Let's Spend the Night Together: Backstage Secrets of Rock Muses and Supergroupies (47 page)

Good question, doll.

Miss Lexa is a founding member of the Plastics, a quartet of flashy groupie publicist-promoters, and their impudent photograph adorned the cover of the zine Rock City News. I recalled my recent snappy chat with the flame-haired, ivory-skinned Lexa and knew I had to investigate her escapades and those of her playmates-in-crime.

It does me proud that Lexa and the Plastics do such a smashing job of decorating rock and roll events here in Hollywood. Especially since she insists that my all-girl group, the GTO's, helped inspire their inventive brand of merrymaking. Not only are these voluptuous show-offs proud to be called groupies, they are also successful business babes who use their savvy to get bands seen and heard. Their Web site, www.myspace.com/ backstage_plastics, offers various types of assistance to up-andcoming rock stars:

• photoshoots, product endorsement, modeling

• host, MC your event, show, or party

• go-go dancing and burlesque for shows

Lexa has invited me to her 1920s heart-of-Hollywood apartment, and as she brews tea in her Sex Pistols T-shirt, miniskirt, and combat boots, I wander around enjoying the lineup of vintage lunchboxes, rock 'n' roll action figures, and Gothic dolls that adorn the walls. Her furniture is covered in tapestries and fur, and the coffee table has been converted to an altar, littered with candles, incense burners, daggers, crystals, oils, flowers, and framed photos of Lexa with Marilyn Manson. A homemade collage featuring Kurt Cobain and Jesus Christ hangs in the kitchen next to the fridge, which is plastered with concert and club flyers. After Lexa shows me the trashy treasures in her frock-filled closet, I'm ready for an engrossing peek into her imagination.

Lexa Nicoletti felt strangely out of place as far back as she can remember. Her artistic parents were considered peculiar in their conservative hometown of Andover, Massachusetts. "It was upper middle class-very white, very rich-and I was the total black sheep," Lexa says as she pours an herbal tea concoction. "There were blonde Christian cheerleaders, then there was methe girl raised in a pagan household. I never knew what church was. My mother was a painter and my father was a chiropractor who ran his own practice. They were never around. I had three older sisters and the youngest is always neglected, which is how I got away with so much. My father was a dark character. He was cold and uninvolved but claimed to be a high wizard. Both he and my mother claimed they could heal people with energy, but I suffered from bad bladder infections for years and was never treated, even though I complained. I also suffered insomnia, paralyzing night terrors, episodes of disassociation, and severe depression. I had no family structure and didn't have a family at school either. But I knew there was something else out there. MTV had just started, and I was addicted. I was reading music magazines and thought, `This is the world I wanna be in.'"

Once again, the saving grace of rock and roll gave the odd girl out a reason to thrive. Lexa's first mad crush was Poison's C. C. DeVille. "Pirate Radio used to broadcast from L.A. on Saturday nights and you could call the special guest rock stars. Every week I would dial until I got through. One night I got Poison's Bret Michaels on the phone and my question was `How do I meet you in person?' He didn't know I was fourteen and told me, `When we get to your town, come to sound check about three or four o'clock. Talk to the road crew, tell them you want a backstage pass, and they'll forward you to the head of security."' Lexa got the skinny straight from the rockers' mouth! "Yeah," she laughs. "That was my first time being backstage. It was cool, there was free beer, and I got my autographs. After that, my life depended on the next show. When I knew a band was coming, I'd go on a diet, buy new clothes, get my nails done. .. it was like going to the prom every time."

As she traversed venues along the Eastern seaboard, young Lexa sensed right away that she shared something special with the performers. "I had a real psychic connection with the guys in the band. That's why I always go directly to the front row. As soon as the band hits the stage, it's magnetism. The singer will almost always start singing to me, stare at me, and communicate with me."

Even though I know the answer, I ask Lexa how that kind of heightened communion feels. "It feels like sex-that is my sex, my religious experience-like being on drugs. But I never use drugs at shows. I don't want to alter the experience."

Why were musicians able to move her in such a profound way? "Looking back, some of it was because my father was absent. I always knew something was wrong with me, emotionally and physically, but our issues were swept under the rug. At sixteen, I told my mother I believed my father had sexually abused me. She insisted it couldn't be true and instead of sending me to a psychiatrist, she sent me to her psychic-who told me I was right. But I never spoke of it again to my mother. I remember reading an interview with Axl Rose about how his father sexually abused him. As a teenager I thought if I could find a rock star who'd been through something like I had, they'd understand me and protect me. The attention I got from musicians filled a void and validated me. But it's the music, mostly, that drives me. I believe music comes from God, or whatever is up there: the higher power source. Musicians channel that source, and when they look at you with those eyes, it's like being with God. You're communicating with a medium that has God inside them at that moment."

