The stage reeks of sweat and it's a hundred degrees onstage and we have been playing for about fifty minutes and all I want to do is sing the last song, which the band, when I mention this in between breaks, thinks is a pretty bad idea. All the songs are from the last three solo albums but from the front row I can hear Orientals crying out in thick, r-less accents the names of big hits I played with the band and this band launches into the biggest hit off the second solo LP and I can't really tell if the audience is enthused even when they applaud loudly and behind me a four-hundred-foot tapestry—BRYAN METRO WORLD TOUR 1984—billows in back of us and I'm moving slowly across the large expanse of stage, trying to peer out into the audience but bright blinding spotlights turn the arena into this moving mass of gray darkness and as I begin to sing the second verse of the song I forget the lyrics. I sing "Another night passes by and still you wonder what happened" and then I freeze. A guitarist suddenly jerks his head up and a bassist moves closer toward me, the drummer still keeping beat. I'm not even playing my guitar anymore. I start the second verse again: "Another night passes by and still you wonder what happened. . . ," then nothing. The bassist yells out something. I turn my head toward him, my hands killing me, and the bassist urges "You give the world one more try" and I'm saying "What?" and the bassist calls out "You give the world one more try" and I'm saying "What?" and the bassist yells "You give the world one more try—Jesus" and I'm thinking to myself why in the hell would I sing this and then who the fuck wrote this piece of shit and I motion for the band to go into the chorus and we finish the song okay and there's no encore.
Roger rides with me in the limo back to the hotel.
"Terrific show, Bryan." Roger sighs. "Your concentration and showmanship really cannot be improved upon. I would be lying if I said they could. I'm all out of superlatives."
"My hands are . . . fucked up."
"Just the hands?" he says, not even really sarcastically, no edge in his voice, a muffled complaint maybe, an observation not worth making.
"We'll just tell the promoters you had an uneven synth mix," Roger says. "We'll just tell people that your mother died."
We pass a crowded street diagonal to the hotel and everyone is trying to peer into the tinted windows as the limo rolls toward the Hilton.
"Jesus," I'm mumbling to mvself. "All these fucking gooks. just look at them, Roger. just look at all these fucking gooks, Roger."
"All those fucking gooks bought your last album," Roger says, then adds, under his breath, "You brain-dead asshole."
I'm sighing, putting my sunglasses on. "I'd like to get out of this limo and tell these gooks what I think of them."
"That's not gonna happen, baby."
"Why . . . not?"
"Because you aren't presentable for direct contact with the public."
"Think of all the words that rhyme with my name, Roger," I say.
"Are there a lot?" Roger asks.
Roger and I are standing in an elevator.
"Get me a maid or something, okay?" I ask him. "My room is like a total wreck, man."
"Clean it yourself."
"No. Unh-uh."
"I'll move you, okay?"
"Okay.”
"You've got the whole floor, you cadaver. Take your pick."
"Why can't you just get me a maid?"
"Because housekeeping at the Tokyo Hilton seems to think that you raped two of their maids. Is this true, Bryan?"
"Define, um, rape, Roger."
"I'll have room service send up a dictionary." Roger makes a terrible face.
"I'm going to move."
Roger sighs, looks at me and says, "You're getting the feeling that you're not going to move, right? You're realizing that you were going to consider it but now you're coming to the conclusion that it would not be worth the effort, that you don't have the strength or something, right?" Roger turns away, the elevator gradually slowing, reaching his floor. Roger turns a key so that the elevator is locked into going to my floor and not anywhere else, like I even want it to.
The elevator stops at the floor that Roger has put a lock on and I step into an empty, dim-lit corridor and start walking toward my door, breaking the hush by screaming loudly, twice, three, four times, and I fumble for the key that will open the door and I turn the handle and it's open anyway and inside is a young girl sitting on my bed, dried blood everywhere, leafing through Hustler. She looks up from the magazine. I close the door, lock it, stare at her.
