Rock n Roll Babes from Outer Space

by Linda Jaivin

  C’mon, Jake, work it out.

  The very last thing he could recall was scrambling past the bouncers at Selinas and up onto the stage for a record sixth time. One moment he was airborne, palms away, sailing over heads and hands. Then there was a brilliant flash of light, an eerie silence and a sweet, melting feeling. The next thing he knew he was swaying on his tingletoes, this alien girl’s mellifluous voice lapping at his ears, her streaming words wilding his brain Yaddayaddayaddayadda.

  Alien girl?

  Baby, she said her name was. Baby Baby. Where had he heard that before? As she chattered on, she answered each of the questions that popped into his head. The bizarre thing was, it occurred to him with a jolt, he hadn’t actually asked them. He hadn’t so much as opened his mouth, except to gape. She was reading his mind. How’d she do that? This was seriously spinning him out.

  Her gaze was so intense it hurt.

  Baby may have had the rock-chick look down pat, but she didn’t have a clue how to behave in an acceptable rock n roll manner. As any bean could tell you, contemporary rock n roll manners are very much tied up with slacker etiquette. And slacker etiquette requires, among other things, that no one look anyone else in the eye for too long or too attentively, particularly a person you are speaking to. To a slacker, excessive direct eye-contact goes beyond rude to approach the physically painful. Instinctively dodging the javelin of her regard, Jake glanced nervously around him.

  Things were slowly coming into focus now. She had sat down upon a ripe-strawberry red sofa the rolling surface of which suggested a giant tongue. Voodoo Lounge? Did she say something about Voodoo Lounge? The linguiform sofa appeared to be licking her bottom. Trying not to stare, he shifted his gaze slightly and noticed that facing the lounge at a slight angle was another sofa, this one covered in blueberry suede and shaped like a giant shoe. A wall-mounted control panel of some kind pulsed luminously in the corner. It was all very SF.

  Yet for all the high-style high-tech, the place was a brothel, a total, absolute, shambolic, slobbiferous mess. Clothes and zines and CDs were strewn everywhere. A bit like his own room back in Newtown really. Except the clothes were all new, and this place lacked that ambient je ne sais quoi that comes from spicing up the dry goods with a few near-empty beer bottles and half-eaten vanilla slices and a grease-soaked pizza box or two. He noticed that there were a few plaques that looked like stolen street signs but which bore names like Red Giant and White Dwarf. Star signs? She stole star signs? Posters also decorated the walls. Jake made out the familiar face of Kurt Cobain on one of them. He found the sight comforting until it occurred to him that Kurt was dead too.

  Not too. He’s dead. I’m not. I’m not dead. I’m not dead. Jake thought if he repeated this enough he might even convince himself.

  Alien girl?

  Visions of body-snatchers, brain-suckers, fire-starters, cocoon artists, cosmic apes, liquid skies, parallel universes, purple people-eaters, David Bowie, Sigourney Weaver and the second-to-the-last Dr Who tumbled helter-skelter through his mind. He searched for the right response but the right response was quaking in some dark corner of his brain with the rest of his rational faculties as the visions shot through.

  Yorp! Yorp! Yorp! It was at this moment that a small reddish creature with hideous fur like an old shag-pile rug, a long narrow snout, floppy ears and prehensile toes bounded into the room, making a peculiar sound that was halfway between the yap of a small dog and the pop of a cork from a champagne bottle. Instead of pupils, its bulging round eyes pinwheeled yellow and black. Although it utilised both its front and back paws, it relied more on the back ones, hunching over with a peculiar gait that Jake had only ever previously observed in roadies. Yorp! Yorp! Yorp! Before he had time to consider the implications of this fresh apparition, it hurtled itself across the room and onto his left leg.

  Its tiny body wrapped tightly around Jake’s left knee, the creature began humping furiously. The alien girl hooted with laughter at this. That was a bit mean. No time to reflect on that now, however. Until he removed this furry tumour from his leg, he was in no position to reflect on anything. Revor was way beyond disgusting. What’s worse, his snaky pink tongue, poking out of his puckered and off-centre little mouth, had threaded itself through a rip in Jake’s jeans and, with a series of moist ministrations, embarked on an upwards exploration of his thigh. Jake vainly attempted to shake it off, push it off, pry it off, peel it off and slap it off, all the while trying to maintain some semblance of cool. As Baby, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, finally suctioned the little creature off him, Jake felt something wet dribble down his knee. He looked down to discover a stream of bright pink fluid. His stomach slam-danced against his ribcage; nausea diluted his cocktail of wonder and fear. ‘What is that thing?’ he gasped.

