Too Weird for Ziggy (10 page)

An old rock musician, an old friend of Morrison's, who'd done acid with the singer “a thousand times” and had now joined the horde of cleaned-up campaigners, went on the show to proselytize. Reeve said, “I think the drugs thing was just because of his era; I don't think he would still be doing them if he were still alive. I'm not into drugs personally—my feeling is basically go suck a gun, it's quicker, you know?” And the audience applauded. “I don't even drink. Someone tossed a bottle onstage and I just stuck the bottle in my mouth, tilted my head back, and faked it. I stuck my tongue in the bottle neck so I won't take any down. I did do acid once, years ago, just to try and see where Jim was coming from. Only you can't really see what somebody else did, can you? I mean, it's a whole different thing.”

A reptile keeper came on once with a tangle of limbs writhing in a box. It was a real lizard king, he said, five small brown lizards with their tails tied together, all desperately struggling to go their own direction but snapped back into the bundle like rubber bands. And he presented a lizard-skin belt once worn by Morrison to the teary winner of that week's Jimformation Quiz.

The East German poet came in and gave a recital. An Australian Doors copy band flew over for the show. Billy Idol, who was touring in Germany, came and sang “L.A.
Woman,” which he'd covered on his album, and Reeve jumped up and joined him at the microphone. The next day's reviews said Billy's sultry Elvis-sneer looked like a cold sore beside Reeve's smoldering pout.

A music critic wrote: “What's refreshing about Reeve's performance is that there is none of the surliness, none of the done-it-all-before-to-the-point-where-I-hate-it-but-not-as-much-as-I-hate-
you
thing that you get from most rock artists you see on a stage. From Jim Morrison, certainly. The famous Miami '69 incident, the one where the singer was arrested for taking his cock out onstage, the one that is now cited as evidence of his coolness, his rebelliousness, his dedication to art, his
sexiness
? The truth of the matter was he was drunk. He had nothing but contempt for the audience, the show, the whole debacle. He couldn't be bothered. He forgot the words. He stumbled about.

“And when the people who had paid to come and hear him sing—and if he wanted to throw in a little of that famous wild-and-crazy behavior for the price of a ticket then fine, but the bottom line was they wanted to hear some
songs
—when they turned on him and for once the artist-audience hatred was mutual, he taunted them. He asked them, ‘Do you want to see my cock?' And he pulled it out and it was
soft
. It wasn't cool or rebellious or artistic or sexy, it was soft and floppy as a dead fish.

“All rockstars at some point come face-to-face with the utter pointlessness of what they're doing. Some get there quicker than others, some hide it better than others, but it happens to all of them. Reeve, however, can never suffer from pointlessness. Because it's not
him
. The whole
messy business of self has been done away with. He's doing it for someone else. He's been taken out of himself. He is like a religious devotee, he has that gleam in his eyes of someone who knows, whose conviction cannot be shaken, that there really
is
a point. In some way, Jim Morrison did die for him.”

They did a special show on the third of July, the anniversary of Morrison's death. Reeve, dressed Morrisonesquely, tailed by the TV crew, walked around Paris, pointing out landmarks, places where Jim had or might have been. At the spot where Morrison died in the bathtub, the camera lingered on a mongrel dog pissing on the wall. Next stop, of course, was Père Lachaise cemetery, the camera moving sedately up the manicured aisle, following the arrows scratched onto monuments saying “Jim this way.” It wove through tombstones splattered with graffiti: cartoon genitalia and declarations of love, snatches of Jim poems, often badly spelled, names and countries and messages in a dozen languages.

The graves were packed in tight like a ghetto. Jim's was hardly big enough to hold a circus dwarf. The stone was a squat plain slab the color of tarmac. It was mobbed with young people. They were sitting around talking and laughing, drinking beer and putting notes and flowers in the empties, placing them gently on his grave. It was really quite moving. Reeve melted in among them, kissed a few cheeks and shook lots of hands.

