You Are The One
Title:: You Are The One
Genre:: Vam
Rating:: PG
Summary:: N/A
Notes:: One of the stories I wrote for the fluff competition on . This one didn't get submitted.
You Are The One
My pen goes around in circles between my deft fingers. It feels right there, comfortable; it’s part of me, but I don’t know what to do with it.
I need to write. I have to write something down, get something out. I might bust if I don’t. Do you know that feeling? That need, right between your heart and your stomach, a little pinch, just there, that means if you don’t get something out of your system you’ll implode? Go crazy? Say and do things that you shouldn’t, just because of that little niggling feeling, right there between your heart and your stomach that you just can’t quite place and don’t quite know how to get rid of otherwise.
So I picked up my pen, came here to my desk, and now I can’t figure out what I’m meant to write. The pen is an impatient weight in my hand, as I toss it from finger to finger, waiting for something to come.
But nothing is.
It’s not that there’s nothing to write about. There’s always something to write about. I have songs and songs, written about anything and everything. There’s a pile of them; crumpled up pieces of paper, stacked and balanced precariously on each other - breathe too hard and they scatter around the room, pieces of thoughts and feelings caught on the wind. The pile is staring at me.
I need to write.
What do I write about? Now that I’m thinking, it seems that I’ve written about it all.
The pain. The suffering. The all-encompassing desire to end it all. Join me in death for love. Love, yes, I’ve written reams and reams about love. I write like an expert but I’m not. Far from it; I’m just a child, playing with sticks in the mud, building fairy-tale houses with moss and twigs and dandelion leaves when it comes to love. I make it up.
I’ve only been in love once. I’ve only really ever been in love once.
There have been a lot of times, when I thought I was in love but wasn’t.
I only knew that they weren’t love when I found the one.
The one. I like that. So clichéd. So painfully clichéd, but so true.
I remember it all. I remember every single second; and as I look out the window at cars going by, sending tidal waves of grey puddle water up behind their tires, I relive every second again, at 10 times the speed, savoring the memories dearly.
No I won't surrender
At any cost
The first time I saw him, I hated him.
I saw him on TV. He was putting tacks all over his parents’ bedroom, so that when they woke up to him and his other friends he could fall over laughing at them.
Jackass, the show was named, and appropriately so. I ignored the white subtitles across the screen, listened to his oh so obnoxious voice and glared.
If I ever met him, I’d slap him. I promised myself that. Presumptuous little American fuck, that’s what I thought. Then I switched off the TV and cursed MTV for being so dumb.
The first time I actually met him, I didn’t slap him. I should have, but my friends got there first.
Him and his friends had somehow found out about us, infiltrated our gig, blagged their way backstage, where they proceeded to set up a practical joke; I don’t remember the logistics of it but we were angry. We were very angry.
Until he bought us all drinks to make up for it.
And then we liked him a lot, and I realized how blue his eyes were, how enticing his smile was, how he could make you laugh just with one look.
Love at first sight? Definitely not. Not on his part, not on mine.
But we were friends. From that day onwards, he became something like an annoying little foot-dog. Always trotting around, yapping and barking and jumping around. We had good fun with him. It was easy to tease him without him realizing, it was easy to make fun of him, to play around with him. We were a bit cruel, I have to admit. Especially me.
But I did like him. When he wasn’t drunk, and when he wasn’t playing to the cameras or to his friends, we could sit down and have a decent conversation. We could have fun together without all that master and pet stuff.
I smile, twirl my pen around my thumb, before bringing it up to my mouth to chew a bit on the end of it. Yeah, we had good times.
“Ville, Ville, look!”
I looked over; he was standing next to a huge snowman that he must have built whilst I was in the store, choosing alcohol for that night.
“Nice, Bam,” I said, shaking my head, chuckling. He was such a 10 year old.
“It’s you!” he yelled, laughing, standing back to checkout his masterpiece made from snow. I faked offense.
“Am I that fat!? Damn, I’ll have to go back on that diet then.” He laughed some more - he was always laughing.
“No, no, but look!” He took his beanie - a clone of my own - and stuck it on top of the snowma’s head.
“Now it just looks stupid, Bam!” The beanie was perched on top of the snowman, looking like the nib of a condom - so not the effect my beanie had, I was sure.
“Wait for it, wait for it!” He was on his knees, casting around in the snow. “Aha!” He moved to the face of the snowman, fiddled around for a bit, and then stood back, grinning.
I squinted to see it properly in the dimming light, but when I realized what he’d done, I laughed so hard I almost dropped my bag of alcohol. The snowman had eyeliner - brown, not my best color, and the lines were somewhat too jagged for my liking, but it had eyeliner.
“There we go. Willa Walo, the snowman.” We fell about laughing in the snow. An improvement, since the day before, I’d been contemplating throwing myself from a balcony. He wasn’t supposed to be there. But he got the first flight over when he’d heard what I’d tried to do, red-eyed it over to see me, to keep me off of any damned balcony railings.
It was sweet, but it had annoyed me at the time. However, lying there in the snow, I began to change my mind. I was glad I hadn’t thrown myself from that balcony, just so I could see Willa Walo the snowman, and Bam rolling around with snow in his hair. It was worth it.
My pen finds the paper, glides across it as I shiver, remembering how cold it was that night.
You're something so sweet and tender
From my heart
We burst into my apartment, laughing, drunk.
“Bammie, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, you should be skating. You can’t just put that on hold for me.”
He laughed, poured me a glass of Jägermeister; we weren’t even out of our coats yet, but the first thing he did was go straight to the bag of liquor. As usual. Again.
