Neon Angel

by Cherie Currie

  Joan was furious. “How could that bastard say those things about us?” she fumed. I remember her telling me that she would never trust another journalist again. But even worse than the journalist’s betrayal of our trust was the betrayal by my own manager.

  There was a section of the piece where the journalist had asked Kim what it was like working with me. Kim’s response?

  “Handling Cherie Currie’s ego is like having a dog urinate in your face.” A lump forming in my throat, I read on. “The best thing that could happen to this band,” said Kim, “would be if Cherie hung herself from a shower rod and put herself in the tradition of Marilyn Monroe.”

  We had been recording a track called “Midnight Music” all day long. It was one of my favorite new songs—a little more melodic than the usual Runaways stuff. Still, hearing the same guitar parts over, and over, and over again was driving us crazy. But all of a sudden I couldn’t hear the music anymore. All I could hear was my voice screaming in my head. I looked at the magazine, dumbstruck by the viciousness of what Kim had said. My hands started shaking, and I found myself staring hard at that ugly picture of Kim grinning out at me from the pages of the magazine.

  “Cherie!” the engineer called out. “We’re ready to lay down a vocal!” I looked over to him, sitting in front of the vast mixing board like the captain of some science fiction spacecraft. I looked back at the magazine in my cold, shaking hands. The rest of the girls were sitting around, tired and pissed off. Everybody’s nerves were on edge by the painstaking process of getting every single track on this song just right. Tempers were flaring.

  Joan came over to me and put a hand on my shoulder. She could see that I was really upset, and she knew why. “Come on, Cherie. It’s just Kim. You know he’s full of shit!”

  Tears started to well up in my eyes as I continued reading the piece. All of a sudden something was very clear to me: I needed a quaalude. I needed one right away. But I knew that I was out, and I didn’t even have the money to get more. But I needed one; otherwise I was going to lose it in a big way. There was a half-drunk bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the studio, and I considered grabbing it and chugging it down. I needed something, anything, to take the edge off how I felt right then.

  “That son of a bitch . . . how could he say such a horrible thing? He said he wants me dead!” I managed to stammer that much and then like a goddamn baby, I began to cry. I tried to cover my eyes, but of course everybody saw it. I could feel my cheeks flush with embarrassment, but I couldn’t help it.

  Lita threw her hands up in exasperation. “Motherfucker!” she screamed. “I can’t take this! Are you gonna sing, or are you gonna sit there crying like a fucking baby?”

  That was Lita. I could always rely on her in a time of crisis.

  “DID YOU SEE THIS?” I bellowed, holding up the magazine and waving it in her face.

  “Yeah?” She shrugged. “What about it?”

  “Did you read what Kim said about me?”

  Lita flung her hair back and laughed. “Yeah. So what, Cherie? It’s only a stupid fucking magazine article!”

  Lita was in an even worse mood than usual. She hated the direction that the new album was taking. If she had her way, we’d have been playing hard rock. But this album was getting a much poppier and polished sound than the first, and that drove Lita nuts. Plus, Earle Mankey was doing guitar overdubs on some of the tracks, something that Lita took personally. Her latest bone of contention was with the song that I cowrote, “Midnight Music.” She thought it was “pansy-ass crap,” as she so nicely put it. In an attempt to pull the album into a “harder” direction, Lita fought tooth and nail to get a terrible blues-rock song called “Johnny Guitar” onto the album. It was, in my opinion, one of the worst songs the Runaways ever recorded.

  Now that she saw that I was in tears, Lita was on her feet yelling, pushing home her advantage. Sandy got between us, ready to intercede and calm things down. Whenever Lita started up like this, I’d get real nervous. On the last tour she had flipped out and physically assaulted Jackie. They were sharing a room, and Jackie had been speaking too loudly on the phone while Lita was trying to sleep. Lita’s solution was to rip the phone out of the wall and try to strangle Jackie with the cord.

  The producer looked on, used to this kind of drama. The sessions had been painful, and the band as a whole was extremely fragile. Poor old Earle Mankey just stared into space with this just-another-day-at-the-office expression on his face.

