The Obsessed Broadway Fan

This story was updated changing mistakes from the original version

I am a Broadway fan. The problem is that I know someone who loves Broadway more than I do. Which is... a lot!

Back in around May 2005, I met someone who was looking at a Cats playbill. I knew the show but I didn't get a chance to see it. I asked the person about it and he said he saw it towards the end of its run. I asked him what his name was and he said his name was Ian and he was a broadway fanatic. We became friends after a few months.

I went to his house and my mind was blown. His room had a wall of Phantom of the Opera masks which included one from the broadway show, a gallery of what looked like twenty playbills, a closet with shirts from shows, and a carpet design of shows from the seventies to the nineties. It was crazy! I couldn't believe my eyes! I asked how he could afford all of it and he said he was rich. The playbills were signed too! The carpet had shows like Phantom of the Opera and Evita.

I went to his house a lot. He seemed to get a bit weirder each day. It was very little though, that's why it took a while for it to seem noticeable. I got a snack from the fridge one day and when I got back, he kept saying, "Feed me... feed me..." which I thought was quoting Little Shop of Horrors but he was apparently ACTUALLY hungry. I don't know why he didn't say it before but I found a thing of Jell-O in the fridge and tossed it to him which he ate quietly and kept breathing heavily.

About a year later, he started wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask out of nowhere. He didn't wear them a lot but suddenly, he wore it every day! I was confused and asked him about it.

"Phantom of the Opera is my favorite broadway show," he told me every time I asked him about it.

He then started collecting more playbills that weren't playbills. They were shows that never existed. Like Tortoise and the Hair, The Little Kitten, and Big Kicker. They were pretty stupid. But the weirdest one was one of Newsies. The show wasn't on broadway yet, it wasn't even at the Paper Mill Playhouse at the time! I didn't think it was weird at the time, of course, because I didn't know it existed.

I decided to try to figure out about the Phantom of the Opera mask that summer (he started the mask thing in like, February) and I asked one more time before then.

"I told you! It's my favorite show!" he told me.

I tried to take it off of him but he got out of the way. I tried again and he started to run. He tripped and the mask fell. I ran to him and he wasn't looking my way. He was scrambling to get the mask. He then turned my way, not knowing that I was there.

The area the mask covered, being half of his face, was disfigured just like the movies. I couldn't say anything. He told me that he disfigured himself to look like Erik from The Phantom of the Opera. He then went to his knees and started to cry.

"Why... why did I do that to myself... I-I n-n-need to stop b-being so ob-bsessed with B-Broadw-wway," he said in tears.

I felt bad. I comforted him. He seemed to feel better. I did too.