“You tried to jump off a balcony. Can’t have my best friend doing that, can I? Course I should be here. I’m going to cheer you up, Valo, if it’s the last thing I do.”
I smiled; my heart warmed.
“I’m your best friend?” I certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I played games with him, was cruel to him, never really took him seriously.
“Course you are. But don’t tell Ryan, he gets jealous fast.” He winked at me, clinked our glasses together, and we downed the thick liquid in quick, burning gulps, my body quickly warming not only because of the Jägermeister’s scorching.
I sigh a bit, looking up from the page. Now the memories have priority. I haven’t gone through them all, I haven’t done any filing of them for ages. They’re lying about, scattered in my brain like the stacks of lyrics are now scattered around the room - the previous sigh being too forceful and carrying them all off on a whim.
Yes I've done my evil
I've done my good
Memories. There are lots of good ones. There are lots of bad ones too. I raise an eyebrow at myself. I was cruel. I was stupid. I did things I shouldn’t have and said things I shouldn’t have.
“You want me to what?” I frowned at Seppo.
“Ask him, it can’t do any harm. You need the publicity. The band needs it. Europe is all very well and good, but you need a new stage. You need to go Stateside. And you can’t do it without him.”
I gave in to what my manager was asking from me, but I shouldn’t have. I went to Bam, knowing of course that he’d jump at the chance, and I asked him do to some music videos. I asked him to wear my sign, I asked him to be a whore for our sake - to shamelessly pimp us whenever he could. And he agreed, wholeheartedly, without ever suspecting foul play. He never suspected we were using him; he never suspected I was using him. He just genuinely thought we wanted him to be a part of our ‘posse’. The Heartagram Club. He was a tried and true member before we knew what had happened, but when he took it too far, when he found a lawsuit on his desk, he flipped out.
And rightly so. We had no right to ask him to do something like that, and then draw a line when it started to benefit him more than us. We had no right. I had no right.
But when I apologized, when I ripped up the lawsuit before his very eyes, when I called Seppo and told him where to get off, he forgave and forgot instantly. He was good at that. He was good at being the perfect picture of ‘a nice person.’ He could play the devil, but he could also be the gentleman. It was a rare trait, and he had it in abundance.
When did I fall in love? Not long after the lawsuit. Where were we, Prague? It was, it was Prague. A mansion, almost a castle, overlooking the city. Beautiful.
A doodle of the mansion fills the margin of my paper, pen sketching idly as I revel in the curls of time and memory. Then a doodle of a bed, a wrought iron frame; a grand-piano; a chandelier; I can see it all clear as day. The way the room was set up, just how cold it was in that house, who was doing what, how many people were standing around. I smile again, chuckle at the memories. Suck on the back of my pen and put it back to the paper. A melody’s forming now, and I hum it to myself, hum up and down the tones, putting them together slowly to make sure they sound right as I write down another line.
Bam was a wonder to watch when he worked. He was a party boy, but when he wanted to work, he got right down to it. He was a strict task master, and when he was under stress, he really knuckled down, and he yelled a lot. But he was still able to laugh, to have fun. And he loved what he did. You could tell, just from the look in his eyes, he loved standing behind the camera, watching the shot, yelling at people left and right. I loved to work with him. This was the first time and yet already I loved how he did it.
“Ville, you’re up now!” he shouted at me, to wake me out of whatever reverie I had fallen into, and I got up, walked over to where the crew was concentrated on fixing up a bed; there was even someone ironing the pillow.
“What’s all this?” I asked, frowning. A bed in the middle of a huge room. Deep red covers.
“Do you mind taking your shirt off?” That wasn’t a question, it was an order.
“You’re kidding. In this house? Do you know how cold it is in here!?”
“Yeah, but you have to not have a shirt on for this to work!”
“What? Why?”
“Oh just take your shirt off; the less you complain, the less time it will take.” I grumbled, but I did it. I would have done anything he asked.
There were several shoots. Of me lying on the bed - Bam yelling at me in the background to ‘be sexy’ never helped me keep a straight face, so these took longer than they should have - of me sitting on the bed, singing, looking pensive, being sad…
And one of me - one shot that changed my life. They weren’t supposed to film anything. Something had gone wrong with the sound, they had to rewire it. I was sitting there, on the bed, waiting, watching Bam - eyeing up the shot in the camera. He’d kicked his friend off of the camera, wanting to do it himself. And as I watched him, just looked at him, that tingling feeling at the back of my neck warned me that something was happening.
And something had. I was falling for him and I knew it. I knew that day that I would be hopelessly in love with him by the end of the week. And Bam… Bam, he realized something was going on in my head; he switched the camera on, zoomed in. He caught the bashful grin, the turn of the head; looking away from him because by then I could tell he was filming, and I could tell what I felt, and I just had to grin.
He caught the moment where I fell in love with him on tape without even realizing it. That’s how perfect he is. That’s how wonderful and amazing. He always knew what to do and when to do it. He always knew what I was thinking before I even said it. And I was right; by the end of the time we spent making that video, I was hopelessly in love with him.
Just believe me honey
I won't let go of you
It took a grand total of 2 months for me to know that I had finally found true love. All told, from the moment I first met him, it took me 2 years to realize.
Bam? Bam claims it took him 10 minutes. But he didn’t say anything for four years.
I was depressed again. I loved him, yes, I loved him so much. This was it, this was what I sang about, what I wrote about - everything before, it had all been lies. This was real. I knew it. He was the one for me.
