I Want It That Way - Backstreet Boys
I would have fucked a Backstreet Boy, if I’d had the chance. This past Tuesday night. Any of them. I don’t know which ones have partners or which one I find the cutest. That’s all beside the point. Assuming a single Backstreet Boy had been willing to boinch this Backstreet-loving-bad-bitch, I’d have done it.
As a child, me and some friends would charge our mothers to watch us dance around the lounge to the Backstreet Boys. It was the worst five rand those women could have spent and those childhood memories are some of my best. Each time, we’d plop the scratched and adored CD into the player, skip skip skip to the most banging tune, and we’d dance and sing our little hearts out. Each time, the moms paid up.
We’d spend our earnings on Chappies or stink bombs or stickers for our sticker books. Remember those furry ones? I’d run my fingers and lips over them. I had a favourite kind of sticker – furry – and a favourite kind of marble – the really really big ones (but especially the really really tiny ones) – and I fucking hated Westlife.
Backstreet Boys and Blue and the Spice Girls and Avril Lavigne; we wore our CDs down. Our marbles were clinked to chipping, our stickers rubbed down to the studs. I, we, couldn’t get enough of a good thing. We watched Cool Runnings and Bring It On every weekend for a year. We felt the rhythm, ate our mother’s bolognese, felt the rhyme, and we knew every detail of every scene of Final Destination, down to which log would tumble off the back of the truck first.
I grew up, lost my marbles, and Lego became fancy. It became expensive and began to have a purpose, like a puzzle – a picture on the box of what it should be. I bought American Idiot by Green Day, and tucked Avril and the Blue boys away in one of those long, wooden shelves that was built specifically to store CDs.
I started wearing eyeliner. Too fucking much of it. I started high school and touching boys and smoking. I threw out the CD storage unit and showed anyone who would look my motherfucking iPod Shuffle.
But still. Any time the Backstreet Boys would come on, there I was and there I am. Six, or seven, turning over a five rand coin in my smudgy fingers, having just performed the show of a lifetime in a Woodmead lounge.
And this past Tuesday night, at the age of 29, there I really was. Standing in an arena in a casino with one of the friends I used to dance in the lounge with. “We’re fucking late,” I yelled at her, as we ran in. Apparently, there were no South African boy bands well-suited to be the opening act. Apparently, when you’re almost 30 and going to see a boy band on a Tuesday night, and the ticket says the show starts at 8pm, the show actually starts at 8pm.
I had on my platform, high-top Converse, Chappie yellow. My dungarees, four sizes too big for me. My hair wrapped up in two buns, perched atop my head (think Miley Cyrus, the early years).
I had the Backstreet Boys, there in the flesh, on the stage, right in front of me. We hauled ass to our seats, inhaling poppers and admiring their matching black outfits on the way. Every time they danced, my friend would yell out the side of her mouth, too scared to look at me and miss a moment, “Look at their matching dance moves!”
With every song, every outfit change (“Look at their matching white outfits!”), my dungarees sagged with the weight of five rand coins. They spilled from the pockets on my chest and landed heavily in my plastic beer cup and littered the arena floor. A few of them got sucked right up into my nostril along with the poppers.
During the show, my bladder plead with me. “I’m making a run for it, I’m going to pee,” I screamed over the music. She was horrified, my friend, at the risk I was taking. Who knew how far the bathroom was or what song was coming up next. But me and my bladder are old, now, and I was drunk enough to think I was fast at running.
I zipped down the stairs, out of the arena and into the lobby. I yelled at a security guard, “WHERE IS THE CLOSEST BATHROOM,” and she looked me up and down before pointing to a door that read ‘Toilet’, half a metre away. I spilled a trail of coins in my wake.
I slammed the stall door shut behind me, and began to yank the dungaree straps off my shoulders, to shimmy them down my body. But a necklace I bought in Italy, less than a year ago, is caught on one of the strap’s buckles. I always wear this necklace. I love this necklace. I always wear these dungarees. I dress most days like I’m going to a Backstreet Boys concert. Why now?
I try, for a few seconds, to release the necklace from the buckle, but it won’t budge. I can hear the song coming to an end.
I bought this necklace on a cobbled street in Porto Venere. I was there, for a week, with a man I loved, in a country I loved, eating food I loved, and this necklace was the thing I bought to contain all of the cobblestones and kisses and bowls of pasta; a Horcrux I collect on each of my trips.
It’s delicate and beautiful and as I ran it between my fingers in a bathroom stall in a casino in Cape Town, I could smell the Mediterranean sea and see the wrinkled face of the lovely woman who sold it to me. I could hear the man I loved saying, “It looks beautiful on you, my love.” I could feel him tracing his fingertips over my tanned collarbone while he said it.
I ripped it off my neck in one swift movement, tucked it and its broken clasp into a pocket in my moon bag, zipped it up, carefully, making a point to remember which pocket I’d put it into, made my desperate wee, and ran back through the lobby, into the arena.
I was back in time for I Want It That Way. And the others. My throat was sung raw and my heart was bursting.
And then confetti exploded in the arena sky, the songs and outfit changes ended, my pockets lightened, lost their coins, my nostrils cleared, and the sadness set in. It was over.
Four months after the trip to Porto Venere, the man I loved and I hugged goodbye. I wore my little necklace and packed my things into big boxes that are now scattered across three cities, two countries.
Four months, to the day, since the last hug, was this past Tuesday – Backstreet Boys Day. And I would have fucked any one of them, even though it would have been a bad idea, if I’d had the chance. To get more of a good thing.
I would have carried on loving him, even if it might not have been the best idea, if I’d had the chance; ‘til we were worn and chipped and rubbed down to the studs.