Anything But Ordinary
Lyrics by Avril Lavigne
Sometimes I get so weird
I even freak myself out
I laugh myself to sleep
It's my lullaby
Sometimes I drive so fast
Just to feel the danger
I wanna scream
It makes me feel alive
Is it enough to love?
Is it enough to breathe?
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
Is it enough to die?
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please
To walk within the lines
Would make my life so boring
I want to know that I
Have been to the extreme
So knock me off my feet
Come on now give it to me
Anything to make me feel alive
Is it enough to love?
Is it enough to breathe?
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
Is it enough to die?
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please.
Let down your defences
Use no common sense
If you look you will see
that this world is a beautiful
accident turbulent suculent
opulent permanent, no way
I wanna taste it
Don't wanna waste it away
Sometimes I get so weird
I even freak myself out
I laugh my self to sleep
It's my lullaby
Is it enough?
Is it enough?
Is it enough to breathe?
Somebody rip my heart out
And leave me here to bleed
Is it enough to die?
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please
Is it enough?
Is it enough to die?
Somebody save my life
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please
I'd rather be anything but ordinary please.
~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~***~~~
“Next.”
I look up at the woman behind the counter, waiting impatiently for me to pick up my suitcases and move. I take out the ticket and my id, placing it in front of her.
“Are you checking in any bags?”
“Two.” I move the two big ones to the side so she can put the tags on and weigh them.
She proceeds to ask me all the usual questions. I know them all by heart after having traveled so much in the last nine years.
“Boarding will start in fifteen minutes. Gate H3,” she says, putting a stamp on my ticket and handing it back to me.
“Thank you,” I say, putting my id away and, picking up the carry on bag, I head in the direction she pointed me to.
Thankfully, there aren’t that many people waiting for the flight, so, finding a couple of seats in the corner, I make myself comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can get in an airport. I look out the window, watching the workers prepping the plane for the flight. It’s sunny here and I begin to wonder what the weather’s like over there. I move my gaze over to the screen at the entrance to the plane. Flight 1381. From Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. On time. The only time you need the plane to be late, it’s not. Oh, the ironies of life. I look away from the board and stare out the window again.
Pittsburgh. It feels weird to be going…home. That’s really what it is. I’ve lived all over the place since I left, but never anywhere long enough to call it home. I thought LA would be it, but I was wrong. So, Pittsburgh wins by default, I guess.
My phone rings and I answer it without even looking at the caller id.
“Hi, darling.”
I sigh. It’s Sandy. The woman has a knack for calling at the worst possible times. I met her three years ago in Chicago. She read about me in some art magazine or whatever and looked me up, wanting to exhibit my stuff in her gallery. Which really wasn’t a big deal anymore because by that time I’d had a number of exhibits all over the country as well as Europe. I sent her a couple of my works just to get the woman off my back. Somehow a couple of things turned into three major shows and resulted in me moving out to LA. “Hey, San, what’s up?”
“Bill said you were leaving today.”
“Yeah, going…” I pause. Something in me just stops me from saying it. From thinking it. It can’t be home. I don’t want it to be home. Because it would mean so many other…things…that I don’t want it to mean. Don’t want to think about.
“To that God-forsaken place?” she finishes for me, for which I’m grateful.
“Yeah.”
“It’s raining there, sweetie.”
“Rain happens, Sandy,” I reply.
“Not here, it doesn’t. So, why don’t you stay in the land of sun and palm trees?”
“Can’t,” I simply say. I’ve had this conversation with her and others more than once in the last month.
She sighs. “Ok, well, when are you coming back?”
I look up at the board again. Pittsburgh. “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. There’s nothing left for me here. The job ran its course and according to Dennis, so did our relationship. It’s time to move on…again.
“Well, would you call me? The exhibit got great reviews. It’d be a sin not to do it again.”
Yes, I know. The show was a huge hit. Blah blah blah. I know all of it. The problem is, it doesn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore. “I will call you. Promise.”
“Well, I hope you hate every minute you’re in that hellhole and decide to come back.”
“Gee, thanks, San,” I say sarcastically which makes her laugh. “Bye.”
“Bye, darling.”
