Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

At the party, me and the guys are getting bombed and also doing some excellent blow. Everyone in the club, including Mr. Alchemy, is inebriated on something. The Sheiks and Andrew has arranged for Absolut Vodka to sponsor the minitour and they was gonna sponsor the next big one, too. So the spirits was flowing. The club is filled with all kinds of slurpies wanting a piece of the Insatiables’ action. Alchemy is poontang king of the road. Sometimes, I’m sort of jealous because me and Absurda are still a pair. Been about four years at that time. I never before had no girl love me like that.

Around 4 A.M., I need to piss something fierce and the bathroom is fill up ’cause Falstaffa and Marty is using it as their pharmacy. I step outside. Madam Rosa’s was on St. John’s Lane, this tiny street just below Canal. I stumble past the bouncers, and after about fifty feet, I see Alchy’s back, and at first it looks like he’s pissing, too. I’m about to yell, “Stop right there, you’re under arrest for desecrating the spotless streets a New York.” But before I do, I hear Absurda. She’s squatting down in front of him, so she can’t see me and I can’t see her face. “Thank you, oh … Alchemy … thank you … You’re the best. Ever.” I don’t need to see her to get what that voice means.

I just feel sick. I feel so burnt. I say screw them, it’s too fuckin’ perverted. I lam back inside and Nova is rappin’ with these two chicks. I join the discussion. Then this guy, looks like to be around my age, steps between us. “Hi, my name is Stevie Stevens and I work for the ad agency of AY&S Worldwide, and I’m dying to talk to you. We’d love to use your song ‘American Van’ for one of our GM commercials.”

I’m more than a tiny bit distracted, and I says, “ ‘American Van’?” Nova and me, we look at each other and roll our eyes at this tool. The girls are giggling.

“Yes. Your song, ‘We’re an American Van, We’re an American Van, we’re coming to your town …’ The lyrics are perfect for our spot.”

“Sure. Sure.” I really can’t concentrate ’cause I’m discombobulated by Alchemy coming back into the club.

“Can I give you my card?” He sticks out his hand.

“No.” I slap his hand away. “You call Andrew Pullham-Large and talk to him first.”

Absurda is back and surrounded by her girlie fan club, the Nightingales. (They still exist. Only it’s creepy now.)

I feel like I gotta get out of there or I might have to kick some ass. Nova, the chicks we been talking up, and me, without saying goodbye to no one, hop a taxi uptown to party at the Plaza. We go up to my room and are just getting into it when my brother Lenny — fucking Andrew told him where we was staying — starts slamming his fist against the door and screaming, “Ricky, why are you treatin’ us like we’re some smelly ragheads?”

I open up, and he puts his tattooed mitt on my naked shoulder. I take his hand and snap it away like it’s pigeon shit. “Lenny, if I hadn’t made some dough, ya bastids woulda thought a me ’round about I dunno … never.”

“You think you’re so freakin’ special. A somebody. You ain’t shit. You just got lucky. I coulda been in your band and do the same bomp, bomp, bomp crap you do.”

“You coulda been … but you ain’t. Now take your fucked ’tude and get the fuck outta my sight.”

“Not ’til I let ya know how Ma was a fuckin’ wreck after you left. She didn’t leave her room for weeks.”

“Like that’s new? Lenny, Ma was doin’ half the dickwads on the block for a bottle a cheap wine. Christ, she even fucked Nova’s pop.” I look back at Nova and he turns his head away. We never done spoke about it, but I knew. “And Lenny, our dad is a wife-beatin’ prick. And you’re a loony met’ head. Choke on them facts, Mr. Tough Guy.”

He smacks me across my cheek. I jump him and we roll around like two retards in the hallway. Nova’s pounding Lenny’s head, and one of the chicks is all right and starts kicking him. The other was taking pictures with her little camera. Some guest called security. Lenny and me get arrested. Nova flushes the drugs down the toilet, gets dressed, and scrams ’cause he was on parole. I made the cover of the Post . MTV News loved me. Man, Kurt the Lode practically ran the nightly Mindswallow report for a few months.

A lawyer bails me and Lenny out. I don’t hear from Alchemy. Turns out no one else has either for like twenty-four hours. We all assume he is off sexing half the city. Nope. He’s with Salome at Collier Layne visiting her shrink. They’re driving back that night.

My emotions was all confused. I’m still pissed at what I seen and heard and want to pummel him. I’m also, I gotta admit, intimidated, well, fucking terrified, that he’s going to toss me out of the band. And I ain’t exactly thrilled about having to do time in a nonjuvee jail. Before we confab at the Chelsea, I meet Lux in the lobby of the Plaza and he is majorly PO’d. He noogies my forehead like I’m Curly and he’s Moe.

“Ambitious, what the hell were you doing? You shouldn’t be dissin’ Absurda, picking up other chicks in public. Or private.”

“Buck,” I says, itching to try to describe the shit goin’ down between them, “I expect this jive from Alchemy. Not from you.”

“Ambitious, this isn’t jive. This is your band. Absurda is your lady. Don’t blow it.”

Lux, he never come down on me before, and though I’m seething inside, I can’t bring myself to explain more fully so I take his abuse. I need to see Absurda and Alchemy first. “I wasn’t thinkin’. Let’s leave it at that. Me and Absurda, we’ll handle our private business privately. And you don’t know my family.”

“Right. And I don’t want to.”

We laugh, and that puts a lid on it. We go to Xtine’s place at the Chelsea. She’s this dyke friend of Salome’s who I heard about but never met. Only Alchemy ain’t there. Salome and Absurda are buddying up beside each other on a futon.

Salome yells out to Xtine, who is in the kitchen on the other end of the loft. “Meet Mis-ter Lux Deluxe, a fine representation of the human race. And Mr. Ambitious Mindswallow, he’s a former teenage killah.” Salome grinned kind of loopily at Absurda. Absurda gives me a soft smile but don’t defend me or nuthin’, like she would’ve done twenty-four hours before. I’m feeling shitty for her and thinking, Fuck you, I seen what you and him was up to .

Salome, strutting in tight blue jeans and leotard top, nuthin’ fancy but dick-busting sexy, sashays over to the kitchen table and holds up the picture of me in the Post . “Cute. Photogenic. Xtine should shoot you sometime. Not as cute as the photo of me when I was accused of murder .” She holds out that word like it’s glistening hot in her mouth. “You think you’re the only killah in the room?” No doubt in my mind, she’s a killah. “Someday I will tell you about how I was called a ‘murderer’ by some who I thought were my friends.” She cranes her neck in my direction. “You must take care. There are those who you think are your friends who aren’t real friends. Beware the schadenfreude! You know what that is, my killah bee?”

“Something to do with Singmut Freud and shocking people?”

“Not bad, not bad. In fact, I quite like that definition. It is when others take pleasure in your pain. I am sure you are most familiar with the concept from the side of the envious. The more you succeed, the more others will want you to fail. And when you fail, behind your back there will be an orgy of gloating.”

I figure my mother and father is having a damn good gloat right at that moment.

The front door opens and Salome announces, “Here is the man who can resuscitate your image.” Alchemy shows up with Andrew, Sue, and this cocky-looking dude in a black suit, shiny leather shoes, and hair that looks like he just left the car wash. Reminds me of some ’50s dandy. Or maybe Bryan Ferry. It’s Alexander Holencraft, a PR expert. I got to say, against my initial instincts, he ends up being a decent dude. Holencraft got me on Entertainment Tonight and angles the whole episode so I look like a stand-up guy who is real generous to his family.