by Stanislaw Kaslowski
Stephanie the Rockstar’s Muse Part 1
“Thank you Kansas City! You’ve been a great crowd, and I can think of no better place to kick off our tour than here, in this great town!” The crowd, silent so that they could hear her farewell, roared with approval as Stephanie Newg, lead singer and songwriter for the band Doubtless, stood before them, left hand holding a microphone, right hand stretched outward, waving excitedly to the throngs of fans.
Drenched in sweat, her adrenaline finally ebbing after two hours of losing herself in the music, Stephanie walked off the stage, followed by the rest of her band and the frenzied cheers of the adoring multitude.
Doubtless was on tour to promote their latest album, the fourth record they had released. The first, self-titled album was a bust. The second record, A Happy Domain, most certainly was not, and had become one of the top-selling albums in US history. It was followed by a third record, Escape from Mars, which, while not as critically acclaimed, was still immensely popular and solidified Doubtless’ position as one of the more popular bands in the US. All the while Stephanie Newg had gained a reputation as a brilliant songwriter, one of the best in the business. Her ability to tap into the raw, untouched emotions of the human psyche and funnel those very emotions into lyrics that often left fans in tears had earned her near universal acclaim.
Something was different about the 4th album, Strong. Oh, it was popular enough, and the critics, while not enamored, did not pan the record. However, Stephanie, while writing the songs for the album in a secluded Caribbean locale, never did feel the same connection, the same emotion as she did while writing A Happy Domain, and Escape from Mars. She got fan letters that told her the songs were brilliant, had touched lives, etc. The basic adoring fan letters every star gets. But their words rang hollow. Stephanie had decided that on this tour, which kicked off in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena, Doubtless would not play any of the hits from their second and third album, and would instead only play songs from Strong. Stephanie needed to gauge fan reaction to JUST the new work. Stephanie liked to put out the basic “artist” aura of mild indifference to what both the masses and the critics had to say about her work. Deep down, however, she needed their approval, their cheers and adoration.
After walking off-stage a bit, and taking herself out of view of the audience, Stephanie sighed and leaned back against a wall in the narrow passage that led from the stage to the backstage area. She was bitterly disappointed in the fan reaction.
While performing Stephanie never was able hear the crowd. She was a captive in the golden cage of music. Her adrenaline flowed and she was only able to concentrate on performing the pieces that she had written her heart into. However, after the performance, when she was thanking the crowd, her trained musician’s eyes and hears noticed subtle changes in the crowd from this show to the concerts they had performed to promote A Happy Domain and Escape from Mars.
Oh, the crowd still gave Doubtless a standing ovation, and they still cheered loudly, and they all seemed to enjoy the show. But in previous concerts Stephanie had seen grown men weep after hearing her songs, seen looks of such pain and joy on the faces of women that SHE was often brought to tears. There was none of that here tonight in Kansas City. Just a sold out crowd of 10,000 whom had seen a nice show and we’re ready to go home, go to bed, and not speak of the concert tomorrow morning at work or school. There was no intensity in the arena. There was practically no emotion. The realization was like a mailed fist to her gut.
As she stood in that little hallway reflecting on the disappointment, her friend and lead guitarist Lanak Yont laid a hand on her shoulder.
“You ok Steph?”
She responded with a smile that she was barely able to maintain, “Yeah, I’m fine Lanak. Just a little tired from the show. Let’s go backstage. I think MTV wants an interview.”
Lanak smiled upon hearing that news. He was a Norwegian immigrant to the Southern California area, where Stephanie and the rest of Doubtless had been born and raised. Lanak had a joker’s disposition and a calico’s smile to go along with a pair of green eyes that were always twinkling with some mischief. He had learned English quickly and now spoke it almost flawlessly, at least in private. In public, when giving interviews or talking with fans, Yont pretended to know very little of the language, and he further pretended to butcher what little he said he knew. Stephanie could see little reason behind this, but whatever made him happy.
Stephanie walked backstage, ignoring MTV’s cameras and microphones, letting Lanak and Doubtless’ manager handle the ravaging hordes. She needed some isolation, a little peace and quiet.
As she strolled into her dressing room, she heard an unfamiliar voice from distantly behind her yell, “Stephanie!” She ignored it and closed and locked the door behind her
.
She recoiled in shock when she saw a young man, not yet 25, sitting on a metal folding chair positioned just to the right of the door through which she had just entered. The young man stood up, his full height revealed to be just around 6 feet. He was dressed decently, but not expensively. Slightly fading sneakers, new black jeans, a long-sleeved denim shirt that protected him from the cold Kansas City night. He wore glasses, but he was the type of man for whom glasses add an air of intelligence and good looks. A thick, somewhat un-kept mop of auburn hair rested heavily on his head. A sharp, hawk-like nose dominated the center of his face, resting lightly above thin, pursed lips that gave no indication of having much experience smiling.
