The Brand (15 page)

The attentive reader will notice that while
previously subdued, Joelyn had of late a voracious appetite. She
and Jason made beautiful music together. Even after they had been
married for many weeks, Joelyn would still catch herself
daydreaming about him. He was everything she could ask for in a
man: kind, gentle, generous, compassionate, big, strong, funny,
handsome, endowed with big genitals, overly sexually
experienced…

He buried his mouth inside her buttocks and
licked her private parts. She was on her knees, her chest flat
against the bed, and her buttocks stuck high up in the air. He
covered her vagina with his mouth and stroked her with his lips and
tongue. He grabbed hold of a plastic contraption made of three
balls, the size of small round pebbles, joined in a straight line
by thin, short rods. He wet her anus with lubricating oil and
pushed the balls into her anus. She winced at the pain as the first
round ball entered into her. He dipped the second ball into her and
then plunged his big penis into her already wet vagina. She yelped
like a dog at the wave of pleasure that seared through her…

He rolled onto his back on the bed and
beckoned for her to climb on top of him. She obeyed quickly, and
took his enormous phallus inside her vagina. It filled every
available space inside her. She placed her hands upon him, palms
flat against his chest, and began to rock herself on him. She
shouted the Lord’s name aloud repeatedly as the fire of ecstasy
engulfed her. He pulled her down towards him and kissed her
hungrily. Then suddenly he rose from the bed, carrying her with
him. He placed his big arms under her thighs and supported her
weight as he stood upright. She locked her arms around his neck and
jumped up and down his enormous shaft. It was delicious!
Splendirific! Awesome! Outta this world! Heavensent!...Suddenly it
stopped, and she realized that the delicious rod had dropped out of
her flooding vagina. Frantically, she reached under herself and
shoved it back into her sizzling warmth. He jammed himself into
her.

‘Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ Lord Almighty!’ she
cried and collapsed onto him.

If she was a believer, the Lord might have
descended from heaven that night, in some form or shape, but she
was not, so the words were uttered in vain. She was, though, a true
believer in the power of love, and that night she lay cuddled in
his arms and felt herself yearning to be with him every day of her
remaining days on earth.

He broke some news to her in a quiet voice.
‘My contract with the Yankees expires next month. I can either
renew it or accept the offer from the LA Angels, so as to be close
to you.’

She looked into his eyes. ‘What do you
want?’

‘It’s a difficult decision for me. I really
want to work in this city so that I can be with you, but my agent
thinks the new contract the Yankees have drafted for me is the best
from all the other clubs that are interested so far. Again, I’ve
been with the Yankees for five years. It’s like a home to me.’

‘Don’t do something that’ll make you
unhappy.’

He stroked her hair and brushed her lips
against his. ‘You won’t be mad at me if I decide to stay in New
York with the club?’

‘Of course not.’ She replied with a pretty
smile at him. ‘I can always move to New York if I miss you too
much.’

Following the immense success of her debut
album,
Jo S –
The Introduction
,
Joelyn’s voice was on demand to feature in other people’s songs and
subsequent music videos. The music side of her life kept her so
busy in the first half of the year that she travelled to all the
major cities in the United States, recording and performing with
other artists, and barely had time to actually stay at her Beverley
Hills home for more than three days at a time. In New York, the
married couple shared a multi-million dollar condominium at the
expensive Upper West Side building, the Grand Tier.

In March, an opportunistic music promoter
in South Africa had begun liaising with Joelyn’s managers and
agents over the possibility of the superstar performing a music
concert in two cities in that part of the world. In April, the two
parties had agreed on the terms and conditions of that deal. Ms.
Smith’s contract demanded that she be protected by state policemen
for the duration of her tour to South Africa; that any hotel she’d
be put in should have adequate accommodation for her entourage,
totaling 32 people; that her hotel room should be white in color,
and have white lilies changed every five hours; that the hotel
should have Evian water; that under no circumstances would Ms.
Smith be delayed by weather, traffic or unforeseen circumstances;
and that any hotel she would be set up in
must
have an infinite supply of Krug Grand Cuvée, a
very delicate and smooth champagne of the highest quality that is
imported by wine merchants all over the world from the Republic of
France.

Jo S, as she was affectionately known in the
music industry and to music fans worldwide, would perform one
concert in Johannesburg and another in Cape Town on two
corresponding Saturdays. In Johannesburg, she stayed at the
Hilton/Radisson in Sandton and performed her 90-minute show at what
was known as the Coca Cola Dome in the vicinity of North Riding.
Johannesburg has a notoriously cold winter spell that usually
starts around May and ends sometime in August. On the night that Jo
S performed her music show at the Coca Cola Dome in Johannesburg,
it was a particularly cold night, but thousands of her fans braved
the cold weather, aided by copious amounts of alcohol in some and
various illegal substances in others, and came to see their idol in
action. The fact that Jo S was a product made in South Africa that
had become massive in America gave her divine status amongst South
Africans. The show was sold out, and Jo S showed her gratitude for
her fans’ loyalty by giving them a show to remember. She was, of
course, travelling with a team comprised of dance instructors,
choreographers and voice coaches; all of whom worked diligently
behind the scenes to bring out the best in her.

During the week, Ms. Smith visited Sun City,
a resort leisure center in the North West Province that is not
exactly South Africa’s answer to Disneyland, but has a five-star
hotel and various amenities to force the mind to relax and is
actually a very popular local tourist destination. Ms. Smith also,
for purposes of publicity, posed for pictures with the current
South African cricket team, and visited the Hector Peterson
Memorial in Soweto. While involved in these activities, she was
heavily guarded by armed police whose numbers were exaggerated by
the local press to such an extent that the real truth was never
known, but it became a story of intense local interest that while
Ms. Smith was visiting Montecasino, a leisure and gambling mecca in
Fourways, there were clashes between riotous fans wanting to touch
Jo S and the police officers protecting her from exactly this sort
of particular behavior.

