Title: Passive
Author: rowan
Copyright:
MajickRowan 2001.
Disclaimer: I
don’t know Paul, or any other ‘Matchsticks’ for that matter, and I doubt this
is true.
Quote: I know that its weak/But god help me/I need this [Bed of Lies. matchbox twenty.]
“Paul”
Paul watches things. From his vantage point on stage, hidden behind
his drums, he watches things happen.
He watches Brian
flinging himself around the stage, feet flying, fingers attacking the strings
of his bass. Pookie pauses only when Adam catches his attention and they have
short conversations before the break apart, smiling. Brian is fun to watch.
He watches Adam watching the crowd from his place at stage
right. Adam rarely strays from where he stands. He sings his harmony parts with
fierceness in his voice and a crazy smile in his eyes and he always seems so intent
on what the crowd is doing: who's singing along and who has gone frantic with
excitement. Adam tells the best stories of sobbing girls and flashers. Adam is
the one to ask how the show went. He notices and remembers. Whereas Adam sees
the big picture, Paul only sees things in pieces, one at a time.
He watches Kyle.
Kyle doesn’t watch anyone. Paul believes Kyle exists in another world entirely
when he plays. His keeps his eyes closed, opening them to watch Rob when they
are ad-libbing a song. After Kyle is sure of where they are going he retreats
to where it’s just him and his guitar. Watching Kyle makes Paul sad, because
Paul wonders when he lost the passion for this that Kyle still thrives on.
Paul doesn’t let
himself watch Rob. It is painful. Rob shakes and trembles and sways and jumps
and soars with the music. Rob renders
people motionless with his voice. He makes them cry and scream and holler. Rob
makes Paul hate.
Paul hates how
helpless Rob makes him feel. Paul knows for certain that he didn’t ask to fall
like this. ‘Head over heels’ they call it. And Paul could only sit behind his
drums and watch it happen.
He watched it
happen from the first day they met, when Rob took him drinking and they were
both barely of age. He sat next to Rob and drank too much beer and let Rob get
them in trouble with his tall tales and his subtle insults. He watched Rob brag that
Paul was a better pool-player or fighter than the six-foot-seven, 350 lbs truck
driver sitting next to them, and who'd like to place a bet? After that, it was
easy. Rob quickly became an important part of his world. So much that Paul can’t
remember what it was like not to love him. To want him. To need him.
Paul’s heart pounds every time Rob calls him ‘baby’. Every time
he flops down on a couch in a green room, more on top of Paul than next to him.
Every time he steals a lit cigarette from Paul’s lips, takes a drag and gives
it back. All the little things he has introduced to their relationship that
fall short of the one thing Paul actually wants.
The one thing Rob can’t give him.
After the shows,
when they trail from the venue, flanked by bodyguards and girlfriends, Adam and
Brian walk together, talking and joking and laughing and buzzing with energy.
Paul sees a very different Brian from before the show. Pre-show Brian is mostly
quiet and solitary. Kyle holds his
daughter and his wife walks with her arm around Kyle’s waist, letting him draw
from her the life and the love he lost on stage, when he was filled with music.
Paul walks with
Rob. Always. Marisol never
moves to take the place beside her husband because she knows that after the
show, it is Paul’s place. Paul is Rob’s best friend, his band mate, and right
then, he's more important to Rob that Marisol. So Paul swallows the emotions
that collect in throat and threatens to strangle him and he smiles at Rob, and
poses for pictures with fans and he just barely keeps himself from screaming
with frustration. He accepts this closeness, this tenet of their friendship,
and recognizes it for what it is: a little bit and not nearly enough.
By the time they
make it to their buses or the hotel, Paul’s heart is weary with it and he can’t
stand to be around Rob for one second longer. He draws his fiancée near and
buries his face on her shoulder and is quiet with her. He tries his best to
love her more than he does.
He falls asleep
thinking of him.