29. What Normal Looks Like
WHAT NORMAL LOOKS LIKE
SANG-HOON — NEW YORK
After the meeting was over, a pair of buses took us over to Madison Square Garden for the technical rehearsal. There wasn’t much for me to do as a stylist since they weren’t in costume, but I had to pay attention to where everything was, and the short time the group had to change between numbers.
It was as if I’d never left the tour. I stood backstage and watched Jin perform, and I couldn’t imagine why I’d ever wanted to leave.
Sun-hee-noona joined me. “Come sit with me,” she said. We found a table and two chairs where we could still see the performance. She opened her laptop.
“Look at this.” She showed me graphs of performance data. “This is Jin over the past six months. Stage presence scores, fan engagement, vocals quality, dance precision. See this spike? That started since Cannes. Since you two stopped pretending and started being real with each other.”
The data was clear. Jin had been performing better, not worse, since we’d gotten together.
“Now look at London.” She played footage I hadn’t realized was being recorded. Jin going through choreography mechanically, missing cues, his expression hollow. “He fell apart without you.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Jin is such a professional. I’m surprised he let anything affect him so much.”
We heard the number on stage begin to build to its crescendo and we both turned to watch. Jin was flawless, better even than he’d been before. He hit every note perfectly, moved with a sinuous grace, and made everyone around him look better. He was truly the center.
“You need to understand the effect you have on him,” Sun-hee-noona said, when the number ended. “Whatever happens in the future, remember this.”
We made it back to the hotel in time for supper, which the group ate ravenously. I didn’t have as much appetite; I was still considering what Sun-hee-noona had said. It felt like such a responsibility, like I had the future of Pryzm on my shoulders.
Jin was sitting on the bed, and I was on a chair nearby. Both of us were fiddling with our phones, because it was clear that there was just too much in the air to even talk. Then Aidan and Liam arrived.
“We have an idea,” Aidan said.
“No, you have an idea,” Liam said. “I think it’s a mistake.”
“I asked some old friends who live in the city about a gay bar where Liam and I can take you where you’d be relatively safe. They recommended one in Tribeca that’s dark and noisy and busy on a Sunday night.”
“Tribeca?” I asked. “Is that in New Jersey?”
They both laughed. “No, it’s a neighborhood of Manhattan, not far from here. This bar caters to an older clientele who are unlikely to know anything about K-Pop. They also recommended a very discreet car service we can take there and back.”
“And what? You want me to perform there?” Jin asked.
Aidan shook his head. “I want you to be anonymous there. I bought you these T-shirts in the hotel store.” He held them up. One read, “I can’t even think straight” and the other “I’m a blue boy in a red state.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“It means no one will consider you a pair of foreign celebrities,” Liam said. “Aidan deliberately bought a size too large.”
Aidan handed us the shirts. One hundred percent polyester, baggy, with poorly sewn seams and loose threads.
“Look at your face,” Aidan said, laughing. “You and Jin would never wear anything like that, would you?”
I looked at Jin and he laughed. “No,” he said.
“Excellent. Put them on with dark pants and these.” He handed us a pair of plain baseball caps.
No one gave us a second look as we walked through the hotel lobby. The car service had sent an unremarkable dark sedan, and as we drove through the neon-lit streets I wondered if this was a bad idea. But Liam and Aidan were there to protect us, so I decided to give in.
The club was as they told us it would be. Dark and crowded and noisy. Jin looked at me and took my hand, and led me to the dance floor. We squeezed between groups of older men with gray hair and tank tops, and began to dance.
It was incredibly freeing. I slithered next to Jin and we rubbed our bodies together, moving as one being. The floor was too crowded for any of the moves he did on stage, which was just fine.
After a while we were both sweating, and Jin leaned close to my ear. “Drink?”
I nodded, and he took my hand again. That was almost better than dancing. Walking through a crowded club holding hands with him, not worrying about who might see us or whether somebody had a phone pointed in our direction.
We found a place at the bar and Jin ordered two beers from a very American-sounding company called Sam Adams. While we waited, I looked around.
In addition to the older guys, there were some men our age. Two guys beside us were sharing something on a phone, their shoulders pressed together. One of them laughed and kissed the other on the cheek. Neither of them looked around afterward to see if anyone had noticed.
The bartender put our beers down and Jin handed me one. I took a long swallow. It tasted flat and bland, but it was America and we needed to experience it all.
A couple came up to the bar behind us, a few years older than we were. One man put his arm around the other’s waist while they waited to order. It was such a small thing. Something I had seen men and women do a thousand times without thinking about it.
I wondered what it would be like if Jin and I could be that ordinary.
He must have seen something on my face, because he leaned closer. “Someday.”
“You think so?” I took another drink of the bland beer. The taste was growing on me.
“I have to.” He bumped his shoulder against mine, and I laughed. Then he held out his hand. “Come on. We didn’t come here to watch everybody else.”
He pulled me back onto the dance floor.
This time I stopped thinking about Seoul and Pryzm and reporters and fans. I stopped wondering who knew about us and what would happen if they found out. There was just Jin, smiling at me in the flashing light.
At one point I looked over and saw Aidan and Liam dancing together with a grace I hadn’t expected of them. Even in the dim light, they looked like they were in love.
Then I noticed another couple beyond them, men closer to our age. They were dancing badly and laughing about it, one of them with his arms around the other’s neck. They looked happy. Not famous. Not brave. Just happy.
I wanted that for Jin and me.
Not only tonight in a dark club thousands of miles from home. I wanted years together, holding and loving each other. I wanted someday to be so accustomed to touching him that I didn’t have to think about whether anyone was watching.