Lola Bensky

by Lily Brett

  The fact that he used a lot of drugs and also drank heavily seemed to have already had a bad effect on his health. He had been hospitalised for ‘health problems’ several times. Lola thought the alcohol and the drugs probably exacerbated his detached, anti-social tendencies.

  There was another even more bothering side to Brian Jones. Lola had heard that he sometimes beat up his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg. Anita Pallenberg had often been seen with bruises on her arms. Quite a few people seemed to know. No one appeared too bothered. Lola wondered why it was a criminal offence to beat up someone in the street, when beating up your wife or your girlfriend was viewed as part of ordinary everyday life, as merely a domestic spat or disagreement.

  Three months before the Monterey International Pop Festival, Anita Pallenberg, who had been with Brian Jones for two years, left him for Keith Richards. She left when Brian Jones was hospitalised in Morocco while the three of them were travelling together.

  Brian Jones was on time. They sat down side by side on a bench under a tree, not far from the festival’s office. Lola looked at Brian Jones. His hair was as bouffant and bouncy as it always was. Lola had heard that Anita Pallenberg used to do Brian Jones’s hair and makeup. His hair didn’t look as though it was missing Anita Pallenberg’s touch. He looked a bit pale, but maybe it wasn’t a lack of make-up, maybe he always looked pale.

  ‘This festival is already pretty exciting, isn’t it?’ Lola said to Brian Jones. ‘Do you think it is going to be quite an extraordinary event?’ Brian Jones looked at her. He opened his mouth. Nothing came out. Lola waited.

  ‘Three days. Three days,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lola. ‘It is a three-day festival. What made you want to fly over for it?’

  ‘Jimi,’ he said. ‘Community.’

  Lola thought about it. Did he mean he came over to see Jimi Hendrix and the local community? Lola was used to interpreting and translating seemingly incomprehensible sentences. Her parents’ English always needed interpretations and adjustments.

  ‘Jimi Hendrix is great,’ Lola said.

  ‘Best world,’ Brian Jones said slowly.

  ‘This community is the best in the world?’ Lola said. Brian Jones looked even more bewildered. ‘Jimi Hendrix is the best in the world?’ Lola said. Brian Jones just stared at her. Thinks Jimi Hendrix is the best guitar player in the world, Lola wrote in her notebook.

  ‘I think,’ Brian Jones said. ‘I think,’ he repeated.

  He thinks, Lola wrote, and waited.

  She looked up at him. He was slowly listing to his right. He was almost leaning against Lola. She tried to prop him back to an upright position. ‘Community,’ he said. ‘Form a community.’

  ‘In Monterey?’ she said. He didn’t answer. ‘You mean you think the people at the festival will form a community?’ Lola said.

  Brian Jones blinked. Lola thought that must be what he meant. Brian Jones feels that the people who come here will, after spending three days together at the Monterey International Pop Festival, have formed a community, Lola wrote in her notebook.

  ‘I think I understand what you’re saying,’ Lola said to Brian Jones. ‘And I think you’re right, I think a community, maybe even living in different parts of the world, will be formed.’ He didn’t answer Lola. His eyes were closed. He appeared to be asleep. She peered at him. He was so out of it – so unaware of anything around him. Lola examined his face, at close range. His skin was smooth. It had an almost innocent flawlessness about it.

  Even passed out, every part of Brian Jones’s ensemble was impeccable. His scarves were draped with casual perfection. His cape with its fur-trimmed collar still contained a romantic aura. And each of his many pieces of jewellery was polished and in place.

  The mess, Lola had heard, was in his home. Apparently there were clothes and underwear everywhere and piles of dirty dishes and stale food and grooming accoutrements on every surface. Mick Jagger, Lola had been told, supposedly found it intolerable to visit. Lola could believe that. She didn’t think Mick Jagger liked too much mess.

  Lola gingerly shook Brian Jones. He opened his eyes. ‘Do you think the world is changing?’ Lola said. ‘Is this a social revolution?’

  ‘Change?’ Brian Jones said, looking straight at Lola. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, slowly, while he tried to put his hand into the pocket of his satin trousers.

  ‘No,’ he said in a slurred voice.

  Lola suddenly realised that Brian Jones thought she was asking for money. She was horrified. ‘I don’t want change,’ she said.

