Rock Star

  It was 1968, and ever since the advent of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, England was hot. The swinging sixties all started in London, with fashion, movies, style, and most of all – music. London was definitely the place to be.

  One day, after receiving a letter from his mother, Buzz said, ‘I think I’m gonna ask Daphne t’come an’ stay with us fer a couple of weeks.’

  Buzz never called Daphne mum, he always referred to her by name.

  ‘Why?’ Kris blurted out, forgotten guilt creeping up on him.

  Waving her letter in the air Buzz said, ‘She’s given up ’er job, chucked out that new bloke she was livin’ with, an’ – I dunno – she sort of sounds on edge, y’know what I mean?’

  ‘Where’ll she sleep?’ Kris asked. ‘There’s no room here.’

  ‘She can have my bed. I’ll kip on the floor. Yer don’t mind, d’you?’

  Christ! Did Buzz know? Impossible. Daphne had sworn him to secrecy – she would hardly confide in her son.

  Forcing himself to sound casual he said, ‘I couldn’t give a monkey’s.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll give ’er a ring then,’ Buzz decided. ‘I guess I can just about scrape up enough readies for ’er ticket.’

  Kris wondered if Daphne would expect him to resume service. He had no desire to do so. After all, he was no longer the innocent virgin she had initiated on her garage floor. It wasn’t that he didn’t like her, it was just that the guilt of giving one to his best friend’s mother was too much to take.

  Buzz went off to the local bar to call her, while Kris figured out what he was going to do.

  He didn’t have to figure too long or too hard. When Buzz returned he was pale beneath his tan.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Kris asked quickly.

  Buzz sat on the edge of his bed, his thin face a mask of shock. ‘She topped ’erself, didn’t she. Daphne’s dead.’

  * * *

  Returning to England for the funeral was the most depressing thing that had ever happened to Kris. It was October, and he had forgotten the icy cold, the afternoons when it was dark by four o’clock, the relentless drizzling rain, and the heavy traffic. Most of all he had forgotten what it was like to live at home with his two sisters – both unmarried – shrieking at each other all the time; his stepfather, Horace, the television zombie; and his mum, Avis – still cleaning other people’s houses, and ruling the home front with her loud voice and bossy manner.

  ‘Yer too skinny,’ she informed Kris sternly. ‘Why didn’t yer write? I could box yer ears, y’little bastard!’

  Both his sisters stared at him jealously. The younger of the two said, ‘It’s all right for some people, ennit? Just laze about in the sun all day an’ don’t send mum no money. I pay for my room an’ board.’

  ‘Don’t get your knickers in a twist,’ Kris said quickly, ‘I’m not stayin’.’

  ‘Shame!’ exclaimed his other sister, who had inherited her mother’s sarcastic tongue. ‘Goin’ off to America to be a pop star, are we?’

  He couldn’t stand his sisters, but his dislike for them paled in comparison to his relationship with his brother. Brian came over for Sunday tea trailing his wife, Jennifer, and two snotty-nosed kids. The two-year-old was the reason Brian had been forced to get married in the first place, and the baby, Kris figured out, was just to make him feel bad. Brian’s smug face said it all. I’ve got a job, a wife, and a family. What have you got, little brother?

  It’s about time you decided what you’re going to do with yourself,’ Brian lectured him pompously. ‘Don’t you think it’s a bloody disgrace the way you’re worrying ma?’

  ‘Fuck you,’ Kris muttered, a low aside destined only for Brian’s ears.

  Unfortunately the two-year-old caught the rhythm and proceeded to chant, ‘Fuckoo, fuckoo, fuckoo!’

  ‘You low-life scum,’ Brian said angrily. ‘Teaching my boy to swear. You’re just a no-good layabout – whyn’t you start behaving like a man, cut your hair and get a job?’

  Is that what you think being a man is all about?’ Kris asked, with a derisive snort. ‘Short hair an’ some lousy job?’

  ‘I don’t have to worry about it,’ Brian puffed self-righteously. ‘You’re the one that looks like a bloody queer.’

  Kris started to laugh, which infuriated Brian even more.

  Avis cracked the whip. ‘Will you two shut up?’ she said, her loud voice booming across the table. ‘If yer wanter act like squabblers, go outside an’ do it.’

  ‘Yes,’ chorused the sisters, livening up at the prospect of a possible fight.

