Nick
On Friday
morning, I woke up in Vegas. It was the day
of our last show, and I couldn’t believe it.
In some
ways, I was relieved. The next day, I’d
be able to go home and get some much-needed rest. I could spend all day in bed or just lying
around on my couch if I wanted to, and I wouldn’t have to worry about getting
up and performing when I didn’t feel good.
But at the
same time, I was sad to see the tour end.
This would be my last chance to perform for awhile… and if I got bad
news next week, maybe forever. I wasn’t
ready to face the possibility of this being my last concert… not just of this
leg of the tour, but the last one ever.
Either way,
I was determined to make it a good one.
We were performing at The Beach at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, which
had to be the coolest venue we’d played the whole tour. The stage was an island, set above an
eleven-acre manmade beach outside the hotel, with real sand and a huge wave
pool. The show was general admission,
since there were no seats, only water to wade in and lawn chairs in the
back. We’d had to adjust our blocking,
since the stage was smaller than we were used to, but no one really
minded. The last show of a tour was
always a little more laidback than most, and it was fun to be able to change it
up a little and do something different.
It was
ninety-eight degrees outside when Cary went out to open the show. She wore a light, Hawaiian-print sundress,
but even so, by the end of her three-song set, her bare skin was shiny with
sweat. “Take it easy out there,” she
warned me, as we crossed paths backstage.
“Drink as much water as you can.
It’s really hot.”
“I’ll be
alright,” I replied, and truthfully, I wasn’t too concerned. I’m a Florida boy; I’m used to the heat and
used to performing summer concerts in too many layers of clothes. And besides, the guys and I had a plan.
By the time
we took the stage, the sun had gone down, but the temperature was still in the
lower nineties. We started the show in
our usual stage outfits – black pants and dress shirts, Brian and AJ in
jackets, Howie and I wearing vests – but during the first wardrobe change, we
traded them for jeans and t-shirts. We
were sweating buckets already, and no one felt like putting on our tour
hoodies. By the last set of songs, we
were in swim trunks. The crowd went crazy
as we came out, one by one, for “All of Your Life.”
“Since
we’re performing at the beach, we thought we better get in our swim trunks,”
Brian joked with the fans later, showing off his crazy, turquoise,
Hawaiian-print shorts. He, Howie, and AJ
had on thin, plain, white t-shirts with their trunks; I wore a white
button-down over a wifebeater, to make sure the bump of my port stayed
hidden. It didn’t matter, though; I was
comfortable, and it gave the end of the concert a fun vibe, like we were really
at a beach party. We were pretending…
like I’d been doing the whole tour, like I had the guys doing now. Pretending everything was carefree,
pretending nothing was wrong. The whole
thing was an act.
It really
hit me when we got to the end of “Bye Bye Love.” As we sang, “I’m saying goodbye to you… I’m saying goodbye to you,” and waved
to the fans down in the water below us, I realized I was saying goodbye in more
ways than one. It wasn’t just a lyric in
a song; it wasn’t just the end of a show or even a tour. This was my farewell to all the fans and the
incredible career they’d let me have, in case there wasn’t another concert,
another leg of the tour, in case the news next week was bad and I never got
another chance.
It was hard
to go on and act like I was having fun, with that depressing thought in my
head, but somehow, I did it. I did it
the same way I’d made it through all the other shows before this one: by faking it, by forcing myself to stay in
the moment, forget everything else, and focus only on performing. This time, I knew Brian, AJ, and Howie were
having to do the same thing.
We gave the
fans a finale they’d never forget, busting out Super Soakers for the second
half of “I Want It That Way” and spraying the crowd. “Tell
me why,” we sang, and I shot a stream into the first few rows. “Ain’t
nothin’ but a heartache. Tell me why…” Then I turned the gun on Brian and Howie and
squirted them, too. “Ain’t nothin’ but a mistake.
Tell me why…” I did the
choreography with the Super Soaker in one hand.
“I never wanna hear you say… I
want it that way…”
I nailed AJ
while Howie was singing his solo. By
then, Brian had a squirt gun, too. I
expected him to retaliate, but he sprayed the front row, instead of me. Again, I was reminded of how much things were
going to change, of how much they already had.
