“Be back,” I say. “A minute.”
Wandering through the crowd, I hunt for her, concentrating my jittery thoughts on finding her dark, slicked-back hair. Turning the corner of the corridor behind the DJ booth, I see her pushing a woman up against the wall, her hands on the woman’s hips.
They’re kissing deeply.
An arm’s length away, I stare at them, aware of the sick feeling, deep in my gut, of things gone completely wrong.
The woman notices me staring and stops kissing Wendy, nodding my way.
Wendy peels back from her and then follows her eyes to me.
“Hi. This is my friend Maureen,” Wendy says. “We go way back.”
“Yes,” I say. “I can … um … see that.”
The woman strokes Wendy, peering at me like a cat defending its kill.
“She told me she knows where to score more party favors,” Wendy says, leaning back into the woman’s long body.
The woman nods.
“Okay,” I say. “But everyone’s ready to head out.”
“Where are you heading?” Wendy asks.
“Home,” I say. “The loft.”
Wendy whispers to the chick.
“We can meet you there,” Wendy says.
“You both?”
Wendy nods slowly, biting her lip suggestively.
“How long?” I ask, not sure that I believe her.
“I don’t know,” Wendy says, with a shrug. “An hour or so.”
She looks up to Maureen, who nods.
“Why don’t I come with?” I ask.
“No,” the other woman says, shaking her head. “It’s late. She wouldn’t like a boy there at this hour.”
“We’ll meet you,” Wendy says.
Looking the two over, I try to find a clear thought—something firm I can trust in my twitchy, nervous haze.
Then the chick slides her hand down Wendy’s chest, and runs her thumb over her nipples once, twice, until they rise through the thin fabric of her dress.
Staring at Wendy’s hardening nipples, I understand things more clearly.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll leave the bottom door unlocked. Just knock. I’ll be there.”
“See you in an hour or so,” Wendy says.
Jennifer drives us back to the loft, and once inside, she and Jonathan run to their mattress.
Leaving the lights off, I put on Floodland by the Sisters of Mercy only loud enough so I don’t have to listen to them, and I then throw myself down on the couch to wait. I think of Wendy and that woman and start turning their bodies over in my mind, the different hair colors and shapes, imagining how different the flesh of each one would feel.
Suddenly I notice my eyes have closed, and I force them open again, refusing to fall asleep before they can arrive. Floodland is long over, but now I think I hear whispering and giggling, and that pisses me off even more, so I put on a new CD: I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits, by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult.
Fitfully, I keep shifting, first sitting with feet on the ground, then with my legs over the armrest, then lying down, and then back to sitting up.
Then the thought of being duped blasts away all fog in my head.
You’ve been played, Scott. Dipshit. How could I fall for that crap?
I curl up, furious with myself. I want to cover my head in aggravation. Sleeping would be better. I’m so tired but so very awake. Jitters force me to pace around for a few minutes. As I sit back down, anxious exhaustion settles in.
It’s been well over an hour. So yes, I’m screwed.
Fidgety, I get up and pace again. That takes too much energy, so I fall down onto the couch. Stupid waste of time, to prove that Lynda doesn’t matter. Who cares?
I snort in derision at myself.
Thinking takes too much effort now. I lie out along the couch. As I fade in and out of consciousness, my earlier sense of being admired and of succeeding at last succumbs to humiliation.
So sorry, Sammy. None of this was supposed to happen—not without you.
Chapter 38
Mannequin
—Jennifer—
We’re sleeping in after last night at Berlin.
Well, he’s asleep. I’m looking at his face, his eyes softly closed, lips quietly resting together, a ray of light falling across his cheek. I trace the curve of that cheek with my finger’s shadow and feel like the heroine of a teen romance novel. I should be thinking of how we’ll always be together and how lucky I am. Instead I’m thinking about the sex, feeling as if I had wings. But that’s strictly adult reading.
“I want to rip you to pieces and swallow you all,” I whisper. “I love you so.”
Leaning down, I hold my lip barely over his, and let his warm breath stroke my face.
Do you gaze at me like this when I’m asleep? Do you feel anything like this? Or feel anything at all? The teen heroine realizes she can’t know, even if you say yes, and she gets scared. Then she tries to wake you to find out if she can see the love in your eyes.
Quickly I kiss his cheek where the slice of light falls across it, and he stirs but stays asleep. The teen heroine’s still alone, wondering what you feel.
I comb the hair away from his brow with my fingers and delicately tuck it behind his ear. He shifts again, more this time, but still refuses to wake. The teen heroine’s worried that this is a sign. She’s unsure what to do. Rolling my fingers through the ray of light, I make the shadows jump over his face.
Adult novels are more exciting. So I run my fingers, lightly, across his cheek and then down his neck, down his shoulder, through the blond hair on his chest to his belly, and then over his hip, feeling my fingers rise and fall with the contours of his body.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hey,” I say, looking into his eyes. Does she see the love there?
He pulls his fingers delicately down my cheeks.
When I’m here with you, you’re thinking of me, right?
He’s staring at my body now.
Or do you think of your music? Some song of yours?
He sits up.