But he didn’t know it. He didn’t know and I hated that he didn’t know. It was horrible, just being around him was horrible. I loved him so much that I hated him for not loving me too. A vicious circle that I couldn’t get out of. Attempts to shut him out of my mind failed miserably and I was left with longing for him, and only him, and never anyone but him.
I couldn’t have him. He wasn’t gay. He was as straight as a ruler and he wouldn’t ever bend. Not even for me. We were best friends, we’d have to stay that way. I was too selfish to give him up, too worried that I’d lose him to even tell him.
In the end, he found out from my loudmouth friends, drunk on a tour-bus, thundering across the Autobahns of Germany, late, late at night.
“Truth or Dare, Gas?” Burton slurred, taking another swig of whatever he was drinking. I laughed; we all laughed as Gas chose Dare and was made to prance around with Mige’s girlfriend’s bra on his head. Bam caught it on video, laughing so hard I was worried he might stop breathing.
“Okay, okay, truth or dare, Lily!” Bam called out, turning to Linde, zooming in on his face probably.
“Umm…” Lily was very drunk, and very into the game. As he was wont to do when he was drunk, he had lost all barriers.
“Truth!”
“Damn, you were supposed to pick dare!” Bam said, sighing. He probably had the perfect one worked out. I could always tell with him, just when he was planning something mean. This was one of those times.
“I s-said truth!”
“Fine… fine… okay. Um. Huh. Okay. Tell me… tell me who the rest of the band likes.” My eyes widened and I tried to get Lily’s attention, but it was useless, and before I could shut him up, Lily was off.
“Mige likes his girlfriend, and Burton likes his wife, and I love my wife, and Gas likes anyone that’ll fuck him, and Ville’s been in love with you for years.”
Everyone’s laughter at his list stopped. Bam stared. Brought the camera slowly down from his face; my cheeks were burning.
“Fuck you, Mikko,” I said to Lily, quietly. “Fuck you.” And then I got up, and slowly, oh so slowly, walked to the bathroom, anywhere to get away from Bam and his shocked - and, I thought, horrified - stare.
I have to laugh. I have no idea how I made it to the bathroom without falling over, I was so drunk. We were all drunk. Bam followed me, after putting his camera down. Kicked his way into the locked stall, wiped my tears, grabbed my face and kissed me with all the strength he could muster in his extremely drunken state. And I can still feel the way his lips burnt on mine, and how we melted into each other, how we didn’t leave the bathroom for hours, just sitting there, talking.
He loved me the minute he saw me. He’d kept quiet, for four years, never let on. I must say, he was better at it than me. My pen’s dancing in my hands again, and I can’t help but grin. I don’t know how he kept it quiet for so long, how he stood it for so long, but I’m so glad he did.
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all
“I can’t believe it took us four years.” We lay in bed one night, holding each other, talking quietly. Months had passed since the fateful tour-bus ride, but we were still in the throes of new-couple bliss.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked him, frowning. I never did understand why he didn’t say anything; though it was hypocritical, as I never said a thing either.
“Why do you think, nidiot?”
“Well, but besides that.”
“There is no besides that. That was the only reason. I thought you’d hate me for it and that I would lose you. Duh. That’s the only reason.” He laughed and kissed my forehead.
“Don’t you regret it though?” I had to ask it. I certainly did. I thought it was stupid, that we had wasted all that time. But Bam shook his head, no.
“No, I don’t. We had fun, didn’t we? I’d never have gotten to know you as well as I do if I had said something. This might have been different. No, I don’t have any regrets. None at all.”
And suddenly, I realized he was right. It was worth it, all of it, to end up here, where we were.
His words ring through my head even now; the husky tone, the one that’s only in his voice in those few minutes after sex, when he can’t hardly remember his own name from the lust and satisfaction that courses through his body. “No regrets, none at all.” And I do get it. I get it completely, and I write it down. Simple, but effective. It’s not the poetic norm of my songs, it’s not anything verbose and flowing, but it’s beautiful, it’s the truth.
We've had our share of misfortune
We've had our blues
And God is not on our side
Yes it's true
Again, the pen is stalled. Where do I go from there? I sigh, push papers around the desk. If I didn’t know that I had to write this, I would give up, get up, leave it. But something’s telling me I need to write it now, I need to finish it.
I find a letter, a letter he wrote me. Smiling, I open it; I have to squint to read his handwriting, but I read it all the same, even though I know every word off by heart.
Ville.
I don’t know where you are, but I guess you’ll get this when you come back. Which I know you will; all your stuff is here.
I wish I knew what to say to you. I wish I had your gift with words, then I could do this elegantly. Everything you ever do is elegant, did you know that? It is. But whatever. The point is, this is probably blunt and to the point and if I could embellish it, I would.
You know what? It was stupid of me to suggest this. It was stupid to even try to keep this a secret. The press are fucking hounds, they could have sniffed this miles off - well they did, didn’t they? Anyways. I know that now, you were right, it was a stupid idea to try and keep it quiet. Stupid.
I just want you to know… I’m so proud to have you. I thought I was protecting you by keeping this quiet; if I ever knew that you hated sneaking around so much, I would never have suggested this.
I love you. I want everyone to know. If you don’t care about the press, then neither do I.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I wanted to keep you a secret. I don’t care what they have to say. I don’t. They can do whatever the hell they want, they can say whatever they want, all I want is you. We can get through anything together. I know we can.
Call me when you read this?
I love you. More than anything else, I love you.
