The Last Living Slut
BORN IN
IRAN
Bred Backstage
Roxana Shirazi
FOR TIGER. FOREVER.
I AM THE LOVE THAT DARE NOT SPEAK ITS NAME.
LORD ALFRED DOUGLAS, “TWO LOVES”
Andres Lesauvage
Contents
Epigraph
Introduction
A Few Thoughts On The Word “SLUT”
Prologue
Part 1 - Home
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part 2 - Lost
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part 3 - Found
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Photographic Insert
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Part 4 - Dead
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Part 5 - Returned
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About The Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
She stood there, alone, at the train crossing in San Clemente, California, an explosion of denim and hair extensions, with a battered laptop in her hands.
That was the first time we saw her.
She’d taken the train from Los Angeles to show us her manuscript. We were on deadline for our own books, so we said she had an hour.
Eight hours later, some friends had joined us and we were all sitting drunk in a cabin on the beach, listening rapt as Roxana Shirazi read portions of the tale that follows.
It was the best Saturday night we’d had in a while.
“Do you want me to stop?” she’d ask in her demure English accent.
“What else have you got?” we’d ask.
“There’s the one where I got Avenged Sevenfold to pee on me.”
“Yes, for God’s sake. Read that one!”
At the time, this wasn’t a book yet. It was a collection of detailed notes, essays, snapshots, and journal entries of her experiences in hotels, on tour buses, and backstage mingled with childhood reminiscences. And not only was each one riveting, shining a light into the trapdoors of the rock–and-roll circus, but it was told in such a unique voice. The writing was muscular, ornate, and unapologetic. This was a woman who was not a victim, but who made rock bands her victim—and got off on pushing them to extremes that made them uncomfortable. She believed the rock-and-roll myth, and when she was unable to find anyone who lived up to it, she chose to embody it herself. Until she made the mistake of falling in love with a rock star.
All of this, in addition to her disturbing sexual coming of age in Tehran in the midst of the Iranian revolution, gelled into a story we’d never heard before. At least not told like this.
We had to get it published.
We sent a few choice excerpts to several editors and agents. They all said that after reading them, they couldn’t get the images out of their head. Yet they refused to put the book into print. Like the rock bands Shirazi had seduced, they said the book was out of their comfort zone. It was too much.
So we decided to put it out ourselves.
The Last Living Slut is a beautiful memoir of growing up in the political turbulence of Tehran; an unflinching portrait of teenage cultural dislocation in London; a backstage romp that makes Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With the Band read like a nun’s diary in comparison; a white-knuckled tale of jilted love and brutal revenge; and the most gripping real-life account of female depravity we’ve ever read.
The rockers mentioned in this book may still have the Polaroids, but you now have the images. And they are unforgettable. We promise you that.
—Neil Strauss and Anthony Bozza
Igniter Books
A Few Thoughts On The Word “SLUT”
Quite simply1, slut means an individual (although the word most commonly refers to females) who frequently engages in sexual activity2 with a lot of partners.
When describing a male who frequently engages in sexual activity with a lot of partners, the words often used are stud, player, horndog, and so onÑand sometimes male slut. However male slut is a label that men usually wear with pride; it is a term of approval and envy. A male who frequently has sex with a lot of partners is patted on the back, looked up to with admiration because he is merely carrying out a role that is assigned to him as a man. It is seen as a progressive step toward the development of masculinity. It is celebrated and encouraged. It is the equivalent of childish misbehaviour and being naughty.
With females, however, the disapproval is taken to the realm of stigmatization.
A female’s pursuit of sexual pleasure and sexual adventure is still seen as a negative characteristic, somehow making her a bad human being. A female is not defined in terms of her humanity, but in terms of her sex life.
So, logically, does enjoying sex with different partners make someone a bad person? How can an individual’s sex life define them wholly as a human being? Surely human beings should be measured by their human qualities and characteristics: kind-hearted, funny, lazy, expressive, determined, shy, mean, boring, bossy, happy-go-lucky, and so on.
Sex, even though it’s just a small segment of our existence, is still such a beautiful, sensual experience, and exploring one’s sexuality and sexual diversity should be respected and celebrated.
In this book, I am the last living “slut” embodying the negative meaning of the word, and the first living “slut” embodying a new, positive, and celebrated meaning of the word. Some will say that the word slut can never be independent from social and historical meanings attached to it (just like “nigger” or “queer”) and will always be bound and steeped in the negative sense of the word, and thus there should be a new word to describe a sexually active and experimental individual to detach it completely from its previous meaning. Well, maybe, but in this book at least I have been conceited enough to give myself the authority to change the meaning of a word. Love your body, love your sexuality, and realize that you are a bad human being only if you are unkind and cruel and do harm unto othersÑand not because of your sex life.