Before they found out I had cancer, I’d never have gotten away with
squirting any of the guys without taking a shot straight to the face as
punishment.
We were all
armed with squirt guns when we came back out for the encore, and we completely
nixed the choreography to “Straight Through My Heart” and just played around
onstage, instead. There were beach balls
bouncing over the heads of the audience, and the fans in the first few rows
were screaming wildly as we drenched them with water. It was fun, the perfect end to our last
show. And when it was over, we set down
the Super Soakers and grasped each other’s hands.
As we took
our final bows, the fans’ screams making my ears ring, I suddenly thought of
the quote I’d included in my thank yous for Millennium. Thinking I was clever, I’d put it in
code:
5483-5433-86-843-3855378-367-843-388873-47-722723. Live
life to the fullest, for the future is scarce. At the time, I’d been nineteen and on top of
the world. I’d had limited experience
with death – most recently, the passing of our producer, Denniz Pop, to cancer
– but like most teenagers, I still felt invincible, untouchable. The saying sounded deep, and the code thing
was cool, but when they were decoded, the words were still just words to me.
Standing on
that stage over a decade later, at the ripe old age of thirty, with the same
disease that had killed Denniz inside my body, I realized truer words had never
been spoken.
That night,
I’d lived by them.
***
“Thank
you,” I told the guys later, as we walked back up to our hotel rooms. “Thanks for letting me do this… and for doing
it with me. It meant a lot to me.”
I’ve never
been too good with words, and it’s weird for me to really say what I feel when
it comes to the emotional stuff, but I wanted them to know how important our
finishing the tour together had been to me.
They all nodded and hugged me, one at a time, and Brian said, “Now that
it’s over, you just need to go home and focus on getting better, okay?”
I nodded,
too. “That’s what I’m gonna do.”
We were all
staying one more night in Vegas, and if things were normal, we would have spent
most of it in the casinos, drinking and gambling, partying and celebrating the end
of another leg of the tour. But the guys
must have known I was completely wiped from the concert, because no one invited
me out. That was just as well with me; I
had already played in the casino at Mandalay Bay before soundcheck that
afternoon, and I was ready to call it a night.
Cary was
waiting for me with a bottle of sparkling grape juice when I let myself into
the room. “Congratulations,” she said,
filling two glasses and handing me one.
“You made it.”
“Thanks to
you,” I replied, smiling sheepishly, raising my glass to her.
She shook
her head. “Thanks to your own
stubbornness. If I’d had my way, I’d
have sent you home weeks ago. Lucky for
you, you’re persistent, and I’m a pushover.”
I grinned
and clinked my glass against hers. “I’ll
drink to that,” I said, taking a sip of the grape juice. I guess I could have been an ass and ordered
real champagne, since our whole deal was off now that the guys knew the truth,
but I knew she had my best interest at heart, and I respected that, even if I hadn’t
always shown it. “Seriously, thank you,”
I told her, wiping my upper lip with the side of my hand, “for putting up with
my bullshit and… well, for everything.”
Cary
smiled. “Thank you, too. For the experience. It’s been a roller coaster, but…”
“You love
roller coasters.” I smirked, remembering
her telling me so at that theme park in Georgia, where Zombieland had been filmed.
Her cheeks
got pink as she laughed. I loved the way
I could always make her do that – giggle and turn colors. The effect made her even prettier; her cheeks
got rosy, her eyes got big and shiny, and her hair bounced on top of her
shoulders. It occurred to me again that,
under different circumstances, I probably would have tried to sleep with her by
now, but I quickly suppressed the thought.
I’d taken enough advantage of her already.
“Sorry it
wasn’t what you expected,” I added, feeling a surge of guilt when I recalled
how I’d basically tricked her into coming on the tour. “I hope you at least liked the performing
part… and hopefully you’ll get to open for us again, if we do the second leg.”
“Are you
kidding? I loved performing!” she
gushed, still smiling. “I loved
everything… being on stage every night, seeing the country, meeting you guys…” She blushed a little darker. “For me, the whole experience was worth the
not-so-pleasant parts.”
Thinking of
the long days on the tour bus, the long nights in hotel rooms, doing chemo in
secret and feeling like shit and trying to hide it all so I could drag my ass
on stage and perform, I nodded. “For me,
too.”
***