-BamBam
There are newspaper clippings with the letter. “Skater and Singer announce affair”; “Finnish Sex Idol and Jackass Star ‘in love’”; “VAM - not just a fangirl’s dream.” Magazine articles, a transcript from the press conference.
I kept all the hate mail too. I kept all the things that were thrown at us, and I kept all the harsh words. Oh yes, I kept them; memories are possessions, and one of my most treasured possession is the memory of the bonfire we made of all the hatemail, all the missiles, the things that I’d written down that people had said to us. That bonfire burned for a whole day, and it felt so good to watch it burn.
We keep forgetting baby
The beauty of us two
There is no one who can take that away
From me and you
I find all the letters he’s ever written me; read through them all. Smiling the whole time.
I’m only in here because we fought. I’m only writing because I was mad at him, because he hurt me, because something he said got to me, caught me off guard and made me turn into the hormonal teenager I thought I’d left behind years ago.
And now I realize how stupid my anger is. He hurt me, but I don’t remember how now, because it’s not important at all anymore. It should never have been important; all that matters is how much I love him.
My pen hits against the ring around my finger and makes a ‘ting’. I smile, twist the ring with my other hand; put my pen down again, watch almost detachedly as it glides across the paper, remembering.
“Bam, what are you doing?”
I had just walked up 10 flights of stairs, wheezing all the way, because the elevators were broken. How elevators in a 5 star hotel could break was beyond me, but they had. I’d only just managed to get to the room without having an asthma attack, and really just needed to find my inhaler.
Instead, I found my boyfriend - who wasn’t supposed to be there, once again, he must have been blowing something off to come see me - and there were roses everywhere. I mean everywhere.
“Have you gone insane?” I had to find my inhaler. I didn’t know what he was doing; he could have actually been a figment of my hopeful imagination, because I really didn’t have enough oxygen.
“What do you mean, gone insane? You always say that I just am insane.”
“Well that too,” I said, smiling, having finally found my inhaler, having to sit down on the bed to take proper deep breaths from it. Once that was done, I looked at him again.
“Would you like to tell me what this is all about? Your agent is going to kill you, you’re supposed to be promoting.”
“No, I wasn’t. That was a decoy.” He smiled. I just shook my head. Unsuspecting, as usual; though it wasn’t as unusual as it seemed for Bam to turn up unexpectedly with surprises in tow. He did it often enough.
“Oh. Right. So. Why are you here then?”
“Well if you don’t want me here, I might just leave again.” I laughed; he knew I wanted him there, I always did, it’s just that there had to be a reason and I had just climbed 10 flights of stairs, I wasn’t in the mood for beating about the bush.
“Seriously Bam. Explanations would be good. And then an open window. Love the roses, but I am still a chronic asthmatic.” I winked at him, blew him a kiss whilst he rolled my eyes at me.
“I was tryingto be romantic,” he said, with regard to the roses.
“Whatever for? You never do that.” I grinned. It was okay, I didn’t mind his incapacity to do romance, because it was just him. He didn’t do the soppy girly shit, as he put it.
“Because. I know you like it.”
“Bammie, I like whatever is you, be it romantic or not.” I reached out my arms for him; enough talking, I wanted a hug.
“But I want to be romantic. Just for now. So will you let me?”
I sat up, and sighed. This was one of his games. I loved his games but … I was tired. Of course I would play along, I just didn’t see where it was going.
“Fine, okay. Where do you want me?” He frowned, thought for a second, and pointed to the door.
“Over there, like you’ve just come in, and you have to be all in raptures about the flowers. And highly shocked to see me.”
“But Bam…”
“Just do it?” I sighed, walked over to the door. Opened it, shut it, turned around, and did as he asked. Acted - over the top to overcome my self-consciousness - as if I’d just walked in, seen the flowers - “What on EARTH is going on here?” - noticed him standing in the middle of the room with…
…with a box in his hand that I hadn’t seen before. I stopped. Stared at him; at the little velveteen box in his nervous, shaking hands.
“Bam…?” I didn’t understand, but he grinned nervously. I’d never seen him properly nervous, but he was nervous then. He was nervous standing there, smiling at me; he was nervous when he crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek; he was nervous when he bent down on one knee; he was so nervous he could hardly get the box open, could hardly say the words: “I love you, marry me?”
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all
I wipe a tear from my cheek before it can fall on my writing. Close the lid on the pen, set it down, hold the page back to look at it. It’s the cleanest thing I’ve ever written, there are no scribbles, no spots of ink, no corrections. It was right the second it came out of my pen. Another tear threatens to fall and I have to laugh at myself; happy memories that make you cry. Who would ever have thought it? But they aren’t tears of remorse, I tell myself. They’re tears of… tears of happiness; fulfillment. No regrets. Never any regrets.
“Ville?” A slight knock on the door before it opens and he walks in timidly.
“Hey,” I say, wiping my face again.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I nod, smile at him, beckon for him to come over. The fight is forgotten, we both know it.
“Whatcha been doing,” he asks as he wraps his arms around my shoulders from behind. I smile, lean back into them, showing him the song.
“I wrote you something.”
“Yeah?” I nod, smiling, leaning up to kiss his neck.
“Sorry about earlier… I shouldn’t have said that.” I shrug.
“It’s okay.” I put my pen down to slide my hand in his; the only other place I feel at home. My Bam - my true love, my one and only true love.
“I love you,” I say as I stand up to let him wrap his arms around me. I hum the chorus of the song I just wrote, sing it into his ear. “You are the one, Bammmie…” And he always will be.