"Was that you screaming?" the girl asks in a small, tired voice.
"Guess," I say and then, "Have you made friends with the ice machine yet?"
The girl is pretty, blond, dark tan, large wide blue eyes, Californian, a T-shirt with my name on it, faded tight cutoff jeans. Her lips are red, shiny, and she puts the magazine down as I slowly move toward her, almost tripping over a used dildo that Roger calls The Enabler. She stares back, nervously, but the way she gets up off the bed, walking slowly backward, seems too calculated and when she finally hits the wall and stands there breathing hard and I reach her, I have to put my hands around her neck, softly at first, then tightening the grip, and she shuts her eyes and I bring her toward me then slam her head against the wall which doesn't seem to faze her and this worries me, until she opens her eyes and grins and in one swift movement lifts her hand, the fingernails long and sharp and pink, and rips a two-hundred-dollar T-shirt down the front, scratching my chest. I bunch my fist and hit her hard. She claws at my face. I push her down on the floor and she's spitting at me, plugging my mouth with her fingers, squealing.
I'm in the bathtub taking a bubble bath. The girl has lost a tooth and is nude and sitting on the toilet seat, holding an ice pack from room service (who left several) up to the side of her face. She stands unsteadily and limps over to the mirror and says, "I think the swelling's gone down." I pick up a piece of ice that floats in the water and put it in my mouth and chew it, concentrating on how slowly I am chewing. She sits back down on the toilet and sighs.
"Don't you want to know where I'm from?" she asks. "No," I say. "Not really."
"Nebraska. Lincoln, Nebraska." A long pause.
"You had a 'ob at the mall, right?" I ask, eyes closed. "But the mall closed down, right? It's all empty now, huh?"
I can hear her light a cigarette, smell its smoke, then ask, "Have you been there?"
"I've been to a mall in Nebraska," I say.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah.”
"It's all flat."
"Flat," I agree.
"Totally."
"Totally flat."
I stare down at torn skin on my chest, at the pink swollen lines that crisscross the skin below, over my nipples and I'm thinking, There goes another photo shoot without a shirt on. I touch the nipples lightly, brush the girl's hand away when she tries to touch them. Once she's properly lubricated I slide into her again.
A gram and I'm ready to call Nina at the house up in Malibu. The phone rings eighteen times. She finally answers.
"Hello?"
"Nina?"
"Yeah?"
“lt's me."
"Oh." Pause. "Wait a minute." Another pause.
"Are you there?"
"You sound like you care," she says.
"Maybe I do, babe."
"Maybe you don't, asshole."
"Jesus."
"I'm fine," she says quickly. "Where are you now?"
I close my eyes, lean up against the headboard. "Tokyo. A Hilton."
"Sounds classy."
"It is far and away the nicest place I have ever lived."
"That's great."
"You don't sound too enthusiastic, babe."
"Yeah?"
"Oh shit. Just let me talk to Kenny."
"He's on the beach with Martin."
"Martin?" I ask, confused. "Who the hell is Martin?"
"Marty, Marty, Marty, Marty-"
"Okay, okay, yeah, Marty. How's Marty?"
"Marty's great."
"
Yeah? That's great, even though I have no idea who he is but, um, can I talk to Kenny, babe?" I ask. "I mean, can you go out to the beach and get him and not like freak out?"
"Some other time, okay?"
"I would like to talk to my kid."
"But he doesn't want to talk to you."
"Let me talk to my kid, Nina." I sigh.
"This is pointless," she says.
"Nina—just go get Kenny."
"I'm going to hang up on you now, okay, Bryan?"
"Nina, I'll get my lawyer."
"Fuck your lawyer, Bryan, just fuck him. I've gotta go."
"Oh Jesus—"
"And it's not a good idea if you call here too often."
A long silence because I don't say anything.
"It is never a good idea if you talk to Kenny, because you scare him," she says.
"And you don't?" I ask, appalled. "Medusa?"
"Never call back." She hangs up.
