I placed Abi next to the sofa and put a burger in her hand to help her absorb the alcoholic spew. I could smell roadie sperm on her. Or maybe it was Sebastian’s band. I was so disappointed in her. She fell asleep sitting up, still clasping the burger. I pried it away from her, then I climbed back into bed with Dizzy and went back to sleep.
The next day, as soon as I returned home, a text from Dizzy appeared on my phone: “I can still smell your body. It’s in my hair. Come see me. I miss your body, eyes, hair, boobs . . . all of u. And just so you know, I do dig u, and I would never fuck with your head and I would never fuck you over.”
I slept sweetly that night. But at around four a.m., Dizzy called. He sounded upset. He was in Nottingham, and he wanted me to come join him. I imagined girls lurking there, stumbling in and out of his room, and camouflaging themselves in his wardrobe as we spoke. But he didn’t seem to have anyone else there. His voice was pleading, reeking of neediness. We talked on the phone for an hour; he snapped at me angrily, pleading with me not to break his heart, not to let him down.
“Fucking blow me off then,” he said. “I treat you good, unlike those piece-of-shit men who have fucked you over in the past.”
“I really like you, too, but you live in LA. What do you expect to happen between us?”
“So you’re breaking my heart?” he shouted. “Just tell me to fuck off then! I can’t believe this!”
“I am just being realistic,” I said. “This is fun. What else could it possibly be?”
I tried to remain logical, but I knew it was too late. My heart could not take even a feather stroke of pain. I just wanted him to understand the reality of the situation—in a few days he’d leave for home.
Chapter 46
A couple days later, just before the Guns N’ Roses shows at Wembley Arena in London, one of Dizzy’s children came to visit him. She was in her teens, and he hadn’t seen her for a few years; he was ecstatic at the prospect of seeing her. I was bringing Lori to the Saturday show and another friend on Sunday. I wanted to be with Dizzy so much, I couldn’t wait for Saturday.
Late Friday night, he called me, crushed. The meeting with his daughter hadn’t gone so well.
“I’m so fucking down,” he said. “I wish you were here. I’m feeling pretty alone.” He said he would give the hotel receptionist my name, so I could hang out in his room if he wasn’t there.
The next day, I bought a fuchsia corset and a Playboy bunny polka-dot skirt from my usual Sluts R Us stall in Camden Lock. I couldn’t wait to see Dizzy. He’d been telling me how much he wanted to see me, as he needed some serious cheering up. So I was determined to give him the best cuddles and massages I could. I would melt away all his hurt.
Later that night, he told me, the band was going to play a secret acoustic show in a small club called Cuckoo’s in Mayfair after the regular gig, and that Lori and I should meet him at the Soho House Hotel, where he was staying, and we’d all go together.
I couldn’t wait for Lori to meet him. I gushed to her about how I had finally met a rocker who was genuinely lovely and good-hearted, and who treated me nice. Lori was dying to see what this rare amulet looked like.
The Soho House was a Kinder Egg surprise. Hidden in an alley off Dean Street, it reeked of film-industry types and its foyer was engorged with scorching crimson trinkets. Lori and I sat in the waiting room, a cleft off the reception area, and waited for Dizzy. The room was so exquisitely white, fluffy, and Peter Pan–like—a deviant in dirt-and-smoke-saturated Soho. But by the time Dizzy texted me that night, it was nearly three a.m. and I wanted to go to bed.
“We are not going to hotel now,” his text read. “We are going to Kabaret and then Cuckoo’s for the gig. I am so down. My kid blew me off tonight. I want to die. Sorry.”
Kabaret was a little celeb-type club that was always in the gossip mags, usually because reality TV stars were constantly falling out of it. To get there, Lori and I took a rickshaw: I loved going through the intestinal tubes of Soho that way, smelling the night—the Chinese-Italian-Turk brothels, Albanian pimps, gay boys, cocktails with olives, Essex boys and girls, and excited Euro tourists—of a typical Saturday.
The tiny club was packed sardine-tight with the remnants of an Essex pub on football night. I saw Axl sitting in a roped-off area with two brown-haired girls laughing around him.
