How to Kill a Rock Star

by Tiffanie DeBartolo

“Do you think people can change?” I nodded, refusing to consider the possibility that any of us are doomed to die the same sorry people we sometimes become.

sometimes people can have so much love between them, they end up treating each other like retards.

I laid it all out for him: Eliza believes in me, she moves me, and she’s moved BY me. She makes me happy, she makes me sad, she makes me try harder, she makes me laugh, and she makes me feel like I can fly. Isn’t that the goddamn definition of love?

Feldman accused me of underestimating myself, but that’s not really the problem. I just happen to comprehend the low standards of the majority of the music-buying public, and I don’t care how condescending that sounds, it’s true. They always go for the shiny gimmicks. Always.

I envied their emptiness. I envied the simplicity of their goals. I envied how little it took to make them happy. I almost envied their greed.

When the priest asked the congregation to kneel, I knelt too. Then I bowed my head and tried to think about what it all meant—the contract, the band, the money, my goddamn career. I hate the connotation of the word “career.” It doesn’t seem to truly account for the way I spend my time. It embodies all the direct opposites of my hows and whys and most of all it implies a choice, and I’ve never felt like I had any choice. I do what I do out of need and necessity, and because it’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, not as a means to an end, not even for money or the adulation of the world, but for my own measly survival. Not that I won’t welcome all that if it comes my way, right? Let me tell you, depositing a check for seven hundred grand did not suck.

I am of the theory that all of our transcendental connections, anything we’re drawn to, be it a person, a song, a painting on a wall—they’re magnetic. The art is the alloy, so to speak. And our souls are equipped with whatever properties are required to attract that alloy. I’m no scientist so I don’t really know what the hell these properties are, but my point is we’re drawn to stuff that we’ve already got a connection to. Part of the thing is already inside of us.

Fate is the magnetic pull of our souls toward the people, places, and things we belong with.

“I’ve never been happier in my life. But when dreams come true in reality they never feel the same as when you imagine them, and you know what that means? It means that no matter how good things are, maybe they’ll never be good enough, and there’s something seriously wrong with that.”

“All your cocky-bastard nonsense, it’s an act, isn’t it?” “If I said yes, would you love me less?” “I’d probably love you more.” “I’m so glad you said that.”

I need to know that wherever I end up, in the stars or in the gutter, you’re along for the ride.”

“Bottom line, Eliza—you’re my home and my family, and I don’t want to lose you. I could lose everything else, and as long as I still had you and a guitar I know I’d be all right. Do you get what I’m saying?” In the six years Adam and I were together, he’d never said anything so important to me. I’d only known Paul for five months and already I was sure I never wanted to spend a night without him. “Yeah,” I said. “I’m all yours.”

“I know what you’re going to say.” He put his hand up to keep me quiet. “This is the last thing I should be thinking about now, right? It’s supposed to be all about my career, the band. But one thing I’ve realized is that my life in its entirety is more important than any one aspect of it. And the sad truth is that until I met you I didn’t have anything else. So, if you love me and want to be with me…Well…What do you say?”

He held me against his chest and said, “Tell me what you’re scared of.” “Getting left behind.” “I’m not going to leave you behind.”

She screamed, “I CAN’T!” and locked herself in the bathroom. I hate that word, CAN’T. I wish it had never been dreamed up, spoken, or defined. I wish the concept of CAN’T could be eradicated not only from language, but more importantly from the psyche of a girl who I know is filled with so much CAN it seeps out of her pores and scents the air.

“It’s about you,” he said. This incited an emotional riot in me, and for a brief, irrational moment I didn’t want anyone else to ever hear the song. I no longer wanted to share Paul with the world. I wanted to lock him up in that room and keep him there like a songbird in a cage. I wanted him to belong to me and only me. I didn’t want his talent or his soul to be picked apart and trampled underfoot by Winkles and critics and all the potentially insensitive music listeners who might never dig deep enough to find a place for him. He set the guitar on the floor and scooted toward me. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “What’s it called?” “Originally, ‘The Goddamn Single,’ but Clint is forcing me to rethink that. I might name it after you just for shits and giggles.”

Some people believe in a master plan, that there’s no such thing as free will, and humans are nothing but pawns in the chess game of the gods who sit up in the sky on their white fluffy clouds lavishing good fortune on a select few and conspiring against the rest. I know better. Namely, I know that if I ever have the audacity to blame fate or God for holding a gun to my temple, I also have the wherewithal to remind myself that if I end up with a hole in my head, I was the one who pulled the trigger.

The thing is, we loved each other, and on some level we always will, but when you’re twenty-three and you fall in love, you tend to think that love will supercede any problems.

no matter how much you love somebody, no matter how desperately you want a relationship to work, life can act as an oxidizer and corrode it to pieces.”

He leaned back and crossed his arms, examining me as if I were a painting on the wall. “How do you say no to those eyes, huh?” “If you figure it out, let me know,” Paul said.

“You don’t smoke?” Loring asked. “Only when set on fire.”

