secretly alone
Rock n' Roll Doggie FOB
Ok, I wanted to wait a bit to start posting this. But because I am the kind of person who must wear brand new clothes the day after I buy them, and the kind of person who can never save any of anything for later...here it is. This is the "sequel" to Stranger In A Strange Land. I should have wrote a prologue to that one too, but alas. This is just to explain briefly a bit of the interim, between the end of that story and what will be the beginning of this one. I have a lot of ideas for this story, hopefully refining my writing, and I sense a lot more PM chapters
Also, a note. I am aware that I'm kind of twisting U2 lore and history itself here ...but, this is a work of fiction, so I can do that!
ANYways, I hope this is an interesting ride. Here we go.
~This really, really, really never happened. I made it up~
I've never adapted well to change. From as far back as I could remember, small changes to my status quo completely unnerved me. There was only one change in my life that I took well, and that was leaving home and moving to Ireland. True, that massive transition was aided by falling in love, but still. It was a doozie!
The changes continued to come fast for Bono and I. Of course I wanted the band to "make it", so to speak. But I was unprepared for how fast it happened, and even more unprepared for the consequences. I didn't notice much change at first. People were buying their records, that was nice. We were still on the road at least 50% of the time, and not living what I would call "comfortably". And I grew up in a working-class home. Then, it happened. Maybe sometime in late 1983, after the tour. Suddenly, people were looking at us when we went out to dinner. We could actually go out to dinner more than once every few months. I'll never forget the date- April 2nd, 1983, the first time someone approached us in public, asking Bono for an autograph. He looked surprised, but I was completely blown away. It was adorable to me the first few times it happened. I would ruffle up his hair and gush about how everyone loved him. But then it got to be a habit, and I was frightened of it. I wondered how bad it would get. Would we eventually be swamped any time we went out? Bono is a much more versatile person than I am. Everything kind of rolls right off of him. He goes with the flow, and change, well, it never seems to bother him. I was scared, and he knew it. He told me that if somewhere in my mind I was worrying about losing him, then I should wipe it out of my mind, because it was never going to happen. I never worried about that. Not only did I trust him, I knew that was not in his nature. What I worried about was too much changing around us, not between us.
One day, after roaming about on his own, Bono came home with a pretty red bag and handed it to me. "I got you something", he said, blushing up to the tips of his ears. It was a lovely white cashmere sweater. It reminded me of freshly fallen snow. I thought it was a wonderfully sweet gesture, but immediately, that hard wired red flag went up. We couldn't afford that! I didn't say it, because I didn't want to hurt him. Then this sort of thing began to happen more often. Dinner out was more common. There was less window shopping and more actual shopping. It dawned on me after a little while that Bono wasn't going insane. We just weren't poor anymore. That was nice, because we were able to move out of his father's house and into our own appartment. But then I got scared of this too. It was changing too much. Some things were just unnecessary expenses. When I finally spoke up, one day yelling at Bono, "What are you doing? We're not rich, you know!", he simply shrugged and responded with, "Well..." and never finished his sentence. I had been afraid of that. I didn't want to be rich. Rich people were spoiled bastards who didn't care about the less well-off people...people like me, and him.
The two of us struggled. Not with eachother, but with everything around us. I struggled against it, and he tried to reassure me that nothing important was changing. True, Bono wasn't changing. I had no reason to believe he ever would...I had never met anyone as sincere and down to earth as him. Still, the tension built until it finally burst. In the summer of 1985, U2 were becoming huge. I was thrilled that everyone loved my boys. They (well, we, seeing as I tagged along everywhere) were on tour that summer, but this tour was different than the others had been. We still rode around in the bus, but we no longer spent nights in it. We didn't spend nights in dodgy hotels, either. Limousines would transport us between the venues and the hotels, and it was here where I snapped. After a show in Chicago, someone was following us with a camera. It was raining, and no one wanted the camera catching up with us. All of us were hussled into this shiny black limo, and the doors shut fast. Suddenly, I felt like I was enacting a scene in a film about a rock band. I completely freaked out. "What is going on?!?! I don't know you guys anymore! I have to get out of here..." I opened the door and stumbled out into the rain, running for the sidewalk. Bono came running after me, shouting. "Lilly, what the hell's the matter with you?! It's pouring, get back in the car!" "NO! I don't care if it's raining, I'm not too special to get rained on! Do you think you're too special and precious to get rained on? Because you're not!!" He looked completely blown away and caught me in his arms, though I momentarily fought to get away. "No, I don't think I'm special. The only person who's ever told me I was special is you." I was silent. "What's gotten into you, Lilly? Lately I feel like you're just cracking up on me." True to form, I began to cry. I sobbed into his already rain-soaked hair, which was flowing from under his hat and sticking to his neck. "Everything is changing, and I don't think I like it. People follow us, riding in limos...I hate it! Why can't we just walk or take the bus like normal people? OH, because people might follow us, that's why! This is all so self indulgent, and..." I continued to cry. He sighed and shushed me, stroking my hair. "Oh, Lilly, things around us might be changing, but we aren't. We're always going to be the same two kids we've always been. I promise, no matter what, I won't change, and neither will the way I feel about you. I would throw all of this to the wind if that was what you wanted. Is it?" I shook my head. "No, of course not. Music is part of your soul...you're doing what you love. I would never want you to lose that." I felt like our whole word was turning upside down, but eventually, I began to get used to it. I felt like the craziness was levelling off, so I must have been adapting.