Here was Axl about five feet away from me, and all I wanted was to be with Dizzy.
After scouring the club, though, I couldn’t find Dizzy anywhere. It was now about four a.m., and the paparazzi were waiting outside the club. Lori, in her hedonistic pink heels, was melting with exhaustion. My eyes were shutting down when I received a message from Dizzy: “Sorry, honey. Now we’re going straight to Cuckoo’s. It’s completely out of my hands. No one knows what the fuck is happening. Do you want to ruin my night, simply because I was nice to you and didn’t treat you like a piece of garbage like all the other men and women you have fucked in the past?”
I couldn’t understand why he was texting that when we’d been waiting around for him all night.
Five a.m. A lovely Sunday morning. Church day. Birds were chirping for their Sunday brekkie in the light outside. Inside Cuckoo’s, Guns N’ Roses were finally about to play and it seemed like anyone who was awake in London wanted to see the show. Bunches of the band’s crew members were scattered outside the club, harassed and hijacked from their sleep. Paparazzi lenses fed on whatever fodder they could serve the tabloids, so I stood in front of the lenses, pouting like I was sucking on lemons and peacocking my being so the bulbs would flash when Dizzy walked into the club. A petite, dark-haired Italian girl who did public relations for the band fingernailed a last-minute guest list, saw me, grabbed my hand, and pulled me through the crowd. That got me happy quickly: Finally, I felt like part of the Guns N’ Roses family. I reached for Lori’s hand and whipped her neatly into the club.
The club was a tiny space, intimate, with peach lighting and rustic, tangerine-peel walls. All the crew I recognized from the tour were there. A Chinese photographer who had taken a series of shots of Ostara and me in Birmingham was sizzling in the shadows, observing. Sebastian was swaying in the middle of the crowd, bouncy and jovial, like a big happy-go-lucky kid trailing the scent of Herbal Essence shampoo. He was adorable and fun; I wanted to kiss him all over, like a puppy, but his shampoo smell put me off. It was like smelling a girl. Hard as I tried, I still couldn’t find him sexy.
Suddenly Axl rolled in with a couple girls swept up in his tails. He came over to us and, as the room went crazy, Lori took his hand and kissed it like he was Henry VIII or something.
“I want that Indiana boy, Sebastian,” I panted, conflicted between my youthful desire and the new feeling of love-fueled attraction I was experiencing with Dizzy. “I want him. Get him for me.”
“I’ll try. Did you get his signature tattooed on your pussy?”
“No. It got rubbed off when Dizzy went down on me.”
Sebastian howled with laughter. On a tiny, impromptu stage, Dizzy played the keyboards, pale and haggard. Robin and Tommy played along as Axl sang a salad of Guns N’ Roses medleys, while Sebastian and I kept shouting for our favorite, “Civil War.” I looked at Axl like I was a teenager, and his gaze lingered on me. I flushed the same vermillion as my corset and lips. His aura and talent drilled through and punctured that small lair. He was majestic, and I was in dripping awe.
As I stood there with Sebastian, the catering girl he’d been hanging around with at the Birmingham show appeared, docile and domesticated, and tried to grab his hand awkwardly. Sebastian ignored her and moved away. I assumed she was his date, and I felt bad for her. It was a further reminder of how rockers pay attention to women one minute, then treat them like shit the next.
But then I looked over at Dizzy. He looked so broken. I knew it for sure: I loved him.
The catering girl inched closer to Sebastian, with faith and optimism in her eyes. As she reached out again to him, Sebastian�
�s glance suddenly webbed on to a crust-ridden toad of a blonde and he promptly started paying attention to her. My heart melted for the catering girl as she walked off in tears.
After the set, I waited for Dizzy so we could leave. But when he still hadn’t come out after an hour, I was filled with fear and dread. I was sure he was upstairs in the dressing room area, fucking the girls Axl had brought to the club. I knew he would do it. Despite his kindness and promises that he would never fuck with my head and heart, it started to dawn on me that maybe I didn’t really trust him at all. So I compensated for the sinking feeling by flirting with Sebastian.