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all
Genre:: Vam
Rating:: PG
Summary:: N/A
Notes:: One of the stories I wrote for the fluff competition on . This one didn't get submitted.
You Are The One
My pen goes around in circles between my deft fingers. It feels right there, comfortable; it’s part of me, but I don’t know what to do with it.
I need to write. I have to write something down, get something out. I might bust if I don’t. Do you know that feeling? That need, right between your heart and your stomach, a little pinch, just there, that means if you don’t get something out of your system you’ll implode? Go crazy? Say and do things that you shouldn’t, just because of that little niggling feeling, right there between your heart and your stomach that you just can’t quite place and don’t quite know how to get rid of otherwise.
So I picked up my pen, came here to my desk, and now I can’t figure out what I’m meant to write. The pen is an impatient weight in my hand, as I toss it from finger to finger, waiting for something to come.
But nothing is.
It’s not that there’s nothing to write about. There’s always something to write about. I have songs and songs, written about anything and everything. There’s a pile of them; crumpled up pieces of paper, stacked and balanced precariously on each other - breathe too hard and they scatter around the room, pieces of thoughts and feelings caught on the wind. The pile is staring at me.
I need to write.
What do I write about? Now that I’m thinking, it seems that I’ve written about it all.
The pain. The suffering. The all-encompassing desire to end it all. Join me in death for love. Love, yes, I’ve written reams and reams about love. I write like an expert but I’m not. Far from it; I’m just a child, playing with sticks in the mud, building fairy-tale houses with moss and twigs and dandelion leaves when it comes to love. I make it up.
I’ve only been in love once. I’ve only really ever been in love once.
There have been a lot of times, when I thought I was in love but wasn’t.
I only knew that they weren’t love when I found the one.
The one. I like that. So clichéd. So painfully clichéd, but so true.
I remember it all. I remember every single second; and as I look out the window at cars going by, sending tidal waves of grey puddle water up behind their tires, I relive every second again, at 10 times the speed, savoring the memories dearly.
No I won't surrender
At any cost
The first time I saw him, I hated him.
I saw him on TV. He was putting tacks all over his parents’ bedroom, so that when they woke up to him and his other friends he could fall over laughing at them.
Jackass, the show was named, and appropriately so. I ignored the white subtitles across the screen, listened to his oh so obnoxious voice and glared.
If I ever met him, I’d slap him. I promised myself that. Presumptuous little American fuck, that’s what I thought. Then I switched off the TV and cursed MTV for being so dumb.
The first time I actually met him, I didn’t slap him. I should have, but my friends got there first.
Him and his friends had somehow found out about us, infiltrated our gig, blagged their way backstage, where they proceeded to set up a practical joke; I don’t remember the logistics of it but we were angry. We were very angry.
Until he bought us all drinks to make up for it.
And then we liked him a lot, and I realized how blue his eyes were, how enticing his smile was, how he could make you laugh just with one look.
Love at first sight? Definitely not. Not on his part, not on mine.
But we were friends. From that day onwards, he became something like an annoying little foot-dog. Always trotting around, yapping and barking and jumping around. We had good fun with him. It was easy to tease him without him realizing, it was easy to make fun of him, to play around with him. We were a bit cruel, I have to admit. Especially me.
But I did like him. When he wasn’t drunk, and when he wasn’t playing to the cameras or to his friends, we could sit down and have a decent conversation. We could have fun together without all that master and pet stuff.
I smile, twirl my pen around my thumb, before bringing it up to my mouth to chew a bit on the end of it. Yeah, we had good times.
“Ville, Ville, look!”
I looked over; he was standing next to a huge snowman that he must have built whilst I was in the store, choosing alcohol for that night.
“Nice, Bam,” I said, shaking my head, chuckling. He was such a 10 year old.
“It’s you!” he yelled, laughing, standing back to checkout his masterpiece made from snow. I faked offense.
“Am I that fat!? Damn, I’ll have to go back on that diet then.” He laughed some more - he was always laughing.
“No, no, but look!” He took his beanie - a clone of my own - and stuck it on top of the snowma’s head.
“Now it just looks stupid, Bam!” The beanie was perched on top of the snowman, looking like the nib of a condom - so not the effect my beanie had, I was sure.
“Wait for it, wait for it!” He was on his knees, casting around in the snow. “Aha!” He moved to the face of the snowman, fiddled around for a bit, and then stood back, grinning.
I squinted to see it properly in the dimming light, but when I realized what he’d done, I laughed so hard I almost dropped my bag of alcohol. The snowman had eyeliner - brown, not my best color, and the lines were somewhat too jagged for my liking, but it had eyeliner.
“There we go. Willa Walo, the snowman.” We fell about laughing in the snow. An improvement, since the day before, I’d been contemplating throwing myself from a balcony. He wasn’t supposed to be there. But he got the first flight over when he’d heard what I’d tried to do, red-eyed it over to see me, to keep me off of any damned balcony railings.
It was sweet, but it had annoyed me at the time. However, lying there in the snow, I began to change my mind. I was glad I hadn’t thrown myself from that balcony, just so I could see Willa Walo the snowman, and Bam rolling around with snow in his hair. It was worth it.
My pen finds the paper, glides across it as I shiver, remembering how cold it was that night.
You're something so sweet and tender
From my heart
We burst into my apartment, laughing, drunk.
“Bammie, you shouldn’t be here.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, you should be skating. You can’t just put that on hold for me.”
He laughed, poured me a glass of Jägermeister; we weren’t even out of our coats yet, but the first thing he did was go straight to the bag of liquor. As usual. Again.
