It's Not You It's Me (17 page)

‘Maybe I’ll need a few more than two drinks. More like five. Six. Seven.’

‘I’m sure Sharon would be more than happy to buy.’

Jas snorts in reply as Shane starts speaking to the group. Everyone quietens down in order to hear.

‘OK, people, I think that’s all of you now, so we’re off—
like a rat up a drainpipe. We’re going to be walking a few streets down to Atomika, this funky little karaoke bar. I’ve had a few words to my mates there, and they’ve agreed to give us reduced drinks all night…’

A cheer from the group.

‘On one condition. Everyone, and I mean
everyone
, has to get up and have a croon.’

A boo from the group.

‘Come on, it’s not that bad. Just take advantage of those reduced drinks and we’ll probably be dragging you off the stage. Now, let us be motionary.’

Jas looks at me worriedly. ‘I can’t sing.’

‘This is no time to get stage-fright, Spawn-boy.’

He shakes his head. ‘Shhh, not so loud. What I mean is, if I sing she’ll know who I am—that Sharon girl. She’ll find out.’

‘So? Big deal. It’s only a matter of time before she works it out anyway.’ I turn to go and follow the group, but Jas catches me by the arm. I look up at him, wondering why he’s so worried.

‘You don’t understand. If she finds out, she’ll tell people. I know her type. The media’ll be here in under an hour.’

‘Do you really think the media would come?’

‘They always come,’ he groans.

I finally get it then. The Sharon and the media thing. I’d been wondering about it since that day in Reims—Jas’s fretting about the media taking a few photos, worrying that Sharon would work it all out and alert them. It’s bigger than I thought. It’s not that he doesn’t want Sharon to find out who he is and have to give her an autograph and have the other people on the tour interested in him. It’s more than that. He thinks the media are going to turn up and he’ll have to give interview after interview. Photo after photo. Well,
fair enough. I’d hardly want a media entourage on my holiday. All Jas is after is a little privacy, and I don’t blame him if that bathroom phone call from Zed’s anything to go on.

I think about his problem for a moment before I come up with something. ‘Um, how about if you faked it? Sang differently? No one’s asking for a star performance from you tonight.’

‘You think I could?’ He seems relieved by my suggestion.

I check to see if he’s being uppity, but he’s not. ‘Sing badly? Sure you can. If you don’t think you’re up to it, just follow my lead. I’m a pro at singing badly—even in the shower.’

He takes his hand off my arm then, and looks a bit less worried. ‘Guess we’d better catch up with Shane.’ I follow his lead and we walk quickly out through the door and up to the group, who are waiting at the lights.

The group walks briskly the rest of the way to the little bar. It’s cold. Winter’s coming. And to add to this I think people are still more than a little hungover from the day’s festivities. This combination leaves us all reasonably quiet, and when Shane tries to start up a rousing chorus of ‘everyone’s favourite beer song’ he doesn’t get very far. As one, we walk even more briskly the rest of the way and the relief is visible throughout the group when we finally get to our destination a few streets later.

Inside, I have to admit to myself that the place really
is
pretty funky for a karaoke bar. It’s very retro, with pink and red lighting, which makes it feel warm and cosy. There’s a fifties-looking vinyl bar, and the place is dotted with little white vinyl bucket chairs and tables all facing…

…the stage.

You can feel everyone’s eyes stare at it in trepidation as they enter the room. And then, when they’ve all seen it and
worked out what it is, there is an instant lemming-like descent on the bar.

‘Scotch?’ Jas asks.

‘Yep. Scotch and dry, I think. A double.’

‘Right.’

I find a table and take a seat. Soon enough, Jas comes back. With four drinks. ‘Thought we might need them. Dutch courage and all that.’ He puts them down on the table.

‘Thanks.’ I take a sip out of one of my drinks. ‘But what are you talking about—Dutch courage? You do this all the time. And usually in front of hundreds of thousands of people who are
paying
to see you.’

‘Usually they’re not intent on “discovering my true identity”.’ He says this in a deep voice, as if he’s reading from an action-packed comic book.

He’s definitely losing it, I think, taking a close look at him as I keep sipping—I really
do
need the Dutch courage. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’ll find a song we can do together and I’ll drown you out a bit. You’ll be fine.’

