How to Kill a Rock Star

  I kicked him in the shin as hard as I could. As he simultaneously doubled over in pain and laughed, I stormed off to my room, slammed the door, and bit the sides of my cheeks so that I didn't cry.

  Paul entered my room without knocking. He sat down on my window ledge, rolled up his pant leg, and said, “My leg's turning black and blue.”

  “Why did you tell her you were at practice?”

  “What was I supposed to say? That I was busy making out with my roommate?”

  “Get out!” I yelled, tasting blood in my mouth, and christening myself the biggest fool in all of Manhattan.

  He laughed again, limping over to me with his pant leg still rolled up to his knee. “Hey, no one said you had to kiss me back.”

  “I didn't kiss you back.”

  “You most certainly did. Twice.” He clutched his side and moaned. “Ow. Shit. Now it's my leg and my pancreas.”

  I held the door open.

  “Say you'll come to the show on Thursday.”

  “I mean it. Out!”

  He stomped off to his room like a pouting child and then reappeared in the hall with his little tape recorder. “Thursday.” He pointed at me. “Be there.”

  He left the apartment without another word, and from the window I watched him walk toward Houston Street. I stood there for a long time, even after he was gone, struggling to process the night, the last couple of weeks, my life, and where Paul Hudson might fit in to the equation.

  I tried to tell myself he didn't fit in at all, but I had a sinking feeling that no matter how hard I tried to remain on the periphery of the country that was Paul Hudson, I had already willingly crossed the border.

  Dreams can change histories and songs can alter destinies— two ideas that on good days I believe wholeheartedly and on bad days I denounce as a bunch of bull. It must be a stellar goddamn day because I was positive, as I wandered down Houston Street and away from the girl I knew was standing in the window watching me, that someday I'll look back on this night as a turning point. The convergence of my past and my future. History and destiny crashing together like the Big Bang.

  I was having an epiphany. A moment of supreme clarity, leading to what I dubbed a “realization of solitude” that goes like this: I'm lonely.

  I rarely notice it. The loneliness. I've learned that my mood remains steady when I'm completely oblivious to my isolation. But when I left that girl in the window I was sure I'd never felt more godforsaken in my life.

  There's a big difference between being alone and being lonely. And I'm guessing that once you've discovered this distinction you can't go back to solitary confinement without serious emotional repercussions.

  As I walked away trying not to limp, my shin still killing me from where Eliza had kicked me, all these ideas started coming in waves and I felt the kind of high I figure can only come from three sources: art, love, or narcotics. And that last one doesn't count because even I know it's a cop-out.

  Is Eliza feeling even half of what I am? I don't know. What I do know is that she's searching for something too. It's in her eyes. It's in her scar. It's in her reverence for music, which I saw all over her face when she listened to that Van Morrison song in the bar. The girl is a real believer. That she doesn't yet believe in me is only a minor problem. If she's the kind of person I think she is, I'll win her over with one verse. One chorus. Maybe even one line. It'll be a goddamn test. I'll test her the same way she'll no doubt test me—with a song. Because believers know the truth when they hear it.

  Epiphanic moment of supreme clarity number two came half a block later, after I caught a glimpse of my reflection in the window of Katz's. Circles under my eyes. Skin the color of a poached chicken breast. I look like a goddamn junkie and I swear over my life I've never touched that shit. Epiphanic moment of supreme clarity number two was this: Eliza makes me want to be a better person. And not for her sake either, but for my own, which seems pretty monumental considering I haven't even fucked her.

  Eliza has the sky in her eyes and I've always wanted to touch the goddamn sky.

  My supremacy of clarity was unprecedented and called for a lot of resolutions to be made, which I rattled off down the sidewalk. On my index finger I resolved to cut down on the smoking. On my middle finger I resolved to cut down on the weed—no, I resolved to cut out the weed. Well, I'll at least put in the effort.

  And the shirt-folding. On my ring finger I resolved to be a better shirt-folder. The best goddamn shirt-folder the Gap has ever seen, because life is short and a man should take pride in his work, even if his work makes him feel like a total loser.

