How to Kill a Rock Star (7 page)

You write the songs. You hold the crowds. You make the decisions.”
5I begged him to keep it down. He pointed to the door and said, “You didn’t tel them?”

Hel , no, I didn’t tel them. And I asked Feldman not to tel them either. They don’t need to hear that kind of negative shit.

Feldman ranted until he ran out of rants. He thinks I purposely try to make everything harder than it has to be and said only a fool would turn down an opportunity to sign with one of the biggest record labels in the universe. But the thing is, it took me a long time to find three guys I click with—we’re a band and we’re staying a band, and if that means we play Rings of Saturn for the rest of our lives, so be it.

For what it’s worth, I don’t go out of my way to be difficult.

I just want to sleep with a clear conscience and wake up with the ability to look at myself in the mirror. I also want my life to be my own. Even if it’s a shitty goddamn life, it’s stil mine.

The night Feldman and I met, at the party of a mutual friend, Feldman hadn’t impressed me in the least. And, wel , actual y, the so-cal ed mutual friend wasn’t much of a friend. She’s what I like to cal a fleeting lapse of judgment, but I don’t real y want to get into that. Anyway, she coaxed me into playing a few songs.

Afterward, Feldman appeared out of nowhere and fed me one of those “you’ve got star written al over you” lines. I didn’t fal for it right away. My goals have nothing to do with celestial bodies. But he was persistent. He showed an enthusiastic interest in my music, offered to manage me on the spot, paid for the rehearsal space, and even got me a social security card and driver’s license—despite the fact that Hudson is my stage name.

Al Feldman wants out of life—and he even admits this—is to be somebody’s Brian Epstein—you know, the guy supposedly responsible for the Beatles. Feldman said he’d been searching for his McCartney or Lennon and he picked me. In the meantime, he works with 66 because they’re actual y making him money.

Feldman was also the one who got us the residency at Rings of Saturn. A few years ago I’d shamelessly begged for a chance How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 53

to play there, but after doing a short set for the owner of the place, the guy said my music had “too much texture,” whatever the hel that meant.

When I asked Feldman how he managed to change the guy’s mind, he laughed and told me that as a young, struggling lawyer, he’d represented a number of New Jersey’s finest organized crime families. “I have friends in low places and they al owe me favors,” he said. “I just cashed one in.” I didn’t ask.

After Feldman left rehearsal, we put our instruments aside in favor of getting stoned, and then spent half the night debating the most popular flavor of ice cream. Burke insisted it was chocolate, even though it’s vanil a—I actual y read this somewhere— but I was too distracted to argue about it. First, I couldn’t stop thinking about Winkle. Then I couldn’t stop thinking about Eliza, and I wondered what Michael would say if he knew I was letting my imagination run riot with his sister. He’d warned me before Eliza got to town: Hands off, he said. Keep an eye on her, be her friend if she’l let you, but no messing around.

When I asked Vera why Michael was so obstinate, she told me that some asshole had recently broken Eliza’s heart. A drummer, no less. Hel , even I know girls should stay away from the goddamn drummers.

Speaking of, Angelo pointed a stick at my face and told me vanil a was boring, but the thing is, I never said it was the most fun, I said it was the most popular.

Caelum goes: “There have been studies done on this topic, gentlemen. You could wager a bet and look it up.” Caelum always talks like someone’s dad when he’s high.

Angelo suggested bubble gum as a number one and I told him no one over the age of eight orders bubble gum ice cream.

Then Burke raised his hand like he was in school and asked if maybe we could talk a little more about what happened with How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 54

5Winkle. I immediately suggested we cal it a night but Angelo wouldn’t let the goddamn bubble gum issue die. He claims he orders bubble gum ice cream al the time.

Burke stood up and goes, “Maybe we should at least consider whatever Winkle suggested.”

Angelo jumped on the bandwagon, yel ing, “Yeah. It’s better than nothing.”

The rehearsal space is twelve by twelve, if that. There was no need to yel .

Caelum said yielding to Winkle would mean the end of folding shirts for me, not to mention it would keep him in the band. Or so he thought. The desperation in Michael’s voice made me feel even guiltier, and for the zil ionth time I said I didn’t want to talk about it. My pancreas ached and I had to press on my side to ease the goddamn pain.

