STORY OF A FAN

When I was 12 years old I walked into my bedroom one day to hear music blasting from under my bed. I looked under it and saw the little black cassette/radio player my dad had given me as a gift a few weeks earlier. He had recently passed away and the little black player had been confined to its box in the back of my closet, so what was it doing plugged under my bed?

I remember the song that was playing, ‘We’ve got it going on’ an upbeat single from this American band called the Backstreet Boys. I don’t know why but hearing that song, it was the first time in weeks I’d felt happy and actually started jumping around my room dancing to the beat of the boys.

I never found out how the radio got there, nobody in my family owned up to the deed, and it seems silly but at the time I believe it had been him, his spirit, who had somehow found a way to help me leave the sadness behind and put a smile back on my face. That was 1997 and I have been a Backstreet fan since. Who would have thought that moment would become such a big part of who I am.

When I was 14 I had my heart broken for the first time, my first crush had stolen my first kiss, which I romanticized until I found out he’d only done it as a bet and didn’t actually like me. Millennium had just been released, the perfect mix of sad songs (Show me the meaning of being lonely) and angry ones (Don’t want you back), to express the way I felt.

When I was 16 (year 2001) I saw them for the first time, back to back concerts in Caracas and Maracaibo on their Black and Blue tour, of course I went to both. Black and Blue is actually my favorite BSB album, I’d listen to my boys tell me how I deserved ‘More than that’ and I should ‘Get another boyfriend’, oblivious at the time to how right they were.

At 17 I started dating a boy, this was not a crush, this was my first love, the typical bad boy everybody warns you off, but you just won’t listen. I did a lot for this boy, went against my friends and family, left them to move to his city under the ‘University’ excuse and 8 months later he broke my heart with no explanation. The explanation came a few days later when he said ‘if you’d slept with me we’d still be together’. My boys were right after all.

As the years went on, and the albums were released, the boys helped heal broken hearts and dry my tears, when I was happy there was always a song I could jump around to and when I was sad they could sing my feelings better than I could say them out loud. Nobody ever really understood my loyalty to them, and as I grew older people started insisting I was too old to be a fan, they told me I should behave like an adult, grow up. They told me the Backstreet Boys didn’t even know I existed, that I would never meet them, that I should just give up.

Fast forward to 2011, I am 26 and on Saturday December 3^rd I proved all those people wrong. The place was the Backstreet Boys Cruise, it was a prom themed night and I had gone all out. Big pink princess dress and tiara in place, I settled with my friends to watch the show, when the boys announce they will be picking girls to sing to. ‘No way’ I though, ‘they’ll never pick me’.

Nick Carter starts walking up those stairs to the back of the auditorium, full of girls in pretty dresses, and he stands directly in front of me. In a matter of seconds my BFF Hattie points at me and yells ‘pick her’, Nick looks right at me, smiles and extends his hand for me to hold. That moment he led me down the stairs and on stage and sang ‘Helpless when she smiles’ at me, and I can’t even begin to describe hearing those lyrics come out of those lips while he hugged me, held my hand and I stared straight into his beautiful blue eyes.

What are the odds that from all the girls on that boat, Nick Carter, my true first love, even if a platonic one, would pick me. I hugged and kissed all the boys that night, and even if just for a moment, they saw me, they knew I existed and they made my dream come true. So for all of you who said I was too old to be a fan or go on that boat, for all of you who said it was time to stop wearing pink, for all of you who said my dream would never come true… that moment was for you. Don’t ever stop believing.

Until next time… Smooches to all xXx