“All rockstars at some point come face-to-face with the utter pointlessness of what they’re doing. Some get there quicker than others, some hide it better than others, but it happens to all of them. Reeve, however, can never suffer from pointlessness. Because it’s not him. The whole messy business of self has been done away with. He’s doing it for someone else. He’s been taken out of himself. He is like a religious devotee, he has that gleam in his eyes of someone who knows, whose conviction cannot be shaken, that there really is a point. In some way, Jim Morrison did die for him.”
They did a special show on the third of July, the anniversary of Morrison’s death. Reeve, dressed Morrisonesquely, tailed by the TV crew, walked around Paris, pointing out landmarks, places where Jim had or might have been. At the spot where Morrison died in the bathtub, the camera lingered on a mongrel dog pissing on the wall. Next stop, of course, was Père Lachaise cemetery, the camera moving sedately up the manicured aisle, following the arrows scratched onto monuments saying “Jim this way.” It wove through tombstones splattered with graffiti: cartoon genitalia and declarations of love, snatches of Jim poems, often badly spelled, names and countries and messages in a dozen languages.
The graves were packed in tight like a ghetto. Jim’s was hardly big enough to hold a circus dwarf. The stone was a squat plain slab the color of tarmac. It was mobbed with young people. They were sitting around talking and laughing, drinking beer and putting notes and flowers in the empties, placing them gently on his grave. It was really quite moving. Reeve melted in among them, kissed a few cheeks and shook lots of hands.
“I’ve made a lot of friends here,” he told the camera. “It’s amazing. It’s like a sort of club. I’ve made the pilgrimage, I don’t know, at least a dozen times. The first time I was eighteen years old. I brought a sleeping bag and camped out on his grave. The first time I came I wrote my name on his gravestone in the bottom right-hand corner. I wanted it to be right at ‘The End.’ It’s gone now. This stone is really ugly. The others got stolen piece by piece.”
He led us up through the cemetery to where Oscar Wilde was buried. “Look at this.” The camera closes up on the inscription. “The first time I came here I saw this. It’s really incredible.” He recited Wilde’s words, etched onto the tomb.
And alien tears will fill for him
Pity’s long-broken urn
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn.
“It could have been written for Jim. ‘Alien tears.’ That’s really something, isn’t it?”
Cut to a bar where Jim used to come and drink and write poetry. The bar owner was rinsing out Pastis glasses, nonchalant and very French. A Parisian journalist in his late forties, who stated that he and Jim often had long conversations here about existentialism and claimed that Jim asked him to translate his poems into French, sat beside Reeve, perched self-consciously, arrogant and uncomfortable. He looked like he was sitting on a carrot and sucking on a lemon all at the same time.
And they showed footage of The Doors in concert and rare clips of Jim offstage, looking like a god and looking like a retard, Fat Jim, droopy-faced and bearded, with small eyes peering out of fat, puffy lids. And Reeve’s band flew over to Germany and they played together for the first time in more than a year. And when they finished, Jim’s cousin came out of the studio audience, shook Reeve’s hand, and said, “Hello, Jim.” There were tears in the audience’s eyes, in the band’s eyes. Reeve looked as if he were about to break down.
When the contract was up, Reeve chose not to renew it. On his thirtieth birthday he moved back to L.A. But his band had scattered and moved on. He went on a few chat shows, hired a media consultant, but nobody really wanted to know. He moved back in with his mother. He got a job with Star Company, driving a stretch limo, picking up VIPs at the airport. When the planes were late or his order was canceled, he’d drive down to the beach and sit in the car with the door open, letting the cool air in, writing poems in his head and staring at the sea. Feeling cold made him think about his apartment in Germany, the big old ornate radiator in the corner of the room, slow to rumble into action, reluctant to heat up the room. And the ceiling so high up that when he lay on the bed it made him feel like a child. He thought about the food shops, the cheeses and the sausages piled up in pyramids, a work of art, and sweets and cakes and pasta dripping in shop windows. He thought about the café that served poetic coffee in large silver pots with thick fresh cream.
