When it was over and I got up to go, someone announced that Pussy’s car had arrived, which is how we wound up leaving together. She didn’t say much as we negotiated the jumble of passages and fire doors and went out into a sour, London afternoon. If she remembered me from the interviews I’d done with her before her disappearance, she didn’t let on. Then again, with the number of people stars encounter once or maybe twice in their lives, I guess every face they see must look vaguely familiar.
Her car wasn’t there; the driver must have parked at the door on the other side of the building. There was just a bunch of teenage girls hanging out on the street. Most of them ignored Pussy—they were here for Frankie, although I suspect they were actually here for each other and Frankie was just the excuse—but Pussy didn’t ignore them. She stood facing them, motionless, as if she wasn’t quite sure what to make of this unusual audience. Then an older girl—eighteen, nineteen, who didn’t look part of the clique—peeled herself off of the car she’d been leaning against and walked over to her. Pussy switched on that embarrassed, childlike smile she had whenever it looked like some kind of attention was coming her way.
The girl said something to her, I couldn’t hear what. And all at once Pussy lashed out at her, arms whirling everywhere, all the while making this weird bellowing sound like a wounded animal. They must have been watching on the security monitors because seconds later two studio guys shot out and bustled the girl away. Frankie soon followed. He ran over to Pussy and held her by the shoulders—not intimately but quite formally, almost at arm’s length, like they were a couple of awkward schoolkids being taught to ballroom-dance. The girls lined up in the curb like it was a mosh pit and stared at them both, grinning.
“What the fuck was that all about?” one of the guys asked me when Pussy had gone back inside with Frankie and the girls outside had been dispersed. I shrugged. His guess was as good as mine. Though I was to find out soon enough.
I was walking back to the tube station when a car pulled up and the back window rolled down. It was Pussy, offering me a lift. Since her flat was the other side of London to mine, it was curiosity more than anything else that made me accept. She clearly wanted to talk, although why she chose a rock journalist and not a shrink—other than the fact that we’re definitely cheaper and usually better briefed—I couldn’t tell you. I was surprised at quite how much she did say, though, considering how quiet she had been in the studio earlier, and considering her habit in the interviews we’d done before of doing little more than lip-sync the thoughts of the band’s guitar player, her lover, Taylor, the man whose death brought on that weird disappearing act of hers.
“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked me. She didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, whether there might be this invisible audience, you know, watching everything you do. Applauding sometimes. Sometimes chucking bottles of piss.” She gave a small laugh. “Just, you know, there. So you’re never actually alone.”
“Is that how it feels,” I asked her, “now you’re back in the goldfish bowl?” and she massaged the frown between her eyebrows and stared out of the window at a woman trying to negotiate a baby stroller across the road between the moving cars.
“I’m not so sure it’s a good idea,” she said after a long pause. It was hard to say if she was referring to the mother and baby or her comeback. As our car turned the next corner into a quieter side street she remarked, “That woman at the studio. Do you know what she said?” For the first time since I’d got in the car with her, she looked me directly in the eyes, waiting for me to say something.
“No, but by the look of it, it wasn’t particularly pleasant.”
“She said Taylor had sent her to me.”
“Hmm.” I raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“She said that Taylor was watching me. That he knew everything I was doing.”
“Him and Jesus Christ,” I muttered.
“And she also said she was fucking him.”
“Taylor, not Jesus, I take it?”
She frowned.
“Look,” I added, “one thing I do know is that weirdos will never worry about extinction. There’s always some nut giving Jim Morrison head or having Elvis’s love child. It’s the celebrity-death thing. They can’t get their brain around it. They’re crazy about someone they never knew in the first place, so the lack of the little green blip on the monitor isn’t going to be of any great significance to them.”
“No,” she interrupted, “it wasn’t like that. She said she didn’t care whether or not anyone believed her because soon enough we would know the truth. Because I wasn’t the only one who was making a comeback, she said—Taylor was too.”
“I’d say you were in a better position.”
