Rock Star

I.

Once the first wave of tortillas was flung into the sun-baked crowd, the ensuing chaos could be easily predicted. Really, it was an innocent gesture, a gift to strangers, with the intention of having them stay for more - cake icing, chocolate syrup, whipped cream, G-strings, animal masks.

But something got lost in the translation.

First, there was the brown-skinned girl in the middle. She became particularly upset. Screaming at the top of her lungs, so she could be heard over the blare of electric instruments, she told of the starving millions in this world, most of whom apparently could be saved by a stolen milk crate filled with corn-based nutrition.

I wondered perhaps if I were to provide her with more, she could leave that minute with a handful and start tending to the aggrieved.

She responded with a one-finger gesticulation that was quite rude.

Then came the bottles, denoting every color in the rainbow - Aquafina, Arrowhead, Crystal Geyser, Gatorade, Powerade, Vitamin Water. Many of the bottles found their intended target - my head. Suddenly I realized I was fighting a war. And we hadn't even struck the first note.

II.

On the platform of the Red Line stood a young woman of stunning beauty. She had long black hair, with just a hint of curls, which hung down past her shoulders. She wore a white shirt with blue trimmings and a solid red skirt that fell half way down her long thighs, sturdy and enticing. Her shoes were brand new, fashionable, alluring, conversation pieces, with colors that burst like fireworks in the dull darkened underground depot.

She was a player. Her shirt said "Hustler."

I could do nothing but stare at her, slyly, without attracting attention, like I was just waiting for the train.

She eyed me too. I could see her reading the lettering on my shirt, which read, "No Job - No Car - No Money - But I'm In A Band!"

The beginnings of a smile pursed her lips, but nothing more. She went back to reading her book. Street Life it was called. We had so much in common. I had my book too. War and Peace. Practically the same.

I thought maybe I could talk to her.

When the train arrived I followed her into the same car and took a seat one row away, as she placed herself perpendicular from me in a seat reserved for the elderly or disabled.

I sat, collecting my nerves. What would I ask her? Would it be about the book? The shirt? The shoes? The monotone alert bell, denoting the closing of the train doors, rang. I sat, pondering.

A boy with a clean white tee, immaculate hair and a plastic bag with a box inside came and sat directly opposite her. I hadn't seen him on the platform, he came from nowhere. Their eyes met almost immediately and as I sat collecting and pondering, he leaned over to ask her a question.

"Where did you get your shoes?"

III.

I get love letters!
"GO DIE!"
"The vocals fucking suck!"

It's so nice to be noticed!
"Abortion poster child!"
"Your absolutely fucking shit!"

Attention that would make others cry!
"Couldn't sing to save his life!"
"Take the singer out!"

Only emboldens me!
"The singer sucks cocks"
"Would go farther if they didn't have that dumbass singer!"

And makes me stronger!
"Worst crap I've ever seen!"
"Lead singer sucks balls!"

Sometimes shamelessness is a virtue. I've admired it in others.

IV.

I had a dream once where Paul Stanley came out in his makeup and started dancing for me. I'm not ashamed to say it aroused me. He was smaller than I imagined, really, just wafer thin, even with the platform boots.

He swayed to a KISS song, one that I couldn't recognize, but it rocked balls and I stared transfixed as he hid himself behind two huge black, feathery burlesque fans. There were many others there to watch him, yet I felt his right eye, the one with the star over it, was penetrating me only, boring a hole in my confused and overloaded psyche.

Then he whisked the fans away and stood there, slowly, erotically, lifting the black vinyl gloves off his hands, one finger at a time, with the music cascading and the crowd roaring its approval. He flung the gloves away, like discarded trash. There was a fight for the scraps.

It didn't stop there. Suddenly he ripped off his bodice, exposing his bare chest. It was thin and girlish and his nipples were covered with stars. I wanted to reach out to touch him and fondle his tender flesh. I wanted to feel his long sensuous tongue on mine.

