His hair was shorn. Or rather, it was in the early stages of growing back, and it was bleached a pale blond that clashed with his dark eyebrows and lashes. He was also wearing tortoise-colored glasses I was sure he didn't actually need, despite his droll claims to the contrary.
“Tell me you're not going to look like this for the rest of our lives,” I said after we finally composed ourselves and sat.
“God, no. Do I look like a salesman, though? I told the stewardess I was a salesman from Peoria.”
“You look a little like that dead guy from Bananafish. What do you sell?”
He pointed at his tie. “Sporting goods. With an emphasis on high-end leisure activities.”
Paul took a glass of champagne from Samantha and I caught a glimpse of the new tattoo peeking out from under his cuff. I flipped his wrist and examined the art against my old wound.
“Cool, huh?” he said.
I was about to rest my hand on his chest and kiss him again, but the plane's door shut with a bang that sounded violent and terminal and I screamed. “Please, Paul! Please don't make me do this!”
He took my hand, leaned in, and whispered, “It's probably a good idea if you stop calling me Paul.”
The plane started moving in reverse and I felt like I was going to faint, which would have been a blessing.
“Inhale, exhale,” Paul reminded me. “We're together, everything's fine, and I love you.”
I pressed my forehead against the cold plastic window, imagining my mom doing the same thing years earlier.
“I love you too,” I told Paul.
“You're breathing all wrong.”
He was right. I was taking in air in short, shallow spurts like someone with emphysema.
“I have a confession,” he said.
“Right now?” I half-turned to see what he wanted.
“My dick is hard.”
I elbowed him and then went back to looking out my portal. At the same time, I extended my arm behind me so that I could hold his hand.
“I think it's those goddamn pants you're wearing.”
“Not now, Paul. I mean it.”
“Stop calling me Paul.”
Then the captain said, “Flight attendants please prepare for takeoff,” and I knew there was no turning back. I dug my nails into Paul's palm until he winced. “You hate me, don't you? That's why you're making me do this. Pure hatred.”
“I just told you I love you. What do you want, a formal goddamn decree?” He made me turn and look at him. “Hey,” he said, his eyes sharp and sincere. “I'm doing this because I love you. I want you to be free.”
I was about to lean over and kiss him once more, but the plane turned onto the runway and I had to refocus on my breathing.
Paul grabbed a handful of almonds. “You know what I've been thinking about all day? What color underwear you'd be wearing.”
I found his nonchalance staggering. “Don't make me kick you before we die.”
“We're not going to die. But look on the bright side—if we do, at least we'll die together.” He peeked down the back of my shirt. “Mmm. Pink. Is that pink?”
The plane started thundering down the runway, picking up speed by the second. “This isn't fair,” I sobbed. “If we make it out of here alive, you're taking the Chunnel.”
“The what?”
“The subway-train thingy that runs under the English Channel. It's called the Chunnel.” I was hysterical, my voice getting increasingly louder to compete with the roar of the engines. “If we survive this, you're going underground!”
“Fine, we'll go tomorrow if you want. Can you keep it down, though?”
The nose of the aircraft tilted toward the sky and I immediately assumed the crash position—head between my knees, hands protecting my skull—until Paul pulled me up and said, “Don't be ridiculous.”
The wheels lifted off the ground, and I was instantly aware of the sensation of being airborne.
It felt like a dream.
It felt like my stomach was floating above my head.
I was afraid I was going to throw up again.
And then the coolest thing happened.
I heard music.
Calling Eliza a high maintenance flyer might be the understatement of the goddamn decade. During takeoff, I wondered if I'd made a big mistake, if maybe we should have just hopped on the Love Boat, let Isaac serve us some drinks, let Julie McCoy plan us a few shuffleboard games, and saved ourselves a lot of trouble. She was out of control. Like one of those little rubber balls they sell for a quarter in gumball machines—the crazy kind that, once you dropped it—and you didn't even have to drop it with any force—it would bounce left and right and up and down and diagonally, ricocheting for all of eternity unless you scooped it back up and put it in a goddamn drawer or something. That was Eliza for the first hour of the flight. Forget that she was chained to her seat as tight as the belt would go, she was all over the place.
She was also squeezing my fingers like a vice grip, and I had to switch hands every few minutes, otherwise I thought I might never play guitar again.
All the same, I knew it was my responsibility to keep her amused, distracted, and basically try to get her to forget where she was.
My first attempt was singing. I started right as we were taking off. I was going to do “The Day I Became a Ghost” because of its uncanny relevance to the situation, as well as its sentimental value, but that seemed too obvious so I broke into “Shadows of the Night” by Pat Benatar instead. And get this—even though Eliza was having a breakdown, I still saw goose bumps on her arms.