  ‘Another cuppa tea, luv,’ Horace requested, oblivious to the simmering hostilities around him. ‘I don’t want ter miss the football on telly.’

  Kris knew he wasn’t going to be able to take family life for long. He was used to his freedom now, and sleeping on the couch in the front parlour – because one of his sisters had taken over his old bedroom – was a real drag. He had only been home five days, and already it was time to move on. The problem was he had no money, and Buzz was no help. Ever since Daphne’s funeral Buzz had refused to leave his house. He didn’t want to practise, or go round the clubs. He didn’t want to do anything.

  Daphne had killed herself in the traditional way – stuffed her head in the oven and turned the gas on. Nobody knew why. ‘Poor dear. She got depressed a lot,’ a relative explained at the funeral. ‘Depression’s a terrible burden to bear.’

  Buzz thought differently. It’s ’cos I left her alone,’ he said grimly. ‘We was always close, an’ I deserted her.’

  Kris didn’t know what to say. He still felt guilty – maybe it was his fault.

  ‘C’mon,’ he told Buzz. ‘You can’t just sit around bein’ miserable. We gotta get somethin’ goin’ for us.’

  ‘What?’ Buzz said stonily. ‘Fuckin’ what?’

  ‘I dunno,’ Kris replied in desperation. ‘But I’m goin’ to figure somethin’ out. You can bet on it.’

  * * *

  With fifty pounds borrowed from his mother, and a temporary job washing windows again, Kris moved away from the family home dragging Buzz with him. Buzz couldn’t stay in his house anyway, the lease was up and he had to get out. Daphne had left a few hundred pounds. Unfortunately the funeral and legal fees soon ate that up. Buzz gave all her possessions to relatives, and followed Kris to the squat he had found in nearby Kilburn. The squat, an abandoned derelict house, had been taken over by a bunch of hippies whose credo was LOVE AND PEACE. The place was a mess, but Buzz fitted right in to the indolent lifestyle – it suited him fine to do nothing all day, and then sit around at night playing his guitar by candlelight watched by a bunch of admiring long-haired girls.

  It did not suit Kris. He had far more ambitious plans. With the money he’d borrowed, he bought himself a second-hand motor-scooter, enabling him to get up to the West End of London, where he began hanging out at all the rhythm and blues, rock, and all-night jazz clubs, hoping to get a chance to connect.

  He soon found out he was not the only one. Before long he met a black guy called Rasta Stanley, a would-be drummer currently making time running errands for a record company. And Ollie Stoltz, a talented bassist straight out of a scholarship year at the Royal Academy of Music.

  Triumphantly he told Buzz he thought he’d found their group.

  ‘It’s all horseshit,’ Buzz said, dragging heavily on a joint – his new favourite habit ‘I’m not gettin’ into any of that competitive crap.’

  ‘Right,’ agreed Flower, Buzz’s current love, a sixteen-year-old runaway from Brighton with huge, limpid blue eyes, and fair hair which hung in a straight curtain to below her ass.

  Kris felt the anger boil up inside him. This is what they had been striving for since school. The right combination. The dynamite group. And then . . . POW!! Rock stardom would be theirs, and there’d be no looking back. He could buy his mum a mink coat, and tell Brian to go shove it in his left ear.

  Now this little frother with the dirty h
air and big stoned eyes was telling Buzz what to do. He wasn’t going to stand for it. No way.

  ‘Flower, luv,’ he said calmly, ‘whyn’t you go down to the corner shop an’ buy yourself a packet of fags an’ a box of Maltesers’, He fished a precious pound note from the pocket of his jeans. ‘My treat.’

  This got Flower’s attention. After smoking dope and screwing, normal cigarettes and chocolate were her main passions.

  ‘Really, Kris?’ she asked unsurely, as if he might whisk the pound note away as soon as she got up.

  Pressing the money into the palm of her grubby little hand he said, ‘Yeah, only I want you to go right now. Okay?’

  She looked at Buzz for approval. Laconically he nodded. Jumping off the old mattress where they lounged away most of the day, she smoothed down her crumpled blouse, added a miniskirt and floppy sandals, and scurried off.

  Buzz drew deeply on the last of his joint, stubbed if out on the floor, and leaning back clasped both hands behind his head. ‘Go on then,’ he said. ‘Start pissing me off.’

