Flip for Me

Gerard Way’s Point of View

“Gerard, how’ve you been?” my counselor asked me. These classes were bullshit. I didn’t have an anger management problem.

“Fine,” I scowled.

“Gerard, you haven’t been fine. You got second place to your component, again, and you're bound to have some rage inside of you. In your files, I remember it saying something about how you lashed out at a cameraman? He only asked you a question and you hurt him pretty badly. Gerard, that isn’t at all healthy,” she said.

“Jessica, I assure you that I have no rage inside of me right now. I'm fucking happy!” I said, acting. I put on a very forced smile.

“Quit lying,” she said before standing up. She walked to the other side of the room and got something out of the cabinets. “Okay, as you can see, this is a Frank doll,” she said, holding an ugly little stuffed doll in front of me. It looked exactly like Iero. “Here is a foam mallet. I want you to unleash your anger on the doll once I place it on the floor, okay?”

I nodded, taking the green foam mallet from her hand. She put the doll on the floor away from anything breakable. I walked over and barely hit it.

“C’mon Gerard, I know you're angrier than that. For Christ’s sake, you threatened to slit my throat when we first met,” she said.

Ha, she was right. I was so fucking mad at Patrick and my mom for literally forcing me to come here. Whenever Jessica tried to talk to me, I’d threaten her or just not talk to her. Thank god for private lessons or I’d be in jail for premeditated murder right now. Jessica was a nice person, even if she didn’t like me. I wasn’t sure if she liked me or hated me, but either way, she was damn sarcastic a lot of the time.

“So, I just hit it?” I asked, looking at the doll.

“Yes Gerard,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. It probably was though…

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and turned on the TV. On the screen was Frank, talking about one of his victories.

“I thought you'd be stubborn,” she said. “So, why not help you get it all out?”

The video was from when Frank beat me for the fourth time. I’ll never forget that day for all of eternity.

“Yeah, I'm really excited that I beat him!” Frank said happily, bouncing up and down on the screen with his medal. “I honestly didn’t think that I would, but he had too many faults in his performance. After he was finished, before the judges even gave their scores, I knew I was going to beat him.”

I gripped the mallet tightly in my hands and stared down at the doll as I listened to Frank talk on the TV. There were different interviews, one after the next, and each one made me want to chop off his head even more. Finally, I lost my cool.

“You stupid, son of a bitch! Motherfucking asshole!” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I gave no mercy on the doll. “Motherfucker! Always thinking you can fucking beat me! Ugly, shit, fuck!”

I hit the thing repeatedly until it there were only scraps of fabric and cotton on the floor. I was sweaty and hot. I glanced in the mirror that was on the wall and saw noticed my face was extremely red.

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect you to tear it to shreds and pieces with only a foam mallet, which you’ve also managed to destroy, but well done. You amaze me in many ways Gerard, but this isn’t a good one. None of my past clients were able to destroy the damn mallet,” she said, picking up the scraps on the floor.

“I want him to just go away,” I mumbled, settling myself back down on the couch.

“Gerard, I think that I can conclude that your anger results from Frank. I find that odd because in most of my clients, it usually comes from childhood abuse or neglect, but you’ve had a wonderful relationship with your parents,” Jessica said, pulling back her hair. I wonder what she’d look like blonde…

“I'm not your usual client, baby,” I smirked, winking at her.

“Are you hitting on me, Gerard?” she asked me seriously. She could probably kick my ass if she really wanted to.

“Now, you know that I'm gay, so isn’t that a bit of a stupid question?” I asked.

“Speaking of that, maybe your anger would decrease if you found someone in your life,” she suggested.

“No one likes me, so I can't really do that,” I said, looking away from her.

“A lot of people like you Gerard, you just have to look past their shells and find it. Dig deep,” she said.

“Even if I do dig deep, I don’t think that anyone will like me long enough to stay with me. I can't make it to second base unless I'm hoping for a one night stand, and I rarely do that. So, I'm gonna have to say fuck that solution,” I said.

“Gerard, when you actually act like yourself and not the stuck up, prissy, pole-in-your-ass gymnast, you're an awesome person. However, when you go around and act like you run the world or when you act like the world owes you some great huge apology, then you're an asshole that no one likes. That’s why people prefer Frank over you most of the time. He's nice, sweet, considerate, sexy, beautiful, charming, and friendly,” Jessica gushed, making me feel like killing another Frank doll.

“Could you stop?” I asked her, trying to be as calm as possible. I took in deep breaths to keep from jumping over the little coffee table and slapping her senseless.

She smiled at me, cunningly, and then wrote something on her clipboard.

“I'm proud of you; you didn’t downright maul me when I said that. And on the first day you came here, you said that you wouldn’t get anything out of this. Look at you now; you're already showing improvement,” Jessica said. I thought about it and she was right. She was completely right and that honestly amazed me.

“Well, then . . . thank you,” I said quickly. I shook her hand and then left.

As I was walking out of the building, I saw that Pete guy, Frank's coach or whatever.

“Hey Gerard,” Pete said. I didn’t want to talk to this guy.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Nothing, I was just trying to be civil,” he said innocently.

“Fuck off dude. I don’t want to deal with you or your little fairy. If I don’t beat him, I'm going to murder him. I don’t care if I go to jail either,” I said.

“Don’t talk like that Gerard,” he sighed. “If you really want to beat him, thinking about doing a few more flips in your routine—that’s what the judges like to see, most of the time anyway. Also, try not to act like an asshole all the time and maybe even give to some charities and get more sponsors. A lot of it relies in the media, and the judges—even if you're the best damn gymnast in the whole world—will not take kindly to you acting like the biggest ass on the face of the earth. They look for character too, you know,” he said before walking away.

What the hell just happened? Pete gave me advice on how to beat his partner. There’s something wrong with that statement, something very wrong.

I gave up on thinking about it and went home, only to think about it again. I had to discuss this with Patrick. I called him and told him everything that happened.

“Maybe you should take that advice Gerard. He knows what he's talking about. But you know what? I have been giving you that advice for five years Gerard—five fucking years,” he said, laughing.

“Whatever Patrick. Hey, I’ll talk to you next practice, okay?” I said.

We ended the conversation and I went online to pay some bills. While doing that, I opened a new tab to see what movies were playing and saw something that caught my eye—Rocky Horror would be playing in an old fashioned theater in two weeks about twenty minutes away from here. This was going to be shown like they did it in the seventies—actors on stage, water pistols, everything. I quickly ordered my ticket; no way in hell was I going to miss this. It sucked that I had to experience this grand seventies awakening alone though.