Page 38 of Dead Rockstar

“I'm not scared of you,” I said.

“You're wary of me, then,” he said. “I can feel it. It bums me out.”

“I'm not,” I argued. “I swear.”

“Why can't you look at me, then?” he asked.

I opened my mouth to say, that's all I've been doing. Or, if I look at you, I won't be able to stop. But both of those things were pathetic, and I was embarrassed enough without being a failure to feminists everywhere. Instead, I changed the subject. “Tell me about where we're going. Who we're seeing. The plan.”

“My old neighborhood. I squirreled some money away there once, after our first album went platinum. I had this paranoid idea that banks were evil, or that some accountant at the record label – or one of my bandmates – was going to cheat me. After a while, I was so strung out I forgot about it. I guess it's a good thing I did, huh?” He looked over at me. “I hope to fuck it's still there.”

“Where is it?”

“Buried under a tree in my old backyard.”

“Did anybody know it was there? Your family or anybody?”

“Just Jason,” he answered.

“Jason? As in Jason Langley?”

He nodded. There were two remaining members of the band. Nathan “Ollie” Green, the band's rhythm guitarist, who had totally quit playing music after the deaths of Phillip and Kim but turned up from time to time in skating competitions and also held a monthly column in a local indie rock magazine, where he wrote about the intersection of politics and rock music. Jason Langley, head guitarist and co-founder of Bloomer Demons, was Phillip's best friend from childhood and was still very much alive but kept a low profile and had done so for over a decade after his last stint in rehab. He'd done the Dr. Drew show, and after that he'd disappeared into the ether. I hadn't seen any interviews with him or heard of his whereabouts in a long, long time. I had always assumed that was good news, that maybe it meant he was sober. His name still cropped up from time to time on message boards and reddit, but nobody had seen him in the flesh in over a decade. I told this to Phillip, and he nodded with a grim smile.

“Doesn't surprise me. He always said if he was ever going to truly kick that shit, he'd have to leave the business.” He smiled sadly. “He was so strung out – more so than any of the rest of us, really. We all loved our cocaine and wine, but he was doing heroin and shit, and well...you know the way it goes.”

“After Kurt, it became old hat,” I said.

“Kurt? As in Cobain? What happened to him?” he asked.

“Oh,” I said, realizing. Phillip had died in 1993, a year before Kurt's very public and very tragic demise. “He uh-”

“Don't worry about it,” he said, waving a hand. “I can guess. Damn. I liked him. He was so talented. Hell of a nice guy, too nice, really, just very sincere. I was really rooting for him to get it together.”

The irony of this struck me. “It was a whole thing,” I said. “People still have conspiracy theories. There are whole documentaries trying to blame Courtney for what happened.” I didn't mention that Sloan and I had been embroiled in a decade long argument about that very subject, and that we were now sworn to never talk about it again, lest I revoke her feminist card and bestie card. I fucking loved Courtney Love. Anyone who didn't could eat a dick.

“I'm sure people tried to blame Barb, too. For my downfall,” he said thoughtfully. “Did they?”

They had. There were whole groups of fans who hated Phillip's ex-wife, even though she'd never gone public with any stories or tried to profit off his death. She was another one who kept a low-profile. I knew she was remarried and had children, but she rarely gave interviews and it was an unspoken agreement between the fans – the true ones, anyway - that she was to be left alone. I gave him a curt nod but didn't elaborate. I loathed the jealousy that brewed in my gut at the mention of her name. “I hate that you all struggled so much,” I said finally, not sure what else to say, not wanting to bombard him with upsetting stories of his peers or his fans. Or his ex. “I know it must be hard.”

He gave a non-committal shrug, but I wasn't going to let him off so easy.

“You said Kurt was sincere,” I said, looking at him. “Now that I've met you, I could say the same for you.”

“What do you mean?”

“The real you,” I said. “Beneath the hair and the clothes and the persona – oh, I have no doubt you really are that guy – the tall vampire type with the sardonic wit and the animal charm, that's really who you are, but there's another you, behind the...the smoke and mirrors, as you say. It's ironic to me that you'd use the word 'sincere.' Because that's what I see in you. Sincerity.” I looked at his sharp profile, his pursed mouth, the way the hair fell over his ear. “So much of it that you had to hide.”

He didn't answer, but he glanced at me, and his face was sad. “That's very astute of you, Stormy.”

“Not really. It's just what I see.” Without thinking, I reached over and tucked his hair behind his ear. He looked surprised. “Is it hard? Being two people?”

“Yes,” he answered. “It was. Not at first, maybe. It's fun, acting, playing a part. Seeing what you can get away with. And it’s easier to be a larger than life version of yourself, to put a dramatic face out there, when you’re newly famous. But after a while...” He swallowed. “It hurt. I wanted to go back to the life I had before, but I couldn’t. It was impossible.” He sighed. “I belonged to them now.”

“It's bullshit,” I said, angry. “It's like our society has made sincerity unpalatable. Any kind of vulnerability, it's repugnant to us, especially in men. So you guys force yourselves to wear masks, to cloak yourself in sarcasm, in bravado, and it works at first, because that's what we want, you know, a tough guy. But then you go to take off the mask, and it's stuck to your face. It's there forever, and you can't get it off.”

“Not without pain,” he said.

“It's bullshit,” I repeated. “Is that what happened, Phillip? To you?”

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