I stepped outside. The Sunday morning sun was bright as a lightbulb. I tried to stay calm, but my heart hurt with fear as I wondered where Dizzy had gone with those girls. They were beautiful models, and I was just a nerdy Iranian girl with big facial features. But when I checked my phone, I saw message after message from Dizzy landing in my mailbox; they’d been stacking up there while I was out of range in the club. He was back at the hotel already, wondering why I wasn’t there with him. Relief warmed my heart, so sweet and soothing. I smiled so wide that my mouth stretched like a facelift.
When Dizzy opened the door to his room half an hour later, I nearly collapsed on Del. The two of them were in the middle of a heated discussion.
“I have to call my manager,” Dizzy said, in a panic. “The fucking band owes me thousands of dollars.” His face was white and drawn.
“Are you okay?” I hugged him close, trying to calm his anger. But he was furious, so I went to soak in the bath while the two of them talked in private. I was dying of fatigue, but happy to be with him at last.
Eventually Del left, and I ran into the bedroom to hold Dizzy tight. God, I had missed him so much. And it wasn’t just love: I liked him properly, as a person.
The room was splendid. Creamy curtains and plush decor set the tone. Despite our fatigue, we made sex–love. I was finally under his spell and I was so fucking happy. I knew he had many women, but the way he was with me was real, beautiful, caring, and protective. It never once occurred to me that it could all be just a con.
I had to leave before noon on Sunday because Dizzy’s daughter was coming to the hotel to see him. He was planning to take her to Camden for a tattoo.
That night, I went to see him play the last show of the tour in Wembley. I met Janie there, and we skulked around the catering area; her raging, brilliantine white dress dazzled like a snowstorm in the heat of backstage. I watched the show with Warren. As I gazed at Dizzy playing a beautiful piano solo, Warren teased me again.
“Look at you. That is the look of love.”
This time I blushed and scowled, squelching my face like a kid. Axl was ill that night, so Del had to fill in on vocals for some of the songs. When Axl passed out in the sidestage area later, Sebastian took over for the last song.
Afterward, the crew looked exhausted, and I couldn’t wait to get out of there. Dizzy called and told me to hurry.
Chapter 47
That night, back at the hotel, Dizzy was super-hyper. He talked like a woodpecker on fast forward. He discussed his childhood, and how his grandmother saw him play the piano when he was little and marveled at his natural talent. He talked about one of his first bands, the Wild, and his own cover band, Hookers N’ Blow. He had a bunch of their songs on his laptop, and he kept nagging me to listen to them. “Do you wanna hear my band?” he asked over and over. “I want you to hear my band.”
I hated cocaine so much at that moment; it gave people verbal diarrhea, which bored me to tears. “I think you got a bad batch there,” I said, pointing at his stash. He thought that was the funniest thing ever.
Dizzy rambled on about how dorky he was as a child and how badly he’d been bullied. It was as if he were trying to tell me his whole life story in one big roller-coaster breath. He particularly relished telling me little anecdotes about things that had happened to him in Guns N’ Roses. I absorbed so much information, I felt like alphabet letters were swimming in my eyes. And then, right in the middle of his autobiographical rant, he skidded to a stop.
“What if you’re pregnant? I’ve come inside you so many times.” He looked at me dead-on, and I got worried.
“Yeah, I got a bun in the oven!” I patted my stomach jokingly.
“I’d have kids all over the world then! This one would be half-Iranian. That’s fucking cool.” He smiled. I was so relieved.
By now I was tired and I just wanted him to stop talking. I rolled over onto the other side of the bed.
“Do I have to text you to come over here and cuddle me?” he said. I rolled back and we held each other as we had every night we’d been together.
Only this was different: It was his last night before going home to Los Angeles. I wanted to tell him so badly. I wanted him to know. “I love you,” I said, looking straight into his eyes, without emotion, but with raw honesty.
He went quiet and stared at me for what seemed like five minutes with that wide-eyed stare of his. I didn’t know what that meant.
We fell asleep around six a.m. and got up at noon so he could go to the airport.
“I miss my dog,” he said as he started packing. “Oh, and I have to leave this girl’s shoes at reception for her to pick up.” He casually picked up a pair of candy-style, wooden-heeled pumps.