Jas downs his beer in almost one go.

‘If you’re still able to stand upright in half an hour, that is.’

After everyone’s had a couple of drinks, and a few stragglers have arrived at the club, Shane gets the ball rolling with ‘California Girls’ by the Beach Boys. He includes lots of lovely up-and-down suggestive hourglass-shaped hand movements for all the girls in the audience to enjoy. Poor guy, I think as I watch him trying his damnedest. I hope he’s making a lot of money out of this job and that he doesn’t end up having a psychiatric episode later on, when the flashbacks start. What do they call it? Post-traumatic Oktoberfest stress disorder, I think.

A few of the girls strut their stuff next, in groups of twos and threes. It’s the usual showing-of-age time warp choices, such as ‘Fernando’ by Abba and ‘Careless Whisper’ by George Michael. That kind of thing. The kind of thing I need to be way, way drunker than I am right now to get up and embarrass myself with.

Give me half an hour.

When Jas and I have downed our fourth drink each, I decide I’d better get moving before I end up under the table. ‘I’m going to find us a song,’ I tell him.

Jas nods. ‘I’ll source us a couple more drinks.’

It takes me a good ten minutes or so to work through the list of songs available. When I’ve made my choice and stuck us in line, I go back to our table. ‘Guess what I chose?’ I say to Jas as I sit down.

‘What?’

‘“99 Luftballons” by Nena—they had it.’

‘What? In German?’

‘Of course.’

‘But I can’t sing in German. Can’t read it. All I can do is the “99 Luftballons” bit.’

I give him a look. ‘Duh. That’s the whole idea. I’ll do the verses and you just come in with whatever you can work out. That way you don’t have to do too much singing.’

Jas’s face perks up then. ‘Duh, yourself. Might even work. When are we on?’

‘Not for a while yet. I think there are still about three or four people in front of us.’

‘Here you go.’ Jas pushes my two drinks closer to me.

Hmmm. Should I, or…? Of course I should. If I’m going to be carrying us up there I’m going to need it.

Jas and I sit back and clap along as a few guys have a go
on stage singing a Beatles song. After this, it’s Sharon who makes her way up.

‘Got a bad feeling about this.’ Jas turns to me. ‘A really bad feeling.’

And he’s right to have that really bad feeling, because in the next few seconds we learn that Sharon’s chosen a Spawn song, of all things. She struggles through it badly, all the time looking straight at Jas, which makes everyone else turn around and look too.

To make matters worse, pictures of Zamiel start flashing up on the video screen halfway through the song. Zamiel walking down the endless corridors of some stadium. Zamiel in the wings. Zamiel running on stage. Zamiel doing his famous S&M banned-in-twenty-countries scene. Zamiel’s fans trying to get on the stage. Zamiel’s bodyguards kicking the shit out of the fans trying to get on the stage. That kind of thing. Good clean, honest fun.

‘Jesus…’ Jas groans under his breath and lowers his head a little.

If he could fit, I think he’d try to slink underneath the table right now.

I try very, very hard not to laugh as I watch the video. It’s hysterical seeing Jas as Zamiel—the bad boy of the music world—when I know he’s really pretty much like a kitten. No, that’s not fair and, frankly, a bit emasculating. Maybe more like a gummy old lion who’s lost its teeth and roar but can still pace around its cage majestically. Anyway, kitten or lion, it’s something that I never would have thought he had in him—pulling off a character like Zamiel. And I’m having a great old time until the end of the clip…when Zamiel does the stare thing.

Now, the stare thing’s something I’ve tried to avoid seeing in the media, because it tends to give me the shivers.
It’s been a pretty hard task dodging it over the last year or so, though, because it’s Zamiel’s favourite move and is invariably included in every Spawn video clip, ad et cetera. And the stare is just a stare when it comes down to it—really, that’s all it is, just a stare.

But, boy, is it an effective one.

Because Zamiel’s stare, with Jas’s dark, dark eyes, whitened face and lashings of kohl eyeliner, is mesmerising. Like one of those hypnotic swirls. As you watch, you seem to go deeper and deeper in, and try as you might there’s no pulling away. Just as I’d felt before, in the hotel room.

I squirm in my seat and avert my eyes from the video screen.

