Nellie looks at me for a second, before she starts shaking with laughter. “Sign with the devil, huh? Oh my God, you’re funny. I think you listen to Taylor Momsen way too much, Jen.”
Her warm laughter makes my room warmer and brighter, and part of my tension is gone. Nellie holds up the smaller envelope. “This is your share for our gig on Saturday.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “I’m getting paid already? That was sure fast!”
“Well, we don’t always get paid that fast, Jenny, but I’m glad you didn’t have to wait to get paid for your first gig with us.” She keeps smiling, and caresses me with her dark eyes.
I take the envelope and open it, and my eyes widen. I’m shocked by the amount of money in the envelope, and rendered speechless. I suddenly jump from my desk chair, and throw my arms around Nellie. Immediately, I smell her perfume. I recognize it, it’s ‘Black Opium’. And somehow that seems appropriate, because I suddenly feel as though I’m becoming addicted to her, to her touch, and to her body’s warmth. And when my own body responds, I blush furiously, quickly withdraw from Nellie, and sit back down on my desk chair.
I don’t dare to look into her eyes, but count the bills in the envelope instead. It’s a lot more than I expected, and more than the whole of my old band ever got paid for a single gig!
“We don’t play just for the money of course, we love to rock as you know, but the money’s good to have,” Nellie says, her voice sounding husky.
I nod. I’m overcome by shyness again, and I’m still unable to look into her eyes. We both fall silent, and then Nellie downs the rest of her hot chocolate.
“I should go now,” she says with a sigh, getting up from the sofa. “I need to study for my finals.”
I get up from my chair. “I understand. Emilia needs to study for her finals, too.”
“Yeah, it always gets rough towards the end of the semester. Say ‘hi’ to Emilia, will you?”
“Oh, sure.” I walk to the door with her. “I guess I’ll see you Wednesday?”
Nellie smiles, and nods, as she puts on her coat. “Do you need a ride on Wednesday? I can pick you up again.” It’s a simple statement, however, it sounds as if Nellie is struggling to make it sound casually.
“Yes, that’d be great, Nell, thanks.”
She beams at me. “You’re welcome, Jenny. I’ll send you a text before I leave school.”
We briefly hug, and she kisses me on both cheeks, and then she’s gone.
And hours later I’m lying in bed, trying to find sleep, but I still feel as though I can smell her fragrance and feel her warmth. I miss her, and I hate being alone in bed.
And just as I was thinking that I hated sleeping alone, the door of my apartment opens, and Emilia enters quietly. In the dim light of a flashlight she finds her way to my sofa-bed. When she slides under the comforter I turn around, wrap myself around her, and we kiss tenderly. And I realize how much I love her and crave her.
“Nite, nite, Emi.”
“Nite, nite, Jen,” she says, snuggling into me, and we fall asleep in one another’s arms.
+++
“Holy shit, Jenny, is it true? That you’re one of ‘The Coldhearts’ now?” My little brother Chris calls me on the phone, wildly excited.
I laugh. “Hello to you, too, Chris! Yes, it’s true, and it’s fucking amazing.”
“That’s so fucking cool, Jenny. And the girls in the band are all so hot. Is it true they’re all lesbians?”
“Well, it’s part of our hype to be enigmatic about that, so I’m gonna be cool and tell you I can’t tell you.”
“Whoa, Jenny, you sound like a total rock star already. When’s the next time you’re going to be playing a gig here in our city?”
“I actually have no idea. I know you can go to ‘The Coldhearts’ website to check our tour dates, though.”
“Oh, okay.” Then he laughs. “Our mother’s really, really pissed off by the way.”
I roll my eyes and sigh heavily. “Why’s she pissed of this time?” I know my mother well enough to know that whatever she’s mad about, she’ll put the blame on me.
Chris giggles again. “Well, it is about you again! She actually thinks you do everything you do to fuck with her! She’s like it wasn’t enough for you to be a lesbian! Now you’re a notorious lesbian, and you’re playing in a notorious lesbian heavy metal band. As far as she’s concerned this is the worst thing ever!”
I giggle too. “She’s fucking insane. But how’d she find out?”
“She saw the newspaper article about your concert last Saturday. There was a picture of you with the other girls.”
“There was? Huh.”
“Yeah, you’re practically a real rock star now. Which means…sex and drugs and rock’n’roll, right?”
