Part 17: Bobby

“Jesus Christ, that was bad,” Bobby Melrose said to himself, as Our Beautiful Misery left the stage for a second time. 

The last notes of “Don’t Say Goodbye (It’s Only Goodnight)” were still ringing in the air, but already the lights were on, other music was playing, and the fans were pouring out of the venue, scattering like ants. That was the idea, of course: get them out quickly, before they had time to process the experience. Keep them impulsive, keep them energized. It had been studied extensively. Some would stop at the merch tables on the way out; the rest would go to diners, to bars, trying desperately to keep up the momentum of the night. The ones who didn’t buy anything at the show would regret it. They would feel the experience start to slip away, to recede, and they’d have nothing tangible to hold onto for comfort. 

So they’d go online, they’d go to the band’s website, and they’d send themselves a shirt or a pin or a poster, which they would pretend was just as good as getting it at the show, but inwardly they’d promise themselves that next time they’d buy something at the show so they'd really have something to remember it by. And they’d believe it, too, because otherwise they’d have to admit that material goods didn’t keep memories alive, which in a capitalist culture would be like a medieval Christian admitting there was no God. 

The beauty of capitalism was that it always provided the answer to its own questions. If you weren’t satisfied by what you had, you didn’t have enough. Buy something, feel dissatisfied, buy more. An endless cycle. Bobby found it beautiful, the some way people might find it beautiful to contemplate the stars or the structure of an atom. The idea that he was part of it, too, did not bother him any more than it bothers a scientist to perceive his own place in the natural order. 

It wasn’t the show itself he found bad. That had been about what he’d expected, what he’d always assumed it was. Unoriginal drivel, but effective. 

No, it was Xander’s monologue in the second half that gnawed at Bobby as he watched the crowd disperse. An essential part of the formula, of course, and in theory it didn’t matter what he said. No matter what he said, the cogs of Teen Group B would eat it up and think it was genius. They had to. It was in their nature. 

The problem was that Xander didn’t understand that it didn’t matter what he said. He was under the impression that people were actually listening to him. Which, to the one person who was listening to him, was another sign that he was teetering on the edge of a breakdown that could upset the natural order and cost them both a lot of money. 

Bobby began to walk against the tide of bodies, towards the stage. The fans eyed him suspiciously. After he passed, many of them turned to each other (all in pairs, it seemed) and laughed at the very idea of his existence. He must look middle-aged to them. And his clothes - loose-fitting jeans and a dress shirt. Easily recognized in the business world as a compromise between professionalism and comfort, a way of saying, sure I’ll do up my buttons in the morning but I’m still just a regular guy. The mullet of clothes. 

But these kids did nothing halfway. They’d have understood a suit and tie, or a raggedy t-shirt and torn jeans - they could wrap their brains around any aesthetic, but an uncultivated appearance was foreign to them. 

That’s what separates us from them, Bobby thought. That’s why they’re so easy to market to. All they want is consistency. Slap the same label on ten different things and they’ll buy them all. 

Tomorrow was a rare, non-travelling day, which meant Xander ought to spend it writing songs for the new album. And that made it even more urgent that Bobby talk to him tonight. Because while Bobby considered himself a master of the music business, he couldn’t actually write music. He had once sat down and tried to pen the lyrics to an OBM song, just to prove to himself that he could, and it just didn’t happen. It should have been easy, but it wasn’t. It was like running a marathon, maybe: he knew exactly how it was done - you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and don’t stop - but that didn’t mean he could actually do it. 

He knew all the ingredients, but when he put them together, they just didn’t turn into a cake, and when Xander put them together they did.

It felt like a betrayal. Like when you finally acquiesce to carry an umbrella and you get wet anyway. Or when you brush and floss your teeth twice a day every day for six months and go to the dentist and it turns out you’ve got a cavity. You kept up your part of the bargain, but the world didn’t. 

So after that one frustrating half-hour, Bobby had never tried to write a song again. 

He briefly considered the idea of hiring a songwriter, but why waste the money when Xander was still sitting around for free. 

When Bobby reached the stage, the roadies and interns were hauling amps and speakers off stage at the steady pace of those who are paid by the hour but still care a little bit about proving that they’re not controlled by how they get paid.

“Where’s Cross?” Bobby shouted to no one in particular, and no one in particular answered. The bystander effect at play. 

Bobby was used to having his questions answered. He pointed at the closest guy, a scrawny, early-twenties, wife-beater-under-T-shirt type carrying a mic stand, and said: “You. Where’s Cross?” 

The guy shrugged. “I dunno.” 

“Well, find out.” 

“How?” 

“If I knew how to find out, don’t you think I could just find out myself?” Bobby snapped. 

