Title: Pop the Cherry
Author: mao
Disclaimer: Velvet Goldmine characters, likenesses, and plotlines belong to Todd Haynes, Michael Stipe, and the rest of those crazy kids. The lyrics belong to Placebo's song, "My Sweet Prince." I'm making no money off this (at least, not that I know of), nor do I get (or claim) credit for any of that stuff. Suing me will accomplish nothing. So there. :P
Author's Notes: The woman in this chapter is a figment of my own imagination, yes. Don't consider this a self-inclusion; she's just a plot device. She was vaguely inspired by a girl I once knew who died from an overdose.
Warnings: Graphic descriptions of drug use and semi-graphic sex. Brief language, vague mention of incest.
***
1967
It's a night like any other - another shoddy, wild performance on a rickety stage, with another crowd, composed of the usual people, pressed up against it, making it bend and bow ever so slightly. Another line of blow, another couple of beers, another hit of acid to see him through the show, to help keep him up, popping around the stage like he's nuts - which, he thinks with a laugh and a sip of beer - he really is.
His nineteenth birthday came and went a couple weeks ago, and he's going on a year and eight months since he left his parents' house and the watchful eyes and groping hands of his older brother. He hasn't looked back; he loved them all once, but he feels freer in the world, though he's only gone as far as Detroit. At least, for now. Either way, Ann Arbor feels light years away.
And for now, there's groupies by the dozen. Lanky girls with thin hair and skinny smiles that don't quite reach their eyes, in tight clothes that don't quite fit correctly. They all want a piece of him; he could feel their yearning from the stage, as he hopped about, his cock bouncing against his naked thigh, flipping them off and touching himself to get them to yell. When he'd launched himself into the crowd, pants firmly re-secured to his hips, the boys and girls rejected by Michigan's dying culture had held him up, proud that one of their own was speaking for them, even in such graphic terms.
Now the girls - their eyes hollow and lusting from dark caverns, going after him, after the boys in the band, their trashy makeup smeared with dancing, their jeans so tight he can see the lines of their panties. He's fucked some of them - most of them, actually - before, and really has no interest in doing it again.
But there's someone new tonight, he realizes as he glances through the crowd of groupies. Long, dark hair falls over her thin shoulders, and her face is pale and peaked behind it. Her eyes, light blue, seem too light from behind the curtain of her lashes, and she's dressed like the others. She carries a bag - a hideous, macrame hippie-type thing - over one shoulder, clutching it as close as a baby.
It takes him a few minutes to figure out that what bothers him is that she moves differently. He sits on the tired couch, girls all around, watching her slowly, trying to figure her out. She's been approached by the drummer, who's hitting on her, but she seems indifferent to him. On the contrary, she keeps glancing lazily over at Curt, her head moving slowly to the music, her body seeming to dance even as she stands there.
Eventually, she manages to escape, leaving one of her friends behind with the drummer, and, with a glance to him, heads for one of the doors. As if in another world, he follows her, extracting himself cautiously from the girls on either side of him, and follows her into one of the narrow bedrooms of the house.
She's seated on the bed in the dim light, waiting for him. He locks the door, sits down next to her, and realizes that her pupils are growing steadily bigger and bigger; her eyes look like marbles, with just the thinnest layer of faint blue around the edges of them.
"Have you ever chased the dragon?" She asks him quietly, her eyes meeting his in their glassy glory, her voice soft like cat's feet; the words dart out quickly, softly, then retreat into the blackness around them. He shakes his head, not taking his eyes from hers'. But she doesn't come back to it. Instead, she tells him, "I saw you tonight. You seem lost," and she reaches out, one of her hands as pale as moonlight brushing the dishwater blond of his hair back behind his ear. "Who are you, Curt?"
At first glance it's a simple question, but even a second later, he realizes he has no good answer for her; he is no more aware of who he is than he is aware of what will happen to him next week. Softly, so softly he almost can't hear her, she murmers, leaning her forehead against his, "Do you want to find out?"
