Big on Education

by Laurie Ames

  Chapter 10

  I'll be dreaming my dreams with you/I'll be dreaming my dreams with you. /And there's no other place, /That I'd lay down my face. /I'll be dreaming my dreams with you. – “Dreaming my dreams” The Cranberries.

  JD had rejected her. He had walked out of her office without a backwards glance, despite her pleas to stop so that she could explain herself. She was angry but mostly she was wounded. She went through the motions of her daily work, doing what needed to be done with her usual thoroughness and efficiency. But deep inside, she could feel her heart bleeding.

  She did her best to avoid meeting with JD. So far so good. A few times, JD had tried to come into her office but she had given Chantal strict instructions that she was not to be disturbed by any of the band members, especially the lead singer. Chantal was an oddball and a bit flighty but Miranda kept her around because she followed her orders to the letter.

  But Miranda found out the hard way that she could not command her subconscious the way she did her personal assistant. At night, her dreams were still filled with thoughts of Jason Dunford. Hot, naughty dreams that made her want him more and more with every passing day…

  ***

  Miranda was quickly walking away from JD, towards her parked car. She knew she was dreaming because she was wearing 6-inch-high heels and was still managing to walk away very quickly. In real life, she had never mastered the art of walking quickly when wearing high heels. Also, she did not own a car. Purely by choice.

  “Listen Miranda,” he said, grabbing her hand, stopping her in her tracks.

  “Let Go of Me!”

  He didn't. Instead he turned her around and pushed her onto the hood of the car and kissed her madly.

  Miranda wasn't quite cooperating but that just added fuel to his fire.

  For a moment, his eyes looked golden with warmth…and careless as hell. “Your mine,” he mumbled, over and over again, in between his feverish kisses.

  Little by little, Miranda's resistance melted. She sighed and thought, he really is a great kisser. Her hands rose up of their own accord and went around his neck.

  JD picked her up off her feet, while somehow managing to open the door of her car, and placed her inside. He slid in beside her. At one point, he took off his jacket and placed it delicately on the front passenger seat. He then positioned Miranda on top of the jacket so her skin wouldn’t chafe from the leather seats.

  How very…? Miranda tried to think of the appropriate word but it took a while, what with the anticipation of JD’s skillful tongue wreaking havoc on her thought process. But finally, she found the right word. How considerate!

  JD kissed and licked and touched her all over. They were fast approaching the point of no return when a cell phone intruded upon their reality. Miranda had to interrupt JD three times.

  “What?” he finally murmured from somewhere in the vicinity of her navel.

  “My phone!” Miranda gasped then moaned.

  “What about your phone?” he continued his exploration.

  “Ringing!” was all Miranda could manage before the tremors shook her violently.

  ***

  She suddenly woke up, sweaty, disoriented, with the aftershocks of her dream-induced orgasm still going through her. The orgasm wasn’t the only thing that had crossed over from dreamland to reality, or from reality to dreamland as it were. Her cell phone was still ringing.

  She looked at her alarm clock. Some minutes past 3am. She looked at the caller ID and frowned. Why was one of the band members calling her at three o’clock in the morning?

  “Hello?”

  “Miranda? Please come down to St. Anne’s hospital. There’s been an accident.”

  Chapter 11

  “Your memory is a monster; you forget – it doesn’t. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you – and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you.” – “A Prayer for Owen Meany”, John Irving.

  A cave. A dark cave. The path is so narrow and dark that the safest way to get through is on hands and knees. The earth pressed close around him. He could hardly breathe.

  Suddenly, JD came out into the deepest chamber and found himself face to face with a towering figure, a menacing shadow. He instinctively knew it was a manifestation of all his doubts and fears. His knowledge was confirmed when the shadow grew a pair of dark hands and opened a file cabinet that materialized beside it. Out flew all the memories and feelings that he had repressed over the years.

  His daring escape from the desert rehab “camp” and his subsequent homeless days, living in the streets.

  The two bullies who cornered him one night and forced him to suck them both off. How he vowed after that incident that he would use his talent to become so incredibly rich and famous that no one would ever degrade him again.

  Meeting a music legend who had supposedly disappeared from the face of the earth but was actually living on the streets. By choice.

  The music legend that gave him a guitar with the cryptic advice of “Watch out!” Fame is a double-edged sword,” one week before he died from an overdose.

  His dragon tattoo, chosen because it fit perfectly with how he felt about his hectic, stressful life as a rock star. He had read somewhere that the dragon was a Western symbol of a tyrant who had held fast to a kingdom until all the life had been squeezed out of it.

  His wild ascent of becoming a triumphant rock star followed by his descent into the unruly, drunken days of failure.

  His deliberate, over-the-top shameless behavior that had made him and his band blacklisted in the prestigious rock circles that mattered.

  Rehab. Rehab again. Rehab, one final successful time.

  Miranda.

  Miranda’s rejection… and how that particular file made JD want to ask the shadow to encircle him, suffocate him, destroy him.

  The shadow gladly complied and engulfed him in a car-like mist. The mist solidified into Michael’s car. Michael was behind the wheel, driving JD home.