The guy reverted to “I don’t know,” and kept carrying his mic stand offstage. As a form of revenge, Bobby decided he probably had a trashy girlfriend named Krystal, who you just knew even when he said it out loud was spelled with a K. 

Bobby gave it another shot, this time choosing a heavy-set woman whom, if you were forced, at gunpoint or in some sort of workplace-positivity-retreat-conference type setting, to compliment, you would probably call handsome. “Do you know where Xander went?” 

“Saw him heading backstage with a couple of groupies,” the woman said, jerking her thumb in the right direction. “Borderline age-of-consent. Might be worth checking on. I mean, if you care.” 

“What? Okay, thanks, Helen.” Bobby was irate now. It was his job to choose the girls for the Q-and-A sessions that Xander famously did after every show and actually did twice per tour. He knew how to pick the perfect ones: the ones with OBM fan pages that other people actually looked, the ones whose parents understood what an honor this was and would happily wait in the parking lot for an extra half-hour, the ones who were just plain-looking enough that the rest of the fans would always believe it could have been them instead, but attractive enough that they understood why it hadn't been. 

But if Xander had chosen fans for himself, he certainly would have chosen the wrong ones. He had a knack for that like Bobby had a knack for songwriting. 

Again, he wasn’t worried about what the fans would think. It was what Xander might think. 

Bobby didn’t bother to knock this time when he reached Xander’s dressing room, he just threw it open. He was no longer a modern suburban dad; he was that dad’s dad: deliberately and defiantly old school. To his surprise, he found Xander alone, in much the same position he had seen him earlier except that the TV was off. 

“What are you doing?” he sputtered, angry at having his expectations violated by the exact thing he wanted. Helen must have been lying. She should be fired. “Where are the girls?” 

“There are no girls. I’m writing the new album.” 

“You’re writing?” 

“Yeah, this is what writing looks like sometimes, Bobby. You think writing is only what happens when you’ve got a pen in your hands?” 

“Jesus Christ, Xander.” Bobby had been raised Catholic, but the only indications of that now were a preference for religious epithets and a distaste for wine, which he had been told again and again was literally blood (no matter how many times he said, ‘Yeah, okay, okay, but I mean really.”) 

“What? Doesn’t writing refer primarily to the act of creation, the making of something out of nothing. The subjective processes of the mind can never be observed directly, only inferred through their physical manifestations.” Xander tapped his finger to his forehead three times, a bit patronizingly. 

“Xan, I see exactly what you’re trying to do here, I can see through you so hard you’re not even transparent, you’re invisible,” Bobby replied. “You think that if you say more and more outlandish shit, someone’s going to eventually call you out on it. But that’s where you’re wrong. The bar for rock-star insanity is set so high you’ll never reach it. You’re not creative enough, sorry to tell you.” 

“What makes you think that’s what I’m doing?” 

“Oh, come on. I listened to your little speech tonight. I reread the interview you gave in The Prattler after BC came out.” 

“And . . .?” 

“And you’re trying to find a way out of being Xander Cross, by way of self-parody. Your favorite book was scratched on the walls of a Soviet prison camp? A book that doesn’t exist, by the way, in any language. You only listen to two obscure emo bands that broke up in the mid 90s and the ‘deep cuts’ of Miles Davis? Literally the most famous jazz musician in history, but you only like his worst music? That was bad enough, but then tonight . . . there’s no more beautiful music than a duck splashing in a river? Let me say it again. Jesus Christ.” 

Xander listened to this tirade with the face of someone who earnestly believes they are listening patiently, but is too busy praising themselves for their patience to actually be listening at all. “Are you done? Bobby, I’m just cultivating an image. Just like you’ve taught me to do. I’m sorry if I’m not doing it exactly the way you or the label wants me to . . .” 

“No, that’s what I thought at first, too,” Bobby said. “That’s why I didn’t say anything when I first read the interview. I thought you were just doubling down on your whole ‘I’m not a hero’ shtick, which was brilliant. What better way to trick someone into thinking they must have called you a hero! But you’re not doing the whole say I’m just a regular guy so that everyone is impressed with how humble I am thing, you actually want them to think you’re a regular guy.” 

“But I am just a regular guy.” 

“Well, obviously. But they’ll never believe that.” Bobby racked his brain for a metaphor, a parable. They were his relief in times of stress. “It’s like, some people will spend fifty-grand a year on a degree from Harvard just so they can go around saying that a degree from Harvard doesn’t mean anything and people will actually listen. But you’re the guy who spent all that money and now you really don’t think it means anything. And you don’t like how they’re only listening to you because you went to Harvard, because that means they aren’t really listening to you at all.” 

“Bobby, what the fuck are you talking about? It’s too late for paradoxes.” 

