I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  So we toured. Phone calls came from the record company telling us which “markets” had the song “in rotation” and reporting numbers of albums sold that seemed extremely high. But the business talk was confusing. The real evidence of success came when our shows got moved to bigger venues or when second and third nights had to be added. Then, one night a fax from Lucy waited for us at our hotel in San Diego: the Billboard Hot 100 chart. She’d circled our album in the number two position and scrawled beside it: “Your gold records are waiting in L.A.!”

  Regan screamed and dropped the sheet of paper. Embracing me as tears streamed down her flushed cheeks, she declared, “Maybe we can knock Britney Spears out of the top spot if we wear Catholic schoolgirl skirts in the next video.”

  Since Tom wasn’t about to shave his legs, we never dethroned the princess of pop, but it didn’t matter. The album had only been out for a few months when my dad came to our show in Milwaukee and I had a gold record to present him with for his birthday. It came in a rectangular frame matted against a red background. I wrapped it up and gave it to Dad while he relaxed on a couch backstage. He shook his head, confused, probably wondering if I’d purchased an overpriced piece of art and needed a lecture on the value of money. When he tore through the paper, his hand flew to his mouth and he just stared. Finally, he looked up at me, lip curling into a smirk, and said, “Didn’t I tell you this would happen four years ago?”

  But the biggest shock of all came a month later. We were in New York City and our manager insisted on going someplace nice for dinner. He gave no explanation, just asked, “Would you prefer Italian or sushi?”

  I gagged into the phone. “Pasta, please.”

  Regan, Tom, and I beat him to the ritzy restaurant and were mildly irritated when he arrived guffawing away with a guy in designer vintage threads that were stereotypical of industry people trying to disguise themselves as hipsters.

  Well, we were pissed until the guy was introduced as “from Rolling Stone,” and immediately after he shook our hands, he said, “We want to do a story. A cover story.”

  Somehow we managed to order our food, but once the waiter left, I kicked Regan and Tom under the table. “Can you excuse us for a minute?” I said.

  Tom was so dazed that he didn’t even notice when we dragged him to the ladies’ room. We all sank to the floor and lit up cigarettes. A woman in a silky dress that probably cost more than my dad made in a month walked in, wrinkled her nose at us, and stalked out, huffing, “Who do you think you are?”

  “Rock stars,” Tom mused with a kid-on-Christmas-morning grin.

  “Yeah, look for us on the cover of Rolling Stone!” Regan shouted after her.

  I collapsed against the marble tile, my black hair fanning out around me. “Holy shit, guys, Rolling Stone.”

  So Regan’s little prophecy came true, early in fact. If only she’d been right about being rid of Johnny. He never mentioned me in the press, seeming to understand that it would be best for both of our careers not to, but the creepy stalker thing continued. He lurked in the audience at a couple of our shows. He sent me flowers when the album went gold. I threw those, vase and all, off the balcony of my hotel room to Regan’s and Tom’s rowdy applause.

  Then, a week before the Rolling Stone shoot, Tom got a voice mail from Johnny. At that time, I still didn’t have a cell phone, an attempt to exercise control over who could reach me when, but Tom did. While checking it on the bus one day, he tossed it to me. “Crap, Emily, listen to this!”

  When I put it to my ear, I heard Johnny’s voice. “Hey, Tom, I don’t have contact info for Emily, so if you could just pass this message on to her. I heard you guys are going to be in Wisconsin in a few days, doing yet another magazine cover—congrats, by the way, Rolling Stone’s the big one—and I’m actually going to be in the studio in Madison redoing a couple vocal tracks, so why don’t you give me a call and we’ll get together for some drinks.”

  I thrust the phone away as Johnny rattled off his number. “Delete!”

  Tom shook his shaggy head. “I don’t know, I think we should play this for Mike …”

  “No.” Even though it had been proven that handling Johnny on my own wasn’t the best course of action, I still hated asking for help. “Mike’s probably freaking out enough as it is. That album’s supposed to be in the final mixing stages by now.”

