I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone

by Stephanie Kuehnert

  “Great,” I groaned. “Even worse.”

  “Emily, don’t be so melodramatic.” Regan unleashed that half-grin she wore back when we were fifteen when she thought she’d spotted some guy who would be perfect for me. “If you really like him, you should go for it.”

  She was so evil. “Regan …”

  “Just try going about it differently. Hard as it may be, don’t sleep with him right away. I’m not saying you have to hold out for a year like I did, but—”

  “Regan!”

  “I dare you.” She smirked deviously.

  “Nice try.” I rolled my eyes, turning to face her with my hands on my hips. “That’s not gonna work like it did when we were ten.”

  She ignored me. “Dedicate a song to him tonight. Just murmur, ‘This is for Ian,’ like after you take a drag off your cigarette or something. It’ll be all sultry and mysterious.” She pursed her lips, fluttered her eyelashes, and took a dramatic drag from an imaginary cigarette. Giggling, she fished in her pockets for a real smoke.

  I shook my head and returned to my makeup. “No. I am definitely not doing that.”

  “Then I will. I’ll be all Casey Kasem long-distance dedication about it. ‘This one goes out to Ian of Rolling Stone, from Emily …’” She rubbed her palms together gleefully.

  I whipped around, brandishing my eyeliner pencil like a sword. “If you do that, I will seriously break up the band onstage.”

  “I knew it!” she chortled. “You’ve got it soooo bad. Like me and Tom.”

  “Like my mom and my dad?” I huffed sarcastically. “And where did that get them?”

  Regan’s expression faltered, but then she met my gaze firmly. “You’re not her, Emily. Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve attained. Just let yourself be happy.”

  Her words hit me hard. They followed me onstage that night and bounced around my head for days. Simple as they were, I needed them to counteract what Johnny had said back at River’s Edge about me trying to be my mother. I needed them in order to let Ian in. Not that I did right away. Especially not after Regan’s stunt.

  She pulled it three songs into the set. I mumbled, “This one’s called ‘Home,’” and peeked back at her because she was supposed to click her drumsticks together and count it off, but instead I saw her pink, pigtailed head lean toward the mic. Her lip gloss gleamed in the stage lights as she did the bad Casey Kasem impression, dedicating the song to Ian from me. She’d called my bluff, knowing I wouldn’t really break up the band. I could only shake my head and growl the lyrics, so it didn’t sound like a love song. I did throw my guitar into her drum kit at the end of the set, but she dodged it, laughing. And as much as I wanted to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers perform after us, I stalked back to the bus to avoid Ian.

  But when I returned from England, Ian called me in the middle of the night. His excuse? He wanted to show me those pictures of me and my dad, which he claimed to have just developed. He insisted on bringing them to me right then.

  “It’s one in the morning. I was asleep,” I protested groggily.

  “That’s not very rock ’n’ roll,” he said with a laugh. Damn his adorable laugh.

  “I’m still jet-lagged.”

  “Come on, where do you live?” he implored.

  Since he was nice enough not to mention the dedication incident, I agreed to let him come over.

  I answered the door in pajamas. While I blinked blearily in the searing light coming from the hallway behind him, his green eyes glowed bright, wide-awake. His washed-out Cheap Trick T-shirt and his jeans, which hung loosely enough to reveal the top of his boxers, appeared slept-in, but apparently he only owned wrinkled clothing. “You really were sleeping.” He seemed shocked.

  I tried to flatten my tangled hair. “Why would I lie about that?”

  “Because you didn’t want to see me. I mean, when you gave me this address, an apartment in the suburbs, I thought for sure that you were trying to get rid of me.”

  “Why? Should I live in a Gold Coast penthouse now? I don’t like moving.” I shrugged and held out my hand for the envelope tucked beneath his arm. “Pictures?”

  “You’re not even going to let me stay and look at them with you?” He frowned, nibbling on his lower lip.

  “Okay.” I shrugged again, too tired to resist. I led him inside to my tiny living room and pushed aside the mound of dirty laundry on the couch so we could sit down.

