I let him out and stayed in the booth for a bit, contemplating the revellers of my grand after-show. It was fast turning into one of those evenings where I could conceivably lose my friends, my shoes and the contents of my handbag.
It was the walk back to the bar that nearly did for me, because I wasn’t expecting to stumble into one of the Chinese laundry sheets hanging down. I executed a crazy sideways lurch into a group of girls, who laughed, and one of them barged me back on course. I picked up someone’s drink from a passing table and skolled it, at which I heard a high-pitched protest.
‘Nina!’ Jenner darted over and guided me by the elbow, squeezing hard. It was the first time I’d seen him fired up about anything. I looked down and saw that I was brandishing the empty glass.
‘I wasn’t going to do anything,’ I protested.
‘Let’s just call it a night,’ he said. ‘Rose is busy freaking out over Brando being here anyway. The pair of you are getting on my tits.’
‘It’s our party,’ I could hear Rose yelling at somebody, probably Brendan. ‘It’s our party. Everyone is here because of us. It’s our money behind the bar.’ One thing about Rose and me: if one went a bit loopy, the other soon followed in empathy. Or maybe it was in competition.
By now, this half of the room was spectating with interest, so Jenner led me into an empty bar upstairs that I would never be able to find again, despite subsequent visits to the club. I pulled out my phone and checked my reflection in the screen. My nose was shiny from crying earlier, so basically there were going to be pictures of me all over Twitter, shouting, with a shiny nose. At least John Villiers wasn’t on Twitter.
Rose stomped upstairs to the empty dining-room with Brendan, ready to receive Jenner’s pep talk. We’d heard it before. It was delivered in a soothing voice and went along the lines of it having been an amazing show with everyone saying how great it was. I caught myself in a micro-nod and yanked at my hair to try to snap out of it. Like Jenner said, only a potential two hundred of the two-thousand-strong audience could have caught our little après-show meltdown, and that would soon be forgotten anyway.
In our minds, though, we had already written off Australia, as though it were an ex-lover that had crossed us. It was unsupportive of those with ambition. It was a small pond for big fish. We didn’t need it any more.
15
ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME
There’s little I can remember about making my third studio album, but it didn’t suffer any for that. The friction between me, the band and the record company was expertly committed to tape and climbed to the top of the charts.
POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)
Pru Yoshida had ‘Only God can judge me’ tattooed on her forearm in fancy script. We saw it when she came in to our dressing room to say g’day. Pru was co-host of a music chat show in Los Angeles, but she was more notorious for dating cute guys in bands.
‘I beg to differ,’ I said as soon as she had gone, ‘I judge you tremendously.’
Rose spat out her juice, laughing. ‘Oh, she’s cute,’ she said, wiping her mouth. ‘Perfect skin. Did you see her tush? So Brazilian. I would.’
‘I don’t think she’s Brazilian, Rose.’
‘Whatever, she’s hot.’
Everyone in LA was hot, and until Pru walked in the room in the Burbank studios, Rose was most taken by the actor Grayson Matthews, with whom she was locked in a Twitter flirtation. A week earlier we’d played a set as ourselves in a vampire movie, in which Grayson was the lead vampire: nineteen going on nine hundred.
‘I think he’s gay, Rose,’ I’d whispered, over the mini quiches in the catering truck at one corner of the hangar.
‘He’s not.’
‘Serious, he is. He looked at me and there was no flicker of yes or no, nothing. Completely blank.’
‘Oh my god, why should there be anything? I don’t look at someone and decide instantly whether I want to tap them or not.’
‘But Rose, you’re asexual. I’m not saying I’ve got tickets on myself, I’m saying there should have been something going on behind his eyes.’
I piped down, though. It was about time Rose hooked up with someone, even if it was a slightly camp child of the night.
