The Last Living Slut (24 page)

“I know about the other girl you got pregnant. . . . know what you did to her life,” I texted, inflaming him even more.

“So you and this girl, you’re friends now? I hope you go through it again to be honest. I’ll gladly write you a check for saving the world from your offspring. Enough. Good-bye.”

My throat hurt. I wailed like a child when I cried. I didn’t care if anyone in the room next door could hear. I felt so alone. It was just this room and me. Where could I go? I didn’t want to face the morning.

The curtain displayed its curves in waves over the window with glee. Maybe Dizzy was right, I thought. Maybe I had no place on this earth. I wanted that baby so much. I loved it. What was left for me to do now but put myself out of my misery?

I put my phone on silent, peeled myself off the floor, and emptied a packet of pills in my palm. It would end the pain.

Chapter 40

T
he first time we met was in the summer of 2006 in Paris, a cloudy city, vast and rabid, stained with perfume and watercolors.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hi.”

I was in the VIP room at Paris’ Bercy Stadium. The guy in front of me was staring wide-eyed and mute, his eyes so explicitly sky blue I thought he was wearing contact lenses.

“This is Dizzy.” Chris Pitman from Guns N’ Roses stepped in and introduced us.

I had vaguely heard of Dizzy Reed before—he was one of the many musicians hired by Axl Rose as part of the ongoing Guns N’ Roses machine. Dizzy had highlighted dreadlocks, which was weird. He was in Guns N’ Roses, so I couldn’t understand why he was endorsing a rasta look rather than dressing like a rock star. Somehow he had managed to stay in the band for sixteen years, which interested me straightaway. But it wasn’t just that: he had an overpowering and intoxicating sexual aura that even Izzy Stradlin, who was hanging around, didn’t have—and even Tommy Lee hadn’t had.

He wore a light blue denim waistcoat draped over his slight frame. He had a well-worn aura of staleness about him. His eyes gawked at me, fixed and vacuous, but they dripped sex in a dirty old man way. He didn’t seem quite there, like he was on some secret cloud-nine medication.

“Hi and bye!” I said. “I have to go.”

I was tired after standing around on my six-inch PVC heels for hours—first waiting for Avenged Sevenfold to finish their set, then waiting for Guns N’ Roses, who came on more than ninety minutes late. Their show then stretched for two hours, with lengthy guitar and bluesy piano solos randomly spliced into sets by a medley of musicians I didn’t recognize. I nearly passed out with hysteria when Axl came out to the opening bars of “Welcome to the Jungle,” but by the end I was just praying for the show to end.

It had been a long journey to get there. Just a few nights before, I had been in Frankfurt for the World Cup. While I was singing the theme song from
Titanic
in a Thai karaoke bar, a roadie friend working on the tour had called to say he’d gotten me a pass. So the next day I took the train to Paris for the show.

In the VIP room afterward, a pair of gangly emaciated teenage twin girls in matching yellow lycra vests and microscopic black shorts, souped up with valley girl accents, were straddling Izzy Stradlin like he was this year’s hot stuff in
Teen People
. They nuzzled him like two child giraffes, flirting in their limited teenage way. Silent, introverted, pointy-chinned and meek, Izzy tried to respond, coquettishly flirting back and smirking like a shy schoolboy.

By then I’d talked to various members of this new Guns N’ Roses, especially Chris Pitman, one of the keyboardists, who for some reason was dying to introduce me to Dizzy.

It was mid-June and the steaming heat of summer in Paris had broiled my flesh. I was tired, but this Dizzy guy’s intensely sleazy, sexual vibe and stare convinced me he’d be easy to get, that he was someone who could not resist pussy. I said bye to him, cursing myself for being too damn tired to even flirt, and headed back to my cousin’s flat in Montparnasse to crash out.

“Did you meet anyone in the band?” my cousin mumbled from the dark when I crept into the room.

“Oh, just the keyboardist, Dizzy Reed,” I mumbled disappointedly as I drifted into sleep. “Better than nothing, I suppose.”

