The Life And Lies Of Gerard Way

Chapter sixteen: Lies and reasons

Frank’s death became a turning point in Gerard’s life, and he realized that for once and for all, he was all alone. And much like after Lindsey had passed away, he locked himself up in his art studio again, but this time, he found himself unable to produce anything. It was as if all of his creativity had drained out of him, and that was scary for a man who had always been creating.

“All I could think about was Frankie,” he remembers. “All I could see was his face. Our kids and Mikey and Ray, they tried to reach me but I was so caught up in sorrow that I didn’t even notice them. They just didn’t exist to me, my entire world was Frankie and because he was gone, I had a hard time figuring out what to do with myself. And I wanted to channel all those emotions into art or songwriting or anything, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t think of anything to do, and basically all I had was words in my head, words about him.”

With thoughts of Frank overflowing in his head, Gerard took to the only way of escaping he knew of; he started to write.

“I was thinking about how I fell in love with him in the first place, how he had been a part of my life,” he explains. “And somehow it felt like I needed to pay homage to his memory, I needed to show the world what an amazing man he had been. So I penned it all down, all my thoughts, My Chemical Romance’s entire history, and I isolated myself from the world for weeks in a row because there was just so much to write about. It felt liberating, in a way, to get to tell a story, but somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that it could never be published, the world could never know.”

Writing became the only way for Gerard to deal with his loss, and slowly he started to come back to life again. It became therapeutic, in a way, to remember everything that had happened and to put it all down on paper. While his daughters, son and the rest of his family struggled to deal with the loss of Frank, they also found themselves having to struggle to get in contact with Gerard, because he isolated himself from them. Gerard remembers a particularly difficult conversation with Bandit, and he realized he couldn’t keep ignoring them.

“She was so fucking mad at me,” he groans tiredly, and it’s easy to see that he thinks she was right. “Santana and Emilie had just lost their grandfather, and I hadn’t really thought of it like that until Bandit came and told me that it was like they had lost boththeir grandfathers, because I hadn’t talked to them in months. And that really opened my eyes to what I was doing, the kids and our daughters and son were just as sad as I was, but I was the one torturing them with my absence when really all they wanted was some comfort. It wasn’t right of me to keep blocking them out, so I really tried after that to spend more time with them, and I babysat the kids quite a lot and generally tried to be a part of their family again.”

Jamia found it difficult to cope with losing her husband and best friend, and escaped on her own to Hawaii for a few months, to clear her head. No one heard from her in a long time, and the children missed their grandmother but no one could get her to come back.

“She took it so hard,” Gerard sighs, “and I don’t blame her for wanting to get away. She had spent her entire life with Frankie, and then suddenly he was just gone. Anyone would have gone mad if that happened to them. So I get that she left, though it was hard on the kids because suddenly all they had left was me and their parents. Two of their grandparents were dead, and one was away, and so I was all they had left. That was strange, not having anyone else to turn to, but Mikey and Ray were there for me when I needed them and I probably would have gone insane without them.”

Being constantly reminded of My Chemical Romance’s past and his relationship with Frank, Gerard made a decision to finish writing down the story of his life. With the help of the rest of the band, his daughters and son, and even the children, Gerard slowly started to remember everything that had happened in his life up until that point. And in 2054, almost two years after Frank’s death, Gerard had a finished manuscript of his memoirs, and he pitched the idea to a publisher but got instantly rejected.

“There was too much obvious love for Frankie in what I had written,” he explains, “and I guess I needed another person to say it for me to realize it. I hadn’t exactly revealed that Frankie and I had been together all along, because I felt that was a secret the world wasn’t ready to know, but there were definitely some very detailed descriptions of how he made me feel, and though I thought I had been sneaky writing it in loose metaphors and stuff, the publisher saw through me instantly and he really made me question whether or not I wanted the truth to come out.”

Together with his family and the publisher, Gerard decided that in order for the book to be published, it needed to be edited, so Gerard sat down and rewrote most of it, to make it less revealing and more like a story he knew the fans could accept.

“It needed to be believable,” he says, “and it needed to be something that wasn’t too revealing. My Chemical Romance’s story had to be clean, so I changed it.”

He pauses.

“And that was the worst decision I could have made.”

‘The True Life of a Fabulous Killjoy’ was released in December, 2055, and My Chemical Romance fans were thrilled to see the band’s entire history summarized. The book portrayed Frank as Gerard’s faithful best friend, and described their relationship as entirely platonic. Their odd choice of living arrangements were explained as a pure need to keep their families together, and both their wives were portrayed as their ones and only. Gerard wrote Frank as his brother, and their children not as siblings but as mere best friends, and though he explained how both their families merged together and turned into one he didn’t reveal the reasons behind it. But as soon as the book was published, Gerard started to feel like something wasn’t quite right, and as he held the finished copy in his hands, he realized that he had made a mistake.

“I wanted to honor Frankie’s memory with the book,” he explains, “but instead I had told a lie. Frankie would never have wanted me to do that. He would have wanted me to tell the truth about us, to tell the story like how it happened. I hadn’t realized it before, but by lying about our relationship I was soiling and besmirching his memory and I didn’t want that to happen.”

So Gerard did what he thought Frank would have wanted him to do. He stopped the production of the book, telling his publisher that he didn’t want the story out anymore, and they stopped printing the book instantly. And suddenly people wanted it even more, because they knew that something was wrong with it, and copies were sold for extraordinarily high prices at all retail markets. Only about 50’000 copies were ever made, and to this day they are considered rarities and hold great value for the band’s fans.

“People started to realize that there was something off with that book when I cancelled the production of it,” Gerard remembers dejectedly. “It became so much bigger than it was ever supposed to be, and just like back in the day conspiracy theories and even fan fiction, weirdly enough, started floating around on the web again and people were reading so much into it. I didn’t know what to do, that book started so many rumors and I just didn’t know how to deal with it.”

While ‘The True Life of a Fabulous Killjoy’ started a commotion amongst My Chemical Romance’s fans, Gerard shied away from all attention and tried to make up his mind of what to do next. Reading through all of his early entries for the original book, he realized that in order for him to finally get some peace, he needed to tell the truth.

“Frankie wouldn’t have wanted me to hide,” he says. “He would have wanted me to stand up for myself and for our love, and he would have wanted me to be proud of what we had. So really, I just needed to get the truth out there.”

With his mind dead set on finally honoring Frank like he deserved to be honored, Gerard set to work on trying to find the best ways to make it happen. After thoroughly researching authors and journalists in the My Chemical Romance fanbase, he turned to me in April, 2056, asking me to listen to what he had to say.

“I need to tell you a story,” he said when he called me the first time, “and I need you to tell it to the world.”