Back from the Dead by Chris Petit

Author:Chris Petit [Petit, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447210252
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWO

Exploiting the zeitgeist, Mickey called it when I had found him grinning in some dressing room, ramming his shameless dick into another bent-over crack. A lot of dick got sucked back then and none of us read the small print. We thought of ourselves as sex-charged conductors able to transform thousands of pulsating libidos into one mass that could be teased to the edge of erotic terror. Sure we got to take our pick: the roar of the crowd reduced afterwards to a single squirming body, that night’s reward. In Bangkok we ate the local pussy. We let the genie out of the bottle.

A local publicist named Dore, pronounced Doray, fixed me with talk radio and daytime television hosted by young presenters with too-white smiles and eyes that danced to some higher control. One show I was put next to an actor with halitosis who had once died heroically in a Peckinpah Western. The rest of the time I took to drinking in a bar with a green door and steps down into a cool dark room where nobody bothered you.

‘Line two, we got a Leah,’ the producer in my headset said, and my throat went dry as the deejay asked, ‘Hi there, is this Leah?’

‘Yes,’ she said. It wasn’t. Nor were any of the others. I had said I was in Los Angeles, staying where I normally stayed, and looking for a Leah I once knew. Ricky Montello was the deejay and afterwards I remembered nothing about him except his name and a dumb sentence of his: ‘And what can we do for you this sunny funny day, Leah?’

In between I waited in the room for her call, and counted the hours and the days. The greater the fame, the greater the insecurity. They never tell you that.

What I need is a ghost. I have no interest in telling my story. Life was little more than itineraries and tour-date T-shirts. We did not lead narrative lives. We led ones of tired old songs rehashed, with squabbles over what new ones to include, of suitcases packed and unpacked, excessive air miles, identical hotel rooms, wake-up calls, altercations with desk clerks, ticket trouble, sleeping the wrong hours, irregular meals, mislaid backstage passes, bad security, too much random sex too quickly forgotten, and a lot of waiting.

When she writes about Lazarus she writes about me. I like the idea of a relationship with a dead person. In her letters I can read her soul. The people I walk among are as good as dead, as am I. Maybe she can save me from myself. Maybe we can bring each other back. I like the idea of a second chance.

It seems so long since any of it was real, since the act took over. You get so used to being watched you end up watching yourself like you were someone else. The hardest sentence I can write is: I am no longer as famous as I used to be.

Which is worse, the

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