The Day We Forgot The Guitarist

Frank and Gerard Really Need To Get A Room

My name is Mikey Way, and here's my deepest, darkest secret: sometimes, I think about ending the whole facade.

I would sneak a camera into their room and take the smuttiest, most glorious photo I could of Frank and Gerard. I know it would cause the shitstorm of a century. I can picture it now: the fangirls screaming and reposting with #frerardislife or something crazy like that, because finally they have proof of the famed ship's existence! It would ruin Frank and Gerard's lives, between the overblown media attention and the voyeuristic fangirls throwing themselves at the guys constantly.

Maybe the Westboro Baptist Church would picket one of our concerts, and one of the fans would beat them up. That would be awesome.

Sadly, for reasons that were obvious to anyone with a functional brain, this was a stupid and potentially illegal idea that would probably get me kicked out of My Chemical Romance and for all their...ahem, quirks, I really did love my bandmates.

So I stayed silent even though there are moments where this I'm struck with an intense desire to make my revenge fantasy a reality. I had one of those moments a few years ago, when we were driving to Chicago in a beat-up tour bus, probably on loan from the 1990s and used by almost every band without money since then, and we certainly fit that description well. Even after four albums, we were still stuck using the same damn bus as Justin Bieber. Kill me now.

The main problem with that bus, as I had found after many sleepless nights, is that the walls were basically glorified cardboard. Add the thick, bulky frame on Frank and Gerard's bed that was constantly thwacking against my wall because of, well, you know why, and I hadn't slept in weeks.

I heard telltale kissing sounds coming from our makeshift living room, and put my headphones on in a vain attempt to avoid listening. Frerard was kind of cute in the beginning, especially when Gerard dyed his hair rainbow striped to come out to me and announce their relationship, but by that point it was just annoying as hell.

I was just getting started on a new idea for an album theme (but not focusing, however, due to a nagging, random sense of not having something important) when Frank sheepishly opened the door into my room, clad in only boxer shorts."Hey, man, so Gee and I were about to, you know, get down to it, and, um, what I was wondering is, do you have any...protection?" he asked, pausing before the last word for a euphemistic eyebrow raise.

I sighed, laughing mirthlessly and rubbing my forehead. "Dude, do you seriously think I have any of that shit? I'm an emo white guy in his thirties who plays the goddamn bass while other emo white guys sing about their feelings into microphones for attention because we're just so bored. You'll have to find your condoms somewhere else."

"Come on, man. Just take a look."

"Fine," I said, and got up and started to look through my mess of a sleeping area.

I couldn't find it, and I knew I was half-assing the search, but I had really only agreed to look so I could see what it was that I had left at the last hotel or whatever. I knew I was missing something, but I just didn't know what.

Suddenly, Gerard yelled from the small kitchen in the back.

"Hey, did Mikey have anything?"

"Nope."

I heard him continue to rummage around in the cabinets, and then he shouted back to his boyfriend. "I found some Saran Wrap, you think this'll work? We are kind of desperate here."

"You know, you might just want to wait until we get to the hotel to do this. I mean, dude, have you thought about all of the people who must have had sex on these tour bus beds?" I said, continuing to tear my room apart.

Sometimes I wondered why I even tried.

Finally, I did find something— an old Trojan Ecstasy, a high school reject stuck in my bag from the days when I thought I was cool. I interrupted their scintillating debate on which household item would make a better condom by throwing the real one at them and walking out.

Frank and Gerard retreated into their shared room, furiously making out all the way there, and I breathed a sigh of relief, and headed near the back of the bus far away from them.

For some reason, I still couldn't shake the feeling that I'd forgotten something.

I opened up the door to the storage area. We kept  all of our stuff back here, right at the end of the bus: the instruments, mics, tech stuff, everything. It's a tight fit, but we made do with what we could. We were on the Bieber bus, after all.

The sense of having something missing only increased as I surveyed our inventory and find everything in its place. We had my bass, the sound equipment, the guitar...

Fuck.

Shitfuck, in fact.

We had the guitar, but we didn't have the guitarist.

It hit me all at once - we had left our lead guitarist Ray Toro at the truck stop, about twenty-five miles ago and we were only driving further away from him.

We were completely and utterly fucked.