  Lita grabbed the magazine from me and glanced at it. Then she tossed it to the floor.“He’s right about your ego!” she spat. “Always in the center of every damn photo session! Always getting the biggest interview in every damn article!”

  “That’s not my fault! I don’t ask for that!”

  Sandy pushed her way in between us. “Will you two just shut up and get goin’? We’ve been here all day doing this fucking song! I want to get it done already so we can go home!”

  My throat was burning from all the yelling. I tried to get my breathing under control, but the rage, frustration, and pain wouldn’t stop. Sandy opened the door to the sound booth and said gently, “C’mon, Cherie. Forget the article! Let’s just get this over with . . .” She stood there expectantly, waiting for me to walk in and record my vocal. I shook my head.

  “I can’t sing now!” I sobbed. “How can you expect me to sing?”

  “See!” Lita yelled triumphantly. “What did I tell you? We all have to go by Cherie’s fucking schedule!”

  Even Jackie had put down whatever book she was reading and picked up the discarded Crawdaddy from the floor. She was flipping through it while all of this was going on. She looked up from it now, shook her head, and whistled. “Whoa! Pretty nasty stuff in there! I didn’t even know you and Kim were fighting, Cherie.” She tossed the magazine back to me.

  “Neither did I . . .” I sniffled.

  “We’re not!” boomed a familiar voice from the doorway.

  Kim was standing there, watching all of this go down with an amused expression on his face. I started shaking when I saw him. I stormed over and shoved the magazine right in his goddamn face. “Explain this shit!” I screamed at him.

  Kim held the magazine between two fingers, as if it were covered in dog shit or something. He looked at me, grinning that crooked grin of his. Then, in that oh-so-patronizing voice of his, he said, “This, Cherie, is what we call controversy. This is publicity. What was it that Andy Warhol said? ‘I don’t pay attention to what they write about me . . . I just measure it in inches.’ This is a juicy story for your fans to drool over, nothing more, nothing less.” With that, he dropped the magazine into a trash basket.

  “But . . . but why?”

  “Why? Why not? It was there! This idiot wanted to hear some inside gossip on the Runaways, so I manufactured some for him. You should be glad, Cherie. Because of that little quote, we got an article twice as long, and most of it is focused on you! Its called selling records, dear.”

  Kim leaned in, and placed a crooked hand on my shoulder. “It’s just business,” he said with a nasty smile. “We’re just selling records here.”

  “Good!” spat Lita. “They’ve kissed and made up! Maybe now she can get her ass back in that booth and finish this fucking song!”

  “Of course she’ll sing!” Kim cooed, still with that shit-eating grin on his face.

  “I don’t want to,” I said, unable to even make eye contact with him.

  Suddenly the smile drained from Kim’s face. I sensed him straighten up, and I glanced up to see his eyebrows furl as he stared at me with a look of death. “You don’t have to like it,” he growled. “You just have to sing into the fucking microphone.”

  “Kim!” Sandy interrupted. “Why don’t you leave her alone? She’s had enough for today. All right?”

  Kim turned on Sandy. “No, dog!” he snapped. “It’s not all right. But . . . I’ll let her take five, then she’ll sing like a goddess, won’t you, Cherie?”

&nb
sp; “You don’t own me!” I blurted.

  Kim laughed at that. “To all intents and purposes, I do. You’re on lease to me, and so long as I am renting your puerile sixteen-year-old brain, you will do what I say. This group is MY group! This group is MY creation, and I don’t want to hear any more of these dog-puke complaints!”

  “Then treat me like a human being!” I whispered. “I’m not a fucking dog.”

  “If you’re going to learn anything,” Kim went on, already up on his goddamned soapbox, “then you had better stop being so rebellious! If you want to rebel, go back to your high school math class and curse out your teacher. Go back and join the other hordes of brain-dead, no-hope teenagers around the country. If that’s the life you want, then you’re fucking welcome to it. But if you want to be a superstar, you’d better learn to shut your fucking mouth and absorb everything I have to teach you!”

