To the Beat of My Heart

A Return

It's Saturday but it's also show day. Seattle today, then off to Vancouver for the second part of this tour: the Canadian leg. You never really get to soak in any of the cities. It's not a holiday. It's a job with a lot of nice views, if you're awake to see them.

We had our Michigan show, then Chicago, Minnesota, Montana, and now the highlight for me: Leo's city. You better believe I'm visiting the aquarium and blowing Leo's socks off. Also gotta convince the dude that, no, I'm not stalking him. And somehow keep the actual reason for my brief visit in Seattle quiet. No Clay yet.

We're getting somewhere. Sharing some more personal demons has been... liberating, I guess. Interesting. Still waiting on a response to that last email. Everything else in my life is moving so fast, but not Leo.

I don't know. I just don't feel like Leo's a good friend. How long's that gonna take? Where he stops being a formless face on a screen and starts becoming more... real. Like one of those people who always has your back and you physically hurt after having to say goodbye to them. I need that kind of connection.

Sure as hell not getting that from Ansel.

I'm sorry. I wish...

Look, the last three shows were great. They really were. Ansel put all that shit behind him, wowed everyone and kept to his reserved self afterwards. No drama. Just him and his phone, texting away. Another kind of wall.

The bus sits empty, unloaded, and most of the crew is inside prepping the place. Clay and Kai I can see outside the window now, having a smoke. Ansel sits with his body all tight, palm pressed against his chin, nibbling at the hoodie sleeve as he buries his face in his phone's screen. I plop myself down next to him, taking the initiative.

"Hey!"

Ansel grunts a half-assed hey back. My smile is strained, to say the least.

"Is that... Oscar. It is Oscar, yeah?"

Ansel looks like he won't say anything, but then he tilts his head into his palm, looking at me sheepishly.

"Yes. It's Oscar."

"The boy you kissed." Ansel flinches. "Sorry. Your best mate."

"Ja. All my friends..."

He trails off. I get it. We're mates, I'd say. Not great pals. Clay no doubt feels stronger about it. But no one's pretending Ansel and Kai have anything really going for them. We're a bus of mostly decent folk, but we're still strangers. It's that same hollow sensation I've got with Leo.

We can try and make something out of this. I'm trying with Ansel. But his world, everyone he loves is far away. Not just physically. They've moved on, and it's that gut-wrenching feeling that nothing can ever be the same again, only a pale imitation.

Ansel's reached a level of fame that's awesome, but loneliness is more than just an absence of human connection, easily remedied. True loneliness is more akin to a harrowing depression that doesn't care for status or wealth or security. You will always feel like shit if the people around you don't give you that warm fuzzy wholeness that seems to make everything a little more right. It's why you can be alone in a crowd, terribly alone. You crave the bonds that mean a damn. When they're gone, the world is grey.

Grey and shit.

It's the sad but universal truth that you leave the nest, make a life, a career away from your home. Home was a place you felt infinite and maybe sometimes perfect. If you had your friends to explore and love, loneliness was a fleeting thing. You were safe in the knowledge that there was always a return, to home, that perfect sanctuary. To friends and that wholeness in your gut. Everyone was a community, and everything felt possible and eternal.