I hang up, but instead of putting the phone away, I stare down at it. It would be so easy to just dial his number. Press one. He’s been number one on my speed dial for the last two years. Two damn years in one place, with one person. That’s a long time. But it’s over. We’re over. And he was the one who wanted it this way.
“I need you to walk away from me.” That’s what he said. I couldn’t believe it. It seemed like it came out of nowhere, but here we were, in the middle of our condo saying good-bye.
“I need you to walk away from me, Justin,” he said, his eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t even breathe. How the fuck did we get from discussing going to my mother’s wedding to THIS? Ok, so things haven’t exactly been great lately. But every relationship goes through problems and we’ve already had our share. We’d dealt with it and moved passed it. We made it work. I loved him and he loved me and that was all that mattered. I was set on making it work this time. Dennis was what I’d been searching for all this time. I knew it. He was so much like me, but at the same time so completely different.
We met at my first show in LA. He was a reporter covering the art section for the neighborhood paper, so he came in looking for an interview. Needless to say, the biggest part of the interview was done in the bed of my hotel room. He was a little reluctant to take the next step, but I just dived in, head first. That’s how I always did it. The second I stepped on the plane taking me away from Pittsburgh that morning I decided to never hold back, to not be afraid of getting hurt again. I’ve lived that way for three years, scared shitless to get my poor little heart broken again that I forgot to live. And that’s exactly what leaving Pittsburgh was about. Living. Living my life the way I wanted. Without fear, without looking back.
Never look back. That’s what he said to me before I left. He. The one person I never allowed myself to think about. Brian. It’s funny how you can run your whole life without realizing what you’re running from. Or maybe, what you’re running towards.
The three years in Pittsburgh after I left him had been tough. Pretending not to care when I did. Pretending not to want to be with him when every part of my body screamed for him. Pretending that our little escapades from time to time didn’t mean anything, when I knew it did. I never for one second thought that I’d never be with Brian again when I walked out of Babylon that night. It never crossed my mind. Not because I was still in love with him, but because I knew what we could be together. The amount of heat we generated in bed could serve as the source of energy for the whole city for a month. And that just wasn’t going to go away, to disappear just because I decided to put myself first for once and seek what I desired. I was back in Brian’s bed in less than six month. On and off. We never made a big deal out of it. Getting our needs met. That’s what this was all about, right? We both knew it was bullshit, but went along with it anyway.
Until one day when I got a call from an art gallery in New York with a very enticing offer. The one that I couldn’t refuse. The one that I knew Brian wouldn’t allow me to refuse. When I told him about it I could see that he was proud of me. And that made the whole thing even more painful. He told me to go. This was something I had to do. There was no discussion about it. I had no right to even think about NOT doing it. My future was beginning and I had to do what I had to do. Which was leave home and move to New York.
“Don’t look back, Justin. Never look back,” he said.
And I didn’t. He let me go. I knew he wanted me to stay. I knew it. I felt it in his touch that night. That last night when he once again turned off the blue lights and we made love. I know there’s a fine line between making love and fucking, but with Brian I knew. I could always tell. It was slow and tender. We needed the time to savor it. To store it in our memories. Because we didn’t know if we’d ever get to feel it again.
“Don’t look back.”
I didn’t. I left before he woke up the next morning, making a quick stop at mom’s to pick up my things and then drove to the airport. I made a pact with myself. To never think about him. Brian was off limits. No matter what. No matter how often I talked to Lindsay or Debbie or any of the guys. Or Gus. I talked to Gus every weekend. It was our “date time”. Still, despite the contact I had with everybody back home, I never once thought about him.
The only time I was allowed to reminisce about the good old days were the two times I visited my mom. Both times went the same way. I’d fly in for a few days. Show up at his doorstep without warning. He’d open the door for me, without even a sign of surprise on his face, as if he was expecting me. We’d spend some time together, fucking and talking. I’d fill him in on my recent adventures and he’d fill me in on…all things Brian. Then it’d be time for me to leave and to never look back again.
I was living my life. Just like he always wanted me to. He dreamed all those things for me, so I did my best to make his dream come true. I became pretty well known in the art community, even having a few shows in Paris and London. I also had a couple of teaching positions here and there as well as a consulting job in Chicago. I wasn’t afraid to try anything and everything that would come my way. A job. A relationship.
