The Last Living Slut (34 page)

Later that night at the Rainbow, as I cooed over Troy with my usual doe-eyed adoration, he told me he wanted to take me to Scott. My heart sank. We snuck around to the back of the now-forbidden Cat Club and saw Scott sitting by himself.

“Scott, take her back and spoon her,” Troy said.

I was so fucking upset. He was clearly giving me to Scott because he was pissed off that I’d slept with Scott before him. But I was lonely and needed someone to be with. So Scott came home with me that night and stayed with me for two days.

“I’m gonna get kicked out of the band,” he muttered. “And this isn’t helping any.”

“Then why are you seeing me?” I asked.

He looked at me with those needy puppy eyes of his. “Because I like you.”

I liked this honest whore. He had balls. He was risking his livelihood for pussy. I believed he really must have liked me.

“That’s insane,” I said. “You’re Dizzy’s friend.”

“He’s told me I’m not allowed to see you, but I told him I really like you and want to keep seeing you.” It was strange: Here he was, a guy in his late thirties, being ordered by his friend who he can fuck and who he can’t.

“Dizzy is going to kill me,” Scott repeated as he fucked me next to the mirror, grabbing my hips from behind and ramming himself into me. I screeched and whimpered like an animal as we watched our reflections writhe and he grabbed my hair and nipped the back of my neck.

All night, Scott’s phone kept going off; it was Troy, leaving him messages that Dizzy was going to fire him. Scott went pale every time he saw a fresh text come in, as if they were death threats. I felt so bad for him.

The next morning, his phone was flooded with voicemails. “Fuck it. Fuck them,” he said. “I can see whoever I want.” We ate lunch at a cute little Mexican restaurant, holding hands and feeding each other. My admiration for Scott bloomed. He had guts to risk getting fired from his job just to be with me, even though being in the band was his only bread and butter.

That night, though, he failed to show up at the Rainbow, where we’d planned to meet. When I called him, his voice eked out of the phone like a pigeon. He seemed crestfallen, as if he were speaking to me from the depths of a well.

“I’m out. I’m out of the band. I don’t have a job anymore. Dizzy fired me.” He sounded drained of life. “I can’t see you anymore. My life is fucked.”

I cried. I was gutted. I felt like shit. All I wanted was to live my life, be happy, and move on.

“You’re like Yoko Ono,” Kenny, the barman at the Cat Club, said to me one night after I’d snuck into the club around closing time.

“And why is that?” I giggled.

“Well,” he said, his bulldog features shifting with a bitter guarded vibe, “you broke up a band.”

I chuckled. “Hookers N’ Blow aren’t exactly the Beatles, are they?”

Nonetheless, part of me got a bit of an ego high from deseaming the band the way I did. Although Scott and I kept talking on the phone, he refused to see me because he was scared of Dizzy.

After a couple weeks, Scotty couldn’t take it any longer. One night around one a.m., he called, whispering like he was on a secret mission.

“I’m at the corner outside your hotel.”

“Come to me,” was all I needed to say.

Five minutes later, he knocked. We didn’t say a word. We ripped each other’s clothes off, breathed each other’s smell, sucked each other’s mouth. The door was still open. We tore at each other like two animals. Low yowls gushed from our throats as we fucked. My lacy nightdress was shredded in the carnage as Scott pushed me down and pump-fucked me, roaring into me as I spread my body so wide open for him to absorb his hair, his smell, his fucking. We moaned so loud I was sure someone would think I was being beaten to death. By the time we both came, I was like a rag doll. I had spread my pussy so wide for him that I ejaculated all over him.

Afterward, though, his fears returned and overwhelmed him. “You’re gonna destroy my life, aren’t you?” he kept saying. ”You’re gonna tell Dizzy, aren’t you?” His voice was defeated, drained, fearful. “Don’t tell anyone. Please. Dizzy will kill me if he finds out.” He was trembling like a scared little boy. I wished I could take him back to England with me and protect him.

Part 5
RETURNED

Chapter 55

I was Hysterical because I needed My Vibrator to Work Properly.

M
y experiences with Troy and Scott—and eventually with Alex Grossi, the fourth member of Hookers N’ Blow—were like drug highs, only temporarily masking the pain I felt from Dizzy. The vitriolic texts from him that followed, on top of the months of trauma I’d endured, were the last straw. I’d felt lost since the abortion and one night it all came to a head. When I was unable to eliminate the pain any other way, I swallowed forty-five paracetamols. Fortunately, my friend Danny Demure, who played in a band called Nothing Sacred, showed up, worried by the texts I’d been sending him. As soon as he saw the empty pill containers and my blanched face, he made me vomit up the pills. I spent my last two weeks in LA with him looking after me, bringing me food, and taking me on drives through the Hollywood Hills.

When I returned home, I remained tired and ill for another month—from a combination of pills, the emotional intensity of the battle between Scott and Troy, and my own efforts to purge myself of Dizzy. My overdose hadn’t helped anything and it didn’t make me feel better. I cried like a lunatic, which made me mad as hell. All spring I walked around like a zombie, not caring about anything or anyone.

Then, one night, I just got out of bed, put on my makeup, and returned to the place where it had all started, the Underworld in Camden. I needed to see my friends, who were hanging out with a band called Bang Tango.

Ostara had adored Jizzy Pearl since the Adler’s Appetite days; now Jizzy was back singing with Love/Hate, who were on the double bill with Bang Tango. She’d spent the day with Jizzy, walking in the park and fucking. I saw her backstage, glowing, looking like the sweet beautiful fairy doll that she was.

“How have you been?” she asked in her hushed, love-filled baby-doll voice. My attire said it all: For once I was wearing my normal student clothing to a gig instead of my usual fuck-me heels.

