Breaking Through

Another show. Another bleeding city. Elena was wrong – it wasn’t any easier without the drama and without love. It was as torturous. As lonely as before. Or even more. He had nothing but endless loneliness. That’s the irony of touring, Daniel thought. You have thousands of people around you, hundreds of people attending to each and every need you have, you are hardly ever on your own physically except at night, yet you are so lonely all the time you want to scream! You just miss everything you left home. Little silly things. And all the things that are here to replace them while you are away, they are all just wrong, no matter how many people are trying to make it right.

They weren’t even half-way this tour yet.

Daniel knew he had made the wrong decision. But he had to keep going till the end. The end. In his own strange way of confusion he wanted the end to come yet he was dreading it, too.

He got up and walked out of his dressing room. He knocked softly on the door next to his.

“Darren?”

“Come in,” Darren replied.

Daniel pushed the door open and saw Darren sitting in front of a mirror. Staring at his own reflection. He looked lonely and wrong, too. He probably felt he had made the wrong decision, too.

“You’re alright?” Daniel asked, closing the door behind him.

“Alright, Danny… thanks…” Darren replied in a lifeless voice.

“I mean… I just want us to play great shows… that’s… you know… that’s all we are here for, isn’t it?” Daniel stumbled over his words.

“… oh… and I am the one making it not-so-great?” Darren turned away.

“No!” Daniel was losing temper again but softened as he remembered who and where he is… “No, where do you get these crazy ideas?”

“I don’t know…”

“I just … I just miss normal conversations… I just miss some real things… it’s like a reality show, nothing is for real… Actually, I just came to wish you a great show!”

Darren was still not looking at him. He sighed and said, “I miss that, too… you know, I miss laughing with you most…”

Daniel was taken aback very unexpected. He was not prepared. No, he was certainly not prepared to have this conversation. He quickly walked over and planted a gentle kiss on top of Darren’s head.

“See you on stage!” Daniel said before closing the door.


Guilt was creeping over Daniel slowly but inevitably. He couldn’t get his mind off Darren’s words – “this is who I am…”…. Maybe he really just didn’t know how to love Darren for who he is? Maybe this whole thing was HIM – Daniel – having a problem, not Darren… Daniel didn’t know any more. He didn’t know what really had happened, now when he had lived over and over again in his mind every second of their love… Every time he looked at Darren now he felt some inexplicable guilt. He didn’t know what Darren felt now. He didn’t know who he slept with. He didn’t know if he cared. Or maybe he did?


Daniel knocked at Elena’s hotel room door.

“Oh my, you scared me…” she laughed, letting him in. “I know it’s weird but every time a phone rings or I hear a knock at my door at this hour, I always fear something horrible has happened…”

“Sorry… is it too late?”

“No, no, I wasn’t sleeping, come in…”

“Where’s Richard?” Daniel asked and immediately regretted it. The nature of their relationship was a mystery to Daniel and he always tried to avoid the subject altogether of possible. Why did he have to ask where is Richard now? If Richard was not here, did he really want to know where he is? A little jolt of pain something resembling jealousy went through his bones.

“I don’t know. Down at the bar maybe?” Elena shrugged. “Why do you care?”

“I wonder how you do it…”

Elena laughed. “I don’t. I don’t DO anything. I just let life happen”

“Is it like anarchy then?” Daniel laughed with her.

“No, it’s like accepting people. What else is supposed to hold people together? Talk it through, work on your relationships, all bullshit, big lies and fooling yourself big time! Boundaries? Fortress around your home? It’s a bullshit of a relationship.”

“So it’s like … you’re just supposed to put up with everything?”

Elena smiled. “Oh no! Fighting with your teeth to hold the man is what I call putting up with everything. We just… you know how some times you walk along the same path with somebody? You love and you are loved, you just happened to walk that path together because it just happened… But you are two people walking, you know, you don’t have to stop when he stops… you don’t have to catch up with him when he starts running… you walk your path the way you have to, and eventually it all levels up or down and you’re again walking together. So much nicer than stopping with him every time, finding out why he stopped, being frustrated about having to wait… what kind of life is that?... You know, I really do not believe the shit that people are meant to be together. We are meant to be on our own path and we can get lucky and have a good company for a certain length of the way, but it certainly isn’t worth going off your own way to keep it cause it’s all bullshit, believe me…”

“That’s easy in theory, but then there’s love…” Daniel said.

“Doesn’t love mean that you have to let that other person be?”

“I don’t know…”

“See, Daniel, I will never chase anyone around bars or hotel rooms. It doesn’t mean I don’t care. It’s just letting people be. And taking your life as it is – your own path.”

“Do you love him?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, I love him. Why?”

“What if he leaves you?”

“Then he just leaves me… what if we all die tomorrow? Can’t live like that, Daniel.”

“You are not scared of anything then?”

“I have no time to be scared. Even if all my life falls apart tomorrow, that’s no reason to stop living it today. No one knows what will happen. If you are scared of that, you’re scared all the time.”