Cherry Bomb Page 12

  Jenner smiled, but he was watching us for our response.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Rose flounced back over her shoulder, so that her earrings clacked against her necklace. ‘We know what we’re doing.’ Clack. ‘One day you’ll be opening for us.’

  Jameson roared in approval, but Strider took a pull on his cigarette, one eye squeezing shut. ‘They couldn’t make you up,’ he finally exhaled, giving Rose the once-over. ‘You’re like a fairy on a cake.’

  I didn’t like the way this was going. Straight off the bat I could see that Strider was the sort of scumbag I usually wound up with, so to see him intrigued by Rose was intolerable. I turned around and shot him a haughty look, registering his surprise, which surprised me too. So, good; now he’d noticed me.

  ‘I feel like a giddy teenager,’ Strider declared as they left.

  •

  At what point did you realise your sleeping around was proving a problem for those around you?

  I prefer to retain an air of mystery on that front, Molly.

  ‘Look at her now,’ Strider crowed, even though we were the only ones in the hotel room. The room looked like it wanted to tug its skirt down over the shameful detritus of abandoned tequila bottles, cigarette butts, clothes and CD cases; the latter were mostly of Bitumen’s back catalogue, which we had been playing.

  Strider sat on the sofa with his surprisingly soft white belly rolling over the top of his cargo pants. He lit another smoke and kept it hanging out of his mouth for the duration of the stirring song he picked out of his guitar. I wondered how something so lovely could come out of somebody so corrupt.

  The first night in Adelaide was rough going with Bitumen’s crowd, which meant the second night I got drunk with Strider beforehand while Rose did an interview with Dolly. I could argue it was actually a good career move to accept a bottle of Jose Cuervo from the headline act.

  I couldn’t face Rose after the show, so I bunked up in Strider’s room on our day off, in a nicer hotel than ours. I would answer my phone when I sobered up, which wouldn’t be for a while, unfortunately.

  ‘Do you want kids? I could give you a blue-eyed boy,’ Strider said, eyeing me as his fingers journeyed in cosmic patterns around the fretboard. He already had three sons to three women. I didn’t know why he’d tell me that. At some point, Strider’s friend Liam was there, but now it seemed he’d gone again. Pity. Liam acted as Strider’s third-party conscience, making it clear when his behaviour was beyond the pale and suggesting reasonable alternatives.

  Like: ‘You can’t go back into that pub and demand a bottle of vodka—look what happened last time. Why don’t you drink this beer and wait until morning?’

  Or: ‘Stop inviting her around and then not answering your door; you’re doing her head in.’

  Being around Strider was thrilling, because he was so awful. Whenever we went out to eat near the venue, earnest fanboys hovered and bobbed with nervous, shit-eating grins on their faces. If they happened to recognise me, the shit-eating grins spread wider. Good onya, Strider, they seemed to say. But then he was awful to them and the power swung back to me.

  As youngsters, Bitumen had an appetite for groupies, and now the message board on their website was awash with presumptions that they’d brought The Dolls on tour for more of the same. Occasionally I got a spike of paranoia that he and I were just a publicity stunt he’d cooked up with the others, but really I didn’t think he had the gumption left in him. The whole band were as hardened as old arteries, morally bankrupt and creatively spent, their ex-wives stationed in far-flung countries to suck them dry. That was the problem with jonesing for older men: you always came to the party too late.

  Strider set down his glass; he wanted my opinion. He had publicly pilloried Blink-182 for thieving a riff, and now he’d set his sights on Jay-Z. He played me the evidence on a big red guitar the fanboys would faint at touching.

  ‘It’s one chord,’ I said.

  ‘It’s two chords,’ he huffed. ‘They’re a semitone apart.’

  ‘I don’t think it would stand up in court.’

  He looked at me, gimlet-eyed. We’d had the heated conversation once before about who was likely to know better, and neither of us really wanted a repeat performance. I scoped back his crumbling façade. He had suffered some structural damage since the beginning of the tour: cracks at either side of his mouth, a touch of trench foot, mysterious bruises that he insisted were from wrestling Jameson.

