The Brand (11 page)

Her fiancé advised her otherwise, pointing
out correctly that America was a democracy and people were entitled
to their opinions. He said that if President Obama had sued all the
people who had said wrong things about him he would have become
extremely rich, but publicly he would have been viewed as a bad
guy. Still, Joelyn was unconvinced that she should let the libelous
columnist continue to mentally harass innocent people. She called
Chris Woodyard and screamed down the phone that the newspaper
should be sued in a very unforgiving way. Woodyard, loved and hated
by equal numbers of film critics in the world, told her wisely that
she should let it go.

‘Embrace those that love you, and don’t let
those who don’t destroy you. Don’t let one bad word from a single
bad person to diminish the value of all the millions of good words
that have been mentioned by good people about you.’

Joelyn took those words to heart and they
calmed her rage. Meanwhile, following the authorized revelation of
their impending nuptials, there ensued a media and public obsession
with Joelyn Smith and Raizer T of such a critical magnitude that it
overshadowed the Republican nomination race for the presidential
candidate for the 2012 election. Capitalizing on that storm of
publicity, a song containing lyrics by both Joelyn and Raizer T was
purposely leaked onto the internet. It became one of the
most-listened-to tracks on YouTube that week. Two more tracks, with
Joelyn singing and Raizer T rapping, were released on a digital
platform and they affirmed Joelyn’s status as a recording artist to
be watched in the coming year.

The interest in her music was not, strictly
speaking, because of her genuine talent in singing. It had more to
do with the fact that she was one of the foremost sex symbols of
the day, combined with the fact that Ryze Entertainment had thrown
its most talented music producers together to create sounds for her
songs that would appeal to the younger generation, which over the
years has been identified as being the most crucial audience for
any pop star. Also, the public always loves a new thing, so with
the right amount of marketing and public appeal, a new music artist
will find fans. The interest in Joelyn Smith, christened Jo S at
Ryze Entertainment, was so phenomenal that the label pushed forward
the release of her debut album from a May date to February of the
coming year.

In between shooting a film in Australia,
Joelyn was busy recording material for her upcoming album at
various locations in America, given that she would feature in five
of her songs for the album seven popular recording artists who were
strewn across the US. She was also shooting videos for her album’s
first two singles, to be released weeks apart in December. She was
travelling between Australia, where she was on the set of an epic
period-drama, and America, where she was appearing on MTV, radio
stations, TV shows and magazines, doing promotional work for her
upcoming album.

It might be important to note that Joelyn
Smith and Anthony Ryzor had nothing in common, save for their
passionate love for good sex and good music. From their individual
backgrounds right through to their lifestyles, it was apparent to
anyone who cared to notice that their marriage was doomed even
before it commenced. In fact, Mrs. Ryzor, when Anthony took his
fiancée to meet his mother, actually uttered these words:

“Well, well, Anthony has outdone himself this
time. Don’t worry, girl, there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact,
everything’s right with you. And I like you alright. I’m just not
sure my son is the right one for you.”

It was a measure of the depth of
understanding Mrs. Ryzor had for her son that she said those words.
She knew fully well that her talented but misguided Anthony was
emotionally incapable, and mentally insecure, to commit himself to
one woman. To put it bluntly, and taken verbatim, Mrs. Ryzor said
to the other ladies at her regular hair salon that Anthony was not
ready to give up all the pussy he could get from a wide selection
of whore-fans, bitch-ass groupies and downright porn whores just
for one high-priced White pussy.

The superstitious amongst us might say
those words served to portend a bad future for the two lovers.
Without being superstitious, but stating facts, it should be
recorded that the very near future did go very awry indeed for
Joelyn Smith and Mr. Anthony Ryzor. It so happened that Raizer T,
as he was widely known by his staggering legion of fans, discovered
almost too late that Joelyn’s birthday was in November. This
negligence can quite rightly be attributed to his rather busy
schedule, which deprived him of the chance to get to learn all the
sufficient details about his would-be wife. Nevertheless, upon
realizing that her birthday was around the corner, Raizer T
impetuously loaded himself into a Gulfstream G650 with a group of
his inner circle and instructed the pilots to take him to
Australia. Acting on purely good intentions, Raizer T wanted to
give his fiancée a pleasant surprise by gracing her with his
physical presence for her 27
^th
birthday, but Lady Luck was not smiling at her. Raizer T
and his entourage were arrested and detained at the airport in
Melbourne, from where they had been prepared to drive the long
route to the film location at a farm in Neerim South, on charges of
disturbing the order and peace, after an altercation developed
between Raizer T’s bodyguards and airport security personnel.
Raizer T and his group were promptly deported from Australia and
sent back home unsympathetically in their private jet.

Joelyn, who heard of the drama from her
fiancé, using his mobile phone while still detained at the airport,
actually took a leave of absence from the film shoot and demanded
to be driven to the airport, where she found the Gulfstream
carrying her lover already ejected from Australian territory.
Although fully booked, Qantas Airlines did manage to find her a
seat in the first class cabin of an Airbus A380 departing that
evening. Upon her arrival at JFK International, Joelyn Smith was so
harassed by the hordes of paparazzi, who were excited into this
hive of activity by the drama involving Raizer T at the Melbourne
airport, that security officers had to accompany her to the car
sent by Raizer T to pick her up, a custom-made bullet-proof Rolls
Royce Phantom, white in color.

It took her to the safety of Raizer T’s
Hamptons mansion, hidden behind a high wall and gate. That night,
Raizer T threw a lavish party to celebrate his beloved fiancée’s
birthday. Some big names in music attended, as well as some
Hollywood faces. Dom Perignon and Veuve Clicquot premier champagnes
flowed endlessly at the party. A hired Japanese chef outdid himself
by creating various delicacies to go with the barbecued choices
which were in huge abundance at the vast lawns of the big property.
Ryze Entertainment artists entertained the guests. Even Raizer T
and Joelyn did a rendition of one of their songs together.

