37 It’s me who’s actually changed the most for you

Mark

It made me laugh when Burt asked me if Steve and Jamie were fighting again. How appropriate for Steve and Jamie to be fighting while filming the mv for the song about Steve and Jamie fighting.

It also made me laugh that I'm the only one who knows what's really going on between Steve and Jamie. Not because I want to know. I would really rather not know. But I seem to always be around when these things happen.

Jamie got so livid last night, seriously his face turned red and was just so ugly. But he simply walked back to his car and drove off. I had to face Steve and Antonia by myself and had to act like everything was okay haha, how nice to see you here, Antonia, and recorded my rap with all the anger and frustration that I couldn't express to the people in the next booth. It's a good thing there really is supposed to be anger and frustration in that part of the song.

~

The one for me

Feels like a lie

That promise we made is strangling us

Maybe time has stopped for us

Or maybe it's about to go off and explode

~

"Wow, you sound so angry, Marky," Antonia said as Steve listened to playback. I gave her a short smile that didn't reach my eyes. So coy and flirtatious all the time, pretending to be unattainable to all of us mere mortals, but she apparently spread her legs for Steve. And probably still does.

I don't know what about it makes me angrier. We all knew that Jamie was crazy about Antonia. We also all knew he wouldn't dare do anything about it, but that didn't mean we could try something with her instead. I mean I felt really horrible when I once considered it and just pushed it back from my mind, and never thought about it again. Jamie worshipped Antonia. He was unable to say two words to her. He would die for her, literally. If she told him to just run under a bus, he really would.

And we all knew this. Steve knew this. Did Steve sleep with Antonia because Jamie loved her? Because that's the only thing I could think of why he would betray Jamie like that. Because he couldn't have Jamie himself, so he would have what Jamie could never get?

"Let's do another take," was all Steve said, saying nothing about my delivery. He usually has something to say about each take. What syllables to emphasize. The pacing. The tone. But none today? Is he waiting for me to be done so that I could leave? Fine.

—

"Cut!"

I looked at Luke, the director of our mv. He's this big deal indie film director, award winning artistic type, supposed to be difficult to work with. I wondered what his deal was, now. He looked like he didn't know what to tell me.

"Mark buddy, just a small thing," he said. "Could you dial down the anger a little bit?"

I exhaled. "Less anger," I confirmed.

"Yes," Luke gave me a thumbs up. "The music is really angry by itself already, you might scare your fans."

"Okay, got it." I took a deep breath again.

~

Am I the one for you?

Is there a test I didn't pass?

I told you you've changed but it's me who's actually changed the most for you...

~

—

I looked at the camera lens and smiled. "Hey, everyone, this is Mark from Boy Next Door.

"I'm waiting to shoot my scenes, it's an interesting video, we don't dance in it at all, it's like a short film and we're telling a story. LJ and I have a fight scene in the mv, we haven't shot that yet, so I'm worried about it and excited about it at the same time. We've both come out in films, but we've never acted together in a scene, much less a confrontation scene like this one. I hope it comes out well.

"So we're fighting over a girl in this mv. I feel really lucky that I never had to fight with LJ over a girl, or with any of my members for a girl. We fight, of course, we've been all living and working closely together for more than ten years, of course we're not always going to agree on everything. But the best thing is we value each other enough to fix the relationship. Like the song says. You could say that the song is about that."

I originally didn't plan to say that last part, but I was so pissed off at Steve that I felt he deserved to hear that. It's petty and immature and it felt so damn good.