And when Paul dove to embrace me, the look on his face was one of absolute, perfect joy—the kind of joy that can’t be reproached, stolen, or marred—the kind that only the innocent or the ignorant are capable of experiencing. I wanted to freeze the moment. Freeze it and jump inside of it and stay there until it melted into the warm, swishy liquid of happy memories.

“Not acceptable.” He stood up, looking like he wanted to pace, but there was no room. “Eliza, you can’t go through life like this. Do you know that on an annual basis, donkeys kill more people than planes?” “Oh, yeah? Well, do you know that between 1975 and 1981, more than ten percent of the toxicological tests on pilots were positive for alcohol?” He rolled his head in a circle. “Jesus, where do you get this shit?” He made a growling noise that meant his patience was shot.

Sometimes you meet people who are actually interesting, and obviously attractive. But there’s a gigantic difference between thinking about it and doing it. You have to cross a line to get to that point, and that line, for me, is not drawn in sand.”

He moved in so he was practically in my lap. “I’m only going to ask you this once,” he said, his eyes glistening with panic. “And I swear over my life I’m going to believe whatever you say. Do you understand? With my whole goddamn heart and soul I’m going to believe you so please don’t lie to me because I would never get over it.” “No,” I said before he even asked the question. “Nothing happened between me and Loring. Not last night, not ever.”

“What are you asking? If I think he’s cute? He’s a very good-looking guy. So what?” “He’s more than just a good-looking guy and you know it.” But, I thought, he doesn’t have flashlight eyes or a cocky-bastard smile that can boil water or a voice from the heavens and most of all he says things like, It’s only rock ’n’ roll.

“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Paul doesn’t want what you think he wants?” “He doesn’t know what he wants.” “Yes, he does. And more than anything, it seems he wants you.” “Then he’s a bigger fool than I give him credit for.”

He grabbed my hand and slammed it palm-down into his chest. “Can you feel that?” I didn’t know what he was alluding to, but I couldn’t feel anything through his coat—it was as though his heart had stopped—and it threatened to break me down while I twisted out of his arms. “Don’t do this to me, Eliza. Please. I need you.” I looked at Paul. He was crying. “You don’t need me,” I said, wondering whether or not I believed it. He gripped my face and kissed me. But it was a hard, painful kiss. A severe and bitter kiss. A kiss that seemed so black, so final, it was like death. “Happy fucking Birthday.”

made a resolution to banish Paul from my mind. Paul was the past and evoking the past was a worthless human ability that had evolved for the sole purpose of reminding mortals of their mistakes. Forget the noose. Forget the Iron Maiden. Forget the electric chair or the guillotine. The mind was mankind’s most painful torture chamber, the blessed liberty to cogitate offering either doom or salvation, depending on one’s disposition.

“I found myself talking about you a lot while I was gone. Of course it never failed that someone would ask who you were and I didn’t know what to say—she’s my friend, she’s my roommate, she’s the girl I’m sleeping with? What am I supposed to call you?” “Last weekend, Vera and I met a guy in Prospect Park who, for a dollar, made up a rap using our names. He told us to call him Yo-Yo. Why don’t you call me Yo-Yo?” Loring neither smiled nor laughed. “Help me out here, please.” “Sorry. What do you want to call me?” “Mine.”

Paul picked up on the third ring. The sound of his voice was like a defibrillator to my chest. I wanted so badly to hate him, but his voice had the power to flood all my enmity and water it down to nothing but a steady stream of longing. Despite everything, I swore I could still hear a burning supernova of hope and truth and love inside that voice.

At the newsstand, I stopped for some reading material. I picked up a novel called Hallelujah, written by some guy who, according to the inside flap, had died in a drowning accident before the book’s publication. I opened the book to a random page and read the first sentence my eyes landed on: “I couldn’t give in to them because I knew that if I did, I’d be giving away the part of me that belonged to her.”

Loring glanced at the paragraph in the magazine. “I was just making conversation.” But then his focus became critical, his expression sullen. “Oh,” he said. “I get it. This is about him, isn’t it? You don’t want Paul to see this.” It probably would have behooved me to utter loud, thrashing words of denial, but I didn’t see the point. Loring handed the magazine back to me. “I’m sorry, Eliza. Really.” He was already walking away. “I promise I’ll never again tell anyone how happy you make me.”

I wondered if he really wanted to get away, or if he just wanted to keep me from Paul. I also wondered how someone who could explain the chaos theory, identify every work of art painted between 1420–1600, and had four top-ten singles to his name could be so dippy when it came to love.

Probably the biggest kicker of all is that Bananafish’s record sales have, at this point, reportedly tapered off at around twenty-nine thousand. Success is so unbelievably relative. To think that twenty-nine thousand people went out and spent their hard-earned money on a collection of songs that came from my goddamn heart and soul makes me wanna do the Hustle down Broadway. Winkle considers it a failure.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and pretended Eliza’s hand was on my chest. This soothed me for about half a second, and then made my heart feel like it was being ripped apart by a grizzly bear. Even now it hurts to think about.

