
“Enough!” Justin interrupted. “It’s over, my God! What is wrong with you people?” He looked at Mike. “And since when are you obsessed with soaps operas? I’m bringing a VCR and some movies in here tomorrow, I swear.” Poor Justin. He was born the year Luke and Laura got married, I think, or just before. He had no idea what we were talking about and I know he hated us having something in common that didn’t involve him.
“Everybody knows Luke and Laura,” Mike said loftily. It’s true, everyone does.
The thing is, Justin spent his formative years actually doing something productive as opposed to me and Mike, couch potatoes extraordinaire. He’s ignorant about lots of things in a way, like, he was oblivious to some of the things that I took for granted that everyone would know -- like Luke and Laura, term papers, or pep rallies. Generally anything that I knew that came from being a regular kid, he had no knowledge about. It frustrated him, but on the other hand, he was a lot more worldly than I was in many ways. Still, when he didn’t know something he got a major attitude.
“No, everybody doesn’t,” he snapped, picking up the remote attached to my bed and switching the channel. “Since I’m paying for this, I’m picking the next thing we watch.” He’d been outraged that we had to pay a couple of dollars per day to watch television. Just to shut him up I’d started to pay it, but he insisted that it was the principle that mattered -- ‘we’ were paying thousands of dollars for me to stay there so the least they could do was provide us with television. Again, he had a point, but it didn’t change anything. We still had to pay.
We settled down to watch TRL, and he was gratified when their video for "I Drive Myself Crazy" or whatever the long title is made number one again. Bored after the soaps were over, Mike decided to head out and go home for a little while. I never knew he was born and raised in D.C.
“Now I can hang out with you when I’m off,” he had joked, and I smiled but secretly thought, not on a bet.
Really, he wasn’t that bad. Annoying, yeah, but he was actually a lot of fun, especially when we’d watched soaps together. He and JC had both looked really worried that morning when they came to see me after I was moved into my private room, even bringing me some flowers from the gift shop. Justin gave me roses, too. I made a big deal over them because it was just a nice thing to do. JC hung around for a little bit but caught a ride from Sasha when she went home to sleep. Mike stayed and asked all kinds of questions, and at first I thought he was there because of Justin’s safety, but now I know he really cared about how I was doing.
I was still feeling rotten. My regular doctor stopped by and checked me over, but I was still hooked up to IV’s and he didn’t anticipate me going anywhere for another couple of days at the earliest. Sasha fired question after question at him -- she’d talked to Jen, who was a pre-med major and at the time was about to start med school, so she had a list of things to ask. In a case of really bad timing, a nurse had just given me another dose of pain medicine so I couldn’t quite follow everything. Justin followed along and explained it to me when I was a bit more lucid.
They still thought there might be a clot so I stayed hooked up to the blood thinner until I went down to x-ray for another scan. Mike and Justin waited for me and when I got back, I slept for a few hours while they watched talk shows and played cards or something. Besides some personal things, Sasha brought me books, magazines, Monopoly, the Game Boy and a deck of cards. I never did use any of that stuff except for the game because I felt so bad, but I was glad she brought them because otherwise Justin would’ve gone crazy.
I watched the video for a while. The group was running around in silk pajamas singing the song that I probably hated the most of all while these trite, sentimental scenes played out. Ever since I met him, I wondered what Justin really thought about the music they sang. What better time to ask?
“Which song is your favorite out of the ones you guys sing?” I tried to broach the subject tactfully. He was really sensitive about everything.
“Umm ... I don’t know. I guess ... umm ...” he looked off into the distance, thinking. “I can’t pick. Which is your favorite?”
That was easy. Not because I liked so many of their songs, but because I really really liked one of them. “I Want You Back!” I said in a rush. “You already know that, J.” Truthfully, I found most of their songs cheesy, but I’d loved that one from the first time I heard it. Still do. As for the rest ... well, let’s just say that I paid lots of attention to their dancing on certain songs. “So which one is yours?”
“I guess For the Girl,” he finally decided. “I mean ... we didn’t really pick those songs. Lou picked them for us, mostly.”
“That explains the label change,” I said and we both fell apart, laughing at my little joke.
The guys had just publicly announced that they were leaving their current record company, TransContinental Records or TransCon, to move to Jive Records. That would’ve been great except they were still under contract to Lou Pearlman, the man who owned TransCon. By all accounts he was a bloodsucking leech who was ripping them off. He did the same thing to the Backstreet Boys, only they sued him earlier in the year and got out of their contract -- they were allowed to sign with another label but Lou still got a percentage of everything they owned. Now ‘N Sync wanted to break away as well and was taking the first steps towards freedom. Johnny Wright, their manager, was behind their decision and was helping them sort through the maze of legalities. I wholeheartedly approved of him since he got his start with the New Kids. Anyone okay with Donnie Wahlberg was okay with me.