The next day, I went to visit Jim Morrison at Père–Lachaise Cemetery, which I always did when I was there. And, as always, I got lost trying to find his grave. Walking past my idols, Oscar Wilde and Edith Piaf, I decided to follow the debris of burger, fries, and cheap aftershave that trailed from a group of American tourists wearing Eminem T-shirts and the like, who were loudly making their way through the cemetery with their cameras and iPods, whooping and cheering.

The cemetery was serene and courtly, snug and dusky. James Douglas Morrison’s grave seemed like one of the biggest tourist spots in the world. Thin silver railings at knee height had been erected around the grave itself to protect it from human copulation, bloodletting rituals, and general Morrison worship. I stuck myself hard and fast to the silver railing and vomited in my mouth a little as loud, fat Americans high-fived one another and took pictures. Jim’s grave had become Disneyland and I had to cry just a little bit for that. The smell and noise and
click-click
of cameras drove me crazy. This was a carnival of the grotesque, the debris of an MTV version of Jim Morrison.

But then I was a tourist, too, gawking at a slab of cold stone. To comfort myself, I took a mental step back and chose to view the scene as purely postmodern.

A couple guards, looking like toy soldiers, stood by as more loud Americans sieved through with maps of Paris and ice cream. We all stood around staring at the grave, as if Jim might come alive any second. It was like some Brechtian play. And that’s when I decided to get a closer look at the notes and poems left on the grave. I put one leg over the railing and one of the toy-soldier guards clicked awake.
“Non!”
he yelped, and proceeded to unravel a reel of French.

“He says you can’t climb the railings, dude,” a sleepy guy with an afro drawled.

“I’m just going to look at the writing,” I answered affably.

“If you go over fence, I will get police,” the guard said, switching to English.

“I’ll just be a minute,” I snarled and put the other leg in.

I walked over to the grave and read some of the writings. There were letters wailing desire and dirty laundry to Jim, notes of sexual innuendo and sorrow, candles with rainbows, child photos, lipstick tissues, some dead flowers, and a plastic bird.

Minutes later I heard what sounded like an army of footsteps behind me grinding on the gravel. I turned around to see seven French policemen standing against the railing, beside themselves with anger. I climbed back over the fence, nearly shitting myself.

“I was just looking at the poems,” I stammered.

“You must come with us,” one of them announced.

“Just because I climbed over the fence? I wasn’t causing trouble.”

“You must leave now,” one of the security men repeated. “You have to come with us.”

Suddenly, the number of uniformed men seemed to double, surrounding me in a flash. The spectacle had succeeded in making the American tourists shut the fuck up, and turned me into the circus freak. As the policemen took me away, I decided to add a P.S. to their postcard home, shouting, “Jim would have been so proud of me!”

Because I didn’t struggle, most of the policemen dispersed and left me with just one guy. At least I wouldn’t get lost this time.

“I’m sorry I don’t speak French,” I said. It was tacky that I didn’t speak the language.

He seemed to like that—so he asked me out to dinner.

“I wasn’t doing anything wrong,” I insisted.

“Yes, but many people want to have the sex on his grave,” he stated in his hard, sugary French way. “That is why we put fence.”

As he led me through the cemetery, I realized that he might actually be taking me to a police station and not just escorting me out. I’d had enough bollocks for that afternoon, so I decided to make a break for it. I ran out of the gates, down the street, and into the fusty tubes of the metro.

Chapter 41

W
hile I was in Paris with Guns N’ Roses, my mum had a stroke. My brother called and reluctantly relayed the news: She was alive, but had lost some of her memory. I bawled as I waited for the Eurostar train back to London that morning. I loved my mummy so much, and I didn’t want her to die. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Paris was a bittersweet, twisted lover.

When she recognized me in the Bristol hospital, my jagged insides were anesthetized with relief. Her eyes, though, were vacant and her words slurred. My mother was my heroine. She had worked so hard while studying at university to provide for her parents, brought up three kids by herself when she moved to England, and sold her wedding jewelry to buy us food. Laying back, her hair floating about her as if underwater, her body was warm in the white sheets.