  That first night in his dressing room, buzzing with hangers-on, he’d merrily slagged off the band’s formidable frontman to anyone hanging around the rider, before dragging the entourage back to his hotel room. One of Strider’s gophers called him ‘chief’, and then everybody did. Strider corrected them. He was a Sagittarius with Pisces rising: a drunken general.

  ‘You must meet Cave,’ he’d told me, pouring me vodka into a plastic cup that tipped over under the sheer weight of beverage. He was always saying stuff like that. ‘You must meet Duff.’ ‘You must meet the Oz.’ I knew I never would.

  I was the last to leave, staying into the next afternoon after he left for soundcheck. I charged my dinner to his room and wrote my own room number inside the passport on top of his suitcase. His real name was Colin. One for me to know and the fanboys to find out.

  •

  ‘You know I’m supposed to vet men before you sleep with them,’ Rose reprimanded me when I updated her in our dressing room in Newcastle. It took her the entire trip up the Pacific Highway to forgive me for going AWOL in Adelaide, and it was only the loan of my new Wheels & Dollbaby dress that precipitated the thaw. Jenner said that once we got to the States we’d have a massive tour bus, but they were illegal in Australia, so we had to travel in convoys of people-movers.

  ‘I can’t stand it,’ she said, when I emulated the weird little scream Strider did when he came.

  ‘He says guitars aren’t phallic,’ I said, egging her on. ‘He says they’re like vaginas.’

  ‘Oh my god, he’s gross!’ she cried, ripping some grapes off their stalks. From the kitchen down the hall, Bitumen’s catering team was creating some enticing smells, but they were not for the likes of us. Not unless I wanted to go public with Strider.

  I dug through the clothes in my bag. The top I’d planned to wear was splotched with lube. ‘Can’t I have a golden ticket just for this tour?’

  She giggled, pleased with herself. ‘Yes. You can have a golden-oldie ticket.’

  I felt a shard of guilt in my black heart. Strider and I had privately mocked Rose’s epic spiritual journey—she was rarely photographed at an airport without a copy of The Secret in her hand, and meditation combined with the prescription medication meant she slept through all the arguments we might have had on long journeys. Strider referred to her as ‘Nickers’, as in Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac, the original witchy woman. To her credit, Rose refused to be bothered enough to ask what the nickname meant.

  ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t tell Mickiewicz about this the next time they’re playing a round of golf, eh?’ she said with a soupçon of satisfaction, and turned back to her text conversation with Jimmy.

  In front of the dressing-room mirror I turned my head one way and then the other, threading my hoop earrings through my ears. But the currency of Strider is worth it, I told myself. I am elevated a notch, not dropped. But then, I might go down in Mickiewicz’s estimation . . .

  My life was a snarled knot that I could never quite unpick, of who knew what and who might tell whom and why. It was like a Venn diagram of shame. This latest worry should add at least half an hour to my nightly staring at the ceiling.

  TOP 10 MOST INCONVENIENT COUPLINGS BY NINA DALL (2008–2014)

  1. The man at closing time one New Year’s Eve at the Parramatta Hotel (mainly regrettable because Rose wouldn’t let me forget that his name was ‘Trog’).

  2. Second engineer on the demos (still scope for John Villiers to find out).

  3. Hank.

  4. Soundm
an on our first headline tour. What goes on tour stays on tour, but it did cause friction when he always had me higher in the mix than Rose.

  5. Guitarist from an arena band my lawyers advise me not to name.

  6. Features editor of White Out (although, we did get 4.5/5 not long after).

  7. Photographer in Brisbane (unsure of name/publication and so who to avoid).

  8. Hank’s friend Barney (this may come as a surprise to Hank, but since he’d never admit to reading this book, we’re cool).

  9. Strider.

  10. Kane.

  •

  In Sydney, we had two days off. Bitumen’s tour manager took some of them to a koala sanctuary and to Bondi, but The Dolls had to work.

  We’d been booked for a shoot with His Style magazine on the North Shore. In their top-floor studio we picked through the salads a gopher had brought us. ‘Be a sweet and get me some coconut water,’ Rose beseeched. The only things available on tour were cheese and bread, both of which we were intolerant of, so apart from the odd desultory bit of fruit from Bitumen’s rider, we’d been surviving on vodka and pretzels.

