The Last Living Slut (13 page)

Then I realized: those panties were expensive. So when the band finished their set, I climbed onstage to retrieve them. He was standing there, the beautiful singer. The cocaine was swimming toward the pit of my belly, and grazing and gnawing at my crotch. So I asked him if he wanted to have a threesome with Lori and me.

And that’s when I first went backstage. Backstage—that magical place where your dreams come true.
Backstage.
The word sounded like a delicious secret code, where decadent, exotic stories effortlessly domino into one another. Where there is only happiness and laughter, luscious lips and orgasms, loving friendships and chocolate cake. So I headed backstage.

The security guy was a cliché: big and hostile.

“I want to go backstage, please,” I announced, matter-of-fact, like I’d just arrived at a tea party.

He looked us up and down as if we were on drugs, which we were. “You don’t have wristbands, so you can’t go,” he snapped, looking away as if watching a ball game in the distance.

“What do you want me to do?” I said.

A guy walking past stopped in his tracks and smiled. “If you suck my cock, I’ll give you a pass,” he said, as if this were a business transaction.

I reveled in sleaze, and this seemed like the most typical of all rock clichés and I so wanted to do it. But I decided to take it one step further.

“No. We’ll
both
suck your cock at the same time,” I said, motioning to Lori, who looked at me with a naughty glint in her china-doll blue eyes. I was a bad influence on her, but she was like a curious kitten, eager to devour any new sexual experience.

The guy with the passes led us both through the doors. Just past them was a tiny room. He took us in there and unzipped his trousers. Getting down on my knees, I started the most perfect deep throat I could. Feeling bad, I decided to push Lori away, not wanting her to get involved. After thirty seconds, I stopped.

“There you go,” I said.

“Is that it?” he looked at me, his eyes pleading like Oliver Twist for more.

“I’m shy,” I said, grabbing Lori and running out in search of the rockers.

There were a lot of corridors and little rooms back there, all lit up with rows and rows of fluorescent lights, as if there should be no dark corners in which to do dark deeds. Instead, everything should be done in the open fields of this landscape, on these phlegm-soiled carpets under the eyes of surgical lights. We opened door after door until we found a tiny room where InMe was hanging out with photographers and friends. They were so vanilla and milky that I wanted to clap my hands in approval like an auntie after a school play. And then I saw the Bullet For My Valentine boys, all Welsh attitude and emo hair.

I didn’t even know his name, the singer. But he was very pretty. I walked straight up and kissed him as if it were the most normal thing in the world. I felt like a teenage fan.

“I’m Matt,” he said with those adorable lips, which made me kiss him again. While we were talking about Wales, a wild-eyed cavewoman marched up to me screaming obscenities. She grabbed my hair, pulling me toward the door.

“I don’t want any groupie sluts near my band. FUCK. OFF.”

Shocked by the pain of having my hair pulled, I held back tears. “I have hair extensions,” I mumbled. “They’re new.” I couldn’t understand her demonic rage.

“I’m the band’s manager. And I’m Matt’s girlfriend,” she hissed in my ear. “Get the fuck out of here.”

I managed to squirm away and cowered in the corner as if in detention. A few minutes later, Cavewoman, with her Lego haircut and butch clothing, bounced down the corridor as I drifted back to the boys. This time I kissed another boy, Padge. We were talking about threesomes when I felt my hair being yanked again—this time with such force that I let out a guttural scream. She was back.

“I thought I told you to leave my band alone. Fuck off!” Then she grabbed Lori by the hair with the other hand, holding us like two plots of grass. As everyone tried to scrape her off us, I leaned forward to bite her ear. Unfortunately, they managed to pull us apart before I could reach her, and Lori and I were ushered into another room. We could still hear her screaming. “I want those bitches out of here.”

So I decided to go out there and head-butt her.

“Please,” one of the roadies begged me, “she’s one of the most powerful women in London. Don’t mess with her.”