  “Johnny Threat, punk-rock perfectionist,” Regan quipped, but she was frowning. “I think Tom’s right. We need to make sure Johnny doesn’t show up or something.” She deferred to me uncertainly. “Unless you want to see him …”

  I glared at her, exasperated. “Regan, the only guy I’m hanging out with during the Rolling Stone thing is my dad.”

  To illustrate our roots, Rolling Stone had decided to do the cover shoot at River’s Edge, which was as close to Carlisle as I was willing to go. I planned to drive up early and spend a little time with Dad while I got my picture taken and finished answering questions. I hadn’t seen him since his birthday in Milwaukee. I didn’t see him nearly enough because of my nonstop tour schedule. There was the added complication that I refused to go to Carlisle when I was off, and Chicago was tough for him to visit.

  But at River’s Edge we were both in our element. When I arrived and saw his motorcycle parked outside, I ran inside with my guitar in hand. We met in the middle of the warehouse and hugged. He kissed the top of my head and repeated what he said every time I called him: “I miss you, but I’m so proud of you.”

  I squeezed him tighter. “I miss you, too.”

  Then we finished the sappy stuff and turned to what we did best: playing music together. Sitting cross-legged on the stage, I strummed my guitar and mumbled lyrics. He nodded in rhythm with the song, the lines in his forehead puckering as he concentrated, still taking on the role of my coach.

  Halfway through a song I’d been having trouble arranging, I slapped the stage in frustration, whining, “I don’t like that bridge. It’s been driving me nuts.”

  “Well, let me show you something …” My dad reached for the guitar. And then it happened: the camera flash that brought Ian Winters into my life.

  I glared murderously at the lanky, dark-haired stranger. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarled, hopping off the stage and standing protectively in front of my father, arms crossed.

  “My job,” he said, not fazed by my attitude.

  “You’re the Rolling Stone photographer?”

  He had a baby face, round cheeks, and smooth olive skin that he probably had to shave about once a week. His messy brown curls would have dipped down below his shoulders if he freed them from his ponytail. He wore ragged jeans and a plain white T-shirt, both wrinkled, like he pulled them out of the hamper after deciding they were clean enough. In short, he appeared to be in his second year of art school.

  “Yes.” He didn’t use any unnecessary words, and his expression was undecipherable. The look in his catlike green eyes and the slight curve to his lips could have been contentment or contempt. When I didn’t reply to his one-word response, his dark eyebrows knitted together. “Is there a problem?”

  “You’re just … you’re, like, nineteen or something,” I stuttered, uncharacteristically.

  He smirked, his amusement discernible for the first time. “Twenty-five, actually. Magazines like to do that sometimes—up-and-coming band, up-and-coming writer, up-and-coming photographer. Besides, you’re a Chicago band, I’m a Chicago photographer.”

  “But we’re not a Chicago band.” I was inexplicably defensive about that. I mentioned it in every interview, but hated Carlisle so much I wouldn’t even visit my own father there. “We’re from here. That’s why we’re doing the shoot here. But you’re early and I had no idea who you were …” God, why did he get me so flustered?

  He extended his hand. “I’m Ian Winters.”

  “Emily Black.”

  “Hmmm.” His lips snaked into a secret smile, but his eyes darted down to his paint-spatte
red sneakers, so I couldn’t read him.

  “What?” I snapped, put on guard by his aloofness.

  “Obviously you’re the singer,” he murmured.

  “What does that mean?”

  He just blinked.

  “I’m not trying to act like a diva, if that’s what you’re implying. My dad and I playing music together … that was a private moment, when you took a picture …”

  “Sorry. I liked that moment. When everyone else gets here, you’ll have to pose and put on more makeup, but that’s not really the spirit of rock ’n’ roll, is it? When you guys used to play here—”

  “Whoa, you’ve seen us play here?”

  The furtive grin once more, the forest-green eyes shooting down to the shoes and back up again. “I’m not really from Chicago either. Freeport,” he said. “And no offense or anything, but I’ve always liked your drummer’s sister’s band better than yours.”

