by Lynn Crosbie
I AM LYING on a metal bed, being fingerbanged by a doctor.
He says I have a concussion, and asks what happened.
I don’t remember.
I was with him and then I wasn’t.
Bruises and burns constellate on my chest. My thighs ache; there are purple finger-marks on my hip bones.
He comes into the room, and the doctor tells us to “Lay off the rough sex” as I change back into my dirty clothes.
He asks me what that means. I lie, and tell him I need to get dressed.
The tights look like a tiger mauled them; my bra is gone; my underwear is a bloody mess I drop into the trash.
I slip on a pretty black dress, making a mental note to burn it, and see, for one agonizing second, that familiar face, twisting into something new and evil.
I pour a packet of smack into one line, and do it up on the metal gurney.
Everything I am afraid of disappears.
After I sneaked into his bed, I started to get sick every day. I lost so much weight, my rib cage looked like a xylophone.
I took a cab to a clinic, and saw a doctor.
She also told me to take it easy. “Now that you are pregnant.”
I CALLED HIM right away, and cursed when Misty answered.
“Just put him on,” I said.
He came to the phone eventually, and I told him what the doctor said.
“Who is this?” he said.
I told him again to the speedy pulse of the dial tone.
I KNEW HE was still mad about New York; that he thought I was with Page.
But I was contrite. It was his baby and I wanted him to be happy.
When I called back, Misty said he was changing the number, and to stop bothering them.
“It wasn’t nice of you to just take off,” he said.
“Fuck you,” I said, shaking with anger.
“Nice talk,” Misty said, and laughed.
SIXTEEN
MISSISSIPPI DELTA SHINING
I poured drugs over my fear, as usual.
We were showcasing our new EP at Chop Suey, and the place was packed wall to wall.
I walked out and flashed the crowd, sharing my secret.
“Daisy” and “Milk” are songs I wrote for him, in a jealous rage, and as an act of contrition.
“The daisies wind around your head, their petals spoil when you are dead,” we sang quietly before I picked up my guitar to pine, “Oh, love me, anyway.”
In the middle of all of this, there was a memory poised in my head, of us falling asleep at the Chelsea; there was a sound too, like a cymbal, as new possibilities emerged inside me.
When the crowd carried me above them, I became violently nauseated, and aimed at the guy with his hands up my skirt.
I would throw up yellow bile and little monsters for days in the Longleaf hospital.
I texted Page — “Over & Out” — blocked his number, and cultivated a collection of pills as I read and reread the novelization of Superfly and crushed Percs with my incisors.
No one visited except for florists and reporters dressed as candystripers, who published shots of me shuffling down the hall with my IV stand, cigarettes, and middle finger raised.
EVEL’S LAST PARTY? asked one of the headlines above bootleg footage of the Echo show.
He gave me that name, in addition to Evl, Whatevs, Little Miss Evil, Neverlast, and E.V. Bake.
I started using it, and would mention my (false, this was his thing) fascination with Evel Knievel’s heroic jump over Snake Canyon.
Mostly, he called me baby.
I forwarded the link to the story about my “last party?” to his most recent email with the word YES in the subject bar. I called and called and talked to Misty so much that I forgot he was an intermediary.
“I want a second chance,” I said.
“He gave you everything and you just threw it away. ”
“I need him.”
“He even let you come into our house —”
“What? Your house?” What the fuck was happening?
“The answer is no,” he said. I heard a song being picked out in the background, a plaintive riff that sounded like a spade, rooting in barren ground.
PAGE WAS WRONG about him. I let the drugs drag me down all on my own.
Media interest diminished quickly after too many missed appointments, appalling photo shoots where I appeared with open, issuing tracks up and down my arms, and shows the other girls couldn’t save when I was sleeping in their path.
But I still had to travel in disguise. He and I were the story, and we had millions of dedicated followers, who loved and hated us equally.
I started roaming around, and wound up back in LA. The band left me incensed messages from the stage in Baton Rouge. I texted back, “I do not know this Evelyn person and I am having my stag party: please stop ruining it!”
I wrote this at the Formosa, as I drank an old-fashioned in a black head scarf and glasses.
I selected a chalky round pill, a pink oblong, and a blue hexagon from the silver box in my handbag, and asked the gorgeous, elderly waitress if she was a film star.
She said no, and took my empty glass.
“I am extremely famous,” I said, ordering another.
“Is that right?” she said indulgently.
I caressed the red leather seat, and told her I was travelling incognito.
When one of my songs started playing, I sang along, but couldn’t seem to find the notes.
When we were living in Venice, we thought I was pregnant.
I skipped a period, and took a home pregnancy test that, when inserted into a USB port, played “(You’re) Having My Baby.”
We had been using a lot, but I managed to take a break for the baby’s sake.
He tried hard as well, for the creature we called Honey Chile, Tiny Bubble, and Zing.
Neither of us wrote a word during this time. One night we decided that the extremes, ecstasy and grief, are strictly to be lived.
“We’re not stenographers,” he said.
