Black and Blue

"It's gonna be May."

Yep, it never fails. Every April 30th, for the last decade or so, at least one person has sent me this gif. Justin Timberlake, circa 2000, with his floppy golden bush of a hairdo, mouthing the iconic line appearing in bold meme-font beneath him. Yes, Justin, it is indeed going to be May.

"Do you see this every year too?" I ask my friend, Kenji, pointing my phone screen toward him from across the multi-colored Taco Bell table.

"Ha! I mean, it's a classic," he laughs.

Sure is. I might even miss it if it ever disappears. Or I'll fail to notice, and go on with life blissfully unaware. That's also a possibility.

"Did you like *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys more?" I ask, now that we're sort of on the topic.

Kenji raises his eyebrows, sipping his Baja Blast. "Hmm?"

Ugh, I barely cared enough to ask in the first place, and now he's making me repeat it. "Which one did you like more?"

"Which what?" he responds, his eyes wandering elsewhere. Clearly my proposed topic of the boy band heyday from 20 years ago is a fascinating one.

"Oh, my god. *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys?" I ask again, laughing with exhaustion over his inability to understand the question. He looks back to me, his brow furrowed with confusion.

"What are you talking about? Backstreet Boys?"

I roll my eyes and look away in disgust, having lost all interest.

We finish our faux-Mexican dinner of champions and head out to my car. We're sitting at a red light when Kenji looks out the window into an alley, where a group of young guys are standing around conversing. He swats my arm to get my attention.

"Hey, are those the Backstreet Boys?" he asks with a grin.

I just glare at him for a moment, wondering what I'm missing. "Are you.. joking? I don't get it."

"What? Who cares if I don't know who the Backstreet Boys are?" he laughs, emphasizing the group's name with a goofy tone.

"You DO though! Everybody does!" I snap back with the most bewildered look on my face.

"Sounds like you're wrong about 'everybody'," he mutters.

At this point, I'm starting to think he might actually be serious. But from what I know about Kenji, he wasn't raised under a rock. He and I were both in our early-to-mid teens during the peak of Backstreet Boys fandom, when they were all over TV, radio, magazines. It's impossible that he's never heard of them.

"Tell me whyyy!" I sing the quintessential lyric in an exacerbated, off-key voice as I hurriedly open Spotify and search "I want it that way".

"Ooooh, you gonna play me something??" Kenji asks with feigned excitement, leaning over to see what I'm doing. I ignore him.

How is it not the first result? Or the second? I scan the list of songs that is shockingly devoid of any hint of the Backstreet Boys. Did I misspell it? No. So why is it...

Kenji mutters something quietly - "screen", I think - but it barely registers. I just stare at my phone in aggravated bewilderment, wondering how it could be such a struggle to- HONK! The sudden blaring horn from behind us makes me jump in my seat, and I look up to see a green light.

"What the hell?" Kenji laughs. I can see him giving me a weird look in my periphery as I begin to accelerate. It takes me a moment to realize what he said.