Just a Man

It all happened very fast.

In a matter of days, it seemed to Gerard. One day, he was just a fat loser in his mother’s basement, no job, just drawing useless pictures of zombies and vampires that no one really wanted to see anyway, least of all himself. He was sick of it all, of his pale skin and battalion of medication he kept neatly in a plastic Tupperware container next to his bed, medications of all kinds, meant to keep him sane -- if that was even possible. He doubted it sometimes, especially when he started getting pills that would offset the effects of the other pills, and so on and so forth. It felt like his doctor was just doping him up so he couldn’t complain of mood swings or night terrors or voices or really anything anymore. He flirted with the idea of selling them on the streets -- it’s not like it would be too uncommon, not here in Jersey.

But he didn’t. He kept swallowing them and drawing his pictures, filling sketchbooks and gaining weight, growing paler and getting older.

Then one night, it seems, he falls asleep and wakes up an international rockstar, his weight still there but slowly sliding off him, a result of night after night of bright lights, hot venues, and dark, heavy clothing. A result of his new rockstar life, sleeping in a bunk and getting a real meal once every few weeks -- if he was lucky. He was still drawing, but now he was doing other things: getting mobbed by screaming girls, writing music, singing music, laughing, a formerly foreign concept but now something that occurred quite often.

But how exactly someone who was a fat pale loser one day handles being a thinner mysterious rockstar the next day is not something anyone really knew how to handle, least of all someone who had pills to offset the effects of his other pills, pills to help the problems his other pills created. Gerard Way was never someone you would say was ‘on top of his game’, not unless he was on stage, and never in his personal life.

He was doing pretty well for the first few months, throughout the first tour -- it helped to have his little brother at his side and it also helped that he had gotten an insanely big crush on one of the guitarists, a little fairy named Frank, a pierced and tattooed little fairy at that. By the time the tour was over Gerard was fairly certain he was in love with him.

But when they got home was when the trouble started.

Letters were forwarded from the record company in scores. Gerard was back in his mom’s basement, only this time it was different -- he had been around the country, and now the black space he had felt so at home in before now seemed suffocatingly small, and he couldn’t wait for the next tour to start, but that was months and months away. So Gerard, between his drawing, spent time reading.

Dear Hero, many of them started, and the words never failed to make Gerard blush, and he was half tempted to write letters back to them denying the title, telling them all the reasons he was anything but a hero. But soon the sheer volume of mail became too much to handle, and he stopped thinking about a response of any sort.

But he still read every single letter, opened every single package, and thought about every single thing said. Some of them, the more heartfelt ones, made him cry. Some made him sob. He could remember the first letter someone said he had saved their life, and while he didn’t know how a band or a man these kids had never had real contact with in their entire lives could save them, he thought he could understand the sentiment behind the words and it overwhelmed him. To have all these lives credited to his name was an indescribable sort of pride and guilt -- pride because he finally made something with himself, him, Gerard Way, fat pale loser, had gotten out of the fucking basement and done something with his life. And on the other hand, there was the guilt. The man these kids wrote about was a shining god, someone good and while not quite whole, someone who was everything Gerard Way wasn’t.

And he didn’t know how to get that through to them, though he wanted to. He wanted to tell these kids to save themselves, just play him in the background, because background noise was all he was. But he didn’t know how.

So he kept taking his pills. One night he took too many of the round yellow ones by accident and floated on a cloud of bliss for the rest of the night, unable to think or really feel. The next morning he woke up and realized his mistake, and that night he made the mistake again, only this time on purpose.

So Gerard Way, who went from fat pale loser to thinner mysterious rockstar in what felt like a matter of days, went from thinner mysterious rockstar to pathetic lying junkie in another few days. The change was fast but it was solid, real. He started chasing his pills with booze and he stopped reading letters, because all they said was ‘you inspire me’ and ‘I love you’ and ‘you’re my life’ and he would wish that all his admirers could see him now, doubled over the toilet puking his guts out or slamming his fist into the wall because his whole body was numb, surviving from pill to pill, drink to drink. He wished they could see the man they so affectionately called ‘Hero’ now, pathetic and alone, addicted and losing hope.

He wished he really was a hero -- because then maybe he could save himself.

The tour Gerard had so wished for for months before was looming closer, and Gerard thought it would get harder for him to pop pills and drink with his band looming over his shoulder. It didn’t. They had all now officially hit their twenties, and with this second tour they were coasting on a cloud of fame that sent them flying, flying, and a trained eye could see that they were heading for a crash landing, but in the beginning, no one said anything.