As Bang Tango played, I sat with a seventeen-year-old boy who was working as a roadie for Kristy Majors, the former guitarist in Pretty Boy Floyd. The only person in the room with us was Jizzy, who was warming up his voice. Jizzy scared the shit out of me. He was always pissed off, and his vibe bordered on militant and antagonistic. He scared me even more tonight, because I thought he’d probably been brainwashed against me by Dizzy.

“I hear you’re doing Hookers N’ Blow,” he said with a sneer.

“I haven’t done
all
of the members yet,” I replied, trying to make a joke out of it.

He looked at me with a warmth that caught me completely off guard.

“Everything’s gonna be fine,” he said.

This cheered me up for a moment, so I went off to slip into the slutty clothes that I’d brought with me.

I stood on the sidelines watching Love/Hate, surrounded by my friends, and made a conscious effort to be happy. It felt like Christmas in a warm, family living room. I so wanted to find my cheerfulness again.

The crowd creamed themselves for Jizzy, chanting his name like a hypnotic mantra. The Underworld rarely went that crazy for someone like this. I had no idea Jizzy had such cult status. When he came offstage, the dressing room was filled with horny young girls, thick-booted and raucous-haired, as well as sunken-faced, older groupies, secretly optimistic.

“Only the people who are with the band, please,” a roadie shouted at the crowd. “The rest of you get the fuck out.”

“Oh,
she
can stay.” I felt a hand grip my shoulder and looked up to see Joe Leste, the lead singer of Bang Tango. His eyes were Frisbee-round pools of sympathetic brown; his face lit up in a toothy grin with trenches of dimples dancing around it. He didn’t stop staring at me the whole time we were backstage.

“You are mine! You’re coming back with me—no one else!” He kept saying this, as if I were prize game. Back in LA, I’d told my friends I wanted to fuck that hot lead singer from Bang Tango, and Scott had balked with horror. Now I was about to get what I wanted.

I knew Joe’s voice was powerful, as was his persona. In the ’80s he’d been fairly successful riding the hair-metal wave. And tonight he wanted to act the part of rock star. He had a wide, red bandana tied around his raven hair, chains hanging from his leather trousers, and black wristbands. He also had a funny grin and a bit of a paunch. Nevertheless, the crowd of hot young girls backstage was dying to sleep with him.

He held my hand and we headed off to a late-night café by Camden Lock Hotel. The residue from the Underworld crowd trailed behind us in the form of about twelve rock chicks, their tongues hanging out as if they were stray dogs and Joe were a late-night kebab. They swarmed the streets, dragging their stilettoed heels, inebriated, smudged and eyelinered, sticky, camera-phoned, pumped with beer, and exuberant in unison. They were like a military march of the rock zombies.

Ostara had left to meet a friend, and a brunette had moved in and stuck herself to Jizzy like a stick insect. These young, gorgeous girls were cock-hungry for these middle-aged men. I wondered how many would be doing this if the men were not in a rock band. The way they lusted to lay open their young, pert, nubile bodies to these men astonished me in a most pleasant way. This was rock ‘n’ roll—my happiness, my soul.

Yet something in me had died. I was uniformly happy—all my friends were around me and I was gonna get fucked by an American rocker I had a crush on. And though I was happier than I had been in over a month, my spirit still dwindled. I felt exhausted, like a cardboard cutout stewardess.

Joe kept looking at me in awe. “You really are a stunning woman, aren’t you?” he asked.

I didn’t feel a thing.

When we got to the café, the crowd followed us in. The stick insect was still hanging onto Jizzy. There was something disturbing about it. As I walked over to talk to him, the girl looked up at me, her muted almond eyes narrowing hatefully. I thought she was going to maul me. I backed off.

“So you wanna be with Jizzy then, do you?” Joe looked mildly hurt.

“No. I was just talking to him.”

“Because he’s the headliner, huh?” He looked genuinely injured.

The café was still packed at three a.m., mostly with blokey local types after a night on the lash and sensible vegetarians discussing the wonders of James Blunt and organic gardening. They sipped their red wine, trying to pretend we weren’t there. Joe and I crammed ourselves into the café along with the cock-hungry girls, the rest of Bang Tango, Jizzy, a dozen older groupies, emo kids, and a bunch of over-the-hill goths and junkie DJs. As a blues band played, Joe and I made out, sticking our tongues down each others’ throats. A young girl pulled at Joe’s arm, trying to get a kiss, but she couldn’t even get a glimpse of tongue.

“God, you’re so beautiful.” Joe was like a tonic. Not only was he generous with his compliments, but he was also a generous dispenser of cash for everyone’s drinks.

The congregation of young girls stuck around us like they were waiting for candy and cake. They all wanted to be with Joe. A weathered and prune-haired groupie who looked like Patricia Kennealy sat down and began giving me drunken advice on the pitfalls of groupiedom as if we were still in the sixties, when the optimism in the scene was rife and sunshiny dispositions were plenty. Kristy Majors’ little-boy roadie offered me drugs, and I balked at the insult. Everybody was entangled in drunken group makeout sessions.

When the band launched into a Doors song, I stood up.

“You gonna dance for me, baby?” Joe was like a kind puppy.

Right there in the middle of that rancid floor, I hitched up my skirt around my ass, grabbed two chicks, and snaked and gyrated my body for the audience. As the sensible vegetarians averted their eyes, I took turns gorging on the mouths and tongues of these two young, chubby, delicious girls. I wanted to fuck them so badly, and they looked at me in awe, dripping with tender trust. I could tell Joe’s cock was getting hard.