Neon Angel

  Snip.

  If they hated it, good! If they laughed, I didn’t care. I’d give them more. If they thought David Bowie was a faggot and a weirdo, good. I’d be so fucking weird they won’t know what hit them. They were gonna get all of the hatred I felt inside shoved right in their stupid faces.

  Snip.

  Snip.

  I looked into the mirror. I had done a fine job. Ugly, beautiful, just like David Bowie. I felt exhausted, like a great weight was lifted right off of me. Now all I had to do was figure out how to turn what I had on my head into something resembling the style that Bowie wore on the cover of Pin Ups. That freaky round helmet of spiked hair on the top, but long at the back. I had always admired that look, but of course I was too wimpy to do something about it. But not anymore!

  The teachers were going to hate me. Good! They’d say, “You might as well shave it all off, Cherie, it would look just as bad!”

  “Maybe I will!” I’d spit back, and then I’d turn and walk away. They’d have to learn it, too: you don’t fuck with Cherie Currie. Not anymore.

  Soon my hair was going to look just like David Bowie’s. I would BE David Bowie. I would be ugly-beautiful, horrible and handsome. That moment, that electric flash at the Bowie concert when I felt that I was truly invincible—that’s how I wanted to feel all of the time. Not afraid. Not some little square kid from the suburbs. Cherie fucking Currie, the Queen of Hate.

  And nobody—NOBODY—would be able to hurt me ever me again.

  Chapter 4

  Learning Experiences

  It was Saturday morning, sometime in the spring, and the damn birds were singing outside of my window. I groaned, turned over, and tried vainly to block it all out. It was no use, though; they kept on chirping and hooting, so I reluctantly opened my eyes. The sunlight was streaking in through the window, turning the bedroom into a furnace. I sat up and looked over to Marie’s empty, unmade bed. The clock told me that it was 10 a.m. I was still hurting pretty bad from the previous night of partying, but I could hear voices coming from the den, so I figured that I’d better get up.

  The main voice I could hear belonged to T.Y. He had a booming, theatrical voice that carried throughout the house. T.Y. was short for Tony Young, and he was my sister Sandie’s husband. He was tall and handsome and had the kind of chiseled good looks that belonged on a movie poster. He had thick, dark hair, warm hazel eyes, and—clichéd though it is to say—a million-dollar smile. He was in his midthirties and he was an actor, of course. In those days, he regularly had bit roles in stuff like Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Back in the early sixties, he’d even had his own TV show called The Gunslinger. As the title suggested, it was a western, in the vein of Gunsmoke or The Lone Ranger.

  My sister Sandie was an actress. She had been acting professionally since she was sixteen years old, and I thought she was beautiful: she had long red hair and glacial blue eyes.

  Sandie and T.Y. had met on the set of Policewomen, a 1974 feature film that they both starred in. They had been inseparable ever since. Mom had left the States, off to visit Wolfgang in Indonesia for a few weeks, so Sandie and T.Y. were in charge of us kids. That was fine with us, because Marie, Donnie, and I were all crazy about T.Y. He was pretty cool for a grown-up: he seemed to know what was going on, and he was one of the rare adults we could all relate to. Of course, Mom didn’t like T.Y.—at least, she didn’t like him as much as she’d liked Sandie’s previous boyfriend, Ron Honeywell. That was because Ron was handsome, rich, and Mom knew damn well that an actor’s life is unstable at best.

  I rubbed my eyes and stretched.

  It suddenly hit me what today was: today was the release of David Bowie’s new album: David Live. Rumor had it that it would include songs recorded at the show I saw with Marie and Paul. Paul said that he was going to buy a copy and bring it over this morning . . . I looked at the clock again and groaned. He was due here any minute.

  I leaped out of bed and looked at myself in the mirror. Oh Jesus! Last night’s makeup was still smudged all over my face, and my hair was a horror show: it was flattened against my head on one side and sticking straight up in the air on the other. My mascara had smeared down my cheeks, and it occurred to me that I looked like some kind of space-age version of Baby Jane.

  “You look like shit, Cherie!”

  Marie’s voice made me jump. I didn’t even realize she was standing behind me. Even though it was first thing in the morning, Marie looked totally together.

  I wrinkled up my nose and summoned my most sarcastic voice. “Oh REALLY, Marie? Well, thanks for pointing that out.”

