“Kelly, where is Kelly?” I repeated, over and over in my head.
I closed and opened my eyes and... uh-oh. The wrong Kelly. My 2nd pre-teen crush from an American TV detective trio suddenly appeared and was also lavishing me with her sudden affections and wanton loins.
All I needed now was Daphne from the Scooby Doo cartoon to show up and 1980-me would have died and gone to heaven.
There was a knock at the door, but alas it wasn’t Daphne. Nor even Velma, mores the pity. It was unsuccessful coffin-dodger Walter Perkins, aged 82 and quite dead but standing right in front of me, wanting his stereogram back and me arrested for crimes against music for having dared to play my said favourite 80’s pop band’s record on it.
Walter had been dead for quite some time, so was looking a little bit worse for wear, and his left arm was almost rotting off.
Anyway, the next thing I knew I was arrested, imprisoned and sitting in a stone cold cell. Did I mention I was also now suddenly naked?
And I was throwing dice. I knew if I got a double six I would earn a get out of jail card. So I did it over and over again, but no joy ahoy.
Kelly was nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I concentrated and tried to will her into the dream. And then the ducks started quacking again and this time I woke up.
Weeks passed and I was becoming more and more obsessed. I’d had a taste of the realm of possibilities. Basically it seemed anything was possible in my seemingly warped subconscious mind, so I was more than determined to make it so.
In one dream I ‘entered’ I encountered a violent hurricane, an attack of killer bees and a profanity spouting rhinoceros (!) all in one day.
And can I just say until you’ve had a rhinoceros tell you to fuck off, you really haven’t lived.
But no matter how hard I tried, how much I persevered, it was as if something was deliberately trying to hold me back and keep us apart...
...perhaps even something in my own subconscious psyche?
CHAPTER 6.
“So how do I find her again?” I asked Stefan.
I was agitated. It’d been a couple of weeks since I finally found Kelly in my dreamscape. It had taken me so long the first time. And I was growing impatient.
“First you must master the craft”, Stefan replied rather glibly. “It can take years of practise.”
The bottom nearly fell out of my arse. I don’t have years, I thought. I wanted to be with Kelly now.
“I’m not sure dream walking is for you,” Stefan sighed.
“I’m a little worried I was premature in suggesting it.”
I surmised I might be coming across a little too desperate, perhaps a little too obsessive. But I just needed something, some form of hope to cling on to. Dr. Irving had given me a lifeline, however whacked out or crazy it sounded. And I knew it did. And I didn’t care. All I cared about was finding my way back to Kelly again. And maybe it was an obsession. And maybe it was unhealthy and all the wrong things it probably shouldn’t be, but I’d reached the point of no return. And I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.
You have to understand what Kelly meant to me. This was a woman that got more beautiful with every breath she took, and now beyond some. I liked to call her my precious jewel. My forever beautiful Kelly.
She was a few years younger than I was, but she still shared the same love of an 80’s childhood I often wish I could go back to. Life was so much simpler then... at least for me anyway.
Kelly’s upbringing wasn’t quite in the same bed of roses, mostly due to Olivia Montecarlo, her overbearing mother. Olivia is what I call a relig-a-holic, with particular emphasis on the turning water into wine part. She also likes to control how everyone else lives their lives, but only obeys half of the ten commandments herself. Love thy neighbour, unless he’s not straight or not white or not devout, and that kind of still living in the past mentality, governed by a fictionalised fairytale of strict rules to live by.
She predominantly promoted what those stuck in that era love to, in my humble opinion: intolerance, xenophobia and hate, though I think most of that is simply down to low, old spec brain ram and lack of modern day education.
So Kelly’s childhood was a torturous endurance of rules and regulations, having to do this and not being allowed to do that. Of course that kind of parenting usually results in rebellion, and Kelly and her mother hadn’t seen eye to eye in a long time.