“How’re things going with the switch?” When they announced their plans, the Backstreet Boys had reacted by threatening to sue Jive if they signed ‘N Sync. Their intense hatred of ‘N Sync puzzled me since they’d once been friends -- Johnny had been their manager, too, and the groups had mingled lots of times before. According to Justin, the only ones they got along with were AJ McLean and Howie Dorough. AJ was cool but I didn’t want Justin anywhere near Howie -- he was the biggest loser I’d ever seen. But that’s a whole other story.
He ran a hand through his hair. “Jive still wants us, but Lou’s acting like an asshole. So’s Backstreet, but we expected it from those f*ckers.”
I coughed some more and he patted my back while I caught my breath. The hospital still had me on oxygen which helped a lot, but it didn’t help with my coughing fits. Justin shuddered. “Jesus, that sounds like it hurts, T. Sit up, let me rub your back.”
“I can’t,” I whispered, “I’m too tired.” I fell back in the bed and he got up from his chair and squeezed in next to me.
“My poor baby,” he said consolingly as he slipped his arm under me, pulling me against him. At first I made everyone stay away from me out of fear that I was contagious, but the doctor told me that whatever I had wasn’t catching so I was free to hack away. Burrowing into his chest, I went back to our conversation.
“I don’t understand why they hate you so much.” It really bugged me because I loved Backstreet’s music. Now my loyalty was divided -- Justin was my boyfriend, so I couldn’t justify liking the same people who insulted him. “Why do they care if you’re on the same label? It’s not gonna hurt them ... their album is, like, the top seller of the year.”
He shrugged. “Who cares? We gave up giving a f*ck about them a long time ago, T. I mean, JC used to f*cking share an apartment with Kevin and now he won’t even say hello ... f*ck them. Our next CD’s gonna blow Millennium out of the water, watch.”
Preparations were already starting for the group to begin recording, but their problems with Lou were holding things up. JC was coordinating the whole effort and Justin was pretty involved, too. As soon as he finished shooting his part in a TV movie in Canada, he was heading to Florida to record. The original plan was for me to go along with him to Canada and I prayed that I’d be over this cold or whatever it was before it interfered with our plans. I didn’t want to be away from him again. However, I was worried about their next album if their first one was any indication of what was to come. They definitely had the talent to compete with Backstreet, but so far their material was way behind.
“Who’re you guys working with?” That was a nice way to see what they had planned, I thought. If I had only known then how right he was -- they blew the f*ck up with No Strings Attached.
He pulled me tighter against him and rubbed my arms lightly. “We’re gonna try to do some of it ourselves, I mean, me and JC are. Both of us are gonna try to write this time. But probably Max Martin, the dude in Sweden. We want to work with R&B producers this time, too, not just pop. The thing is, we can’t just do a 180 and go completely hard-core, you know? We gotta do it slowly.”
That made sense. I just really hoped that he was right and their next CD was successful. I was all too familiar with boy bands trying to do more adult music -- so far Michael Jackson was the only person to succeed. But at what cost?
“I can’t wait ... I’ll buy, like, a hundred copies,” I said. “Did you already start writing? Can I see? Will you write a song for me?” I knew I was asking a million questions, but I loved listening to him talk about music. He was so passionate about it. If I let him he’d go on forever, talking about all the things he wanted to do and the direction he wanted the group’s music to go.
Who am I kidding? I would’ve listened to him recite the phone book at that point in our relationship.
Anyway, he took me by surprise again. “Yeah, actually ... I’ve been playing around with a song about you,” he told me. I sat up.
“You did?” I croaked. I had just been joking about him writing a song for me ... had he really? “What is it? Can I hear it?”
He picked up my IV free hand and kissed the back of it. “It’s not really ready ... there’s a melody and I’m working on the words with some of our band. Can you wait a little while?” I could’ve waited forever for anything he asked.
“How’d I get so lucky to find you, Justin?” He was probably worth millions of dollars, idolized by girls the world over, and the day after he performed on freakin’ MTV, he was laying with my disease-riddled ass in an uncomfortable hospital bed. Anybody else in his position would be asleep at some luxury hotel in Manhattan, recovering from partying the night before. But he wasn’t doing that. He was with me, taking care of me.