Sitting in the empty coffee shop (which Roger had "cordoned off" because he was afraid "people would see you") in the bottom of the Tokyo Hilton, Roger tells me that we are going to be watching the English Prices eat lunch. Roger is wearing huge black sunglasses and an expensive pair of pajamas, chewing bubble gum.
"Who?" I ask. "Who?"
"The English Prices," Roger enunciates clearly, again. "New group. MTV discovered them and has made them big." Pause. "Real big," he adds grimly. "They're from Anaheim."
"Why?" I ask.
"Because-they-were-born-there." Roger sighs.
"Uh-huh," I say.
"They want to meet you."
"But . . . why?"
"Good question," Roger says. "But does it really matter to you?"
"Why are they here?"
"Because they are on tour," Roger says. "Are you doing coke?"
"Grams and grams and grams of it," I say. "If you knew how much you would choke."
"I suppose it's better than the angel dust routine from '82." Roger sighs warily.
"Who are these people, Roger?" I ask.
"Who are you?"
"Um . . . ," I say, confused by this question. "Who . . . do you think?"
"Someone who tried to set his ex-wife on fire with a tiki torch?" he suggests.
"I was married to her then."
"I suppose it was a good thing that Nina threw herself in the ocean." Roger pauses. "Of course it was three months later, but considering how smart she was when you first met, I was glad her reflexes had improved." Roger lights a cigarette, thinks everything over. "Christ, I can't believe she got custody. But then I hate to think what would've happened to that kid if you had gotten custody. Mothra would have made a better parent."
"Roger, who are these people?"
"Have you seen the cover of the new Rolling Stone?" Roger asks, snapping his fingers at a young, nervous Oriental waitress. "Oh, I forgot. You don't read that publication anymore."
"Not after that shit they pulled with Ed's death."
"Touchy, touchy." Roger sighs. "The English Prices are hot. A hot album, Toadstool, and a video game made about them that you should play, er, sometime." Roger points to his coffee cup and the waitress, head bowed dutifully, pours. "It sounds tacky but it's not. Really."
"Jesus, I'm a wreck."
"The English Prices are big," Roger reminds me. "Stratosphere isn't an inappropriate word."
"You said that already and I still don't believe you."
"Just be cool."
"Why the fuck do I have to be cool?" I look straight at Roger for the first time since we entered the coffee shop.
Roger looks down at his cup and then at me and enunciates each word very carefully: "Because I am going to be managing them."
I don't say anything.
"They'll bring in a lot more people," Roger says. "A lot more people."
"For what? For who?" I ask, instantly realizing the question is useless, better left unanswered.
"For you, babes," Roger says. "We've been drawing sizable crowds, but still."
"There isn't gonna be another tour, man," I say. "This is it."
"That's what you think, baby," Roger says casually.
"Oh man" is all I say.
Roger looks up. "Oh shit—here the little bastards come. Just be cool.”
"Jesus fucking Christ." I sigh. "I am cool."
"Just keep telling yourself that and roll your sleeves down."
"I am becoming aware of just how lost inside my life you really are," I say, rolling my sleeves down.
Four members of the English Prices walk into the coffee shop and each of them has a young Oriental girl by his side. The Oriental girls are very young and pretty and wearing striped miniskirts and T-shirts and pink leather boots. The lead singer of the English Prices is very young also, younger than the Oriental girls in fact, and he has a short platinumblond burr of hair on his head and smooth tan skin and he's wearing mascara and red eyeliner and is dressed in black leather and has a spiked bracelet wrapped around the wrist he holds out. We shake hands.
"Hey, man, I've been a fan of yours like forever," I hear him say. "Forever, man."
The other members nod their heads sullenly in agreement. It's impossible for me to smile or nod. We're all sitting at a large glass table and the Oriental girls keep staring at me, giggling.
"Where's Gus?" Roger asks.
"Gus has mono." The lead singer turns to Roger, eyes still on me.