“Little boys’ room,” he says. “Be back.” He kisses me and then pushes himself off the mattress.
“Pffft.” Not exactly romantic. Or sexy.
As I watch him walking across the floor, a feeling of déjà vu hits. I can’t place the moment. A movie? An ad? The scene is of someone’s lover walking, naked, through a raw space dramatically lit with the same shafts of light, cutting through twilight.
It looked perfect. I am sure I envied that I wasn’t part of it.
This time it is me. I’m watching my lover in my place. I’m the one to wonder about and to be envied.
I’m enjoying being her. She’s so unlike any of the awful girls Ron had me pretend to be in the shots he took for Wendy, which she put in a talent book at Les Femmes.
Then Jonathan insisted on framing and displaying three of the shots. I look at the eight-by-tens.
Who’d want to be any of those women? I hate them.
One has me glancing over my shoulder as if I’m a carefree flirt, in a sheer top I’d never even look at on a sales rack. One has me lying down on our couch, sipping a glass of water I pretended was a cocktail; I’m looking up, dramatically, as if I’m a Ewing girl about to drop a bomb on Dallas. The last is of me in suburban corporate drag, standing authoritatively in front of one of our brick walls.
I’m none any of those women. I don’t wear those clothes. I don’t flirt like that. I don’t drink cocktails while plotting to take something over. I’m sure as hell no corporate clone. These are softcore stills of image porn—illusions.
If Ron were here now, he could take shots of who I really am; but we’re both naked, and that’s creepy—as it is here most of the time now. With all these people in t
he loft all the time, it’s as if I’m living on the set of a TV show that peeks in on my life: “Look! Jennifer’s on top of him. Hear what she sounds like. See what she looks like when she wakes up with him. Here’s what Jennifer looks like the morning after sex.”
Suddenly I get it. Jonathan’s showing me off, like everyone else. I’m a prop to you. That’s why you put those photos on the wall: “Lookit! This is who I fuck, everyone. Aren’t you jealous?”
Somewhere inside me, a sick feeling splits wide open. He’s using me, like everyone else.
Right then he steps out of the bathroom.
I pull the sheets over myself. He walks over, nude, showing the studio audience how hot he is, how cool we are. “See, we walk around naked. Look at us strutting. Don’t you want to be us?”
I am not an exhibition.
“Jonathan,” I say.
“Yes?” He stands next to me.
“Why …” I need to be sure to say this right, so he can’t slip away by twisting my words all around.
He kneels in front of me. “Why … what?”
“Why do you have those photos of me hanging on the wall there? Like trophies?”
“It’s something you did. You look good. Ron has people come in. Maybe they’ll see you and—”
“You are showing me off. Like I’m a piece of—”
“I’m showing off what you did. That looks good. Maybe you’ll make some money. I’m only trying to help out here.”
I purse my lips. I doubt that.
“Hey, if you don’t like them, I’ll take them down. No big deal. But I like them most when you’re not here.” He sits beside me. “They let me look at you.”
“I don’t look like that.”
“Well, actually, you do. That is you. But you’re not her, or her, or her. Gotcha. I know exactly what you mean. Everyone has this idea about the long-haired guy who plays and sings. They think I’m having orgies and shooting black tar, or downing a bottle of Bourbon a day—like I live some low-end version of an MTV rock star’s life.
“That goes for you too.” He shakes his head. “The rock star’s girl. You’re that in people’s minds, even in your own clothes. In spite of working in an office.”
He points at the photo of me in the corporate wife’s dress. “That’s you.”
I shake my head.
“Yes, it is. That’s your face. It’s your body. Ron took that photo of you. But not really you. I’m a waiter. I only play a rock star onstage. You’re Jennifer. Loft-living urban homesteader and assistant producer. You only play suburban corporate droid in black-and-white prints.”
That had helped for a while. But things only got worse when they should have gotten better, starting with Wax Trax! finally releasing Mercurial Visions’ EP a few weeks later.
This was supposed to be like the triumphant scene at the end of the movie—everyone rooting for them, at the edges of their seats, and then—yes, they do make it!
But all this has done is make me wish that they never met that A&R guy or recorded “Joie de Vivre,” and that no one had heard of Mercurial Visions.
Before all this, we were only dreaming about what might happen. No one knew us except when they played out. Then, Jonathan was only my boyfriend. Now that he’s a rising rock star, I’ve turned into the rising rock star’s lover.
I don’t like getting pushed around like this.
Sure, when Wendy got me out of Wild Hair Salon’s School of Massage Therapy—that softcore whorehouse—and gave me a real job at Les Femmes, I went from almost-masseuse to executive assistant, and now to assistant producer. I chose those promotions.
This new crap is happening to me, and things keep getting weirder and weirder.
Les Femmes was strange enough before—full of pretty boys and pretty girls, the talent, plus their managers, the photographers, the producers, the scouts, and the advertising people, all playing this twisted popularity game. Sure, I had to play, but as the boss’s assistant, I could to stay mostly apart, touching it only when I had to, as if it were a deck of Community Chest or Chance cards. But then my photos went into circulation, and I’m talent now, getting examined, picked over, and discarded, people flashing cash in my face that I’ll never get. “Just smile, girl. Smile.” So now I’m supposed to play in the game. I won’t. I hate it. And I won’t pretend to be those softcore illusions.