  She laughed a little. Although we both ragged on each other all of the time, there was no genuine animosity between us, really. Sure, there was a part of me back then that resented how well adjusted Marie was, and how easily she fit in with the popular kids in school. There was something effortless about her; I never caught her looking the slightest bit out of whack. It was more of a friendly rivalry than anything else. She was still my twin sister, and that is a bond that runs so deep that it would surely be unfathomable to most people.

  Marie started making her bed, and as she did this she casually said, “Oh yeah . . . uh, Paul just called.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “And, uh, he said he had the Bowie album and he’ll be here in, like, fifteen minutes.”

  “Oh SHIT!” I screamed, and I hustled out of the bedroom to lock myself in the bathroom. When I emerged half an hour later, I was a totally new Cherie. I had transformed myself: my hair was fixed, perfect, just like Bowie’s on the cover of Aladdin Sane, only platinum blond. Last night’s makeup had been scrubbed off, and in its place was baby-blue eye shadow, black eyeliner, and reddish-pink rouge. On my lips I had applied shiny pink lip-gloss. Of course, I didn’t wear lipstick—primarily because Bowie didn’t wear lipstick.

  I walked into the den. Marie and Paul were hanging out. I ran over and threw my arms around Paul, squealing, “Let me see it!” Paul pulled the LP out of a paper bag and handed it to me. He muttered, “Here you go . . .” through his clenched teeth. I held the album breathlessly, running my thumbs over the gatefold sleeve. “Oh my God.” I sighed. “It’s wonderful . . .”

  Marie looked at me with that familiar mix of pity and indulgence. She liked Bowie, too, but regarded my obsession with the Thin White Duke as bordering on the unhealthy. The cover image was one of the most beautiful I had ever seen: Bowie, dressed in that slick zoot suit he’d worn at the show, striking a pose. He looked incredible. The picture had a blue cast over it, bathing him in a futuristic neon glow.

  David Bowie is the most beautiful man on the planet, I thought as I stared transfixed at the image.

  Paul started laughing that strange laugh of his, but I knew he was just as excited as I was. Paul was the only guy I knew whose obsession with all things David Bowie could even come close to mine. “Wait till you hear it,” he said. “It’s INCREDIBLE.”

  “Come on!” I grabbed Paul’s arm and tried to lead him to my bedroom. “Let’s go to my room and listen!” He shook his head, and jingled his car keys.

  “No can do. I have some stuff to do before the party tonight. Do you two need a ride?”

  Marie shook her head. “No, Vickie is picking us up. We’re helping her to set up . . .”

  I was already heading to my bedroom, so I called back to them, “Okay, thanks, Paul! See ya later!”

  I ran into my room and pulled the record out of its sleeve. Holding the shiny black disk in my hands, I examined it carefully for imperfections. Then, gently, I placed it on the turntable. I put the needle on the groove, put my headphones on, and flopped back onto my beanbag chair. I could hear the screams of the audience filling my head, making my stomach flutter in anticipation. I closed my eyes, and it was almost as if I were really there again. As the music began, I got the strange sensation I was floating . . . altered . . . transported.

  Before the party, I decided that a change of outfit was in order. I did
have an outrageous silver glittery outfit picked out, but after seeing how handsome Bowie looked on the cover of David Live, I decided to go with a suit and tie. It was a hand-me-down from my brother, small and fitted, and it hugged me in all the right places, but I was still a little bummed that it wasn’t an actual zoot suit. Still, I had to admit this was a pretty good compromise. I struck a pose in the mirror and smiled at myself.

  It was eight o’clock and Marie was in the bedroom getting ready with me. She was dressed in blue jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, boots, and a belt. It was way too conservative for my taste, but I had to admit she looked good for a surfer chick. T.Y. knocked and then peeked around the bedroom door, smiling at us indulgently. He looked like a doting father. I knew back then that T.Y. really wanted kids, but Sandie was dead set against it. I still believe that this was because Marie and I had flushed her favorite dolls down the toilet when we were toddlers. We didn’t do it to be mean—we were trying to give them a bath. But Sandie took it badly, and I honestly think that this put her off of the idea of having children, ever.

  “Cherie-zee!” he boomed with that movie-star voice of his. “Look at you! You look great, darlin’!”