"I'll have to send him some flowers," Roger says.
The singer turns back to me, explains, "Gus is our drummer."
"Oh," I say. "That's . . . nice."
"Sushi?" Roger asks them.
"No, I'm a vegetarian," the singer says. "Plus we already had a big breakfast of SpaghettiOs."
"With who?"
"A big important record executive."
"Hip," Roger says.
"Anyway, man," the lead singer says, turning his full attention back to me. "Like, I was listening to your records—well, the band's records—since I can remember. In, like, well, a long time ago, and I'm not guessing when I tell you that you"—he stops and has trouble pronouncing the next word—". . . influenced us."
The rest of the English Prices nod, mumbling in unison.
I try to look the singer in the eyes. I try to say "Great." No one says anything.
"Hey," the lead singer says to Roger. "He's pretty, uh, subdued."
"Yes," Roger says. "We call him, in fact, Sub Dude."
"That's . . . cool," the lead singer says apprehensively.
"Who were you listening to, man?" one of them asks me.
"When?" I ask, confused.
"In, like, when you were a little kid, in, like, high school and stuff. Influences, man."
"Oh . . . lots of things. Um, I don't really remember. . . ." I look at Roger for help. "I'd prefer not to say."
"Do you want me to, like, repeat the question, man?" the lead singer asks.
I just stare at him, frozen, unable to move.
"That's life," the lead singer finally says, sighing.
"Captain Beefheart, the Ronettes, antiestablishment rage, you know," Roger says blithely, then, "Who are your friends?" He laughs slyly and the lead singer laughs, barking, and that's the cue for the rest of the band to follow.
"These girls are great."
"Yes sir," one of them says in a deep monotone with a lisp. "Can't understand one bit of American but they fuck like rabbits."
"Can't you?" the lead singer asks the girl sitting next to him. "You a good fuck, bitch?" he asks, a sincere expression on his face, nodding. The girl looks at the expression, takes in the nod, the smile, and she smiles back a worried, innocent smile and nods and everyone laughs.
The lead singer, nodding and smiling, asks another girl, "You give real good head, right? You like it when I slap your face with my fat leathery cock, you gook bitch?"
The girl nods, smiling, looks at the other girls, and the band laughs, Roger laughs, the Oriental girls laugh. I laugh, finally
taking off my sunglasses, loosening up a little. Silence takes over and everyone at the table is left, momentarily, to his own uneasy devices. Roger tells the band to order some drinks. The Oriental girls giggle, adjust tiny pink boots, the lead singer keeps glancing at my bandaged hand and I see myself in the same naive curled grin, in the blur of a photo session, in a hotel room in San Francisco, in a zillion dollars, in another ten months.
In a dressing room at the arena before we are supposed to go on, I just sit in a chair in front of a huge oval mirror staring at my reflection through Wayfarers, at myself nibbling radishes. I start to kick my foot against the wall, my fists clenched. Roger walks in, sits down, lights a cigarette. After a while I say something.
"What?" Roger asks. "You're mumbling."
"I don't want to go out there."
"Because why?" Roger asks as if speaking to a child.
"I don't feel too good." I stare at my reflection, uselessly.
"Don't say that. You have a distinctly upbeat air about you."
"Yeah, and you're gonna win Mr. Congeniality any fucking year now," I growl, then, calmed down, "Get Reggie."
"Get ready for what?" he asks and then, seeing that I am about to pounce on him, relents. "Just a joke."
Roger makes a phone call, ten minutes later someone is wrapping something around my arm, a vein is slapped, pinpricks, vitamins, saying yeah, weird warmness rushing through me, flushing out the coldness, fast at first, then, more slowly, yeah, sure.
Roger sits back down on the couch and says, "Don't beat up any more groupies, all right? Can you hear me? Lay off."
"Oh man," I say. "They . . . like . . . it. They like to pet me. I let them pet . . . me."
"Just cool it. Do you hear me?"
"Oh man fuck you man I'll do it again."