– Roxana Shirazi
* * *
1 As much as I would love to write about how gender is socially constructedÑand how the concepts of masculine and feminine are merely performances
that have been produced as truths and taught to us from birthÑI have a story to begin.
2 Please note that the term sex always means consensual sex. Any sexual act that is not consensual is not sex; it is an act of violence.
Prologue
June 9
“Roxana wants to do the whole band,” Tommy Lee says to Nikki Sixx, pointing at me. I sway between them, dressed in white linen and lace, eyes glistening with liquid warm honey, mouth parted like meat, body needing to be double-penetrated by these two rock legends.
“Mick would die,” I murmur, mindful of Mick Mars’ degenerative bone condition, yet relishing the headline that would accompany the act: “Death By Sex: Girl Kills Rock Star Mid-Fornication.”
Vince Neil’s vice for the day is two bone-brittle blondes, the type whose eating disorders are just another accessory. It’s afternoon, high summer, and we’re indoors under the intestinal-tube fluorescent lights by Mötley Crüe’s dressing rooms at Download Festival. The reek of emo emanates from every corner as little boy bands slumber and lounge, all panda-eyed and girlie-haired. They are elfin boys with big ears and crayoned black liner proudly gunked on, who have scrawled angst and pain and I hate my parents on their striped tops. They pretend to be aloof on the steps of their porta-cabin dressing rooms, as if they don’t notice the detonating presence of rock royalty—Mötley Crüe.
I drink Earl Grey tea from a frail cup as Tommy Lee offers to feed me Jägermeister. Teenage girls dressed in ’50s diner-waitress chic look at him, all doe-eyed Pollyannas. They are fluff, chicken feed. And I shoo them away. Tommy kicks out the girls I brought for him because they look like groupies: all ripped fishnets and synthetic dresses. I speak Greek with him because he’s half Greek. He is a hyperactive, kindhearted toddler on speed in a man’s lanky, skinny, tattooed shell. He’s toothy, and has dimples and a rasping gasoline voice that fucks me in the cunt.
But I want Nikki Sixx, my Elvis, inside me as well.
“I’m a squirter,” I tell Sixx.
“We like that, don’t we, Tommy?” he says, his voice a gooey slur, marinated in decades of distilled degeneracy.
Tommy takes me to his dressing room and locks the door as his bodyguard assumes the position outside. He cranks up the techno music he’s so in love with to gangrene-inducing levels.
“Can’t you put Mott the Hoople on instead?” I beg him.
“This is the music to fuck to! Fuck yeah!” Tommy says, bouncing around like a hyper child. “I wanna see you squirt, Miss Wet!”
He is so bossy, ordering me with that gravelly roar of his. I obey, spreading my legs from beneath the lovely puffy cotton dress my mum bought me. I never wear knickers. It’s been a habit since girlhood.
Tommy’s eyes eager-up like a boy wolf. I spread my pussy wide open and dildo myself so I can ejaculate all over Tommy’s lucky floor. “Is Nikki coming too?” I wish it were 1983, when they were rock’s most cretinous band.
Tommy, eyes ablaze, plays with me and kisses my flower. I’m so fucking horny. I wanna get double-fucked by Tommy and Nikki. I go to find Sixx.
Nikki tells me to be patient. He wants me to himself when he’s back in England.
London, England
Two Months Later
“You sound so angelic,” Nikki Sixx says.
“I can be a whore in the bedroom later if you want,” I reply.
“So do you and Livia come as a team?”
His voice is nasal and bookish-sounding, and it drags on like syrup. I cannot believe I’m talking to Nikki Sixx on the phone. I am a very lucky girl.
“I’m starving. When are you getting here?” Nikki says.
“Soon . . . soon.”
“Come to the hotel. I’m waiting. Hurry up!”
My heart is alive, full of the moon. I am going to dinner with Nikki Sixx. Little old me: the Iranian refugee girl with the mustache. The biggest nerd at school, the one who lost her virginity at twenty-four. Suddenly all the others—all the Sunset Strip nobody musicians, the has-beens, the never-wases, the ones who fucked my heart—don’t matter. They have no meaning. Nikki Sixx is waiting for me.
In the taxi on the way to his room, I feel like a coronary is coming on. Livia tries to calm me down in her flowery way. She isn’t fazed by all this. To her, Nikki Sixx might as well be John Regularsmith from the local chippie.
Livia is a model. She is ravishing. We both look like stars. Not too revealing, not too modest. Gleaming, coiffed, perfumed, and moisturized. She, a blond Marilyn; me, a raven Ava Gardner.
Nikki is waiting in the St. Martins Lane Hotel lobby. His feline, aquamarine eyes slant like a jaguar’s; jagged, jet-black hair tumbles and crashes over them. I know a lot of people who would give their kidney or an important finger to be in his presence. I am overwhelmed. I try to be civilized and not spontaneously lactate as my femininity begins to open up like a lotus flower. We hug and kiss and go to dinner.