And he thought about the German woman who had been his lover. She was older than him, almost old enough to be his mother. She was an artist, with strong hands and a strong, fine face. He had found her one night in the lobby of his apartment building, arguing with the concierge, who wouldn’t let her up. He smuggled her in later, both of them feeling slightly ashamed and elated, laughing in whispers as if they were in his mother’s house.
She told him—months later, when the concierge had come to know and accept her and would stop and have a natter with her every night in the hall and offer her a coffee if Reeve was late back from the studio—she told him what he already knew, that she was totally into Jim Morrison. She told him that she wanted to be on the show.
And she told him a story. She had gone to the cemetery at night and broken in, scaled the wall with a pickax and a spade. She said she needed to know for sure that Jim really was dead and buried. There had always been rumors, just like there had with Elvis, maybe just like for every star who dies in the bathroom, that he hadn’t really died, that he’d just disappeared and was working in a gas station or living in a trailer in the desert watching the lizards go by. When reports reached Los Angeles that Jim had had a fatal heart attack in the bathtub, his manager had flown to Paris to see what was going on. And all Jim’s wife could show him was a sealed coffin and a death certificate signed—she was so wasted—by she couldn’t remember who.
If the coffin had been empty she had planned to go and look for him; she knew that she could find him. But it wasn’t empty, she said, staring at the high ceiling as they lay propped up together on the oversized pillows. It was a while before he broke the silence and asked her what she did.
And he shuddered as he remembers how she tugged a cigarette from the packet and lit it, blew out a smoke ring he tried to catch. She said, “I gave him a blow job. And then I fell asleep.” The cemetery caretaker found her the next morning. She was sent to a psychiatric institution. She still saw her caseworker; she wanted him to meet her. The caseworker approved of her going on the show. And it came to him that what he did was just another form of necrophilia, trying to suck some life out of a corpse, but he banished the thought as quickly as it had come to him, pulled the door closed, and started the motor up.
He drove up Sunset and parked outside the nightclub where the Germans had come to see him play. He watched the world hum by in its Porsches and Mercedes. He turned on the radio and waited for his ride.
ALLERGIC TO KANSAS
Everything was fine until Leo started growing breasts.
Better than fine. Even Leo, with his well-honed sense of his own genius and matching grievance at how long it had taken others to catch on, viewed his achievements with some satisfaction, although he knew he deserved them and more. A number one album in Britain, a second one climbing the American charts, five hit singles, a sold-out U.S. tour, and a supermodel girlfriend who swallowed. And who had just called to say that her Caribbean shoot had been canceled and she was flying straight out to join him on the road. And who would be more than a little upset to see the teeth marks and lacerations that covered his torso, courtesy of the crazy blonde he’d shagged last night in Kansas.
“Tell her she can’t come,” said Murray. The tour manager knew all about the problems caused by visiting girlfriends. If he had his way, all females would be banned from the road.
Leo shook his head. “Ain’t gonna work.” No one said no to Phoebe Fitzwarren, and he wasn’t suicidal enough to try. So he chose the grizz
ling option instead.
“Murray, she’s going to be here tomorrow. What the motherfuck am I gonna do?”
Murray had experience in these matters. He’d worked with bands for years. Moments later he appeared with a huge roll of wide, crepe bandage, ordered Leo to strip, and proceeded to wind it tightly around his body, armpits to pelvis, pelvis to armpits, down, up, down. “Tell your old lady,” he said, “that you tripped coming offstage and cracked a rib.” And Phoebe had fallen for it—not just fallen, been smitten by such a fit of caring that she’d stuck around for almost a fortnight. Two weeks deep-frying under the stage lights like a burrito with legs—and no sex. Not even a hand job. “Broken ribs,” Phoebe said, “can be dangerous. One false move, you could puncture a lung. Come on, baby, lie down here next to me, we’ll just hold each other and talk.” Which was just what he needed after two hours of staring down at rows of sweet young cleavage, feeling hornier than a Salvation Army band. He’d had to go behind Dave’s drum kit for a wank during the guitar solo; he was sure he saw Ian’s guitar tech laughing. He made a mental note to tell his manager to stop his end-of-tour bonus.