“I've made a lot of friends here,” he told the camera. “It's amazing. It's like a sort of club. I've made the pilgrimage, I don't know, at least a dozen times. The first time I was
eighteen years old. I brought a sleeping bag and camped out on his grave. The first time I came I wrote my name on his gravestone in the bottom right-hand corner. I wanted it to be right at ‘
The End
.' It's gone now. This stone is really ugly. The others got stolen piece by piece.”

He led us up through the cemetery to where Oscar Wilde was buried. “Look at this.” The camera closes up on the inscription. “The first time I came here I saw this. It's really incredible.” He recited Wilde's words, etched onto the tomb.

And alien tears will fill for him
Pity's long-broken urn
For his mourners will be outcast men
And outcasts always mourn
.

“It could have been written for Jim. ‘Alien tears.' That's really something, isn't it?”

Cut to a bar where Jim used to come and drink and write poetry. The bar owner was rinsing out Pastis glasses, nonchalant and very French. A Parisian journalist in his late forties, who stated that he and Jim often had long conversations here about existentialism and claimed that Jim asked him to translate his poems into French, sat beside Reeve, perched self-consciously, arrogant and uncomfortable. He looked like he was sitting on a carrot and sucking on a lemon all at the same time.

And they showed footage of The Doors in concert and rare clips of Jim offstage, looking like a god and looking like a retard, Fat Jim, droopy-faced and bearded, with small eyes peering out of fat, puffy lids. And Reeve's band
flew over to Germany and they played together for the first time in more than a year. And when they finished, Jim's cousin came out of the studio audience, shook Reeve's hand, and said, “Hello, Jim.” There were tears in the audience's eyes, in the band's eyes. Reeve looked as if he were about to break down.

When the contract was up, Reeve chose not to renew it. On his thirtieth birthday he moved back to L.A. But his band had scattered and moved on. He went on a few chat shows, hired a media consultant, but nobody really wanted to know. He moved back in with his mother. He got a job with Star Company, driving a stretch limo, picking up VIPs at the airport. When the planes were late or his order was canceled, he'd drive down to the beach and sit in the car with the door open, letting the cool air in, writing poems in his head and staring at the sea. Feeling cold made him think about his apartment in Germany, the big old ornate radiator in the corner of the room, slow to rumble into action, reluctant to heat up the room. And the ceiling so high up that when he lay on the bed it made him feel like a child. He thought about the food shops, the cheeses and the sausages piled up in pyramids, a work of art, and sweets and cakes and pasta dripping in shop windows. He thought about the café that served poetic coffee in large silver pots with thick fresh cream.

And he thought about the German woman who had been his lover. She was older than him, almost old enough to be his mother. She was an artist, with strong hands and a strong, fine face. He had found her one night in the lobby of his apartment building, arguing with the concierge, who
wouldn't let her up. He smuggled her in later, both of them feeling slightly ashamed and elated, laughing in whispers as if they were in his mother's house.

She told him—months later, when the concierge had come to know and accept her and would stop and have a natter with her every night in the hall and offer her a coffee if Reeve was late back from the studio—she told him what he already knew, that she was totally into Jim Morrison. She told him that she wanted to be on the show.

And she told him a story. She had gone to the cemetery at night and broken in, scaled the wall with a pickax and a spade. She said she needed to know for sure that Jim really was dead and buried. There had always been rumors, just like there had with Elvis, maybe just like for every star who dies in the bathroom, that he hadn't really died, that he'd just disappeared and was working in a gas station or living in a trailer in the desert watching the lizards go by. When reports reached Los Angeles that Jim had had a fatal heart attack in the bathtub, his manager had flown to Paris to see what was going on. And all Jim's wife could show him was a sealed coffin and a death certificate signed—she was so wasted—by she couldn't remember who.

If the coffin had been empty she had planned to go and look for him; she knew that she could find him. But it wasn't empty, she said, staring at the high ceiling as they lay propped up together on the oversized pillows. It was a while before he broke the silence and asked her what she did.

And he shuddered as he remembers how she tugged a cigarette from the packet and lit it, blew out a smoke ring
he tried to catch. She said, “I gave him a blow job. And then I fell asleep.” The cemetery caretaker found her the next morning. She was sent to a psychiatric institution. She still saw her caseworker; she wanted him to meet her. The caseworker approved of her going on the show. And it came to him that what he did was just another form of necrophilia, trying to suck some life out of a corpse, but he banished the thought as quickly as it had come to him, pulled the door closed, and started the motor up.