I informed Winkle and Feldman that the campaign would have to be white and red if they put me in it, because they’d have to fucking shoot me first.

So there I was, sitting at that table. On my left I had Winkle looking like he wanted to kill me. Across from me there’s Feldman, probably wondering if John, Paul, George, and Ringo ever gave Brian Epstein this much trouble. My pancreas was burning like a son of a bitch, my career was slipping through my hands, and all I could think about was Eliza. Pitiful. I wanted to run out and find her and tell her how much I hated her. And I do. Because I’m sure I could make it through these cataclysms and survive my undoing with genuine amusement if only she were down on Ludlow Street waiting for me.

I’m just looking at the building. I want to feel close to the woman whose guts I hate. I want to imagine what her life is like in there without me. I want to stumble across something on the sidewalk and pretend she dropped it: a flower petal, a scarf. And then I want to set it on fire.

I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. That’s the only explanation I can figure. I veered left when I should’ve gone right, but instead of stopping to turn around I just kept going and now I’m so fucking lost I don’t think I could get back on track if my life depended on it. Problem is my life does depend on it.

The time we’d spent in Vermont had been something of a Shangri-La: a long weekend of swimming, playing chess, cooking. Loring had even taught me how to ride a horse without using a saddle. But the liberty I’d pretended to feel simply because Paul and I were in a different area code was short-lived, not all that emotionally satisfying, and was followed by a painful recrudescence upon returning to New York. The minute the car crossed the state line, it all came back to me. Paul was in the air. He was the air. He hovered above the city breathing on me, stifling me, and providing life at the same time. I was sure Loring felt it, too. That’s why, as we were crossing the GW Bridge, he put up the windows for the first time in hours. He was trying to keep Paul out.

There’s nothing worse than falling in love with a person over and over every time you lay eyes on them, especially when you hate their goddamn guts.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of Eliza. She had this black knitted shawl around her shoulders, and with her chin down and her eyes blinking toward the sky, she looked like a falcon about to spread its wings. It was all I could do not to fall on my knees and weep like the bastard she always said I was, and I was a breath away from begging her to run away with me. I can’t believe I’m admitting this on tape—I was standing at that table, she hit me with that look of hers, and I swear to God all I wanted to do was grab her hand, press it into my heart and say, “Let’s get the hell out of here.” I was even willing to ride the 6 all the way to Houston Street. No kidding, I was going to take the subway to prove my love. And if she said no, I was going to kidnap her until she agreed to stay. But then Loring slipped his arm around her waist, she took his hand, and I came to my senses. Note to self: The past is gone. Let it go.

“Bonnie Raitt once told me coincidence is God’s way of staying anonymous.”

“I messed up, Paul.” “Holy Hell, you have no right to lay this shit on me now.” “I never meant to break your heart. You have to believe me. All I ever wanted was—” “Hold it!” He let go of the handle and his fist exploded into a shape that reminded me of a spider web. “Break my heart? Is that what you just said? I have news for you; you didn’t break my heart. My heart’s fine. My heart’s in the best shape of its life. You know what you did to me? You took an AK-47 and blew my soul open. So fuck you and your fucking talk because nothing short of a miracle could take back the last nine months of hell you put me through!”

I was alone with nothing to do but obsess over the contradiction of Paul’s cruel words against the look on his face. It was I wish you were dead versus Save me.

“Eliza, about what I said to you at the theater—” “Forget it.” I made a shooing motion with my hand. “I deserve it.” “I just don’t want you to be thinking back on us someday and believe that’s how I really felt. I just had to say that to you, all right?” I didn’t like the way he said us, as if us was lost forever. “All right?” he said again, desperately.

They’ll never understand. Not today, not ever. History can be as cruel as a bully on a playground.

There are things we never tell anyone. We want to but we can’t. So we write them down. Or we paint them. Or we sing about them. Maybe we carve them into stone. Because that’s what art is. It’s our only option. To remember. To attempt to discover the truth. Sometimes we do it to stay alive. These things, they live inside of us. They are the secrets we stash in our pockets and the weapons we carry like guns across our backs. And in the end we have to decide for ourselves when these things are worth fighting for, and when it’s time to throw in the towel. Sometimes a person has to die in order to live. Deep down, I know you know this. You just can’t seem to do anything about it. I guess it’s a sad fact of life that some of us move on and some of us inevitably stay behind. Only in this case I’m not sure which one of us is doing which. You were right about one thing though. It’s not fate. It’s a choice. And who knows, maybe we’ll meet again someday, somewhere up above all the noise. Until then, when you think of me, try and remember the good stuff. Try and remember the love.

That’s the reason I ended up on Michael’s doorstep. Because my last words to her had been words I didn’t mean, and I couldn’t exit her life without telling her the truth. The truth is I was never, not for one goddamn second, not even when I walked in on her in Loring’s arms, sorry that I’d met her. I’m a better person for knowing her. I fucking loved her. No, it’s more than that. Not only did I love her, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never loved anyone but her.