  I pointed an accusatory finger at him. A horrible image flashed in my brain, something I had been trying to shut out for a long time. It was the image of Kim, naked on the bed with Marcie, telling us that he was going to teach us all how to fuck. “YOU—CAN’T—TEACH—ME—ANYTHING!” I screamed at him.

  A silence fell over the room. Everybody was watching to see how this scene played out, even Lita. Kim nodded slowly and looked around the room. I was pretty sure that he wouldn’t hit me—he had never hit any of us. But sometimes, I think what he did to our minds was far worse than hitting.

  “Fine,” he said. “Fine. All of you go. Get the fuck out.” He reached over and punched a button on the twenty-four-track tape machine. The lights went out on the console. “Today’s session is over. You can go do whatever shit it is that dogs do. You’d all better remember that without me you’re nothing, you ungrateful dug cunts! I’d like to see how far you’d get without Kim Fowley in the picture . . .”

  With that, Kim turned and stormed out of the studio. I looked around the room, and all eyes were on me. “I’m sorry,” I told them. “I just don’t know how much more of that bastard I can take.”

  Nobody said anything, but I knew how they felt. We’d been through this so many times already.

  Sandy told me that I was too sensitive and needed a thicker skin. But at the same time she assured me that she would always protect me. God, I loved that girl. Lita told me that I was being a pain in the ass. Joan . . . Joan was my best friend in the group, but even she thought that by standing up to Kim, I was just making things harder on everyone. Jackie didn’t even see the problem, and thought that maybe I just needed to take a break.

  I looked around, and grabbed my purse before walking out.

  Chapter 19

  The Procedure

  The next day I was sicker than ever. I woke up early and knew what was coming. I had to run to the bathroom. After I was finished puking, I hobbled back to my bed to lie down. After a few moments, there was a light knock on the door, and my dad came in. He knelt beside me.

  “How you feeling, Kitten?”

  “Crappy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” Dad kissed me lightly on the forehead. “I think it’s time we found out. Something’s obviously wrong. I’m taking you to see the doctor, and we’ll get this all taken care of, okay?”

  “Yes, Dad . . .” He placed a gentle finger against my cheek. “It’s going to be okay, Kitten. I promise.”

  Later that morning, I found myself in the clean, sterile office of Dr. Frank. Dr. Frank was a nice old guy with a neatly trimmed gray beard and thick bifocal glasses. He smiled a lot, and made me feel at ease. The nurse took some blood; they weighed me, took my blood pressure, and did a bunch of other tests. Then we left, with the promise that they would be in touch as soon as the results were in. I was expecting this to happen in a day or two, but when Dad and I walked back into the house, Aunt Evie was at the kitchen table talking to the doctor on the phone.

  She took a long drag of her cigarette, and I heard her say, “They just walked in. Yes, I’ll tell them now. Thank you, Dr. Frank . . . for everything.”

  She hung up. Grandma was standing at the kitchen sink. Aunt Evie raised the cigarette to her mouth again, and I noticed that her hand was trembling slightly. I started to feel breathless. Dad stood there, jangling his keys, waiting for her to speak.“Well?” he said.

  Aunt Evie shot my dad a long, pensive look. Then she looked at me. “Honey,” she said, “the doctor says you’re pregnant.”

  The silence that followed was thunderous. I stood there, with my mouth open. I felt an icy heat on the nape of my neck.

  Pregnant? Oh God, I’m PREGNANT?

  The first sound that anybody made came from Grandma. She sat at the kitchen table next to Aunt Evie and started crying softly. I watched her, my whole body numb with shock, as her shoulders shook and she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. I felt my father place a reassuring hand on my shoulder, and all at once I wished that I were somewhere else—anywhere else. My father cleared his throat.

  “Okay, Evie, what do we do now?” Dad’s voice was surprisingly calm. I could hear it quaver a little as he tried to keep it under control. In a daze, I walked away from them and sat down on the couch.

  There was a baby inside of me. Suddenly everything made sense. My sickness. The crying. My breasts getting large and tender. How on earth could this not have occurred to me before? I didn’t even notice that I had missed my period! It had never really been regular, so with the tour and all of the stress . . . I just assumed . . . oh God.