  “Oh, thanks, T.Y.!” I smiled. I felt a flutter of pride. I never usually got this kind of affirmation about the way I looked in those days, so when it did happen, it made me feel pretty special. T.Y. looked over at Marie, who was looking at him expectantly, her eyebrow raised.

  “And look at YOU, Marie-zee!” T.Y. grinned. “Lookin’ beautiful!”

  “Love you, too, Tony . . .” Marie smiled as she went on doing her makeup.

  T.Y. stepped into the room, dressed in his uniform of white linen pants and a tan tunic. He looked like he’d just got back from an Indian spiritual retreat. T.Y. was a West Coast free-spirit kind of a guy. Nothing seemed to get to him, and even his attitude toward work was pretty laid-back. Not even Mom’s blatant objection to his and Sandie’s relationship could rattle him. T.Y. took it all in stride. Sure, he attended acting classes, and he worked once in a while, but he didn’t go out and beat the pavement looking for acting jobs the way my sister Sandie did. Tony was more content to just sit back and let the universe take care of itself. He had a daughter from a previous marriage who was around our age, but it was always amusing when he’d attempt to get all paternal with us. To that end, he cleared his throat. “Now, uh, girls . . .” he said, trying his best to sound responsible. “I don’t know what you get into at these parties or whatever . . . whether you have a beer, or you take a hit off a joint . . .”

  Hearing Tony talk to us about grass made me smile. It was always funny when an older person tried to talk to me about drugs, even Tony, who was pretty much a party guy. He’d once allowed Marie and me to throw a party where we invited all our friends from school. He’d even provided the beer. Fast-forward a few hours, and the house was full of staggering, vomiting, crying, and otherwise incapacitated fifteen-year-olds, and there was T.Y., walking around unfazed by it all. I knew that at least T.Y. knew what he was talking about. My mom tried to have that talk with me, and I couldn’t take her seriously. At fifteen, I felt that I knew more about drugs than she did.

  “Well”—T.Y. smiled—“I’m not trying to get into your business. I just want you to be cool . . .”

  He reached into his shirt pocket and produced a couple of enormous pills. “Just take these,” he said. “They’re vitamins. They’ll make you feel a whole lot better in the morning . . .”

  He threw a pill to me and I caught it. He repeated the routine with Marie. We looked at him, and I thought that T.Y. had to be the coolest grown-up I’d ever known. If my mom knew I was drinking or taking drugs, she’d ground me forever. All T.Y. was worried about was making sure I didn’t get a hangover. The whole health kick is something that he and Sandie had been into for a while. On his way out, he put a handful of oval, peach-colored pills on the nightstand.

  “Those are papaya enzymes,” he told us. “They’re good for your digestion.” Then he flashed that movie-star smile and backed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  With a little time to kill, Marie and I decided to go to the rec room and play pool for a while. Mom had agreed to let us convert the garage into a rec room, sometime around our fourteenth birthday. We painted a mural on one wall, with this crazy prehistoric fantasy type of scene. In swirling fluorescent colors, we painted a dragon about to devour a naked woman with a baby in her arms. In the background there was a volcano erupting and spewing neon-red lava, with various stars, planets, and flying creatures hung in the skies above the scene. We also had a couch, and the pool table, and best of all a ladder that led up to a second floor where there was a twin bed, Lava lamp, and table . . . This was in case anyone needed to crash for the night.

  Marie had a new boyfriend, Steve, who lived just down the street. I caught them up there once, making out. As grossed out as I was to see my sister with a guy, it was better at least than her being with Derek. We hadn’t seen Derek since the rape. Not seeing him around made it a hell of a lot easier to pretend that it never happened.

  With a clunk, I accidentally sank the cue ball into a corner pocket. “Goddammit!” Marie laughed and said, “Nice one, doofus!”

  With Marie beating me at pool as usual, it was relief when I heard Vickie honking her horn outside.

  “Oh, tough break.” I smiled. “I’ll finish beating you next time . . .”

  Marie flipped me the bird, and we said good-bye to Sam and T.Y. before jumping into Vickie’s old red Chevy.

  Vickie was a good friend. She was eighteen and had already graduated from high school. Whenever I wanted to ditch school, she’d pick me up in her car and we’d take off to waste time, listen to music, and hang out . . . People said that we could have been sisters, and it was true: the resemblance was really uncanny. She’d even cut her hair into a shag around the same time that I did . . . although she drew the line at dyeing it every color of the rainbow.