As it happened, the three-minute scene panned out exactly the same as any band scene in a movie over the past thirty years: mean-looking people in leather and chains at a blue-lit bar; somebody with a mohawk walking past the camera, a circle pit of punks punching on in front of us. It took about four hours to set up, thanks to the complicated rig of lights that were needed to bathe Grayson in an ethereal glow amid the extras.
‘He’s so flawless he’s, like, triple-filtered,’ Rose reckoned. ‘I looked at him close up; he doesn’t even need those lights.’
Rose and I double- or triple-filtered all our selfies through Instagram and then a couple of apps. And we always used a decent camera, not just our phones. The best camera for selfies is a Canon G12, because it has a flip-out viewfinder. They’re expensive but totally worth it, and won’t distort at arm’s length.
We tried to monitor our selfie count, but realistically I didn’t take any more photos of myself than any other girl my age; they were just retweeted more. Plus, we could guarantee a minimum of twenty fawning fan responses on Twitter per selfie, as opposed to anywhere between two and ten for a comment alone. So, that was our rationale.
A runner knocked at the dressing-room door to take us to the set of the music chat show. We were seated opposite Pru, who was getting a last-minute powdering. As soon as the lights were turned on I could feel myself starting to gleam; it was like sitting under a million suns. Translucent rice powder was the trick of the trade because it didn’t build up layers of colour on your skin.
I wore: silver vest dress with pink bra, neon blue slingbacks, silver razor-blade on a chain, aviator mirror shades, pink gel nails.
Rose wore: fitted yellow sundress with bows on the shoulders, thin string of pearls, strappy leather sandals, sparkle blush.
Pru wore: pink metallic-look peasant shirt, tight grey jeans, pink wedges, silver hoop earrings.
I could see the nub of vertebrae at the nape of Pru’s neck under her silky dark hair as she and Rose made small talk about which celebrities they’d seen in Pablo’s Bar & Grill on Vermont Avenue. I amused myself by slicing Pru down to size in my head. Like, she wouldn’t say ‘thank you’ to the runner bringing her coffee; she’d sing-song ‘ninkquew . . .’
The news anchor cut to us and Pru engaged her smile. She was like the Dannii Minogue of LA. ‘Rose and Nina from The Dolls, charming to have you with us here today. Can you tell us a bit about your new album, It’s Not All—’ she checked the notes on her lap ‘—Ponies and Unicorns. Why did you decide to call it that?’
Next she’d be asking how we met.
Rose answered politely as I nodded and smiled. Nod, smile. Nod, smile. It took all my willpower in these situations not to examine my nails, so instead I focused on Rose and Pru, imagining them lighting up like a pinball machine as the conversation ricocheted back and forth. They looked like hair twins. Rose fielded a question on whether we had pet kangaroos and I tried to remember what I’d read about Pru in the LA Review that weekend. Was she was trying for a baby, or was she a home-wrecker?
‘How do you keep sane on tour?’ Pru was saying. ‘I mean, you’re cousins. You must drive each other cray-cray, right?’
‘We have playdates,’ Rose lied. ‘We hang out, play records, wrestle, talk about boys . . .’ That was cute.
When Pru wound things up and we were back in the green room, I wasn’t surprised she was all over Rose like a rash—I’d given her nothing and people always mistook me for being stuck-up anyway. As I checked out the coffee corner—only filter coffee, surprise—I saw the two of them pull out their phones and exchange numbers.
I was curious about how sad I suddenly felt. Rose and I were like yin and yang, I knew that. She needed me to temper her enthusiasm, which cou
ld get unrealistic, but I wished sometimes that I could be bothered to do the sort of things that Rose did to make people warm to her. Times like this, Rose told me she was carrying me.
•
We had a month of US promo before the tour started. While we were in LA, Elementary had us on an endless treadmill of radio-station phoners, feeding us only Starbucks muffins and coffee.
I wished we could hand journalists a list of meaningful questions. It would save them the five minutes of Wiki research they did, or from sticking a question mark at the end of each paragraph of our album bio. See Example A.