“I’m going to be enigmatic about that, too, Little Brother. But enough about me! How are you doing?”
“I’m okay. I’m trying to avoid our mother’s weirdness, so I spend a lot of time with Leonie. And I’ve been spending some time with her family, too.”
“Oh, nice! And how’s school these days?”
“Good. Like I said, I’m fine, Mother Hen.”
I sigh and smile wryly. Mother Hen? “Good. I’m glad to hear that.”
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing exciting. I’m working at the wine bar, so nothing rock’n’roll. Tomorrow night’s our next gig, though.”
“I just checked your band’s website. Your next gig is a long way from here!”
“Yeah, I know. ‘The Coldhearts’ play gigs all over the southwest of Germany, sometimes a lot farther from home than our next one.”
“Well, that’s life as a rock star, I guess.” Chris giggles again. “Oh, and the pictures of you on the website are very cool.”
“Yeah, Bette took them. She’s got a day job as a freelance designer, and she’s a fucking amazing photographer, too.”
“Yeah? Cool!” He pauses for a moment. “Oh, shit! I have to go, Jenny! Talk to you soon?”
“Absolutely, Chris! Say ‘hi’ to Leonie for me.”
“And you say ‘hi’ to Emilia.”
“Goodbye, Little Brother! Love you!”
“Love you too, Big Sister! Goodbye!”
+++
I knew our next gig was going to be different when I discovered that we’d be opening for a glam metal band from England. I’d never heard of them before, but apparently they were quite well known. I found it hard to believe at first, but they were actually called ‘Testosterone Poison’! I checked out some of their videos on YouTube and on their website. Their songs have titles like ‘I only love her when she moans’, ‘Make Her Scream’, and ‘Cumming hard’. I also read a few articles about them, and discovered they encourage their female fans to flash their breasts at the band during their shows. And I watched a brief interview with their lead singer, whose actual name is Richard Long, but who calls himself ‘Long Dick’. They actually sounded worse than some of the guys I knew back at the time I was a slut, and that’s saying an awful lot.
I was utterly disgusted, partly by what I’d seen of the cock rockers, and partly by my memories of the guys from my inglorious past. I couldn’t believe ‘The Coldhearts’ were on the same bill as the dickheads, and I told Bette as much.
“The promoter absolutely wanted to have us, Jen,” she said with a grin, “and they pay us a fucking amount of money for this show.”
I still wasn’t convinced, and Bette put her index finger under my chin, making me look at her. “C’mon, Baby Doll, we’re a fucking cunt band and don’t care, remember? We’re the black-hearted Coldhearts, and we’re gonna show those dickheads how to rock.”
All I could do was nod, and hope we wouldn’t actually have to meet them. Unfortunately, we do have to meet them. The venue is a large concert hall, in fact the biggest venue I’ve ever played. Almost the whole of the backstage area is reserved for the headliners, with our band being relegated to a dressing room that’s h
ardly big enough for the four of us. When we leave it, the guys from ‘Testosterone Poison’ are sitting in the lounge we have to pass through to get to the stage. One of them puts down his beer bottle and points at me.
“Hey you!” he says. I sigh. It’s Long Dick, the singer. His blonde hair is nearly as long as my hair, and he’s wearing more makeup than I am, too. He’s also wearing very tight pants, and a leather vest that shows off his hairy chest.
I ignore him and keep heading toward the stage with my band mates. He gets up from the sofa. He points at me again, smirking and leering. “Hey you, with the black hair and the full ass! Want to join me in our tour bus later? You look like you need a good ride.”
His band mates begin to laugh.
I feel Bette put her arm around my shoulder. “Sorry Dick,” she says, “Jet-Black Jenny here is my Baby Doll!” She grins at him. “Well, she’s our Baby Doll, actually, but she’s never gonna be yours!”
Long Dick just stares at me in incomprehension. One of his band mates laughs. “You’re wasting your time, Mate!” he says. I recognize him as their lead guitarist, who calls himself ‘Shane Trousersnake’. “All the chicks in this cunt band play for the other team!”
“The fuck?” says the drummer in disgust. It’s really weird, but I seem to remember all their stage names. He calls himself ‘Alfie Porksword’. “You mean they’re all a bunch of cunt-lapping dykes?”