“Whose the fuck are those?” I screamed. “And what the fuck are they doing here?”
“Oh, that girl I told you about. The one who was driving over to Birmingham to see me. They’re hers.” He was so nonchalant about it.
“But you told her not to come. You texted her that in front of me!” I was shocked, and soon I was in tears. “You lied. You even e-mailed me telling me that she wasn’t coming. Was she in your hotel room just before I arrived?”
I couldn’t believe it. Why had he gone to such elaborate lengths to lie to me?
He just shrugged. I had a fast choice to make and I made it: I decided to let it go.
As we hugged good-bye, Dizzy made me promise I would text and call him all the time. I didn’t feel a thing. I had mentally prepared myself for his departure. I was already shutting down. I was going to be a robot.
He picked out two teddy bears from a bag stuffed with cuddly toys that his kids had given him to keep him company. “These are for you to look after. But only for a short time, because I know I’ll see you very soon. I’m so happy we met. Those days and nights were amazing. I will see you very soon. I promise.”
I told him the pain was a motherfucker.
Later, he texted me from the airport: “I already miss you so much. I am going to make sure we will see each other soon.”
I didn’t cry. I just drank the rest of his Jägermeister and cuddled the teddy bears he’d given me. This was life. It was rock band reality. Subreality. I was ready as rain to walk the wobbly pavements of Soho and lose myself in the daze. People, shops, the Tube, colored lines on the route map, my body, sex, going dead inside—all these things must exist without emotion, with precision and tidiness. Because this is life. My heart must not miss or long.
Chapter 48
We can’t keep The Baby. Please don’t Wig Out On Me.
Despite my resolve, throughout August, there was so much slushy, corny talk between Dizzy and me that I stayed happy and smiling in my sleep, curled naked with his teddy bears beside me. My family thought I was on drugs because I was on such a high.
“It has not stopped raining ever since you left,” I texted him. “I wanted to be in your arms tonight. Miss you so much.”
“You should come visit me here,” he responded. “I would be happy to take care of you.”
No other man was attractive to me. I didn’t want to sleep with anyone else, which shocked me. This is what it feels like to want to be monogamous, I thought. It was so nice. Every time I masturbated and gushed like a waterfall, it was Dizzy who automatically popped into my head. I craved him: him on top of me, the smell of his body and his hair, the rough
tickle on my skin when he moved, his light blue eyes and beautiful face. No other man had ever turned me on that way.
Sometimes I felt compelled to text him just after I’d orgasmed to tell him how much I craved him. And he would think I’d meant to text someone else. “Do you know who you have just texted?” he’d reply.
“I can’t believe you said that. I crave you and when I come it’s you I think about,” I’d write in return.
September always ended the smooth, warm summer with a blunt jolt, bringing with it the start of school for children, the beginning of autumn, and the return to rhythm and routine from a spell of laziness and irresponsibility. I was starting to feel sick all the time, and it was pissing me off. My tits hurt like they were being pumped with air; they felt like giant footballs on my chest. I slept all the time, and I began to feel weak. Convinced I was just out of shape, I talked a friend of mine who used to be in the Iraqi army into being my personal trainer.
At the gym, however, I got tired too easily, and it drove me crazy. I was also starting to get menstrual cramps, even though my period wouldn’t start. It was the first of the month, and I couldn’t stop sleeping all day. I felt violently sick, and my breasts were sore like they’d been when my new buds first pushed through years ago. I knew there was no way I was physically capable of getting pregnant, but I decided to have a pregnancy test just to be sure. God, this is ridiculous, I thought. Why am I even buying this? I’m just feeling rundown. No need to be dramatic about it.
I wasn’t nervous buying the kit itself; I’d always been blissfully free of pregnancy anxiety. At home, I did the test with a mixture of fear and amusement. After three minutes, I looked at the stick. There were two pink lines side by side: It was wrong. They must have sold me an expired kit. I did the test on the second stick, and the results were positive again. I hated pharmacies that carried bad stock. There was no way I could be pregnant: I couldn’t get pregnant.
The Last Living Slut Page 20
