A Series of (Un)fortunate Events Influenced by My Chemical Romance
May, 2017
Mark and I meet for the first time at a Sum 41 show when he drops from the sky directly on top of me, knocking me onto my back amid a rampaging mosh pit.
Well, that’s a lie. We’d spoken for approximately two minutes the Wednesday before, when he’d overheard me talking to a mutual friend about how I couldn’t wait for Carolina Rebellion—a three-day festival headlined by some of the most influential bands in the rock-and-roll scene—that weekend. Our conversation consisted of a compliment to the My Chemical Romance shirt I wore, then a brief proposal that we meet up at the concert, which he also happened to be attending. We didn’t talk much after exchanging contact information, and we gave up pretty quickly on finding one another once we realized that the venue would be packed. But, suddenly, he is right here, his left elbow digging into my collarbone and his blue hair in my mouth. Over ten thousand people in attendance, and he is the one who levels me.
Delirious from a combination of adrenaline, concert euphoria, and the sheer what-the-fuck of it all, neither of us can do anything but laugh, even as the chipped concrete and dirt of the ground presses harshly into the backs of my legs. His head falls forward, nose digging hard into my cheek like a talon. The music continues around us, the reverb of the bass pinballing around in my chest and attacking my lungs, but we are in a completely different place.
There’s a specific type of thrill in seeing someone and knowing with certainty that you will one day hate one another. That feeling shoots through your veins like blue dye, exposing all of the vulnerabilities beneath your skin. You are similar sides of a magnet ignoring the ways that you repel one another. All I can think when I look up at Mark is that this will not end well, but I can’t find any resolve in myself to avoid that disaster. Surrounded by a forest of tattooed legs and scraped knees, his laugh is all I can hear, high and clear. He is all I can see.
I think to myself that several eons have passed, but we can’t have been on the ground for more than a minute before a middle-aged man, obviously experienced with rough crowds, grabs the two of us by our shirts and hoists us to our feet, shouting over the noise of the show to ask if we are alright. Nothing feels broken, so I nod, and he disappears to find another fallen person to save.
I glance over at Mark, expecting him to disappear, too. A brief, chance encounter put to rest. A couple inches taller than me, his hair is soaked with water and sweat, bangs clinging to his forehead. He chews his pierced lip between his teeth, shoulders moving in time with the song coming from the stage. We’re so close together that I can see the small pops of green in his eyes.
Instead of wandering off, though, he shocks me by leaning closer. “Emma, right?” he asks, lips brushing against my ear.
I can only nod.
With a grin, he takes one of my scraped, dirt-covered hands into his, lacing our fingers together. “This song is my favorite, so don’t just stand there!” he tells me. And, with the confidence of someone who has absolutely nothing to lose, I nod, smiling wide as we both lift our heads and hands up, singing with the band.
October 2017
I dress as Gerard Way, the lead singer of My Chemical Romance, for Halloween. I straighten my long, nearly black hair so it hangs limply around my shoulders, and I apply maroon Manic Panic eyeshadow around my eyes to make them look even more exhausted. My outfit consists of a black button-up, a red tie, and dirty black Converse.
Mark, dressed as Robert Smith from The Cure, immediately high-fives me, telling me I nailed it. “You look like you’re on a lot of drugs,” he says with a chuckle.
The two of us stroll careless down the streets, rolling our eyes at the young children dragging their tired parents to go trick-or-treating. The sky is streaked with enough red and pink that it looks like an organ sliced in two, swallowing the open space.
As we walk, I think about who I am dressed as, a man who medicated himself with alcohol and whatever narcotics he could find in order to make himself get on stage. He separated the shy creature he truly was from the persona he adapted for his fans—a vampiric mystery, unafraid to moan or scream or exist—and he became dependent on the high to function. He hid behind it.
I know a thing or two about dependency. I look over at the boy beside me as we walk, hair now brown instead of the bright blue from when we met, and the thought of him being with anyone else fills my throat with a thousand wasps, humming angrily and ready to sting. He makes me feel alive in the best ways with his spontaneity—the blood pumping in my ears when we steal the keys to his father’s golf cart and drive down Ocean Boulevard, the hyper-awareness of every nerve in my shoulder as he lays his head there while we sit on his roof, watching the sunset—but takes a knife to my chest in the same instant, leaving another piece of death each time. He blows hot and cold, going from a zephyr to a tornado in the span of seconds, and I can never tell if he loves me the way I love him.
