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It was a beautiful cloudy Thursday in the late spring of 2010. The sky was almost shock blue in the rugged New York weather. The wind blew through the trees around Martin, creating a soothing rustling sound. He shuddered as the clouds parted and the sunbeams hit his face.
A silent tear was rolling down his cheek. He had tried to remain stoic but the façade was starting to crumble.
This was a day that he had dreaded would come many years ago. It was a fear that he had never truly let go of but had in recent years felt calm enough to let rest from time to time; The fear that David Gahan would be permanently and irrevocably ripped away from this world.
Away from him.
There had been moments in the past where he had been afraid that David would have died but in all of those cases the confirmation of his very much alive status had soon been broadcasted along with that message. It had calmed Martin and even the rest of the world for a while. It almost seemed like everybody was joking about his inability to die.
And yet, there he was. Laying inside of a jet black coffin, slowly sinking into the ground. David had said long ago that he wanted to be buried in a coffin instead of a casket. It had been a joke at first but apparently he had put it in his will. It was beautiful and absolutely gothic. It suited him well.
Seeing the coffin sink into the ground, Martin was gripped by emotion and could not hold it back any longer. Once that first tear hand fallen, many more came after that. They all helplessly trailed their way across his cheeks, causing pathways and patterns all leading toward his nose, mouth and chin.
He wiped himself with the handkerchief that he had kept in his pocket. The one that was supposed to be only decorative. He didn’t care though. He hated crying in public and hoped that once he had dried his tears that his body would catch up and turn the damned taps off.
He never thought that he would lose his face so badly and in front of so many people.
Warm arms suddenly but caringly clasped around him as his sinuses were overwhelmed. Andrew Fletcher had embraced him. His warmth felt like home but it didn’t matter how much he wanted to enjoy the embrace; The fact that David Gahan was dead and gone was too much for him to bear. The emotions had struck him hard when he realised that the glimpse of the coffin sinking into the ground would be the closest he would ever get to seeing his body ever again.
He had been in denial from the first phone call. In all likelihood, he had been in denial until the moment he had thrown his rose onto David’s coffin. But that phone call had been the beginning of the end. Martin, who had tried to sober up in the past few years, had once again hit the bottle. He would rather have drowned his feelings than confront them directly and that is exactly what he had done.
Too many of the nights between David’s death and this moment had all been filled with anxious thoughts. “What if I could have done something? What if I could have helped him?” and most importantly of all “Why didn’t I tell him to rethink having the surgery?” David had literally collapsed in his dressing room before a show. They’d found a tumour. He had said that he didn’t want to interrupt the tour for a surgery, even if the recovery would have been quick. He had thought that it wouldn’t be that urgent. Well, maybe not, or maybe this was one of those rare instances where time had really and actually had mattered.
After the tour was over David had worsened and the surgery had failed to remove all of the cancerous cells. It has spread and the radiation therapy during the months after didn’t take either.
For what should have been an easy recovery and everybody who said that he was going to be fine...
Even David, his lips saying “I’ll be fine” played over and over in Martin’s head.
They had all denied it. They had all been wrong.
He wasn’t fine.
He would never be… again.
Martin never wanted to cause a scene but his hulking tears would not stop, no matter how much Andy reassured him and no matter how many people looked at him with furrowed brows. He could not stop himself from showing the world just how much his heart was breaking and how much it ached. He wanted it to weep, to taint the very ground he walked on with thick, dark red blood. His tears did not feel heavy enough.
“Sssh...” Andy whispered into Martin’s ear. Rather than feeling calmed he felt almost condescended towards. He knew that it was coming. He knew that people would pat him on the shoulder because they felt awkward. No-one had lost their composure quite as badly as Martin, not even David's family. It made him feel embarrassed. Most of all he wanted to slip away from the crowd and go hide in a sound isolated room somewhere.
As he went over the events of the funeral in his mind that night he grimaced somewhat at the third person image of himself crying helplessly into Andy’s arms. However embarrassed he felt from letting the limited crowds of close family and friends see that, he wasn’t ashamed of it. It had been raw, it had been real. He had kept his true feelings hidden so long that it almost felt like he had been lying to himself. Was he going through the stages of grief? Well, denial taken care of. What’s next? Bargaining, anger? Acceptance was right out at the moment. Depression… had already taken over.
His feelings were overwhelming him.
