Rock Stars in Particular Order - 2

By Alana Nöel Voth

She’s in bed with a body pillow. The TV is on to keep her company. The screen starts flashing. Here’s what Ella sees: A person like a tottering reed, a snake-panther-strange bird, a gypsy twisting in a storm of spotlights, a live wire in dark clothes. A great metaphor. JD Fortune is a contestant on a show called Rock Star: INXS. He has a conniption on stage.

     It’s like a trip down memory lane.

     Dark hair. Canadian. Slim. Ella likes JD’s rock star stance the best, the way he stands with his legs apart and his thumb hooked in the waistband of his jeans. He inspires a girlish impulse to giggle, a woman’s impulse to have, a groupie’s urge to submit.

     JD has tattoos on his arms, stubble on his chin, crooked teeth. When he raises his arms Ella gets a glimpse of skin, a hint of navel, which reminds her of the trial of hair men have growing from their belly buttons to their pubes. Ella used to follow that trail with a finger.

     She likes the way JD sings "'As Tears Go By" and "Cold As Ice."

Ella starts writing her book, which she thinks will be a collection of fictionalized autobiographical essays in third person.

She gets her degree, gets a job, but not the one she wanted—a tenured-track position teaching creative writing: About $65,000.00 a year if Ella were lucky; but not until she publishes a book.

Her son is born. Record this day in history. Write his name, Mica Landon Roberts, in the stars. Now Ella looks in her son’s eyes for the first time. Falls in love. Really, really in love.

She tracks Hayden down the last time. Tells him over the phone and then just listens to him say it’s not his kid. She hears him hang up and then she says, "Fuck you very much." Although it could have come out, "Love you very much."

Ella slips headphones around her swelling stomach and play songs by Collective Soul. She thinks, whatever magic Hayden has, it’s inside me now. She wonders if this is how her love is returned.

She looks for Hayden, everywhere, and then hears from a friend of a friend of a friend that Hayden is in LA—managing a car wash. But she doesn’t believe it.

When Ella buys a pregnancy test, she already knows the results.

Her eyes water: Falling stars. Hayden grabs her, and his kiss feels passionate because she’ll never see him again. Ella admires his smirk. Feels him hold her by the arms until it hurts.

Hayden says his reason for playing isn’t there anymore. Rock n’ roll is depressed. Ella feels the same way, depressed. A reason to go on living, she knows it’s there; it will float to the surface like a bubble of air.

Ella hears her friend Kaye got loaded on smack and fell through a window. A shard of glass impaled her throat, and she died. Ella remembers the blood they shared once; Kaye’s still in her now.

Courtney Love, Kurt Cobain’s strung-out widow, says women should empower themselves.

Kurt Cobain shoots himself in the head.

• << TEX Home
• 1
• Page 2
• 3
• 4
• Next >>