Pop stars; the performers we loved relentlessly as kids. They were figures of fame, prosperity, and sex. And we were loyal to their personas, giving them ample space to dwell; their faces and poses plastered across our bedroom walls. There must be fifty holes in the wall of my childhood bedroom, and two dozen marks more where tape has ripped the paint right off its surface. My pop stars could dance, sing, and wore the cutting edge of ‘90’s costume couture. I watched their music videos on TRL every day after school. They were perfect, and their eternal effects on me have recently been brought to the attention of my pen. Last week, I saw Nick Carter in concert.

Growing up in a very rural, very out-of-the-way small town, I never went to see Britney or Christina at the height of their relevancy, and the Backstreet Boys- my favorite most of all- lived only day to day in my mind, amidst my hopes and dreams, in the pure skies of my determination. So when the opportunity came up to visit a personality that I had once based much of my existence on, I said yes, and Coffee got secured the tickets. And before I had given much thought to any of it, it was Tuesday night, and Anthony was driving us to the Paramount in Huntington.  

I felt the heat in my chest grow steadily, increasing in temperature and pressure as we moved past the box office, the merch booth, and walked into the theatre. The feeling began to pound as the direct support blew kisses of goodbye to the crowd and the stage crew set up for the main act. My eyes were glued as soon as the band began to play…  But it wasn’t until he walked on- the pop star- that I came face to face with the pre-teen version of myself, the girl who used to sneak to the dark reference section of my school’s library in order to listen to cassette tapes on my Walkman. There he was- finally!- an outline of a person I had painted so well in my imagination, now in the flesh before me. But instead of realizing we’d been strangers all along, the opposite dawned on me, and I remembered every detail of the small lifetime we’d spent together. That night, as he removed his costume helmet, Nick Carter’s straight blonde hair fell in first-song perfection across his matured forehead. The scruff on his face lent to a greater oxymoron, as it somehow made him more refined, fresher, believable. His clear blue eyes I could not see plainly, but I knew they were there, like the ocean, a detail that decades before had claimed as his favorite in teenzine spotlights.  This was not a stranger on the stage before me, but rather someone I had grown up with, grown up for, and grown to respect in new manners.

As he sang, I let him take me with him once again, through a story that had never been outwardly told: I thought about all he had been through since I’d known of him. I thought about all I had been through. And I thought for several hours after the show about all the things I would have never gotten over or under or through without those voices and the eyes and the basic principle of having someone to turn to when shit gets rough. It was consuming, the great wave of realization that swept over me, and I don’t wonder if I was the only one who cried over blonde ambition that night.

Our pop stars. 

Didn’t they teach us how to love? Haven’t they led us to the lives we live now? It’s because of them that I constantly want to hear how you feel for me, although I know very well; breathe for me, bleed for me, ask me to do the same for you. Every three and a half minutes I want you to find a new way to tell me! Pop stars painted our imaginations with unrealistic standards for an unlikely fairytale, and I’ve chased it anyways. Haven’t we never really settled for anything less than a piece of our dream, because aren’t they forever a part of us? When Nick Carter sung “I Got You,” I remembered that no one can touch me, that you make me safe and songs make me invincible. When he went through, “Incomplete,” I sang every word, when he hit, “Do I Have To Cry For You,” I felt the endorphins of theatrics kick in, and by “Larger Than Life” I was going through the motions of Fatima’s famous choreography.     

Our pop stars; Vintage now yet still shining through some gold-plated reverie which hangs at least in the back room of our adult-made homes, made us believe in them and in turn, believe in ourselves.  “I can’t live without you either,” Nick said to an audience that has perhaps been there with him since the very beginning- over a Millennium, through all the Blacks and Blues, an Unbreakable loyalty that has Never Gone and somehow still prevailed as far as one chilly night in 2012 in a theatre in Huntington, NY.

My trick to staying young, to staying inspired, is to find something that’s bigger than me. Something that makes me feel small enough to squeeze through pressures of everyday life and yet strong enough to take on the world. I have read classic literature, gone to see a city, the ocean, or like last week, a Nick Carter show.  My pop star, who I have long since considered an old friend, gave me a zap of life before he moved on to finish his tour, and I have the feeling he won’t be away forever.

…Terica.