There was booze overflowing the tap and everyone knew Gerard took pills, that was a fact of life, but no one really knew to what extent Gerard took pills. And no one really knew that the pills Gerard was taking weren’t really serving any purpose other than keeping him on a constant sort of high so he could play the role of rockstar -- they weren’t cancelling out his depression or helping any other disorder he had rotting his brain.

No one but Gerard knew that, and he wasn’t telling.

There was footage and witnesses of his lowest moments - shuffling around drunk, falling down on the side of the road and spilling his guts outside the tour bus, and everyone just laughed, har har, lookit Gerard, lookit stupid drunk Gerard, har har har.

Gerard pretended it was funny but when he saw the video later he had scared himself, the lost look in his eyes. And he sat down that night, head pounding, trying to draw, and he couldn’t. He tried to write, and he couldn’t. He tried to take a Vicodin and wash it down with Bacardi, and he could. He tried to set his head in his arms and cry and found that he could, easily. The pills and booze and tears were easier than trying to think, realizing things about himself and so much easier than trying to be this Hero that everyone was talking about.

People were crying in the front row of the mosh pit now, crying and reaching out to him, and he wanted to touch their hands but he became afraid that he would touch him and they would be able to see inside him, see that he was just a man, not a hero, see his muscles and tendons and most of all, see that he had FAKE stamped all over his insides. He was afraid that they would know who he was, exactly who he was, that through his sweat mixing with theirs they would taste all the booze and pills crawling around in his system, and they would turn and tell all their friends, tell them all Don’t love him, he’s fake. He’s nothing but a fat pale loser, nothing but a boozed up drug addict, nothing. Not a hero, and definitely not our Hero.

So he didn’t touch them. He pretended not to see them, because if he met their eyes like he so wanted to he would never want to look away. He wanted their eyes, to see himself as they saw him, to understand why they liked him, why they wanted him, why they loved him. He couldn’t understand, no matter how hard he tried.

Frank tried to kiss him one day and when Gerard had twisted away, head down, Frank had asked why. He wanted to tell him everything, Gerard wanted to tell Frank every detail because he loved him, but just like the crying kids at the shows at night, Gerard couldn’t stand to have Frank know. So he just turned back and kissed him, loving the feeling but knowing that he would pay for this slice of happiness later on, once Frank found out who Gerard really was.

Gerard was afraid of this. He was afraid of Frank knowing; of the kids knowing; of his mother knowing, of anyone knowing… and he knew they would find out eventually. They would know eventually. Gerard realized this truth quickly, and as soon as the thought solidified in his mind, another came with it, coolly logical: then don’t be around when they do.

What, like kill himself?

Like you haven’t considered it before.

This was true. When he was still the fat pale loser -- not yet the mysterious rockstar or the pathetic junkie -- he had thought about it, quite a lot. It seemed like the only way to get out of his mother’s basement.

And now it seemed like the only way to escape the inevitable.

So he tried it. He tried it but it didn’t work, just like drawing didn’t work, just like writing didn’t work, just like so many other things in his life didn’t work. He had not exactly chickened out, but in the middle of taking all the pills and floating away peacefully like he had planned, he had decided it was a good idea to call his tour manager and explain himself.

So he had lived, and the kids had their Hero another day. But maybe his eyes were just a little bit more open, able to see the better things among the good. At Frank’s urging, he threw away the extra pills and with Frank’s help starting sleeping without help or nightmares, really, especially when Frank’s arm was curled around his body. It was a combined effort and a deadline that helped Gerard pick up the pen again, and this time when he wrote he tried to tell the kids who wrote him letters the truth in the only way he could -- through his music. His band’s music. The only way they might listen to him.

So he did. I’m a just a man, he said. Not a hero. I’m just a boy.

But it seemed they didn’t believe him. The letters still came, and they were so often addressed to the man called Hero, the man Gerard started to think of as someone separate from him, another entity, a superhero. Each time someone said he made their life, saved their life, or was their life, he wanted pills. He wanted copious amounts of booze and a snowstorm of cocaine, but he never took any. He never got any. He never drank any.

He decided to try and be this Hero. This god. To help these kids stop living a lie, to stop loving someone who didn’t exist. He told them they were beautiful every night, and he meant it. He told them they could do anything, and he believed it. And if they told him that MCR saved their lives, he smiled and just said that’s what he was there for, but they did it themselves. It was all them, he would say, but gently, not to say they were necessarily wrong.

I’m just a man, you know, Gerard would say to all the outcasts and losers that would have carved out their hearts and handed it to him on a silver platter. I’m just a boy, and that’s all I have ever been. But if I can help you -- if I did ever help you -- then I suppose, for one shining moment, I might have been something more.