Beautiful Boys
by Elaine H. Kim
For our first American late night show they dress us in outfits that aren’t exactly identical but correspond as a group: all of us in denim of degrees of blue; burnt orange showing up in a neck scarf or flashing at the ankles. As always we are allowed a few accessories of our choosing: they encourage us to wear items sent by fans, though not for too long. They’ve run into trouble around that before. We try not to notice which of the seven of us gets the most gifts, just as we don’t pay attention to who elicits the loudest screams or how long solos last. Sometimes we think the silent tears are more significant; we secretly cherish the rare fainting spell. But mostly we know we each embody a different ideal: clever guy, tough guy, mysterious guy, shy guy, sweet guy, beautiful boy, boy next door. They told us to just be ourselves, not to force it, and they were right. We can’t hide who we are.
Anyone tuning in to the show can tell which of us are the leaders, not just because they sit closest to the host: the one who speaks English and the deep-voiced rapper. The one with the sweetest, clearest voice might have been a leader too if not so shy, if he didn’t cover his mouth every time he smiles or laughs. Ahn’s teeth were a little crooked and crowded before all this, before he got fixed, and he hasn’t broken the habit. We understand, we have them too. The wonderful thing is the Force has come to know and love these small details. They write long posts about them or multi-string Twitter threads. Some habits of ours have become gifs. We wish everyone could have this kind of acceptance.
However, our skin is perfect. It has to be. We get facials and treatments and undertake a multi-step routine we’re contractually bound to follow every morning and every night before we sleep, even if we shoot a video in the middle of the night or go for twenty hours on location. We sometimes wonder about this, because they cover it all up anyway with foundation sprayed into mist and dabbed with the warm fat of a finger pad. They are magicians, the make-up people. We love them. Sometimes we feel guilty because we are more attached to them than our parents or siblings, but then we reassure ourselves: we see the make-up people almost more than anyone else, besides each other.
It’s Suzy, our favorite, who gets us thinking about the show the next morning.
Everything okay? she asks, her eyebrows drawn together as they always are when working on us.
Das is in the chair, the rest of us waiting our turn.
A little tired. But what else is new?
Suzy pulls back, arm raised, one finger dark from liner, another pale from powder.
You all have been working a lot, she says. Suzy has an asymmetrical haircut, the left side longer than the other, and a hoop dangling from the bit of skin between her nostrils. She often smells like grape and has a soft ring of flesh like a life preserver around her waist. Her real name isn’t Suzy – that’s the American name she picked the first time she came with us on tour. Few of us go by our full Korean names around here; most of us have something else we’ve picked and go by. It was their idea at first and it just caught on.
The interview, she says. It was…interesting.
We shrug. The interviews run into each other, plus most of yesterday’s was incomprehensible to us. Only JM understands and speaks English; the story he tells is that he learned from watching Friends but we know he also studied his ass off in high school. Last night JM translated for us here and there but handled most of the questions as our band’s representative. The Director thought it best that way; apparently American audiences don’t have patience for translation. Which we think is a little weird, given that ninety percent of our songs are in Korean. Does that mean Americans have no idea what we’re saying?
Goosie talked a lot, Suzy comments. More than usual. He even talked over JM a couple of times.
We fall silent as Suzy continues her work, weighing her words like a bag of flour, thinking back on the show: Goosie in the second chair from the host, his arms folded to show off his muscles, his voice lower than JM and ours by at least one category, his face round but not in a good way – more like the moon than Koreans generally like – his left ear with three piercings and the right with none, his shoulders broad in a way we envy slightly until they hinder some of his dance moves, his hands small and surprisingly delicate around a microphone. They are close, JM and Goosie, enough to make the rest of us slightly watchful; enough to make them a little careful. They’ve known each other since elementary school, the majority of their lives. Some say they’re not only the leaders of the group but the founders, but no one likes to hear that, especially the guys in charge.
As Suzy works on our faces we barely feel the dark pencil in our eyebrows, the wet, sticky dab of gloss on our bottom lips as we think about the show: Goosie did talk a little more than usual, slipping in fat words of English, laughing his deep laugh, leaning in towards the host, almost right over JM. Maybe we didn’t notice because JM went along with it, leaning his slender frame back into the armchair. He even offered up a question to Goosie, holding his hands out as if serving cocoa on a tray. We realize we thought they might have planned it, as they sometimes do at the last minute, a murmured word right before going on stage or a look as they pass the mic between them, a quick nod that only the two of them understand. And as we think about it, we realize this happens often enough that we put it in the same category as English: a language the two of them speak that we don’t.
We remember then a moment that flashed by, one we would have forgotten entirely if not for Suzy’s observation. It was at the end of the interview, when we all stood up from the long row of chairs, facing the audience, waving and smiling, taking the time to look some of the screaming girls in the eye, the way we’ve been instructed. The host extended a hand and Goosie reached for it first, nearly cutting off JM, who, without thinking, slapped Goosie away. The sound of flesh on flesh was like the clap of water against concrete, ringing out above the din of the fans and the closing music and the voices saying things. We nearly felt the slap against our own skin, the bones in our hands reverberating with the blow.
Their eyes met in that split second but we couldn’t see what was exchanged between them, and then it was over, JM laughing and Goosie joining in, both of them saying something to the host with their widest, most brilliant smiles. They hung their arms across each other’s shoulders and the whole thing was wiped away, gone from our minds and from the atmosphere and from anyone’s second thought. We all took turns shaking the host’s hand, thanking him in English, continuing to wave to the fans, shining our beautiful boy band beams through the bright lights and into the darkness just beyond. We were all there together, one unit, in harmony. As it should be.
We are watchful the next day during rehearsals. We can’t help it. We don’t mean to be suspicious – we’re just paying closer attention, we tell ourselves, which makes us a little distracted during sound check; we miss a cue here, go left instead of right, arms up instead of down. The Director gets annoyed, cancels a break and then pushes back lunch. We take it from the top again and again until we’re wet with sweat. We sing, we move, we dance, we smile. We forget about whatever we were supposed to be watching for. We are all together, moving as one, and fall on our bowls of rice at the end of the day, nothing but the sounds of soup slurping and spoon clanging to be heard.