He wants the magic she has; that's for damn sure. He was caught on her the moment she walked in, but the spot where her forehead burns against his own is too warm for this planet, and he wants to join her in space. He remembers the last time he felt something so hot on his head - electromagnetic convulsive therapy and two metal pieces against the sides of his head; trying not to like boys and long conversations with God about why he was the way he was.
"Yes," he finds himself whispering, trying to match her tone, and she nods, suddenly decisive, and begins digging into her bag. She makes the motions slow, ritualized and simple, sacred as a tea ceremony. She pulls out a bag of white powder, some of which she empties into the bowl of a bizarrely-altered spoon. She pours a little water into it, and holds it over a candle he's only just noticed.
As it simmers, she murmers some more. "It'll be painful," she tells him.
"I can handle it," he says.
As she pulls out the syringe and fills it, screws the needle on the end, she says, "It'll involve more sacrifice than you know."
"I can do it," he tells her, as she takes his bare arm in her hands, loops her belt around the muscle and pulls it tight. She squirts a little out the end of the needle, then licks it carefully.
As she taps the vein with her hand - "You'll be one with God, and then you'll be alone." She meets his eyes, syringe poised over his vein. He takes in a deep breath, scared and thrilled, his blood pumping so hard he can barely think.
"Do it," he tells her softly. "I've been there before."
She slips the needle in and he winces, but then the plunger is down and he's suddenly, unexpectedly, above the moon. It happens faster than he ever imagined, easier - just a simple push of a plunger - and he's soaring away on silver wings, the wind warm on his face and the beating of the planet's own heart the only sound around him.
And then he's back with her, but her skin is more luminous, her eyes huge, beautiful marbles. She smiles at him as he looks at her in wonder, examines cautiously the silk of her dark hair, the alabaster of her skin, all with slow, curious hands. She gently removes the belt from his arm, puts the needle and the spoon and the little bag of white powder away in her bag, and he reaches out, feeling her cheek.
It's amazing; he can feel the beat of her heart through the thrumming of her blood below the skin. The skin is soft as ancient paper, and the shadows under her eyes and on the far side of her nose seem as deep and cavernous as those on the moon. Her cheekbones seem sharp enough to cut, and he's careful to touch them slowly, to as not to hurt himself on the razor edge of them. Her lips, hot, force out warm air between their pillows, and he pauses with his fingers on them, enjoying the intense feeling of her breath hot on his hand.
Then she giggles, suddenly girlish. "Popped your cherry." Her skinny shoulders buckle inward, and he finds himself laughing with her. Then she's serious again, almost scientific if not for the great glass of her own eyes. "How is it?"
He can't answer. Instead, he leans forward, moving his hand out of the way, and kisses her, tentatively, on the lips. She responds, molding her mouth to fit his, caressing his lips with her tongue, forcing them open, forcing herself inside and around him.
Next thing he knows, they're fucking, naked, their flesh hot against one anothers'. He's inside her, but she's wrapped around him like a glove, and every time she touches him he feels as if he might explode. At his climax, he shudders, collapsing into tears. She climbs off him, wraps her porcelain arms around him, and murmers into his ear.
When he awakes in the morning, the sun is too bright, the day too horrifically cheerful to even contemplate being a part of. He feels as if something inside him is missing, some part of him that has been cut out like a kidney or a lung; something he could live without but would rather not. His teeth ache and his stomach wants to kill him, revolting to a point where he feels as if he might vomit all over himself.
She is gone now, as silently as mysteriously as she initially came, and no trace of her remains in the messy room. At least, that's what he thinks until he sits up, cursing his complaining head and gazing at the beautiful red mark on his arm.
She's branded him with it, but she's also left him with a gift, he sees as he glances at the end table. Wrapped up together with a bow on top is a syringe, the bag of white powder, and a spoon. A note rests beneath them, and he picks it up, reading it slowly, struggling through the oncoming stupor to read the curling writing.
Popped a different kind of cherry last night, didn't I?
Remember, with this gift comes great sacrifice.
Use it well.
And as he turned his head to look at the first shot, already cooked up and sitting inside the syringe, he knows she's right.