After leaving home at eighteen, Lexa got to California via the Misfits and hasn't looked back. She was so jazzed at their gig in Boston that she jumped onstage, got handed a microphone, and sang a song with the band.

"After the show I hit it off with the drummer. I told him I was backpacking around the country and didn't live anywhere. And he said, `Here's our tour schedule. If we're ever in the same place, come hang out with us.' About a week later, I hitchhiked to California. I always had groupie assistants accompany me, but this time I brought a traveling groupie, and we met up with the Misfits in San Diego. After the show, the drummer and me went on our first date, skinny-dipping under the moon, then came back and had a threesome with my girlfriend on a private beach."

Isn't that every drummer's dream? "Yeah, I was experimenting with my bisexuality, and we became a threesome for awhile. We had so much fun the Misfits said, `You guys are too cute to be living on the streets. Come on tour. You've got permanent passes, you're family now.' He went on to a side project, Graves, and they have a song about me called `Ophelia,' which is one of my nicknames. I saw him on and off for four years."

Lexa moved with her girlfriend to San Francisco after the Misfits tour, but soon felt adrift. "The tour ended, I didn't have a car or money, I was completely estranged from my parents, and my relationship wasn't working out. Then one day I took a lot of acid and had a spiritual experience listening to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar. An entity came to me and said, `Don't kill yourself. You're meant to do something else. Go find Manson and go on tour.' I had met him a few times in high school, when he was starting out, playing clubs. Back then, he was very accessible and I had that connection with him instantly. The first time he hit the stage, he came right over to me and gave me his water bottle, teasing me. He pulled down the bass player's underwear and started jerking him off right in front of me-so there was some sort of instant connection between us. I was just seventeen at the time. I thought, `This man is interesting.'"

Lexa's remembrances of her early interaction with Marilyn Manson are sharp and clear. Each glance, word, and touch held complex, esoteric meaning. "We were hooked up with passes for Manson's Fourth of July Grotesque Burlesque show in Vegas. I had been doing pinup modeling for a couple of months and was excited about my new glamorous lingerie image. I had this see-through beaded gown and wanted to make sure I looked fabulous, so I didn't eat all day. It was over 100 degrees, and I had gotten a body wrap at the spa and was totally dehydrated. I was in the front row, and Manson threw me his fancy expensive stage hat, and I felt so cool. Backstage, I was pounding back free drinks and got plastered really fast. Manson invited us to a party at the hotel where they had half a floor rented, and I sat on the bed with him, wearing a bra and panties and the hat he had given me. We were staring at each other, and he said, `Shut up, Lexa. Stop laughing.' I was like, `I didn't say anything!' And he said, `But you're thinking it. "

When Lexa left home for good, the bad memories came more often. "Finally, during one of my suicide kicks, I downed a bunch of acid, put on the newly released Antichrist Superstar album, and the whole memory of childhood abuse came back. I had a religious experience under the influence of music and hallucinogenics. It was as if I'd been unhooked from the matrix and was in a make-believe land where all the lies of humanity were exposed. I could hear this voice faintly coming from the music, guiding me through the experience, protecting me, showing me the truth about why I was so fucked up, letting me know it wasn't my fault. Within two weeks I Joined Manson on tour with nothing to my name but a backpack of clothes, a tarot card deck, and a journal."

Lexa needed to explain to Manson how his music spoke to her and started writing letters to him. "I wanted to know if he had intentionally put subliminal messages in the music to induce this meditational state. He was impressed. I'd been doing a great deal of speed, coke, heroin, and acid. I quit everything cold turkey when I began following the tour. The withdrawal combined with the intensity of the show left me in a paranoid and highly aware state. He was oddly interested and took me seriously."

Because of her unusual connection to Manson, Lexa eventually moved to Hollywood, started her own band, Ophelia Rising, and got into the music publicity biz through Manson's former guitar player. She also started doing extra work. "I was cast as a groupie in Almost Famous and Rock Star, and one of my gigs was Manson's `Coma White' video. I hadn't seen him in over a year and was nervous, but he spotted me quickly and beelined for me. We were like a mirror image of each other. We'd look into each other's eyes and giggle at the same time, then awkward silence. There was weird energy between us. I was on the set for two days and had to see him again. I went unannounced backstage to the L.A. show, and when Manson saw me, it was like `whoa.' I had just had a terrible fight with my most recent boyfriend, and the next thing I knew I was driving to Texas for the Manson tour."