My first one after Brian, after Pittsburgh, was Adam. He was an art teacher at NYU. That’s how I got my first teaching position. He thought I’d be perfect for it and I decided to give it a try. It was great. The job and the relationship. I loved teaching. Helping somebody else to start their future. And Adam was great too. Loving and kind. I used to tell him that he was way too laid back. The students were walking all over him. But he didn’t’ seem to mind. He said his job wasn’t to tell the students what to do or even how to do it. It was to give them the options and hope they’d make the right choice. He looked at our relationship the same way. Nine months after I got to New York I got an offer to work in London for a year. It was a no-brainer. I had to go. Adam knew it, too. We didn’t fight over it. We didn’t discuss it. A long distance relationship wasn’t an option either. So, we went our separate ways, quietly and lovingly, just like Adam.
The year in London was…crazy. No other word for it. It was fast-paced, exciting, and mind blowing at times. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, pinching myself. This was the life I’d always dreamed of. I had a couple of shows. The second one sold out before it even opened. I had friends, acquaintances, fans. I felt like I was on top of the world.
But when once again an opportunity to move back to the States dropped into my lap, I took it, without thinking twice about it. I moved to San Francisco, taking a teaching position at the university. I loved teaching in New York, but this was a completely different experience. Especially when Terry came into my life. Terry was one of my students and we played the whole flirting thing for two semesters. I knew what the rules were and fucking my student was not an option, no matter how hot he looked or how big his dick was. But all bets were off when he came to get his final grade. He knew it. I knew it. He stood in the doorway, staring at me and we both knew what was going to happen next.
I didn’t expect us to last that long. But somehow two years later we were still together. It was strange being the older one in the relationship, being the mentor, the teacher. The one fucking up. The one letting go. Terry was getting ready to graduate and he was considering staying in San Francisco, despite the job offer in New York. I knew it wasn’t right, but he insisted he wanted to stay. To be with me. What a fucking joke. I still remember the feeling of knowing that somebody was ready to give up his whole fucking future to be with me. It’s a high no drug could ever produce. But I knew it wasn’t right. So when I got an offer to go back to Europe, I took it. I left two days before his graduation.
The year after that went by like a blur. I was all over the place - Paris, Rome, London again. I tried to focus on my art…the one constant thing in my life. But there were men. Lots and lots of men. They weren’t nameless. Well, some of them. But I wanted to have someone. Not just a body with a dick. No, I wanted to be able to share all of this shit with someone. I knew it wouldn’t last. Who was I kidding? I felt like a gypsy, half the time not knowing what city I was in. But I loved it. Every fucking minute of it.
When things slowed down a bit, I decided to go back to San Francisco. The university was welcoming me back with open arms and there was also a possibility of doing a show on the west coast. I had everything worked out, even had a ticket in my hand when I got a call from a friend of mine regarding a consulting position for one of the publishing companies in Chicago. I didn’t think it was my cup of tea and told Sam as much, but it was something new. Something unknown. Something exciting. So, I called the airline, changing my destination airport to O’Hare.
I met Ken the first week I moved there. I was checking out the clubs and he was, apparently, checking out…me. We hooked up, thinking it was a one-night thing. It wasn’t. I saw him again the weekend after. And the one after that. We always left the club together. After four months it was evident that one-night stand rules wouldn’t work with us. He wanted more and I wanted him, so when his lease expired he moved into my place. The seven months in my apartment were the most exciting months of my life. Ken was unlike anybody I’d ever met. He would never stand still. Not for anything. He was loud, and funny, and crazy. He was so fucking crazy. He would leap into the fountain in the middle of a populated park and start jumping around like a little kid, splashing water all over the place. He would stand in the middle of Lake Shore drive and scream the lyrics to “My kind of town” at the top of his lungs. Ken was what I had been looking for all this time. Crazy, wild, not afraid of anything. And I took it all in. Every moment, every second we spent together I memorized, I stored it deep inside of me.
But I wasn’t surprised to come home to find his bags packed. I knew it wouldn’t last. I was amazed it lasted as long as it did. He had to do his thing and I had to do mine and somewhere along the way it stopped being fun and crazy and wild. He had to go. I had to stay.