  A kid went by me on a scooter and said, “Shut up, freak.” He didn't even look old enough to drive, let alone old enough to be scooting Manhattan in the middle of the night, and I was going to tell him so, but right then a blast of hot, rank air shot up my legs and hit me in the face. I hadn't been paying attention to where I was going and shit if I wasn't standing on a subway grate.

  My heart started pounding, and I experienced an admittedly irrational fear that I was about to be sucked underground—I'd never get to kiss Eliza again, or see her matching goddamn underwear, or run my goddamn tongue along the inside of her goddamn thigh.

  A homeless guy pushing a shopping cart passed me, pointing and shouting, “There's a cyborg among us! There's a cyborg among us!”

  Great, I thought. I'm morphing into something half human, half machine, and the magnetic suction of the underworld is trying to drag me down. The breath of Hades is deep, heavy, and rancid. One great inhale and I'll be a soggy piece of toast.

  “There's nothing down there but cigarette butts.”

  That's what Eliza said to me when we were on our way to St. Vrain's. As soon as she figured out the grates creeped me out, she skipped and pranced over every one of them. I think I loved her for that. Especially when a train pulled in, her skirt did a Marilyn Monroe, and I almost saw her underwear.

  “Take a look,” she said, pointing into the ground. “Just for a second, you can still stand on the sidewalk. Just LOOK.”

  I peeked over the edge. It was six feet down, tops.

  “Even if you fell through,” she said, “it's not like you'd die or anything. You probably wouldn't even break your leg.”

  She pulled me over until I was on top of the grate and I stood there for like, fifteen whole seconds. I'd like to say it was an act of bravery, but I was only able to do it because she was holding my sleeve.

  This is what I mean about epiphanies. With her, I'd had the strength to stand there. Without her, I would have run.

  People who have something against cities, people who don't like New York, they're always whining that you can't see stars at night. This is no exaggeration—as I was having my epiphanies I counted thirty-three stars above the block I was on, and they seemed so bright and so close I was sure that if I held a match up as far as my arm could reach, it would have caught fire.

  I looked down and realized I was back at Rings of Saturn. John the Baptist laughed when he saw me. He filled a glass with ice and lifted Captain Morgan from the shelf, but the last thing I wanted was a goddamn drink. I asked him for coffee and his operative eye glanced in the direction of a portable burner filled with something that looked like molasses. He said it'd been there since noon but I didn't care if it'd been there since the goddamn bicentennial.

  He said, “Ever jumped out of an airplane, Hudson?”

  I told him I had not.

  “Take this to heart,” he said. “If you're gonna jump out of a plane, remember you'll be falling at terminal velocity, and that's nothing to monkey around with. Check your gear and make sure your parachute is operational.”

  As usual, he was spewing a lot of crap, but I got the feeling he and I were on the same wavelength. I asked him if he'd noticed the way Eliza listened to the music, how she'd gazed at the speakers like God was talking to her.

  He told me terminal velocity is about one hundred thirty miles per hour.

  I c
ould fall hard for a girl who listens to music like that.

  “Sometimes when you open the chute at a high speed,” John said, “the G force is so strong it breaks your arms. It's not common, but it's happened. Happened to a buddy of mine in ‘Nam.”

  I asked John if it was a crime to want to live in a world where girls with falcon eyes and pretty underwear believe in the saving grace of rock ‘n’ roll and he said, “Just check your chute before you jump, that's all I'm saying.”

  Gotta get some sleep.

  Over.

  Vera gave me a sticker to put on my shirt. An all-access pass allowing me to roam Rings of Saturn as I wished. “Michael makes them,” she said with pride.

  The pass was electric yellow and shaped like a banana. But it was a suggestive, tongue-in-cheek banana. A penis disguised as a piece of fruit, to be exact. I stuck it to my chest and, in lieu of actually using it, e.g., possibly running into Paul in the dressing room, Vera and I made our way to a small table to the left of the stage.