Andres Lesauvage
On the way to the restaurant, my hair flusters and shimmies in the gusty winds and rain of August in London. I listen to Nikki talk about his life and watch him give American hundred-dollar bills to every homeless person we pass. I wonder if he is a lonely spirit, no longer a legend of rock-and-roll excess: Having committed every foul and abominable degenerate and depraved act to man, woman, and self—dying twice in the process from heroin overdoses—what does he have now? Who is he?
“That’s just marketing. It’s business,” he insists adamantly about his image. I am instantly deflated.
“You should have worn flat shoes. Those heels are gonna hurt your feet.” He points at my PVC-gleaming, dagger stilettos as we enter the trendy, paparazzi-infested restaurant Nobu.
“Okay,” I mutter in disappointment, tottering on with no knickers underneath my miniskirt.
Livia looks at me. She is a dream come true: Innocent Lolita sexuality, natural blond hair toppling over her face, wide blue eyes smiling back at Nikki. I wonder if he even has sex anymore, or if it all died within him like some lost, sodden memory of a past life. I hope he does, and I hope he wants us; that way I’ll also get to fuck Livia, whose porcelain body I’ve been reluctant to touch for fear of shattering it.
I eat oysters and massage Nikki’s shoulders. “I want to get into gardening,” he says with such pleasure that I imagine him daydreaming such things as he sits in his Malibu mansion, the lonely rock icon. I try to engage in the conversation, but I know jack-shit about gardening. Instead I talk about the residue of ’80s hair bands: Ratt, L.A. Guns, Faster Pussycat. But Nikki knows jack-shit about what’s going on in the old-school rock world these days.
I tell him about my ultimate teenage sexual fantasy: being double-penetrated by him and Axl Rose.
“Oh really?” His eyes spark. “And what did you move on to after that?”
“Porn, of course,” I say.
He nonchalantly tells me that he likes to sit at home and masturbate. “Date rape,” he calls it. His voice is a monotone drag. And yet he is somehow interesting, like a good magazine: packed full of information and detail. We talk about his desire to travel to my home country of Iran, spirituality, and the weather—at which point he turns suddenly around to face me. His chin points, inquisitively like a teacher, and he asks: “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?”
I swallow a bite of the funny-looking raw fish he ordered.
A dreaded feeling—one I thought had evaporated from my heart—suddenly surges into my head. I don’t think. I swallow. I tell the truth.
“Because I fall in love.”
Part 1
HOME
Chapter 1
There is the band. Any band. Standing there—three towers of high, acid-blond spikes and two raging, dark manes. Bare chests, eyeliner, leather, sweat, I–wanna–fuck–you–baby attitude. Guitars and bass and drums and twenty-five-year-old testosterone penetrate the air like hard-core porn. They face their adoring audience, which gazes up at them from the black mass.
There are the youn
g: a bubbling cauldron of pasty white necks straining inside midnight clothing. Fashions bought from Camden on a Saturday afternoon, some baggy to hide their youthful chubbiness. They have zebra tights and matted hair in flaccid ponytails, black liner tracing their Red Bull–vodka eyes. The girls’ breasts, at least, are firm, all puppy fat and tender skin. The heat sends the aroma of laundry soap off their logoed clothing and into the fetid air, mixing with beer and young sweat. In their emo gear, they will scream the lyrics. And then they will go home to bedrooms tucked safely in suburbia, their walls full of posters and angst, their floors carpeted with crushed cans of Red Bull. They will lie there, in awe of the night.
Then there are the hunters, predators hiding in corners, slim and sleek like cats in heat. Tight corsets and slit skirts, hair tidy-messy and obvious. Sapphire eyes, wolf-shaped and sprinkled with glitter lash from a box. They’re seductive but haughty as a pearl necklace, pouting with arched eyebrows. They want the lead guitarist because “he’s hot.” Their vicious heels and fish-cold faces are emotionless, but their cheekbones could cut glass. Ready to pounce to the rhythm of their night’s strategy, discussed, planned, and dissected in hushed tones in the jaundiced light of the chicks’ toilets, gazing in mirrors covered in lipstick marks, paper tissue, and longing so intense it burns like lava.
Of course there is always the older groupie mafia, whose compulsory sedate demeanor nevertheless reeks of a still-rabid desire to get them some rocker meat for the night. They hang around, defeated and heavier, packed into denim. They have sucked and chewed, fucked and crashed their way through all the other sleaze hair rockers of the ’80s that were spawned by Mötley Crüe. They went on actual dates with them before they were married and divorced and married again. They have the original stories of broken hearts, and the hazy bloated memories and scars to prove them. Their sallow bodies are awash in whiskey and sperm. The flickering light catches the hard lines on their faces. At forty-something years old, they’re desperate, angry, ready to push these younger girls outta the way. Without this world, they would be nothing. This is their identity.
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