Superstar Read online

  Superstar

  By Rick R. Reed

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2016 Rick R. Reed

  ISBN 9781634862714

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  NOTE: This ebook was previously published by Amber Quill Press.

  * * * *

  Thanks to Bonnie Bramlett and Leon Russell for writing the song that inspired me. And to Karen Carpenter, whose beautiful rendition is haunting and tragic.

  * * * *

  Superstar

  By Rick R. Reed

  “You said you loved me. You told me you’d come back.”

  I lean forward and an updraft of wind catches at my hair and flirts with stealing my breath away. I am looking down at a straight drop of almost two hundred feet. Behind me, cars rush by, oblivious to my intentions, concerned only with making their way south to downtown Seattle, or north to neighborhoods like Fremont or Wallingford.

  I push my chest forward, so I am hanging over the edge of the George Washington Bridge, better known here in Seattle as the Aurora Bridge.

  AKA Route 99. AKA the “suicide bridge.”

  One look down and I’m dizzy, the vertigo possessing me like a demon, filling me with a giddiness that makes my heart thud and nearly steals my breath. It’s quite a view from up here: I can see the distant mountain ranges of the Olympics, the pine-covered hills and neighborhoods dotting Seattle, and the sparkling blue of Lake Union. Unlike the common “rain city” conception of Seattle, this July day is a stunning one, clear, sunny, low humidity and a temperature in the mid-70s.

  It’s a lovely day to commit suicide.

  I glance down again at the plunge before me. I have read that it will take only 2.2 seconds for me to cover the 180 feet or so I would drop if I were to attempt to take flight. Flight? Gravity is a demanding bitch…hungry.

  I close my eyes for just a moment, because the vertigo of standing here at the edge of one of the tallest bridges in the country is pulling me forward, making me want to make the leap before I’m even ready. But I have things to think about before I take that quick, exhilarating exit and before everything goes dark.

  I have read extensively about this bridge upon which my black Converse shoes are now firmly grounded. Since it was built, more than 230 people have committed suicide by jumping. Hey, a shoe salesman made the leap first back in 1932, before they even had a chance to get the thing completed. Is life that bad for shoe salesmen?

  I have learned that I will reach a speed of about 55 miles per hour before I abruptly come to a halt. The force at impact is 28,000 foot-pounds, equal to being blasted by twenty-five 30-30 Winchester rifles.

  I guess I won’t be leaving a pretty corpse.

  But then you never really did appreciate how pretty I was, did you? If you had, maybe I wouldn’t be standing here right now.

  “You said you loved me. You told me you’d come back.”

  Ah, but I bet you say that to all the boys. I wonder how many of them fell for it as I did? I wonder how many of them fall—big time—for you, just as I am about to do in a few minutes here?

  * * * *

  The first time I met you, you were playing in a little dive bar in Ballard. This was before you got famous, before the Rolling Stone cover, the Grammy, and the two platinum records. I had planned an evening out in Seattle’s equivalent of Boy’s Town: the area known as Capitol Hill. Park once, and you had a ton of bars you could walk to, and later, stagger from. And if you didn’t get lucky at the bars and got desperate enough, there were always a couple bathhouses you could sneak into. I had ducked furtively into Club Z or Basic Plumbing myself a time or two, not that I would admit that to any of the group of friends I had planned to go out carousing with that October night so close to Halloween.

  But Fate, that irascible, mischievous little bitch, had other things in mind for me that night. One by one, my friends called and canceled. One was dating a new guy and he wanted to stay in and cook for him. This from a man who thought Paula Deen was a gourmet chef. Another was still hung over from starting the weekend early…on Tuesday. And the third, Greg, had come down with an outbreak of herpes. I tried to be sympathetic. But that one bathhouse I mentioned earlier? Basic Plumbing? The front desk knew Greg by name there. They greeted him much the same as the patrons of Cheers once greeted Norm.

  So I found myself alone and without wheels. I relied on the kindness of friends for auto transportation and that night, after everything fell through, I just did not feel like taking a bus from Ballard, the neighborhood where my apartment was, all the way downtown, then transferring to get up on the “hill.”

  Ballard had been a Scandinavian fishing village before—like some undulating blob—the city of Seattle absorbed it. There were still fishing boats moored at its shores and here and there, the occasional trace of Nordic culture, but Ballard had become more of a trendy place to live…and to eat, drink, and be merry. Merry. I said “merry,” not “Mary.” One still needs to go to Capitol Hill to eat, drink, and be Mary.

  I digress. I do that. A lot. See? I’m doing it now.

  Anyway, my thought that October night was to head over to Olive’s, a little dive bar and restaurant on Ballard Avenue, where Kurt Cobain was once rumored to have played. No, there most likely would not be any potential love connections there (although that’s not saying it couldn’t happen; just because a bar is labeled “gay” doesn’t mean you’ll always get lucky…and the inverse can often be true; hey I can attest!), but there would be Rainier beer, a dark, crowded room that might contain some grungy, nerdy, cute straight boys who may or may not be amenable to expanding their sexual horizons, and—I hoped—some good music to just float away on.

