The Lonely Hearts Club (2 page)

“I would rather have my father fire me than my brother, I think,” Chloe says to no one in particular. The waitress—who I recognize as the bassist in the band that plays the Lion’s Den on Sunday nights—comes to our table. Jesse and Chloe order beers (Chloe’s is a light) and I order a vodka tonic.

“Well, I’d rather not be fired at all,” I say as soon as the waitress leaves.

“It’ll give you more time to focus on your music, babe,” Jesse says as he puts his index finger gently under my chin, angling my face upward for a kiss. It makes me smile and Chloe blush.

I did mean to get a real job. But there was always something in the way. Something more important to do. Something left that I
had
to do, like apply to schools to get my MFA in music, or some reason that I had to wait, like when my band nearly took off and we almost landed a record deal.

Life is different for people like me. Artists. I could never work for the rest of my life in an office, toiling away day and night at a job that I wasn’t passionate about. I need passion in my life. Excitement. Adrenaline. Sure, everybody says they want passion and excitement in their lives, but I really mean it.

The bug hit me when I was five years old. My parents were having a dinner party and my father encouraged me to sing a song for his guests while he accompanied me on his prized possession—his baby grand piano. He began to play “Hey, Big Spender” from the musical
Sweet Charity
, and the feeling overcame me. All eyes were on me, and it felt like magic. I opened my mouth, improvised some dance moves I’d picked up in my ballet class, and belted it out. The rest
is history. I decided right at that very second that singing was what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I wanted to do with my life.

I’ve been working my ass off since then to make a go of it. Nothing compares to the feeling I get when I’m on stage. The stage is my true home—it’s where I come alive, where I feel the most myself, where I can do anything.

My parents encouraged me for a while. They even dragged me, Gypsy Rose Lee style, to the
American Star
auditions back when I was twelve. I made it through the entire season, leveling the competition with my killer rendition of “Hey, Big Spender.” By the finals, I thought I had it in the bag. I was going against a corn-fed blonde from Kansas who had never been out of the Midwest her whole life. She had buck teeth and a flat chest—no match for my retainer and burgeoning bosom. I belted out “Hey, Big Spender” and she did a shy rendition of “Over the Rainbow” and, in so doing, stole my crown right from under me.

My parents fought for three weeks—my mother accusing my father of pushing me into a song that was “too adult,” and my father accusing my mother of pushing me into a business that was full of rejection. One of my clearest childhood memories is overhearing him tell my mother that he was happy that I lost.

The irony of that little Pollyanna stealing my
American Star
crown is that the girl who beat me was Amber Fairchild. Yes,
that
Amber Fairchild. The pop sensation who flew to stardom at age fifteen, singing “I Want You to Keep Me Up All Night (All Right).” Otherwise known as the bane of my existence. I hate her brand of slutty bubble-gum pop, but what I hate more is that this girl made it and I did not. I often wonder what would have happened if I had won
American Star
instead of Amber.
I
should be the one with the record deal, production company, fan club, and slacker husband who mooches off me. Well, my current boyfriend
mooches off me, so the way I figure it, I’m a quarter of the way there. The record deal has so far eluded me, but I know that it’s just around the corner.

My first band—my only band, really—was on the cusp of breaking through about two years ago. We called ourselves The Lonely Hearts Club Band. Together since high school, we had it all—the talent, the drive, and even the requisite bad-boy drummer with a drug problem. We were just beginning to have a bit of a following in Manhattan—and not just among our NYU classmates, a real following. Our bass player, Kane, had a girlfriend who set up a Web site for us, and we posted photos of ourselves, my song lyrics, and our show dates. Frankie, our lead ax man, was the face. The gorgeous one who girls flocked to. He brought in the crowds. Chloe was our de facto photographer, and I wrote a blog about trying to make it in the music industry. The blog barely ever got any hits, but it made us all feel more legit.