Kelly’s father Charles wasn’t so much henpecked as easily laid back, usually literally. He was too busy having a catalogue of affairs to care or really interfere otherwise, though believe it or not Mr and Mrs Montecarlo have stayed together, probably because no-one else would have the horrendous, fire-breathing dragon lady or he who is too afraid to even say boo to an invisible ghost.
It was just as well Olivia was too occupied driving Kelly crazy, as Kelly’s little brother Ben was hiding a secret that would have gotten him hung, drawn and quartered in the Montecarlo household: he was dating an Indian, oh and did I mention this also happened to be a man?
Kelly and Ben were very close of course, like most siblings from warring-yet-futile parenting often are, so it was a little devastating that the crash that ‘killed’ Kelly also put Ben in a continuous vegetative state.
They were travelling back from a day out together, recreation at a safari park; Kelly was in love with the giraffes there, followed by a bit of retail therapy at an outlet centre. They did so much together that it’s tragic they endured the accident together too.
Kelly was driving and pronounced dead at the scene. Ben was the front seat passenger and has been comatose since.
I wasn’t even in the car but have felt trapped between those two states. Well until now, that is. Until Dr. Stefan Irving fed me the hope of a kind of life after death with a woman I refuse to live consciously without. And now, here he was suggesting taking that newfound hope away from me or at the very least delay it. Take it easy? Be patient? I don’t think so.
When he left the room for a few minutes to see his secretary about making another appointment for me, I browsed his bookshelf:
‘The Truth About Lying’...
‘Finding Your Sanity in an Insane World’...
...and then I saw something that really caught my eye:
‘Counting Sheep: The Science of Dreams’.
I left his office that night, feeling determined. If Dr. Stefan Irving wasn’t going to help me find my way back to Kelly again, then I would surely find a way myself.
READ THE FULL VERSION OF ‘DREAM MYSELF ALIVE’,
AVAILABLE NOW.
POP TARTS PREVIEW:
Flamboyant, tri-sexual pop star Felix is about to turn half a century and his life is a glorified hot mess. He was lead singer of 80s pop band ‘Tequila Sun’ - regularly on Top of the Pops and sweeping the board at the Smash Hits Poll Winners Party - but since their unprecedented 1988 break-up, the sun set and his life has gone nowhere fast.
After starring in a reality TV show and winning another 15 minutes of fame, he faces an ultimatum: reform the band that made him a star or impersonate his own tribute act. There’s only one problem. The band hate each other and haven’t spoken in over 20 years following an affair, an attempted murder and a scandal involving a strap-on microphone and a blow up goat.
From the author of ‘Dream Myself Alive’ comes ‘Pop Tarts’, combining a twisted sense of humour with supernatural elements and soap operatic cliff-hangers. Everybody loves a flashback to the 80s and old certainly is gold. But can Felix pull off the impossible and get back to the Top of the Pop Tarts?
CHAPTER 1. ROAR.
The man on TV smiles and his teeth sparkle. They are a lighter shade of white so brilliant, you feel the need to grab for your shades. His face is lobster red perma-tanned, his jaw chiselled to perfection. He looks plastic fantastic. And he introduces himself:
“Hello and welcome to ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed Me to the Lions’. I am your host Dexter Anton and tonight we s
ee former 80s heart throb Felix from pop band Tequila Sun face off against sex siren Jade Astley, the sultry one from Pink Champagne and one of the Ants from Adam And. But first, here are the highlights from yesterday’s live feed.”
The VT plays and we see Felix and Jade sitting in a cage in the jungle. Felix is wearing a loin cloth, Jade is wearing a coconut bra and a Hawaiian hula skirt. Both are covered in war paint.
“Where is the Ant?” Felix asks.
“He’s still upset over losing Harry from Spandex Belly in the crocodile swamp yesterday,” Jade replies.