We want the first show in New York to be amazing. We’re playing Madison Square Garden, which we learn is legend, where artists like Michael Jackson and Jay-Z have performed. JM is tired from all the English he’s had to do, but we can tell he’s happy and we know he doesn’t mind his role; we all kind of think of the group as his and Goosie’s. They write most of the songs; Goosie from the underground rap scene in Seoul. We know it bothers Goosie sometimes, how he gets called a sell-out by the kids he used to hang with, that the critics write more about how many albums we sell or where we land on the charts than the flow of his lyrics, how he bends Korean into that most American of art forms. We think someday someone will recognize how Goosie’s changed the language, perhaps forever: the slang, the shortening, the rhyme inside the rhyme, how the rage of the American streets has been translated to han, how game is noonchi. The real origin story is that JM and Goosie were kid friends, Goosie deep into rap while JM’s good looks and singing voice caught the attention of the Corporation. JM turned down a spot with The Bright Boys, brought Goosie in despite objections over his appearance (“he’s not just not handsome – I’d say he’s ugly”), and the Director (in A&R at the time) took a chance on the two of them while scouting for the rest of us, scooping from this or that group and in a couple of cases the modeling agencies, and now here we are, the biggest band in the history of South Korea, of Asia, of the world: the biggest boy band since the Beatles.
It’s hard to see the audience, the brightest of lights shining down on us like rays of the sun, but we catch glimpses occasionally. Handmade signs unrolled and waving, the words impossible to make out; during the ballads thousands of cell phone lights move back and forth in unison. Palms glow towards us like beacons. We sometimes see flags: American, Korean, Italian, Japanese. On this night we see something different: an enormous one unfurls during “Secret Love,” one of our personal favorites and always a crowd pleaser. This flag is huge: it spreads across whole rows, almost covering an entire section with its simple rainbow stripes. We’re so surprised to see something so large we break formation, half of us rushing to the edge of the stage, pointing and waving, the other half continuing to sing and dance. A roar goes up and around the stadium and everyone is screaming with joy, the live feed now focused on this explosion of color, the coordination and cooperation of the Force astonishing us and everyone there once again. The rainbow flag ripples across every one of the Jumbotrons and we’re so caught up in the moment we don’t notice the Director in his headset gesturing furiously, his face bright red. We recognize the flag on some level but can’t quite place it, caught up more in the spectacle than in any meaning. We encourage the audience, all seven of us now at the lip of the stage, moving into a different pattern, one that’s not planned for this song but one we know. The crowd responds in kind so we’re all moving together, as if we’re parts of a whole, cells in a body, and we feel the energy, the love and adoration, and the sound pours from us, the words the same but new somehow, and as we sing the enormous flag begins to migrate slowly from its point of origin, carried and moved by the thousands of bodies below, each one taking their turn to live for a few moments under a bright stripe of color before passing it along, the air dark and humid with all of us in concert, joined and united in a moment that feels almost holy.
The images are all over the news and the internet the next day, not just back home but everywhere. We think the Director and the rest of them would be pleased – the more coverage the better, and sales of “Secret Love” are suddenly soaring – but they aren’t. They look askance at us, as if weighing the truth of our confusion over the fuss. We’re not sure why they don’t trust in their own abilities: they taught us well – how to work the crowd, how to take a moment to its maximum, how to perform. We were just doing our jobs. True, we’ve seen that flag before and had some sense of its association, but no one thought it would get the Director and the Corporation all worked up.
Jae-ha us has a secret Twitter account so he can troll The Bright Boys occasionally and tells us #SecretLove is trending. We gather around that night in one of the hotel suites, after the Director finally leaves us to ourselves. We scroll down and down: it starts off as photos of the concert coupled with song lyrics but then morphs into something else: at first, selfies of kids from Korea wrapped in the rainbow flag, then pairings of them, mostly girls but occasionally two guys, also with the flag, and then it explodes: kids of the same gender holding hands, kissing, touching tongues. We even see two nipples tip to tip before the post gets flagged and disappears forever. And then it’s all girls, or who we think are girls, it’s hard to tell, and not just Asian ones but also white ones, black ones, brown ones, from all over, everywhere. Their hair is short or they don’t have it at all or it’s dyed in stripes or bright colors; they’ve got piercings in ears, noses, eyebrows, bellybuttons, unrecognizable parts; they’re busty or flat or showing off tight midriffs or rolls of flesh in bright fabric – the variety is breathtaking but we can see they’ve all got something in common: a kind of masculine slouch, a look in the eye that’s neither male nor female but something else, a hunch of the shoulders that’s a dare, saying something like don’t fuck with us.
We don’t understand it, why #SecretLove is all these boy-looking girls, and we’re whispering to each other over our glowing screens when JM walks in, fresh from a shower, and interrupts us, exasperated.
They’re lesbians, he says. Or queer, or whatever.
We echo the words back to him. JM explains.
Oh, we say, slightly stunned.
Goosie laughs at us. He’s stretched out on the lounge chair across the room, flipping through channels on the silent TV. You didn’t know?
Know what?
They love us, he says. We’re a symbol for them.
Maybe even an icon, he continues. He sits up and shuts off the television.
Goosie is smiling from his eyes out. JM frowns, but Goosie either doesn’t notice or chooses to ignore him.
Not an icon. Not symbols, JM says.
Goosie keeps talking as if JM hasn’t spoken. I read an article about how we’re like a gateway drug. And an essay written by this kid in Indonesia who said we gave her the courage to kiss her best friend. Who was also in love with her, it turns out.
Shut up, JM says, louder this time. The distance between them is taut; JM takes a step toward Goosie.
Goosie looks at each of us and we see a seriousness there, that he’s telling us something important.
We’re like girls, he says. Except safer. That’s why they fall in love with us.
I’m no girl, JM says. His voice is raised. We all turn to look at him, except Goosie, whose smile has twisted the slightest bit into something else, something we can’t quite name. He is still gazing at us.
I’m a man, JM continues, pulling his shoulders back and puffing up his chest. The skin below his ears along the sides of his neck is streaked red. A goddamn man. JM strikes himself across the chest, his hand in a tight fist.
Goosie’s eyes flick in JM’s direction, as if trying to locate a small sound, but don’t land anywhere. You’re all so beautiful, he says softly. You’d win pageants. All of you, his eyes finally moving over to JM. They rest on him and settle there, boring into JM in a way we all feel. We squirm without realizing it, shifting slightly as if to find a more comfortable seat.
Especially you. Goosie’s voice is a whisper. You’re the fairest of them all.
We get distracted then, trying to remember where that line is from, how we know it. Sun says it’s from a song – one of our own, maybe? – while MS insists it’s from a movie, that one with the actress we like. Or was it the title of a drama from a few years back? And anyways, JM isn’t the fairest, not by any stretch of the imagination. That debate rages on-line, camps formed, arguments made: usually Ahn versus Das, JM only occasionally in the running.