A hundred years later Phoebe’s shoot was rescheduled. Finally he could take the bandage off. Her cab had barely pulled away when Leo shot back to his hotel room and ripped off his clothes. Standing naked in front of the mirror, he twisted an arm behind his back and tugged at the top of the wide strip of surgical tape that held the bandage down. It was stuck tight. He reached the other arm around, but it stayed put. Murray had done too good a job. Leo picked up the receiver and dialed. “The person in room 1–6–0–1,” said a machine, “is not available. Leave a message after the tone or press zero for an operator.”
“Murray. Where the motherfuck are you? Get your arse in here,” he barked, and hung up. Impatient, he continued to worry at the bandage, grunting, swearing, trying to tug it around so that the tape was at the front and he could see what he was doing. It refused to budge.
“MOTHERFUCKER!” he bellowed. He picked his jeans up off the floor and dug in his pocket for the switchblade he always kept there. Flicking it open, he snagged the tip inside the top layer of bandage, carefully pulled it away, and sliced. The sharp blade zipped through the crepe, faster than he’d estimated, skidding to a halt on his pubic bone. A small cut but a deep one; it took almost a minute before the blood bubbled to the surface and started a slow drip onto his dick. “Motherfuck,” said Leo, much more quietly than usual. One more inch to the right—the thought struck him dumb.
Hands shaking, he took a clean T-shirt from the top of his case and pressed it to the wound, lifting it up now and then to stare at the spots of red. Still trembling, he peeled off the torn layer of bandage which a fortnight of perspiration had glued to the rest. A loose end of bandage dangled at the bottom. “Thank the motherfucking Lord,” he said, and started to unwind, round and around, carefully, as if his ribs really were broken, like his mum opening her Christmas presents because she wanted to reuse the wrapping paper.
After a while Leo’s stomach appeared, its pale skin imprinted with the bandage’s waffle marks. Next came his upper abdomen, white as an overexposed photograph. Only his chest left to go. As Leo tugged the last sweat-tight layer from under his armpits, two small, round, pert breasts popped out.
“Well, fuck me,” said Murray as he let himself into the room, ready for any emergency, except this one. Two faces side by side gawped at the sight in the mirror.
“Jesus Christ, Leo.” Murray gave a nervous laugh. “Like ’em so much you’ve grown your own?”
“Shut the motherfuck up!” wailed Leo, turning so fast from his reflection that he hit himself hard on the back of a chair. Which reopened the wound, sending the blood coursing a little more heartily down his thigh.
“Whew,” said the tour manager, shaking his head. “I can see you’re on the rag. I’d better keep out of your way.”
As Murray left the room, Leo collapsed onto the chair. Only his breasts stayed perky.
When the tour manager returned, he was all efficiency. “Right, I’ve found a doctor, and he thinks it could be an allergic reaction to the bandage. You know, like some people get with a Band-Aid and their skin all puffs up?” In his short absence, Leo had crawled into bed and covered himself with the blankets; the swellings looked less obvious when he was lying down. His face peered up out of the sheets, glumly. “He’ll be over within the hour to give you a shot.”
“I ain’t going onstage like this,” sulked Leo. “You’re gonna have to cancel tonight’s show.”
“Aw, come on,” said Murray brightly. “The doc’ll fix you up in no time. Think of it as a couple of big mosquito bites. They look worse to you than they really are.”
The doctor arrived, examined Leo’s chest, then turned him over and stuck a needle in his buttock. He wrote out a prescription for a course of antihistamines and antibiotics. “You’re not to drink alcohol with these,” he told Leo, and the singer nodded obediently. “Make sure he doesn’t,” he told Murray as if he were the patient’s father, handing him the prescription, “or they won’t work.”
“I’ll be back with these in a moment,” said Murray, leaving with the doctor. Leo could hear them murmuring in the corridor. He sat up slowly in bed, checked his reflection in the mirror, hoping to see the mounds shrinking. They weren’t.