Bette laughs wildly, and strikes a provocative pose, raising her hands high over her head, making the sign of the horns with both hands, and thrusting her hips out at them. “That’s right, that’s right! Drool, motherfuckers, drool!”
Nellie rolls her eyes and smirks, and Ina shakes with laughter. None of the cock rockers facing us likes being laughed at, and especially not the lead singer. “You teasing cunts! You all need to be fucked in the ass!” he snarls, taking a step closer to Bette. “And I’d fuck you so hard you wouldn’t be able to walk for three whole fucking days, you blonde slut!”
Bette just stares back at him evenly, but I see there’s a hard glint in her eyes. She’s not afraid of him, but I don’t know why. And she’s keeping her cool, but I can’t help losing mine, and I explode.
I take a step forward and stand next to Bette. “Why do you have to do this? Why do you treat us like shit? We all love rock music! We all have that in common! Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Isn’t rock music what really matters to us all?”
My voice is high and too loud, I’m aware of that, and I’m not sure what kind of impression my words make on the guys in the dick band, but at least it takes their minds off Bette.
“Let’s give it a rest, lads,” their bass player, who, I remember, is called ‘Mike Lovemuscle’, and who hasn’t spoken before, puts in a word. “After our show, there’ll be fucking dozens of girls who know how to make a man feel appreciated, unlike this cunting lot!”
Except for ‘Long Dick’ the others laugh. Mike smiles ironically, takes out a joint, lights it, and then hands it to their lead singer. “C’mon, Dick, forget them!”
Dick lets out a deep breath, grabs the joint, and takes a long pull on it. Then he sits down on the sofa again.
We walk past them towards the stage entrance, where Bette stops. She takes me by the shoulders, and locks eyes with me. “Listen, Baby Doll,” she says, “I know the dickheads upset you. But you know what we’re gonna do now? We’re gonna go out there, and show those motherfuckers who we are!” She says it loud enough for Ina and Nellie to hear. “Let’s make it our show! Are you ready to rock, Jet-Black Jenny?”
“Yeah! I’m ready! Let’s rock,” I hear myself reply.
Bette grins like a hungry tigress. “That’s what I want to hear, My Heavy Metal Baby Doll!”
Ina and Nellie are grinning, too, and they pull me into a tight circle so we can begin our pre-show ritual.
“Call us cunt band, we don’t care, we’ll fuckin’ rock the world! Black-hearted Coldhearts, Bitch Goddess Coldhearts, rock, rock, rock!”
After we’re done exchanging High Fives with one another, I quickly glance over my shoulder to the glam rockers. They’re smirking at us, but at least they don’t say anything. Nellie briefly gives me an extra hug, before we take our instruments, and while our intro blasts from the speakers, I follow my new band mates out onto the stage. Looking at them makes me smile. They’re all so beautiful and sexy in their own ways. Of course there’s Bette, and everything she’s wearing tonight shows off her gorgeous figure. Her low cut blood red top displays quite a bit of her full breasts, while her tight black leather pants nicely hug her backside. Ina is wearing a tight black miniskirt, while a pale blue tank top shows off the tattoos that cover her arms. Nellie who walks in front of me is wearing tight black shorts and thigh highs, and a black, cropped tank top. I’m wearing tight black jeans and my favorite green tank top that brings out the color of my eyes, and shows off the tattoos on my arm.
Not many people in the audience tonight seem to know who we are, so not all that much applause greets us. There are more than a few jerks in the audience who catcall us, and demand that we strip for them, but we just ignore them. Except for Bette. As she stands in front of the microphone, she just flashes her tigress smile and raises both her hands in the sign of the horns. And I see a group of girls in the audience thrust their own hands in the air in response, returning Bette’s horn hands salute. Some of our Crazy Bitches are here tonight! Their leader seems to be Jana, the Butch girl I remember from our last gig. Jana catches my eye, and when she grins fiercely at me, I grin back. She and the rest of our little group of fans have come a long way to see us, and it’s good to have their support right now.
We open our set with ‘Savage Rock’ tonight. Nellie pounds out a hard, solid beat, and I join her, and when Bette adds the rhythm of her guitar to my bass and Nellie’s drums, we make the floor of the concert hall shake. Ina makes her own guitar scream, before Bette starts to sing the song’s first line,
‘It doesn’t fucking matter who you really are!’
We all chant our response, ‘Rock is for savages! Rock is for hungry hearts!’