Why were all of his feelings toward David always that difficult to parse? “Why can’t I just say how I feel about him? How I felt?” He thought to himself. Why did he always have to meditate about his feelings?
That’s what you call this? Meditation? I’d call this a prolonged anxiety attack.
“Sssh!” Martin tried to quiet his own mind. He really wanted to go to sleep. He wanted to stop thinking about what was, what could have happened and how he could have changed events. But he couldn’t quiet the voices inside his head and even if he could, it would have been futile; Someone in a neighbouring room was evidently having a party.
Martin stood up from the bed and marched toward the door, flung it open and looked around. He was tired and just upset enough that he could walk right into the party and ask them to quiet down. When he entered the hallway he realised that the party was not happening on his floor, that was for certain.
No matter what, he was going to tell the rowdy hotel guests what for and then have them quiet down so that he could finally sleep. Or he could just leave a stern complaint at the front desk. Surely they could hear the commotion too. He was too tired to look for the actual source of the noises.
When the sliding doors of the elevator opened he did not find himself in the hotel lobby. Or at least it did not look like it was the lobby. There was a full-fledged party going on. The people around him were dancing, thrashing around and screaming to each other over loud music. Martin had to dodge someone throwing a not so empty cup across the room.
His annoyance grew. How could this be allowed? Was it not 1AM on a weekday? Did no-one inform him that all the guests had been invited to a rager in the lobby?
Martin looked around the room again. The people didn’t look like hotel guests. They were all really young, mid 20’s or perhaps younger and all of the features of the hotel were gone.
What was this?
Martin looked at himself. He was all of a sudden dressed for a party. He was wearing his long black dress with the risqué slit. His wrists were covered in bangles and he had a long link of pearls wrapped around his neck.
Almost in a blind panic he made his way to the nearest bathroom. He didn't ask anyone, he didn't know anyone, he just knew that he needed to look at his own face.
His jaw almost dropped when he looked in the mirror. He saw himself staring back at himself but he was younger. Twenty years younger, give or take. He slid his hands across his face in awe.
What in the absolute fuck is going on?
He pinched himself and gasped in pain. It felt real. He looked at the mirrored image again in disbelief.
When he finally made his way out of the bathroom he bumped into somebody.
“Mart! There you are!” I almost thought you'd left,” it was Andy. He was younger as well and he somehow also looked taller?
“Uh... Hi, Andy. Where are we again?” Martin asked in confusion. He needed to know what was happening.
“How much have you had to drink?” Andy asked with a wry smile.
Flashes of memories sailed through Martin’s mind. Had he been exactly in this spot, having Andy ask him that question before? It felt like the moment he was living in right now was a memory but it was happening right now. Was it déjà vu? In that case it was the most intense déjà vu that he had ever experienced.
“Are you alright?” Andy put his hand on Martin’s shoulder and lowered his head to peer into Martin's avoidant eyes.
“No. I’m just a little… off,” he answered honestly. He had not fully come to grips with his new reality yet.
“Want to talk about it?” Andy offered.
“I kinda want to drink about it” Martin said and looked around the room. There was a party and people were evidently drunk, so where was the alcohol? It almost pained him how sober he was.
Andy suddenly smiled and waved to someone behind Martin and he turned around to see who it was. For a second he thought he had seen a ghost.
It was him.
It was David. Lustrous, young and very much alive.
David smiled as he met Martin’s eyes but his smile faded before it had fully taken form.
“Mart?” David said after a long while of Martin just staring at him. He should have anticipated that David would be here, yet the figurative gut punch he felt when he saw him was more than he expected. More than he could bear. He wanted to hug him, he wanted to cry. It felt like someone had poured slime into his throat and kicked his solar plexus. He needed to breathe.
Martin rushed away trying to find the closest empty room. He needed to be alone.
He found a guest room and took a deep breath as he leaned up against the door. Luckily there was no couple making out on the bed. He ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He blinked feverishly as he tried once again to align himself. This felt too real and too familiar to just be a dream. If he didn’t know better he would think that he was revisiting a memory. But how?
He went over to the bedside and sat down. It felt unreal to see David so soon after his funeral, it had been less than twelve hours.
If he truly was reliving a memory then why this one? Was it somehow significant and why couldn’t he fully remember it? Maybe because he had been drunk at the time? It certainly wouldn’t surprise him.
There was a knock on the door. Whoever it was did not patiently wait for Martin to reply before they opened it.
