| Teen Idol. The words haunt me. Make me sick. I never ASKED to be the Next Britney Spears. I never ASKED to be the Next Tiffany or Debbie Gibson. That was NOT my initial intention. Hell, I wanted to be the next Go Gos... not the part the public saw, the backstage Go Gos, the part of the Go Gos only televised on Where Are They Now. I wanted to be crazy, I wanted to be a star, I wanted to live the Rock Star Life... And I did, actually. Don't tell anyone, otherwise I'd be in a LOT of trouble. There are certain things the public just has to know after your fifteen minutes of fame are over. Otherwise you'd go crazy from wanting to tell your whole story. My whole story is like a winding road, never coming to a complete stop. I wanted to be famous. Like, Madona Famous. I wanted to be loved... And hated at the same time. See, to me, if you didn't have some people that hated you, you didn't make it. Don't ask me exactly why I thought that... I wish I knew. To this day, I wish I knew. At age seventeen, I announced my ambition to be a singer. I sang in front of anyone who would listen... Come to think of it, I think I made more enemies than I did friends, with all the bitching I did when someone rejected me in some way. I got a lot of offers... Not the type of offer I would have gone for, I wasn't about to sleep my way to the top like some of my predecessors did. Just because I had a good body, I was taken for granted more than once. A pretty face was all that mattered to record company execs. If they could put my likeness on a doll, they'd hire me. As much as I loathed that thought, I gave in to it. I let myself sign a contract that made me the next Britney Spears. I don't know why I did it... I hated everything that was on that friggin piece of paper... All the merchandising deals... All the plastic surgery clauses... I was against everything on that piece of paper that I had put my signature on. I didn't know why I did it at first, I nearly had a mental breakdown thinking about it as often as I did. But as time went on, I learned to deal with it. I learned to deal with little or no sleep for days at a time, I learned to deal with never seeing my family or friends, I learned to deal with the incessant dance lessons and vocal coaches that spoke almost no English at all, I learned to deal with the mall tours... I paid my dues. I paid a LOT of dues. Living in Britney Spears and Christina Augilera's shadows isn't a fun thing to do. Espically when you're barely eighteen years old and have stars in your eyes, blocking your vision. I learned everything the hard way. Just like me, I always had to do things the hard way, go figure. I learned how record companies work, I learned what percentage managers expect to get paid after you make an album, I learned what Artistic Credibility really is. It took a few years and a few thousand shows in the center courts of malls around the counrty, but I learned it. I finally knew what I was doing, after failing a few dozen times. Before I knew it, my video was nominated for an MTV Moon Man at the Video Music Awards, better known as the VMAs. I was in awe when I got to the awards show; I had never seen so many famous people in one place in all my eighteen years. I decided to go to the show with my cousin, who shall remain nameless. He's one of my best friends, he was the one who spent all the hours driving my ass around to recording studios to make my first demo cd, which included covers of Mariah Carey and MMC songs among others, when I didn't have a liscense yet. He was the one who supported me and listened to my gripes... He understood me completely. I won the Moon Man for Best New Artist that year, and another one for Best Pop Video. I was amazed that I had won, espically over Britney Spears' video for Stronger and Christina Augilera's video for Come On Over and 'N Sync's video for This I Promise You. It was only in my wildest dreams that I would be on the stage at Radio City Music Hall accepting two awards from MTV. This was quite possibly one of the best nights of my life. When I got to the Tommy Hilfiger After-Party, I was even more star-struck than when I first walked down the red carpet at Radio City. To my left were Blink 182, to my right Green Day... I was in heaven. All night long I partied like a freaking Rock Star... And there were no cameras to stop me, no managers to say No to me, not even Chris dared to get in my way when I was heading for the bar. Amazing what you can get when you name drop. All I had to do was sign an autograph for the bartender's daughter, which didn't bother me at that point since all I wanted was a drink, and I got basically anything I wanted. From that point in time on, I was unstoppable. No one got in my way anymore... I got my contract changed drastically, I got every doll pulled from the shelves... And I sat in my Camero smiling through it all. And all it took was a little alcohol to change my mind about being a star. And I was beginning to live like a star too. My days were filled with the "normal" Teen Idol duties... Signing autographs for hormonal fourteen year-old boys, being a "Cutie Patootie" when I was on Rosie, smiling for the cameras... But my nights... You know the old saying, Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll? I was living it. Not that I was taking Drugs, not like coke or anything, I was just drinking a little bit. Not a lot, just enough to give me a buzz. That was all I needed, everything else was just a natural high. I was living the Rock Life... My days were that of Britney Spears and my nights were that of Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters. Needless to say, it wasn't a very healthy way for an eighteen year-old to live, and I knew I had to change. So I sobered up. I never took a drink again, but only after the one stiff shot I took after waking up next to Justin Timberlake after a party in LA. I remembered when I opened my eyes, all I saw was brownish curly hair. My first thought was 'Oops, I did Justin Timberlake. Sorry Britney.' That day, I vowed to change my life, I knew I wasn't going to live very much longer if I didn't. So I changed. I made myself change. It was tough at first, but I got through it. Just like everything else, I got through it. I'm not saying it was easy, it was far from being easy. It sucked pretty bad, actually. Not that I wasn't used to everything in my life being hard... This just wasn't my choice of activities for the month. After a while I began to notice that my life was finally coming together again. Damn near took an eternity. But it finally happened. Now my life is much better, I'm on the right track... And I'm no longer a Teen Idol. At least I think I'm not. I decided to stay away from the music industry after the lawsuit I endured, and won, by the way. I'm now an aspiring model. One can only wonder where this is gonna take me. I could have been anything else... But as I always said back in my Teen Idol Days, some like it hot. |
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