“I’m sorry, what was that, Mr. Johnson?” I said, adjusting the lapels of the fitted black suit he loved tearing off me, leaving my frilly garters, seamed stockings, and needle-heeled, bondage-buckled shoes in play.
“My cock’s not going to blow itself,” he said, aiming for manly poise.
But his voice broke and he turned beet-red, and we ended up laughing too much to do anything but let storm after storm pass through us.
He eventually stood up, and padded into the kitchen to make us tea and cinnamon toast.
I was still catching tears with my sleeve.
It was the first time we had even smiled since the doctor told us the test was wrong.
That there was no baby; that Honey Chile was swallowed by the sky and seas, murmuring that we would meet again, a buzz that turned into a sting that hurt so much we were back on dope in less than a day.
REMEMBERING THE BABY we lost, I performed the ritual. Got rid of all the dealers’ numbers, never carried more than twenty dollars in cash, and stocked up on benzos, diarrhea meds, and anti-nauseants.
I spent days kicking, for the sake of the poor little blob. It was a scene.
I heard that he was still using, that he spent a lot of time with their Unplugged steel guitarist, a junkie knockout who was all legs and ink and a lilac bubble-pony.
I got asked out a lot, but stayed home with my pills, and the occasional drink and cigarette. I hired a nutritionist who made me eat vitamins, and drink green smoothies that tasted like weed killer.
He still wouldn’t pick up his phone, and Q forwarded me a radio interview he did, somewhere near Seattle, where he says we have separated and that I’m pregnant with Chad Lowe’s love child.
His voice, wh
ich is raw on the best days, sounds like rusted metal and molasses.
“Who am I talking to?” he says. Then, “I think that Cubist art, the female portraits, are about the failure of love.”
“Say what now?” the DJ said.
After a few seconds of frightening silence, he says, “I’m dating a girl who is partially skeletonized with a profound interest in haute couture and sensual woodwork.
“My Unplugged show is filming soon, you should come.
“You should totally come,” he says, and the DJ says, “I am chunking you a deuce right now.”
I was embarrassed for all of us.
The baby was the size of a lime, and I called him Ricky.
Q COAXED ME out for a few shows. “Class all the way,” he said.
He had me play a cashier in a diner in a film called Kick the Gong. In it, I wear a tight poly-blend uniform, and serve the stars a dinner of baby food and tap water.
My band was asked to be photographed by Rolling Stone for a feature story on women and rock.
We were thrilled: it was our biggest exposure to date. The serious critics loved us, but the mainstream were on the fence about us: we were “too angry,” “too lightweight,” “too butch,” and “too femme.” We did an interview with a nice older guy named Desmond, who wore thick glasses and a cardigan over his stooped shoulders and round gut.
He interviewed us as artists worked on our hair, makeup, and clothes; as set makers built an old-timey magic-show stage.
Desmond seemed so interested in our views on discrimination in the arts, I barely noticed that my costume — the other girls elected me as the one to be sawed in two by a dashing magician — was little more than a sheer red scarf.
They wore hooded capes with cool gold pentagrams and matching platform shoes, and duelled with their wands as the magician leered at me, extended in the glass box in the red scarf and red-soled, gold Farfamesh sandals.
Jenna called me the day it came out.
“Um,” she said.
I sent Luscious out and he came back with a big stack of the magazine: “At least you don’t have to avoid eye contact with Rico,” he said. We had made the cover under the heading FOX FORCE: we looked hot, tacky, and stupid.
On top of everything, we were slammed by Desmond, who, in his cruel roundup, mentioned our “gimmicky 90s allure” and “short life-expectancy.”
Our record, however, briefly spiked. Sales were high, and Q advised us to take the money and run.
We got a bunch of invitations to do talk shows and perform at some millionaire perv-kid’s bar mitzvah.
Jenna argued with me about integrity after Sable danced topless on Jimmy Kimmel’s desk, and we played a smouldering show for the kid.
She wanted us to keep playing, industriously, at little clubs; I wanted to be a star right away.
My greed would blow us up.
But not before we spent the night in Hef’s grotto with a selection of Bunnies, doing blow and watching the moon caper across the empty sky.
LUSCIOUS WAS STILL doing alternate mornings: he came in and talked to me like Thelma Ritter, while tidying then sliding my breakfast tray onto the shambolic end table.
He rolled me onto newly plumped pillows, massaged my feet, and handed me a massive gilt-edged coffee cup on a saucer.
“There’s mail,” he said.
I ate mayonnaise with a spoon, smoked, and read his postcard that said “Neat-O Toledo!” on the front.
“Nice picture,” he wrote about my cover shot.
“Let me split you in two.”
I cried because he forgave me, and because it was such a terrible, exciting thing to say.
HE WOULDN’T TELL me where he was, and I invited him to our house.
They both showed up and I asked him to come in alone.
“Wait in the car,” he said to Misty.
“Let me look at you,” he said, and I let the robe fall off, whirling around for him in my satin mules and tap panties.
He screwed me against the closet so hard, my head banged the wood repeatedly; my legs wobbled, then crossed his back.
