Frontwards

Sunday, 21st January, 2006.

So you might be thinking at this point that everything is going swimmingly. And it was, really. In fact, things were going a bit too well for my liking, because this is generally not what happens to me. Generally there is a lot more hardship than this. So I was kind of expecting a big old slice of drama sometime soon.

And boy oh boy was I right about that.

What happened, basically, is Gerard had a date. With a girl. This may not be terribly surprising to you because I’m aware Gerard is a very good-looking guy and also the frontman of a famous rock band. So I’m sure there are millions of girls out there who would just love to date Gerard. That wasn’t the surprising bit.

The surprising bit is that, out of all the millions of girls he could have chosen to get closer to, he picked a fucking lunatic.

At first, she seemed generally quite nice. He took her out for dinner last night and then brought her back to the house afterwards, presumably to do the nasty, I don’t know. Anyways the reason I didn’t mention it yesterday is that I didn’t think it would be significant. I just assumed she was some chick he would go on a date with and have sex with and then we would never hear from her again and we could all move on with our lives. Gerard was very casual about the whole affair and nobody else acted like it was anything out of the ordinary, so naively I just let it happen. I had no idea of the impact she would make. None of us did.

Anyway, so he brought her home last night while the rest of us were sitting in the living room watching horror movies (in my case, from behind a blanket). He brought her in and was all like, “Hey guys, this is Jessica. Jessica this is Mikey, Bob, Frank and Daisy.” And we paused the movie and looked up to make sure we approved of her.

She was quite short and slim and she had long dark hair and a couple of piercings and tattoos and so on. She was pretty, I suppose. In a pointy kind of a way. But as you can tell I’m not one to judge by covers. And she seemed quite pleasant, at first. She was all, “It’s really nice to meet you all,” with a big smile and we responded accordingly and then she and Gerard joined us and we carried on with the films.

About twenty minutes after their arrival, I heaved myself up off the sofa to get myself a drink of water.

“Hey, fatty,” Bob said, once I was on my feet. “Get me another beer, will you?” He shook his empty bottle at me like it was my duty to get him a refill.

Now I’m not one to succumb to century-old stereotypes, but I really couldn’t be bothered to argue and I was going to the kitchen anyway so I didn’t mind too much. “Yeah, sure,” I said. “Anyone else want anything?”

The general response was “no thank you, Daisy.”

As I left the room, I heard Jessica say, quite quietly, but not quite quiet enough to go undetected by my freakishly good hearing, “Why did he call her fatty? That’s quite rude.”

Gerard laughed. “Well, she’s pregnant,” he explained. “It’s kind of like our pet name for her.”

I rolled my eyes and continued into the kitchen. When I came back into the living room, everybody was silent again so I handed Bob his beer and sat back down next to Frank and he held my hand and I thought nothing more of it.

This morning, however, something seemed amiss as I woke up. I wasn’t quite sure what, but I was relatively certain that shit was about to go down. Frank wasn’t beside me, which seemed odd since it was 9am on his day off. So I ventured downstairs to see what was going on. There was like this tension that I could feel as soon as I stepped into the kitchen. Mikey, Gerard, Bob and Frank were all sitting around the table, speaking in hushed tones that ceased as soon as I was detected. Gerard was looking solemnly at the laptop in front of him. As I entered, they all turned to look at me.

“What’s going on?” I asked suspiciously. I got the feeling that they were not planning a surprise birthday party or anything quite so jovial. They all looked tired and upset. I decided not to push my luck by telling a joke in case somebody had, in fact, died.

Frank stood up and gestured for me to take his seat. Nervously, I allowed him to guide me down. I was feeling really freaked out at this point.

Gerard looked guilty. He did that thing where you run your hand over your face and sort of pinch your nose between your eyes. And then he looked at me sadly. “We all knew it was going to happen at some point,” he began, which did nothing to ease my concern. My mind was racing at a thousand miles a minute. He paused as he tried to think of his next move. “I’m really sorry, Daisy.”

He pushed his laptop towards me.

At first, I couldn’t quite comprehend what I was seeing. There were some words and a really low quality picture of some girl. But as I looked closer I saw that the girl was me. And that the words said ‘We HATE this fat-ass slut’. Which, you know, was a lovely thing to see first thing on a Sunday morning.

Underneath this comprehensive headline was a long paragraph about how ‘This British whore Daisy claims to be pregnant with Frank’s baby and made him split up with Saskia for her.’ As if whoever wrote it knows us all. As if we’re characters in a soap opera or a high school movie or something. It’s insanely creepy. I can’t even tell you. It carried on in this sort of manner. All hateful and assuming. I couldn’t do much but stare blankly as it all soaked in.

Before I started crying, I pushed the screen away from me and Gerard, sensing I didn’t want to see anymore, closed his laptop. Mostly I was confused. I furrowed my eyebrows together and tried to think why somebody would be so hurtful.

“This sort of thing happens a lot,” Gerard finally said.

I really didn’t get it. Because mostly I forget just how successful My Chemical Romance are. It never occurred to me, as all of this was happening, that there would be people out there who would want to hurt me. People who didn’t even know me. They just hated me because they were jealous of me and Frank and they had to say these spiteful things to make themselves feel a little bigger. And yes it was pathetic. And they were pathetic. But it was hurtful all the same. The fact that they were calling me fat – that was only okay for the guys to say – and implying that I was lying about being pregnant and that I forced Frank to break up with Saskia. They had no idea. But it didn’t matter to them. It was all the same. And not only that, but there was something very sinister about the whole damn thing. It was all vaguely threatening. So full of hate. And they didn’t even know me. But that didn’t matter either.

The fact is that I have Frank and they don’t and they never will. So they have to make my life a misery.

“I’m so sorry, Daisy,” Gerard said again, because I had yet to speak.

I looked up at him and nodded. “How did this even...” I trailed off as it slowly dawned on me. Frank put his hand on my shoulder. “Do you think it was that girl? Jessica?”

Gerard nodded sheepishly. Mikey tilted his head to the side sympathetically. Bob, sitting beside me, shook his head.

“She must have posted it early this morning,” Frank said, squeezing my shoulder. “There’s already been a bunch of hits and comments on it.”

I didn’t really want to hear that.

“We didn’t think it would be a problem just yet,” Mikey said finally. “I mean, it took months for them to find out about Alice.” He chewed on his bottom lip. “She has her own hate club, too.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand,” I said meekly. “Well, I do, but... Why are they saying these horrible things?” I felt like a 4 year old kid being bullied on the playground. Except it was much more public than that. The whole world could see my humiliation if they wanted to.

Frank bent down and turned my head to look at him. “They’re just stupid kids,” he said. “It makes them feel better about their own miserable lives to start these campaigns. They don’t really know what they’re doing. You just have to ignore them. Okay?”

Easier said than done, let me tell you. But timidly I agreed to do my best to try and forget about it. Because there wasn’t really anything else I could do.