  ‘It’s only an oioi,’ shrugged Baby, tickling its ear. ‘Don’t you have them on Earth?’

  It was Revor’s turn to look shocked. Only an oioi?

  Hearing her matter-of-fact tone, Jake cringed at his own display of panic. Wherever this girl came from, alien nation or hallucination, he desperately wanted to impress her. At the same time, he suspected he was already failing miserably. This was a new experience for Jake. Jake usually found it much harder work extricating himself from a woman’s arms than insinuating himself between her legs in the first place. Tears sprang to his eyes.

  Tears had sprung to Revor’s eyes as well. Baby forgot about Jake for a moment. She ootchikootchikooed her by now thoroughly pathetic pet. Sniffling, it wriggled around on her lap.

  Jake found what happened next simply unbelievable. He’d always fancied himself quite the sophisticate. To his friends, Jake was a walking encyclopaedia of sexual knowledge: he could extemporise for hours on such arcana as the relative merits of the cat position and the doggie style, the joys of butterfly kisses (done with the eyelashes), the advantages of mint-flavoured condoms (‘freshens her breath at the same time’), and how to handle piercing emergencies—for instance if your eyebrow ring catches on her labial jewellery (‘make no sudden moves’). Jake was also an avid reader of his flatmates Skye and Saturna’s subscription copies of Australian Women’s Forum.

  But nothing he’d ever seen or done or heard or read could have prepared him for what happened now. It had to be the light…Fucking hell. That was her thigh, for Christ’s sake. Her body was writhing with unabashed pleasure. He could see Revor’s long pink tongue darting in and out of the—what was it? Jesus Christ!

  Revor suddenly jerked his head back, sucked in some O and buried his entire echinoid snout up to the eyeballs. Where his tongue was at this point, Jake didn’t even dare imagine. Gnumgnumgnum came the muffled sounds from way inside.

  Jake was so embarrassed he didn’t know where to put his eyes. He wanted to disappear. He wanted to die. He wanted to throw up. Most of all, he wanted to be Revor. The sensation that, whatever it was he’d gotten himself into, he was already way over his head, grew nearly as fast as his erection.

  After what seemed like an eternity, Baby tired of Revor’s attentions. ‘Mmmmmm,’ she sighed. She extracted him from the tiny orifice on her thigh—his snout popped out with the sound of someone plucking a string on a double bass—and gave him a hug. Revor panted happily, then, squirming out of her grasp, dropped with a ka-thunk to the floor and began chasing his tail, whirling-purling, until his form began to shimmy and blur like the blades of a propeller. Revor always found there was nothing like a good twirl to clear the mind, refresh the soul and renew the tastebuds.

  Space travel rarara…Agent Mulder rarara…flying saucers rarara… Earthling virgin rarara…

  Though Jake’s mind was racing, it still lagged whole laps behind Baby’s spiel. When she began to shapeshift, Earth girl… alien… Earth girl… alien… he sensed he’d lost control of the wheel altogether. Now, with the sudden appearance of two more equally extraordinary alien babes, he crashed into the barricade.

  Knees a-wobble, Jake floored with a thud. As he reeled dizzi
ly into a faint, it occurred to him that this had to be the single most disastrous, humiliating experience he’d ever had with the opposite sex.

  When he opened his eyes again, his chin was resting on the reinforced toe of an exquisitely small army boot.

  ‘Oi,’ spoke the voice that belonged to the feet which occupied the boots that were supporting his face. ‘Don’t scuff the leather, Earth boy.’

  His eyes tracked upwards. From the laced up boot-tops rose a thin leg encased in black leather. Above that, a ripped black t-shirt. Wiry arms were folded over a narrow, boyish chest. This grrrl here is Doll. The face that peered back down at him with a fusion of mild contempt and high amusement was long, angular, pale. A silver bone pierced her elegantly hooked nose and a snarl surfed dangerous lips. Her dark eyes had the intensity of black holes. Through her eyebrows were looped half a dozen silver rings. Her head was shaved, leaving only a short bristly bridge across the front connecting two curved and stiffened devil’s horns of hair that poked out from above her temples. An intricate spider tattoo peeked over the top of her right ear; its delicate web stretched down her neck. She had a dozen shimmering rings on her hands. Apart from the fact that she was green and antennaed, she reminded Jake of Trent Reznor from the Nine Inch Nails. And Trent Reznor, so far as Jake was concerned, was a god. He was kissing the feet of a god. Goddess. It was still terribly awkward and wasn’t helping his self-image. With a grimace, he levered himself up to a sitting position. His brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton wool. Doll Parts. Doll Parts? That name was really familiar too. Where’d he heard it before?