He rubbed my slightly rounded belly roughly as tears fell over my smushed-up face.
He slowed down a little bit, and we made it together, crashing to the floor and panting.
We fell asleep, and in our sleep we are back in the bed by the Lady Grace, where a nest of eggs has taken up residence, presided over by two black, watchful swans.
WHEN WE WOKE up, he carried me to the bath and washed me with a soft cloth, paying attention to every speck.
He lifted me again, oiled me, and patted me dry. Bending, he whispered something into my navel.
After we reached the bed, after he tucked me in, I asked him to stay.
He smiled and kneeled beside me.
He whispered in my ear, “Ask your fucking boyfriend to stay with you, bitch.”
SEVENTEEN
CAREFULLY WATCHED FOR A REASON
I had a show in two weeks in New Orleans.
“You better be there,” I said to his back, to the slammed door and to the deathly quiet I broke with crying that was so loud, a neighbour called the cops and I had to pretend I had tuberculosis.
I lay in bed and remembered my old biology teacher, Mr. Albert. He used to detach the plastic fetus and womb when he talked, and when the little blob rolled around the table, we would play Life or Death.
If enough of us yelled, “Life!” he would jam the model back together.
No one ever did.
I stayed in bed, even though my thighs were dampening, and I felt a strong, recurring cramp.
I lay there, biting my pillow and mumbling, “Life.”
LUSCIOUS BROUGHT ME my laptop, a novel by Violette Leduc, rose-petal jelly, and hot chocolate on a flowered ceramic tray.
He came every day at this point, and did some light cleaning and errands.
It was all I could do not to invite him to crawl into bed with me with an OxyContin shake.
“I’m not sick,” I said, doubling over.
“I’m just a bit lonely,” I said, but he was gone.
I breathed in the track of Cool Water he left behind.
PAGE SENT ME a strangely formal email.
“I am going away for a long time,” it said. “I will never forget our nights of sexy fun.”
I sat straight up. Something was very wrong.
WHEN PAGE AND I were in Berlin, he told me about hustling his way to Los Angeles, “blowing fucking truck drivers.”
He was defiant about this, and even called himself an “upwardly mobile twink.”
He made enough money for a place where his whole band lived, in Hollywood, and sang right on the corner near Eddie Cantor’s little footprints.
He still hooked sometimes, for “rich faggots who thought I was pretty.”
“You are pretty,” I told him, and remembered the time that Jenna and I got smashed and almost hooked up on the tour bus.
I told him about that, about her grinding me as her peachy lips parted and her hair whipped my face, and he got excited.
“That’s different,” he said.
“Why? I’m turned on by your story.”
And then things heated up or cooled down, but I can’t say: there is a scratch in my memory of Berlin.
The story stops abruptly, gets jammed, and starts over.
PAGE SAID SOMETHING to a reporter a little while ago about “vampire queers,” alluding to his former occupation.
He was immediately regarded as a homophobic pig, and he made things better and worse when he wrote a little memoir in his defence, that talked about his harrowing childhood and subsequent hatred of predators.
He said he was molested when he was a kid.
Did he disappear because he was ashamed of th
is admission? Why does he have to feel ashamed? I wondered.
Maybe he just needed to be alone.
Lafayette were interviewed, and their guitarist, some guy in a headband and extensions, said that they were going forward without him, “which blows.”
His fans put up a huge reward, and posted pictures of his abandoned house in Brentwood, and his muzzled pit bulls, being led away by the cops.
“Child, I took the dare. You don’t care, but I need you,” he sings in “Justice.”
I had moved into the living room, onto a stack of pillows, some snowflake light pushing through the lace sheers.
I got up on rubber legs and, wincing, played this, his last song for me.
I was so glad he was gone that I turned it up.
I DREAMED THAT Speck was sleeping with me, smelling like corn chips.
When I opened my eyes, my stomach heaved. I needed him back. I needed them both back.
Luscious took dictation: “Anything you want for the safe return of my dog. Last seen with MIKE _ in Venice Beach, near the Surf n Crash.”
I handed over a picture of the three of us in the water, squinting into the sun, that one of my stripper friends took.
“Get this out everywhere,” I told Luscious, who glided away as the nausea mutated into cramps again, until I diluted them with morphine and the gnarly ginger root I gnawed on most days.
“Speck was our first baby,” I wrote on the SLITCH web site, as I tried to imagine him growing up and not knowing who I am.
But whenever I thought about the future, all I saw was black.
HE STILL WOULDN’T speak to me.
Page was gone, and a hundred Specks had been located, but none was ours.
He was seen wandering through Viretta Park, not far from our place, and sitting by the water, feeding cracked corn to ducks.
Posing for a fashion spread, I was gaunt from morning sickness and fear. They hid the protrusion I was calling Nerf with an empire-waist damask gown and had me pose with two circus elephants named Peanut and Shasta.
I wrote songs about him, songs about him and his other women — Sable was happy to squeal on him to me — that I recorded by myself on his old rosewood Yamaha acoustic.