Disingenuous

16. The Water

2014

Jackson decided he was probably just going to kill himself, which felt dramatic.

But everything felt dramatic all the time and he was NOT doing well. He wasn't doing well at all and it was obvious. It was killing him.

After Dr. Evil came to see him, Jackson was suddenly very busy all the time and he didn't like it. He rationalized that being busy was supposed to help him because he wouldn't be stuck alone with his thoughts anymore, but he had no idea what he'd gotten himself into.

When he was in Europe, Beryl had made everything simple. He just showed up to things sometimes. If he had an idea Beryl tried to help make it happen, and when Beryl thought of something, she'd ask him how he felt about it. That wasn't the case at all with Dr. Evil and his team.

Jackson was withdrawing from alcohol and from the xannys and it was obvious. He knew that, and he was certain that someone on the team must have noticed that, but they still managed to drag him up the glass elevator in the building to a conference room where he signed agreements through a haze of exhaustion and borderline delusion. They convinced him to cut his hair, which he was used to doing himself with scissors and personal faith. It was shorter than he'd ever cut it and out of his eyes for the first time since leaving Idaho.

It was only a week later that they'd put up billboards advertising a New Year's Eve bash at the Moda Center in Portland hosted by the European star Jackson Knight. He wasn't even European, but it was like nobody cared at all. He had to google it because he didn't know where it was, and that's when he realized that the Moda Center had been called the Rose Garden when he was last in Portland. Not only that, he realized via google that it housed nearly 20 thousand people when it was full. His biggest show in Europe had been half that.

A show that big required work and a set list. Jackson literally had a month and so nearly everyday he was expected to sit in that big building with the glass elevator talking about the details to things he barely understood. He was being provided a live band, but he'd been playing on his own almost the entire year. He played the the piano and the guitar, and the rest of the noise normally came off a back track. They were making him be fitted for an ear piece, but he couldn't think of anything he liked less than whatever they shoved in his ears to make that. They realized he was taking the max trains to arrive places and when they figured out he'd never bothered with a drivers license they started making him appointments to remedy it. He didn't even want to drive. He thought it would give him too much personal power. They wanted to fit him for clothes so they made an appointment for that. They wanted him to see the venue so they dragged him out for a tour of the place and then talked to him about things he didn't understand like lights and production and working the crowd and camera angles.

He was forced to rehearse with strangers. He had somehow found himself singing about women again, and he didn't like how it felt. He had cover songs to go alongside his songs from Europe and they were chosen for him without his input.  He didn't hate any of them, but he had questions. He actually had a lot of questions and concerns, but he'd committed so quickly without thinking that he thought pulling Dr. Evil aside to discuss the issue wouldn't make him feel better. He just did what he was told instead, and he tried to sing and dress how they wanted, and show up when he was supposed to, and read the fucking drivers manual they sent home with him.

Everything made him feel physically and mentally ill. Everything was hard and overwhelming. The speakers were loud. The music was loud. The nausea was loud.

When he was in Europe, everything was under a blanket of substance. Everything was padded with a layer of something to stop him from going absolutely crazy. Everything was soft.