Thankfully, the song is over soon enough, and a group of guys from the Beer-drinking Society get up and sing Men at Work’s ‘Down Under’—screaming out the bits about Vegemite sandwiches. The song is Jas’s saving grace. It gets everyone bar the English Sharon and Tara and the Irish couple singing along and forgetting about Zamiel, his likeness to Jas and the fact that Sharon can’t seem to leave him alone.

Even though it’s not on the way to her table, Sharon manages to walk past us as she crosses the floor to her seat. ‘Hope you liked it,’ she says to Jas with a lick of her lips.

He turns to me when she’s out of earshot. ‘Ugh. Did you see that?’

‘I could hardly miss it.’

‘What’s she talking about, anyway? How could I like it? She bloody murdered that song up there.’

I know what’ll take his mind of Sharon. ‘Guess what?’

‘What?’

‘We’re on next.’

Jas sinks the rest of his beer in reply.

A minute or two later, I’m dragging him up front. He’s not exactly being supportive about me having to sing on stage when I’ve never done it before. I’m scared out of my wits, even with three and a half drinks under my belt. While we wait for the music to start up all I want to do is sprint straight out the front door of the bar.

But I don’t.

I glance up at Jas, beside me, hoping for some words of encouragement, maybe even a few tips. But Jas, with his years of performing experience, looks as if he wants to do a runner as well. He doesn’t, however. Instead, he picks up one of the microphones and hands me another one.

Here goes.

‘Er, hi. We’re Jas and Charlie. Again,’ he says, introducing us. ‘This is going to be harder for me than for Charlie. I don’t speak any German—except, of course, for
Zwei Bier, bitte!
and
Wo ist die Toilette, bitte?
So anyone who can speak a bit, try and sing along with us…’ He trails off as the music starts.

I take a big breath and watch as the words come up on the video screen. They’re moving quickly and, being in German, I have to concentrate on them with all my might just to read them out.

I struggle through the first lines, trying to make the unfamiliar words fit the tune. It’s a while before the two words I do know finally flit across the screen. And when Jas sees them—
99 Luftballons
—he belts them out as loud as he can.

Everyone laughs.

I keep right on struggling through the next verse, but, having done this, things then seem to get a bit easier. The words begin to fit in, I start to feel less nervous and take in the atmosphere.

Beside me, Jas joins in with whatever he can work out from the screen—usually just the
99 Luftballons
bits, which
everyone is now belting out every time they come up. Jas looks relieved when they join in, and as more and more people come on board he starts to visibly relax on stage.

Big mistake.

Because as soon as he relaxes I think he forgets why he didn’t want to sing in the first place. And when he lets himself go, it’s hard for him not to look like Zamiel did before. Drunk as Jas is, he seems at ease now, unlike everyone else who’s been on stage this evening. It’s his movements that give him away, I notice when I’ve got a spare moment. Everyone else was gawky and self-conscious. But not Jas. He knows how to move on a stage to make people watch him. He knows how to hold the microphone properly, knows how to use it properly. He has a presence, while I…

I just have a bad voice, I realise as I squawk a high note out particularly badly. I try to concentrate on my singing then and not watch Jas too much. Though it’s difficult. Because watching him is, I hate to admit it…incredibly sexy.

I put it down to my Jim Morrison rock star thing. I could never understand that—why I found Jim Morrison so attractive. The man was grubby and drugged out of his mind, with dirty hair and clothes that had seen better years, let alone better days. Not my type at all. But somehow you didn’t see those things when he was on stage. Off stage—blah. But when he was on stage there was no denying that man was some very choice eye candy. And as long as you couldn’t smell him you were OK—the dream could live on.

What is it about women and the rock star thing? What makes a relatively plain guy suddenly so attractive when he’s singing and there’s hundreds of women drooling before him? Another mystery that will never be answered, along
with ‘Where’d the last chocolate biscuit go?’ and ‘Who left a tissue in their pocket in the wash?’

I try desperately to ignore the fact that Jas is beside me. I keep singing and try to control those stupid, stupid hormones of mine. But it’s difficult, because the fact is I’m pissed.

Sehr
pissed.

I look out at the audience for a second or two and see Sharon watching us just that little bit too closely. Standing near her, Shane follows my gaze to see that I’m keeping an eye on her. He goes up to her then. Distracts her for a bit.