Nick Carter shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Today was it: the big day. The one-on-one interview with John Norris. MTV was airing a special on the boys, aptly titled Backstreet Boys: The One-On-Ones. Of course, he understood the point of it. A lot had been going on in the Backstreet world worthy of reporting on: Kevin and Brian's engagement, Howie's remaining grief over his sister's death, AJ's trouble with his father. MTV hyped it as 'unlimited, up-close and personal access' to the boys' issues with 'candid, revealing and personal responses.' Everyone was excited about it. Everyone except Nick.

No one had asked him if he wanted to participate in this interview. It was just expected of him. Nick hated that- when people expected things out of him that he'd never agreed to. He could understand why no one asked him though- there was no way in hell he'd ever agree to such an interview.

Nick just didn't understand the point of the whole thing. He was a musician. All he wanted to do with his life was share his voice with the world. He didn't understand why his personal life had to be included in that. He couldn't understand why people he'd never met cared so much about him. What was it about Nick Carter that made people want to know every intimate detail of his personal life? There wasn't much to tell, and what was there wasn't that interesting. He had a dysfunctional family, a girlfriend he was in a love-hate relationship with, and the guys. What's so exciting about that?

What made it worse was the fact that it was an individual interview. He hated being interviewed one-on-one. Even the presence of the other guys in the room made him feel stronger. Moral support or something. When he was alone, Nick felt like he had his guard down. He was vulnerable, and that was never a good thing in an interview.

One thing was for sure, Nick was not going to be cooperative. Sure, he'd do the interview. But there were things about his life that Nick was going to keep to himself. John Norris and the people at MTV weren't going to get the 'candid, revealing and personal' interview they expected out of Nick Carter. Not if he could help it, at least.

"Any thoughts of going solo someday?" John asked.

Hell yes, all the time, Nick thought. Everytime Kevin gets angry at me, everytime someone doubts my talent because I'm in a boy band. I think about this more often than you can imagine. But you're not going to hear that.

"Eventually, I might do it." Nick spoke up. "That might just be because I want to do something different."

"I would think, though, that there must be people that you encounter saying, 'Nick, hey, you've got the voice, you've done the group thing, why not go off?' Are there forces around you, encouraging you to do that all the time?"

"Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. There's tons of forces." Damn, is John Norris a psychic? Nick wondered. Mandy and I had just that conversation the other night. She and the other guys got into a fight over something retarded. They don't really like her as an opening act. But she came complaining about it to me. Saying I should leave the band, go off on my own. Mentioning something about dueting with her, a Sonny-and-Cher sort of a thing. I didn't dare tell her that was the stupidest fucking idea I'd ever heard.

"You've got to be comfortable in your environment. You've got to feel at one with what you are doing, and I feel at one with what I'm doing right now, so no matter what people say, it doesn't affect me. Right now, I'm just not at the point where I'm feeling like I wanna do something, but there probably will be a point, there probably will, but I don't know when." Take that, Mandy. I've been with the Boys for eight years. Yeah, I may hate their guts sometimes, but we work well together. I'm not ready to screw that up. Not just yet. There's comfort in consistency.

"Are you still in the relationship you were in a year ago?"

Nick resisted the urge to snort. Yeah, if you could call it a relationship. "Mmm, yeah."

"And as you know, there was a lot of talk that that had led to a falling out between you and your mom."

Of course it was. My mom realized that Mandy was an aspect of her life that she couldn't control, and that absolutely drove her nuts. So being the anal control freak that my mother is, she made me choose. 'Mandy, or me.' I was just looking for a way out of my mother's watchful eye. Mandy wasn't the best scapegoat, but she was the only one there is. But, to be fair, it wasn't just about Mandy. It was the overall realization by my mother that I'm not a little kid anymore. She can't boss me around. Poor Aaron, now she's moved on to him.