“You tried to jump off a balcony. Can’t have my best friend doing that, can I? Course I should be here. I’m going to cheer you up, Valo, if it’s the last thing I do.”
I smiled; my heart warmed.
“I’m your best friend?” I certainly hadn’t done anything to deserve it. I played games with him, was cruel to him, never really took him seriously.
“Course you are. But don’t tell Ryan, he gets jealous fast.” He winked at me, clinked our glasses together, and we downed the thick liquid in quick, burning gulps, my body quickly warming not only because of the Jägermeister’s scorching.
I sigh a bit, looking up from the page. Now the memories have priority. I haven’t gone through them all, I haven’t done any filing of them for ages. They’re lying about, scattered in my brain like the stacks of lyrics are now scattered around the room - the previous sigh being too forceful and carrying them all off on a whim.
Yes I've done my evil
I've done my good
Memories. There are lots of good ones. There are lots of bad ones too. I raise an eyebrow at myself. I was cruel. I was stupid. I did things I shouldn’t have and said things I shouldn’t have.
“You want me to what?” I frowned at Seppo.
“Ask him, it can’t do any harm. You need the publicity. The band needs it. Europe is all very well and good, but you need a new stage. You need to go Stateside. And you can’t do it without him.”
I gave in to what my manager was asking from me, but I shouldn’t have. I went to Bam, knowing of course that he’d jump at the chance, and I asked him do to some music videos. I asked him to wear my sign, I asked him to be a whore for our sake - to shamelessly pimp us whenever he could. And he agreed, wholeheartedly, without ever suspecting foul play. He never suspected we were using him; he never suspected I was using him. He just genuinely thought we wanted him to be a part of our ‘posse’. The Heartagram Club. He was a tried and true member before we knew what had happened, but when he took it too far, when he found a lawsuit on his desk, he flipped out.
And rightly so. We had no right to ask him to do something like that, and then draw a line when it started to benefit him more than us. We had no right. I had no right.
But when I apologized, when I ripped up the lawsuit before his very eyes, when I called Seppo and told him where to get off, he forgave and forgot instantly. He was good at that. He was good at being the perfect picture of ‘a nice person.’ He could play the devil, but he could also be the gentleman. It was a rare trait, and he had it in abundance.
When did I fall in love? Not long after the lawsuit. Where were we, Prague? It was, it was Prague. A mansion, almost a castle, overlooking the city. Beautiful.
A doodle of the mansion fills the margin of my paper, pen sketching idly as I revel in the curls of time and memory. Then a doodle of a bed, a wrought iron frame; a grand-piano; a chandelier; I can see it all clear as day. The way the room was set up, just how cold it was in that house, who was doing what, how many people were standing around. I smile again, chuckle at the memories. Suck on the back of my pen and put it back to the paper. A melody’s forming now, and I hum it to myself, hum up and down the tones, putting them together slowly to make sure they sound right as I write down another line.
Bam was a wonder to watch when he worked. He was a party boy, but when he wanted to work, he got right down to it. He was a strict task master, and when he was under stress, he really knuckled down, and he yelled a lot. But he was still able to laugh, to have fun. And he loved what he did. You could tell, just from the look in his eyes, he loved standing behind the camera, watching the shot, yelling at people left and right. I loved to work with him. This was the first time and yet already I loved how he did it.
“Ville, you’re up now!” he shouted at me, to wake me out of whatever reverie I had fallen into, and I got up, walked over to where the crew was concentrated on fixing up a bed; there was even someone ironing the pillow.
“What’s all this?” I asked, frowning. A bed in the middle of a huge room. Deep red covers.
“Do you mind taking your shirt off?” That wasn’t a question, it was an order.
“You’re kidding. In this house? Do you know how cold it is in here!?”
“Yeah, but you have to not have a shirt on for this to work!”
“What? Why?”
“Oh just take your shirt off; the less you complain, the less time it will take.” I grumbled, but I did it. I would have done anything he asked.
There were several shoots. Of me lying on the bed - Bam yelling at me in the background to ‘be sexy’ never helped me keep a straight face, so these took longer than they should have - of me sitting on the bed, singing, looking pensive, being sad…
And one of me - one shot that changed my life. They weren’t supposed to film anything. Something had gone wrong with the sound, they had to rewire it. I was sitting there, on the bed, waiting, watching Bam - eyeing up the shot in the camera. He’d kicked his friend off of the camera, wanting to do it himself. And as I watched him, just looked at him, that tingling feeling at the back of my neck warned me that something was happening.
And something had. I was falling for him and I knew it. I knew that day that I would be hopelessly in love with him by the end of the week. And Bam… Bam, he realized something was going on in my head; he switched the camera on, zoomed in. He caught the bashful grin, the turn of the head; looking away from him because by then I could tell he was filming, and I could tell what I felt, and I just had to grin.
He caught the moment where I fell in love with him on tape without even realizing it. That’s how perfect he is. That’s how wonderful and amazing. He always knew what to do and when to do it. He always knew what I was thinking before I even said it. And I was right; by the end of the time we spent making that video, I was hopelessly in love with him.
Just believe me honey
I won't let go of you
It took a grand total of 2 months for me to know that I had finally found true love. All told, from the moment I first met him, it took me 2 years to realize.
Bam? Bam claims it took him 10 minutes. But he didn’t say anything for four years.
I was depressed again. I loved him, yes, I loved him so much. This was it, this was what I sang about, what I wrote about - everything before, it had all been lies. This was real. I knew it. He was the one for me.
