That Joke Isn't Funny Any More

Title: That Joke Isn’t Funny Any More

Author: normal human being

Summary: I hate answering questions almost as much as I hate it when Frank’s right.

Author's Notes: Ian Winwood does exist, but I do not own him or any members of My Chemical Romance. Though something very like this may have happened, the questions and answers were probably different and there was probably a lot less gay subtext. In other words this is NOT TRUE and I OWN NOTHING.


We’re starting to get comfortable around Ian. He must’ve interviewed us ten times now and, as his interviews are always for different magazines, he tends to ask the same questions. In an attempt to add some variety to his articles, he will occasionally ask different people about us – the fans outside, the security guys, members of other bands – but his conclusion is always the same: we are pious, we are slightly unhinged, we angst more than we are entitled to, but we are not entirely assholes. He is fairly indifferent towards us, we are almost completely oblivious to the fact that he is not Simon or Kim or Will or one of the hundred other journos that follow us round on tour, asking vaguely why we aren’t more interested in hookers or cocaine.

Except today he seems to have thought of something new.

And he’s going to ask me, because Mikey and Ray have conveniently disappeared, Bob (who has not quite gotten used to the fact that he no longer has to prep for shows) is off Making Himself Useful and Frank is entertaining himself by trying to make his answers as retarded as the questions we are being asked.

“What I don’t get,” says Ian carefully, in that deliberately casual, I-am-your-friend-and-confidant voice journalists use, “is that you’re so anti-groupie, you’re up there telling girls not to flash or guys not ask them to, whatever, and then you put on a really trashy live show. Is that not a bit contradictory?”

“No,” says Frank, and opens a beer.

Ian looks at me as if to say, this is where you give me a soundbite.

“Well, it kind of is and it kind of isn’t. I mean, we want to be exciting. You don’t get up on stage and just stand there, and you don’t get up there and do the same thing as the fifty other bands on tour. Mostly we just want to piss off the homophobes in the audience. We’re really not interested in playing to assholes.” I’m rambling now. “It’s not like we planned to put on a live gay porn act or anything, it just sort of happened.”

“That guy in Jersey,” Frank prompts. “At the start.”

What Frank means is, at one of our earlier gigs some guy in the audience shouted out that we couldn’t play for shit and what were we, a bunch of fucking faggot pussies? So I grabbed Frank and shoved my tongue down his throat. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Ian asks if it never feels a bit, you know, weird.

Frank scoffs. “It’s an act, dude. You just think of someone you really don’t want to kiss and then go for it.”

I nod. “But it shouldn’t look like an act, so actually you think of someone you’d rather be kissing and then go for it.”

At this point, my bandmate decides to demonstrate his legendary wit and say: “Basically, we both think of Bob.”

I laugh, and hope I’m not blushing as much as I think I am.