  I threw on black jeans, a black T-shirt that read “Scum of the Earth,” my Cons, and a leather band for my wrist. I glanced at myself in the mirror, making sure the tribal armband tattoo stood out beneath the form-fitting arm of my T-shirt and decided I looked good enough to be going out solo. I ran my fingers through my dark hair, enjoying the way it stood on end, a calculated mess. I looked good.

  * * * *

  It’s early morning and the rush hour traffic on the bridge pays me no heed. Yet, I know that one of them, sooner or later, will dial 911 on their cell, talk to the police, tell them there’s another jumper on the Aurora Bridge. There will be official vehicles. Perhaps someone trained in suicide prevention telling me that no matter how bad it is, someone else has been through it before…and come out okay.

  I don’t want to hear it. And I want to be long gone before any official vehicles arrive. I do not want to think about what I will leave behind.
>
  I had considered the bright yellow and blue phone boxes mounted on the bridge on my way out here, to where I now stand. The boxes are here for people like me, in case we have second thoughts, in case we want to talk to someone…

  I had tried talking to someone.

  I had tried talking to you. Again and again.

  Which brings us here, with a sharp, downward view that almost makes me giggle with exhilaration…or hysteria.

  * * * *

  I closed Olive’s that night. It wasn’t so much the crowd, or the beer, or even the cute allegedly straight boy in the cargo shorts and Cold Play T-shirt who made eyes at me throughout the night.

  No. It was you.

  And your music. Back then, you were just the lead singer in a band called Voiles and I was mesmerized by both your look and your sound. A bass guitar and a drummer backed you up, and if I passed either of them on the street today, I would not recognize them. For me, you stood all alone on that tiny plywood stage with a black curtain behind you. When that incredible, melodic, craggy voice emerged, it was as if the physical confines of the room disappeared. I could see only you…and what a view that was. Your tousled auburn hair, streaked through with gold, practically obscured your face. Your rail-thin body, packed into skinny jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, was like some post punk boy’s fantasy. And when you jerked your head to get the hair out of your face, the motion revealed a chiseled face, dark chocolate eyes, and a look that seemed both faraway and incredibly sad.

  It made me want to take you in my arms.

  I suppose that’s the effect you were after. I hate to think that the mournful gaze and the counter-culture, retro rock star clothes were calculated, just another part of the act as much as the microphone on its stand, the drum kit, the lights, the amps, the electrical cords.

  I hate to think that.

  But it wasn’t just your look that caught me, entrapping me in a snare that I would find impossible to free myself from for the next three years. It was your song. Your sad, sad song. Your voice was that of a man who had smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for decades: scarred, veering on raspy. It was the voice of a man much older than your years, which appeared to number in the twenties. You were the love child of Leonard Cohen and Rufus Wainwright.

  Your lyrics, coal black, smoldered around age-old topics like lost love, loneliness, alienation, and an inability to find home. Cheery stuff.

  It had me sobbing into my beer most of the night.

  And when I wasn’t sobbing, I was imagining what you’d look like naked.

  There was a curious combination pulsing inside me that night: lust, despair, hunger…

  But I never had any real hopes that I would actually be meeting you that night. No idea that I would actually see what the wiry body under those clothes looked like. No clue that I would come to know the feel of those swollen lips on my own…

  * * * *

  For just a moment, I consider walking away. After all, this whole miserable mess with its potential for getting much messier, could be solved by my turning to my right or my left and simply heading back to terra firma. The sensible little man within me tries telling me you aren’t worth it, that my solution is no solution at all, that brighter days will appear once more.

  I laugh in the little man’s face. His pleas for compassion, common sense, and doing the right thing are coming far too late in the game. In a small way, I am actually happy, sort of relieved to be standing here, summoning up the courage to lean forward and continue leaning forward until gravity takes over and I am nothing more than something akin to a bug squashed on a windshield.

  I have made up my mind and the fact that there’s no turning back almost makes me happy, giddy. I’m free (almost). My worries will come to a close soon.

  Will you read about me in some newspaper? Will you get the e-mail I sent courtesy of your label, holding you responsible for making my life enough of a misery that I am ready to check out?

  Or will you just be oblivious?

  That’s not the way I want to think anymore. No, I have made a decision and will go through with it. Once done, there will be peace, a long blissful slumber—no cares, no worries, no rejection.

  And the clock is ticking. I do not want to have to deal with official types trying to talk me down. I don’t need it. I know their arguments already, their practiced speeches, and have expounded them to myself in the quiet, sleepless hours of the last several nights.

  So just do it, then. Just…jump.

  In a minute! I want to complete that memory of our first night, that blissful few hours when I thought there was a connection, a future, that our two minds had really met and something impossibly beautiful had taken root and was beginning to flower.

  I lean away from the rail, actually close my eyes for a moment. There’s some guy on a bicycle watching me and I hope he doesn’t feel some Good Samaritan vibe.