  I’d been drawing on my reserves of willpower. I prided myself on always going one harder than anyone else, whether it be grimly forcing down one more drink or abstaining from food. Rose was throwing up regularly and would only eat food with natural lubricant, like pasta in sauce, or something with a bit of structure, like pork chops, which wouldn’t block her pipes. Whenever she came back from the bathroom and resumed her conversation, I imagined her fingers dripping.

  TOP 5 DIET TIPS BY THE DOLLS

  1. Breakfast: one small serve of porridge with soy milk, and a banana to boost serotonin levels. (Other fruits are banned on account of their sugar content.) Or pretzels.

  2. Lunch: one cup of brown rice with vegies, fish or skinless chicken breast. Or pretzels.

  3. Dinner: vodka, no mixer.

  4. Vitamin B for beating depression and to replenish the body after alcohol (the body does not absorb vitamin B when drinking).

  5. Distractions from eating: chewie, teeth-cleaning, fresh coat of lipstick, Marlboros (Lights or Reds).

  It was pointless. I was never going to be called a ‘pint-sized pop star’ and neither was Rose; we’d grown too tall.

  The His Style shoot was a thoroughly strange experience. Picture us, dressed as sexy squaws, with a bunch of people who didn’t need to be there buzzing around the room. Then, the moment we started posing, the room went silent. The only sound to be heard was the camera’s shutter, and the air was thick, like when you were about to have sex. It was like being on a porn set.

  Between set-ups, I flumped down on the sofa as far away from the perves as possible and read a copy of Drum Media. John Villiers’ name jumped out at me, but it was just a passing mention. There was a concert coming up to acknowledge the twentieth anniversary of Danger Michaels’ death. The article listed all the big names that would play in tribute and it mentioned John Villiers’ work on Danger’s final album. Too cool. ‘Seminal album,’ it said. Danger had told friends he had a feeling he was going to die, months before he did, of an overdose.

  ‘Miss Nina,’ the photographer called. I sighed and went back over to the set.

  The photographer asked me to stand behind Rose and sling an arm over her shoulder, you know, so that my hand casually dropped onto her chest. A journalist hovered just out of shot and asked us questions like, ‘Who was your first kiss?’

  I was weirded out that we were supposed to look lustful. I mean, they did know we were related, right? Did that not pose an ethical problem for the His Style readers? It clearly wasn’t a problem for Rose, who planted kisses on my cheek and let her fingers drag limply down the front of my suede top.

  With the entire art and editorial team on set dreaming up puns, the headline was always going to be ‘Kissing Cousins’—but I quite liked the way they wound up rendering that with a finger in a steamed-up mirror.

  As we split for five to apply red tribal marks to our cheeks, I plugged my phone into the studio’s stereo and put on some Elvis Costello that Strider had played me.

  ‘You can tell that every band you’re into is because some bloke’s educated you on it,’ said Rose. ‘It’s kind of cute. You’re like a sponge.’

  I didn’t get riled into responding, because Strider had also educated me in the ways of Valium, including a module on which doctors around the country were willing to show sympathy to the touring artist. I liked the way it fuzzed my edges, although it didn’t romance me the way alcohol did.

  Sleeping with somebody who was once part of a pivotal scene, as Bitumen were in their day, was like immersing myself in a textbook. Education was key. In the whorls of Strider’s calloused fingers I saw the fallen women and famous scenesters; the Michael Hutchences, the Nick Caves, the Chrissy Amphletts. It was sexual osmosis. One day, girls would root Hank purely to absorb my essence.

  Sex for a crash course in history was a fair swap. And if you played ‘once removed’, it meant I’d slept with Kylie. I knew that Rose could sympathise with that.

  •

  The rest of the tour was a riot of lost evenings, reckless cigarette-waving and bruising as I struggled to keep it together. Rose and I turned into maniacs, hurling ourselves around the impossibly big stages and winding up Bitumen’s fans. Alannah had coached us on how to make every single person in a three-thousand-strong crowd think we were looking at them. We fixed, very purposefully, on a different section of the venue at a time, and made our faces suddenly glimmer, as though in recognition. Every so often, we’d point, or laugh, or raise our middle fingers.