You faggot, JM says. You fucking faggot. He lunges at Goosie, who starts laughing as the rest of us scramble out of our shock too late to intercept JM but strong enough to pull him off Goosie, who is left with two parallel scratches down the side of his face. He doesn’t seem to feel or mind where his pale skin has been scraped away, tiny beads of blood rounding to the surface. Goosie laughs and laughs, tears starting to pool at the corners of his eyes, his long bangs shaken loose, his round face glowing like the planet Mars. We’re all yelling, some of us at JM and the rest at Goosie, who gets to his feet and approaches JM, impervious to JM’s thrashing and clawing. He places a hand on JM’s cheek and like JM, we’re all stilled, as if we were the ones being touched.
I made us, Goosie says. Me and them. Never forget that. You’d be nothing without us; you’d be ordinary. Just like everyone else. Without us – without me – you’d have no idea who you are. He says these words tenderly, all humor and malice gone, the low rumble of his voice like a lullaby. Goosie’s hand lingers there as something passes between the two of them and then JM is bucking and lunging again, reactivating those of us holding him back. Goosie walks away, saying nothing. He leaves the room without a look back.
We argue later about who Goosie was referring to: the Force? The so-called queer ones with the rainbow flags and their boy-girl, girl-boy looks? Or the Corporation? The Director? In the end it doesn’t matter. JM and Goosie aren’t speaking to each other and it’s clear that some of us are with JM and others with Goosie. We should be proud, half of us say. It’s a big deal to be someone’s hero.
But it’s not normal, the rest of us say. And we’re men, goddamnit. We flex our muscles or smooth back our hair when we say this. Some of us justify the lunging, the scratching – Goosie was totally baiting him – while others argue that violence is childish, that we shouldn’t use slurs. We go back and forth, the whole time no one commenting about what else Goosie had to say: You’d be nothing without us. The words reverberate. None of us want to talk about being nothing, how we avoided that terrible fate, how much we owe someone, whether it’s Goosie or JM or who knows who else. And so we argue about everything else.
You’d have no idea who you are. We can’t help but look in the mirror that night when we’re each alone and on our own. Jae-ha remembers how his eyebrows are shaped when left to their own devices; the same ones on his little sister who broke her arm a couple of months ago after falling off the monkey bars. Ahn thinks of how his first girlfriend drew a line between the three moles on the side of his neck with a cool finger. Like a constellation, she said. Das marvels at his heart-shaped face, the point of chin: his ticket away from the turnip farm with its bulbous crop and dusty stems. Sun, the newest member, peers at the hair poking out just above the corners of his mouth and wonders if he might be allowed to grow a mustache. MS tries not to notice the scar mostly hidden by his hairline, telling himself he’s forgotten where it came from. We look and look even though we know our faces so well, the ones on screens and posters and magazines and billboards and album covers; we look so long we start to see something different, unfamiliar, our faces turning into something else the way a word does when a kid says it over and over again. A glimpse here of one of those girl-boys, those lesbians, those – what did JM say? – queers. If we squint, we can see how we might not be a boy after all; out of the corner of our eyes we see how girlish we are, how lovely. Ahn notices for the first time how his eyelashes have an elegant length and curl; Sun rolls and purses his lips and as he watches the blood rush in, admits they are as lush as any woman’s; Das holds a hand up to his face, both the face and the hand delicate and supple. And then we blink and draw back, shut off the bathroom light. We switch on the television, turn up the volume and laugh at whatever is playing, loud enough to cover the hard thumping in our chests.
We have a show the next day and you know the saying: it must go on. Suzy takes longer with Goosie than usual: we see them talking, a triangle of foundation-tinged foam in Suzy’s right hand. She lays a hand on Goosie’s forearm and he covers it with hers. We can’t remember ever touching Suzy; she only ever touches us. Anyway, she does a thorough job with his face. The only way you could tell anything happened is if you were inches away, or if he were under extreme close-up on the Jumbotron. The Director takes care of that, ordering only wide shots.
Suzy doesn’t ask us what happened, either because she knows or she’s been instructed not to bring it up. The Director took us aside one by one the morning after the scuffle but we kept tight, and he eventually gave up in exasperation, resorting to taking our visiting privileges away for a week. We get a mild sense of satisfaction from our solidarity: he doesn’t need to know everything that goes on with us.
Between Goosie and JM’s fight and the interrogations with the Director on top of the usual hectic schedule of show day, it isn’t until Sun is in Suzy’s chair with the rest of us waiting that we have a moment to ourselves. She is calm and focused, as she always is, her gels and powders on hand, an array of brushes at the ready. We relax here, as there’s nothing for us to do but sit still, close our eyes and become our most beautiful selves under her magical hands.
Do you know what the rainbow flag stands for? Sun asks Suzy, his eyes closed. We’re genuinely curious if this is common knowledge.
She takes a moment to respond.
Yeah, I do.
Do you know why the rainbow is for the LGBTQ? MS hopes the way he says the letters doesn’t sound as new and unnatural as they feel in his mouth.
They say it’s a symbol of pride, Suzy says quietly. But I like to think of it as a symbol of joy.
Something about how she says this makes us all look over at her.
She doesn’t avoid our gaze. Instead, she steps back, gives the slightest of smiles and shrugs a bit, as if to say, so what? And Suzy transforms before us, like Clark Kent into Superman or vice versa, tumbling out of a closet in disarray, smoothing back hair or straightening a pair of glasses. Her asymmetrical hair suddenly looks like something one of us could wear – and we may have, in fact – and her thick eyebrows look strong, aggressive, a contrast to her body – soft, plump – a body of any teenage boy before his growth spurt.
We shake our heads, startled, as if waking from a dream only to find ourselves in another one.
Isn’t it a thing of joy to be who you are? Suzy continues. There’s power there, making yourself free.
We don’t really understand but don’t know what to do but nod. And so we do, and Suzy comes back to us, so close we can feel her radiating warmth, and she continues her work making us the most beautiful version of ourselves anyone will ever see. We watch her surreptitiously, but there’s nothing new to see, at least on the surface. She’s the same Suzy she was yesterday, and the day before that, and we recognize her, just as we recognized our own faces the night before, the way a face can change and stay the same, all at the same time.