  “Yay. You're here,” Vera said, patting me on the back. “Michael's nervous. He really wants you to be impressed.”

  I was nervous too, though surely not for the same reasons as Michael.

  Minutes before the band was scheduled to go on, a girl dashed out from behind the curtain. She was striking in a brazen way, with dark, Cabernet-colored lips, Medusa hair, and she burned down the stairs in a violent flash.

  “Oh, boy, she didn't look happy,” Vera said. “Then again, would you be happy if you were dating Paul?”

  I heard an involuntary noise escape my throat.

  “Dear all Paul Hudson lovers,” Vera said to no one in particular. “Give it up.”

  Most of the people who had been down at the bar were swarming up the stairs for the show, but the place was still only half full as the lights dimmed and Michael walked out. He saw Vera and smiled, but it was quick and inadvertent, as if he had to maintain a level of coolness that showing affection for his wife did not allow. I stuck my tongue out at him and he gave me the finger.

  “Doesn't he look sexy up there?” Vera said.

  As Michael plugged his guitar into an amp and tinkered with the knobs, his presence conveyed a spartan detachment that was not at all what I would call sexy. Regardless, I was reassured Vera thought otherwise.

  “Another reason why you can't let him quit,” I said.

  “Back off,” she piped.

  The drummer swaggered out next. Vera called him Angelo in a disapproving tone. Angelo was drinking a beer, mirrored sunglasses hid his eyes, and a small group of girls whistled at him. He reminded me of a serial killer, only I couldn't remember which one.

  Burke, the blond, baby-faced bass player, was behind Angelo. “Oliver Twist,” Vera whispered. “Doesn't he look like Oliver Twist?”

  “I don't know what Oliver Twist looks like.”

  Paul walked out last, causing a downpour of rainy applause to sweep through the crowd. He was wearing the pants to his green suit, and a T-shirt on which he'd written: Fuck you, Mr. Winkle.

  “I gotta hand it to him,” Vera said. “The guy sure knows how to win friends and influence record execs.”

  Paul had a black Gibson around his neck and a bottle of water in his hand. He approached the microphone and adjusted it down toward his mouth. “Thanks for showing up,” he said using his pretend bashful voice, greeting a group of fans up front, two guys and a girl who looked like runaways.

  “They take the train in from Jersey every Thursday,” Vera said. “Paul is their god.”

  Shielding his eyes from the light, Paul cleared his throat and peered around the room until he found me. “This first song,” he said, his eyes locked on mine. “We haven't really practiced it much but we're gonna play it anyway.”

  He winked, and Vera's chest inflated. “Did he just wink at you?”

  I was able to disregard the question because the band had launched into a spacey, moving rendition of “The Day I Became a Ghost” that pricked open my ears and set me on the edge of my seat. But it was the next nine songs, the Paul Hudson originals, that raised me up and never set me back down until the band left the stage.

  The music defied classification. If I had been writing a review of the show, I would have labeled it progressive, guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll. But the guitars made sounds guitars didn't always make. Symphonic sounds. Sacred sounds. The music dug in so deep you didn't hear it so much as feel it, reminding me of a dream I used to have when I was a kid, where I would be standing on a street corner, I would jump into the air, flap my arms, and soar up into the sky.

  That's the only way I could describe the music.

  It was the sonic equivalent of flight.

  And then there was the voice. I'd never heard anyone sing like Paul Hudson. Even Doug Blackman, master storyteller, whose passion and pain could be heard in every holy word he uttered, only wished for a voice like Paul's—a voice that swept up and down the scale and was, at times, filled with deep, lush, apocalyptic emotion, and at other times was a burning falsetto of hope and love and seemed too big to come from his throat, lungs, or diaphragm.

  From his soul, I decided.

  Before the last song, Vera leaned over and said, “Would you ever think such a little guy could make such a big sound?”