Our Crazy Bitches down there in the crowd know the song well enough to chant the chorus line along with us. And I can see others in the crowd begin to bang their heads along to our beat!
‘It doesn’t fucking matter how you spend your days! Rock is for savages, Rock is for hungry hearts!’
More and more, the crowd is caught up in our rhythm, and more and more members of the audience thrust their hands in the air in the horn-handed salute, and more and more of them chant “Rock is for savages!” along with us…
‘Hear a guitar shred, and you can shred your past! Rock is for is for savages, Rock is for hungry hearts!’
The line about shredding is Ina’s cue to show that she can shred, and how she does! Looking cool and regal, she takes up the song’s theme and elaborates on it, her fingers and her pick moving faster and faster! And when her solo ends, the crowd shouts its approval. Our song ends a few verses later, and to my surprise the audience roars. I begin to smile, sweating, drunk on adrenaline, along with my band mates.
Our set passes quickly, so quickly. Before I know it, we’ve come to the next to the last song in our set, and Bette announces it, saying, “This song is for our special girls who’re in the audience tonight, the girls we call our Crazy Bitches!” Our fan girls respond by screaming. Bette grins wickedly, when she adds, “This song’s called ‘Drive’!” And that makes our Crazy Bitches scream even louder than they have already.
‘I’ll hold you up and drive you all night…’
Bette does her best to drive the whole audience into a fever, and she succeeds. And she drives me into a fever, too. I’m covered with sweat, and when I glance back at Nellie, our eyes lock, and I lose myself in her dark eyes, her molten chocolate colored eyes…
‘Your fingers are trembling and your heart is heavy and red…’
When the song ends, the audience’s cheers and whistles are dea
fening, and so are the screams of our Crazy Bitches. Without waiting for them to quiet we launch into the last song of our set. It’s called ‘Coldhearted Bitch’, and our fan girls know it very well. They sing along with Bette, ‘I’m a coldhearted bitch, and I bang who I want!’
When this last song ends, there’s incredulous laughter at how outrageous Bette is, but there are cheers and screams too. We bow to the audience, grinning, and then we hurry backstage.
Getting back to the lounge, we discover that we seem to have made a certain impression on the members of ‘Testosterone Poison’.
“Not bad for a cunt band,” says Long Dick with a smirk.
“Well, that’s quite a fucking compliment coming from a dickhead band like you.” Bette laughs good-naturedly.
Long Dick and his band mates shake with laughter. The whole backstage lounge reeks of marijuana, which probably helps to explain the change in the cock rockers’ mood.
In the meantime we hear the audience chant ‘Coldhearts, Coldhearts, Coldhearts!’ The promoter approaches us, suggesting that we play an encore, but only one. We agree, and head back out onto the stage.
Like the week before, we play our hard rock version of ‘Love Potion No. 9’. Of course Bette doesn’t adapt the line ‘I told her I was a flop with chicks,’ and the crowd’s laughter shows no one believes her. However, she does change one of the lines to ‘I started kissing every girl in sight!’
When our final song for this evening ends, the audience cheers, and we bow and curtsy to them. The lesbian faction cheers like crazy, and we throw them air kisses.
Some of our fan girls come backstage to see us after our show. They’re all pretty chill this time, and we chat with them briefly, and pose for pictures with them.
“Anyone want to see the cock rockers perform?” Ina asks at some point.
Butch girl Jana sticks one finger down her throat and makes violent retching noises. We all shake with laughter.
“Let’s go home, girls,” Nellie says, and we all agree.
+++
This time the after-show party didn’t last very long. When we arrived at ‘The Coldhearts’ house after our gig, my band mates and I, and the road crew took turns showering, and then we all gathered in the living room for a few drinks. The others were exhilarated. They talked about how amazingly well our performance went, and they laughed about the insane behavior of the cock rockers. At first I took part in their joyful chat and laughter, but suddenly I felt so tired. Had I been high on adrenaline before, I seemed to be having an adrenaline hangover now. Nellie was as quiet as I was, and every now and then I’d catch her watching me. I was even too exhausted to smile at her. When she saw that I was about to nod off, she came to the armchair I was lounging in, took my hand, and pulled me up. Nellie led me upstairs to the guest bedroom. I dropped down on the bed, and fell asleep immediately, sadly not for very long however.
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