  “None taken,” I replied, impressed.

  “Anyway, I can toss this film if you want. I just wanted to get some genuine shots before we go pose in the cornfields so people stop thinking you’re a Chicago band and get tuned in to your roots or whatever.”

  “No,” Dad spoke up. I turned, startled, having almost forgotten about his presence. He gave me a pleading look. “We don’t have enough pictures of the two of us together. Her mom’s gone, so there’s no one to hold the camera,” he told Ian, glancing down at the wedding ring he’d taken to wearing again.

  The way he said “gone” was heartbreaking, so I quickly agreed. “Okay, take some pictures of us, but these are for my dad, not Rolling Stone.”

  “No problem. When everyone shows up, I’ll change rolls, set these aside, develop them myself, and we’ll be in touch.”

  I climbed back onto the stage beside my dad and picked up the guitar again, but before I started playing, I added, “I’m not posing in a goddamn cornfield. When Regan and Tom get here, we’re setting up our equipment and we’re gonna rehearse. You can take pictures of that. My roots are not in those cornfields, they’re in this dank, ugly warehouse, and if they want to airbrush some corn in …”

  Ian laughed, and it wasn’t short and razor-sharp like Johnny’s sarcastic chuckle. It came from his belly and made his eyes dance. And I knew I wanted that laugh in my life.

  We got the shot that would end up on the cover somewhere around one in the morning. Since it was a school night in May, there wasn’t a show at River’s Edge that evening. Around four in the afternoon, it had been determined that Rolling Stone owed us massive quantities of pizza and beer. My dad took that as his cue to leave. The writer, though amused by our antics and the fabulous stories Tom and I told about Carlisle once we were drunk—most of them exaggerated, like Regan and I beating up half the football team, Tom getting kicked out of his house the night he met us and living at River’s Edge—decided to drive back to Madison because a hangover would only amplify the cold he already had.

  Ian put his camera away and swapped tales with us about growing up in a small town and moving to the big city. I lay on my back at the foot of the stage, my hair hanging over the edge. The makeup artist long gone, I looked how I usually did after a show: my dark eye makeup streaky, but my red lipstick applied thick. Tom and Regan sat cross-legged on either side of me, facing each other, talking over me as I lazily strummed my unplugged electric guitar. Ian had been at my feet, involved in the conversation, but suddenly he slammed down his bottle and announced, “This is it. The shot.”

  After he took it, he said, “They’ll airbrush the hell out of it, but we’ll know what it stands for.”

  “The spirit of rock ’n’ roll,” I nodded drunkenly.

  “Yep.” Ian bent down and kissed me on the forehead.

  It could have gone much further than that. Regan and Tom tried to convince me to go back to her parents’ house with them, but the alcohol stirred a particularly acute belligerence toward Carlisle, so I refused. I ended up sleeping on the couch backstage at River’s Edge and Ian slept with me. Literally just slept. I would have him in time, I told myself. A boy who laughed like he did deserved to be had under better circumstances.

  But apparently “better circumstances” weren’t in the cards for me.

  I awoke to the sound of shattering glass. My eyes shot open, and I felt a stabbing pain in my arm as a shard lodged itself there.

  Johnny stood by the stage door, a few yards away from me. When I registered his presence, he bellowed, “What the fuck is this?” He punctuated his words by launching another empty bottle.

  I instinctively leaned in toward Ian, covering our heads, but Johnny’s aim went wide. Despite a pounding headache, I sprung up like a cat as soon as I heard the bottle clatter to the ground unbroken.

  “What the fuck is this?” I gestured to the drops of red trickling down my arm. “Oh, I know what it is,” I seethed. “The violent outburst that I knew would come eventually, just like last time. This is why we didn’t get back together, Johnny. Get the hell out of here!”