The camera cuts to the Ant sat huddled in a corner by himself, rocking backwards and forwards and humming, then mixes back to Dexter in front of a live studio audience. His look of put upon sorrow soon turns into a delighted smirk and he reads his next line right off of the tele-prompter:
“Who will be next to sashay his or her has been little tushie out of the limelight tonight? Find out now in a round we like to call ‘Pass the Bomb’.
Felix, Jade and the Ant are sat in a semi-circle on a giant inflatable banana. Felix is holding a parcel which looks to be a gift wrapped cartoon-style bomb, complete with a lit dynamite fuse sticking out of the top. He looks tentative but not half as freaky outy as the Ant, while cold-as-ice Jade is as cool as a cucumber.
When 80s pop classic ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ starts playing, he passes the parcel of dynamite to Jade who then in turn passes it to the Ant and so on and so forth.
After a few rounds the music suddenly stops and the Ant is left holding the parcel, which then explodes into smithereens, the Ant along with it.
The feed cuts back to the studio, where a proportion of the audience are jeering and heckling.
“Not enough blood that time, eh?” asks Dexter. “Vultures the lot of us, I mean you, heh heh.” The baying crowd chuckles.
“So we are now down to the final 2 survivors and it’s a straight face off between Felix and Jade. Who will be crowned the winner of ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed Me to the Lions’? Find out now in ‘The Bridge of Doooooooom’…
Felix and Jade now stand either side of a rope suspension bridge, above a hundred foot steep drop into a fiery gushing lava.
Dexter fires off himself, again from the tele-prompter: “In this game each contestant has to answer questions from their former 80s heyday. Get a question right and you can move five steps over the bridge. The object is to reach the middle first. However get one wrong and face dire consequences.”
Felix and Jade gasp while Dexter raises an eyebrow with a wicked glint.
“Felix you’re up first. What year did Tequila Sun have their first and last hit singles?”
Felix bites his nails. He knows the first answer is 1984, but not the second. There was just too much vodka and cocaine. Through a haze of sex, drugs and sausage rolls, he throws out a wild guess: “1984 and… 1988?”
The crowd cheers enthusiastically as Dexter announces he is correct and tells him to move forward five spaces onto and over the bridge of certain death.
Felix breathes a sigh of relief as he does so, and mops some sweat from his brow.
“Over to you, Jade.” Dexter laments.
Jade would be shitting her panties, had she been wearing any. But she wasn’t, as usual. And her ankles were getting a tad cold because of it.
“If you can’t stand the cold, what should you do?”
Seems this is an easy one for Jade: “…keep out of the fridge freezer!” she sings, almost in key. And joins Felix in the same position on the opposite side of the bridge.
Bubbling blood red lava spits below them and a gust of wind almost knocks Felix off his feet, giving him the heebie jeebies.
“Felix, who had the biggest penis in Tequila Sun? Yourself, Rhino Zagreb or Cherry Fontaine?”
Is this a trick question? Felix knows full well he was the biggest penis in the band, but did he have it? He decides to throw caution - and his ego - to the wind and go with Cherry instead, and earns himself another rapturous cheer and a further 5 space move into the centre of the bridge.
“Jade, who was the biggest biatch in Pink Champagne?”
Dexter’s eyebrows are dancing like a snake at a school disco. Jade seems stumped and befuzzled.
“Well I would say Rita Barker, but it was probably me.”
Dexter rolls his eyes in cheap disdain.
“I’m sorry Jade. The correct answer is Mick Nelson. Adios my little has been.”
Suddenly the bridge panel Jade is standing on gives way and she falls screaming into a fiery death below her.
Production mixes back to the TV studio and Dexter announces on set: “Please welcome our winner of ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed me to the Lions’, star of 80s pop tarts Tequila Sun… its Felix.
The audience reaction is mixed as Felix joins Dexter on stage, looking both terrified and thrilled. Confetti cannons and fireworks go off and the credits begin to roll.
CHAPTER 2. JUST FELIX.