He strapped a device around his waist. A long thin tube protruded from it and he started stroking it, gently at first, in time to the music, and as the song reached its peak, jerked it faster and harder until the lid of the tube popped open and a multitude of diamondback snakes shot out, fangs ready, into the horrified yet eager crowd. It was a bloodbath and he rocked back on his platforms and posed, a rock star pose, and smirked, a shameless smirk, even as the blood of the innocent splattered everywhere. I stood riveted until the pain of my own shame devoured me.

I covered my eyes until I could wish the dream to another safer location. The screaming stopped. I dared to look again.

I was in a bar. I was standing across from a slender familiar looking woman with dark hair. She was amiably chatting with two boys. She possessed the same sensual aura as the androgynous Stanley and I was drawn to her in much the same way, yet completely unable to move, to speak, even to breath.

I caught her eye for the briefest of moments. A smile pursed her lips, then she turned away from me, uninterested.

That is when I realized it was no dream.

V.

The trash was stacking up ankle deep. The brown-skinned girl was still screaming. Something hit me in the head and knocked off my sunglasses. I looked down and discovered it was a hot dog. This was wrong. There are too many strarving people in the world for callous freeloaders to be gaily wasting precious and scarce resources.

I picked it up and threw it back to into the crowd. In return, a three foot tall square shaped cardboard box filled with vomit and rage hit the stage, an entire festival's worth of garbage spilling out, the most absurd move yet in an ever intensifying chess game.

I shouted "You Suck" one more time and walked over to get my camera. I wanted to take a picture. It was certainly a Polaroid moment.

Just then they pulled the plug. The show was over. Everyone was in a quandry. I stood defiantly, arms outstretched and waving at the crowd.

"No Pussy Tonight!" they chanted, the anthem of the damned. My anthem. I closed my eyes and smiled.

VI.

At Union Station I had to take a pee. I had been riding the rails all day and had spent the afternoon in Hermosa Beach eating Ahi tuna, drinking beers and watching a cover band that played "Brown Eyed Girl" and "Get Down Tonight."

It was brutally hot all over the Southland but overcast at the beach, which was disappointing because all the girls cruising along the boardwalk wore towels over their bikinis.

Then it was time to return home, a sketchy proposition for someone with a weak bladder like me, holding it in and swimming in my teeth until I could find an appropriate place to deposit my fluids.

When I had finished I made my way over to the Gold Line, my final public transportation destination.

She was there too, the same girl in the "Hustler" shirt and red skirt that I found myself unable to approach earlier. This time, another boy had already found her. I was beaten to the punch again. He was a little older than the last boy, with a Rick Fox like scruff of a beard and a bit of a brooding look. A more formidable rival.

Still, though, Hustler Girl spent most of her time on her cell, chatting with someone else. When the train pulled up, we all boarded in the same car. At first, hardly anyone came aboard and I sat with my back to Hustler Girl and her new suitor, Brooding Boy, who sat opposite each other. I convinced myself I couldn't bear to watch. I fell into my book.

The train didn't leave right away, it stayed put until more passengers, likely arrived from the just completed Dodgers game, came in, hordes of them until it was standing room only.

I wanted peace but I resigned myself to giving up my reverie, grabbed my backpack and cleared room on the seat next to me. When the pretty Asian girl, perhaps Chinese, came in, my heart jumped in anticipation of her sitting next to me.

There had been a Japanese girl earlier on the Blue Line, with Disney charms, faded jeans and that wondrous innocent unapproachable facade. Like looking at myself in a carnival mirror. I cleared my seat for her, to no avail. She sat away from me, staring intently and occasionally adjusting the volume on her iPod.

Alas, later, this new potential transit neighbor also declined my covert invitation. She stood close to the sliding train doors. She had no iPod.

In fact, it seemed no one wanted to sit next to me, even on a jam-packed train. My vibe was repelling people. My seat was the last one vacated until a large family came in and a haughty woman, somewhat by default, finally took her place next to me.

