Hi! It’s me! I’m a member of the planet’s hottest boyband for the next two weeks to nine months! No, not the one with “the hair.” No, not the one who dated that currently relevant pop princess for 36 hours during our last album release promo cycle. No, not the one ethnic member so the band can claim “diversity.” No, not even the one with the secret Canadian lovechild that will be revealed in a high stakes Twitter battle royale with a bitterly estranged former bandmember several years from now.
I’m the one everyone always forgets.
It’s not really so bad being the one everyone always forgets. Sure, I don’t get followed by the Pope on Instagram and Malia Obama doesn’t list me as one of her celebrity crushes. But I also don’t have to get asked by Ryan Seacrest on early morning radio if I’m dating the 90-year-old woman I held the door open for when I was leaving an organic eucalyptus juice café. Being the one everyone always forgets means no one ever has any real questions for you. But I have plenty to say! Even though my hair isn’t as lustrous and Medusa-like as the one with “the hair,” I have my own 30 step highly calibrated morning hair care ritual that’s just as interesting!
Of course, I can always rely on the fans to be there for me. Of the tens of thousands of girls at our stadium concerts, there will always be at least a handful yelling my name (or something that sounds like my name) and that they want to do any number of unfeasible things to my lower right shin. Okay so these girls might only shred their vocal cords for me because their more aggressive friends have already claimed the more desirable members of our boyband as their own future husbands. Or they’re pretending to be “alternative” by having the one no one else likes as their favorite. But who cares? The concert tickets/posters/lunchboxes/toenail art stencils with our faces on them are still money in the bank for my secret Swedish lovechild’s college fund.
Honestly, I’m really totally fine being the one who gets his name mispronounced by a YouTube personality when we win an MTV Video Music Award. Who needs regular appearances in “Us Weekly” when you can retire to the suburbs with an Instagram influencer whose DMs you slid into with “I can get you into a party with the one with ‘the tattoos’”?
Sometimes, though, I can get a little frustrated. Just because I only sing two heavily autotuned lines per song doesn’t mean I should be relegated to the smallest bunk in the back of the tour bus with the pillow that always smells like decade old rotting Hawaiian pizza. And maybe the one with “the perfect abs” does do the best cowboy lasso dance move, but why does that mean I have to be the one lassoing in the shadow of the drum kit? You know what? Screw those guys! I’m better off without them!
Wait, we're doing a cash grab reunion tour already? I really do need some extra cash to pay for my secret Russian lovechild's space shuttle-themed birthday extravaganza. I'm in.