The first few weeks after he left I thought the world would end. I moped around, going to all the places we’ve been to together, watching the videos we’ve made on our trips to Florida and Mexico. I missed him so damn much sometimes I didn’t think I’d be able to breathe. This huge city suddenly felt claustrophobic and suffocating. So, when Sandy called me about doing a show in LA I immediately bought a ticket to LAX. Three weeks later I met Dennis.
I press the menu button and quickly go through options to delete the number from memory. No reason to dwell on the past. Deal and move on. That’d been my motto for a long time. You can’t change what happens. You can just put one foot in front of the other and wait until the next big thing happens and then put one foot in front of the other.
Dennis knew that I had just got out of a relationship, so he tried to respect it, giving me time. He wanted to take it slow. I didn’t. I needed to jump into it, to forget about Ken, about Chicago. Just forget. I gave my full attention to this new thing with Dennis, dead set on making it work with him. He was wonderful. We wanted the same things, had the same ideals, plans, views of the world. It just seemed to work. We clicked right away and that never changed. We had our set of problems. He got a promotion that required more time on the road and I was busy with the constant promotion parties and meetings Sandy arranged for me. But it didn’t matter to me. I wanted to be with him and that meant work. I knew it. He knew it. And we were willing to do whatever it took. Nobody said happiness was easy. I had learned that early on. So, we agreed to attend couples’ therapy. A crock of shit if you ask me, but Dennis needed it, so I did it. We talked, we dealt. It was fine. At least that’s what I thought.
He saw it differently. I got the invitation to my mom’s wedding, which in and of itself threw me for a loop. My mother getting married again. To some guy who wasn’t my father. Even at thirty-one it’s weird when your mother gets remarried.
It was a stupid fight. I made reservations without asking him first. Stupid, insignificant fight. But somehow it grew into something so enormous, I still can’t get my mind around it.
“I need you to walk away from me, Justin,” he said so quietly I was sure I had imagined it. I wanted to believe I had imagined it.
But I knew I hadn’t. I saw the tears well up in his eyes. “What?”
“I’m not strong enough to leave, so I need you to walk away first.”
I just stared at him, dumbfounded. How could this be happening? One minute we’re discussing what color tux to wear to the wedding, the next minute he’s telling me it’s over.
“You’re still in love with him.”
“Who? Ken? I haven’t even thought of him in two years,” I screamed back at him.
“No, not Ken,” he shook his head. “This…other guy.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?!”
“Brian.”
I froze. He never even knew Brian existed. I never mentioned Brian to him or anybody else for that matter. Brian was a part of my other life. My old life. The life that didn’t exist anymore.
He must have known what I was thinking because he decided to drop another bomb on me. “You call for him in your sleep.”
I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout at the top of my lungs. “So, you decide to end it over some guy from my dreams?” We both knew Brian wasn’t just ‘some guy from my dreams’. Or maybe…he was. The dreams I never allowed myself to have.
“It’s not just that and you know it. He’s with you all the time. Inside you. I see him in your eyes. Every time I look at you, he’s there. Do you have any idea what it’s like to hate somebody I’ve never even met?”
I had nothing to say to that. He knew me better than I knew myself. I thought I was over Brian. No, not over. After. This was my life AFTER Brian. He wasn’t a factor in it. He was back in Pittsburgh, living his life and I was here living mine. “I love you.” That was all I had left to say.
He walked up to me, putting his arms around me. “I know. But you love him more. No matter how hard you try to convince yourself that it’s not true, you love him.”
I took a step back, staring at him, shell-shocked. It really was over.
“Walk away from me, Justin, please,” he whispered as the tears rolled down his face.
I wipe away a stray tear that has managed to escape from behind my eyes and put the phone back in the pocket of my jacket. A few minutes later they announce boarding and I stand up, gathering my things quickly and move to the front. It’s nice being able to afford to fly first class now. No wait. No coach seats. Just me, a nice cozy chair, and a martini glass in my hand. I look out the window as the plane hovers over the city, wondering for the last time where he is. Is he one of those tiny little dots below? Is he back in our condo packing his things? I close my eyes. Don’t look back, Justin. Never look back. Another chapter of my life is over.
Now, I’m going home.
The End.