Note: Everything that happens in this story is true. However, names of people, places, and bands may have been changed in order to avoid possible embarrassment.
I am standing in a puddle. Rain drips off my lips and a yellow poncho hangs off my skinny shoulders. In a week I will turn thirteen. Today I will fall in love.
My mom created a new definition for “pity party” when she invited Jenny, my friend I hadn’t seen since preschool, to celebrate my Unlucky Thirteen with me. A few months before, my family had moved across the country, and because I was homeschooled and reaching the peak of my introverted stage, my mother had to invent friends to invite to my birthday celebrations for a couple of years.
During the car ride to the concert, Jenny and I spend about five minutes reminiscing about that time in preschool when were sitting in our car seats and eating Life Savers and we both choked at the same time and our mothers almost had to resuscitate us. Then we settle down into a soggy, awkward silence.
We are greeted at the Soul Song Christian Music Festival by a huge clap of thunder. Now we are standing in a puddle, waiting for the moment when First Love, my favorite Christian boy band ever, will dance onto the stage.
Chris, Jared, Josh, Shawn, and Ryan do not dance onto the stage. They rise out of the floor, posed like male, leather-clad Charlie’s Angels. They are so cute. I do not care anymore that I am wet, because I am totally, totally crushing.
Next to me, Jenny is chatting with my nine-year-old brother, Jet. Jet came out of the womb with a tough guy name and today he has a bully side to match. First, he has stolen my faux-friend, Jenny, who finds his boyish charms far more approachable than my aura of shyness. And now Jet is complaining. It’s wet. It’s cold. This is so boring. Dad. Dad. Dad. I want to go home.
I am still watching First Love’s youngest member, Ryan Kelly. Ryan Kelly, with his Brian McKnight voice and quarterback body. Oh. He is my favorite. I love him. I…
“Hey, Bets, I think we’re gonna leave.”
“What? Dad! First Love has only sung one song! And it’s my birthday!”
“Honey, Jet is wet and miserable. We just need to go.”
I pound my forehead against the car window all the way home. Jet and Jenny are laughing at one of their new inside jokes. My love is on stage at the festival, and I sit in a van, wringing out my jacket.
A week later, on my real thirteenth birthday, I go to the hospital and get my tonsils out. For the next few weeks I survive on popsicles and Ryan Kelly—fan sites, message boards, CDs, and his book on godliness and sexual purity. Ryan’s favorite Bible passage is Matthew 5, so I memorize all forty-eight verses of it. I write poems for Ryan, and letters in gold gel pen, which I never send but instead sequester away in a shoe box, as though God will use it as a secret portal to his mailbox somewhere in Nashville. I also write my first songs on my guitar to Ryan. Oh, Ryan, nothing can keep us apart. You soothe my throat and fill my heart.
A part of me is convinced that God is saving Ryan for me, and all I have to do is pray and obsess and write songs for him and pray and obsess some more, and then, like magic (or should I say a miracle!), the next time I see him at a concert, Ryan will notice knock-kneed practically-prepubescent me out of all of the hundreds of drooling girls in line for his autograph and we will exchange addresses and then write letters and then fall madly in love and get married and have musical babies. In another one of my constant daydreams, Ryan’s apartment is burning down and I have to save his life, dragging all six-plus feet of him onto the sidewalk, giving him mouth-to-mouth (gasp!) resuscitation until his eyes open, and, in a heart-pounding rush of oxygen and relief, he knows I am The One. These fantasies in my mind are just millimeters away from what psychologists would call a delusion.
Six months later, I try again. Dad drives me four hours out of the way to the concert with another faux-friend named Ruth, who keeps calling me Beth instead of Betsy. I guess our friendship is still in its infancy. However, I am full of hope because this concert is indoors (no getting rained out!), and my brother Jet is back at home, where he cannot foil my plans.
I quiver as First Love dances onto the stage. Chris. Jared. Josh. Shawn—Ryan? Where is Ryan?
Ryan Kelly quit First Love two weeks before the concert.
I am sitting in the back of the venue, knees scrunched up to my chest, bawling my eyes out. Ruth looks uncomfortable. My dad tries to comfort me, but because he secretly knows this is the stupidest trip he has ever been on in his years as a father, he is no help. My heart is broken.