Stephanie was afraid this man was a stalker, an obsessed fan who managed to work his way into her dressing room. That happened to her far too often. She possessed an electric, giddy, charismatic personality; she was quick to smile, quick to cry. That disposition had won her the adoration of millions and millions of people, quite a few of them men, who were also attracted to her lithe, 6’2 frame. She had a face that could launch a thousand ships, with blue eyes like a reflecting pool and wavy blond hair that went down to the middle of her back. A non-distinguished nose was perched above a pair of decidedly distinguished lips; thick, pouty pink lips which today were lightly covered with a ruby-red lipstick. She possessed a secret intellectualism, a covert nerdish quality that she hid from all but her closest fans.
Her security had often had to handle obsessed male fans. She was afraid this was another such incident. Still, she calmed herself and coldly addressed the handsome stranger.
“And who would you be?”
The stranger looked at her quizzically. Then he realized the problem. “Oh, I’m very sorry Miss Newg. I thought the radio station guys had talked to you. I’m Andrew, the contest winner.”
Relief and remembrance flooded over Stephanie. That’s right, she thought, one of the local FM stations, 103.4, had a contest where the winner got a free ticket to this concert and a conversation with Stephanie Newg. She thought it a rather paltry prize, but hey, whatever.
She grinned sheepishly, and extended her hand to Andrew, who grasped it with a firm, yet gentle grip. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Andrew. I apologize for my paranoia earlier. Stress does awful things to already disturbed minds, you know?”
She could see a flicker of amusement cross a pair of absolutely gorgeous gray-blue eyes, but he didn’t smile. Stephanie groaned silently as Andrew released her hand.
Fans have two reactions when they meet stars. They either have a tendency to be giddy, frightened little sheep who fawn over the celebrities, or they put up a façade of indifference and show no emotion for the length of the meeting. Andrew appeared to be firmly in the latter camp. And if given a choice, Stephanie would choose the giddy fans. At least they were emotionally honest.
Stephanie turned away and sat down at a makeup table, equipped with a large mirror. The table was just a few feet in front of where Andrew was sitting, so she could keep an eye on him. With a tone only slightly less friendly than before, she addressed him.
“Do you mind if I take some of this makeup off while we talk? It really annoys me. Then again, my talk could soon annoy you, so we’d be even, wouldn’t we?”
Ignoring the jesting part of her statement, Andrew responded only to the first question. “No problem Miss Newg. It’s your dressing room that I’m invading after all.”
She smiled into the mirror, an act of genuine amusement. “Please Andrew, call me Stephanie. ‘Miss Newg’ makes me feel 50 years old.”
“Yes ma’am Miss Newg, if that’s what you want.”
She laughed out loud at the somewhat obvious and predictable joke. She found it funny, despite the mediocre nature of the jest. She had a heavenly, high-pitched laugh that was almost hypnotic in effect, and she was not shy about letting loose with it.
For the first time during their little talk, Andrew smiled, widely, revealing a set of perfectly aligned, perfectly white teeth.
Sitting at the makeup table, gazing into the mirror, Stephanie saw Andrew’s smile and her heart stopped. My god, she thought, what a smile. Some people don’t even know what they have. Her heart fluttered, and Stephanie Newg was in love, even if she didn’t know it at the time.
She gazed, trance like, into the mirror for several seconds until Andrew stopped smiling and looked at her quizzically. Recovering, Stephanie tried to resume the conversation.
“So what exactly did you have to do to win this little olive branch?” She asked him, flashing a weak smile of her own.
He gave a slight grimace, indicating he was not particularly comfortable about revealing that little mystery. She tilted her head downward a bit and gave him one of those faux “Tsk, tsk” stares. That broke him.
He said, hesitantly and with a lot of apparent embarrassment, “Well, I was the 103rd caller to say, ‘I want to get naked in a hot-tub with Stephanie Newg.'”
There was a brief pause, during which Andrew was sure she was going to throw him out. Instead, she burst out laughing. Her high-pitched laugh continued for quite a while, and by the time she was finally done, she was wiping away tears and he was smiling broadly.
Still smiling, she said to him, “Lord, you thought THAT was bad? Andrew, I’ve had words hurled at me that would make a sailor blush. Frankly, that was one of the more tame lines a radio station as ever used.” Internally, her stomach was doing backflips. Jesus, if this guy smiles like that one more time I’m gonna burst, she thought.
Not giving him a chance to respond, and anxious to move the conversation away from the whole “Stephanie Newg naked in a hot-tub” topic, she asked him the usual star question: “So, how’d you like the show?”