  ‘Change?’ he said as his eyes rolled into the back of his head.

  ‘I was asking you, if you thought, looking around here, that the world might be changing,’ Lola said, before giving up on the rest of her sentence.

  Brian Jones was leaning back on the bench. He seemed to be in a coma, or asleep. She tried to prod him again. He didn’t move. She pushed him slightly towards her, so she could keep him propped up until someone came to collect him. She hoped, as he’d flown over from England for the concert, that he would revive before the concert began.

  Lola felt quite disconcerted by Brian Jones passing out. ‘He’s stoned,’ the guys who came to pick him up said. ‘How do you know he’s not having a heart attack or a stroke?’ Lola said.

  ‘He’s stoned,’ the guys carrying Brian Jones off said to Lola, again. Lola walked back to the main area of the fairground. A man with a yellow pork-pie hat smiled at her. She smiled back. A girl with cherries around her ears, carrying a bowl of raw carrots, offered Lola a carrot. She took one. Something was happening. Something was changing. There was a happiness in the air that felt almost contagious.

  In front of the stage were hundreds of rows of folding chairs. Quite a few of the seven thousand seats were already filled. Lola had a press pass. This meant that she could sit in the front four or five rows of seats. She squeezed past some people and sat down just to the left of the middle of the row.

  Lola looked to her left. To her horror, she was sitting two seats away from Mama Cass. She had nothing against Mama Cass, but she didn’t want to sit that close to someone who was so fat. Few people were that fat. It was the sort of fat that made people turn around and stare. Lola very much hoped that she was not as fat as Mama Cass.

  She felt bad about wanting to change seats. She knew that it didn’t make her any more or any less fat to be sitting next to another fat person. Lola looked at Mama Cass. Mama Cass was smiling. It was a beautiful smile. The smile of someone who was utterly at peace. There was no hint of aggravation or discontent in her smile. Mama Cass’s smile was at odds with her body, which looked overgrown, over-wrought and uncomfortable. It took up a lot of space and preceded her whenever she turned in her seat.

  Lola felt sad. She didn’t know why she should feel sad. Mama Cass didn’t look at all sad. She looked transcendentally happy. Her head, tilted to one side, rested on the shoulder of a very good-looking blond man. Lola thought Mama Cass must be more at peace with her body than Lola was with hers. Lola looked at Mama Cass’s upper arms and prayed that her own arms were not anywhere near as fat.

  Lola took another look at the blond man. She remembered that he was Mama Cass’s new boyfriend, Lee Kiefer. Lee Kiefer had the good looks of a movie star. He was tall and had taut, chiselled, symmetrical features. He was tanned, lean and muscled. They looked like a strange couple as Mama Cass’s features had been rearranged by the fat. Her face had acquired extra dimensions and added planes and chins.

  Lola almost wanted to cry. She felt sad for Mama Cass. And sad for herself. She really must start a diet, she thought. She already had a new diet plotted out. It involved peaches, apricots, cantaloupe and eggs. The diet was based on having one peach, one apricot, one egg and half a cantaloupe, five times a day. That totalled fifteen hundred calories a day, which usually meant a weight loss of two pounds a week.

  The diet could be varied. She could have two peaches, two apricots, two eggs and a whole cantaloupe t
wice a day plus one peach, one apricot, one egg and half a cantaloupe once a day. There was a lot of eating involved for a relatively small number of calories, which, Lola thought, along with being easy to remember, could be the key to a successful diet.

  Maybe she should also exercise, she thought. She had tried exercising once, when she was seventeen. She had ridden round and round in circles on her bicycle in Renia and Edek’s small backyard in St Kilda, Melbourne. Riding round and round had made her hungry as well as dizzy.

  Lola caught a whiff of cannabis in the air. People were passing a joint along in the row in front of her. Lola got out her notebook. Start the Peach, Apricot, Cantaloupe and Egg Diet, she wrote to herself. Somebody sat down in the seat on Lola’s right. Lola glanced up at them. She looked again. It was Janis Joplin. Lola thought she had seen Janis Joplin walking around earlier. Janis Joplin smiled at her and said, ‘Hi.’ It was a cheerful, enthusiastic, almost girlish ‘Hi’. A ‘Hi’ that seemed in marked contrast to her looks. There was very little that looked girlish about Janis Joplin. She had flat, badly pockmarked skin, and untamed dry hair with stringy split ends. Lola felt sorry for her. It must be hard to live with skin that was so marked. At least she isn’t fat, Lola thought.

