Record Review
It’s loud, but soft all at the same time, and I’m not guessing this will be the first contradiction of the night. She’s saying something, but I can’t quite make it out. It’s 3:00 after a long night at the Disco, and we’re sitting in a favourite corner booth of my local diner. Just as I think it’s my ears ringing which make me feel like I’m going deaf, I’m able to make something out. “Let’s get high,” she croons. Slowly undressing herself in my minds eye as the strings swell and let go, so the only clear line I can hear her say is “We were born to die.”
As she takes me back to her place I take the time to notice where we are, some affluent neighbourhood somewhere, secluded away from the other parts of town I usually stomp around in. She’s yanked my tie off and led me to her en suite bathroom, and telling me about her old man, how he likes to watch her in the glass room, bathroom at the Chateau Marmont. Her body felt like heaven to him, she says, as if she’s trying to make me jealous.
Personally, I’m just so drunk that I don’t really care. I’m more concerned with what I’m hearing around us, in this huge vast property that there’s no way she could afford. It’s obvious this is an act, but at the same time, her ancient claw-foot tub filled with nothing but dry cleaning keeps attracting my eye, and I wonder how much all of those gowns in the closet cost as she says something about a ‘one true love’.
I mention that I’m hungry and she leads me down to her kitchen. Under the buzzing and imperfect fluorescent light of her kitchen, she starts being concerned for me, and making weird claims about how she’ll love me to the end of time. I sort of scoff at this as I spread peanut butter on a piece of toast, almost cutting through the cartoonish pomp and circumstance of this place.
After I finished eating, she wants to know what I want to do. Do I want to play a video game? No. Do I want to swim in the pool? No. At this time she seems so in love with me (or at least in love with love) that I’m taken aback by how strong she’s coming on. She’s switched from what she was wearing earlier to “that” outfit, inexplicably wearing a red bra under a sheer white blouse, which I keep staring at between trying to make sense of the mishmash of musical instruments in this thing I want to call a parlor.
There’s something off about it though. I just can’t quite get comfortable. She bangs out a few soft chords on a Steinway, which seems fine until I notice there’s a can of Diet Mountain Dew on the oak bookshelf in the corner. “On The Road”, “Catch 22”, “Gravity’s Rainbow”, and a handful of Toni Morrisson beside her copy of “Lolita” and a ghetto of Chuck Palahniuk novels, including the first edition hard cover of Fight Club, which she probably spent too much on, if she even bought it at all. It’s amazing what advantages a pretty face can afford.
While I’m busy making my way through the bottle of perrier she handed me because I wanted to sober up, and reading her book spines, she’s using that weird voice that is almost inaudible, while the only thing I can understand is when she pulls her voice up a little more and repeats “You’re no good for me,” as she finishes unbuttoning my shirt.
“God, you’re so handsome. Take me to the Hamptons.”
Yikes.
She has that weird attitude that the popular girls seem to affect in high school: down to Earth enough to make you want to really love her, but there’s this veneer that basically didactically tells you that after tonight I might as well forget about calling her. This will be our time together, and that will be it. Worst case scenario, I’ll sleep on the couch. The best case would be to grab a cab and get home. I think about this as I try to figure out what she means when she keeps repeating that “Money is the anthem of success,” as if trying to defend her ostentatious lifestyle.
This dark paradise, filled with all kinds of instruments— harps, synths, drums, and that Steinway which seems to compliment the neverending selection of orchestra strings— still seems oddly familiar. I think back to Adele and Nicole Atkins, and how I didn’t need to see them writhing around in front of me as I sat listening to them. Nor had they made grandiose claims about falling asleep and never wanting to wake up.
I pound back the last of my Perrier, which I only notice now is grapefruit flavoured. This realization causes me to wonder why anyone would bother; with a flavour so light, why bother making it at all. Then I think back to my copies of Brian Eno’s ambient series and shut my mouth.
The next little while is more of the same: she talks about America and recounts things I don’t quite feel a connection to. She knows she’s talking to me, but she seems to think I’m a teenager who only read the first few chapters of The Great Gatsby; glamour and glory of the affluent while claiming humbler roots, but not being so specific as to make either seem really that sincere, while at the same time she’s seeking vengence for people who didn’t like her ‘then’, and how do they like her now?
I mentally cut to Toby Keith as she pours me something from a cocktail shaker. I shouldn’t, I know, but I do anyway because this might be the only way I can put up with what seems like a neverending monologue that I just don’t connect to. All I can think about is getting a cab and getting the hell out of here. I don’t know where I am, though. I should have paid more attention. Christ.
It’s heartbreak and more like and love, more hyperbole, more of her seeming like she wants to take care of me and put me up in this house, which surely must be rented from some corporate entity. I mean, I rent too, but I rent an apartment, something within my means in a part of town which is easilly accessible by cab. Oh god, I want out of here so bad. I know I promised I’d hear her out though, and that’s the only reason I’m drinking this overly sweet ‘chocolatini’ she poured me.
She takes a break from her diatribe about so-and-so on this trip to here-and-there and how insensitive he was to her feelings to ask me if she should call me a cab. I nod, trying not to seem too eager to leave, but at the same time I excuse myself and ask her where a smaller, less excessive bathroom is.
When I get back, she’s called me a cab, and I finally have enough (liquid) courage to tell her a thing or two.
“Look, Lana. I promised I’d come see you tonight. I promised I’d hear you out, and I promised that I would let you have your say before I finally passed judgement. The fact of the matter is that I think I might be too old for you. I’m not really a fan of reminiscing about apple pie and American flags on the fourth of July.”
I can tell she wants to say something, but I don’t let her.
“It’s not that I think you have no redeemable qualities. I think you’re a little… I’m not sure exactly what the word is. You rely on all of this glamour and lush surroundings—not to mention coffers so deep that you can rub elbows with pretty much whoever you want. That’s fine. But not everyone is going to like you as much as you want them to. Sometimes people just don’t really like you all that much. It was fun, but really, how much of my time do you want? You could’ve stopped singing a long time ago and seemed really sweet, but you overtalked. I’ve been here way longer than I wanted to, and that’s really not great.”
I place my drink down.
“I wanted to be home a half hour ago, but I stuck it out. I said that I would give you your say, and I feel that I did. But I’m sleepy. I’m drunk. I’m tired of you telling me about your ex-lovers while at the same time not really giving me anything substantial to go on.”
She seems to be nodding off now, and doesn’t point out that it’s awfully chickenshit of me to leave on this note, for which I give her credit.
“All of these production tricks around you, it seems like you’ll have a lot of money very soon, especially if things keep going the way they are. But I really think that you could’ve stopped about 20 minutes ago, and I would’ve wanted more, and then I would feel embarrassed that I ever doubted you, but these artificial vinyl pops are just too much. You’re just a bit too drippy for my taste, and I know who would really get a kick out of you, but unfortunately, it’s not me. It’s just not me, it’s you.”
And like that, I’m out the door and into the back seat of my cab, and I ask the driver to turn up the song playing on the radio. I feel like I need a shower and a cleansing of my palate.