Tonight is one of the good ones, though, and we end up at the abandoned skatepark where we spend most of our time together. The sun has fully set, leaving only the moon and the fluorescent lights of the gas station a quarter of a mile away for us to see by. Scaling the chain link fence and hopping over, our laughter fills air otherwise occupied by the sound of passing cars on the highway.
Mark turns to look back at me as he lands on his feet, lips curled upward, and asks me if I want to dance.
“To what?” I reply with a raised eyebrow, trying to emulate Gerard and separate myself from the kick-drum of my heart, the part of me that wants to be loved.
In response, he walks over to the half-pipe a few feet away and taps his phone a couple times before placing it atop the platform. Soft music plays from the speakers, and Mark runs up the metal surface until he’s on the platform, too. He extends a hand to me, silently telling me to join him.
I do.
Without another word, he wraps his arms around my waist, and we sway from side to side. He presses his lips softly to mine, whispering an I love you before tucking his chin over the top of my head, resting it there. His weight is comforting against me, a relief like that of hot air blown onto cold hands.
We dance as the song plays through. Then another. And still, we stand there, swaying.
January, 2018
“I don’t know what ever gave you the idea that I like you,” Mark mutters, looking away from me.
We are sitting on his clothing-strewn bed, watching old music videos on YouTube, and I have asked exactly what is happening between us. For months, we’ve danced around the idea of being together, but nothing has come of it except an unrelenting tension that pushes itself through the cracks of silence between our conversations, thick in the air.
He continues, turning back towards me. “I mean, we’re friends. That’s all.”
I avert my eyes. His room is messy, teal walls covered in posters, license plates, and sharpie. My gaze lands on a picture of My Chemical Romance, taken during the tour for their second album. In it, Gerard Way is pale, holding a microphone tighter than the grip his depression has around his throat. This picture is from the night he got an entire eight-ball of cocaine and did almost all of it himself, one of the lowest points his addiction ever dragged him to. Yet, somehow, he was able to hide the extent of his struggle from most everyone around him.
I turn back to Mark, who taps his foot and fiddles with his lip ring. “All I asked is what’s going on. I didn’t mean to make any assumptions,” I tell him, tone appeasing and apologetic. I don’t want to start a fight.
“Okay. Then don’t.” He flops onto his back, sighing, and picks up his phone. He goes silent.
I am quiet, too. I berate myself for liking the way his bleached hair frames his face, for being unable to stand up for myself. I want to tell him that I’ve had enough of how he only seems to put effort into talking to me when he’s bored, or that I’m sick of being told I’m wanted when I’m not. I want to ask him why he kissed me if he didn’t want anything more than friendship. I want to crack his skull open and observe his brain with a microscope, just to see if I can find any evidence of whether he has ever cared about me to begin with.
I don’t say any of this, though. I mumble that I’m sorry before settling on my back, too, letting the silence take over the room. I look back over to the picture of Gerard, and I understand—at least a little bit—why he let himself suffer for as long as he did: when you become dependent on something, there is no discerning the good parts from the bad. Just as Gerard couldn’t separate the boundless confidence of a high from the way withdrawal hacked away at his brain and body, I cannot separate the way Mark actively hurts me from the boy I consider my best friend.
May, 2018
In the summer of 2004, My Chemical Romance played a show in Osaka, Japan to a crowd of more than ten thousand people. This was the height of Gerard Way’s borderline-suicidal addiction, and he spent the entire day drinking sake and whatever else to forget his anxiety about performing in a new place. By the time of the show, he was blackout drunk, wandering beneath the stage during the middle of the set while the rest of the band wondered if making music was worth dealing with this mess. After the performance, he violently threw up into a trash can for forty-five consecutive minutes and then swore he’d never touch a substance again.
The air outside of Mark’s house is warm. Gentle. A soft breeze combs through my hair, and I can feel the sun on my scalp, heavy like his chin atop my head all those months ago. I fiddle with the My Chemical Romance wristband I’m wearing, my eyes directed toward the ground. The environment is calm, but my insides are in the midst of a category-five hurricane. Power lines are collapsing, and trash cans are flying across the street. Everything is falling apart. I can’t keep trying to hold it together.