But he didn’t know it. He didn’t know and I hated that he didn’t know. It was horrible, just being around him was horrible. I loved him so much that I hated him for not loving me too. A vicious circle that I couldn’t get out of. Attempts to shut him out of my mind failed miserably and I was left with longing for him, and only him, and never anyone but him.
I couldn’t have him. He wasn’t gay. He was as straight as a ruler and he wouldn’t ever bend. Not even for me. We were best friends, we’d have to stay that way. I was too selfish to give him up, too worried that I’d lose him to even tell him.
In the end, he found out from my loudmouth friends, drunk on a tour-bus, thundering across the Autobahns of Germany, late, late at night.
“Truth or Dare, Gas?” Burton slurred, taking another swig of whatever he was drinking. I laughed; we all laughed as Gas chose Dare and was made to prance around with Mige’s girlfriend’s bra on his head. Bam caught it on video, laughing so hard I was worried he might stop breathing.
“Okay, okay, truth or dare, Lily!” Bam called out, turning to Linde, zooming in on his face probably.
“Umm…” Lily was very drunk, and very into the game. As he was wont to do when he was drunk, he had lost all barriers.
“Truth!”
“Damn, you were supposed to pick dare!” Bam said, sighing. He probably had the perfect one worked out. I could always tell with him, just when he was planning something mean. This was one of those times.
“I s-said truth!”
“Fine… fine… okay. Um. Huh. Okay. Tell me… tell me who the rest of the band likes.” My eyes widened and I tried to get Lily’s attention, but it was useless, and before I could shut him up, Lily was off.
“Mige likes his girlfriend, and Burton likes his wife, and I love my wife, and Gas likes anyone that’ll fuck him, and Ville’s been in love with you for years.”
Everyone’s laughter at his list stopped. Bam stared. Brought the camera slowly down from his face; my cheeks were burning.
“Fuck you, Mikko,” I said to Lily, quietly. “Fuck you.” And then I got up, and slowly, oh so slowly, walked to the bathroom, anywhere to get away from Bam and his shocked - and, I thought, horrified - stare.
I have to laugh. I have no idea how I made it to the bathroom without falling over, I was so drunk. We were all drunk. Bam followed me, after putting his camera down. Kicked his way into the locked stall, wiped my tears, grabbed my face and kissed me with all the strength he could muster in his extremely drunken state. And I can still feel the way his lips burnt on mine, and how we melted into each other, how we didn’t leave the bathroom for hours, just sitting there, talking.
He loved me the minute he saw me. He’d kept quiet, for four years, never let on. I must say, he was better at it than me. My pen’s dancing in my hands again, and I can’t help but grin. I don’t know how he kept it quiet for so long, how he stood it for so long, but I’m so glad he did.
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all
“I can’t believe it took us four years.” We lay in bed one night, holding each other, talking quietly. Months had passed since the fateful tour-bus ride, but we were still in the throes of new-couple bliss.
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner?” I asked him, frowning. I never did understand why he didn’t say anything; though it was hypocritical, as I never said a thing either.
“Why do you think, nidiot?”
“Well, but besides that.”
“There is no besides that. That was the only reason. I thought you’d hate me for it and that I would lose you. Duh. That’s the only reason.” He laughed and kissed my forehead.
“Don’t you regret it though?” I had to ask it. I certainly did. I thought it was stupid, that we had wasted all that time. But Bam shook his head, no.
“No, I don’t. We had fun, didn’t we? I’d never have gotten to know you as well as I do if I had said something. This might have been different. No, I don’t have any regrets. None at all.”
And suddenly, I realized he was right. It was worth it, all of it, to end up here, where we were.
His words ring through my head even now; the husky tone, the one that’s only in his voice in those few minutes after sex, when he can’t hardly remember his own name from the lust and satisfaction that courses through his body. “No regrets, none at all.” And I do get it. I get it completely, and I write it down. Simple, but effective. It’s not the poetic norm of my songs, it’s not anything verbose and flowing, but it’s beautiful, it’s the truth.
We've had our share of misfortune
We've had our blues
And God is not on our side
Yes it's true
Again, the pen is stalled. Where do I go from there? I sigh, push papers around the desk. If I didn’t know that I had to write this, I would give up, get up, leave it. But something’s telling me I need to write it now, I need to finish it.
I find a letter, a letter he wrote me. Smiling, I open it; I have to squint to read his handwriting, but I read it all the same, even though I know every word off by heart.
Ville.
I don’t know where you are, but I guess you’ll get this when you come back. Which I know you will; all your stuff is here.
I wish I knew what to say to you. I wish I had your gift with words, then I could do this elegantly. Everything you ever do is elegant, did you know that? It is. But whatever. The point is, this is probably blunt and to the point and if I could embellish it, I would.
You know what? It was stupid of me to suggest this. It was stupid to even try to keep this a secret. The press are fucking hounds, they could have sniffed this miles off - well they did, didn’t they? Anyways. I know that now, you were right, it was a stupid idea to try and keep it quiet. Stupid.
I just want you to know… I’m so proud to have you. I thought I was protecting you by keeping this quiet; if I ever knew that you hated sneaking around so much, I would never have suggested this.
I love you. I want everyone to know. If you don’t care about the press, then neither do I.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it seem like I wanted to keep you a secret. I don’t care what they have to say. I don’t. They can do whatever the hell they want, they can say whatever they want, all I want is you. We can get through anything together. I know we can.
Call me when you read this?
I love you. More than anything else, I love you.