  Johnny tossed his hands up in the air and laughed so maniacally it contorted his face, making it look eerily skeletal. “No, Emily, I don’t think so. This isn’t just like last time. How the hell do you expect me to react, finding you in bed with someone else? With—who is this? The journalist?”

  “I’m the photographer,” Ian murmured, sitting up on the couch behind me and rubbing his temples, bewildered.

  Johnny paced back and forth, three quick steps one way and then the other, whipping his head to the side each time he turned, so he could keep his crazed eyes on me. “You’re so messed up, Emily. I don’t get your logic. It would ruin your reputation as a musician to screw other musicians, but you can screw journalists? Is this why you don’t want anyone to know about us? It would interfere with you sleeping your way to the top? How respected are you going to be when this gets out?”

  I hurled a beer bottle at him, but it smashed against the wall by the door, slivers of glass glittering in the hot sun as they harmlessly spit outward toward Johnny’s sneakers. “Shut up! First of all, there is no us. There hasn’t been for four years and it’s because you’re crazy! Second, how dare you even imply … If anyone slept their way to the top, it’s you. Whose label are you on? Gee, the same one I’m on.” I covered my mouth in mock disbelief.

  “What?” Johnny raged, his eyes dark as gathering clouds. “That’s a coincidence. You had nothing to do with Mike coming to see us.”

  “Are you sure about that, Johnny?” The words popped like the safety catch on a gun. My lips spiked upward into a taunting sneer.

  Blotches of red spread across his cheeks. “Yes! You were with me that night, drunk as hell. You didn’t arrange that.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “Are you sure that I didn’t call Mike beforehand? And what about the media, how would they see it?” I lobbed his threat back at him.

  “Well, let’s ask the reporter you just screwed!” Johnny flicked his chin in Ian’s direction.

  Ian stood and cleared his throat. “I’m not a reporter. And Emily and I just passed out …”

  But Johnny wasn’t listening. “You’re not special, you know that?” he said to Ian, stomping toward us. “Do you know how many guys she fucked here? I should know. I was one of them. She’s a screwed-up little whore. Print that in Rolling Stone!”

  Ian stepped up beside me. “Don’t talk about her like that …” His voice was low and menacing, but with his rumpled clothes, bare feet, and hair half freed from his messy ponytail, he seemed powerless compared to Johnny.

  The muscles of Johnny’s tattooed arms went taut beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt, his fists clenched. I could tell that, unlike the last time Johnny and I fought, he was stone-sober. He swaggered forward until we stood toe-to-toe. “You know why she’s so messed up?” he asked, ostensibly talking to Ian, but glaring directly at me. “’Cause her mommy left her when she was a baby. She tells the cutest little story about it, makes Mommy out to be the holy spirit of p
unk rock. Has that been in an article yet? Do you want the real story? About how her mom just ran off one day and left her and her dad, who’s hopelessly devoted to her? Is that sick or what? No wonder she’s the love-’em-and-leave ’em type,” he ridiculed, the corners of his mouth wet with spit like a rabid dog.

  “Don’t.” I fought to keep my voice strong, my chin from quivering. I certainly hadn’t shared anything about my mother with the press. And I regretted the moment of weakness after my grandfather’s funeral when I told Johnny the full story—what I knew of it then—about her. “Just shut up. Louisa has nothing to do with anything.”

  Johnny’s dark grin stretched wide. “Of course she does! Your mommy complex is everything. Admit it. You want to find her. And if you can’t find her, you’ll be her.”

  My agonizing year of running after Louisa flashed before my eyes. “You have no right to be talking about this, you goddamn psycho. What’s your complex? What’s the explanation for you stalking me for the past two years? Oh, I know”—I jabbed a finger in his face—“you’re nothing but a leech, clinging to my talent because yours is nonexistent.”

  Johnny pinched my finger between his forefinger and thumb. Then he slid his whole hand around it. “Didn’t anyone teach you not to point?” His eyes narrowed into snakelike slits. “I could end your career right now. I could rip this finger out of the socket, and you would never be the same. Who’s in control now, Emily?”