  Ian was good at what he did. He understood how to manipulate light and shutter speeds and all that stuff I didn’t get, but he also recognized the emotional force of music. He caught rock ’n’ roll in motion, and not just the notes being played, but the intensely personal reaction of the musicians. I studied the last picture. In it, my father’s eyes were half closed, a curl untucked from behind his ear, his lips partially open as he hummed, his hands a blur on the strings. All you could see of me in the very corner of the picture was my hair, the curve of my nose and chin, and my hands in my lap.

  “That’s the best one,” Ian said.

  “How do you do it?” I asked, staring at the perfect image of my dad. “How’d you capture the essence of music without the sound?” I managed to rip my eyes away and meet Ian’s.

  Then we were kissing. It was familiar. It was easy. I slid my hand up his shirt, my nails down his back. He took my tank top off, tracing his thumb gently across my breast. I shivered slightly, sucked his warm breath into my lungs, and then drew back, wrapping my arms across my bare chest.

  “I’m not going to do this. I know you heard all of those things Johnny said about me, but they weren’t true. Well, they were. I am pretty slutty, but …”

  Ian wore a placid expression. He was so hard to read. He picked up my shirt and pulled it down over my head. I clumsily lifted my arms, like I was a child letting him dress me. It seemed sort of sweet, but then he didn’t say anything and I felt silly. I was about to get up and show him the door when he finally spoke. “If we just fell asleep together again, no one’s gonna show up throwing things this time, right?”

  “Right … ,” I said uncertainly.

  “Okay.” He leaned back against the couch, opening his arms to me.

  And so it began. Ian and I didn’t use any sort of terms for our relationship, but we made out all the time, and stayed over to sleep—just sleep—in each other’s beds. I pretended that my life was the way it had been a year earlier, before the record came out. I was a normal person, freezing on the ‘L’ platform, waiting for the train to his house, where we’d eat Chinese takeout and watch bad romantic comedies on cable.

  Then, after three months of total bliss, I had to go on tour.

  Nobody wanted to do that December tour, short as it was—a couple of second billings at holiday radio station concerts on both coasts with some extra dates thrown in to make it worth our while. Hey, kids, like the latest single? Ask for our album this Christmas. Definitely the record company’s idea, not ours. Regan and Tom would have preferred to go back to Carlisle for a while. I had a feeling they were about to get engaged, because they were spending a lot of time with her family (his family was still nuts, Sarah Fawcett being one of those people who filled the basement with canned goods and bottled water in preparation for Y2K). And I wanted to spend every waking moment with Ian.

  But admittedly, once I got out on the road, even though I still missed Ian insanely, I had a great time playing live. My newfound happiness restored my energy, and performing felt as incredible as it had back at River’s Edge. The tour sped by, we got good reviews, album sales went up.

  Seattle should have been an awesome show. Every show we’d ever played there had been great. And it was the second-to-last stop before home. After, we’d headline Q101’s Twisted Christmas in Chicago and then be able to take a break until we went into the studio in the spring. But it didn’t work out that way.

  Afterward, I thought I shouldn’t have toured. I should have stayed on Ian’s couch watching movies. The very public airing of my pr
ivate life still would have happened, but, holed up with Ian, I might not even have found out about it for a few days. Instead, I watched it unfold in real time, and then faced the world mere hours later.

  Regan had control of the remote even though it was my hotel room—a really nice hotel room at the Four Seasons. We’d checked in at the crack of dawn and napped for a while. I slept the longest, so Regan and Tom came knocking on my door to force-feed me coffee before sound check. I was perusing the room-service menu when Regan squealed, “Holy crap, I can’t believe they’re doing this show! It’s almost as bad as TRL. Remember they asked us to do this show and we said no?”

  She’d flipped to MTV, which had Live Punx! on. It aired every Monday, with a different band in the studio introducing videos, answering audience questions, and performing their hit single. They did it live with the hope that crazy punk-rock antics would ensue: bleeped swear words, blurred-out nudity, and the occasional controversy.