“How the motherfuck am I meant to go out there like this?” Leo whined. He and Murray were backstage in the dressing room; the rest of The Nympholeptics were out sound-checking onstage. Leo’s tight black T-shirt clung tightly to the small, round protrusions. “I see what you mean,” said Murray, rubbing his chin. “Only one thing for it: We’re going to have to bind ’em down.”
“I’m not getting back in that motherfucking bandage.” Leo shook his head and backed off. “I’m allergic, remember?” Murray was already reaching for a roll of gaffer tape. “No, forget it,” said Leo. “You’re not taping me up with that.” But he did. Taking it off wasn’t pleasant; what few chest hairs Leo had went with it. If Leo ever needed a drink, this was the moment. As for sex, it was out of the question. While the rest of the band were getting drunk or laid, Leo went to bed alone, early, sober, and utterly depressed.
“Do you think they’re going down?” Leo twisted his body sideways in front of the mirror. For four nights, the singer had been following the doctor’s orders, to no avail. What could have just about passed as oddly overdeveloped pecs before had blossomed into a bosom any fifteen-year-old girl would have been proud to display. Murray shrugged and said he thought they were. Through the concrete walls of the backstage room, Leo could hear the band laughing at Ian the guitar player’s impersonation of him as they sound-checked.
“I’ve been thinking,” Leo said as Murray bound him up again—the gaffer tape had been replaced by a stiff, white cotton bandage; allergy-free, the tour manager had pointed out—“that it might have something to do with those two weeks I went without sex. You know, when Phoebs was there? I mean think about it, it can’t be healthy for the body to just stop like that. You know, when you’re gagging for it all that time and you can’t get it?”
“Hmm,” said Murray thoughtfully. After the non-stop fuckathon The Nympholeptics tour had been, he mused, the singer could have a point. “You mean it might be some sort of trapped testosterone? Kinda like trapped wind?”
“I don’t know! But you try lying in bed with Phoebe Fitzwarren every motherfucking night for two weeks with a hard-on.” The tour manager quickly swatted the agreeable image from his mind.
“Anyhow,” Leo continued, “I figured that maybe I should start shagging again.” Before Murray could point out the obvious publicity hazards he added, “With the bandage on, of course, and a shirt. Just try and undo this blockage, or whatever it is. Get my system moving again.”
“Gotta be worth a go,” said Murray solemnly, as if contemplating a risky operation. “I’ll line ’em up for you after the show.”
For the next week, Leo applied himself
to the task assiduously. And although, as he resumed his alpha male role, band relations became smoother, Leo’s chest didn’t. Every night when Murray unwrapped him, behind locked doors when the concert was done, his breasts appeared plumper than ever. Leo returned to the path of abstinence.
“You know,” the tour manager suggested when they reached New York, “maybe we should try leaving the bandage off? Could be all it needs is some air circulating around it.”
“What! When I’m onstage?” shrieked Leo. “How the fuck is that supposed to look? Like the Britney mother-fucking Spears show?”
“I don’t know.” Murray shrugged. “I’m just trying to help. The doctors don’t have any fucking idea what to do.” Three more had been summoned, shaken their heads, and prescribed anti-inflammatories that didn’t work. The pair sat in silence for a while, then someone was bashing at the door and rattling the handle. “Open up!” the guitarist yelled. “What the fuck are you two doing in there that you’ve got to lock yourself in?”
“We’ll be out in a minute,” Murray called back. Turning to Leo, he said, “You could wear one of those thick leather biker jackets. If you zip it up, no one will see a thing. Should be no problem picking one up in this town.” The wardrobe girl was duly dispatched, and finally tracked one down in a cheap cutouts shop.
“What the fuck is that?” said Angus, the bass player, when Leo walked out wearing it that night. Angus was clad in the tiniest rag of a T-shirt; the arena was hot as hell. The crowd at the front were pressed in so tight they went home with their T-shirts steam-ironed.
“What’s it to you?” snarled Leo. Angus threw a glance at Ian, who lifted his right hand from the guitar strings and made the “wanker” sign. It was not a great show. When it was over, Leo, lobster-faced and squelching with sweat, ran into the dressing room and bolted the door. Murray had to usher the band to an empty bunker at the end of the corridor.
Too Weird for Ziggy Page 8