  ‘Hi,’ Lola said. ‘I’m Lola Bensky. I’m a journalist. I write for Rock-Out, a newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia.’

  ‘Oh man, Australia, that’s groovy,’ Janis Joplin said.

  Lola instinctively liked Janis Joplin. There was an earnestness about her. And an intensity. Lola turned to her. ‘Could I ask you a weird question?’ Lola said.

  ‘Sure,’ said Janis Joplin. ‘I like weird questions.’

  ‘Do you think I’m as big as Mama Cass, who’s sitting two seats to my left?’

  Janis Joplin leaned over and surreptitiously eyed Mama Cass. She looked at Mama Cass for what felt to Lola like a long time, then turned to Lola and said, ‘Hell no,’ in a voice that Lola feared was loud enough for Mama Cass to hear, ‘She’s much bigger.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Lola said in a whisper.

  ‘Of course I’m sure,’ Janis Joplin said. ‘I’m trying not to bullshit myself, I’m trying to be real, so I wouldn’t try to bullshit you.’

  ‘That’s a relief,’ Lola said. ‘Her size freaks me out a bit.’

  ‘I understand,’ Janis Joplin said. ‘I was fat when I was a teenager and it isolated me even more. It didn’t help that my face was also constantly covered in big red pimples. I used to get called “pig” or “freak”. It all happened almost overnight when I was fourteen. I didn’t get any tits, but I gained weight and got acne. I wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity before then. I was already different. I read books and I painted and I didn’t hate niggers.’

  Lola knew that she had been right to like Janis Joplin. ‘I had a school friend,’ she said to Janis Joplin, ‘who was very thin. We’d go to the beach together when we were about fourteen or fifteen. Other kids would see us and start chanting, “Fat and Skinny went to war. Fat got shot and Skinny swore.” Did you have that little ditty in America?’

  ‘I’ve never heard it before,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘I wasn’t even fat then,’ said Lola.

  ‘Are you still thinking about whether or not you’re as fat as Mama Cass?’ Janis Joplin said.

  ‘Not really,’ Lola said. ‘Although the thought still does bother me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not,’ said Janis Joplin. ‘I know what it’s like to obsess about something like that. I obsess about my skin. It’s so ugly.’

  ‘It’s not ugly,’ Lola said. ‘And you’re not ugly.’ What she was saying was true. Janis Joplin had an attractiveness that had nothing to do with having blemish-free skin or being perfectly groomed. She was someone it was easy to be drawn to. It was partly her truthfulness and her openness and a sense that she cared. Janis Joplin wasn’t the sort of person, Lola thought, for whom life was one big ice-cream cake.

  ‘Neither are you,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘A few people have said I could be very pretty if I lost weight,’ Lola said.

  ‘Fuck them,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘My mother is obsessed with my weight,’ Lola said.

  ‘Fuck her, too,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘My mother isn’t bothered by the word “fuck”,’ Lola said. ‘I say “fuck” in front of her all the time. It doesn’t bother her. Her English isn’t good enough to know that it’s quite a crude word.’ Lola paused. ‘My mother hates people who are fat,’ she said to Janis Joplin. ‘She was in a Nazi death camp and the only people who were fat in there were some Nazis and the few prisoners who were doing something that was helpful to the Nazis.’

  ‘Are you Jewish?’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘Very,’ said Lola.

  ‘My two best friends at school, Karleen and Arlene, were Jewish.’

  ‘Really?’ said Lola.

  ‘I practically lived at Karleen Bennett’s house,’ Janis Joplin said. ‘Her parents liked me. Nothing about me was acceptable and still isn’t to my mother. She was always telling me to be like everyone else. She wanted me to wear skirts and white shirts and bobby socks. She wanted me to be anything but what I was. So I spent all the time I could at Karleen’s place. I even went to temple with them.’

  ‘Are there many Jewish people in Port Arthur?’ Lola said. She knew that Janis Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas.