  I let my eyes fall to my stomach. I placed a hand against my belly, tenderly. There was a baby in there. Holy shit. The tears fell from my eyes and landed on my shirt, making little dark patches. “Hello, baby,” I whispered.

  My mind scrambled to make sense of it all. A sense of relief flooded me. So I wasn’t sick—I was a mom! I started to imagine how it would feel to hold a child of my own. Somehow, despite the circumstances, the idea was comforting to me. I will love this baby, I thought. I will nurture it.

  After a whispered conversation in the kitchen, Aunt Evie and Dad came and sat beside me on the couch. I closed my eyes as Aunt Evie said, “Honey . . . we need to talk.”

  “About what?” I sniffled.

  “About . . . your situation. Dr. Frank says that he can’t take care of this sort of thing . . . he’s a pediatrician . . . so he suggested we call an ob-gyn as soon as possible. You know, Sandie has a good one, I should call her right now . . .”

  I looked over to Dad. He didn’t take his eyes off me. He gazed at me tenderly. I could tell he was saddened by what he and Aunt Evie were about to say. A cold panic started to set in. “Daddy? Daddy? What does that MEAN—take care of it?”

  Dad reached out for my hand and held it. He held my hand firmly as Aunt Evie said, “Well, honey—you don’t plan to have this baby, do you?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but it was bone dry, and no words would come out. “I—uh—I . . .” What I wanted to say was “Yes—I want this baby!” but I couldn’t. Suddenly I felt very confused.

  Daddy put his arm around me. “Let’s be realistic, Kitten,” he said. “You’re a baby yourself. You don’t want to do this now. Everything changes when you have a child. You have to take care of it . . . you have to support it. It’s a serious business, Kitten. I don’t think you’re ready for it.”

  Suddenly the rest of the world fell away, and I realized what was about to happen. I felt sick all over again. Only this time it was a different kind of sick; it was a sick feeling that was deep down inside of me, inside of the core of me. I started to mutter, “No . . . no . . . no . . .” to myself, shaking my head.

  “You can’t have a career with the band if you have this baby,” Aunt Evie was saying from some faraway place. “Everything is happening for you now . . . this . . . now. It’s just not right. Maybe in a few years when you are with the right man, in a better place—but now? It would be the biggest mistake of your life. You have to talk to Scott. He is the father, isn’t he?”

  When Aunt Evie said this
, I felt my cheeks burning. I put my hands up to my face and groaned. I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation with my dad right next to me. Instead of answering, I just nodded.

  “And look how sick you’ve been, sweetie puss,” Aunt Evie went on. “Some women . . . they’re like that for the whole nine months! You don’t want that! Come on, honey, you know what we have to do. We have to be smart here. We have to do what’s right for you.”

  When the time came to call Scott, I couldn’t do it. I was so ashamed, so humiliated. All I could think about was how lousily Scott had treated me on tour. I felt like a fool, that I had been used. In the end, my father had to call him. I sat there, cringing, listening to their tense conversation. When my father hung up, there was a look on his face that scared me. God, no father wants this to happen to his teenage daughter, I thought. “What did he say, Dad?” I asked in a quiet voice.

  Dad shrugged. “He said he’d take care of it. Told me to let him know how much it all will cost and he’ll pay us back.” Then he muttered under his breath, “The little bastard!” He walked to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a bourbon and ice, and spent the rest of the day drinking and quietly brooding.

  Sandie’s doctor was curt and businesslike. After the examination, he informed my father and me that I was three months pregnant, and that I would have to stay overnight in the hospital to undergo the procedure. When he said that, I squeezed my father’s hand a little tighter. The night before I was due in the hospital, I sat up in my bedroom most of the evening. I held my belly, running my palm over it to see if I could feel any signs of the life that was growing inside of me. I was crushed. An indescribable, desolate feeling came over me. Most of all, I was scared. Scared out of my wits.

  When it was over, I was lying alone in the clean, white hospital linens staring out of the window. The sky seemed unreal, like the painted backdrop for some awful theater production. The sadness inside of me was unfathomably deep. I can’t say what it was that I felt anymore. I couldn’t cry anymore; it was as if I had somehow run out of tears.