***
I am nearly twenty and ex-boy band members are married with beer bellies. My love for Ryan has faded into an amused nostalgia that doesn’t cross my mind often. A month before Christmas vacation one of my college classmates bumps into a burnt-out twenty-something with a Brian McKnight voice and no record label—Ryan Kelly lives in Brooklyn. And a week later he is in my Manhattan apartment building, because, as it turns out, he is dating my friend and former roommate, Victoria. Victoria’s roommate, Sam, is a fellow former First Love fanatic. One day after class she tells me that Victoria is making out under their kitchen mistletoe with the man I once thought I was destined to marry. After squealing and gasping for a while, we concocted a plan for me to meet him: if Victoria ever brought Ryan home, Sam would text me and I would proceed to visit the apartment to “borrow a movie.” The night before Christmas break, I received the anticipated text message:
“Ryan Kelly is in our apartment! Right now!!!”
I knock on the door of Sam and Victoria’s apartment. I cover my mouth and my knees shake.
Sitting at the kitchen table, typing on a laptop and eating macaroni and cheese, is Ryan Kelly. His quarterback body has softened a little, but he still has that thick sandy hair, that straight English nose. He’s wearing a winter jacket and newsboy cap.
“Betsy, this is Ryan, Ryan, Betsy,” Sam says, trying to hide the smile that is making her lips twitch like mad.
I shake his hand, which is disappointingly clammy, and say a casual hello. I chat with Sam and Victoria for a while, and then I turn to him.
“It’s Ryan, right?” I say, with convincing uncertainty. I am a splendid actor.
“Yeah, that’s right,” he says, with a mouthful of macaroni and cheese.
“Ryan, where are you from?” (I already know. It’s Louisville, Kentucky. It was in the exclusive First Love bio book, which I memorized.)
“Kentucky, originally.”
“Oh, that’s cool, I’m from Ohio,” I say.
“Awesome, that means we’re neighbs!”
Neighbs. The unfamiliar slang rolls off his tongue in a dorky way. Major turn-off. This confirms my total apathy and lack of envy toward Victoria for her make-out sessions with the man who should have been mine. Relief sweeps over me.
“…I guess we are…neighbs!”
“Yeah, I’ve been to Ohio a few times, outside of Cincinnati, actually.”
“Oh, cool, that’s where my family lives!” (I know you’ve been to Ohio before, I think. You were there on First Love’s sophomore album tour, and you rose out of the stage. That was when I fell in love with you.)
We talk about our home states for five whole minutes. He does not know that I know about his past life as a Christian boy band member. He does not know that I wrote him songs and poetry. He does not know that I can still quote Matthew 5. I am merely a friend of a friend who came over to drink tea and borrow The Bourne Identity. God is laughing.
I spend every day of Christmas break that year blasting boy band music.
Tags: 2ge+her, betsy brown, boy bands, christian rock, disappointment, heartbreak, his quarterback body, weird true tales, wow ur into christian boy bands thats cool i guess im into harder christian stuff like POD and eli, your favorite bible passage can’t be a whole CHAPTER Ryan
I did not notice that names had been changed and I immediately google image searched Ryan Kelly. THWARTED!
This was extremely great, and it gave me nostalgia feelings for my first serious celebrity crush (after Liberace, which was doomed from the start) . And that crush was Wil Wheaton. I had no idea what I what the hell I was doing, but I do remember having calculated our age difference down to the DAY, and trying to decide at what age that span of years, months and days would become “not weird” so we could date. I think I settled on 17 and a half.
Oh lord (I am blushing as I write this, I am AMAZED at myself!), I sent Wil Wheaton a letter when I was in 7th grade and got back an autographed 8×10 photo which lived inside the cover of my diary for – well, hell, it might still be in there.
Nice to know I wasn’t alone. Thank you, fellow fan!
I did the same thing!! I got back a signed photo and made a frame out of MASKING TAPE and hung it right by my pillow (I slept on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed). *hi fives from the past*
*high fives 4 ever!*
I do feel vaguely pleased by the fact that Wil Wheaton appears to have turned out to be an okay dude. Die, Wesley-haters, die! (alt-net).
Oh my god, the amount of shit I got for liking him on ST-TNG. “You only like him cause you think he’s CUTE!” Well…yeah, duh. I’m like 11.
Oh god I did the age difference calculation with more boys than I like to admit.
I liked this so much!
Amazing. Just amazing.
As always, the tags are the perfect humor garnish on a delightful piece.
i guess im into harder christian stuff like POD and eli
I still have Eli in my music collection *cough*
>_>
I still listen to “Letters” and “Captain” occasionally
<_<
I loved this.
I hope this is secretly about Plus One. We all had that phase. We alllll had that phase…right? Right?
Plus One is my guess (but I can’t actually name any other Christian Boy Bands so they are my only guess).