I looked back and Brooding Boy had moved next to Hustler Girl, who was still yakking away on her cell.

Many conversations bounced along. I stopped pretending to read and sat there and tried to absorb it all.

In front of me, a woman was very loudly talking on her cell with her mother, trying to negotiate an apartment rental. She was claiming hard times, though she mentioned a Saturday class she was taking. There were equal parts love and agitation in her voice.

Next to me, the haughty woman related to someone in her group how her $1900 watch almost got stolen.

Behind me, Brooding Boy had his arm behind Hustler Girl but not around it.

Now the train had started. A few stops in, a family of blunderers came aboard. Once moving, they immediately shouted at a girl, "You have to get off at the next stop!" They had left behind someone.

It was so full in the train I could no longer see behind me. Many stops came and went.

The hard times woman left. The Asian girl left. The blunderers left. Everyone, it seems, left save for the haughty woman, who decided not to move to a seat closer to her husband. I realized I had lost track of something important to me.

When the dust had cleared, Brooding Boy and Hustler Girl were both gone.

Whether they left together, I'll never know.

VII.

My picture was in the paper. I felt proud. I wanted to show people. I wanted to brag. I wanted to turn a girl so dizzy with delight that she would want to kiss me.

I drove to a bar where a friend of mine worked. I got out of my car and walked to the door and peered in the window. Suddenly, I had no urge to enter. I saw my friend working behind the bar, smiling and dispensing drinks. The crowd was older, predominantly male, a bit disheveled. Not my scene. I left as quickly as I had come.

I drove to another bar, where another friend of mine was working. This crowd was more diverse, upscale, vibrant. Yet I stood frozen outside.

It was like I was in a dream, where you keep running to a place and you get there and the place has changed, so you run again, and again and again, and fragmented three-word conversations converge and dissipate in the blink of an eye and you never get to where you want to go, until finally you wake up.

Again, I declined to enter.

There was a party I was invited to, where everyone wanted to see me. I had my picture in the newspaper. There was a story, a story of how I caused a riot and everybody either got cheesed off at me or thought I was a genius, the result of which provided me probably the greatest notices of my career. I wanted to burst into the party waving it around like a cudgel, saying "See? I am a rock star! I am a rock star!"

Yet I couldn't do it. Suddenly I felt nothing but remorse, like I needed to hide my face. Maybe if there was a stage inside the party, where I could just come up and grab a microphone and have a spotlight hung on me, and everybody would gather around, excited and anticipating something brilliant and controversial, that would have obliged me to stay.

There would be nothing of the sort inside, just people. I would be forced to have conversation, compelled to explain myself. I knew instinctively that I would have but ten seconds to speak my mind, then be cut off in haste, either by rolled eyes or the intrusive opinion of others. I didn't want that. The attention I wanted suffered no interference.

That's what I said to myself. In truth, I was too scared.

This time I didn't even get out of the car. I just drove on. I, the inciter, the instigator, a man not afraid to pull any prank, no spectacle too outrageous to perpetrate, for art's sake, for publicity's sake, the bigger the better, no holds barred.

I, the artist who will withstand a mountain of garbage, a legion of haters in cyberspace, the banishment from venues too tame for my act - I don't have the guts to talk to a pretty stranger, don't have the confidence to face friends in a public place, even when I am desperate for love and attention, yet have no problem floating anonymously through life, observing others, as long as no one deigns to observe me.

I can't do it. What is wrong with me? Where have I gone wrong? Who will save me? Me, the rock star?

VIII.

At home, safe in my isolation, I turned on the TV. I had a choice between The Gene Simmons Show, America's Top Model, Sportscenter, Behind the Music, a variety program featuring a dancer named Diamondback Annie, a war movie and Seinfeld.

I chose Seinfeld. Jerry was being vexed by Newman. I laughed. I had seen it before.

I was very comfortable watching it.