  Blinding headlights, the honking of horns, the screeching of tires, the big bang…

  Before the blackness had engulfed him, JD had cried out one last word.

  “Miranda!”

  ***

  “Miranda!”

  “I’m right here JD. I’m not going anywhere. Please come back to me. Please let him come back to me. Don’t take him away from me. Do this one thing for me and I’ll never miss another Sunday service for as long as I live.”

  Miranda watched and prayed. She watched as the semi-comatose man that she knew she loved was moaning, twitching and murmuring her name. The idea of losing him terrified her. She prayed fervent, incoherent, disjointed tearful prayers to a God that she had not ever paid much attention to. She vowed and promised and bargained, all in the hopes that the Supreme Being would keep her Jason Dunford alive.

  She sat there, as she felt her heart cracking like glass, spreading its pieces throughout her body. She could no longer bare the sight of him lying there helpless. It felt as if her world had gone dark, like a big curtain being pulled across the sky. She sat there longing for his touch again. Her heart slowed as she realized, I've waited for him long enough. Now he might no longer be mine. She reached for him and held him in silence, rocking him slowly, as if to wake him up. Her tears streamed down her cheeks, soaking his chest. ‘JD, I was honest, truthful and more full of love than you can ever understand.’

  Later that day, her PR contacts came to see her in the hospital to inform her of the “good news” that, because of JD’s accident and subsequent coma, sales of his comeback album were increasing with every hour he remained in a coma. Miranda screamed at them to get out of the room, the hospital, her life.

  On the third day of JD’s coma, the title track ‘Miranda’s Song’ from his comeback album reached number one on the charts. It was the song that he had written for her. Miranda was listening to his song on earbuds while reading the reviews of
the album to JD. That’s when he first opened his eyes.

  Chapter 12

  “I can’t live/With or without you.” – U2.

  Review by Rolling Moss Staff Writer.

  With most rock stars there comes a time when it becomes clear that the days as a major recording force are over. Many of these rock stars carry on touring but most decide to call it quits. It seemed that time was nearing for JD.

  The last time we heard from him, he was auditioning for the job of Screwed Up Rock Star and he got the job. Hate him or love him, lets face it, JD was a force of nature, a colossus, and of course an unapologetic asshole. His life was a mess and it showed up in the single-title album, “Spirits.” That album was laced with alcohol induced riffs about women, sex, sobriety, war, peace and religion. After 10 albums and after selling 150 million copies, was JD even relevant anymore?

  This rock culture icon has now stunned the world by exploding back onto the scene with an album that is the most divisive and immensely popular in recent memory. JD brings old-school fervor to his new album, Phoenix Rising, as though to make clear to the world that he still matters. At the core of the rock star known as JD remains a sincere white-hot desire to be bigger and better than anyone else.

  On Phoenix Rising, already being shortened to PR by fans, the theme is decidedly different. This is grandiose music from a grandiose man, seamlessly confident in the execution of his duty as a reborn Rock star. Hardly any of the twelve songs break the four-minute mark. JD has gotten over his alcohol addiction and his midcareer anxiety about whether he is still cool enough. Now, he just lets it rip.

  Able Abe’s bass is, as always, right in your face while Joe’s trademark guitar sound is filled with echoing harmonics and powerful riffs that offer a fitting wave for the many chant-along choruses to surf on till they reach the back rows of some humongous, packed to capacity sports arena. And that level of precisely honed craft can be sensed throughout the whole album. Overall there is a self-awareness, a self-confidence and positive energy that pushes Phoenix Rising well beyond JD’s competitors and JD’s own previous albums.

  During the exciting auditory terrain of Phoenix Rising, JD will urge you to ponder birth, thanks to the title track (“Phoenix Rising”) that roars to life, signaling the beginning of an auditory journey like nothing else. It's a wonderful feel good song that offers a strong opening to the album. There’s Death as in “Make it your own", God as in "Have you forsaken me", War as in "The War within" and Love as in "Miranda’s song".

  You would be forgiven for thinking that after ten studio albums, JD would have lost his touch on writing great ballads. The production of Miranda’s song is exemplary, particularly when JD’s passionate vocals are layered upon one another, like two lovers – separate, yet deeply connected. The song is built around Joe’s chiming guitar, which complements JD’s vocals perfectly.

  Miranda’s song is an intimate ballad that makes you feel as though you were a peeping tom, a voyeur looking into the sacred space of two lovers as they consummate their relationship with fire and blazing guitar riffs. This, JD seems to be saying, is how you get the audience to pull out their lighters. When JD sings “You’re the reason why I have the shakes” his passion and his grandiosity seem to come from the same region in his heart. It’s a clear reminder that what makes JD a genuine Rock star is not really his clever ideas, or his intelligence or even his trademark voice. It’s the painful sincerity, warmth and passion that all too few rock stars have any clue as to how they can turn them into music. Even the final orgasmic lyrics of the song "Oh baby please" sound far better than any three words have a right to. Miranda’s song is destined to become one of JD’s live songs that becomes a religious experience for the audience.