He didn’t respond right away. Instead, a scaled down, less severe and shorter version of his earlier grimace flittered across his visage. It disappeared quickly, but Stephanie caught it.
“Oh, it was excellent.” He gave the standard fan response to the standard star question.
She gave him the same “tsk-tsk” look and addressed him with a tone which conveyed her displeasure. “OK, now that you’ve unsuccessfully tried to hide what you feel, try telling me what you really thought of the show.”
He gave the mirror a shocked, devastated look, then realized he was found out and smiled once again. Stephanie almost fell out of the chair.
He took a deep breath and spoke. “Well, I’m not saying it was a bad show. It was…decent, solid. I had some fun, enjoyed myself, and won’t tell anybody about the experience tomorrow. And I’m not talking about the show itself; I could care less about the visuals.
“I’m talking about your songs Stephanie. On the drive over here I was playing A Happy Domain and Escape from Mars and I was practically crying. I DON’T cry. It doesn’t happen. The whole German and English heritage, you know. Mine is not a family of criers. But there was so much beauty, so much meaning in those songs. And as a single man-“
She murmured, louder than she thought, “How the hell?”
Startled, he said, “What?”
“Nothing, nothing. Go on.”
“OK,” he said slowly. “Anyway, as a single person, I can relate to everything you wrote when you going through your issues. Your writing was SO amazing back then, so filled with emotion. And now, now, your stuff is just indistinguishable from the rest. It’s not bad, I suppose, but it’s not good.”
He stopped, suddenly, and realized what he had just said. Stephanie fumed, silently, her mind swirling in confusion.
She stood up fiercely, the chair she was sitting on was sent rolling across the room from the force of her body. She turned on him, her eyes ablaze with rage.
“How DARE you? You come into MY room, invade MY quiet, make me listen to your pathetic attempts at conversation and then have the gall to tell me my writing is meaningless pop crap? Tell me Andrew, is the view good from the cheap seats? Does it make you feel good to destroy and tear down other peoples creation? The most mediocre act of creation is equal to the greatest act of destruction, and critics are merely people who don’t know how to create. Now get out of my sight!”
There were two people in that room shocked into silence by Stephanie’s sudden outburst. The silence didn’t last long, however, as Andrew to filled with anger. He laughed derisively, his eyes mocking her silently.
“You asked for my opinion, and when I gave you what you wanted to hear, you asked for my honest opinion. And when you got that, you screamed at me for giving it to you. Well, frankly Miss. Newg, screw you. Those who are unwilling to hear the truth aren’t worthy of the truth.”
He turned his back on her and moved to open the door. Stephanie felt a wave of both admiration and fear. She placed a quavering hand on Andrew’s shoulder.
“Wait.”
Slowly, he turned around and crossed his arms across his chest, his eyes shooting daggers, but radiating beauty. She wanted to kiss him.
Instead, she sighed deeply and said, sadly, “I know Andrew, I know. You’re exactly right. I had a bad feeling the second I put pen to paper to write the intro song for this damned record. I’ve lost it Andrew. I’ve lost my gift; I’ve lost my talent. Oh, I used to have the gift. Words, words, where have you gone? I used to have words. I wrote words that could bind two hearts together come hell, fire and brimstone. Words that could cause a riot in a nunnery. And now? Now, I’m reduced to writing meaningless pop music. I need… I need some inspiration Andrew. I need something, anything.”
There was a long, uncomfortable pause, during which Andrew uncrossed his arms and lowered his gaze. Andrew stood, studying the patterns in the carpet, eyes shifting uncomfortably. Stephanie collapsed into metal chair Andrew had been sitting on. When he finally raised the courage to look at her once again, the two merely gazed at one another for a time, the tension filling the room like a noxious gas. He did not want to leave this beautiful woman, this gifted writer, but now was the best time. He looked at his watch, and Stephanie noticed the act. She pushed her chair back and stood up, her mind awash with feelings, love and lust, confusion and self-hatred all battling for possession of her mind. She could not identify the feelings she felt towards this man, and she knew not that she was in love, but she did know there was a connection here, a connection that must not be broken. And she knew the feelings were not merely platonic.
Ignoring these feelings, at least temporarily, she stood up reluctantly and offered a hand possessed of 5 long, graceful, well-manicured fingers. He accepted and grasped her hand in his own, his thick, callused fingers entwining with hers.
“I suppose you have to leave?” she asked him.
“I’d rather not, but now seems to be a really good time for me to run away.” He responded, sheepishly.
She laughed and said, “Oh come now. I don’t bite.”
“Unfortunately.” He laughed at his own joke.