We feel splintered that night, a beam fractured somewhere along the way to wherever it was going, though to anyone watching we’re in sync, dance moves in coordination, the passing of refrain to chorus to bridge to solo as seamless as ever. “Secret Love” is excised from the playlist but we scarcely notice. We want to be knit back together but despite our best efforts we feel the conflict between JM and Goosie like a pebble in our shoes, and we’re wet with exhaustion at the end of that second night, most of us slumping off to our rooms, pairs of us here or there getting together to sip a light beer or play a round of cards before bed. We’ve got one more show in New York and then it’s back home. We long for the dark tube of the plane, the smell of the air when we disembark, the knowledge that even if we can’t see them every day, our families are on the same continent, on the same soil. We dream of our mothers that night: a soft hand, a quiet voice, the brush of hair on our faces – and wake with a nagging sense of sorrow, grey rain dripping down the other side of the hotel windows.
On our way to the show, we hear the shouting before we see anything and crane our necks to catch what we can through the darkened windows of the SUV. Only red and blue flashing lights reach us, followed by the overhead thump of a helicopter holding its position. Traffic has slowed to a trickle and we’re only two blocks away, but we don’t even entertain the idea of walking the remaining distance. We haven’t been able to move freely in years.
A crowd of people with signs line half the block; they are surrounded along one edge by television cameras and reporters. Somehow we know right away they aren’t the usual crowd of fans. Maybe it’s the row of police officers in their hard, dark blue, or the low steel gates fencing the people in; perhaps it’s the soft rhythmic singing we hear, in time with swaying hands and faces lifted towards the sky.
Goosie starts laughing. They’re protesters.
We press harder against the thick black glass. Protesters? What for?
That’s when we realize the people – most of them Asian, and to our eye, Korean – are singing hymns. We strain to hear, then we recognize the chorus. Some of us hum along; we know the words.
They’re praying for us, JM says. Look. He gestures towards the women and men kneeling on the hard sidewalk.
That’s ridiculous, Goosie says. He’s stopped laughing and his voice is as dry as a bone. What’re they praying for? I don’t need anyone to pray for me.
We gaze at them as we inch by, hidden by thick, dark glass, these strangers gathered together in prayer, in sorrow, in search of our saving and salvation, and we think of our souls, each one of them, and wonder what they might look like. And then the tide turns when one of the protesters points to our vehicle with its obvious incognito and shouts; in one unified body they ripple towards us, pushing against the barriers as the eyes of the cameras and their lights swivel towards us.
Somehow, they break through and before we know it we are surrounded, flat palms pressed on the other side of the glass, inches away, banging and slapping, faces shouting through wide open mouths, the sounds desperate, urgent. We pull away as if the windows are suddenly burning hot and huddle together towards the middle seats. The driver leans on the horn and a blast peals out, dropping a few away from the car, but most of them continue on as we inch forward. We hear them calling to us: we’re praying for you; embrace Him and His word; cast off sin; gays burn in hell.
One of them has pressed herself against the side of the car and we hear the Lord’s prayer through the smallest gaps. She’s middle-aged, her black hair in soft waves, her body soft and round like Suzy’s. She is praying for us with utmost concentration, as if her life depended on it, as if we were her own children.
We don’t say much to each other through the long minutes that pass before the police finally come and push the people away from the car, corralling them back into the pen. We’re not sure what the others are thinking, who is feeling what. JM can’t take his eyes off them, fascinated, drawn; Goosie is silent, arms folded, gaze sealed on the tops of his feet. Jae-ha thinks of his sister and her cast, sitting in church with their parents, and wonders when he’ll see her next. Sun wonders if anything like this has happened before but doesn’t ask – he’s already so conscious of being the newbie. Das and MS think about what they said the day before, about it not being normal, and look back at the protesters; they shake their heads to free themselves from something discomfiting. Ahn feels a fear all too familiar and covers his face with a warm hand. Each of us are shaken, but for different reasons, and we each feel alone in our fear.
The smell of backstage – shiny aluminum, old sweat, burnt circuits – brings us back to ourselves and the movements of habit kick in. Jae-ha and Das do a few minutes on the stationary bike and the treadmill, all of us stretch. We loosen our jaws and our faces as we start to hear sounds from the others: a la la la here, a scale there, a snippet of a chorus, a bit of a solo. We run our fingers across the outfits hanging there like bodies, smile and chat with the dressers, the tech guys, the stage crew. When it’s time for us to go on we’re in the zone. All thoughts of the protesters, the altercation, the queer kids, are gone from our minds. We are professionals after all.
The crowd appears endless. This third and final show is sold out and the rows of people stretch on and on, abstractions that disappear into darkness in the upper reaches. Their screams and cheers are like crashing waves on a shore but they buoy us with their energy and soon we’re deep in the rhythm, moving and singing without thought. We go through each song flawlessly, hitting our marks. We feel like we’ve never performed so well.
The stage is dark and we’re ready for “Lightning” when the opening chords for “Secret Love” come on instead. We’re confused, like deer in headlights except frozen in darkness, and then hear Goosie’s deep voice echo out across the stadium.
We weren’t going to play this song tonight, he says as a spotlight opens up on him. Goosie turns back to us waiting in the shadows and gestures forward onto the stage. But I wanted to do it for you. The crowd roars and the noise jolts us into movement; we move to our marks as the intro spools on. Goosie is center stage forward at this point, as close as he can get to the audience as possible, furthest from the Director and all those gathered in the wings in bewilderment and fury.
I might get into a little trouble, he says with a small laugh. But I really don’t care. Screams of approval burst through and with that we’re in the song, the notes and the beats the cues we know as if they were stitched on the insides of our veins, and we move. We pass the lyrics from one of us to another, and then are together in the chorus. Goosie does his rap and it’s only in that moment we realize JM isn’t with us on stage, just as his part is up and we glance around at each other, wondering what to do. Goosie steps in and begins to sing, when he never sings, and his register is baritone and JM’s part is for tenor. We can hear immediately how it doesn’t work and so then it’s suddenly one of us after another joining in, covering, drowning Goosie out and ameliorating JM’s absence with our overwhelming presence, the five of us doing what we can to save the song.
And it’s brilliant. We sound amazing. Something about singing that one verse together elevates the whole thing and by the end we swear every single person in that arena is on their feet cheering, singing along, all of us transported to some other place by what we did together, right there on that stage.
We look back on this moment again and again, partly because it was our last time together in that particular configuration, but also to remember what it felt like. Goosie was removed from the group after that concert, despite massive protests, and JM was left to lead by himself. Jae-ha got sick of the protesters, both the Christians and the pro-Goosies; Das quit in solidarity and ended up joining Goosie’s new music company; Ahn – the shy, almond-eyed one with the golden voice – was recruited by Goosie into another group. We were more surprised when Ahn came out than we were by Goosie; when Goosie made his announcement, we realized we always knew it on some level. It was Goosie we missed the most. JM tried his hardest both on stage and off, but no matter what we did, we were just a boy band.