Unfortunately, the song only pacified her until the landing gear was retracted, at which point she had another convulsion. That's when I changed tactics. I informed her I was still hard— I was—and suggested she might want to throw a blanket over my lap and touch it if she didn't believe me.
It was those goddamn pants she was wearing. And don't forget, moisturizer and free Internet porn were all I'd had in the way of companionship for months.
“Paul,” she said, “for the love of God.”
I begged her for the zillionth time to stop calling me Paul. Then I asked her to kiss me and she did. This turned out to be a very good thing. Kissing is the perfect distraction because there's no limit to how long you can do it. We went at it for a while, and I figured we'd keep at it until she pulled away, or until the captain shut off the fasten-seatbelt sign. The latter came first.
I put my hands on her face because I couldn't believe she was really there. I told her she was brave and she said, “I'm not brave, I'm in love.”
Ha. Same goddamn thing.
Then I pointed at the sky and said, “Look. You did it. Cruising at thirty-seven thousand feet, still alive and kicking.”
At first this did nothing except incite another riot, but when she calmed down long enough to look out the window, and I mean really look, I'm pretty sure I saw half a smile.
This is not to say the rest of the flight went off without a hitch. Whenever there was the slightest bump she thought we were a second away from tailspinning into the ocean. Something as routine as an altitude change spurred a grab for the ralph bag. And every time she heard a weird noise, she'd jump and say, “What was that?” and then expect me to give her a dissertation on aeronautical engineering. I had to make shit up. “They're just deploying the spoilers,” or “Oh, that? That's the vertical stabilizer.” Funny thing is she knows a hell of a lot more about aviation than I do, but she never called my bluff.
For a while she wouldn't eat anything either, but finally gave in when Vicki, our friendly neighborhood flight attendant, wheeled out the dessert cart and told us we could design our own sundaes.
First Class—always the way to go when you're dead and have an advance to burn.
Eliza got vanilla ice cream with butterscotch sauce, whipped cream, and a cherry. She asked me to get chocolate ice cream with hot fudge and marshmallows. This way, she explained, we could share without overl
apping flavors. Except she was pretty goddamn stingy with hers. She only gave me one bite. Meanwhile I was supposed to let her eat half of mine.
“Will…” She couldn't keep a straight face when she said my name. Still can't. “We have to talk.”
I'd been waiting for this. Knew it was a matter of time. But it turned out to be the best diversionary tactic of all. Every second Eliza wasn't freaking out she was talking or asking questions about our lost months, like she thought we had to cram every day we'd spent apart into the time it took us to fly across the ocean. I tried to tell her we had forever, there was no need to rush, but in case we didn't make it, she said, she wanted me to die knowing the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help her God.
She started off with the day Feldman invited her to the Kiev, then gave me an overview of life in the penthouse, and I have to admit, when she told me what a good friend Loring had been to her, my initial fondness for the guy returned. In my head I wrote him a thank-you note, one that, if not for the circumstances, I honestly would have sent.
“Dear Loring: Please accept my sincere gratitude for taking such good care of Eliza during her period of Paul-less dementia.”
But then I made the mistake of asking Eliza if Loring was any good in bed and because all she did was giggle and say “that's completely irrelevant,” my sympathies for him vanished.
Jilly Bean was a topic. Amanda was a topic. I even confessed to the two other lapses of judgment I had on tour.
Okay, three.
Okay, four.
These were the times I actually prayed for a little regular turbulence.
We talked for a while about Feldman and why he'd agreed to help me, and for the first time Eliza acquiesced that maybe Feldman had a heart after all. But she felt the need to add that he probably had plans to turn me into the next Nick Drake, too. Twenty years from now my songs will be background music for car commercials, just you wait and see.
Another big topic was where we were going. Nothing was carved in stone. Our immediate destination was only temporary, and we made a plan to travel around until we found a place we want to stay. We both agree that settling in a big city is probably not a good idea, but other than that the world is our goddamn oyster.
How we're going to make a living is still up in the air. Not that it's a real concern at the moment. I've got my goddamn advance to tide us over until we figure things out.
“Why don't you talk about the Chunnel, cocky-bastard?”
That was my betrothed, in case you didn't recognize her voice.
“Go on, I'd really like to hear your version.”
Not going there.
“Give me the recorder, I'll tell it.”
There's nothing to tell about the goddamn Chunnel. It's a train. Somehow it runs under the water. It goes really fast, it smelled like burning flesh, and it took, like, twenty minutes to get from England to France. Enough said.
“Give it to me.”
No. Get your own goddamn—Hey—
“Hi. This is Eliza. I'd just like to say that Will sat on the floor with his head between his knees, moaning and holding his pancreas the whole time.”
I did not.
“Did too.”
