This was a random thought I had several months ago inspired by the way that most people, myself included, feel about the lives of the characters in RENT. I found myself wishing I could live like them, dreaming of it...when I finally stopped and thought of what it actually would have been like for them. All we see is the romantic vision, we can't feel their suffering.
I actually wrote this a while ago, but its been sitting on my desktop because I thought it was... more of a thought than a fic, and a strangely inappropriate thought on top of that... Then I read it, for the first time in a while, tonight and decided that, despite my dislike for it, its probably some of my best work.
I do not own RENT.
Afterthought
Romantic. If someone else were to sum up his life in one word, they'd probably use "romantic". If they were given two words, they'd probably add "tragic". As an after thought, of sorts. He found this hilarious. After all, the average on-looker...the average suburbanite or idealistic youth or bored housewife/businessman would probably look at his life: the lack of structure, the free-spirited and fun loving friends, the tragic losses that only seemed to strengthen life's meaning, the dreams and art and conviction to ideals, etc. and idolize it. They'd see the 'new age of bohemia' and wish it were them with that freedom, that passion and adventure, and best of all: lack of responsibility to do anything but live. Yes, to say his life, on paper, could be romanticized was just a bit of an understatement. And maybe that's why his first film did actually do rather decent.
But the fact was, he wasn't some suburbanite, teenage idealist, or bored career-man. He wasn't looking at his life from an outside point of view, he was actually living it. And adding "tragic" as an afterthought to "romantic" wasn't exactly how he wanted to describe his existence. Because his dreams had faded long ago, and the only thing keeping him pursuing the grey shells that remained was a thick sort of stubbornness that disallowed him from giving up. Because it was no longer a matter of loving his camera than simply feeling lost and defenseless without it: An anchor to the idealistic world he'd once lived in, for however brief a time that had actually lasted. Because once he got past the adventure and romance of living without responsibilities in a cheap loft with no heat and rarely enough food for more than a meal everyday, he realized that there's nothing passionate or liberating about freezing his ass off to the point of severe pain or his stomach cramping in hunger for hours on end just so his dying roommate can have that second meal today, if not tomorrow. But mostly because he could pretend and hope and try all he wanted, but nothing made life feel less meaningful than having to watch most of his friends suffer and die before his eyes. Without him being able to do anything about it.
The romanticism is bullshit. Pure and simple.
And if it wasn't for the fact that he had actually found some friends whom he loved more than anything in the world, there's no way in hell he would've stuck around this long.
Because in the end, it wasn't about the art or the dreams or the bohemian, responsibility-free, purely idealistic lifestyle. It was about the people he'd met along the way. Because no one he knew was happy, not really...but they clung to each other in a way that made life not only livable, but sincerely worth it, sometimes.
The only problem with this was the fact that beneath everything, he was just waiting for them to die...because it was going to happen. There was no cure, and AZT only slowed it slightly...if you were actually lucky enough to have the real stuff. Considering the fact that they got theirs from random dealers who ripped off different pharmacies regularly, they probably got the real stuff sometimes, and sometimes not.
In the end, what did it really matter?
The time came, as expected. And then what was he to do? You can't just take an eight year break from "reality" and then just go back to it (back to school, back to family, back to responsibilities, etc etc etc) and expect it to work. But without something to make existence livable in 'bohemia', how exactly could he do that either? There is never a point in a situation or life when there are no choices. There are always choices, just not always ones that are good.
So in the end, he made the only choice that made sense to him.
Days later, when the police came, in response to a complaint about a foul odor, and cut him down, they found a paper in his front pocket. It read simply:
I couldn't choose between "Unfulfilled" or "Disillusioned". Choose for me. Either way, add "tragic" as an afterthought.