Virgo.

Jezebel was a Virgo and a heart-breaker of the first and finest order. A g-string clad tattooed enigma.She was fucking spectacular as only a true California hybrid babe can be.

Once witnessed? Never forgotten.

Under the veil thrown by the tacky pink lights that drained the scant health out of all and sundry mixed with Hollywood Camel light scented fug I thought that it was a September sent sign.That it meant something mighty and all encompassing,you know,that I could share a star-sign with a goddess.(you tool…) I would sit ,snake eyes cut narrow,seeing all,ensconced in one of the booths and watch her royal late arrival that would split the room full of scumbags and perverts slack jawed in her presence like the red sea ,all the while scrawling endlessly in the note books that I had liberated from Von’s in my voluminous patched army pants.

I thought she was divine.She,they were all high.I hung with the muses and money makers.High above the dirt and married to the danger.

Mean with pills she would take hours in front of the temper cracked tinselled mirror in the crowded change-room to first find and then retrieve herself.Pulling herself back from the brink,coaxing herself forth with a slow,surprisingly gentle steady hand and an arsenal of stolen make up.Talismans and photos of the famous and felonious that she had caroused and consorted with adorned the chipped narrow bench before her,staked her claim and marked her turf.I would eavesdrop as she told tales of daily drugstore shoplifting for cans of airbrush tan,spray on glitter and other miscellany to gild the lilly,to pander to her perfection .Fagin,swooning with a hard-on, would have put her on a pedestal and laid obscene bouquets of hybrid roses at her tattooed toes.

Her  perpetual slow motion was hypnotic as the miles of mirror onyx hair that  ran down her tattooed back like oil to pool at the top of her perfect ass.I made notes on her limitless style and swore that I would appropriate it once these tumors were lanced from my head,once I was thin,once I knew who I was again.Me,the elephant girl surrounded by endless,seemingly effortless stoned beauty .I felt like I was paying penance for a sin that I could not remember committing.The girls smoked fragrant medicinal joints in the alleyway,the glowing cherries blinking bright on the drawback and mean low laughter the only sign of habitation in the dark.

I tried to look enigmatic and flirted myopically with the exit sigh above the door.I prayed for inclusion,for crumbs dropped from the table of  give-a-shit-hip.

She favored tiny kilts,hot with pins and studs and self customized tee shirts stretched to the limit over flawless implants.Endlessly re-tanning already dark limbs her nasty patient leather thigh high boots anchored the whole breathtaking package to podiums and sticky threadbare carpets, swaying in a pharmaceutical wind that only she could feel,smiling at something just over your head,( just beyond you),smelling of molten vanilla and vague promise.She was nice to me when she could remember who I was and why I was in her pill dotted periphery.

I didn’t know who I was or why the hell I was there but I couldn’t have imagined being anywhere else.

Her perfect porcelain teeth would flash like a camera of cool momentarily blinding me and off she would strut to the bar, better late than never to hold high court with Kat von D and the rest of the gang.I tied and knotted my ten tones of dreadlocks back away from my Polish bones into a high Mohawk secured with five thousand bobby pins and long lethal black lacquer and gaudy gold chopsticks.I pulled my shoulders back for even greater height despite  the extra weight clinging to my bitter bones .I dared people to look at the rotting deformities growing from my skull.I powdered my face to matte white like a Thai temple dancer and carved my cheeks and eyes hot pink.Sin nodded her subtle approval at my tentative transformations fresh from the frozen Calgary tundras into full fledged Hollywood trash.I began to starve.I took voluminous pages of notes with a pen and photographs with my mind.I started gleaming smarts and courage from the tender tough girls surrounding me .I hardly said a word and soaked up the scum like a human sponge,distilled it at my leisure taking only what could be of use and poured the rest down the rust spotted drain.We all took aliases and rewrote our stories that culminated in the cunt tinging defeat of our unsatisfactory small town selves.

By the aquarium green light in the pit and the good graces of the night I survived.Thriving would come much much later and even then be taken away at a moments notice. But by then I had hidden reserves.By then I was cunning.By then I had mastered the game.

She came from money like so many of them did,more that I would have believed really,she didn’t need to hustle and hated herself on deep,unreachable levels as we all did.But they all made it look so damn good in tiny scraps of lycra and nosebleed heels .I was a novice.They were the gold standard .Xanax made her confide in me and I treasured being her willingly captive audience.She told me of her beloved horses and plastic surgery.Showed me photographs of hanging in Las Vegas with Marshall Mathers.(“This is when I was doing porn,this one is me and Mr Cartoon doing my back,this is my stallion,this is…”) Her tattooed hands gave me visual aspirations and larcenous dreams.I wanted to be that cool,I would have traded a digit for the privilege and the pleasure to breathe the same rarefied air forever.One slow night as the local Loco’s played a bored game of endless pool on the crooked table and Lyric strode the main stage,leggy and mock stern in horn rimmed glasses to “Hot for teacher” a voice called  from the front desk by the velvet hooded door.

“Michelle!” It barked. We both looked up at the same time,shocked and laughed ,our mutual cover blown.

I liked her.

Virgo girl.

A few lifetimes later I am in Memphis with the love of my life.The snow is heavy and the tour hard.He sleeps backstage,angry with me,angry with the world .Paranoia,frustration and a ragged sense of entitlement fighting it out for top place within him.I long to soothe him but only end up annoying with my affection. We will shatter before long but that is another story.I sit by the merch stand and wait for customers or death.Death comes first by way of Miss Bliss,the sad courier.A message from our past she tells me.My beloved now awake , loving me again,coming back to life and mixing with his fans on the floor, comes over and kisses me distractedly as I open the message.Distressed and blank I leave my post without a word,the email open on my i-phone and walk out into the snow without my jacket or a sane thought in my raven haired head.