Everyone reaches a breaking point. A place that cannot be forgiven or forgotten. I am standing on the top step of Mark’s porch, fiddling with a My Chem wrist band, when he tells me that nothing about us is organic, but manufactured. He has pretended to care for me out of some obligation to his pity, he says. Every speaker-piercing laugh we have shared over the phone—all the sunsets we have spent on his roof hiding from our families, staring at a sky collaged with color and speaking the long-buried parts of us back into existence—have been fabrications. He spits these lies as if they will save him from the hurt of things ending between us.
“Are you even gonna look at me?” he snaps.
My fingers stop their fidgeting, and my head whips up so fast that I can hear the bones in my neck cracking. I narrow my eyes at him, standing there with his hands shoved into the pocket of his hoodie, the nose piercing I gave him a couple weeks before glinting in the sunlight. His hair is spiked up, and he looks every bit the kind of nonchalant douchebag we used to make fun of. I could punch him.
However, when I speak, my voice is calm. “I am looking at you,” I say, my voice firm. “I have been for nearly a year, now. Maybe you should open your eyes.”
There’s a split second where his expression conveys his shock at my words, and I’m reminded of the day we met, the almost-wonder in his eyes, mouth open and on the verge of saying something earth-destroying. But he quickly snaps it closed, returning to his glare..
This is not the same person I have found myself so dependent upon. There is no trace of him. He has been replaced by someone colder, uncaring, and nothing remains of the smiles we would share as we rambled down the streets of his neighborhood with music blasting, the childish doodles in Sharpie that we’d dot each others’ hands with. . Not a single part of me has the strength to keep waiting for him to want me when I know he never will.
He tells me to grow up with a voice like that of an angry child, and I just turn my back, walking away. I do not cry.
November, 2019
The general admission floor of the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach smells like weed despite the ‘No Smoking’ signs plastered against the walls. It’s deceivingly sweet until it mixes with the stink of sweat from nearly three thousand bodies packed close together, as well as the occasional whiff of warm beer. The room is dimly lit by blue lights on the stage, still being set up by the roadies for the band that is about to play, and there is barely enough room to sway from side to side without brushing shoulders or elbows with a stranger. This is the environment of a sold-out concert. The familiarity is comforting.
I stand at the front of the crowd, the front of my body leaning on the barricade that separates the floor from the stage. Someone’s chest grazes my back, and I keep my feet planted in order to avoid getting knocked over. The entire crowd is jittery, anticipating the start of the show, and there’s a nervous excitement that races through every bone and joint in my body before settling in my heart, which beats quickly.
This is one of the first concerts I’ve been to since Mark and I stopped speaking, and it’s strange being here alone. I shift my weight from foot to foot and watch one of the crew test a guitar, the crunchy tone making my teeth buzz. Then, there’s a tap on my left arm.
I turn and am met by a girl with hair dyed the color of blood, several piercings in her nose and lips. She wears well-applied eyeliner and a bright smile. “Did you hear that they got back together?!” she shouts above the noise of the people around us, leaning her face close to my ear and gesturing to the My Chemical Romance shirt I’m wearing. Talking to someone in a crowd like this is always intimate, even if that person is a stranger.
I have heard. On October 31st, after more than six years of being broken up, My Chemical Romance reunited, all of the members sober for the first time in their history as a band. Gerard Way is no longer a wraith of a man, having shed his dependence on substances like an extra layer of skin.
I am about to reply when some of the overhead speakers blare to life, feeding the crowd with music while we wait. In an almost comical bout of irony, the first few notes from one of My Chem’s songs play throughout the venue, and almost everyone begins to sing along. The red-haired girl and I smile at one another, and she joins in with the singing.
For a moment, I just stand there, closing my eyes and listening to the crowd of voices. I think about this band, which has witnessed my best and worst moments, always cradling the back of my head with a gentle hand before it can crack against the ground. I think about Gerard Way, who has overcome addiction enough to stand on a stage once again, this time without any safety net. I think about how you can come so dependent upon a person that they become a lifeline, even if the life they feed into you only kills you slowly, and how sometimes it’s okay to sever a connection to save yourself.
I keep my eyes shut, black vision flashing with blue light, and raise my head up. I sing as the chorus arrives, shouting to the ceiling and universe that I am not afraid to keep on living. I am not afraid to walk this world alone.
I am not.