  I don’t need the distraction. That first night was magic.

  * * * *

  There are few things more depressing than a bar when the lights come up. As I sat there at Olive’s, I thought that the surroundings looked bleaker, dirtier, and cheaper than they had when the bar was lit by soft twinkling lights over the mirrored back of the bar and the flickering candles on the tables.

  The bartender, a dreadlocked white guy with twin tattoo sleeves on his exposed arms, leaned over the bar to call out to me. “Hey buddy…you know that line?”

  He was kind of cute. I smiled at him. “No. What do you mean?”

  “The one that goes something like: ‘you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.’ Last call was fifteen minutes ago.”

  I flushed red. I got unsteadily to my feet (how many beers had I managed to down, anyway?) and found my way to the exit. The floor was littered with peanut shells and beer bottle labels.

  I suddenly felt desperately alone.

  Outside, the air seemed to have dropped twenty degrees. Seattle could be like that: a balmy evening followed by an almost bitter cold early morning. I shivered and wished I had been practical enough to bring the Helly Hanson fleece I had decided was not cool enough (pun not intended) to wear earlier in the evening, when I left my apartment.

  It was a long walk home and the streets of Ballard were quiet.

  No one was more surprised than I was when I turned the corner onto Market Street and saw you standing there, lighting a cigarette. The flame briefly illuminated your face, and even though I didn’t want to believe it was you, I knew with one hundred percent certainty it was. But what I couldn’t believe was that you were alone.

  No fellow band members. No hangers-on. No groupies.

  No, it was just you, in your black jeans and sneakers and a University of Washington hooded sweatshirt pulled over your head. You looked fresh out of high school.

  I smiled. Did I have the nerve to talk to you?

  I most assuredly did not. I was hurrying by you, eyes on the sidewalk when you talked to me.

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  I looked up and stopped. You were regarding me with an impish smile, your gaze taking in my goose-pimpled arms. Twin streams of smoke emerged from your nostrils, as if you breathed smoke and fire.

  You looked dangerous…and beautiful.

  And I wanted to have some witty comeback so that I could amuse you, encourage you to talk more to me, to make the most of this unexpected opportunity. But all I could think of to say was, “Yeah…a little bit.”

  We stood for a moment or two, regarding one another. I suspect even you were a little unsure of how to proceed. When the silence went to just this side of uncomfortable, I picked up my feet and started moving forward. “I need to get home.” I flashed you a smile. “Where it’s warmer.”

  To my surprise, you fell into step beside me. Even though I had given up smoking the previous spring, I asked you if you had one to spare. You did and you lit it for me. We walked for a while quietly, the hush of Ballard at 3 a.m. all around us.

  “So,
you came to the show, right?”

  “Yeah. I loved it. You were great.” Gee, I wondered if I had suddenly lost the capacity not only for wit, but for words of more than one syllable as well.

  “I was kind of singing to you the whole time. I latched on to your eyes almost right from the start.”

  Now I really didn’t know what to say. Yeah, yeah, I was ogling the sexy lead singer throughout his performance, but I was never bold enough, or vain enough, to think the ogling was reciprocated. I suppose I might have noticed when you looked my way, but God, even I wasn’t vain enough to think you were looking at me. I could do nothing but smile dumbly at you, feeling heat rise to my face as I wondered if I was up to the Herculean challenge of making simple small talk with you.

  “Did you notice?” You prompted me.

  “Um…are you kidding? I guess I just assumed there was no way you’d be looking at me.”

  “Oh, I was.” You laughed softly, taking a drag off your cigarette and directing a stream of smoke in my general direction. I wanted to inhale, breathe you into me. “Why would you think I wasn’t?”

  And I really didn’t have a good answer for that. It would sound stupid to say that I thought I wasn’t worthy of the consideration of a singer in a band. After all, you were nobody famous (yet), and to admit that, in my wildest dreams a hottie rock singer might glance my way with admiration and maybe even lust was out of the question, just seemed evidence of someone for whom self-esteem was in embarrassingly short supply. “I don’t know. I suppose I wasn’t sure you were into guys. Olive’s isn’t exactly a gay venue.”

  “Whatever gave you the idea I was into guys?”

  I stopped and regarded you. Had I read this all wrong? The heat factor in my face went up a couple notches. I was probably glowing in the dark. I was about to apologize when you burst into laughter.

  “I’m just fuckin’ with you.” You took a last drag on your cigarette and flicked the butt into the gutter. “I’m very into guys…especially guys like you.” You stepped closer to me and I swore I could feel heat emanating from your wiry frame. You placed your hands on my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. Your dark-eyed gaze burned. I know that sounds hopelessly romantic, but it’s the only way I can think to put it. You brushed your lips over mine quickly, ending with a gentle nip on my lower lip. My knees weakened. You leaned closer, your breath hot in my ear, “I think what I really meant is I wanna be fuckin’ with you. Literally.”