I pushed past the roadie to look for the bitch. It took half a dozen roadies to staple me to the ground: a few of them fatty, a few muscular. Men are so strong, and I’ve never had the strength to overcome that power when they hit me.

“Just wait here,” they said as they left Lori and me.

Then I heard a voice with an American accent ask, “So did they kick her out?” We turned around to see two biker-type guys I recognized from that awful band Poison the Well kicking back on lounge chairs, swigging beer and smirking at us. Their arms were thick and heavily tattooed, and they wore leather trousers. I got hard just looking at them.

“I’m Derek. I like your tits,” the shorter one introduced himself, looking at my chest, which was packed in and displayed from behind four horizontal spaghetti straps.

“Thanks,” I said. “I like your American-ness.”

“These tits are real. You should feel them. They feel so fucking good,” Lori purred from behind me.

Derek opened the door and shouted into the hall to the lead guitarist. “Hey, Ryan, you gotta come and see these tits!” Ryan appeared and immediately announced that he was into auto-erotic asphyxiation.

I took off my top to let my tits swing free and Derek took us out to the bar to do tequila shots and down triple vodkas. After all I’d consumed that night, by my fifth shot, I felt as if my lips had disappeared.

“We’re staying at the Columbia Hotel—wanna come?” Derek said, kissing us both. He took the lead, and gave us sexual compliments, which was such a fucking change from the emotionally constipated Englishmen we were used to dealing with. He took each of us on an arm and began to march us toward the exit doors. Before leaving the building, I frantically asked around for a pen. Eventually, some girl found a Magic Marker. On my right arm, in big letters, I wrote:

GROUPIE.

Chapter 26

T
he Columbia Hotel’s squiggly staircase reminded me of an old-fashioned carousel, fragile and thin like English biscuits.

“Give us a minute and then come up. Ryan and I are in Room 316.” Derek handed me a room key and got in the lift.

“If we do girl-on-girl, I need to shower first,” Lori said, panicking a little.

We got in the lift five minutes later. I plonked myself down on the floor, took off my black stilettos, and rolled on a pair of deep lace-top stockings. No matter how drunk I was, I always put on sexy lingerie when I knew I was going to have a wild ride.

We stumbled into the room and saw Ryan playing guitar while Eric scribbled lyrics. I threw my stuff down on the bed and straddled Ryan, the neck of his guitar pushing into the fleshy overspill of my exposed-stocking thigh.

“Are you gonna fuck me?” I whispered in his ear. He looked up and pushed the hair out of my face. Putting his instrument down, he began to gently stroke my ass.

I moved away and went for Lori, who had stripped down to her French-cut purple lace panties and matching bra and spread herself like dairy butter on the bed. She was so young, tender like lamb.

“You have a Miami ass,” Derek said, pointing to Lori, “and you”—pointing to me—“have porn star tits.”

“Thank you!” I grinned and started peeling off my clothes while sucking on Lori’s mouth. I licked her navel and bit her little tummy. Kissing her marble-white inner thighs, I made my way toward her flower. Derek immediately took position behind me, rubbing his crotch against my ass. The stiffness of the bulging denim pressed against me.

I kept eating Lori, even though we hadn’t showered.

“I wanna see you girls sixty-nine,” Ryan said from the corner of the room as he continued playing guitar.

Lori tasted peachy as always. I hoped I tasted of strawberries and cream and Chanel No. 5, not of fish fingers or feta cheese.

“I can only watch because I have a girlfriend,” Ryan said quietly. I had a feeling he’d be like that. He had a certain Amish quality about him.

“But I need to look into your eyes while you’re being fucked,” he continued, like a scientist. He positioned himself in front of my face so he could study it as I got fucked from behind.

Ryan sighed in quiet happiness as he explained his strangling fetish. I had a feeling his hang-ups stemmed from a Bible-belt mentality, which gave his eyes a quiet, psychopathic look. “I gotta suffocate myself so I can cum,” he said. “I use one hand to jerk off and with the other I choke my throat.”