“I mean, you’ve got to realize, there’s nothing you can say to get these kids to stop thinking you’re a genius. You can’t break out of it. Ever. When you talked about depression and shit in that first interview, they glamorized the hell out of it. I think you caught that. Lots of kids saying they can’t leave their rooms or they’ll have a panic attack. But then when you refused to talk about it, they romanticized that, too. Like it’s so bad you can’t even talk about it, like those Vietnam vets who just shake their heads when you ask them about their service. And hell, if you told them you just made it all up and never even struggled with mental illness, they’d find a way to romanticize that, too. Because you’re the one saying it. No matter what you say, you’re always gonna be the one saying it.” 

“Or I can just stop saying things,” Xander responded. “I mean, that interview came out like that because he kept asking all these questions where, like, there’s no way to answer them without sounding like . . . well, like myself. Or like Xander Cross, at least. I was trying to say I’m just playing a character on stage, and it comes out sounding all demonic, and then I try to say I don’t mean it in a Satanic way, and then all of a sudden I have to insist I’m not a Satan-worshipper. Like, I bet Britttni never even gets asked if she’s a Satan-worshipper, does she?” 

“Not in so many words, no.” Bobby pulled his Blackberry out of his pocket and snuck a glance at the time. 11:52 PM. He set a personal goal to have this conversation wrapped up before midnight. “Xan, you’re right. Well, you’re not wrong at least. But it’s not the questions, or the answers you gave. It’s just the fact that you’re the one answering them.” That wasn’t working; he needed a different tack. “I know you said no paradoxes, Xan, but can I interest you in a parable? The words aren’t actually related.” 

“Fine. Go ahead.” 

“Are you familiar with the Tale of the Dissapointed Pilgrim, it’s about this guy, this super devoutly religious guy who spends his whole live saving up all his money so he can go visit this temple. I can’t remember if he’s a Buddhist or a Christian or what, or maybe he’s Muslim and he’s trying to get to Mecca, but it doesn’t really matter, they’re all bullshit anyway, right, Xan. So anyway, he finally gets to be, like, eighty years old or something and he’s got enough money saved up, he’s finally going to see that place he’s been dreaming of his whole life. Like this is the thing that got him through the day, he had one of those old-timey drudgery, why-unions-were-invented type of jobs. Labor type of jobs, you know. Never got married, never had kids, only cared about praying and being good and getting to go worship at this special temple or holy site or whatever. So finally he goes, he makes it there, and guess what. It sucks. It’s nothing like how he imagined it. He thought it would be this great transcendent experience, and it turns out, it’s just as ugly and boring as anywhere else in the world. He doesn’t feel any closer to God, he doesn’t have any profound realizations, so you know what he does. That’s a question, Xan, do you know what he does?” 

“Kills himself, probably.” 

“Bingo. That’s all you can do, right, that’s the only possible end to that story. One of only like, three possible endings for any story, by the way.” 

“So are you suggesting I kill myself?” 

“Jesus Christ, no, that’s the absolute worst thing you could do. That’d make you Xander Cross times a thousand, times a million. These kids would love a martyr of their own. You’d be eternally twenty-six, eternally handsome, your face plastered on t-shirts. Christ, look at James Dean, look at poor Kurt Cobain. You ever watch a James Dean movie? It makes ‘Yesterday’ sound like a goddamn party in comparison. But anyway, that guy have been better off just staying home where he could still hold on to that idea. That’s why you get married, that’s why you have kids. Because then when things are shit, you can look at them and say, oh, that’s why. And you get to pretend things could be better off somewhere else. But don’t actually go trying to make them better, because they aren’t any better.” 

Xander sighed heavily. “Bobby . . . I’m a hack.” 

“Yes!” Bobby sighed too, visibily relieved. “Exactly! That’s what I’ve been trying to get you to understand all night. You’re a hack. You’ve always been a hack. We’re all hacks, this whole world is nothing but hacks, so stop fighting it and just be one, please. Start writing the new album tomorrow. And I don’t mean sit-around write, I mean pen-to-paper write. I mean, like, someone’s a gun to your head and tells you to write, you’re not going to pontificate about the holistic nature of creativity and shit, you’re going to pick up the pen. Someone’s got a gun to your head and says name something blue, you’re not going to say colors are subjective and who’s to say appearances correspond to reality, no, you’re going to say the sky. Gun to your head, what was the Civil War about? Slavery. Not complex economic and cultural factors, slavery. Live like there’s a gun to your head, Xander. Live in the real world for a bit, please.” 

“So you’re saying there’s no authenticity? No genuine artistic creation? Nothing unpretentious and unfiltered and totally honest?” 

“No, no, no, Xander. There might be. But not for you.”