Sunday evenings have become a rather comical dance. We should be so used to it by now but it's not getting easier. The call came. Mere hours remaining and Ben would be whisked away once more. Back to the states, back to his genius-grind. Back to working on the record so that they can go out on the road, learn to love it, learn to hate it and come home and do it all over again. Groundhog day in career-form, punctuated only by glorious moments on stage when everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs, around five seconds before the lights come on.
Yeah.
It's worth it, he says and he smiles that stupid shit-eating grin of his. The one that makes me smile in spite of whatever dastardly thing he has just done.
I'm not sure which part he meant was worth it, however, because it didn't seem like the part where he encouraged me to take a nap in his arms on the couch in the middle of the day, or the part where we got to the airport and my eyes drowned themselves in spite of my promises to teach them to swim and he turned me into Daniel's arms because he can't deal with it.
He was so calm in the midst of almost fifty thousand people. So calm surrounded by glasses of beer and smoke so thick you could eat it. So calm when we jumped up and down and sang along. So calm when I got nervous at the end, as we made our way back to the row of cars and the crowds were thick and hostile and security grew more lax the further we ventured from the stadium. So calm when we got home and realized we were baked, fried and broiled six ways from sundown.
This is his life, maybe. And maybe in a husband I have bit off more than I can chew, because this is not my life and this many people make me nervous and the levels take away the vocals and then hours of waiting and the staring as they wonder who we are and then a few moments of shallow familiarity and pressing hands and 'insert city here' seem too smooth and far too easy and possibly he is lowering himself to be here only because it's a sure thing when there are no sure things in life. Numbers and playing the game and lobbing percentages across a boardroom table and having someone else pick your clothes when you go on the big television show and the guilt of the wife with her drowned green eyes at home can't really be any fun, can it?
The knowledge that music is as much his escape as it is mine is confirmed hourly in this house, only he makes the escape he wants for himself and I'm mostly forced to find it by proxy. Watching his eyes last night as he watched the people, as he absorbed the energy from this side of a stage was fascinating to me, it's a side of Ben I am gifted a sidelong glance at only a few times a year. It's a side he hides. He isn't like the rest of us. Ben is Ben and you would have to know him to grasp the depth of that stupid, flippant phrase.
I don't think he's all that comfortable on this side, and yet we do what we can with the time we have to make it seem like he is, that he can be, that he will be, someday, maybe. Probably twenty-five years from now, if he manages to sustain the kind of energy that Brian Johnson still possesses. If he ever gets to that degree of famous. Sometimes it worries me. I've seen the inside of his head, he could pull it off, if he wanted to, but it's also the inside of his head that holds him back.
It's a sure thing from my vantage point, because I'm always on this side, and I see things about Ben that can't be deduced from the numbers the label throws around or from the wardrobe stylist who combs his hair.
I'm thinking I should become a rock star too. Then someone would comb my hair.
And I would be the one who gets to always leave.
Only I could never choose that kind of fame. The price is simply too high. Ironic, because it doesn't even come close to the premium on grace and humbleness. Not by a long shot.
He has both, thankfully. Paid for in full.
I've watched you change into a fly
I looked away
You were on fire
I watched a change in you
It's like you never had wings
Now you feel so alive