I claimed to hate them but I could do the dances from their videos (especially the video in the Real World-esque apartment)
I don’t know anything about the band but a Google turned this up and your guess checks out pretty well (last dude) … http://thats-normal.com/2013/02/plus-one-christia…
That post is gold. It’s all coming back to me now. Written on my heart is that music video (the chihuahua in the purse! Yes!). I am having vague memories of liking Gabe the best of all (but they were no Switchfoot. I wanted to marry both Foremans)
Oh yeah. Plus One (with some other bands I don’t remember) was my first concert. Six Flags, VA, 2001-ish. An older girl in my youth group had won a radio contest and got to sing in a choir on-stage with the band. She was so. lucky.
PLUS ONE! Oh my goodness. I was grasping for the name of the band from the deep recesses of my memory. I thought they were total babes.
Can we briefly discuss how horrifying that picture is? All of them just have crazy-scary expressions, is it a parody? Please tell me it’s intentionally horrifying.
The look of a man who’s sold his soul to a higher power
Yes, 2ge+her were a joke band http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nrwl6a4-lSg
Reverse Cenobites
2ge+her though. That 2ge+her pic is bringing back the feels HARD. I didn’t care if they were “fake,” they were real to me. They were my boyband. I spent a good two weeks sobbing through classes freshman year after finding out Michael Cuccione had died. And I remember when their sophomore album came out, my best friend and I made my dad drive us to Media Play as soon as school got out because we were terrified they were going to sell out of the CD, and then they didn’t have any on display in the racks and I started FREAKING OUT. Turns out they just hadn’t bothered to unpack them from the back due to lack of demand :X
Chad is addicted to meth!
ME TOO! I had completely forgotten I had such strong feelings for them. My memory certainly had been kind to them since I recall them being much better looking.
I grew up without cable so to me, 2ge+her was REAL. And QT was my soul mate!!! I only recently found out that they were a parody band, which threw me into a pit of despair.
So, re: crushing on musicians: I did not imagine that I would rescue them from burning buildings but instead thought I would get sick in hospital and they would visit and then… fall in love with me? Because… reasons? Also I should state that at least one of those crushes was when I was like, 8, and I had a crush on a musician I will not name, ONLY through his music, which is good, because I just looked up how old he would have been then and the answer is like 36. Yikes.
I had nearly the exact same fantasy… mine was that I would contract some sort of incurable disease and the Make a Wish Foundation would let me choose a final wish. Of course, I’d choose to have my favourite band visit my sickbed, and of course, the lead singer (most often Matt Theissen from Relient K) would ask for a private conversation with me, and then I would ask if he would give me my first kiss before I died……. what the heck was wrong with me.
I am having severe Cornerstone flashbacks right now.
I do not have a “celebrity teen crush ends up dating my normal person friend” story, but I did experience the opposite when my normal person teen crush (well, as normal as you can be when your entire family is, like, Olympic-level swimmers) married an action movie star/supermodel. I’ll be honest. It stung.
On the other hand, he looks like the kind of guy who’d say “neighbs” now, so it’s probably not that big a loss.
I loved this. I sooo felt every single instant of this, thank you for sharing. <3
I did the same thing!! I got back a signed photo and made a frame out of MASKING TAPE and hung it right by my pillow (I slept on the bottom bunk of a bunk bed). *hi fives from the past*
Oh my god, the amount of shit I got for liking him on ST-TNG. "You only like him cause you think he's CUTE!" Well…yeah, duh. I'm like 11.
Oh god I’m so glad I wasn’t the only pre-teen whose primary way of fantasizing about her crush was through them experiencing terrible tragedy which I was somehow privy to, causing them to fall in love with me. Ah, the hours I wasted in middle school math class daydreaming about rescuing Derek Jacobi from a fiery plane crash….
Oh yes. Trapped together (pick one): on a deserted island/in an ice cave/beneath a collapsed building/in a kidnapper’s basement/in outer space, until he realizes his love for me.
So the very mention of the words “boy band” can only insert one song into my brain now. Thanks, Bob’s Burgers!
“…Will you be mine, coal mine? Will you be mine, diamond…”
I’m angry on your behalf that a whiny younger brother caused you to miss all but one song of your birthday concert. That’s super shitty.
:C
I was allowed to listen to secular music, but i wasn’t allowed to go to concerts. When I was a senior in high school, 17 years old, my dad forbade me to see Tori Amos (a friend of mine had a spare ticket and a car, I didn’t even need a ride, it was a no-commitment thing on dad’s part) because “her concerts are too X-rated.” what. WHAT. I’ve seen her in concert several times and still have no idea what he was talking about. Did he think she was having sex on a piano or something?