  Strider occasionally watched from the wings—just an orange glow of a cigarette end, like one evil eye. I avoided Jameson, though; I didn’t want to see in his gaze how little he thought of me. I wanted to tell them how writing was going on our hotly anticipated debut and about our own headline tour we’d signed up to do. I might pretend to pick Jameson’s brain about something technical and remind him of my exact value, because my self-respect levels had dipped so low I was about to lose a life. It was unbearable to have spent so many years trying to earn people’s respect, to then see it stripped away in a new set of circumstances.

  ‘He asked me if I’d had you up the arse,’ admitted Strider, ‘but I told him you were a lady.’

  Strider never mentioned the world tour he was off on next and where that left us, but it loomed larger every day. When I was in the bath I heard him telling roadies in the hotel room about the reinforced drinking trousers he’d ordered specially and the fancy shoes he wanted to pick up in New York.

  One day, perched on a road case as the rest of the band soundchecked, I tried casually: ‘Where are you going first—Prague or Berlin?’

  ‘Oh, rah rah rah,’ he said irritably, restringing his guitar with a cigarette stuck to his lip. Then: ‘Come?’

  ‘You know I can’t, I’ve got to record the album.’

  He shrugged.

  The tour was a car crash, so the reviews said. I was barely lucid enough to notice. Luckily the critics only threw The Dolls a disparaging remark in passing and mainly aimed their cannons at Bitumen as the grand old has-beens.

  When the tour ended and Strider disappeared with it, I scoured photos on my phone between laying down vocal takes for our album at Tomkat’s. I lingered on the fluffy-haired shots of Strider of decades gone by. I imagined being his girlfriend then. I wouldn’t have been, though. He would’ve been with Tottie Goldsmith or Fiona Horne or some such.

  On the Bitumen message board, fans one-upped each other with reports of backstage hijinks across Europe. Band members were vomiting behind amps and stumbling around on stage. I read and reread the posts about Prague, where fans hinted about backstage goings on. If you can hear a note of treacherous anger in ‘Chica Rock’n’Roll’, that is why.

  12

  FIGHT LIKE A GIRL

  Sometimes it felt like my lyrics were wilfully misinterpreted, whether by deranged fans o
r scathing journalists. They all twisted my own words to try to get a handle on me. Eventually I wound up destroying my own innocence on stage and in real life, almost because I didn’t want to disappoint. That’s what people expected of me and I gave it to them in the ugliest way.

  POUR ME ANOTHER—ALANNAH DALL (SABRE BOOKS)

  It was the last night of our Fight Like a Girl EP tour, which had become known as the Please No More Tour, and we were being even bigger arseholes than usual.

  During soundcheck we promised a fanboy a laminate if he’d go and get us a Fanta from the petrol station. Then when he came back we sent him off again to get us a warm one. When he returned once more I pulled off his baseball cap and fanged it across the empty dance floor. I was hung-over, but drunk hung-over, which was dangerous.

  I wore: denim shorts over fishnet stockings, singlet with dog tags. I’d had some ink done in Brisbane on my right arm: a wild-eyed panther eating its own tail.

  Rose wore: black maxi-dress, sandals. She’d had the same extensions in for the entire tour and one of them was making a break for it over her ear. We didn’t care any more, though—one night in New Zealand we’d done the gig in dressing-gowns and hotel slippers.

  We were both in the same sort of mood. After the show, Rose booted the dressing-room door shut on a group of fans waiting outside with their Sharpies. The gold paint we’d smeared across our faces was now all over her arms from where she’d wiped the sweat away.

  ‘Do you reckon someone will get a tattoo of my signature?’ she asked Mitch with her mouth full of chocolate. Mitch was our tour manager. He wore red vinyl pants with bovver boots every single day and could roll cigarettes with one hand. We wanted to take him overseas with us, because he’d regaled us with tales of wearing bullet belts through customs just to get a reaction, and carrying bondage porn so that border police would stop him and let the band and their drugs through. Brendan was good, but not that good.