  Kris knew how to play it. Turning away he said, ‘Hey, man. You wanna stay on your back all day gettin’ laid an’ stoned, I don’t care.’

  ‘It suits me,’ Buzz said stubbornly.

  ‘Good, ’cos I just wanted to be sure before I take off on my own.’

  ‘Whadderya mean – on your own?’ Buzz asked suspiciously.

  ‘If you think I’m goin’ to sit around here watchin’ you get bed-bugs, you’re barmy. I’m settin’ somethin’ up with Ollie an’ Rasta, an’ there’s another bloke – he plays guitar – does vocals. He can take your place.’ A meaningful pause. ‘I just wanted to be certain you didn’t want in.’

  ‘Fuck!’ Buzz grumbled. ‘What other bloke?’

  ‘He’s an okay guy, you’ll like him. When we get our first gig you’ll come an’ see us.’

  Buzz sat up. ‘Like hell I will.’

  ‘Course, he’s not quite as good as you, but with practice . . .’

  ‘Sod it!’ exclaimed Buzz, hauling himself off the bed, and throwing a dirty black shirt over stovepipe black jeans. ‘Yer won’t quit until yer got me. Let’s go.’

  A few days later they had their group. And a name. The Wild Ones. Two lead guitars – Kris and Buzz. A bassist and sometime keyboard player – Ollie Stoltz. A dynamite drummer – Rasta Stanley. And vocals shared between Kris and Buzz.

  They were all set to fly with nowhere to go.

  ‘Fuck!’ snarled Buzz. ‘We’d better get our freakin’ act together or die. I’ve had this being poor shit.’

  All of a sudden Buzz had ambition. Kris decided it was a good sign.

  Bobby Mondella

  1968

  ‘You’re a fat lazy sonofabitch, an’ I don’ wan’ you livin’ with us no more. So pack your bags an’ git the hell out.’

  So spoke Ernest Crystal, all six feet five inches of him. He had never forgiven Bobby for not laying the golden egg.

  No way this boy goin’ nowhere’, cried Fanni, shaking chubby fists in his direction. ‘He my flesh, my blood, an’ the only way he done go is if n I say so.’

  ‘You arguing wit me, witch?’ demanded Ernest, glowering ferociously.

  ‘I’m jest sayin’ what’s right’, retorted Fanni, refusing to back down. ‘An’ don’ you be callin’ me no names, Ernest Crystal. You watch your damn mouth.’

  ‘I’ll call you what I pleases, woman’, steamed Ernest.

  Standing between them, Bobby felt as if he hardly existed. Neither of them cared about him. They merely enjoyed using him as a prop for their never-ending fights. He had lived with them for two years, and throughout that period Ernest had tried to throw him out more than a dozen times, with Cousin Fanni always springing to his defence. She did not do it out of love – more a bitter desire never to let Ernest get the better of her.

  ‘The day this’n boy goes, you go’, she announced spitefully, glaring at Erriest.

  Bobby hoped she knew what she was saying, because in one week it was his eighteenth birthday – and as soon as that day came, he was out of there.

  For two years now he had been working in the men’s room at the Chainsaw discotheque, and he had learned plenty. Being locked up in Nashville all those years, being looked after by Mr Leon Rue, had taught him exactly nothing.

  ‘You-all are dumb, boy’, Ernest Crystal often said, and in the beginning he was right. ‘Sweet Little Bobby’ was about as dumb as they came.

  Working at the Chainsaw gave him the opportunity to see life as it really was, and he soon began to get a whole lot smarter – fast. The fact was, he had to. Surviving the rigours of the Chainsaw’s men’s room was like treading through a mine-field in lead boots. The last thing people came in for was a simple pee. They entered the men’s room for many different purposes – the number one reason being to score drugs. Bobby cottoned on to that the first night he worked there when he tried to stop a major sale and nearly got fired for his trouble.

  ‘listen, kid,’ Nichols Kline, the manager, told him. ‘You clean up piss, you clean up shit, you stop any fights, an’ you keep your mouth tightly zipped. Don’t interfere with the customers, an’ they won’t interfere with you. Got it?’

  Yes, he got it, especially when he heard about the last men’s room attendant, who’d had his face carved up by an irate drug dealer claiming the attendant was ripping him off by selling his own stash.