“Oh, here he goes,” Angelo said. “Enough with the fucking pancreas.”

“Is a little sympathy too much to ask?” I was looking to be coddled, not mocked.

“Here,” Caelum said, passing me what was left of a joint.

“Here’s a little sympathy.”

At that point I packed up my stuff and came home. This is where it gets interesting.

Al the lights were off when I walked in. The windows were closed and it was so hot it felt like being inside a terrarium. I turned on the light, went to the bathroom to take a piss, and lit a cigarette. Then I went across the hal and knocked on Eliza’s door. Nothing. No “Who is it?” or “Come in” from the other side. I just assumed she wasn’t there and walked in.

She was there, al right. Sitting on her bed, reading. My fan was on her floor, positioned to blow directly on her face, and she was wearing a pink lace bra and matching pink lace underwear.

I said hi and then laughed while she scrambled for the sheet and covered herself up—bad idea. I took this as a sign of weak-How to Kil _internals.rev 2/22/08 4:59 PM Page 55

ness, and exhibiting signs of weakness in front of me, especial y while in a state of near nakedness, was the wrong move. It gave me an advantage.

I sat down on her bed, took off my shoes, and stubbed out my cigarette using the bottom of my left sole. Then I hopped over her, rol ed her extra pil ow into a bal , and lay down, completely ignoring her protests.

“Relax,” I told her. “We’re friends, right?” She said, “We barely know each other.”

“Irrelevant,” I said. “I could real y use a friend right now.” I made her swear a zil ion times that what I was about to say would never leave the room, then I told her the truth about what happened with Winkle. I don’t know why. I guess I thought she might have some insight. I also wanted a reason to stay in her room.

I told her how the worst part was I’d actual y thought about it before I said no. She said nobody would’ve blamed me if I’d said yes, but holy Hel , I would’ve blamed me. I swear to God I’d rather kil myself than give in to those cocksuckers.

I tried to play with the little pearl in her ear but she wasn’t having it. Then, just to get a reaction, I asked her if she always wore bras that matched her underwear, and at first she got al shy, but eventual y she flipped her hair and said yes.

I asked her if yes meant unexceptional y always or once a week. She said it meant every day. She also told me the reason— because she doesn’t have a lot of money to spend on clothes, and this way, even if she has old jeans and a crummy T-shirt on, she stil feels like she looks nice. Like she’s dressed up.

It probably goes without saying that from now on, every time I see her, I’m going to wonder what color her underwear is.

I closed my eyes and moaned, trying to stymie the hard-on I’d had since I walked in the room, and Eliza said: “What’s wrong? Your migrating pancreas acting up again?” I told her it wasn’t the pancreas this time and she cal ed me
5a bastard, but she was kind of smiling when she said it. Honestly, it took al my strength not to lean over and kiss her right then.

I would’ve done it, too, had I not been sort of distracted by the long, thin scar that slashed through the middle of her left wrist.

Without thinking, I reached out and took hold of her arm, and was immediately struck by how fragile it seemed. Then I ran my finger across the scar —it felt exactly like the hem on a pair of the boot-cut jeans I inventoried last Tuesday.

I knew al about the scar—Michael told me the whole story, how he’d found her bleeding on their bathroom floor when she was like, sixteen or something.

Eliza pul ed her hand away and tucked it under her pil ow.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Would you mind going to your room?” Okay, so this is what I did next: I reached over and lifted a lock of her hair, one that had fal en across her eye. I moved it back off of her face, barely touching her skin, and my finger grazed the tiny pearl in her ear. I think we were having a moment but I’m not sure. By then I’d sort of lost myself in her face. No kidding, if you put me in a room with Eliza and a hundred beautiful girls, Eliza would be the one I’d walk over to.

There’s something magnetic about her. And sad. And she does this thing when she talks—she dips her chin and raises her eyes and looks right into you. It’s a gift, real y. I think she could make whoever she’s talking to feel like the only person in the room— the only person in the universe, even. But then it switches—

when she’s not looking at you it’s like her mind is in another world, miles away, and her dark, falcon eyes point upward, like she’s in some kind of mesmerized state of flirtation with the sky.