Those worries slowly faded until they were forced into the back of my mind completely by the most traumatic experience of my life. Bono had gone down to El Salvador, after much protesting from me. He had begun to do a lot of what I would generally label as "activism work". The tendency to speak up had always been in him, but he felt that really putting an effort towards doing so somehow validated his position of being in a band. I usually went wherever he went, for several reasons. But he would not allow me to go with him down there. The country was in turmoil, so I certainly didn't want to go. However, I wanted him to go alone even less, so when I couldn't convince him not to go, I tried to get him to let me go with him. No such luck. He told me it was way too dangerous. That made me even angrier, that he would put himself in danger when I so desperately begged him not to. I knew that he was stubborn and had his heart set on somehow changing the world, a potentially detrimental combination. So I stepped back. Really, I thought, what was really going to happen? He would be safe.
I had MTV on one afternoon while he was gone, while I was heating up leftovers for dinner. The appartment was quiet without him. The programming was interrupted by a breaking news report; there had been some kind of bombing...in some Latin American country...I dropped the bowl of leftover pasta. There wasn't a lot of information yet. My blood ran cold all throughout my body. It was worse than being naked in the snow, not that I had ever been. The cold came from inside, and my stomach twisted into an actual pretzel. I changed to the news channel and waited for more information, not just the same basic things being repeated..."There are reports of whole buildings flattened, and it is expected that at least a thousand people have been killed." I felt like I was swallowing vomit. I probably was. They began listing people "among the missing and presumed dead." A bunch of political leaders, revolutionaries..."and twenty-five year old 'Bono', lead singer of Irish rock band U2." I don't remember what happened after that. I deducted that I had passed out, because the next thing I remember is Edge, trying to sit me on the couch, saying something in a soothing voice, but I don't know what. Somehow I ended up on the bathroom floor, because I remember throwing up until there was probably nothing left to throw up. I'm not sure if crying was included in my reaction. I think I had gone into medical shock, so I doubt I was able to cry. Someone had thought to shut off the TV, but not before I heard the news report being confirmed. I was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, and Edge, Adam, and Larry all were standing around, their faces grey, talking to eachother. I got the feeling they were watching me, didn't want me to move. I was aware of Larry locking the living room window, and somewhere inside, I knew why. It made me want to go to it and make his fear a reality, but I was paralyzed. I couldn't make any part of my body move.
They all fell asleep eventually. I may have fallen asleep at some point, in fact I must have, because I would become suddenly startled by the dark and quiet in the room, and feel the urge again to go to the locked window, but still I couldn't move. Sometime just after the sun began to rise and a little light came into the room, there was a sound at the door. A key in the lock. I wasn't afraid, but confused. No one had the key but me...and Bono. The door finally opened, and there he was, unshaven and clearly unshowered. I was sure I had begun to hallucinate, unsurprisingly. I stared at what I imagined to be Bono, until he threw himself onto the couch and grabbed me. Then I knew it had been a mistake, and I finally burst into tears. I still don't know how long we stayed there, clinging to eachother. At some point I stopped sobbing into his hair.
It had been a hastily reported story, a mistake which had affected several other people as well. But after that, things were never the same between us. I hadn't thought it was possible for us to be closer than we already had been, but I was wrong. The bond between us strengthened to an intensity that couldn't be put into words. When you think you've lost someone, you hold onto them a lot tighter. All the woes about fame and money and things changing were shoved into the background. They weren't important anymore.
the whole time. Glad you're continuing with this 