Worse, “Joie de Vivre” gets this killer review in the Tribune—one I wish had never gotten written.
Joys of Love, Loss and Clubs
M. Isbister
Chicago Tribune Electronic Music Critic
1/18/89
Mercurial Visions “Joie de Vivre” Wax Trax! 4-song EP Five Stars
Releases are rated on a scale of one to five stars
A debut release can be killed by misperceptions, especially when it comes from a label known for its hard-driving industrial bent. If it’s Wax Trax! and the band’s from Chicago, it’s going to be Al Jourgensen, with an assortment of other musicians: Ministry, Revolting Cocks, 1000 Homo DJs, and now this one.
So it will play out like this: In the store, a disc from a band you think you’ve heard of catches your eye. It looks good in the rack. You think “Why not?” pick it up, flip it over, and see Wax Trax!. Then you either put it back because you hate industrial, or you plunk down your money for something you know you’ll like, because you like Al and his projects. Later the CD tray closes and you press the play button, or the stylus lowers, and then … something you never even imagined flows from the speakers—something you really, really like and never knew you did.
This is what the debut EP “Joie de Vivre” by Chicago’s Mercurial Visions sounds like when you first hear it. Each track is utterly danceable—the first and last irresistibly so. More European club music than gritty Chicago industrial, the title track makes you need to dance to this passionate ode to a lover, to the lovers’ physical rapture. Jonathan Stark’s skills as a wordsmith excel here with lines that jump up and grab you, lines you wish you had thought to say to your ex before she walked away that last time, lines he sings with such emotional intensity you can feel her body next to yours. And there is not a dram of sugar—just beat and energy that will hook even the jaded.
This is no one-hit disc. The next track, “Just Walk Away,” follows up physical embrace with kicking loose from someone you should never have slept with in the first place. It’s a good-feeling song about feeling bad. Again the beat sinks into your body and makes it want to move, in anger or relief, for “sometimes it’s best when it’s over,” as Mr. Starks reminds us.
By now you realize this is not Wax Trax! as usual. This band sounds like they left Chicago’s industrial streets for a long stay in Belgium, with a stopover in Ibiza. It’s Front 242’s electronic body music to move to, with a dollop of postpunk attitude, another of industrial might, and ample poetry of the flesh.
The third track, “Amy’s Face,” reaffirms this is not a rehash of some other band but rather something new, real, and important. If you’ve gone to a dance club—and if you’re reading this, you have—you know the scene: A stranger. Throbbing beats. Sweat. As the evening grows late, a face you’ve seen a thousand times before looks fresh, as if you’re seeing it for the first time, but this time you know how it will end.
It’s love in the rhythm zone.
Full of pummeling rhythms, the final cut is “The Ritual,” the club ode to the potent lust—the desires that make us go out, stay up late, drink too much, and dance where it’s safe to live as you want—out loud. It’s a world where anything is always possible—a haven where the only rule is rhythm, and dance is the only work.
For those who passed it by, consider this opportunity knocking a second time. Keep your ears open and your body limber for that song from the band from Wax Trax! that doesn’t sound like Al.
I should feel great and be s
houting “Hurray!” ’cause dreams are happening.
But I liked dreaming better.
Now strangers think they know all these intimate things about me. They think they know we’ve broken up because the song says “sometimes it’s best to just walk away.” They think we later play sex games where he picks me up in a club, pretending I’m a one-night stand. Those are songs about another woman. Only in “Joie de Vivre” does he sing about me. It’s impossible to explain to everyone.
At work, when any of the new kids find out that I’m with the singer from Mercurial Visions, first it’s “wow,” and then it turns to getting the EP and how they’ve danced to the songs. Inevitably it moves on to asking how things really are. If it’s true what he says in his songs.
I don’t know this person. Why is she asking me that? I mean, who is she?
It’s like being poked to see if I’m real—if we’re real. As if everyone’s hoping she’ll hear “it’s only a song” so she can say, “Hah! I knew it. Nothing’s really like that.”
It is real, but only for us. Mostly him and Amy.
It’s so frustrating. Especially since I have no place to escape anymore. Since “Joie de Vivre” and the review came out, it’s been like a parade here in the loft, with people coming and going and hanging out, and the calls. I can’t go and lock myself in my room here; there are no rooms. I’m trapped in the open, exposed. “Here I am, everyone. You’ve seen me in photos. You’ve read about me. You’ve heard about me.”
Jonathan’s been no help. Now that things have gotten extra weird, he’s extra busy. We hardly ever get time to talk. Time to be alone? Only when we’re in bed, and sometimes not even then; if he works late, I go to bed alone. Basically, I’m on my own in this overcrowded loft, reading about him and his band, and listening to songs about his exes, and one about us having sex.
Then, tonight, freakishly, I’m completely alone. A night when I need someone to talk to, no one’s here. The roommate’s gone. Jonathan’s working until late. There’s no rehearsal. No shoot. The last time this happened was before they recorded “Joie de Vivre.”
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