"Well, not really. No, it was more deeper than that. I think that was a scapegoat for a lot of things having to do with my relationship... for other things that were going on. Really, everything right now is extremely cool. I love my family." And its true. I love Aaron and Angel, Leslie and BJ, even Ginger and my dad.

"Your relationship with your mom is okay at the moment?"

Completely and entirely dysfunctional, but no more then it was before. "Yeah, its good."

"She's been pretty involved with your career from the get-go. Do you now think that maybe it's not such a good idea for family and business to be intertwined?"

This guy either knows way too much about me, or is far too introspective. This interview is starting to get scary. After only two dates on this leg of the tour gone by, I'm already beginning to think it was a bad idea to have Mandy open for us.

"I believe that, right now, it's more so, that I wanna be with my family and not [talk] business. That is probably the big issue, what it was. Now it's more just about me wanting to have my family out of the business, 'cause I deal with it so much. I'm living the business. So when I wanna just take a break and get away from it all, I don't wanna have to come back and deal with it all, with all the business and stuff. I wanna be able to just chill, so that's pretty much what it's all about."

"Has it become difficult for you to keep your business and personal lives separate?"

Nick resisted the urge not to laugh. How could you ask me that, when you're tearing my entire life apart in this interview? Don't you realize, there is no such thing as a personal life when you a Backstreet Boy? Your personal life and your business life are one-and-the-same. Especially for me. Every person that's important to me in my life is using me to furthur their own fame in the music industry. My family, Mandy, hell, even Brent. The only person that wouldn't do that is Melissa. But she's not a part of my life anymore, now is she? "It is kinda personal to me, and at the same time, I'm in the spotlight all the time, and everybody's in the spotlight, so a lot of people know your business. Once you sign on the dotted line, that's what you're obligated to let everybody know."

"Is it safe to say there won't be a "Heart And Soul, Part II" coming out anytime soon?"

"Not anytime soon." Never again, if I can help it.

Nick was in a daze for the rest of the day. The interview had come across as he had hoped: he as a bumbling idiot too confused by words to spit up anything worthwhile. But it was the things he didn't say in the interview that got him thinking.

The US tour had been a wild time in Nick's life, one he would never forget. It all began that summer day in Milan, the day he broke up with Mandy. From then on out, Nick had really taken Brent's words to heart. It was all about the men: just Brent, Nick and his dad. They had fun on the road together, drinking, partying, experimenting. A different girl every night. And for awhile Nick felt like a real live rock star. But very quickly Nick learned that with the life of a rock star, you party twice as hard, but you crash just as fast. And that's just what he did- crash.

He'd realized that the fight with Mandy had been ridiculously stupid. Brent, Mandy and himself had all been to blame. Brent was drunk, but that wasn't an excuse for the things he said. No one should ever be able to say such things. Mandy had reason to be upset, but she should have controlled herself better. Nick should have been the rational one, finding the happy medium in between his best friend and his girlfriend.

So he took Mandy back. Or she took him back. Maybe it was mutual. Brent wasn't too happy about the situation, but Nick busied his best friend by initiating him to pursue music. Nick thought things would go back to normal. But what he had forgotten was that with his life, things were never normal.

He loved Mandy. He really did. And he knew that deep down inside, she loved him too. But maybe love just isn't enough sometimes. In his last heart-to-heart before Brian's engagement, B-Rok had said something that registered with Nick. "I know you too care about each other, Nick. But it seems like you love each other so much, that you can't share each other's best qualities with anyone else. You use them all up on yourself. So in some respect, you bring out the worst qualities in one another for the world to see. Think about it, Nick. Is that the kind of relationship you want to be in?"

It was probably the deepest comment anyone had ever made to him. That was two months ago, and Nick was still trying to figure out the answer. Until the day he figured it all out, Nick just left things the way they were. Like I said before, there's comfort in consistency.

~want to be notified when this site is updated? email me (and send feedback!)~

© 2002 [email protected]