But in that moment, the one we go back to the way a compass swings north, Goosie is the star, lit from above and below and from the sides, in white and purple and blues and greens. He cuts through like a great scythe and he seems suddenly free of the laws of gravity and the dictates of this world, and we hope, for a moment, that he’ll simply levitate off the stage and float free, just so we can follow him one last time, as far as we are able, stretching, reaching, as high as we can imagine the stars can go.
Anyone tuning in to the show can tell which of us are the leaders, not just because they sit closest to the host: the one who speaks English and the deep-voiced rapper. The one with the sweetest, clearest voice might have been a leader too if not so shy, if he didn’t cover his mouth every time he smiles or laughs. Ahn’s teeth were a little crooked and crowded before all this, before he got fixed, and he hasn’t broken the habit. We understand, we have them too. The wonderful thing is the Force has come to know and love these small details. They write long posts about them or multi-string Twitter threads. Some habits of ours have become gifs. We wish everyone could have this kind of acceptance.
However, our skin is perfect. It has to be. We get facials and treatments and undertake a multi-step routine we’re contractually bound to follow every morning and every night before we sleep, even if we shoot a video in the middle of the night or go for twenty hours on location. We sometimes wonder about this, because they cover it all up anyway with foundation sprayed into mist and dabbed with the warm fat of a finger pad. They are magicians, the make-up people. We love them. Sometimes we feel guilty because we are more attached to them than our parents or siblings, but then we reassure ourselves: we see the make-up people almost more than anyone else, besides each other.
It’s Suzy, our favorite, who gets us thinking about the show the next morning.
Everything okay? she asks, her eyebrows drawn together as they always are when working on us.
Das is in the chair, the rest of us waiting our turn.
A little tired. But what else is new?
Suzy pulls back, arm raised, one finger dark from liner, another pale from powder.
You all have been working a lot, she says. Suzy has an asymmetrical haircut, the left side longer than the other, and a hoop dangling from the bit of skin between her nostrils. She often smells like grape and has a soft ring of flesh like a life preserver around her waist. Her real name isn’t Suzy – that’s the American name she picked the first time she came with us on tour. Few of us go by our full Korean names around here; most of us have something else we’ve picked and go by. It was their idea at first and it just caught on.
The interview, she says. It was…interesting.
We shrug. The interviews run into each other, plus most of yesterday’s was incomprehensible to us. Only JM understands and speaks English; the story he tells is that he learned from watching Friends but we know he also studied his ass off in high school. Last night JM translated for us here and there but handled most of the questions as our band’s representative. The Director thought it best that way; apparently American audiences don’t have patience for translation. Which we think is a little weird, given that ninety percent of our songs are in Korean. Does that mean Americans have no idea what we’re saying?
Goosie talked a lot, Suzy comments. More than usual. He even talked over JM a couple of times.
We fall silent as Suzy continues her work, weighing her words like a bag of flour, thinking back on the show: Goosie in the second chair from the host, his arms folded to show off his muscles, his voice lower than JM and ours by at least one category, his face round but not in a good way – more like the moon than Koreans generally like – his left ear with three piercings and the right with none, his shoulders broad in a way we envy slightly until they hinder some of his dance moves, his hands small and surprisingly delicate around a microphone. They are close, JM and Goosie, enough to make the rest of us slightly watchful; enough to make them a little careful. They’ve known each other since elementary school, the majority of their lives. Some say they’re not only the leaders of the group but the founders, but no one likes to hear that, especially the guys in charge.
As Suzy works on our faces we barely feel the dark pencil in our eyebrows, the wet, sticky dab of gloss on our bottom lips as we think about the show: Goosie did talk a little more than usual, slipping in fat words of English, laughing his deep laugh, leaning in towards the host, almost right over JM. Maybe we didn’t notice because JM went along with it, leaning his slender frame back into the armchair. He even offered up a question to Goosie, holding his hands out as if serving cocoa on a tray. We realize we thought they might have planned it, as they sometimes do at the last minute, a murmured word right before going on stage or a look as they pass the mic between them, a quick nod that only the two of them understand. And as we think about it, we realize this happens often enough that we put it in the same category as English: a language the two of them speak that we don’t.
We remember then a moment that flashed by, one we would have forgotten entirely if not for Suzy’s observation. It was at the end of the interview, when we all stood up from the long row of chairs, facing the audience, waving and smiling, taking the time to look some of the screaming girls in the eye, the way we’ve been instructed. The host extended a hand and Goosie reached for it first, nearly cutting off JM, who, without thinking, slapped Goosie away. The sound of flesh on flesh was like the clap of water against concrete, ringing out above the din of the fans and the closing music and the voices saying things. We nearly felt the slap against our own skin, the bones in our hands reverberating with the blow.
Their eyes met in that split second but we couldn’t see what was exchanged between them, and then it was over, JM laughing and Goosie joining in, both of them saying something to the host with their widest, most brilliant smiles. They hung their arms across each other’s shoulders and the whole thing was wiped away, gone from our minds and from the atmosphere and from anyone’s second thought. We all took turns shaking the host’s hand, thanking him in English, continuing to wave to the fans, shining our beautiful boy band beams through the bright lights and into the darkness just beyond. We were all there together, one unit, in harmony. As it should be.
We are watchful the next day during rehearsals. We can’t help it. We don’t mean to be suspicious – we’re just paying closer attention, we tell ourselves, which makes us a little distracted during sound check; we miss a cue here, go left instead of right, arms up instead of down. The Director gets annoyed, cancels a break and then pushes back lunch. We take it from the top again and again until we’re wet with sweat. We sing, we move, we dance, we smile. We forget about whatever we were supposed to be watching for. We are all together, moving as one, and fall on our bowls of rice at the end of the day, nothing but the sounds of soup slurping and spoon clanging to be heard.
We want the first show in New York to be amazing. We’re playing Madison Square Garden, which we learn is legend, where artists like Michael Jackson and Jay-Z have performed. JM is tired from all the English he’s had to do, but we can tell he’s happy and we know he doesn’t mind his role; we all kind of think of the group as his and Goosie’s. They write most of the songs; Goosie from the underground rap scene in Seoul. We know it bothers Goosie sometimes, how he gets called a sell-out by the kids he used to hang with, that the critics write more about how many albums we sell or where we land on the charts than the flow of his lyrics, how he bends Korean into that most American of art forms. We think someday someone will recognize how Goosie’s changed the language, perhaps forever: the slang, the shortening, the rhyme inside the rhyme, how the rage of the American streets has been translated to han, how game is noonchi. The real origin story is that JM and Goosie were kid friends, Goosie deep into rap while JM’s good looks and singing voice caught the attention of the Corporation. JM turned down a spot with The Bright Boys, brought Goosie in despite objections over his appearance (“he’s not just not handsome – I’d say he’s ugly”), and the Director (in A&R at the time) took a chance on the two of them while scouting for the rest of us, scooping from this or that group and in a couple of cases the modeling agencies, and now here we are, the biggest band in the history of South Korea, of Asia, of the world: the biggest boy band since the Beatles.