  I couldn't even blink, let alone turn my head from the stage and respond to Vera. All of a sudden I was angry. It was incomprehensible to me that bands like 66 were playing to sold-out crowds, earning thousands of dollars a night, while Paul Hudson and probably so many other extraordinary artists were stuck in half-empty barrooms getting nothing but bogus attention from Winkles who wouldn't appreciate musical rectitude if it spit in their faces.

  “Welcome to America,” Doug would have said.

  I set my martini glass down so hard its base cracked and water spilled over the sides, soaking my napkin. “I need air.”

  Outside, there was a deli next to Rings of Saturn. Through the window I watched a swarthy, heavily bearded man shoving a pastrami sandwich into his mouth, taking bite after bite before he finished swallowing what he was chewing. He had a glob of mustard on the tip of his nose and bits of meat stuck to the hair on his chin.

  As the man washed down his food with gulps of soda, I knelt on the ground, let my head fall to my hands, and stayed like that until Vera found me ten minutes later.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Kneeling Mecca-style outside the club. Not a good sign.”

  I rose, brushing dirt from my skirt. “Why didn't you tell me?”

  Vera looked cautious. “Tell you what? I said he was talented.”

  “Talent? That's not talent. Talent is Liza Minnelli tap-dancing and singing at the same time. What I just saw was devastation. Dying man on the cross. Salvation in B minor. An ejaculation of truth.”

  “Oh, for Pete's sake, it's music. It's supposed to be fun, not devastating. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, remember? Whew-hoo. And don't get any crazy ideas about Paul. He's the last thing you need.”

  I followed Vera backstage, where Paul and the Michaels were huddled together in the corner, extolling each other's triumphs and picking apart their mistakes like a gang of school chums after a dodgeball game.

  I avoided making eye contact with Paul. I wasn't ready for him. Not with so many people around. I waved to Michael and waited until he came to me.

  “I'm going to try and get Sonica to let me write about you guys,” I said. “If I have to sell my soul, I will.” I eyed Vera and then refocused on my brother. “You are not quitting this band. No way. I'll get another job if I have to. I'll support you.”

  Vera was not happy with me. She left the room in a huff. But Michael's face, usually phlegmatic, had ignited. “Sonica would be huge.”

  A well-dressed man approached me. He had threadlike black hair, skin the color of a raw pork chop, and was a few pounds shy of being called stocky.

  “Hey, Peepers,” the man said, kissing the top of my hand. “How much do you want for your soul
?”

  I turned to Michael and said, “Did he just call me Peepers?”

  “Watch it, Feldman,” Michael said. “This is my sister.”

  “Sister?” Feldman said. “You never told me you had a ravishing sister with Sonica connections.”

  I immediately had misgivings about Feldman, as I would have misgivings about anyone who dubbed me Peepers. And something about the way his eyes spun around the room reminded me of a propeller. I'm terrified of propellers. If I'm watching a TV show and there's a helicopter in the scene, I have to change the channel.

  “Peepers,” Feldman said again, trying to hand me a wad of bills, “you would do us a big favor getting us mentioned in Sonica.”

  I gave Feldman a look and shoved the money back at him.

  “Come with me.” Michael took my arm. “I want you to meet the band.” We went into the dressing room. “You already know that guy,” he said, pointing at Paul, who was slumped on a chair, wiping his face with his shirt, staring at the floor and looking spent.

  Michael introduced me to Burke and Angelo, and Burke monopolized the conversation campaigning for basil as a tasty additive to ice cream.

  “Think about it,” he said. “It's an herb. And mint is an herb. And mint makes a hell of a combo with chocolate.”

  “Chocolate Pesto Chip,” I said. “I think you might have something there.”

  “You've gotta meet my girlfriend,” Burke said, galvanized.

  Burke's girlfriend, Queenie, was a tiny, streetwise girl, with eyes that fluctuated from vigilantly independent to utterly vulnerable with every blink. She told me about her latest ice cream concoction, which she called The Movie Star, The Professor, and Mary Ann. “Ginger ice cream base,” she explained, “with a shot of gingko biloba and chunks of coconut cream pie. Get it?”

  I nodded. “Gilligan's Island.”