Did I mention how much I wanted to kiss her? I wanted to kiss her lips and her eyelids and the curve in what I’m going to cal “the transition area”

where her hip flows into her waist.

And my desire wasn’t just confined to my dick. She made my whole goddamn body taut, like some invisible energy force was pul ing me up by the skin.

I inched closer to her and she goes: “Don’t even think about it.” I was starting to get the feeling she was trying not to like me, so I told her this story about how, when I was a kid, my mom made clam chowder for dinner one night. I think it was my birthday or something, and Mom thought it was a big deal to serve clam chowder but I refused to eat it. I told her I didn’t like clams and she said, “You’ve never tasted a clam. How do you know you don’t like them?” She said I had to taste it. If I didn’t like it, she promised she’d make me a peanut butter sandwich, but I had to take at least one spoonful of the clam chowder first.

I paused to make sure Eliza was stil listening. Then I said,

“Needless to say, I didn’t have peanut butter for dinner that night.”

“That’s a touching anecdote,” Eliza said. “But I’m al ergic to shel fish.”

I told her she was missing the point and she started jabber-ing on about how she knew I had a girlfriend named Avril but was sleeping with this Beth chick, not to mention I was her brother’s friend, not to mention the last thing she needed was to get involved with a guy like me, yada, yada, yada, I swear I thought she was going to start crying, and normal y that would have sent me hauling ass in the other direction, but you know what? I had a bizarre urge to put my arms around her and hold her until she fel asleep.

Remember this moment, my friend the tape recorder. Lying next to Eliza, I had the feeling I’d just found something I didn’t even know I’d lost. We hovered above the moment like two rain clouds, until I said: “Don’t swear off al fruit just because you ate one bad apple.”

She said, “Please go to your room.”

I said, “If I go, I’m taking the fan with me.” She said, “Take the stupid fan.”

I halted in front of the fan on my way out the door. I think I even touched the cord. But I left the room without it.

Over.

Prior to moving to New York, I had a lot of sil y fantasies about what it was going to be like. Vera and I would hang out at quaint cafes by day, discussing life and how to live it; at night there would be cool lounges where she and Michael and I would see live music. But Michael and Vera were busy, and so was I. We hardly saw each other that first week.

And I couldn’t get Paul out of my head. I kept thinking about what he’d told me the night he’d wandered into my room—about how he’d walked away from what might have been his only shot at a record deal because he didn’t want to let my brother and the rest of the band down.

There was a lot more to him, I guessed, than the flippant pretext and cocky-bastard smile he presented to the world.

But it was as though Paul didn’t even live on Ludlow Street. More often than not, I had the place to myself and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like waking up and seeing the door to his room screaming-wide open, his bed in complete dis-array but untouched from the day before. It made me feel like I was missing something.

Days went by before Paul ended our incommunicado, using a scrap of paper he stuck to my door while I was out running one morning, affixing it to the wood with a piece of gum.

Why didn’t you come to the show on Thursday?

I get off work at 6 tonight. Meet me here. I’ve been thinking about you.

Potential y yours, WP Hudson
.

I spent the entire morning obsessing over every word of that note. I wanted to know what “I’ve been thinking about you”
literally
meant. Thinking about me
how
? Did it mean thinking: “I wonder how she is” or “I wonder if she likes Pink Floyd” or “I wonder if she’s good in bed” or what? There were too many interpretations. And then the “potential y yours” sign off. How was I supposed to decode that?

At any rate, I’d missed Bananafish at Rings of Saturn the week before because I was busy trying to put the finishing touches on my panning of the 66 show in the hopes of winning the respect of Lucy Enfield, only to have Lucy turn around and assign me the job of fact-checking a feature on a Brazilian fashion model, while Corbin, the guy in the cubicle beside me, got to interview Wayne Coyne.

I did my best to maintain the delusion that it wasn’t excruciating to be employed by the nation’s paramount music publication and have to research an article about a girl who was quoted as saying: “It’s like, such a drag when singers whine about the world. I just want to say to them, you know, like, shut up and dance.”