Example A
Album bio: The Dolls are the first to admit the recording of It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns was an unsettling time.
Journo: Did you find the recording of It’s Not All Ponies and Unicorns unsettling in any way?
The first wave of shysters were trundled in and presented to us, all alike with their record bags, the recorders they always had to fiddle with and the notepads held protectively out of reach on their laps. Lazier journalists had ten minutes on the phone. This was how ten-minute interviews panned out.
– Journalist sympathises that we must be doing a lot of press.
– We report that it’s quite exhausting, but that we’re so excited to be here.
– Journalist acknowledges we must get sick of answering the same questions all the time.
– We laugh.
– Journalist starts with something safe, like our experience of working with John Villiers.
– Rose cuts in before I can answer and responds with something equally safe.
– Journalist wonders what we think of other journalists comparing us to .
– We respond that this is a new one to us but we grew up listening to ’s music and certainly respect them as an artist.
– Journalist hypothesises we must be tired of people bringing up the Alannah Dall connection.
– We protest that no, Alannah has been and remains a huge influence on our work and we have learned so much from her.
– Operator cuts in on the line to tell us we have one minute remaining.
– Journalist asks something really personal that might potentially make us hang up. Possibly: a) how do we respond to criticism that we are using shock tactics to sell our record, b) is it true that our former manager is suing us for unfair dismissal, or, c) are we likely to play the Woop Woop Ute Muster again.
– One of us laughs benevolently and replies: ‘What a good question; we’ll have to come back to that one, [insert name here].’ Call ends.
These journos were smiling assassins. Some bitches would make out we were the worst thing to happen to women since Tony Abbott, while the men would go home and bash out meaningless clichés like ‘and therein lies the rub’ on their grimy laptops, just so they could hear themselves say it. They’d describe us as bruised, ruined, fallen, wasted and damaged, or they’d review our show like it was a hate fuck. For the rest of my adult life, every time I’d see someone with a laptop in a Starbucks I’d have to fight the urge to dump my caramel latte on their keyboard.
‘What do you say to those who accuse you of being a bad role model?’ the journalist on the line said, cutting through my reverie. She gave a little laugh as though we were in on it together.
I’m just a young girl myself, was the answer Mickiewicz had programmed into us, which sounded obscene coming from his mouth. I’m still learning about life and I’m always striving to be the best person I can be.
I was especially careful with phoners, because if my timing misfired with the other person it got super awkward and then I said things I regretted.
Don’t fill the gap.
Wait two seconds, to make sure they’re done.
Say this sentence and nothing more.
Nothing more.
Don’t say, ‘This is off the record’ when you could say nothing at all.
‘I aim to please,’ I said to the journalist.
My last call, after a five-second break, was a hook-up with Germany. As we did our dance, I scoured YouTube on my laptop for evidence of Hank Black being a bastard. The interviewer asked his questions precisely, as though he were carrying out a series of checks. Europeans were more predictable, thanks to the language barrier. I preferred them.
I found a clip and clicked on it.
The German wrapped up by politely telling me he was looking forward to our Frankfurt show.
‘That’s great,’ I said. ‘Be sure to come backstage and say hello.’ We didn’t even have a European tour booked yet, but if Boris the bratwurst ever turned up backstage I’d have my security chuck him out quick-smart anyway.
I hung up and pumped the volume on my laptop, frowning into the screen. ‘You are blacker than black,’ Hank was laughing riotously, pointing his finger at his co-host.
‘No, you are blacker than black,’ the idiot chided back.
I felt an urge to call Hank, but I quickly squashed it. It was just that I was in limbo; missing something without even knowing what. Maybe I was missing home even though I’d been glad to leave. It was that awful feeling of powerlessness, of knowing that some other place was happening without me, that the world there continued to turn, and every day that passed, I became more irrelevant to it.
Could everything just . . . freeze? We’d be back.