That's because you kept laughing and saying, “How does it feel to be a hundred and fifty goddamn feet under the sea?” All I can say is you better watch out the next time we get on a plane. I'm going to make Ian Lessing look like a saint. Now give me my goddamn tape recorder.
“Here. Take the stupid thing.”
Thank you. I apologize for that interruption. Where was I? Plane ride. Eliza freaking out. Talking. Questions. Eliza freaking out. Ice cream. Eliza freaking out. Oh, right. Eliza was calm after the ice cream. Marginally, at least. Enough that I finally felt okay about getting up and going to the bathroom—I'd had to piss for hours. But when I came back she was all melancholy. Not scared so much as just plain sad. I asked her what could have happened in the two minutes I was gone and she confessed that she'd been sitting there wondering if we were cowards, if what we were doing was tantamount to surrender.
My holy goddamn no was emphatic. I might be fooling myself, but I truly believe surrender would have meant giving Winkle his hit songs, his Gap ads, his flashy videos, and his power ballads. It would have meant making concessions. It would have meant joining hands with the heathens and pagans in a happy little game of ass-kissing ring around the rosy.
Eliza's afraid that someday I'm going to regret giving it all up. She said she doesn't understand how I could turn my back on what I love more than anything in the world.
I know, kind of sanctimonious coming from her, considering how she fed me to the sharks.
But the way I see it, I haven't given up that much. Am I going to miss the live shows? Hell, yeah. But it's not the end of the world. I'm still going to play my guitar, write my songs, and sing them into my four-track. It's just that, at least until I croak anyway, very few people will get to hear them.
What I love, what it's about for me, and what it's always been about, is the music. Everything else I can use to wipe my ass.
It's pretty simple, really, when you think about it: We all start out as little fishes in our daddy's pants, and we all end up a Thanksgiving feast for the worms, and in the meantime we have to find a couple good reasons to give a fuck.
I've got my girl and my guitar, and for me that's enough.
The rest is yesterday's news.
Eliza was still pondering all this stuff when we started our approach into Heathrow. I could tell by the way her eyes looked. She was also exhausted—neither of us had slept at all. And the first thing she did after we touched down was start bawling. Then she kissed me and thanked me and I thanked her back, and let me tell you it was a pretty amazing moment all around.
As we were taxiing to the gate, she lowered her chin and blinked, and I knew she had at least one more thing to say. I told her to spit it out and she goes: “With a little compromising on your part, you might have been king of the heathens and pagans, you know that, don't you?”
The plane came to a stop, the bell dinged, and I unbuckled my seatbelt. “Wasn't worth it,” I said. “Besides, I don't think I ever wanted it badly enough.”
She called me an anachronism. She said that if I'd been twenty-nine in 1969, everything would have been different. I might have been a legend.
I stood up and took her hand.
“Yeah, well,” I said as we began walking off the plane. “And if my aunt had balls she'd be my uncle.”
Over.
The world is filled with people who are no longer needed—and who try to make slaves of all of us—and they have their music and we have ours. Theirs, the wasted songs of a superstitious nightmare—and without their musical and ideological miscarriages to compare our Song of Freedom to, we'd not have any opposite to compare music with—and like the drifting wind, hitting against no obstacle, we'd never knows its speed, its power.
—Woody Guthrie
My thanks go out to all the artists and music industry professionals who spoke so candidly with me about their experiences in the music business.
I also need to wholeheartedly thank my agent, Al Zuckerman, for his undying patience and support. And my editor, Hillel Black, for being such a joy to work with.
Friends, family, and inspirations: If your name is on this list, then you fall into one or more of those categories, and I thank you with all of my being: Mom, Dad, Lisa DeBartolo, Nikki DeBartolo Heldfond; Nashara Alberico, Barry and Jen Ament, Bambi Barnum, Sebastian Beckwith, Jack Bookbinder, Gene Bowen, Seymour Cassel, Teressa Centofante, Corrine Clement, Liad Cohen, Denise Coleman, Jean-Paul Eberle, Jonathan Fierer, Sean Gauvreau, Savita Ginde, Jimmy Gnecco, Elizabeth Graff, Ben Heldfond, Eddy Midyett, Gunita Nagpaul, Peter Prato, Race, Troy Reinhart, Jennifer Roy, Sean San Jose, Scott Schumaker, Kira Siebert, Sasha Taylor, Sep Valizadeh.
To the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the universe, U2, who for over two decades have made it easi
er for me to believe in love amidst the chaos and contradictions of life. Thank you for never letting me down.
To Asher: may the words of the radio prophets touch your soul.
And last but not least, to JB. Angel and muse extraordinaire.
To contact the author, go to www.tiffaniedebartlo.com
To help music make a difference in the lives of young people, visit www.roadrecovery.com
Tiffanie DeBartolo, How to Kill a Rock Star
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