  ‘Hardly any. People were suspicious of anyone Jewish. I think being Jewish is very cool,’ said Janis Joplin, looking quite thrilled that Lola was Jewish.

  Lola was not at all sure that it was thrilling to be Jewish, but she didn’t want to start a conversation at the Monterey International Pop Festival about the endless catastrophes and tragedies that had befallen Jews solely because they were Jewish.

  ‘You went to temple?’ Lola said to Janis Joplin.

  ‘Yes,’ said Janis Joplin. ‘I loved it. We’d go with Karleen’s parents and her grandmother.’

  ‘I wasn’t allowed to go to synagogue because neither of my parents believed in God, not after what they’d experienced,’ Lola said.

  Janis Joplin was quiet. ‘I’ve always hated discrimination,’ she said. ‘When I spoke up in high school and said I was in favour of integration, everyone thought that I had gone crazy. At my high school, Thomas Jefferson High School in Port Arthur, just being good at English or reading books or doing art could get you beaten up. I got such shit for doing art.’

  ‘We had boys that beat up other kids when I was at primary school,’ Lola said. ‘I was terrified most of the time I was there, which was from the time I was six till I was ten.’

  ‘What did your parents do about it?’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Lola. ‘I didn’t tell them. I didn’t think it would help.’

  ‘It must have been hard to talk to a mother who’d been through all that,’ Janis Joplin said.

  ‘My father was also imprisoned in a Nazi death camp,’ she said.

  Janis Joplin looked sad. Lola felt bothered. She didn’t like the knack she seemed to have developed for making people sad. It seemed to be almost unavoidable if both your parents had been in Nazi death camps. Lola thought she definitely would have had a more cheery range of life stories to exchange if her parents had been trapeze artists or weightlifters.

  ‘A journalist friend who saw you perform in New York told me you were sensational,’ Lola said to Janis Joplin. Janis Joplin clapped her hands together like a child and beamed. ‘Did he?’ she said. ‘That’s so cool. We played in New York in March. He must be a groovy cat.’

  ‘He is a she,’ Lola said.

  ‘Well, that’s even better,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘Really?’ said Lola.

  ‘Yes,’ said Janis Joplin. ‘I find women are more honest. And men still think all of us chicks are supposed to get married and have a brood of children and shut up.’

  Lola tried to think about what Janis Joplin had just said. She wondered if that was what
men expected of women. She thought it probably was what women expected of women. She didn’t think that most of the girls or women she knew thought of themselves as becoming brain surgeons or nuclear physicists. Lola herself mostly thought about how to lose weight. Needing to lose as much weight as she needed to lose was a time-consuming occupation.

  Mama Cass passed a large tray of watermelon slices along the row. Lola and Janis Joplin each took a slice. ‘Thank you,’ they called out to Mama Cass.

  ‘You could never say “fuck” in my house,’ Janis Joplin said to Lola. ‘My mother would have been furious. She used to call me a harlot without me uttering any obscenities. The first time she said it, Karleen and I had to look it up in the dictionary as I couldn’t believe my mother would call me that.’ She paused. ‘She had no reason to say that to me,’ she added.

  ‘My father used to call me a prostitute if I came home after ten p.m.,’ Lola said. ‘I used to think that maybe the word prostitute didn’t sound so bad, in Polish, and he didn’t know how hurtful it was. I was so virginal and so offended.’

  ‘Me, too,’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘Your mother sounds pretty awful,’ Lola said.

  ‘She is very controlling,’ Janis Joplin said. ‘And cold. Nothing I can do is right. She still wants me to wear demure skirts and put my hair up in a bun.’

  ‘My mother isn’t cold or detached,’ Lola said. ‘She just isn’t there. You can see her but she’s absent. She’s not there. I think she’d probably like to be present, but she can’t be. The only time that she’s there is when she’s telling me to lose weight.’

  ‘Well that’s an incentive to stay fat, isn’t it?’ said Janis Joplin.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Lola. She hadn’t thought of that.

  ‘You don’t mind that I called you fat, do you?’ Janis Joplin said.

  ‘I am fat,’ Lola said. ‘I sometimes think that I must be too fat for my mother to kiss. She never kisses me. And rarely touches me. Sometimes I think that maybe it has got nothing to do with my being fat, I think that maybe she was just touched too much.’