The flakes swarm an ice nimbus around the sickly yellow street light in the parking lot and I hear the door creak open behind me as I shiver with shock and cold.His strong arms wrap around me from behind and it is moments like this that I know why I love him through it all. “I’m so sorry Bunny” he breathes into the side of my neck warming the skin.I cry and cry in the Tennessee night and sink back gratefully into his fleeting and fickle embrace.

I had kept in touch,kept tabs and watched the world that I had existed in in 2004,that was to shape so much of what I was yet to become, drift away.Sin Fisted still ruled and ran every club that she landed in feet first,contorting her limber way around poles and hearts all over the world.Nadja hung up her hot pink heels and left the Stargarden ,promptly holed up with a has been rock-star,his royalty checks and a massive meth habit that raped her once formidable looks and took her teeth in the bargain ,Three went on to drum and tattoo another day clad in his Clash jacket ,his panting pug dog at his side.Sweet petite Kat Von D got famous,Lemmy was still Lemmy and would outlast us all.Trixie who had danced nightly to “Gimme Shelter” and therefore staked a claim in my hard heart, left the game and became the artist she had dreamt of being,Anna Marie who had so kindly taken me to AA meetings and coffee shops locked,orange and shag carpet chocolate brown in the 1970’s ,kept writing and healing herself by the letter,Jezebel retired from the stage ,went to work for Kat and had a baby girl who I have no doubt will grow up as beautiful as the mama that she will never know.

One pill too many after a life time of much the same I thought. Miss Bliss telling me that she was gone.She never woke up.A montage of pictures of her so vital and alive flicking though my shocked mind kept me awake that night.Sin sent me a picture of the funeral.A massive bouquet by her solemn casket studded with tiny Hello Kitty’s.All of us hard assed hustler broads with knives down our boots and hand guns under our pillows to protect our hot-pink-forever-pre-teen hearts.More front than Macy’s.Fast mouths to match fast escapes.Three card monte and card tricks .All tight scars and scrubbed clean of the layers of warpaint from the night before,sleeping fitfully in anonymous Hollywood apartments, air conditioners doing overtime,inked arms clinging tightly to plush tear tarnished Hello Kitty toys through the desert hot dreary days and hunted in our dreams by demons.

Recharging to do it all over again at sundown.

Bueno tough exteriors to house bubble gum blowing corazons.

Go figure.

The most beautiful girls who have it all and bring it to break it on the Sunset Strip.Who polarize a room upon entry.The granite girls,the hell raising heroines that I emulated slavishly.Who inspired me to claim myself and throw it down on life like a winning hand.Who are never far from my thoughts nor from my gratitude.The trail blazers. Some survivors, thank god but undoubtedly some of the most damaged amalgamations of female flesh I have even known.The deliverers of dreams.The true gold dust women.They explode so briefly in the night sky inspiring sighs,songs,theft,boners and air brushed art on black velvet.The forever fearless.The broken butterflies.

Who live on in my music and my dreams.Ladies,I salute you.

Gone.

Memphis is three years past.Long bitter nights behind closed doors for an hours perfection on stage, the man I was going to marry now with another who shares little but his interest in total self annihilation.Two years since my exile and near death in the wake of.Eight years since Sin Fisted took me in and housed me on Romaine out of the kindness of her heart.Eight years since I sat at Crazy Girls in Hollywood night after night being the silent mascot and dogs body to the  girls who change the game.The rough diamonds set priceless in the wicked world.

And now? A lifetime later?

My cave,my bunker in the city at the end of time and meaning is jewel toned and tactile.Velvet,linen,fur.Alone and softy lit I barricade myself in with my memories and occasionally the weight of my failures,a punk rock Miss Havasham. And if I write no one ever really dies,so I do,I keep them alive on the page,brilliant and unforgotten.Unforgettable.Ah,Jezebel…I remember her heavy ink when it was still daring and shocking,her kindness rare and ever  treasured and I wonder where her body is interred.I need to take her pink roses on my return to the west ( is the best,get here and we’ll do the rest….).I need to tell the dust of her how much she affected and inspired a nobody from the wrong side of nowhere.

I told her you know,to her face.Mine red as a tomato as I did,grateful that she couldn’t tell in the dark,I mumbled and stuttered only to fade into static.Not my finest effort but I think she caught my drift..I could see that she didn’t believe me but she still smiled.Getting up slowly,finding perilous purchase on skyscraper heels she gripped my forearm and straightening up she playfully ruffled the top of my cockscomb of dreadlocks .I froze unaccustomed  to such kindness.Steve O lurched by and said hi. We both nodded in reply.She gave a small snapping yawn like a cat.Sin,filling the stage with her tiny lithe frame terrorized her faithful followers to Ministry as Miss Von D whooped like a cowboy with her cronies by the brass rail and made it rain.

“Mama,you are just too sweet” she said in that incongruous California girl drawl full of long lost orange groves,privilege,boredom and cigarettes smoked to the 3am filter and made her languid way to the main stage,her perfect body a toffee figure eight creating awe and havoc in its flawless wake.Truman sent me over a virgin bloody mary with a wave.I weakly raised my hand in return as the fat thighed waitress set it before me,the sad celery drooping over the edge of the glass like a hurricane hassled  palm tree.Something undefinable had just befallen me.As  I fiercely blinked back the tears shimmering across my bright Caribbean green contact lenses the world raised its weary glass to the night and rolled on and away.

I toasted it back,took a bite out of my beverage and sneezed as the Tabasco sauce found my sinus’s.

She paused by the dj booth as if collecting herself.I held my breath.She turned her feline head back to me and smiling dropped a fat lashed wink.

I grinned in reply.

Cool girls will change the game and shine a light every time.