I Only Want You for One Night

“Tom… Come on, Tom, get up.”

I felt something rocking me gently. I felt a roll of nausea and a sharp, screaming pain in my head as I realized I was hung over and whoever was rocking me was not helping my cause at all.

“Tom Kaulitz, get up right now, you’re going to get stiff and won’t be able to turn your head if you keep lying here like this.”

I groaned and tried to hit whoever was waking me up. I didn’t want to be woken up. I wanted to dissolve into the floor and fall out of existence.

I felt someone grab my dreadlocks and yank slightly. “Get up or I’ll pull you up by just one of them.”

I groaned fiercely and sat up, feeling my head and stomach spin. I lost my balance for a second but felt a hand grip my arm, steadying me.

I glass was put into my hand. “Here, you need some aspirin.”

Two pills were put into the other. I popped them in my mouth and drank the water, swallowing the pills and gagging on them. I hated swallowing pills.

“Since I realize you’re still out of it and cannot form your mouth around manners at the moment but I know you still mean to say it, you’re welcome.”

I hung my head in exasperation. “You’re not helping my headache, Alice.”

“Sorry.”

I sat there with the half-full glass in my hand and forced my eyes open. The bright light stung, and I saw dark spots before my eyes adjusted. I looked around and felt my heart shrink at what I had done to the apartment.

“Alice, I don’t care if you color coordinate my underwear, just fix this, please,” I said in a dead voice.

She nodded. “Of course. I doubt you could fix any of this. By the way, do you have a broom and dust pan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah, well, I’ll see if I can find one. If not, I’ll run home and get one.”

I didn’t say anything.

She snapped her fingers randomly. “I see there’s a broken vodka bottle on the floor. Drop it?”

“Threw it.”

“At?”

I gave her an intensely hatred-filled stare.

She bit her lip. “That’s right, huh.”

I felt my heart break more. “No, it’s wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong!”

I slammed the glass on the floor and held my knees. “It was wrong, it was always wrong, I should have just listened to my head in the beginning, and this would never have happened. I had to be so stupid!”

Alice sat calmly while I had a tantrum. I breathed heavily in time with my pounding head then stopped.

“Better?” Alice asked.

“Yeah.”

“Still believe what you said?”

“Yeah.”

“Good,” she said, the let her hand fly across my face, slapping my cheek hard.

“Alice, what… what the fuck!”

“You’re such a dumbass! You can’t believe anything you just said! You and Bill were made for each other!”

“What we had been doing was immoral and it’s better this way! I’m glad he’s gone!”

She slapped me again. “Listen to yourself! You just did everything you could to prove you loved him, broke the bank, killed yourself with exhaustion to show how much he meant to you, and here you are because of one stupid mistake he made saying you never meant any of it! Do you know how honestly pathetic that sounds?”

“But it was-”

“Just shut up for a second and listen to me, Tom! Throw out what everyone else thinks is right, what’s considered moral, what’s legal, what supposedly goes against nature, get rid of all of that and just think for a second! What does Bill mean to you?”

I bit my lip and hung my head. “The world,” I choked out, feeling tears burn my eyes.

“Do you love him?”

“Yes. I don’t want to love him anymore, Alice, I don’t.”

She wrapped her arms around me and rubbed my back. “You can’t, Tom, it’s impossible to just suddenly stop loving someone. If your love for Bill is as strong as you showed me, then you may never stop loving him.”

“It’s wrong, though!”

“I disagree. Love is love, and I’ve had this opinion ever since I was little. It doesn’t matter who you love, as long as love is shared and you are happy. And I don’t want to hear any shit about it going against nature. You were raised as a what, Catholic, Baptist, Protestant, Lutheran?”

“I wasn’t really raised anything, but Mom was Protestant, so I guess I’m Protestant.”

“So you know the whole ‘And Eve was created from Adam’s rib’ blah stuff, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, think about it. Adam and Eve were the only humans in the world. How the hell did their kids have kids of their own? Have to procreate with someone.”

“Didn’t two chicks kind of randomly appear from God?”

Alice paused. “Dammit. I forgot about that from Church.”

“Protestant too?”

“Catholic, but that’s not the point. Just look at all of history: the Greek gods, Ancient Egypt, the royal line in England for corn’s sake, everywhere in history there is incest and it’s wrong for people to be looking down on it now when they never did before!”

“Did you just say ‘for corn’s sake’?”

“Tom.”

“Sorry.”

“My point is, there is nothing wrong with the way you love Bill. What’s wrong is how society acts about it. They act like it’s a new thing that’s horribly disgusting and they shouldn’t. It’s horrible how people mock and insult love, no matter who it’s shared between, and then they worship fake celebrity love like it’s how the world should be.”

Alice was in full ranting mode. I sighed. “None of this is making me feel better. Bill hurt me, and that’s that. I never want to see him again, not after what he did.”

“You feel that way now, but it’ll change, trust me. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, Tom.”

“Even when the heart is cold and indifferent?”

She rolled her eyes. “Go, sleep off your headache and nausea, and I will clean this place up. Think about Bill, and try and look past his mistake.”

She stood up with my glass in her hand and walked to the kitchen. I sighed, defeated, and stood up, walking shakily to the spare room where I had spent my night before last.