It’s hard to see the audience, the brightest of lights shining down on us like rays of the sun, but we catch glimpses occasionally. Handmade signs unrolled and waving, the words impossible to make out; during the ballads thousands of cell phone lights move back and forth in unison. Palms glow towards us like beacons. We sometimes see flags: American, Korean, Italian, Japanese. On this night we see something different: an enormous one unfurls during “Secret Love,” one of our personal favorites and always a crowd pleaser. This flag is huge: it spreads across whole rows, almost covering an entire section with its simple rainbow stripes. We’re so surprised to see something so large we break formation, half of us rushing to the edge of the stage, pointing and waving, the other half continuing to sing and dance. A roar goes up and around the stadium and everyone is screaming with joy, the live feed now focused on this explosion of color, the coordination and cooperation of the Force astonishing us and everyone there once again. The rainbow flag ripples across every one of the Jumbotrons and we’re so caught up in the moment we don’t notice the Director in his headset gesturing furiously, his face bright red. We recognize the flag on some level but can’t quite place it, caught up more in the spectacle than in any meaning. We encourage the audience, all seven of us now at the lip of the stage, moving into a different pattern, one that’s not planned for this song but one we know. The crowd responds in kind so we’re all moving together, as if we’re parts of a whole, cells in a body, and we feel the energy, the love and adoration, and the sound pours from us, the words the same but new somehow, and as we sing the enormous flag begins to migrate slowly from its point of origin, carried and moved by the thousands of bodies below, each one taking their turn to live for a few moments under a bright stripe of color before passing it along, the air dark and humid with all of us in concert, joined and united in a moment that feels almost holy.
The images are all over the news and the internet the next day, not just back home but everywhere. We think the Director and the rest of them would be pleased – the more coverage the better, and sales of “Secret Love” are suddenly soaring – but they aren’t. They look askance at us, as if weighing the truth of our confusion over the fuss. We’re not sure why they don’t trust in their own abilities: they taught us well – how to work the crowd, how to take a moment to its maximum, how to perform. We were just doing our jobs. True, we’ve seen that flag before and had some sense of its association, but no one thought it would get the Director and the Corporation all worked up.
Jae-ha us has a secret Twitter account so he can troll The Bright Boys occasionally and tells us #SecretLove is trending. We gather around that night in one of the hotel suites, after the Director finally leaves us to ourselves. We scroll down and down: it starts off as photos of the concert coupled with song lyrics but then morphs into something else: at first, selfies of kids from Korea wrapped in the rainbow flag, then pairings of them, mostly girls but occasionally two guys, also with the flag, and then it explodes: kids of the same gender holding hands, kissing, touching tongues. We even see two nipples tip to tip before the post gets flagged and disappears forever. And then it’s all girls, or who we think are girls, it’s hard to tell, and not just Asian ones but also white ones, black ones, brown ones, from all over, everywhere. Their hair is short or they don’t have it at all or it’s dyed in stripes or bright colors; they’ve got piercings in ears, noses, eyebrows, bellybuttons, unrecognizable parts; they’re busty or flat or showing off tight midriffs or rolls of flesh in bright fabric – the variety is breathtaking but we can see they’ve all got something in common: a kind of masculine slouch, a look in the eye that’s neither male nor female but something else, a hunch of the shoulders that’s a dare, saying something like don’t fuck with us.
We don’t understand it, why #SecretLove is all these boy-looking girls, and we’re whispering to each other over our glowing screens when JM walks in, fresh from a shower, and interrupts us, exasperated.
They’re lesbians, he says. Or queer, or whatever.
We echo the words back to him. JM explains.
Oh, we say, slightly stunned.
Goosie laughs at us. He’s stretched out on the lounge chair across the room, flipping through channels on the silent TV. You didn’t know?
Know what?
They love us, he says. We’re a symbol for them.
Maybe even an icon, he continues. He sits up and shuts off the television.
Goosie is smiling from his eyes out. JM frowns, but Goosie either doesn’t notice or chooses to ignore him.
Not an icon. Not symbols, JM says.
Goosie keeps talking as if JM hasn’t spoken. I read an article about how we’re like a gateway drug. And an essay written by this kid in Indonesia who said we gave her the courage to kiss her best friend. Who was also in love with her, it turns out.
Shut up, JM says, louder this time. The distance between them is taut; JM takes a step toward Goosie.
Goosie looks at each of us and we see a seriousness there, that he’s telling us something important.
We’re like girls, he says. Except safer. That’s why they fall in love with us.
I’m no girl, JM says. His voice is raised. We all turn to look at him, except Goosie, whose smile has twisted the slightest bit into something else, something we can’t quite name. He is still gazing at us.
I’m a man, JM continues, pulling his shoulders back and puffing up his chest. The skin below his ears along the sides of his neck is streaked red. A goddamn man. JM strikes himself across the chest, his hand in a tight fist.
Goosie’s eyes flick in JM’s direction, as if trying to locate a small sound, but don’t land anywhere. You’re all so beautiful, he says softly. You’d win pageants. All of you, his eyes finally moving over to JM. They rest on him and settle there, boring into JM in a way we all feel. We squirm without realizing it, shifting slightly as if to find a more comfortable seat.
Especially you. Goosie’s voice is a whisper. You’re the fairest of them all.
We get distracted then, trying to remember where that line is from, how we know it. Sun says it’s from a song – one of our own, maybe? – while MS insists it’s from a movie, that one with the actress we like. Or was it the title of a drama from a few years back? And anyways, JM isn’t the fairest, not by any stretch of the imagination. That debate rages on-line, camps formed, arguments made: usually Ahn versus Das, JM only occasionally in the running.
You faggot, JM says. You fucking faggot. He lunges at Goosie, who starts laughing as the rest of us scramble out of our shock too late to intercept JM but strong enough to pull him off Goosie, who is left with two parallel scratches down the side of his face. He doesn’t seem to feel or mind where his pale skin has been scraped away, tiny beads of blood rounding to the surface. Goosie laughs and laughs, tears starting to pool at the corners of his eyes, his long bangs shaken loose, his round face glowing like the planet Mars. We’re all yelling, some of us at JM and the rest at Goosie, who gets to his feet and approaches JM, impervious to JM’s thrashing and clawing. He places a hand on JM’s cheek and like JM, we’re all stilled, as if we were the ones being touched.