God, I loved him.
“We found each other, I think,” he said slowly. We’d had variations of this conversation before. Justin was a huge believer in fate and truly thought that nothing was a coincidence. “You and I were meant to be, Tara Wallace. How else can you explain how perfect we are together?”
To me, even now, I think his whole belief in fate bringing us together was right. I mean, we really weren’t very much alike at all and, barring that chance meeting, probably would never have crossed paths. I’m Black, older, had never dated outside of my race before and pretty conservative. He was a nineteen-year-old pop star from Tennessee with a penchant for video games, Black women, urban music and fashion who got high on a regular basis. While I liked most pop hits, I was pretty much oblivious to the whole resurgence of teen stars and couldn’t tell the difference between Backstreet, ‘N Sync and 98 Degrees if you paid me. And the guys I dated tended to be on the intellectual side and somewhat serious.
Although when I think about it, what I just said makes it seem like Justin isn’t very smart. He is. He’s actually very intelligent and open-minded -- it’s just that at the time we dated, he was still relatively young and learning about a lot of things. But he reads a lot more than you’d think and is extremely knowledgeable about world events. I could take him anywhere and he fit in with anyone, usually becoming the life of the party. On the other hand, he loves to get high and drunk and zone out much more than I ever grew comfortable with. I think that was sort of a good thing, though. What happened is that we ended up balancing each other out perfectly -- I calmed him down and he made me more outgoing. Each of us brought to the table the qualities that the other lacked.
It’s like, together we made a whole. When I find the perfect person for me, the one that I can trust and the one that I love, I want us to fit together like that. Without all of the bullsh*t.
Because despite all of the things that I described, we had major problems due to his ego and my independence. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again -- Justin is so spoiled that he wants everything his way. He was raised that way and his chosen career path and success only made that worse. Because his little brothers are raised in a different home and he’s so much older, sharing attention, toys or anything with them was never an issue. I can understand that and relate to it, being an only child myself, but I also wasn’t used to having to adapt to someone else’s lifestyle, especially one so different from what I’m used to. I have a real problem completely opening myself up to anyone -- I’m a true Cancer sign, with the hard shell, a protective covering to keep from being hurt.
The typical girlfriend of someone like Justin is happy just to be around them, ready to follow them anywhere and change their life to suit their guy. While I was happy to do that for a time, I definitely had plans beyond that of being a girlfriend or companion to someone else. But having your own ambitions doesn’t really mesh when you’re with a celebrity, not to mention the problems of dealing with nosy fans and reporters that make you second-guess yourself. Justin told me that people would start to make me doubt my own sanity, and I thought he was being melodramatic but he was right.
But at that time, none of that was a real issue.
“I don’t know, Justin Timberlake,” I replied, closing my eyes. My medicine was making sleepy again, and being in his arms always relaxed me. “Doesn’t matter, anyway ... what matters is you’re here.”
“No, baby ... what matters is you getting better,” he stroked my hair, which was rapidly becoming a matted mess from laying in bed. “You have to get out of here so I can take you to Florida and you can lay out by the pool and eat oranges right off of the trees.” Mmm ... that sounded good.
I yawned, my mouth opening wide. “What do you have to do in Florida?” His movie was starting to film in Canada and I knew he had to be there in a few weeks, but I didn’t know what he needed to do in Florida. “I thought you’d go home to Tennessee.” He had a house in Orlando but his home was with his mom and secretly I was waiting for him to invite me there. I’d already met Lynn, of course, but not his dad, brothers, step-dad and grandparents. And he loved his grandparents.
A show about feuds in hip-hop came on and I knew his mind was focused on it. “I wasn’t sure where I was going until you got sick, then I said f*ck everything else until I knew you were okay. I mean, I knew I’d want you with me wherever I decided to go, but since you’re sick I think Florida might be better. I just saw my Mom, it’s not a big deal.”
“What about your grandparents and everyone?” His mind was elsewhere and I was drifting into sleep -- my voice was barely audible.
He shifted in the bed, moving his long legs around to get more comfortable. I could tell he knew I was going to sleep and was preparing to lay there for the long haul. “Maybe we’ll go see them after we get to Florida, if we have time before Canada. I want you to meet them and I want to see my little brothers, I bought some toys and sh*t for them. But you come first right now, baby ... they’re doing fine. You’re my #1 priority.”
That was enough for me. With all my questions answered, I stopped fighting and went right to sleep, dreaming of Justin feeding me oranges under the hot Florida sun.