  ‘Keep clean an’ you’ll stay alive’, a white waiter called Rocket Fabrizzi warned him. ‘They’re hirin’ kids now ’cos it’s a tough pace. The guy before the last one had a heart attack an’ dropped dead over the crapper. Oh, an’ you’d better watch out for your ass. Don’t get caught with your pants around your ankles.’

  Bobby didn’t figure that one out for several weeks, until he had to fight off an overexcited old queen who kept on crooning, ‘I just adoooore chubbos, especially black ones. I’ll give you three hundred dollars and a simply delicious time!’ And so he learned. They came in to—

  Buy

  Sell

  Cruise

  Talk about sex

  Pop pills

  Sniff cocaine

  Have sex

  Smoke a joint

  Throw up

  Shoot up

  You name it, they did it.

  At least once a night Bobby had to eject some drunken but willing female who was either sitting across a guy’s lap in the one John with a door, or giving all and sundry a blow job.

  Dull it wasn’t.

  Sordid it was.

  However, it certainly afforded him a crash course in survival. He’d lied about his age to get the job – making himself three years older than he actually was. And once he had it, he was determined to stay, because working at the Chainsaw certainly wasn’t ordinary.

  The Chainsaw was the first of the really large discotheques – a vast two-storey emporium of flashing strobe lights, outrageously loud music (sometimes live groups, mostly records). It had hot-looking bartenders in black bell-bottom pants with skin-tight white vests, and equally hot-looking waitresses in leather mini-dresses.

  The Chainsaw was what hip New Yorkers called a happening place. It catered to the rich, famous, and infamous – most of them notorious for never picking up a cheque. And to pay the bills it also catered to whoever looked beautiful enough or bizarre enough or outlandish enough to gain entry. In other words – no polyester crowd ever broke through the heavily guarded doors of the Chainsaw. And the word ‘tourist’ was never mentioned.

  ‘I gotta go to work,’ Bobby announced, squeezing past his cousin Fanni, who had now launched into a loud tirade about Ernest’s disgusting bathroom habits.

  They both ignored him as he left.

  He was sweating as he walked towards the subway and he knew why. Anyone would sweat carrying around the extra weight he packed, and he’d finally decided to do something about it. A new waitress had started work at the club a few weeks earlier. Her name was Sharleen. She was black, about twe
nty-three, and she was gorgeous. Bobby was in love. The only problem was she had no idea he existed. Every time he tried to talk to her she gave him a blank look as if she’d never set eyes on him before.

  On quiet nights he studied his reflection in the ornate mirror above the line of porcelain sinks in the men’s room. When he was ‘Sweet Little Bobby’ the chubbiness kind of suited him – it went nicely with his white sequinned stage suits and modified Afro. Now, at nearly eighteen, and growing taller every day, he looked like a huge blob. ‘Fat Big Bobby’ could be his new title.

  Living with Fanni was no help. The woman loved to cook. Grease was her middle name – even the once muscular Ernest was getting fatter by the minute.

  Bobby knew he had to move on. If he stayed with Fanni and Ernest, he’d remain fat forever, and there was no way Sharleen would notice him.

  He had his plans. Rocket, the waiter, had promised there might be a bed available in his basement apartment as his roommate was leaving. Bobby had said he’d take it – and handed over a month’s rent in advance. Unfortunately, every time he asked what was happening, Rocket had a ready excuse. Finally Bobby insisted he move in on his birthday or get his money back. Rocket had promised everything would be worked out.

  Arriving at the club, Bobby found the usual frantic staff activity. Friday night was the hottest night of the week. It was also the night the celebrities came out to play before taking off for long restful weekends.

  Hurrying straight to his supply cupboard, he checked out boxes of Kleenex, soap, clean towels, packets of Durex, and bottles of cheap aftershave.

  ‘Bobby,’ said Nichols Kline, the manager, appearing at his side.

  ‘Yes, Mr Kline?’ Bobby replied alertly. He had this lingering fear that one of these night he would get fired, and would be unable to afford to move away from Fanni and Ernest.

  ‘I’m puttin’ you in charge of the private men’s room tonight,’ Nichols Kline said. He was a tall, jumpy-looking man in his thirties, with a shock of abundant rust-coloured curls and a Captain Hook nose. He had the reputation of being a formidable stud, and was often to be found behind locked office doors with any female of his choice. ‘Seymour’s out sick. Can you handle it?’