He drove up Sunset and parked outside the nightclub where the Germans had come to see him play. He watched the world hum by in its Porsches and Mercedes. He turned on the radio and waited for his ride.

Everything was fine until Leo started growing breasts.

Better than fine. Even Leo, with his well-honed sense of his own genius and matching grievance at how long it had taken others to catch on, viewed his achievements with some satisfaction, although he knew he deserved them and more. A number one album in Britain, a second one climbing the American charts, five hit singles, a sold-out U.S. tour, and a supermodel girlfriend who swallowed. And who had just called to say that her Caribbean shoot had been canceled and she was flying straight out to join him on the road. And who would be more than a little upset to see the teeth marks and lacerations that covered his torso, courtesy of the crazy blonde he'd shagged last night in Kansas.

“Tell her she can't come,” said Murray. The tour manager knew all about the problems caused by visiting girlfriends. If he had his way, all females would be banned from the road.

Leo shook his head. “Ain't gonna work.” No one said no to Phoebe Fitzwarren, and he wasn't suicidal enough to try. So he chose the grizzling option instead.

“Murray, she's going to be here tomorrow. What the motherfuck am I gonna do?”

Murray had experience in these matters. He'd worked with bands for years. Moments later he appeared with a huge roll of wide, crepe bandage, ordered Leo to strip, and proceeded to wind it tightly around his body,
armpits to pelvis, pelvis to armpits, down, up, down. “Tell your old lady,” he said, “that you tripped coming offstage and cracked a rib.” And Phoebe had fallen for it—not just fallen, been smitten by such a fit of caring that she'd stuck around for almost a fortnight. Two weeks deep-frying under the stage lights like a burrito with legs—and no sex. Not even a hand job. “Broken ribs,” Phoebe said, “can be dangerous. One false move, you could puncture a lung. Come on, baby, lie down here next to me, we'll just hold each other and talk.” Which was just what he needed after two hours of staring down at rows of sweet young cleavage, feeling hornier than a Salvation Army band. He'd had to go behind Dave's drum kit for a wank during the guitar solo; he was sure he saw Ian's guitar tech laughing. He made a mental note to tell his manager to stop his end-of-tour bonus.

A hundred years later Phoebe's shoot was rescheduled. Finally he could take the bandage off. Her cab had barely pulled away when Leo shot back to his hotel room and ripped off his clothes. Standing naked in front of the mirror, he twisted an arm behind his back and tugged at the top of the wide strip of surgical tape that held the bandage down. It was stuck tight. He reached the other arm around, but it stayed put. Murray had done too good a job. Leo picked up the receiver and dialed. “The person in room 1–6–0–1,” said a machine, “is not available. Leave a message after the tone or press zero for an operator.”

“Murray. Where the motherfuck are you? Get your arse in here,” he barked, and hung up. Impatient, he continued
to worry at the bandage, grunting, swearing, trying to tug it around so that the tape was at the front and he could see what he was doing. It refused to budge.

“MOTHERFUCKER!” he bellowed. He picked his jeans up off the floor and dug in his pocket for the switchblade he always kept there. Flicking it open, he snagged the tip inside the top layer of bandage, carefully pulled it away, and sliced. The sharp blade zipped through the crepe, faster than he'd estimated, skidding to a halt on his pubic bone. A small cut but a deep one; it took almost a minute before the blood bubbled to the surface and started a slow drip onto his dick. “Motherfuck,” said Leo, much more quietly than usual. One more inch to the right—the thought struck him dumb.

Hands shaking, he took a clean T-shirt from the top of his case and pressed it to the wound, lifting it up now and then to stare at the spots of red. Still trembling, he peeled off the torn layer of bandage which a fortnight of perspiration had glued to the rest. A loose end of bandage dangled at the bottom. “Thank the motherfucking Lord,” he said, and started to unwind, round and around, carefully, as if his ribs really were broken, like his mum opening her Christmas presents because she wanted to reuse the wrapping paper.