“No listen, she told me Taylor had laughed at the idea of me trying to do a record without him. She said he told her to tell me, ‘Anyone can make a start in rock music. It’s the end that kills you.’ And it just sounded so much like something Taylor would say that I flipped out. I think if they hadn’t stopped me, I might have killed her.”
As she spoke, her face was blank, like someone utterly defeated. If it hadn’t been for the fact that half an hour ago I’d seen what was going on between her and one of Britain’s hottest young popstars, I’d have said that this was a woman who still wasn’t over the shock that when Taylor died, she didn’t die too, since all her energy had been wired up to him. When we pulled up at her place, she shook my hand distractedly and said good-bye, like at the end of an interview. I noticed that she was wearing a silver identity bracelet with the name “Taylor” on her wrist. “Let’s meet again sometime,” she said. She didn’t invite me in.
Do you remember when the story broke in the tabloids about Pussy and Frankie Rose? Early one morning a postman had seen them slipping into Frankie’s houseboat—sorry, “love boat”—and he figured the newspapers ought to share in his joy. After several nights stalking them, the paparazzi were rewarded with a front-page shot of the couple’s faces, smudged with sex, framed by the boat’s small wooden doorway. The Sun did itself proud:
Mad for the Buoy! It was old hands on deck when the 25-year-old pop superstar invited the 41-year-old former rock singer Pussy on board his Love Boat to show her his captain’s log! Since Frankie first moored the brightly painted canal-boat the Bloody Rose outside his swank, £3 million home in London’s exclusive Little Venice, there has been no shortage of beautiful girls lining up to scrub his plank. Which makes his latest choice in ship’s mate even stranger. Pussy—real name Terri Allen—is old enough to be his mother! Nevertheless the odd couple gave the local fish a few headaches as they rocked and rolled the boat all night long! When we asked Frankie about the new woman in his life, his answer was unprintable. As for Pussy, she’s saying nothing—mum’s the word!
A sixteen-year age difference, and from the fuss the papers made you’d have thought she was a pedophile. The rock press wasn’t much better. One of them said she should change her name from Pussy to Snatch, as in “cradle snatch.” Little wonder she and Frankie kept the relationship quiet. Odd thing, though, is that even when they were all over the papers, they never really went public. Not even when the rumors appeared that she was pregnant with his child.
She was in Los Angeles with Jack Mackie, her manager, to sign a big American comeback deal—Frankie planned to produce her album—when she flicked through the channels on her hotel television and stopped on MTV. It was a news report—shaky video footage of her lover dying on the pavement outside a North London nightclub in another woman’s arms. Pussy didn’t scream. Didn’t even cry. She just quietly left her hotel room, walked the few yards up the hill onto Sunset Boulevard, and lay down in the road. Just lay there. If it was a suicide attempt it was a pretty bizarre one—the cars, inching along the boulevard at their usual funereal pace, had no trouble stopping, in fact were so used to grinding to a halt for no reason that no one even hooted. Then Jack came running up, held up one hand like
a cop to stop the traffic—which was already motionless, but I guess he felt the need to do something useful—and scooped her into his arms.
Holding her close to his chest, he carried her down the hill and along the covered, fairy-lighted path that led into the Eden West lobby. The staff were lined up and watching, as if the master was returning with his new bride, carrying her over the threshold. Someone held open the door to the pool and Jack swept through, past the gawping guests sitting by their low-calorie snacks at the poolside café tables, past the power-swimmers and maids and the Mexican gardener hosing down the giant leaves of the tropical plants in the hotel’s back garden, and carried her into her suite, laid her down gently on the bed, closed the blackout blinds, and crept into the next room to phone the front desk and tell them that under no circumstances should they be disturbed.
The story I heard was that after Jack left her room, Pussy emptied out the minibar and stared at the TV until the news report came back on. That night she started bleeding on the carpet. When the maid found her the next morning, curled up on the floor in the center of the stain, she refused to leave for the hospital until they’d cut out the blood-soaked patch of carpet and put it in a plastic laundry bag in the empty minibar. It might have been apocryphal, of course—there had been a number of those kind of stories doing the rounds since Pussy had gone public about her breakdown and told how for years she’d obsessively hoarded all her hair and body waste and everything, I don’t know, either afraid of letting go of the past or reclaiming her body for herself.