Felix wakes up with a jolt. He gets out of bed and goes to the shower. As he opens the shower door, a woman is showering with her back to him. She turns around and it is Jade Astley of Pink Champagne back from the dead Dallas-style!
“Good morning,” she says, as she yanks him in the shower to join her, clasping him between her heaving bosom and succubus love loins.
As the water hits him he wakes up again, this time for real as his mobile telephone rings by the side of his bed. He feels around for it blindly, still half asleep, burrowed in the pillow and knocks it from the bedside cabinet onto the floor.
He leans over the side of the bed to retrieve it and answer. It’s his agent Max Jacks.
“Felix this is your wake up call,” he says with a hype too fervent – according to Felix - for this time of the morning, even though it’s almost 12 noon.
“Oh Max, thank God it’s you,” Felix stifles through a yawn. “I thought the whole first chapter of the book had just been a dream.”
Max suspects Felix was up partying hard till probably dawn. Usually literally, with a revolving door of blatant floozies.
“Where are we meeting today?” asks Felix. “The Ivy? Have you sent a limo to pick me up?”
It’s the morning after the wrap party for ‘I’m a Has Been, Please Don’t Feed Me to the Lions’ and Felix is hopeful that having won the show, his career is now finally back on track.
He hasn’t really been in the public eye since 1988 when his band Tequila Sun broke up under somewhat acrimonious circumstances. And his crestfallen attempt at a solo career went somewhat tits up in the early 90s.
“I couldn’t get a table,” Max replies. “But I’ll see you in Wetherspoons at 1 o’clock, so get a move on or you’ll miss the number 27 bus.”
The realities of a supposedly glamorous lifestyle hit home harshly. It always amused Felix that the GBP (the Great British Public, as he called them) assumed that if anyone had been on TV just once, they were instantaneously a millionaire for life.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Felix lived in quite a modest apartment just outside of North London, afforded to him only by the godsend of a Christmas hit in 1986 that has been played every year since.
If it hadn’t been for that and the fact he’d co-written it - for co-written read changed a couple of words in a drunken and enthusiastic ad-lib - he’d probably be working his arse off in a fast food restaurant or living in a cardboard box right about now. Time had not been forgiving.
“So what are the plans, Max? Felix asks as he joins him at a table in the local pub. “What have you got lined up? I suppose the phones haven’t stopped ringing?”
“Not quite,” Max replies, stirring a cup of Earl Grey tea, white with no sugar.
Felix orders himself a pint of Strongbow and a packet of pickled onion crisps. How very rock and roll.
“The solo album you recorded in 1992 is back in stock at the pound shop,” Max relays with just the merest hint of sarcasm.
<
br /> “Better get started on another one then, eh?” says Felix, refusing to let it dampen his enthusiasm.
“They’re not interested Felix,” Max tells it like it is. “Without Holly, Cherry and whatshisname, they just don’t give a damn. They never did.”
Felix is forlorn. He can sing, he’s got star quality and he’s managed to retain his somewhat youthful good looks – this despite two decades of chronic alcohol abuse and nigh on a thousand tri-sexual lovers, as in he’ll try anything once, and usually two or three times, just to make sure.
“But I wrote some new material,” he declares. Actually it sounds more like pleading. And then he suddenly breaks out into song:
“When I first saw her, my heart skipped a beat, I grew seven inches, I dropped my shredded wheat, her hair was golden, her eyes emerald green, to avoid her beauty, you would need a vaccine…”
Max interrupts, looking around in embarrassment. “Very good Felix,” he says. “But would Patience and Rule the World have been as big hits as solo singles?”
Felix is feeling despondent. He looks down at the worn carpet like a scolded child told he isn’t getting any pocket money this week. I could swear there was a pet lip out as well.
“We have to get the band back together, Felix,” Max says. “It’s what the public wants.”
“But I haven’t spoken to Holly or the others since 1988,” Felix declares, and he’s definitely declaring this time.