  When She Laughs rose to sudden success, the media called it a “punk-rock revival.” They proclaimed Chicago the new Seattle and said that we’d come to save the rock world from “the postgrunge macho backlash.” Groups fronted by girls or sensitive yet angry guys ruled the airwaves. Like all movements in music, it yielded mixed results. Great underground bands got their day in the sun, but shows like Live Punx! were born to make an edgy scene more palatable for the masses. As far as we were concerned, self-respecting punk bands didn’t do Live Punx!

  But Johnny never had much self-respect, and his was the band that Regan gaped at in my hotel room, laughing hysterically. My Gorgeous Letdown fell into the “sensitive yet angry male” category. They’d ridden our coattails to the top and now verged on real success.

  I stuck my tongue out at the TV. “Change it.”

  “No, it’s going to be funny,” Regan insisted.

  I doubted it. I knew they would ask him about me. Everyone had been asking me about him lately because they’d figured out that My Gorgeous Letdown’s biggest single, “Blackout Girl,” was about me. Every goddamn song on the album alluded to me, and since Johnny wasn’t the most subtle lyricist, it wasn’t too tough to decipher. But I always gave the same cold response when asked about it: “Johnny who? Never heard of him.”

  And Johnny, clearly frustrated by his failure to be enigmatic, kept spitting out “No comment” when questioned, his pretty lips contorting into a scowl. “No comment” was a stupid answer. It implied there was something to comment on.

  I hadn’t been too concerned about it anyway because I’d had Ian to distract me. But now my eyes were glued to the screen and I had a gut feeling that the whole Johnny-Emily thing was about to reach the boiling point.

  They played the “Blackout Girl” video and then cut to the band in the studio. All four of them were crammed onto an obnoxious neon-blue couch, the spiky-haired, mall-punk-clothing-clad VJ seated next to them in a director’s chair. He led in with the usual “Really rockin’ song, guys,” tossing that devil-horns hand signal at the camera so his viewers could concur, Yes, indeed, that song does rock. “But there are rumors flyin’ about it. It was recorded right around the time She Laughs released their major-label debut last winter, and everyone wants to know, Johnny, is the song about Emily Black?”

  Johnny rolled his gunmetal-gray eyes and sighed audibly, but as he yawned his usual “No comment,” the VJ went from innocuous, trend-sniffing puppet to lecherous, hard-nosed reporter.

  “Because, Johnny, you and your reps have denied any romantic link to Emily Black, but we did some detective work, and we’ve uncovered this lease in the names of Emily Black and John Thompson—your legal name—for an apartment in Chicago back in 1994, this restraining order filed against you by Ms. Black six months later, and another one filed just this summer. Unless this is a different Emily Black, it seems like the two of you have had a very rock—”

  Johnny lunged for the papers in the VJ’s hands, snatched them away, and started tearing them to pieces. Seth, the bassist, leapt up, screaming, “End of interview!” as the cameras cut to a quick, final shot of Johnny’s fist connecting with the VJ’s jaw.

  “Shit.” I heard my voice but didn’t feel myself talking. Regan’s hands flew to my shoulders, and Tom turned off the TV. The phone sat beside me on the bed, the number to room service in my lap. So I dialed. “Two bottles of Jack Daniel’s.”

  Regan and Tom tried to convince me to cancel the show. Especially after I opened the first bottle of Jack. But I thought drinking and playing would make me feel better. I should have known by then that drinking and playing did not mix.

  Little things came back to me later in snapshots.

  Halfway through the second song, I stopped, told Tom and Regan, “Shut up! I have to ask these people something.” I tried not to slur. “Do you care about who I’m fucking, Seattle? Seriously, do you?”

  There seemed to be a mixture of reactions. Some confusion, since half of my audience didn’t watch MTV, but somebody did and yelled out, “Johnny Threat!”

  “Nooooooooooo,” I drawled into the microphone. Then I took a long swig of whiskey. “And you don’t actually care, right? ’Cause you are a good rock city. You just want to rock. So we’ll start that song over again.” And we did.

  I played my way rather badly through a couple more songs. A blur.

  My next memory: plopping down on the edge of the stage with my bottle, declaring, “I suck tonight. I need a second guitarist so when I suck, they can take over.”