I made us, Goosie says. Me and them. Never forget that. You’d be nothing without us; you’d be ordinary. Just like everyone else. Without us – without me – you’d have no idea who you are. He says these words tenderly, all humor and malice gone, the low rumble of his voice like a lullaby. Goosie’s hand lingers there as something passes between the two of them and then JM is bucking and lunging again, reactivating those of us holding him back. Goosie walks away, saying nothing. He leaves the room without a look back.
We argue later about who Goosie was referring to: the Force? The so-called queer ones with the rainbow flags and their boy-girl, girl-boy looks? Or the Corporation? The Director? In the end it doesn’t matter. JM and Goosie aren’t speaking to each other and it’s clear that some of us are with JM and others with Goosie. We should be proud, half of us say. It’s a big deal to be someone’s hero.
But it’s not normal, the rest of us say. And we’re men, goddamnit. We flex our muscles or smooth back our hair when we say this. Some of us justify the lunging, the scratching – Goosie was totally baiting him – while others argue that violence is childish, that we shouldn’t use slurs. We go back and forth, the whole time no one commenting about what else Goosie had to say: You’d be nothing without us. The words reverberate. None of us want to talk about being nothing, how we avoided that terrible fate, how much we owe someone, whether it’s Goosie or JM or who knows who else. And so we argue about everything else.
You’d have no idea who you are. We can’t help but look in the mirror that night when we’re each alone and on our own. Jae-ha remembers how his eyebrows are shaped when left to their own devices; the same ones on his little sister who broke her arm a couple of months ago after falling off the monkey bars. Ahn thinks of how his first girlfriend drew a line between the three moles on the side of his neck with a cool finger. Like a constellation, she said. Das marvels at his heart-shaped face, the point of chin: his ticket away from the turnip farm with its bulbous crop and dusty stems. Sun, the newest member, peers at the hair poking out just above the corners of his mouth and wonders if he might be allowed to grow a mustache. MS tries not to notice the scar mostly hidden by his hairline, telling himself he’s forgotten where it came from. We look and look even though we know our faces so well, the ones on screens and posters and magazines and billboards and album covers; we look so long we start to see something different, unfamiliar, our faces turning into something else the way a word does when a kid says it over and over again. A glimpse here of one of those girl-boys, those lesbians, those – what did JM say? – queers. If we squint, we can see how we might not be a boy after all; out of the corner of our eyes we see how girlish we are, how lovely. Ahn notices for the first time how his eyelashes have an elegant length and curl; Sun rolls and purses his lips and as he watches the blood rush in, admits they are as lush as any woman’s; Das holds a hand up to his face, both the face and the hand delicate and supple. And then we blink and draw back, shut off the bathroom light. We switch on the television, turn up the volume and laugh at whatever is playing, loud enough to cover the hard thumping in our chests.
We have a show the next day and you know the saying: it must go on. Suzy takes longer with Goosie than usual: we see them talking, a triangle of foundation-tinged foam in Suzy’s right hand. She lays a hand on Goosie’s forearm and he covers it with hers. We can’t remember ever touching Suzy; she only ever touches us. Anyway, she does a thorough job with his face. The only way you could tell anything happened is if you were inches away, or if he were under extreme close-up on the Jumbotron. The Director takes care of that, ordering only wide shots.
Suzy doesn’t ask us what happened, either because she knows or she’s been instructed not to bring it up. The Director took us aside one by one the morning after the scuffle but we kept tight, and he eventually gave up in exasperation, resorting to taking our visiting privileges away for a week. We get a mild sense of satisfaction from our solidarity: he doesn’t need to know everything that goes on with us.
Between Goosie and JM’s fight and the interrogations with the Director on top of the usual hectic schedule of show day, it isn’t until Sun is in Suzy’s chair with the rest of us waiting that we have a moment to ourselves. She is calm and focused, as she always is, her gels and powders on hand, an array of brushes at the ready. We relax here, as there’s nothing for us to do but sit still, close our eyes and become our most beautiful selves under her magical hands.
Do you know what the rainbow flag stands for? Sun asks Suzy, his eyes closed. We’re genuinely curious if this is common knowledge.
She takes a moment to respond.
Yeah, I do.
Do you know why the rainbow is for the LGBTQ? MS hopes the way he says the letters doesn’t sound as new and unnatural as they feel in his mouth.
They say it’s a symbol of pride, Suzy says quietly. But I like to think of it as a symbol of joy.
Something about how she says this makes us all look over at her.
She doesn’t avoid our gaze. Instead, she steps back, gives the slightest of smiles and shrugs a bit, as if to say, so what? And Suzy transforms before us, like Clark Kent into Superman or vice versa, tumbling out of a closet in disarray, smoothing back hair or straightening a pair of glasses. Her asymmetrical hair suddenly looks like something one of us could wear – and we may have, in fact – and her thick eyebrows look strong, aggressive, a contrast to her body – soft, plump – a body of any teenage boy before his growth spurt.
We shake our heads, startled, as if waking from a dream only to find ourselves in another one.
Isn’t it a thing of joy to be who you are? Suzy continues. There’s power there, making yourself free.
We don’t really understand but don’t know what to do but nod. And so we do, and Suzy comes back to us, so close we can feel her radiating warmth, and she continues her work making us the most beautiful version of ourselves anyone will ever see. We watch her surreptitiously, but there’s nothing new to see, at least on the surface. She’s the same Suzy she was yesterday, and the day before that, and we recognize her, just as we recognized our own faces the night before, the way a face can change and stay the same, all at the same time.
We feel splintered that night, a beam fractured somewhere along the way to wherever it was going, though to anyone watching we’re in sync, dance moves in coordination, the passing of refrain to chorus to bridge to solo as seamless as ever. “Secret Love” is excised from the playlist but we scarcely notice. We want to be knit back together but despite our best efforts we feel the conflict between JM and Goosie like a pebble in our shoes, and we’re wet with exhaustion at the end of that second night, most of us slumping off to our rooms, pairs of us here or there getting together to sip a light beer or play a round of cards before bed. We’ve got one more show in New York and then it’s back home. We long for the dark tube of the plane, the smell of the air when we disembark, the knowledge that even if we can’t see them every day, our families are on the same continent, on the same soil. We dream of our mothers that night: a soft hand, a quiet voice, the brush of hair on our faces – and wake with a nagging sense of sorrow, grey rain dripping down the other side of the hotel windows.