On Wednesday, she spent the morning and
afternoon with her best friend, Samantha Ashford, with whom she
still maintained a relationship over the phone and social
networking sites. The two friends did not, however, manage to
engage in their favorite pastime, shopping, owing to security
concerns over Joelyn by the police. In the evening, the music
sensation and local hero left Johannesburg and travelled by private
flight, a Boeing 747 with all her entourage inside, and descended
in the city of Cape Town, where she stayed at the One & Only, a
five-star hotel of such excellence and exclusivity that it held an
unofficial status as a seven-star hotel.

It happened that while Ms. Smith was, with
all due diligence, preparing for her show at the Cape Town Stadium,
an arena originally built for purposes of hosting some of the 2010
Soccer World Cup matches, but now with no apparent use, news broke
out in America that while Joelyn Smith had been singing her
husband’s praises in her Oscar acceptance speech, Jason Kane had in
fact at that time been engaged in sexual activities with two women
who would later reveal themselves to be high-priced prostitutes.
Owing to Internet availability on portable devices, the people
gathered at the stadium on that night learned of the news as it
broke out in America, where it was still daylight.

A vicious row of words erupted amongst
members of Jo S’s team and also between the concert organizers and
some members of her team. The bone of contention was whether to
inform the superstar of the news of her husband’s infidelity or to
keep her in the dark until the show was over. Eventually, it was
tentatively agreed that the revelation
s
would badly affect Jo S’s performance that night,
or, worse still, she might not be able to go ahead with her
performance after hearing the bad news. While she did her final
preparations for the show that night, Joelyn was unaware that a
media blackout had been effected on her. It helped that her
Facebook friends and Twitter followers were usually handled by her
assistants, and that she had switched off her phone in order to
focus her mind on the imminent show. Unknown to her, Samantha
Ashford did actually make several attempts to reach her, but each
time her efforts were blocked by Joelyn’s inner circle.

Thus, Joelyn Smith broke out onto the stage,
oblivious of her beloved husband’s infidelity, and gave her fans a
splendid performance. Towards the end of the show, she spoke to the
screaming crowd of thousands and told them that her next song was
dedicated to them and the light of her heart, the love of her life,
Jason Kane. The crowd erupted and yelled in unison, “Ditch him!
Ditch him! Ditch him!”

It started as a low noise eventually became a
thunderous roar that echoed off the big stadium’s walls. Jo S
smiled. She innocently thought they hated her husband for
“stealing” her from them. She quieted them down and brought half
the crowd to tears by doing a soulful performance of a love ballad
they hadn’t heard before, which she promised would be on her next
album. By the end of the song, the crowd was collectively ready to
forgive and forget Jason Kane’s marital transgressions, but then
again, alcohol and drugs have the capability to diminish the mind’s
capacity for analytical thought.

In the morning, all hell broke loose. While
holed up in her expensive suite at the One & Only hotel, Joelyn
demanded both her BlackBerry Torch smartphone and Apple iPod. All
the members of her team displayed their cowardice by giving her the
gadgets and letting her find out for herself the news concerning
her husband. When she did, Joelyn exploded in anger and yelled at
the top of her voice at whoever was close by to be scolded. After
the combined shock of learning the news and the anger over her
people’s betrayal dissipated, her first reasonable thought was to
get in touch with her husband.

His phone was off.

She called the numbers of some of the
people who managed Jason Kane’s life and career, but it was a
futile attempt. The response was the same:
Mr. Kane was not speaking to the
media. He would issue a press statement in due course. Thank
you.

‘I’m his goddammed wife, for God’s sake!’
Joelyn screamed down the phone, but the line was already dead.

Enraged to boiling point, she ordered her
people to organize an immediate flight to New York. The flight was
available in two hours. On the way to the airport, sitting at the
back of a silver Mercedes Benz S-class that was both led and
followed by police vehicles, Mrs. Kane phoned her friend Samantha
Ashford and shared her grief about a relentlessly cruel media that
was hell-bent on destroying her life. Samantha could only
sympathize.

When she arrived at JFK International
airport, Joelyn had to be escorted once again since becoming a
celebrity by airport security to her waiting car, which took her to
the Grand Tier apartment on Broadway Street. She found Jason at the
apartment, hiding from the media. When she saw him, a sudden tumult
of emotions welled up inside her and tears flooded her eyes. With a
tremendous exercise of self-restraint, she only just managed not to
rush forward and hug him.

In a quavering voice, she asked him, ‘Is it
true?’

He looked down in shame, avoiding her gaze.
‘I’m sorry, Joelyn…’

Joelyn burst out in tears of grief.

Following the revelations about Jason
Kane’s infidelity on the night of the Academy Awards ceremony,
confirmed in private to his wife but yet to be confirmed publicly
by none other than the culprit himself, more women soon came out
into the open about their previously-secret sexual relations with
one Jason Kane, a professional sportsman with a previously
impeccably flawless private life. It soon became a matter of public
record that Jason Kane was a sexually promiscuous and remorselessly
rampant sex addict of eminent standing within New York City’s sex
industry who, since his marriage to Joelyn Smith, had been sexually
involved with thirty-seven women, most of them high-priced
prostitutes, who by their very own nature would sell their own
mothers for money. Eager for
their
15
minute
s
of
glory, they quickly sold to the tabloids their individual tales –
incorporating the name of Jason Kane, naturally.

Due to journalistic sadism and sensationalist
tendencies, the story dominated the news headlines for weeks and
did two things for American society: it provided light
entertainment and diverted people’s minds from the Presidential
election race; and it also earned Jason Kane a bad reputation in
America.