  The same guy yelled out, “Johnny Threat!”

  “No, I need a good guitarist,” I sniggered. “He’s not very good.” Some people jeered. “You like his band? If you do, you can leave now.”

  I struggled to my feet. “Listen to this. I can play his song better than he can even when I suck.” My fingers flew over the power chords to “Blackout Girl,” and I mockingly scream-sung, “Ooooh, my blackout girl, you press my buttons, you conquer my world,” making my voice crack like a pubescent boy.

  Regan and Tom stood silently behind me, clearly disapproving of the joke. Whenever I whirled around to face them, they stared at me, terrified, like I was a suicidal person on top of a building and they feared that if they said “Don’t jump!” I would wink and take a running leap.

  I took off my guitar and shouted for a roadie. “I polluted the guitar. I need a new one now.”

  I was presented with another one, but before I strummed the first chord, I quipped, “I heard he’s really bad in bed, too.”

  A few more songs. I forgot lyrics, entire verses. Regan and Tom played robotically behind me.

  Another snapshot: I asked, “Do you really want to know who I’m sleeping with?”

  People booed me. I’d never been booed before, not even at my first couple shows when I deserved it. I went on with my tirade anyway. “I don’t fuck rock stars. They’re boring. Ooooh.” I covered my mouth and looked back at Regan, whose face was in her hands. Still speaking into the microphone, I added, “I’m sure it’s not boring for you and Tom, since that all started before you were rock stars.” She didn’t lift her head. I turned back to the crowd and told them, “I’m doing this photographer. Actually, I haven’t yet, but I’m going to. Will someone tell MTV to announce this for me?” I paused dramatically, staring into the bright white lights above me. Then I yelled into the mic, “Ian, when I get home, you are getting laid!” I giggled girlishly. “He’ll be happy to know that. He was probably beginning to wonder.”

  “Emily!” Regan hissed.

  “What?” I said into the mic, pivoting toward her. “Another song?” She shook her head no, but I said, “Okay, another song.”

  According to one of many devastating reviews of the show, I played a song we’d already played. I made it through two more and stopped again, contending, “Restraining order, pffft! You guys think I would need to take out a restraining order against some wussy-ass, wannabe rock god? I’m tough. I can take care of myself!” And to prove it, I jumped into the crowd. They
scratched me. Tore out my hair. Ripped me apart. And I remember cackling, thinking it was good pain.

  I returned to the stage in my underwear. I admonished the audience. “I have to go find some clothes now. My boyfriend would not appreciate this many people seeing so much of me.” But I probably would have stood there half naked, sipping my whiskey and yapping about my love life, if Tom hadn’t finally yanked me offstage.

  In the dressing room, Regan muttered, “Emily. Jesus Christ, Emily.”

  And Tom told someone, “There is no way she’s going back out there.”

  And I puked at Regan’s feet, falling to my knees, clutching my gut and gagging.

  The voice of the tour manager: “… spectacle …”

  Regan to me: “It’s okay, honey. Just let it out …”

  Tom: “… should have canceled …”

  Someone from the venue: “… going back out there?”

  Manager: “… obviously …”

  Tom: “… not …”

  Me, suddenly sober, wiping my mouth: “Yes, I have to fix it.”

  Regan: “No.”

  Tom: “No.”

  But I splashed cold water on my face, put on a T-shirt and jeans, and made them follow me out for the usual encore. Dizzy as hell, I kept my eyes closed the entire time. I finished by saying “Sorry” instead of “Thank you, good night.”

  When I got offstage, I requested a 7UP and the cancellation of our show in Vancouver.

  Regan combed her fingers through my hair. “Do you want to fly home tonight?”

  “To what?” I snapped. There would be reporters and, after my outburst, no Ian.

  “What do you want?” Regan persisted gently.

  “I want to go back to the hotel, where you are going to bleach my hair.”

  She blinked back confusion. Though she’d been changing the color of her dark brown hair for years, I had never messed with my natural hair color. People killed their hair trying to get the black I was born with, so why screw with it? And blond? As Regan knew, I never would have considered blond. In my mind, it was trademarked by Louisa.