  Vickie was beaming when I got in the car with my suit and tie on. “Whoa!” she said. “Cherie—you look radical! Man, you look just like a female David Bowie!”

  If there was any compliment in the world that was guaranteed to make me feel amazing when I was fifteen years old, that was it. I looked out of the window, grinning. Yeah, I thought to myself, I AM the female David Bowie. After all, I could move like him, and I could sing along to all of his records perfectly.

  “Dammit, I AM David Bowie!” I announced.

  Marie tutted and rolled her eyes. “You’re a weirdo, Cherie, I swear to God.”

  “Fuck off,” I told her, wrinkling my nose. She folded her arms and looked out of the window. I could feel the anger bubbling in my chest. It hurt because I knew that she really did think I was a weirdo; this wasn’t just some sisterly teasing. This was the Marie I had to put up with when she was hanging out with her stupid “popular” friends. Well, FUCK THEM, I thought, tonight I was going to have fun. Nobody was going to ruin that for me—not even Marie.

  Vickie lived with her mom in a modest home in Sherman Oaks. But this weekend her mom was away, so Vickie decided it was good opportunity to throw a blowout party.

  “So, who’s coming tonight?” Marie asked as we arrived at Vickie’s place.

  “Ah . . . a lot of people. Danny, Paul, Gail . . . A few others . . .”

  I knew Gail through Marie. She was a strange one, and no doubt about it. She was on this 1930s kick, and wore her hair real short with these loose curls pressed against her head. She had narrow shoulders and wide hips, and was kind of gangly and awkward. Like me, she caused people to do double takes when she walked into a room.

  We got out of the car, and Marie said, “You know, Gail and I went shopping the other day, down on Hollywood Boulevard. Man, she knows all of the cool shops. She’s a pretty hip chick, you know? But she’s tough, too! We were walking down the street and some asshole pulled up beside us hooting and hollering out of the window, screaming ‘LEZBOS!’ You know wha
t Gail did? Man, she chased that moron down the street screaming ‘FUCK YOU, you fucking FAGGOT!’ You shoulda seen the guy! He looked like he was gonna crap his pants or something. He couldn’t get out of there fast enough. It was so cool!”

  Vickie shrugged. “What’s the problem? Gail is a lesbian!”

  “I know!” Marie laughed. “But she said she didn’t think it was fair to me . . .”

  Inside, I was putting out bowls of potato chips when Vickie pulled me aside and whispered, “I have something for you.” She put something into my hand. I looked at it. It was a round white pill, a pill that was somewhat the craze at parties in those days—a quaalude. Without hesitation, I popped it into my mouth and washed it down with a mouthful of rum and Coke. “Luding out” was becoming one of my favorite highs in those days—when the mix of booze and pills was just right, it felt as though you were wading through warm, viscous liquid when you walked, and each gooey step sent little shivers of ecstasy erupting down your spine like firecrackers.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” I said. “This party is gonna be a blast!”

  By ten o’clock, the party was in full swing, and I was feeling real good. Relaxed, happy, and my head was swimming pleasantly. Every time someone talked to me, it was as if their words were floating over to my ears, coming to me in telepathic waves. The lude was strong, and for a moment I almost panicked . . . was it too strong? I had seen kids pass out—I mean, literally just keel right over—when they couldn’t handle their ludes. Their eyes would go unfocused and then they’d just fall flat on their faces, busting noses or cracking teeth in the process. Or, they’d crawl off into a corner and pass out, and kids would draw mustaches on their faces as they lay there drooling.

  But no, not me. I was David Bowie, right? I could handle it. I could handle anything. The lights were low, and the air was hot, and the living room was crammed with young people. I saw Paul and Gail sitting together on the couch. I watched them, with sleepy, heavy eyes. Gail was staring at me. I stopped and took her in dreamily. People walked between us, but she never took her eyes off me. The way she stared at me made me shiver. She smiled at me, and I felt my lips turning upward, too, as if we were connected in some weird way. I felt a little removed from my own body, like I was floating above myself, observing my own movements with the detached interest of an observer. A familiar piano refrain began to play, and I realized that it was Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” As I noticed this, I began to dreamily sway with the music. I saw Gail coming toward me, ignoring everyone around her, walking straight over to me, putting her hand on mine, and saying, “Would you like to dance?”