We had a gig at the C Note in Alphabet City, and a friend of a friend of a friend’s pet dog had arranged for an A&R guy from Pinnacle to come hear us play. This was it. Our big chance. The moment we’d been waiting for—wishing for—since we first got together in high school.

The night before, we all went out to play a gig at a small club in Chelsea to get ready. We were all so young then. We still felt invincible, in that way you do before anything really bad has ever happened to you, before you’ve really had a chance to see the way life really is. I don’t remember much about that evening, but I know that I went home early to try to get some sleep before the big day. Billy, our drummer, must have stayed out at the club without the rest of the band because the next night, he didn’t show up at the gig. Two days later, we got a call from New York City Hospital telling us that Billy had overdosed and died. The hospital staff told us that someone dropped him off at the entrance, left him there, and disappeared.

The record company wouldn’t talk to us without him. Certainly didn’t want to come and see us play anymore. Wouldn’t even listen to our demo. I thought we were Blondie, but I guess even Blondie wouldn’t have been signed without Chris Stein. It would be like the Doors without Krieger, the Stones without Richards. Would it be the same band? I could debate stuff like this for hours, but the point is—they wanted nothing more to do with us. And then, without Billy, we all wanted nothing to do with each other. The next Monday, I went to work for my dad.

I am currently without band. And now I find myself, six months after graduating from college, with no real job and no real prospects. And even if I did have prospects, who on earth would hire a loser who’s been recently fired by her own father?

“Hey, China Doll,” Chloe’s flavor of the week says, pulling a chair up to our table and kissing her on the cheek. I don’t even remember his name. It’s never a good idea to remember their names. They’re always the same—anti-establishment, angry, and unbelievably hot. I can spot ’em a mile away.

This one’s wearing a T-shirt from his high school soccer team. I really hope that he’s out of college like we are and just wearing the shirt ironically, but there’s a good chance that he’s actually still
in
high school, so I don’t dare ask.

“Hey, yourself,” Chloe says back. She doesn’t seem to mind this ridiculous “China Doll” nickname, even though she is actually Korean.

“Hey, man,” Jesse says as he puts his hand out for the flavor of the week to grab. Even though Jesse calls everyone “man,” I can tell that he doesn’t know this guy’s name, either. After two and a half years together, I know one “man” from the other.

“She’s Korean,” I say to Flavor of the Week, in lieu of hello.

“Cool,” he says, and leans in to Chloe for a kiss.

“You called her China Doll,” I say, “but she’s actually not Chinese.”

Flavor of the Week breaks from the kiss for a second to regard me.

“Jo, please shut up,” Chloe says, and goes back to kissing. Jesse laughs under his breath and kisses me on the head as the lights dim.

“Give me a break, Chloe,” I whine. “I was fired today!”

No sympathy from the people at our table.

“By my dad!” I cry out. Heads turn. That’s true star power—commanding an audience even on your worst day.

The band begins to play, and Jesse and I jump to our feet. Chloe and Flavor of the Week sit and make out, oblivious to their surroundings. Jesse and I dance, singing along to the chorus. I feel the tensions of the day fade into the music.

Four songs in, the redheaded lead singer takes a break to talk to the crowd. “Hey, we’re The Rage and we just want to thank you all for being here and supporting the band,” she says and the crowd goes wild. The light hits her hair and it looks like fire. “A friend of ours—a very good friend of the band—has asked us for a favor tonight. And for this guy, well, for this guy we’d do anything.” More screams from the crowd. “His friend is having a pretty awful day, and the only thing that would make her life better is to sing to you lovely people tonight.” The crowd goes nuts. “Can you believe that? I hope you’re flattered,” she says, flirting with the crowd. “Jo, are you out there? Jo Waldman?”

I turn to Jesse. “No fucking way,” I say. The edges of his mouth curl slightly and he shrugs his shoulders. I put my hand around the back of his head and pull him to me and kiss him hard. “Thank you.”

“It’s nothing,” he says. “I just wanted to do something for you today. It’ll get you jump-started.”