  ‘In your dreams,’ said Doll wryly. Noting his look of surprise, she added, ‘These antennae ain’t just decorative, sweetmeat.’ Doll had her doubts about Baby’s choice of Earthling. He was, after all, their very first abduction and, while there’d surely be more to come, the first carried a kind of symbolic significance, not to mention a certain sentimental value. For one thing, she didn’t see why it couldn’t have been a girl. ‘Where’s Lati?’ growled Doll, ignoring Jake. ‘I’m sure she’s taken my new, whats-hernames? Moc Dartens.’

  ‘Doc Martens,’ said Jake helpfully.

  With an open palm, Doll whacked the side of her head so hard that Jake jumped. ‘Damn Transling-a-tron,’ she growled. ‘Think there’s a bug in it.’

  Jake was now smacked in the gob by a third apparition.

  And that’s Lati. This one he took in from the top down. Lati Dohdidohdoh. An untamed mop of hair as red as the dust of Mars. Widely spaced grey eyes smudged top and bottom with kohl. The kind of girl referred to in Jake’s circles, with deference and awe, as a grunge queen. Her body was as curvaceous as space itself: soft full breasts straining against a short white t-shirt, sexy rounded belly humping out of low-slung jeans, big, luscious arse. Standard green skin and antennae. Encircling the waist of her jeans was a belt that appeared to be woven of the very fabric of the night sky, along which planetary fragments vibrated, collided and smashed.

  Jake’s reality systems were crashing fast.

  Why’s the Earthling sitting on the floor, Lati wondered. Baby shrugged, reached down, grabbed Jake by the hand and hauled him to his feet.

  Jesus! The girl was strong as a mallee bull. What’s more, the touch of her hand was literally electrifying. Jake felt the hairs on his arms and legs stand on end. She patted the seat next to her.

  What’s your name, Earth boy?

  ‘J-Jake,’ he stuttered. God, this was getting worse and worse. He’d never stuttered before in his life. He wanted to press rewind and start again. What was this movie anyway?

  ‘He speaks,’ noted Doll, not overly impressed.

  Latidohdidohdoh, Latidohdidohdoh. The syllables rocked and rolled in the vertiginous funride of his mind. Of course! The Ed Kuepper song! ‘Just sing Ladidodidohdoh’. And Doll Parts—the Courtney Love hit, of course. As for Baby Baby…Doh! Did he feel dumb.

  ‘Well, well, I suppose I should give him some credit,’ conceded Doll. ‘He’s not exactly quick. But he got there in the end. I was beginning to worry.’

  Her eyes fell upon Lati’s waist. ‘Lati, you bitch! That’s my asteroid belt. I’ve been looking for it since we got to this galaxy and you know it.’

  ‘You said I could borrow it,’ Lati defended. ‘Besides, you’ve got all my rings of Saturn.’

  ‘You could’ve asked,’ Doll sulked. ‘I want it back. And’—she pointed to the boots on Lati’s feet—‘my Moc, Doc, thingos as well.’

  ‘Take ‘em back then.’ Putting her hands on her waist, Lati raised her eyebrows and threw Doll a look so cheeky it could’ve been Mama Cass’s arse. Doll stomped over to where Lati stood. She looked her straight in the eye. Keeping her gaze steady, Doll reached down, undid the belt, snaked it out through the loops, and tossed it to the floor. The corners of Lati’s mouth curled up ever so slightly. Doll knelt down on one knee with firm, deliberate movements, untied the laces of Lati’s Docs and loosened the tops. With an upward wave of her palm, she indicated for Lati to lift one foot, then the other. Jerking the boots off, she tossed them aside as well. Doll now hooked a finger in Lati’s waistband and pulled till her stomach was flush against her lips. Lati’s mouth twitched. Doll licked and sucked Lati’s stomach, which Jake suddenly noticed, had no navel. Queasy-o-rama.

  That was nothing compared to what Jake saw next. He felt like he’d entered some mutant jigsaw world where all the pieces had been put together in the wrong place. His hand flew to his mouth. ‘I think I’m gonna hurl,’ he moaned weakly. ‘Wherezaloo?’

