‘IF YOU AREN’T EATING, I’M NOT EITHER!!” Zac stood on one side of the catering table and glared.
“Zac,” I tried. Zac was getting so thin, and putting so much extra into the shows each night for my slack. Even someone eating a normal amount each day would have lost weight. I was barely eating one full meal a day due to my reaction to the blood thinners, and most of the time that didn’t stay down. Road food wasn’t the best thing for recovering from emergency surgery, but I was doing what I could to keep myself healthy.
“Guys,” Taylor came into the venue green room, with that look on his face. “Fans will be back here for M&G any minute. Pull it together.” He looked at us, then at the mostly untouched food on the table. Any previous tour and no trace of food would have been left.
He sighed, “Ike, I know I’m stealing your line here, but you both need to eat something before the show.”
“Taylor,” we both started.
“I know. Zac thinks he’s fat and Isaac is sick,” Taylor put his hand on my shoulder “Have you talked to your doctor about a different medicine?”
“Yes. He said with touring this is the best choice. It’s either finish out tour with this or cancel and come back for surgery.”
“Well, if that’s what we need to do . . .”
“No! We will finish out this tour and then I will have the rib resection and be fine.” Ok. So part of my constant nausea was nervousness about this other surgery. Usually tour went by so quick, but these months were dragging by. I spent every spare moment researching the surgery, and knew every best and worse case scenario. There were a lot more worse cases.
“You both need to pull it together. I don’t care how loud you scream at each other on the bus, or in a hotel room, but we’ve never aired our dirty laundry in public, and we won’t start now.”
Zac and I looked at each other. We didn’t say anything else, but we both knew this fight wasn’t finished.
Taylor crossed his arms and stared at us. “Are we ready to act like a wholesome family band? Or am I doing this meet and greet by myself? I will straight up tell them that Isaac isn’t feeling well and Zac is looking after him. Please believe our fans have read every single article about the surgery and there a lot of rumors floating around about Zac. ”
“I’m not sick,” Zac said.
Taylor raised his eyebrows. “Well you look like you haven’t eaten in days. I think after the meet and greet we will all come back here and eat dinner before the show like a nice happy family.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Zac and I said at the same time.
“Well, do it quick, brush your teeth, and come on.”
“When did you turn into the big brother?” I asked.
“When you stopped.” Taylor said, and walked out of the room.
“Damn.” I said.
“I’m still not eating. Now that you know how it feels, you know that you can’t just force yourself to eat when you don’t feel like it.”
“I know. But mine is caused by medicine. Yours is just believing that something is wrong with the way you look.”
“I can’t just change the way my brain works. What if I told you to stop taking care of all of us? Could you quit cold turkey?”
“No. But there is nothing wrong with taking care of my family.”
“There is when you are overbearing about it and think older brother is some kind of status symbol.”
“All I’ve ever tried to do is make sure everybody is ok.”
“Well, everybody isn’t always going to be ok. Sometimes we just have shit to deal with.”
“But you aren’t dealing with it. You are trying to hide it from the people you should be closest to. If you let us in, we could help.”
“You are in. No one in the world is more in than you and Tay.”
“Not even Kate?” I asked.
“Kate wants me to be healthy.”
“This isn’t healthy. You were more healthy three years ago than you are now.”
“I was fat then. All of the fans said so. You and Tay said so.”
“Zac, we were teasing. That’s what brothers do. What about back in the day when you and Taylor called me Chewy?”
“Do you think that is the reason why you spend two hours getting ready every day?”
Yes. “Of course not. I deal with a lot more of the nitty gritty business than you and Taylor do. I need to look professional.”
Zac rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say, Chewy.”
“Meet and Greet five minutes,” Rebecca, our tour manager called.
I followed her out of the room and came to stand on one side of Taylor in the lobby of the venue. Zac stood on the other side. I think we were both glad to have a buffer between us.
I hoped that the fans at this meet and greet would share the details with their friends. After 15 interviews about my surgery, I had to go through all of the details with the meet and greet winners, too.
Yes, I could still play guitar, and I was taking medicine for the pain. Yes I would have to have another surgery, but it will be after tour and wouldn’t effect any plans for the year. Yes, I know that so and so celebrity also had PE issues. Yes, thank goodness it wasn’t my voice, just my arm. (I noticed Taylor tensed up during that question. I wasn’t the only band member delaying doctor advised surgery.)
“Thank you very much for coming, out,” I told them.
“Thank you,” one of the fans said. “I didn’t expect you to be here today. Or on the walk.”
“You’re very welcome. Hope you enjoy the show.”
“Well, Dad, did we behave ourselves well enough for you?” Zac asked Taylor as we made our way back to our dressing room.
“Yes. But I still want both of you to try and eat something before we go on stage.”
“I’m not hungry Tay,” Zac said.
“Zac, you need to eat.”
“Damn it, Ike! Not again. You have no right to tell me what to do. Especially when you aren’t eating, either.”
“I’m not TRYING to lose weight. I want to eat. I want to eat all the foods we get on tour that we don’t at home. I don’t want to smell food and feel like puking up my guts. I don’t want to feel weak and tired all the time.”
“I don’t feel tired.”
“Because the few things you do eat are filled with sugar and caffeine.”
“That’s what I need to keep up with all of this.”
I stopped and grabbed him by the arm. “Well. Maybe we should slow down.”
“What are you saying?”
“Yeah, Ike, what are you saying?” Taylor finally chimed in.
“This band has been our life for 15 years. Maybe after this tour, we need to pull back a little. I’m not saying quit. I can’t imagine not being in this band. But we all have families now. We are all some version of sick. And do we even know what our other siblings are up to?”
“I do.” Taylor and Zac said at the same time.
“Ok, fine. I don’t. But I would like to. I want to know if they need any help, or if they just need advice from someone that isn’t Mom or Dad.”
“Our business is still pretty new, so I don’t know if right now is the time to slow down.”
“That’s a good point,” I said. “It’s just something to think about. We can focus on tour for right now, enjoy the holidays, and then evaluate everything after the new year.”
“Seems reasonable to me. Zac?”
“Yeah, fine.” Zac had slumped down on the couch with his hands in his pocket. “I mean, I’m sure Kate would like me to be at home more.”
“We can just tell the fans that we are slowing down to work on the business and make sure that we are all in good shape for the next project.” I said.
“Let’s don’t even tell them that much,” Taylor said. “Telling them we want to be in good shape later on implies that we aren’t now,” he said as he piled up two plates of food from the catering table and handed one to me and one to Zac. I took one bite of a sandwich and had to make a mad dash for the bathroom.
When I got back, I noticed Zac’s plate sitting on the table untouched.
“Don’t you dare say a word. I ate as much as you did. That’s the rule from now on. I will eat what you eat.”
“Then you just wait until I get better. I’m going to eat everything.”
“No, you won’t. Your stomach is going to shrink before then.”
“I’ll stretch it back out.”
“Ok. You won’t know what I eat or not then cause we won’t be crammed on a bus together.”
“I’ll check on you. I will be your big brother regardless of if we are on tour or if we are in Tulsa.”
“K.” Zac stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes. “Let me know when it’s 10 till showtime.”
I rolled my eyes and left him in the room. If he wouldn’t eat, at least he was getting rest. I was exhausted, too. As much as I enjoyed playing for our fans, I was ready to be in my little bunk bed on the bus, falling asleep to the rhythm of the road.