I collapsed onto the bed and clung to one of the pillows, feeling my cheeks get wet.

“Please, God, don’t let me love him anymore…”

~+~

I got up and looked at the clock.

1:30 PM.

I had slept for a good three hours. My hangover was gone, but I was still hurting.

I walked out of the room and saw that the apartment was spotless. Alice really was a neat freak, everything was perfect, the way it was before, except for things that could not be repaired, like broken mirrors and glass.

She left a note on the fridge.

Tom

Cleaned as best I could. A few people called while you slept, I took messages for you. I also made you something to eat, it’s in the fridge. Try to clean yourself up a bit, shower, do something. Call me later and maybe we’ll go to the park.

-Alice

I opened up the fridge and saw that she had made me garlic and Parmesan pasta. I pulled out the plastic container and put it in the microwave, turning it on for a minute.

I ate it hurriedly when it was done, feeling suddenly hungry. Three minutes and the entire container was empty.

But I ate too fast. I felt sick. I ran to the bathroom and puked up everything I had just eaten.

This was killing me. Alice was right, I already missed Bill more than I should have, especially when I was mad at him, but I wouldn’t call him.

He needed to suffer like I was suffering.

I did nothing for three days, just sat around and ate very little, hating everything.

On the fourth day, I tried to watch TV, but after flipping through the channels twice and finding nothing interesting I just turned it off in disgust. In a quick decision I turned it back on and turned on the game console. The only problem was, I couldn’t find any good games to play. I must have put in at least five before deciding against them and taking them out. I was bored out of my wits, so I went and found my guitar.

And that’s when I found out.

I couldn’t play.

I’d put my fingers to the strings and suddenly forget every chord I had ever learned, every song I had ever created, everything. I couldn’t even remember the letters of the strings. Some shit about three E’s or whatever.

I strummed all six strings angrily without a tune then shoved the acoustic guitar off of my lap. It landed on the floor with a strangely melodic crashing sound. I heard something crack, then a metallic snap.

I couldn’t be bothered. I could just go buy more if I pleased. Not that it mattered, I didn’t remember how to play anyway.

I hated admitting it to myself, but I needed Bill. I felt like I was partially like dead, like half of my body was numb.

I walked into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. I did so, then looked into the cracked mirror. I screamed.

Half of me was gone. I was split right down the middle, only half of my body visible. I hurriedly rubbed my eyes in shock, then looked back.

I was all there.

“Just my imagination,” I muttered, shaking my head.

With nothing better to do, I tried to call Georg and Gustav, see if they wanted to do anything.

They were both busy, but apologized. I didn’t need their apologies, I was the one without a life.

Or a love.

I put on my shoes and walked out of the apartment, locking it and heading on my way to see Alice at work.

I got there, then pushed my way through the doors of the bookstore where she worked. It was fairly empty.

“Alice,” I called, looking down the different aisles.

“Hang on a second, Tom.”

She walked out from a door in the back, took one look at me, and dropped the books she had in her arms. Her hands flew to her mouth as the books clattered to the floor.

“Tomi, what happened to you?”

I blinked in confusion. “What do you mean, what happened to me?”

She walked closer to me, lightly touching the skin under my eyes. “You look like you’ve been in a fight!”

She pulled a compact mirror out of her back pocket and showed me.

I stared wide-eyed at the reflection I hadn't noticed before.

My cheeks were sunken, I had bitten through my lip, and I had dark circles around my eyes. I did look like I was in a fight, and I also looked like I had lost that fight.

She looked at my arms. “Four days can’t have done this to you.”

“Done what?”

She lifted up my shirt, then looked down at the floor with a pained expression. “Tom, look at yourself.”

I held my shirt and looked down. My hipbones stuck out, I could count my ribs without touching them, and my jeans were so much baggier on me.

I was borderline skeletal.

She sighed. “You’re staying here until I get off work, then I am going to go home with you. You need properly fed and cared for. And I’m not going home until you get your weight back.”

~+~

True to her word, Alice took care of me. She made me healthy again, and she tried her best to make me happy.

But after two days, she said the light wouldn’t come back to my eyes, so she gave up. She was nothing more than just a friend who cleaned up after me, a mere working acquaintance.

On the third day, she deemed me fit to live alone again. I went to work with her that day just to hang out with her, and when I got home, I saw the light flashing on the answering machine.

I walked over to it and pressed play.

“One new voice message.” The date was from just a few hours ago. I listened to the voice on the message with somber indifference.

“H-Hey Tom, it’s me…Bill. I haven’t talked to you…even seen you in awhile. …I miss you, so much and I know sorry isn’t good enough. But I love you, and I want to see you again. I want to hear your voice. If you don’t ever want to see me again, that’s fine…but I just wanted to tell you that I love you, and I’m always going to. I never meant to do such a thing to you, I understand if you won’t forgive me.”

The message ended.

I fell to my knees and started to sob. “I want to forgive you, Bill, I want to. But I can’t.” I clutched at my heart. “I love you, Bill, but I don’t want to. I love you so much.”

I had to tell Alice, I wasn’t ready for her to leave.

Hearing Bill’s voice made me relapse.

I was dead again.

Emotionally dead.