Stephanie was not laughing. She was staring into his eyes, looking at his smile, trying to decide what she was going to do. It was tearing her apart inside. She wasn’t single; in fact, she was engaged to Ross Dale, a rather handsome guitarist for a popular rock band. Ross was always good to her, treated her right, didn’t go Tommy Lee on her. Ross even indulged her somewhat “deviant” sexual tastes, and he indulged them well. But as she stood, holding Andrew’s hand and looking down at him, she made up her mind.
“Um, Stephanie…Can I have my hand back now?”
Not listening to him, she whispered, “Ah screw it.”
Taken aback, Andrew looked quizzically at this beautiful girl who was cutting off circulation in his hand and asked her, “Uh, screw what?”
She looked at him fiercely and said, “You.”
With that, she squeezed his hand and, before his surprised face could utter a word of protest, she pulled him near and kissed him, full on the lips, her hands grasping at his hair, holding him tightly against her lips. Their tongues intertwined in a twisting, grasping, Byzantine dance of love. Oranges, she thought dimly. He tastes like oranges.
She pulled away from him, placed both hands softly on a not well-muscled chest, and shoved him, hard, against the far wall. She strode up to him, covered his body with hers, and peppered his face and neck with kisses, leaving small, light orange marks as evidence of her lipstick. This time her hands roved below his belt, grabbing and squeezing his rapidly enlarging cock, fondling it; whenever she felt it get to large, she moved her hands back to his butt, squeezing that with an almost religious fervor. When she felt the urge to hold his cock, Stephanie stuck her well-practiced hands down his pants, where her long, graceful fingers played with his dick and fondled his balls.
For his part, Andrew had recovered from his earlier stupor and was giving as good as he got. He returned her kisses with frenzied passion, equaling her own. She smelled of good wine and apples, her perfume invading his nostrils and setting off bells in his synapses. His hands roamed down the back of her body, and found a permanent resting spot on her ass and upper thighs. He kneaded them like dough, sending shivers of excitement up her spine.
Suddenly, she pulled away from him. Recovering from their frenzied play enough to catch her breath, Stephanie asked him, “Did the radio guys have you park close to my dressing room?”
For the second time in ten minutes, Andrew looked dumbfounded. “Did they…?” Then he caught on. “Yes, yes they did. I’m like 30 feet behind here.”
“Good. There’s a back door in this room that leads to the parking lot. Go out; wait by your car. I’ve got to tie up some loose ends, so to speak, and then I’ll be right out.”
Doubt and confusion flashed over his eyes. He had been making out with one of the most gorgeous women on earth. And now she wanted him to leave her, if for only a while. He resigned himself to that fate.
She was straightening her clothes and hair when he spoke. “OK, if you say so. But here’s one for the road, in case you get held up.”
With surprising ferocity, he pulled her close and kissed her once again with a passion and verve that made their previous kiss pale in comparison. He fondled her breasts. They we’re small, pert, but they fit perfectly into his fingers through the fabric of her sweat drenched tank top, and the nipples responded quickly to his touch.
He pulled away from her, and turned to go. She called after him, smiling, as a small metal door in the back of the room opened and he exited. “I’ll get you for that!”
After she pulled herself and her stuff together, Stephanie opened the front door of her dressing room a little and got the attention of Lanak, who was still giving an interview with the MTV people, who looked like they could barely understand the heavy Norwegian accent and broken English he was adapting for their sakes. She waved him over hurriedly.
“Lanak, I’ll not be staying at the hotel with you guys tonight. Tell the rest of the band I’m staying at a cousin’s tonight. I’ll meet you guys back here tomorrow morning. 8:00, OK?”
Lanak, displaying the unquestioning loyalty of a close friend, merely nodded and went back to his interview.
She slammed the door shut and locked it, for what reason she couldn’t stay. As she ran out the door, she picked up a long gym bag that she had thrown on the floor before the show. As she exited her room and ran towards the lone car in the parking lot, she stuck her hand into the depths of the bag and pulled out an object.
Andrew had underestimated the distance from her dressing room to his car. She was thoroughly out of breath by the time she could see Andrew. He was standing on the driver’s side of a white Toyota Tercel. His hands were on his hips and his right foot was tapping noiselessly and nervously on the asphalt below. It was all she could do keep her breathing at a low level.
Silently, she snuck up behind him and grabbed both his wrists and pulled them behind his back. Before he had time to protest Stephanie had handcuffed him and turned him around so that he was looking up into her eyes.
“Do you just carry those-” He started. She interrupted him with a kiss. When she pulled off him, Stephanie flashed a wicked smile that sent chills of anticipation up and down Andrew’s spine.
“Sssh. Now we’re gonna have some fun.”