“Jump-started?”

“Yeah, now that you won’t be working for your dad anymore, you can focus on your music,” he says. He doesn’t need to say anything else—I know where this is going. It’s the same discussion we’ve had over and over since my band broke up junior year. I consider defending myself, telling him that I have a gig or two lined up, and that I’ve even been working on a new song lately, but I instead take the high road and choose not to turn this into a heated argument. I try to remember that he’s doing something nice for me on a bad day.

“Thank you,” I say as I walk around the table and smooth out the front of my used Levi’s. I’m thankful that I’m dressed in my usual uniform of black leather motorcycle boots, ripped vintage jeans, and a fitted concert tee over a white long-sleeve T-shirt. Running my fingers through my hair to mess it up a bit, I walk to the stage. My black hair tops off the look—the bangs and layers around my face are Joan Jett, circa 1982, and the rest of it, all tangles and curls, is pure Stevie Nicks.

As I discuss song selection with the band, all I can think about is how lucky I am to have Jesse. We debate The Pretenders versus The Kinks, and I turn around to sneak a peek at him. He’s staring at me. I wink at him and wonder if he can see me through the darkness.

Jesse and I met at a Battle of the Bands competition out in the suburbs of New Jersey, just a stone’s throw from the George Washington Bridge. This was before Billy died, back when my band was still together, before I went to work for my dad.

It was at a dive bar called Treble that was rumored to have been owned at one time by Richie Sambora. Each July, they ran a Battle of the Bands contest, and the prize was $10,000.
All of the bands that played the downtown clubs went—any band that was anything at all was there.

Jesse’s band and my band were the two bands left in the finals. We won, of course, but who’s keeping track? What I remember most about it was how goddamned romantic the whole thing was. I noticed Jesse on the first day of competition, tapping his drumsticks on a table in the back of the bar to Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.” When he glanced up and saw me staring at him, he knocked over his beer bottle with his drumsticks, and it spilled all over the spiral notebook he was writing in. Billy caught this little exchange out of the corner of his eye and quickly ushered me away, lecturing me on messing around with the competition.

Through each of the rounds, I could see Jesse staring at me from behind his massive drum set, crystal blue eyes burning into me. Every time I was on stage, I found myself singing to him. Always to him.

“Are we the Montagues or the Capulets?” Billy asked me as we walked off the stage on the second night of competition.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I told him.

“He’s in a hack band that plays weddings and bar mitzvahs every weekend,” Billy said.

“Nothing wrong with making some money to support yourself,” I said, even though I secretly hated bands that sold out like that.

“You’re too good for him.”

I started wearing tighter and tighter jeans each round, in the hope that Jesse would notice me. Any time he tried to approach me, one of my band members would be there, seemingly out of nowhere, to tear us apart and remind me that we were there to compete. On the last night of the competition, I even had my hair blown out, a fact that Chloe will never let me live down.

Right after my band was announced as the winner and we all hugged and mugged for the audience, I marched right off the stage and into Jesse’s arms. It was like something out of a movie, with him waiting in the wings and everyone in the room watching us, just waiting for it to happen. I ran to him. We fell into each other’s arms and kissed like no one was watching.

After that night, we spent every night together, either attending each other’s gigs or meeting up late night after our respective gigs, and we haven’t been apart for one night since.

Through the crowd, I see Jesse staring offstage. I turn back to The Rage as we decide upon “I Want You to Want Me” by Cheap Trick as a compromise.

I spin around to the crowd as the band begins to cue up the song. The lights hit my face and I feel the energy building up inside of me. The music penetrates my bones and I can’t help but smile. This is where I belong—under the burning lights with tons of eyes focused on me—not in some doctor’s office wishing the hours of my life away. I can hear Chloe and Flavor of the Week screaming my name. I can’t see Jesse anymore, but I can feel his eyes on me. I can feel everyone’s eyes on me. The band plays the last eight bars before the first verse and I cock my right hip, ready to go.