On our way to the show, we hear the shouting before we see anything and crane our necks to catch what we can through the darkened windows of the SUV. Only red and blue flashing lights reach us, followed by the overhead thump of a helicopter holding its position. Traffic has slowed to a trickle and we’re only two blocks away, but we don’t even entertain the idea of walking the remaining distance. We haven’t been able to move freely in years.
A crowd of people with signs line half the block; they are surrounded along one edge by television cameras and reporters. Somehow we know right away they aren’t the usual crowd of fans. Maybe it’s the row of police officers in their hard, dark blue, or the low steel gates fencing the people in; perhaps it’s the soft rhythmic singing we hear, in time with swaying hands and faces lifted towards the sky.
Goosie starts laughing. They’re protesters.
We press harder against the thick black glass. Protesters? What for?
That’s when we realize the people – most of them Asian, and to our eye, Korean – are singing hymns. We strain to hear, then we recognize the chorus. Some of us hum along; we know the words.
They’re praying for us, JM says. Look. He gestures towards the women and men kneeling on the hard sidewalk.
That’s ridiculous, Goosie says. He’s stopped laughing and his voice is as dry as a bone. What’re they praying for? I don’t need anyone to pray for me.
We gaze at them as we inch by, hidden by thick, dark glass, these strangers gathered together in prayer, in sorrow, in search of our saving and salvation, and we think of our souls, each one of them, and wonder what they might look like. And then the tide turns when one of the protesters points to our vehicle with its obvious incognito and shouts; in one unified body they ripple towards us, pushing against the barriers as the eyes of the cameras and their lights swivel towards us.
Somehow, they break through and before we know it we are surrounded, flat palms pressed on the other side of the glass, inches away, banging and slapping, faces shouting through wide open mouths, the sounds desperate, urgent. We pull away as if the windows are suddenly burning hot and huddle together towards the middle seats. The driver leans on the horn and a blast peals out, dropping a few away from the car, but most of them continue on as we inch forward. We hear them calling to us: we’re praying for you; embrace Him and His word; cast off sin; gays burn in hell.
One of them has pressed herself against the side of the car and we hear the Lord’s prayer through the smallest gaps. She’s middle-aged, her black hair in soft waves, her body soft and round like Suzy’s. She is praying for us with utmost concentration, as if her life depended on it, as if we were her own children.
We don’t say much to each other through the long minutes that pass before the police finally come and push the people away from the car, corralling them back into the pen. We’re not sure what the others are thinking, who is feeling what. JM can’t take his eyes off them, fascinated, drawn; Goosie is silent, arms folded, gaze sealed on the tops of his feet. Jae-ha thinks of his sister and her cast, sitting in church with their parents, and wonders when he’ll see her next. Sun wonders if anything like this has happened before but doesn’t ask – he’s already so conscious of being the newbie. Das and MS think about what they said the day before, about it not being normal, and look back at the protesters; they shake their heads to free themselves from something discomfiting. Ahn feels a fear all too familiar and covers his face with a warm hand. Each of us are shaken, but for different reasons, and we each feel alone in our fear.
The smell of backstage – shiny aluminum, old sweat, burnt circuits – brings us back to ourselves and the movements of habit kick in. Jae-ha and Das do a few minutes on the stationary bike and the treadmill, all of us stretch. We loosen our jaws and our faces as we start to hear sounds from the others: a la la la here, a scale there, a snippet of a chorus, a bit of a solo. We run our fingers across the outfits hanging there like bodies, smile and chat with the dressers, the tech guys, the stage crew. When it’s time for us to go on we’re in the zone. All thoughts of the protesters, the altercation, the queer kids, are gone from our minds. We are professionals after all.
The crowd appears endless. This third and final show is sold out and the rows of people stretch on and on, abstractions that disappear into darkness in the upper reaches. Their screams and cheers are like crashing waves on a shore but they buoy us with their energy and soon we’re deep in the rhythm, moving and singing without thought. We go through each song flawlessly, hitting our marks. We feel like we’ve never performed so well.
The stage is dark and we’re ready for “Lightning” when the opening chords for “Secret Love” come on instead. We’re confused, like deer in headlights except frozen in darkness, and then hear Goosie’s deep voice echo out across the stadium.
We weren’t going to play this song tonight, he says as a spotlight opens up on him. Goosie turns back to us waiting in the shadows and gestures forward onto the stage. But I wanted to do it for you. The crowd roars and the noise jolts us into movement; we move to our marks as the intro spools on. Goosie is center stage forward at this point, as close as he can get to the audience as possible, furthest from the Director and all those gathered in the wings in bewilderment and fury.
I might get into a little trouble, he says with a small laugh. But I really don’t care. Screams of approval burst through and with that we’re in the song, the notes and the beats the cues we know as if they were stitched on the insides of our veins, and we move. We pass the lyrics from one of us to another, and then are together in the chorus. Goosie does his rap and it’s only in that moment we realize JM isn’t with us on stage, just as his part is up and we glance around at each other, wondering what to do. Goosie steps in and begins to sing, when he never sings, and his register is baritone and JM’s part is for tenor. We can hear immediately how it doesn’t work and so then it’s suddenly one of us after another joining in, covering, drowning Goosie out and ameliorating JM’s absence with our overwhelming presence, the five of us doing what we can to save the song.
And it’s brilliant. We sound amazing. Something about singing that one verse together elevates the whole thing and by the end we swear every single person in that arena is on their feet cheering, singing along, all of us transported to some other place by what we did together, right there on that stage.
We look back on this moment again and again, partly because it was our last time together in that particular configuration, but also to remember what it felt like. Goosie was removed from the group after that concert, despite massive protests, and JM was left to lead by himself. Jae-ha got sick of the protesters, both the Christians and the pro-Goosies; Das quit in solidarity and ended up joining Goosie’s new music company; Ahn – the shy, almond-eyed one with the golden voice – was recruited by Goosie into another group. We were more surprised when Ahn came out than we were by Goosie; when Goosie made his announcement, we realized we always knew it on some level. It was Goosie we missed the most. JM tried his hardest both on stage and off, but no matter what we did, we were just a boy band.
But in that moment, the one we go back to the way a compass swings north, Goosie is the star, lit from above and below and from the sides, in white and purple and blues and greens. He cuts through like a great scythe and he seems suddenly free of the laws of gravity and the dictates of this world, and we hope, for a moment, that he’ll simply levitate off the stage and float free, just so we can follow him one last time, as far as we are able, stretching, reaching, as high as we can imagine the stars can go.