It was David, because of course he had gone after him.
“Are you ok, Mart?” he asked, his face painted with concern.
Another flash of now-memories. This absolutely happened before. He could remember David just as he was. But why this moment in time?
“I’m fine. I’m just a bit light-headed,” It wasn’t entirely untrue. He did feel kinda dizzy looking at David. He wanted to tell him everything about his future. Tell him to stay away from heroin, to get screened for cancer, everything, but he would sound absolutely crazy if he said those things to him right now. He didn’t know how to express to David how happy he was to see him alive and well without coming off as a time traveller or just absolutely tits-out insane.
“Can we talk?” David asked and looked at the empty spot next to Martin on the bed and then down at his own feet.
Martin wanted nothing else but to exchange words with him. He nodded and patted the bed next to him. He swallowed a lump in his throat. The last time Martin had seen David was at the hospital. He had known he was about to die and had reached out to all his close friends for one final visit.
“For a second I thought you wouldn’t come,” David had said when Martin had stepped through the door to the private hospital room. It smelled sterile, like alcohol and chlorine. All the furnishings were in light wood and white cotton, it made the room look shockingly bright. In his memories it seemed like stepping into the precursor of heaven.
“I thought I wouldn’t either… but here I am,” Martin had said. Feeling guilty for being called out. Feeling even more guilty now, knowing what would happen.
“I’m glad you could make it, there might not be another time,” David had said it so thinly. He had sounded so weak.
“Of course there will. You’re strong Dave, you’ll make it,” he had tried to convince himself more than he had meant it to reassure David.
He laughed and licked his lips as his smile died down.
“Come. Sit with me,” he had said and Martin had followed his words, closing the door behind him and going over to David, sitting by his bedside.
He had not known, or dared to even think that it would be the last time he would see him alive.
By some karmic fluke however, Martin was now face to face with him again.
David closed the door and went over to sit next to Martin.
“Do you remember last weekend?” David said, looking at his clasped hands that he was resting in his lap. He took a breath. “The party at Simon's place?” he raised his gaze to meet Martin’s eye.
“Simon? No. I don't recall,” Martin answered truthfully. There had been many parties in the late eighties, he was not even sure which one he was at right now.
“Figured. You were pretty out of it,” David said and ran his fingers through his hair. ”So you probably don't remember what you said then either?”
“No, but I'm betting you're about to remind me.”
David blushed.
He had blushed the last time he saw him too, although he had been weak and pale there had been a rosy tint on his cheeks when Martin had grabbed his hand.
“So, what did you want to talk about?” Martin had asked.
“Martin…” David had said slowly, letting his name hang in the air and on his lips before he continued. “There are so many things I would like to say to you. Some of them… Well, some of them shouldn’t leave this room.”
“You said you liked me…” David took a deep breath, filling the room with silence in the meantime. Martin didn't interrupt him. There was yet again a flash of a memory occupying his mind. He had a vague recollection of David saying those exact words in a room exactly like this room. In the flash of memory Martin had been incredibly inebriated and he vaguely recalled saying ‘of course I like you’ before David had finished taking the breath.
“I know we haven’t always been the best of friends to each other but in truth, you are my longest lasting friend and I love you. I hope you know that.”
“I know David… I know…”
“I was just wondering if you meant that purely platonically?” David asked. Martin piqued his ears. Why did this feel new? Had his interruption in the past been the significant event? He felt completely sober right now and maybe that was the deciding difference? What would sober, present-time Martin do that drunk past-Martin would not?
Martin wrapped his arms around David, hugging him tightly. David almost jumped at the action but he quietly returned the hug by gently laying his arm around Martin’s waist.
“Never doubt for one second that I like you as a friend,” he said, almost choking on his voice. He withdrew from the hug just enough to meet David's eyes. “but I like you much, much more than that,” he said, painstakingly forcing the words out. He did not want to leave this room with the same ambiguity as he had left the hospital all those weeks ago.
“Really?” David swallowed. “H-how Much?”
“Oh, for fucks sake. This much.” Martin said, closed his eyes and kissed him. David’s lips trembled a bit before he kissed him back.
In his mind he thought; “I love you too.” Those were the words that he never said, the words that he wished that he had the guts to say. The words that David would never get to hear.
When Martin opened his eyes again he was laying in his bed in the hotel room with a silent tear falling from his eye.