All I do know is that the record company booked her into the Shining Star Institute—the rehab-cum-psycho spa that Cal West’s controversial shrink had set up for rich, damaged stars. I was interviewing one of its regulars, Carrie Gibbs, not long afterwards, and she told me she was there at the same time as Pussy and had tried to befriend—as she put it—“a sister in need.” But Pussy wouldn’t speak. “Not even in psychodrama class,” said Carrie, which she found most unsettling. Carrie had had her septum rebuilt four times, had been arrested once for stalking a former boyfriend after he quit their band, and still wouldn’t gig in any town with an h in its name on the advice of her psychic, but the concept of a star who didn’t want to talk about herself was about the sickest thing she could imagine.
But, coincidentally or otherwise, Shining Star was exactly what Pussy needed. When she finally left the place, it was arm in arm with, of all people, Spike. He’d just spent three months in the Institute’s sex addiction clinic—part of a deal his lawyer managed to broker with a California judge who loved his records, after one of Spike’s less salubrious encounters with a young fan. Judging by the smile on Spike’s face, the regime wasn’t quite as harsh as the U.S. court system might have liked.
Despite the fact that Pussy was over twice the age of Spike’s usual choice of companion, the relationship continued in the outside world. I’d never have believed it, but Spike did wonders for her. The big test was the night he took her to the Whisky a Go Go to see Kunt, that Pussy tribute band; she passed with flying colors. Spike and Pussy held hands at the back of the room, swinging their arms back and forth like a couple of besotted teenagers, as three girls in boy-drag and a guy up front in peroxide wig, fishnets, and fuck-me shoes ran through all her old hits. Spike laughed uproariously when Pussy’s doppelganger opened the drawers of the filing cabinet on the left of the stage and bombarded the whooping crowd with jam-dipped tampons, More surprisingly, Pussy laughed too. No one had ever seen her so animated. By all accounts they were inseparable. Until, that is, that night at J.D.’s.
J.D.’s Bar & Grill was the hottest nightclub on the Strip. Its owners were three big-name actors with delusions of rock stardom who had a side band by the name of Meat. Because of their work commitments, Meat didn’t get to play too often—for which music lovers can offer up thanks—but when they did, real rock stars, enticed by the kinds of girls and drugs serious film money could buy, would always come by to hang out or jam. Which was how it was on the night of the Diet Cola Incident.
Just after midnight, after a set by a forgettable local band, Meat took the stage, to exaggerated cheers. Each time it launched into a cover song, someone in the room would urge a celebrated tablemate to get up and join in. Pussy had insisted, despite Spike’s objections, on a table at the back, out of the range of fire, but the actor-bass player spotted her. “Pussy!” he yelled, pointing her out to the lighting man, who followed his arm and put a spot on her. The actor-drummer tattooed out a drumroll that sounded like bean cans tumbling downstairs as the bassist jumped off the stage and slalomed between the tables to where she was sitting. He bowed to her flamboyantly and, asking Spike’s permission, took her hand and pulled her up out of her chair. As she let him lead her to the stage, the audience stood and applauded vigorously, like at the Oscars. Meat fell to their knees and salaamed in extravagant worship. It was the first time Pussy had set foot onstage since Taylor’s death.
The band struck up the old Pussy hit “Sleepwalker.” For a moment no one, herself included, was sure if she would sing or run away. Then she lifted the mike off the stand, her eyes preternaturally bright. She crossed her right leg over her left and swayed on the spot like a little girl. She fingered the microphone provocatively and gazed across the heads of the celebrity crowd. At Spike. Who was gazing at the pumped-up breasts of the teenage blonde who’d taken over Pussy’s chair and was assiduously, meticulously massaging the cock jutting from his open fly.
Pussy sprung off the stage. She landed awkwardly on one foot, breaking a stiletto heel. It gave her a lopsided walk as she lumbered through the staring faces back to where she’d been sitting. Spike was grinning. The girl’s mouth was frozen into a startled sex-doll O. With the agility of a center-forward, Pussy aimed her foot at Spike’s crotch. Her shoe, already fatally damaged, flew off and hit the signed, framed black-and-white on the back wall of Johnny Depp playing a guitar. Spike laughed uproariously and raised his glass to her. Pussy shimmered with rage.