  Doll looked up and the three aliens exchanged mystified glances. ‘Hurl’ was coming up ‘to rush, to dash, to throw, to fling; undecipherable in this context’ through their Transling-a-trons. ‘Wherezaloo’ wasn’t coming up at all.

  The moment passed. Jake swallowed, closed his eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again. Four pairs of curious alien eyes—three humanoid, one animaloid—were fixed upon him. Revor, an incurable romantic with an instinctive empathy for any sort of emotional turmoil, scampered over and, intending to comfort, stuck his tongue in Jake’s ear.

  That was the final straw. Jake jumped up, knocking Revor to the ground. Revor landed neatly on his feet, unhurt except in his little furry heart. He’d only meant to help.

  Baby pulled Jake down next to her on the Voodoo Lounge, and leaned towards him. The sweet plum of her mouth was just inches from his…you were everything I’ve always wanted. Inhaling her honeyed breath along with her words, Jake’s stomach settled. His loins began once again, almost imperceptibly this time, to stir. Imperceptibly, perhaps, to your average Earth girl. Aliens, however, are known for nothing if not the sharpness of their senses. They all stared with frank interest at the subtle sinuations of Jake’s trouser snake under the fabric of his jeans.

  Bruise-arsed, dumb-struck and, despite everything, hopelessly on-turned, Jake flushed and covered his crotch with his hands.

  You’re a quiet boy.

  Reaching behind her, Baby pressed a button on the faintly glowing control panel. One of the doors slid open, revealing another pie-slice shaped room. This one was more brightly lit. A laboratory table occupied the centre of the room, behind which stood a bench and cabinets. Hanging from the wall were all manner of sterile-looking tools like medical instruments. Now what?

  Try to stay calm… Baby rose and, standing in the doorway, gestured to him. And welcome to the sexual experimentation chamber.

  Struggling to hang onto some last thread of cool, Jake steadied his voice and said, as casually as possible, ‘So, what brings you to Earth?’

  Baby smiled. Her smile was so dazzling that he had to narrow his eyes and, finally, turn his head. Light poured in sweet, seductive waves from her minty skin, lime-lolly eyes and coconut-ice teeth. It washed over him, embracing him in warm, fragrant tendrils and making him feel suddenly, irresistibly, sleepy. A sweet musk with a touch of nutmeg and orange peel filled his nostrils, and his eyelids succumbed to the pull of a strange, hot g
ravity. ‘You want to know what brings us to Earth?’ she was saying. Jake perceived Baby’s answer but dimly as he slumped down, slid off the lounge and passed over the threshold to Out. ‘Three things, Earth boy,’ she was saying. ‘Just three. Sex, drugs and rock n roll.’

  Sex, drugs and rock n roll indeed. For all their cosmic nous, yoonal kyoool and Moc Dartened sophistication, the girls didn’t understand certain crucial things about life on Earth. They didn’t realise, for instance, that Eros was potentially a big problem for Earthlings. The truth was that Eros was practically out of control. In fact, it was believed in some circles that Eros might just destroy the world.

  Eros. Greek god of love and sexual desire. Son of Aphrodite. Winged nudist. Hormonal hoon. Australian Women’s Forum man of the month, every month. The French tickler of the soul. The imp in every impulse.

  Eros. Biggest motherfucker of an asteroid ever to orbit the ‘hood. Remember the meteor that got T Rex and all the other Dinosaurs Jr and Sr? Next to Eros, that was a mere pebble-ette, a flyweight of a flyby, a gentle lentil.

  Now, Eros, 433 Eros, member of the Amor group to you astronomers, was falling in lust. Love. Whatever. The point is, Eros was falling. Or trying to. And it was all the Babes’ fault. You don’t moon or blow kisses at an asteroid and expect life to go on exactly as before, do you? It’s just common sense, really.

  You want Tales of a Scorched Earth, Miss Mellon Collie? Just wait for Eros to come crashing into your life.

  Back in the saucer…

  Baby looked down at Jake’s prone form. She prodded him with her foot. Though sound asleep, his mouth pursed slightly, as though anticipating a kiss. Underneath heavy lids and a thick fringe of curly brown lashes his eyes darted, chasing a dream. The bold arcs of his eyebrows lay motionless on his high, clear forehead. The silver ring that pierced the left brow glinted in the clinical light streaming out of the sexual experimentation chamber. Baby bent down and touched his cheeks, then brushed her lips lightly over his neck. A potent Earth boy smell, part bourbon-and-coke, part sweat, wafted up into her nostrils and set off delicious vibrations in her antennae. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.