“Right on, man!” I laughed as he scurried off to the toilet. This seemed to be a significant moment for him, which we had to respect. I wasn’t sure if he was joking or not, but when he returned a few minutes later, his face was purple and his eyes bulged. He couldn’t breathe well, so I wondered if he’d finally been able to shoot his load.

It was about eight in the morning by the time Derek, Lori, and I stopped fucking. I was a bit sore as I put on my clothes. The band had to leave and check out of the hotel. The staircase spun before me like candy floss as I walked down. I couldn’t sleep for days because of the fairy-tale adrenaline rush I was on.

Chapter 27

Roadies. I Lost My Head. In Their Laps.

L
ori and I stuck to each other like glue. Rock bands became our talk, food, and song. I think we were both on a quest to find love and reassurance. I worked like a donkey at my belly-dancing job to make money to travel to gigs. And at the shows, I danced and kissed like I was Cinderella at the ball. Then Velvet Revolver came to London in January. And I became the village idiot.

I loved their songs. I was there for the music, not to get laid. Slash had never been my type, and Scott Weiland looked to me like an anorexic gay junkie who gyrated his hips better than I ever could. Only Duff was remotely interesting to me. He was much more “fuck-me” looking now than in his Guns N’ Roses days, when he was essentially a subservient drunk. It was still winter, and I didn’t want to put any clothes on, so I decided to see every Velvet Revolver show in London that January.

The line outside the Hammersmith Apollo stretched down the street. Scores of little boys in Guns N’ Roses T-shirts waited with their dads, who were in leather jackets and middle-aged euphoria. Fat couples in denim with frizzy mops of hair stood side by side, dutiful and obedient. I was in a crushed velvet corset and a skirt of flimsy tussore. The freezing wind slapped my bare skin. I looked around for groupie-type girls and didn’t see any.

Lori and I stood at the front of the line for what seemed like hours before the doors opened. Unknown faces in flannel hoodies handed out flyers for Adler’s Appetite, former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler’s new band.

The support bands were crap, and I was bored but determined to maintain my stilettoed position behind the barrier, even though I was getting crushed by the heaving crowd and drenched by kids throwing beer. Velvet Revolver blew me away. I lost my voice screaming along with every song.

Someone in the crowd behind me untied my corset and it fell off. That was when the roadies noticed me. “Here’s a pass. Come to the aftershow party.”‘ A big bulldog of a guy, who said his name was Anthony, pressed stickers into Lori’s hand and mine. They said, “Guest Pass.”

In the gutted pit of the mauve-rinsed toilets, we looked into the cracked mirrors. The clunky white sinks hosted squelched toilet paper and broken plastic cups. A group of girls, in blurred lipstick and razored fishnet tights worn under knee-high black leather boots, compared levels of drunkenness and gossiped about the band.

“Slash has definitely got his wife with him,” said one with purple hair extensions.

“Yeah, but she’s really fat—very trailer trash,” said a stick-skinny girl in a baby-doll nightie as she smeared on gloops of lipstick. “Slash is totally pussy-whipped.”

“All their wives are here,” a voice from the toilet shouted. “Matt Sorum’s girlfriend is really young. Did you see her? She’s that little blonde with the short fringe who was standing sidestage. She’s really pretty.”

“How are we gonna get near them then? Fuck!” screamed another, sitting on the wet floor with a plastic beer cup looking genuinely bewildered.

I remember noticing, as I walked out the door, how hard their faces all looked—broken, with a desperate, defeated look in their eyes. They wore far too much makeup, trying to prop up their slouched features. I felt happy I wasn’t like them.

Upstairs at the party, I was quickly surrounded by roadies. The bulldog, Anthony, turned out to be the tour manager or something. Carl, another roadie, looked like Robert Redford. Various camera and guitar-tech guys, tired and haggard, sniffed around me like I was birthday cake. I got a bit scared.