-BamBam
There are newspaper clippings with the letter. “Skater and Singer announce affair”; “Finnish Sex Idol and Jackass Star ‘in love’”; “VAM - not just a fangirl’s dream.” Magazine articles, a transcript from the press conference.
I kept all the hate mail too. I kept all the things that were thrown at us, and I kept all the harsh words. Oh yes, I kept them; memories are possessions, and one of my most treasured possession is the memory of the bonfire we made of all the hatemail, all the missiles, the things that I’d written down that people had said to us. That bonfire burned for a whole day, and it felt so good to watch it burn.
We keep forgetting baby
The beauty of us two
There is no one who can take that away
From me and you
I find all the letters he’s ever written me; read through them all. Smiling the whole time.
I’m only in here because we fought. I’m only writing because I was mad at him, because he hurt me, because something he said got to me, caught me off guard and made me turn into the hormonal teenager I thought I’d left behind years ago.
And now I realize how stupid my anger is. He hurt me, but I don’t remember how now, because it’s not important at all anymore. It should never have been important; all that matters is how much I love him.
My pen hits against the ring around my finger and makes a ‘ting’. I smile, twist the ring with my other hand; put my pen down again, watch almost detachedly as it glides across the paper, remembering.
“Bam, what are you doing?”
I had just walked up 10 flights of stairs, wheezing all the way, because the elevators were broken. How elevators in a 5 star hotel could break was beyond me, but they had. I’d only just managed to get to the room without having an asthma attack, and really just needed to find my inhaler.
Instead, I found my boyfriend - who wasn’t supposed to be there, once again, he must have been blowing something off to come see me - and there were roses everywhere. I mean everywhere.
“Have you gone insane?” I had to find my inhaler. I didn’t know what he was doing; he could have actually been a figment of my hopeful imagination, because I really didn’t have enough oxygen.
“What do you mean, gone insane? You always say that I just am insane.”
“Well that too,” I said, smiling, having finally found my inhaler, having to sit down on the bed to take proper deep breaths from it. Once that was done, I looked at him again.
“Would you like to tell me what this is all about? Your agent is going to kill you, you’re supposed to be promoting.”
“No, I wasn’t. That was a decoy.” He smiled. I just shook my head. Unsuspecting, as usual; though it wasn’t as unusual as it seemed for Bam to turn up unexpectedly with surprises in tow. He did it often enough.
“Oh. Right. So. Why are you here then?”
“Well if you don’t want me here, I might just leave again.” I laughed; he knew I wanted him there, I always did, it’s just that there had to be a reason and I had just climbed 10 flights of stairs, I wasn’t in the mood for beating about the bush.
“Seriously Bam. Explanations would be good. And then an open window. Love the roses, but I am still a chronic asthmatic.” I winked at him, blew him a kiss whilst he rolled my eyes at me.
“I was tryingto be romantic,” he said, with regard to the roses.
“Whatever for? You never do that.” I grinned. It was okay, I didn’t mind his incapacity to do romance, because it was just him. He didn’t do the soppy girly shit, as he put it.
“Because. I know you like it.”
“Bammie, I like whatever is you, be it romantic or not.” I reached out my arms for him; enough talking, I wanted a hug.
“But I want to be romantic. Just for now. So will you let me?”
I sat up, and sighed. This was one of his games. I loved his games but … I was tired. Of course I would play along, I just didn’t see where it was going.
“Fine, okay. Where do you want me?” He frowned, thought for a second, and pointed to the door.
“Over there, like you’ve just come in, and you have to be all in raptures about the flowers. And highly shocked to see me.”
“But Bam…”
“Just do it?” I sighed, walked over to the door. Opened it, shut it, turned around, and did as he asked. Acted - over the top to overcome my self-consciousness - as if I’d just walked in, seen the flowers - “What on EARTH is going on here?” - noticed him standing in the middle of the room with…
…with a box in his hand that I hadn’t seen before. I stopped. Stared at him; at the little velveteen box in his nervous, shaking hands.
“Bam…?” I didn’t understand, but he grinned nervously. I’d never seen him properly nervous, but he was nervous then. He was nervous standing there, smiling at me; he was nervous when he crossed the room and kissed me on the cheek; he was nervous when he bent down on one knee; he was so nervous he could hardly get the box open, could hardly say the words: “I love you, marry me?”
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all
I wipe a tear from my cheek before it can fall on my writing. Close the lid on the pen, set it down, hold the page back to look at it. It’s the cleanest thing I’ve ever written, there are no scribbles, no spots of ink, no corrections. It was right the second it came out of my pen. Another tear threatens to fall and I have to laugh at myself; happy memories that make you cry. Who would ever have thought it? But they aren’t tears of remorse, I tell myself. They’re tears of… tears of happiness; fulfillment. No regrets. Never any regrets.
“Ville?” A slight knock on the door before it opens and he walks in timidly.
“Hey,” I say, wiping my face again.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” I nod, smile at him, beckon for him to come over. The fight is forgotten, we both know it.
“Whatcha been doing,” he asks as he wraps his arms around my shoulders from behind. I smile, lean back into them, showing him the song.
“I wrote you something.”
“Yeah?” I nod, smiling, leaning up to kiss his neck.
“Sorry about earlier… I shouldn’t have said that.” I shrug.
“It’s okay.” I put my pen down to slide my hand in his; the only other place I feel at home. My Bam - my true love, my one and only true love.
“I love you,” I say as I stand up to let him wrap his arms around me. I hum the chorus of the song I just wrote, sing it into his ear. “You are the one, Bammmie…” And he always will be.
You are the one
And there's no regrets at all