The Rest Of The Story
Summaries For The Remainder Of The Chapters With Parts Of Each Included Here
Part of this chapter is already online, but here's what happens: A fourteen-year-old girl, one of Oxymoron's most ardent fans, decides to go on a diet after her father mentions that she looks "chunky". Annie figures she will fare better in grade nine if she resembed a sylph rather than a piglet. She decides to keep a diary of her progress in slimming down, not that she was even close to fat to begin with and her journal is amazingly like Michael Hope's. This is where the Oxymoron connection comes in: Annie meets Michael very early on the band's "Leveller" tour and gets a chance to talk to him. She's already lost twenty pounds and is beginning to resemble a concentration camp inmate.
Michael comments on how thin she is and she retorts with, "Well, look at you! You're a bone rack. I just want to look like you. Here, want to see my journal?" Michael reads it and cannot believe how much like his the diary is. Feeling like a kindred spirit with Annie and guilty that he may have caused her to go on this crazy diet, he takes her to a secluded vegetarian restaurant and shows her his weekly segments. The two compare and are blown away. They decide they are going to help each other and Annie is so excited that Michael Hope is actually taking an interest in her, who feels like a nothing, a zero and a loser.
It doesn't take long before Annie is doing everything in her power not to gain any weight and in fact, begins losing more. Michael is discouraged but cannot point fingers because he is in the same leaky boat. Annie meets the rest of the band, who take Michael aside and tell him it is a bad idea to involve himself with someone with so many problems, but he doesn't listen to them.
The rest of the chapter's summary involves Annie ending up getting so sick that she cannot get out of bed one morning. Unable to reach the phone, she slips into a coma, weighing a mere sixty-five pounds, and dies there. This devastates Michael and he feels responsible. His guilt is so overwhelming that he takes a massive overdose of Codeine and Percodan and retires for the rest of the day. Will he make it and if so, will there be any damage? That's for you readers to find out in the hard copy. This chapter was written to see how Michael and Annie were leading parallel lives. It shows you that, famous, rich and world-adored, one can still have the same problems of a junior high school girl. It makes the band seem more approachable.
The remainder of Chapter Eight involves Michael's family, along with meeting what turns out to be his biological father, portrayed here by Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers, a rock duo that was extremely popular in the fifities and still is in Europe. Much of this chapter deals with the strained relationship between Harold Hope and how their relationship comes down to the fact that the elder Hope is primarily interested in getting some money froim his well-to-do son. They have terrible fights and Michael stops eating altogether. He even begins to slash up his arms out of hatred, disappointment and heartbreak. There doesn't seem to be much the band can do for him as they watch their front man getting worse and worse.
This chapter has a lot to it, for the book is about more than a musician with an eating disorder. It's about what made Michael that way and his retalationship toward the father he'd never before seen escalates to extremely disturbing hieghts. Oxymoron is due to go on tour in three months so Michael, who ;possessed nearly no energy and stamina, slogs through the shows while Burton and the rest keep a close watch on it. How will this turn come out? It is to promote a CD called, "Stark" and Michael is expected to take a large part in the video for the first hit. Whether he will be able to carry out his duties remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, "Daddy Warbucks" hovers about for a piece of the action until Burton finally tells the leech to "bugger off". Toward the middle of this chapter, Michael recovers enough to do the tour, but fans see beyond the layers of clothing and notice the terribly gaunt face. Rumours that Michael had AIDS began to circulate, which were totally false and made Michael extremely uncomfortablle. The chapter ends disturbingly but realistically and for the first time Burton, Gill and Paul wonder if Michael will ever get welll again. That's it for this installment. I hope I haven't said too much.