•
By morning we fielded questions about whether we liked The Veronicas and whether our aggressive sound was due to the harsh Australian Outback, and in the afternoons we rehearsed with our new band. We thought we’d have to run them through it all, but they came fully prepared and played more smoothly than our band in Australia ever did. They were embarrassing, though, and old. The guitarist couldn’t hit a chord without acting like he’d just spoofed in his pants, the drummer looked like a bloated Billy Idol, and the bass player thought he was backing Alannah Dall in 1985. Jenner said we were not to call them session musicians . . . but we weren’t to bother mentioning them in interviews, either. I made him promise he’d get Elementary to ditch the guitarist and come up with someone not called Spike.
Jenner was right about one thing: the American press liked us much better than the Australian press. They were less afraid of a melody and more partial to girls with guitars, particularly if they got to compare us to their classic girl bands: The Runaways, The Go-Go’s, The Bangles. Radio was its own beast. Being picked up by college radio stations was like watching a presidential race, as state by state they added us to their rotation.
Scrolling through Twitter during interviews always hypnotised me into a sense of calm. Twitter was like a full-time job in itself. We were supposed to tease fans but not fully engage. When they were good, we rewarded them with new photos of ourselves. In return, they were at pains to be bright and happy and delightful in our presence.
I’m in love with your smile, you’re so flawlessly beautiful
I have the prettiest best friend
What would happen if you followed me back?
How do I be as skinny as you?
Bounteous blessings to you, dear, dear girl
They were no different from the men on Twitter who wanted to cut off our heads and rape the bloody aperture; they just wanted a bit of attention. Even though I understood most of them to be living with their parents in Buttsville and working at Subway, their Twitter bio would read like:
The Real Brianna
Recording Artist/Actress/Dancer/#DreamChaser
It’s all about living the dream!
For Bookings: [email protected]
Vimeo.com/TheRealBrianna
Some had my photo up, or Rose’s, instead of their own and, like Rose, had borrowed the Dall surname. The bolshier ones opened fake Twitter accounts in our names if we blocked them for being obscene. That was on top of the slash fiction that was starting to appear on forums. Rose would read it out on her phone, reams of it, creepy stuff about the two of us getting it on.
‘W-w-what do you mean?’ Rose said
tensely.
‘I’ve always felt this way about you,’ Nina retorted sharply.
She looked up shyly through her lashes and took in the vision of her cousin, her own flesh and blood, standing there on the tour bus in her neglishey. She shivered.
I knew that our fans thought our life was one big pyjama party and they would probably leave us bleeding in a gutter for a shot at taking our place, but they didn’t understand that we remained the same people we had always been. Who had I taken on this magical journey? Me.
There were times I wished I could restore myself to my factory settings, back to before any of the rot set in. You were supposed to love yourself before other people could love you, the women’s magazines always said, but they never explained how. They never came up with one of their crazy personality quizzes to ascertain whether you were a) so fucked you were likely to wind up in prison, b) suffering from a personality disorder, or c) dead inside. Those were never the options. Magazines were not for the likes of me. Or our fans.
•
Rose came to meet me in a tattoo studio on Melrose. I was getting Anubis, the Egyptian jackal-head god, on my inner arm—but with a woman’s body. The job of Anubis was to weigh the hearts of the deceased and decide whether they were innocent or guilty.
‘That’s rad,’ said Rose. She’d gone whiter still with her teeth. She sat down in a spare chair and sucked on the straw of her iced coffee. I was concerned that the tattooist might be annoyed, but he just ignored her.
‘Nice teeth,’ I said. ‘They’re very you.’
‘You should get yours fixed properly,’ she said from under her wide-brimmed hat and shades. Rose was on a mission to keep her skin porcelain, even when indoors. There was a definite trend for porcelain in LA, even though people thought of it as a tanned place. All the burlesque clubs had seen to that. ‘It’ll be too hard once we’re on tour. You can get proper veneers put on. And go a few shades lighter. Doctor Carson does the $ista $ista girls and all of Bro-Town; Pru recommended him.’
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