“Did you see anything exciting in Paris?” she whispered.

“I saw a band,” I said. “They’re called Guns N’ Roses.”

“Be careful.” She looked right at me as she said it. I should have listened.

Guns N’ Roses had a UK tour coming up. Their music had been my life and soul ever since I was a teenager. So I e-mailed Dizzy. I couldn’t get his frozen-eyed stare out of my head. It seemed like an invitation.

“It was nice to briefly meet you at the Paris show in the ‘little room,’ ” I wrote. “I was the one with the corset and heels in case u don’t remember. Hope to see ya in England for ‘proper’ fun! Xx.”

“God, I hope so, too!” he e-mailed back. “Let me know where you are going to see us and we can plan ahead so you’re not disappointed!!! Message me and remind me when it gets closer to the gig. The girl I was totally in love with just blew me off for a baseball player but that’s life. See you then. I’m an idiot.”

I felt bad for him, but I figured after that experience, he might be in the mood to party. A couple weeks later he e-mailed me again: “We get to Sheffield tomorrow. Let me know if you want to come to the gig or if you want to meet up tomorrow night as well. The gig will be no problem except I don’t think we are hanging around too long after so it might be cooler to hook up tomorrow. Let me know, Diz.”

I couldn’t make it, but I told him I would go to the Manchester show. Again, he responded right away with a sweet e-mail, signing it “Dizweiser.”

I hadn’t expected him to be so nice—or so interested in me. I was flattered that someone like him would be so willing to pursue little old me. It was out of this world—especially, a short time later, when he wrote to me again: “I think we are staying at some place called the Malmaison. When I confirm that, I will send you the address as well and my contact info. I need some fun too! We all do. Talk to you soon. Dizzy Fuckin’ Reed.”

I Googled him. Wikipedia described him as someone who was very loyal to his wife and enjoyed collecting stamps. That sounded nice.

I was delirious every time I got an e-mail from him; I would squeal with delight and clap my hands together like a child. Eventually he sent me—a complete stranger—his BlackBerry number, a second e-mail address, and the address where he was staying. “I will stay nice and sweaty for you,” he wrote at the end of the e-mail. He remembered I’d told him I liked him sweaty.

In the back of my mind, of course, there was a nagging signal: Isn’t this the behavior of a complete male whore? What kind of guy gives out all his details to girls on the Internet? But because he was in Guns N’ Roses, it translated as sexual confidence. I was blinded by his breathtaking charisma, which was bound in the Guns N’ Roses name. And I was intrigued that he wanted me so much when there were hordes of females of the model variety to keep him company in England. Of course, I realized that if this had been some random guy from the Internet asking me to come to his hotel, I would have freaked.

In hindsight, that might not have been a bad idea.

In the days before I was to meet him, I took out my collection of Guns N’ Roses videos and watched them all again. Dizzy hadn’t looked too good back in the ’90s. He resembled a roadie, with his long, shaggy brown hair trailing over a tubby denim-clad body. Embarrassment burned over me.

“Why don’t you hook up with Izzy instead?” Abigail chided when I told her about Dizzy. She laughed at me, thinking I was desperate.

“I don’t find Izzy attractive at all,” I replied. “Dizzy seems very sexually exciting and charismatic.” I wasn’t just defending my decision; it was the truth.

On Friday night, I groomed myself to perfection: skin apricot-scrubbed; hair glossed; brows and other hairs waxed, epilated, and shaved; body marinated in mango butter. Bitter butterflies zigzagged in my belly all day. That night I made my way to my mother’s house for a family barbecue, and sat silently in the garden under my parents’ little canopy as my stepdad grilled lamb and tomatoes in the twilight. I was so nervous that I couldn’t even touch the feta salad my little sister had made. Sheer nerves froze me to my plastic garden chair.