  The War Within is JD’s self-portrait, an honest, warts-and-all depiction of a rock star who has seen it all, done it all, lost it all, then miraculously, found a way to get it all back. Like Lazarus, a come back from the dead. Like a Phoenix Rising. It features a brief JD scream, and when he sings "I'm still alive, I will arrive", it's clear that JD is still as exuberant as when he first started his career two decades ago.

  Great musicians remain relevant regardless of the passage of time. This album is proof enough that JD is still a great artist working at the peak of his musical powers. This new album is the most moving material that JD has popped out since his first album. May the Phoenix continue to rise.

  Chapter 13

  Michael’s death hit JD hard. He was a wreck during the funeral. But he knew that he was a changed man because not once did he consider numbing his pain with alcohol. He had faced his doubts and fears and he had won.

  When he won his first award for his comeback album, he dedicated it to Michael.

  “I wouldn’t be standing here, holding this award if it wasn’t for two very special people. One of them is no longer on this plane of existence. He died doing what he did for me ever since the first day I met him at an AA meeting. He died helping me stay on the straight and narrow. My sponsor, my friend, my comrade-in-arms in the battle against alcoholism. My guardian angel in the journey of sobriety. Michael. This one’s for you.”

  He got a rousing standing ovation.

  ***

  He started to question his life, and rode the guilt trip wondering why he had lived and Michael had died that fateful day. He vowed that he would redeem himself as a human being. He started by visiting his parents more often and most importantly; asking for their forgiveness; for giving them such a hard time when he was a teenager, for running away from home and for causing them so much anguish. As always, they welcomed him with open arms.

  On night during a hearty dinner prepared by his mother, he told them about Miranda. By the time he was done, she was built-up to be a saint in his parent’s eyes. When his mother was practically planning the guest list and sitting positions, JD promptly reined her in.

  “Mom, I’m not even sure she is really interested in me, leave alone willing to marry me.” All I know is I love her.”

  With a cheeky twinkle in her eye she told him; “My dear son, all you have to do is simply turn on the Dunford charm. Wear her out the same way your father wore me out!”

  “I will Mom” he said as he hugged her like never before.

  He never forgot those shrewd words from his dear mother. He did turn on the Dunford charm with Miranda. He made sure that he kept things strictly professional when they were working and only got personal when she accepted an date with him. He took it slow, refusing to make love to her until the “Phoenix Rising” tour was officially over and they could both concentrate on their budding relationship.

  It was hard for him to keep his hands off her but he could tell that it was harder for Miranda. He enjoyed seeing her frustration at not getting what she wanted most from him; mad, passionate, crazy animal on-her-desk sex.

  A few months later, his patience was starting to pay off. The Dunford charm was indeed wearing her out, breaking down her defenses, causing her to trust him again with her heart. JD could sense he was winning her over.

  ‘It is time to close the deal.’ He told himself over and over. ‘I’ve got to tell her I want to move this relationship ahead.’ Full of bravado, he walked into her office, closed the door and sauntered over to her desk.

  “JD, this looks serious. Is something wrong?” Said Miranda as she closed her laptop, and stood up.

  “Miranda, we need to talk about our relationship. This has gone on long enough. There’s something that I should have said to you long time ago.”

  His eyes were like melted chocolate, warm and addictive, she knew everything was alright.

  “No, I want to get something off my chest first,” Miranda said cutting him off. “Remember that day when you stormed out of this office? I had wanted to explain my feelings to you, but you wouldn’t stop to listen, you just turned and walked out. I had wanted to say - I love you.”

  “OMG, well that figures, I was such a hothead, plain and simple. Now it’s my tur
n to get something off my chest. I came her to tell you that my success and career is now back on track because of you. AND I admit you were right about holding off on our relationship. But now it’s been long enough! All I do is think about you. All I fantasize about is fucking you.”

  Miranda blushed, not with embarrassment but from the heat she suddenly felt within.

  “Okay JD, do you mean like…right now, right here in my office?” She turned and shook her rear end while looking back over her shoulder.

  “Yes!” JD reached over and squeezed her ass with a grin.

  "You like?" She said with an appreciative smile.

  He gave a small chuckle "Pretty hot." He glanced down at her booty and snickered. "First thing I'm going to do is kneel down between those sexy hot legs of yours and tongue that hot pussy. Then I'm going to kiss you until you're begging me to fuck you. What do you think about that?"

  She hesitantly looked up at him, a swirl of emotions making her gasp. He yanked her closer and covered her mouth in a hungry kiss. Their lips crushed together and Miranda let out a low moan. Miranda felt a smoldering heat deep within her as JD’s grip tightened, crushing her body to his, gentle yet firm. He slanted her head further, deepening the kiss.

  JD grinned and pointed behind her. “Couch?”

  Before she could respond, the office door creaked open. "Oh shit,” said Miranda under her breath. “I should have locked the door!" She said while looking at JD.

  "Hello Miranda...Hi JD...this a bad time, I guess?" said Collin, his eyes darting away. He knew something was up when he noticed their creased brows and tense faces.

  “It’s okay Collin, what’s up?” Asked Miranda, trying to play it casual.

  “Well JD, just following up with what you said to me earlier.