Her eyes zoned in on the bottle of Diet Coke the girl had been drinking. So perfectly, so ludicrously Californian. No alcohol—the girl was under twenty-one—and God help her if she lit a cigarette, but hand job, no problem. Snatching up the coke bottle, Pussy hurled the contents over them. The way the girl screamed, you’d have thought it was boiling oil. She kept on screaming until the lights came on and all eyes, those of the actor-band in particular, were on her. The waitresses came by with clean towels, wiped the chair, replaced her drink, led her, soothingly, to the ladies’ room. The next day, Pussy moved out of Spike’s Franco-Beverly Hills château and into a suite overlooking the back gardens at the Eden West hotel.
Which is where she was the next time I saw her. I’d been summoned to Los Angeles by Rex, the singer with the heavy metal band Shoot 2 Kill. A perverse character, he had announced that he was going to make a solo album with a middle-aged country singer, LeeAnn Starmountain. Since for some reason I’d not yet quite worked out Rex had adopted me as his private Boswell, he told his record company to fly me to L.A. so he could discuss the project with me. I’d have done a lot more than that at that particular moment for a flight out of London—a long story, maybe I’ll tell you later—but I stood my ground and insisted on a room at the Eden West, and that’s what I got.
As soon as I checked in I changed into a bikini, grabbed the plastic bagful of British magazines and Sunday newspapers I’d brought for the trip, and headed for the outside Jacuzzi in the garden at the back. The Jacuzzi was empty, steaming in the evening air, a sunken circle tiled in black, dotted with tiny underwater lights and framed by a mini-jungle of glossy tropical plants. A world smelling of jasmine and chlorine. There was a wooden post with an intercom and a big red button that connected to the front desk. I pressed it and ordered a large, crushed margarita. The Jacuzzi sprang into action and I stepped into the bubbles forcing their way up through the water. Leaning back, I rested my head on the tiled surround. Hot water pummeled my shoulders, a cool bree
ze skimmed my face.
The waiter soon appeared with an enormous stemmed bowl of gray-green slush. He placed the tray by the pool, took out his lighter, and touched it to the tequila in the scooped-out lime shell on top. It twitched into flame. I signed the tab damply and peeled the News of the World off the top of the pile. On the cover of the newspaper was a pneumatic young blonde who looked all of sixteen, and a smaller inset picture of Spike. Big red letters told me to turn to the center pages for the full story, and I did as instructed, sipping my margarita. When someone spoke my name the glass almost flew out of my hand.
It was Pussy. She was standing on the edge of the steps dressed in a fifties swimsuit and a white hotel bathrobe. “Hey there, mind if I join you?” She dropped the robe carelessly by the steps so that the bottom dangled in the water and stepped down and sat right across from me, stretching herself out, her feet floating up through a carpet of froth. The bubbles coughed at her bathrobe, willing the rest of it to fall in.
“What are you doing here?” she said with a smile, like she’d run into an old friend. “When did you get in?”
“Just arrived, twenty minutes ago,” I said, and outlined my mission. When I got to the subject of Rex, her eyes lit up.
“That guy has the cutest butt, don’t you think? But I hear he’s pretty psycho.”
I confirmed that both observations were true. Pussy shrugged. “Hey, all the men in this town are either fruits or nuts. A girl needs a dick transplant to get laid around here.” I didn’t think it would help this unexpected new atmosphere of fellowship to point out that until a month or two ago she had been dating Spike and that she didn’t look as if she’d been too deprived in that department since.
“Mmm,” she said, eyeing my glass, “good idea.” She reached out and hit the red button. I noticed that the Taylor identity bracelet was gone. “Drink up,” she commanded, “there’s another one on its way. So, what’s the gossip back home? Ah!” she said, spotting my pile of publications. “Are those new? Brilliant. Can I?”
Too Weird for Ziggy Page 10