It would have gone down in the society pages
as a successful party, but for an unfortunate incident that
occurred just after the two lovebirds had just performed on stage
together for the guests, immediately after Anthony had presented
his fiancée with a big diamond necklace for all the guests to see.
A large contingent of police officers, armed with a variety of
weapons and wearing bullet-proof vests, appeared at the gates of
the mansion and forced in their entry. Inside, they presented
Raizer T with a warrant of arrest on charges of possession of an
illegal firearm, and assaulting police officers. He was taken away
in a police car, leaving his guests stunned, and Joelyn in
tears.

The story was that Raizer T, together with
the group of people who always hung around him like leeches, had
become embroiled in an exchange of gunfire with a rival camp while
returning from a nightclub in New York. No one had been injured
during that exchange, only because the police had intervened and
caused the two rival camps to disperse. Raizer T’s car had been
stopped and searched by the police, whilst the rival camp sped
away. While searching members of Raizer T’s camp, they found him
with an unregistered firearm and wearing a bullet-proof vest upon
his person. However, when they had tried to put handcuffs on him,
his bodyguards had sprung to action and assaulted police officers,
overpowering them, after which they had all got into their car and
temporarily escaped from the arm of the law.

While social networks, tabloids and newscasts
went ablaze with reports of the rap star’s incarceration, he
languished inside a holding cell and thought that his mother had
not raised him to be like this. His mother had not raised him to
end up in a jail cell. Raizer T liked to talk about street life in
his songs, but few people would guess that he had been brought up
in the suburbs of Philadelphia and had attended private schools
until he ran away from home at age 16 to find his way in the world.
The street-cred attributable to Raizer T could be narrowed down to
the few months he struggled living with friends in New York while
trying to establish himself as a producer of note in the music
industry.

Investigative journalists would discover now
that his mother had overcome teenage pregnancy and put herself
through school, eventually earning herself a PhD in philosophy and
tutoring students at college. Along the way to her professorship,
she had had two more children by different men. Anthony was a
middle child, with an elder brother and a younger sister. The three
siblings had been brought up in a suburban home by their single
mother, who by the time Anthony entered into his teens was a full
college professor. She was earning enough of an income to put her
children at good private schools, determined to make them better
people with good moral and social conduct.

Anthony’s brother had gone to Harvard to
study Political Science and subsequently settled into an academic
life. His sister had studied Anthropology at Columbia, and was
currently working for the Discovery Channel in some capacity
Anthony wasn’t exactly sure of. Anthony, himself born with a
natural intelligence but cursed with precocious curiosity, had
started sleeping with girls at the age of twelve. It became such a
regular occurrence for him, this sexual exploration, that he did
the deplorable at fifteen: getting a girl of thirteen pregnant. At
sixteen he was a father and on the road, trying to discover his
calling in life.

While his mother forgave him for getting
other parents’ child pregnant at such an early age in life, she
never forgave him for leaving school. It was a mother’s pain that
still haunted him today, and a subject to which he frequently
alluded in thinly-veiled lyrics in his songs. From the moment he
had started earning large amounts of money, Anthony had constantly
tried to atone for his transgression by buying his way back into
his mother’s heart, until she told him that he had to stop trying
to please her with expensive gifts, because she had long forgotten
his transgression.

‘Anthony, a mother will never truly hate her
son; she just gets disappointed. Let bygones be bygones and free
your spirit. I’ve long gotten over it. In fact, I’m very proud of
you. You’ve done wonders and created jobs for many people to put
food on the table for their families. I respect that, and truly
love you for it, Anthony. Just stop trying to buy people’s love.
They should love you for who you are, not what you are or
have…’

Mentioned years previously, the words were
still very fresh in his mind as he languished in a jail cell,
pondering his present circumstances. All he had asked the Lord for
was to have a good life; in short, get the car, get the girl and
enjoy a good drink once in a while. Not this. He could not deny
that the Lord had answered his prayers manifold. But the devil had
led him astray. With a lucid mind, free of intoxicating substances,
Anthony Raizer was able to meditate exhaustively on issues
pertaining to his life, such that by the time his high-priced
lawyer arrived to demand his release, after a successful urgent
application for bail, he had resolved to correct certain aspects of
his life. First on the list of those resolutions was to get rid of
some bad elements in his crew. There were people who were a bad
influence, who made him believe that he was God and encouraged him
to do stupid things. They had to go. The second was to be a better
man for the woman he was engaged to marry.

Partly due to the heavy media people’s
attendance at the county jail, Joelyn had not bothered to go and
physically witness her fiancé’s release. The other reason was that
she had decided that further association with the public enigma
that was Raizer T was a frivolous and potentially detrimental
arrangement to her public image. Anthony’s arrest had woken her up
from her foolish teenage dream, and she had fully realized the
implications of being married to a man like Raizer T, a man so
emotionally lacking, so sexually depraved and so psychologically
inadequate that he needed to surround himself with servants and
sexual slaves to boost his self-esteem. It was a conclusion reached
after a critical analysis of the present situation over a short
period of time.

During that short analysis, she had admitted
to herself that she could not continue to ignore the blatant
honesty that she and Anthony Ryzor were a mismatched couple. For
one, Anthony was an unrestrained disciple of human reproduction,
whereas Joelyn tolerated children as long as they belonged to
someone else. Her resolution was made without remorse but with a
reasonable mind. And it was delivered to Anthony Ryzor with such
cold ruthlessness he gasped with shock when it fully hit him that
she had slipped out of his hands.