Rock Machine

I swore to her…
And if I tell you today about the unusual adventure that happened to me, it is mainly because, by continuing to keep it for myself alone, it would have ended up escaping me. Already ten months have passed and this story, I have the unpleasant impression of having invented it from scratch: just a fairy rock tale. And yet!

I have no luck. I live in a small town in the east, between Nancy and Metz. Every Tuesday, I have a chore to do: validate a Lotto sheet for my parents. Always the same numbers. And that Tuesday, I forgot. It happens. You can guess the rest: Wednesday evening, we theoretically had four good numbers, a small appreciable sum. The idiots! For once they won. The family atmosphere worsening all of a sudden, I take my jacket and I break away. It’s a habit of mine: when things go wrong, I head for Paris, two or three days, the time necessary to make me forget. Around nine in the morning, I started to stop. At noon, I was still in Pont-a-Mousson, I tell you that I have no luck. And it was curdling funny. At two o’clock, I was on the RN4 in Toul. A rotten R6 stopped: two baba-type students going up to the capital. Friendly. (Little anecdote by the way: I quickly realize that they are two notorious addicts: in Vitry-le-François, they ask me for a service: go to a pharmacy to buy a box of syringes for diabetics. With me, that I would walk, I had a good head. The pharmacist has not worked. Since then, in Vitry, I have a reputation!) Around six in the evening, they drop me in the corners of the Chatelet, it is almost night already. Paris has a calming effect on me, in all this panic I feel incredibly free, especially incognito. No question of taking the metro, I can’t stand, it’s too common, and where to go? I go to the first street at random. I will end up finding a cheap hotel, and then, sometimes, chance will offer you little surprises (I remember that one evening I had a particular slab, I was hanging out on avenue George V and I fell in a vernissage. It was at the Kodak gallery. They weren’t even asking for invitations. I had swallowed a maximum of petit fours and champagne. That’s right, Paris, such occasions you will never have in the provinces . Nice!) I come back to my story: I had hiked for a couple of hours feeling sorry for myself when I came across the Olympia. I had never seen: a facade, a style that reeks of the old. Tonight: KIM W. It didn’t fit and I went my way. But still, it made me think: KIM W.! A little balm in the heart, especially in a moment like this. Without being a fan of her. I liked her, a beautiful girl face, what! But I just had enough money for the hotel and food. So? In my head slowly creeps in an idea of a scam. It was easy, it was inexpensive even if it didn’t pay off. Action. I buy a nice envelope. Inside I slide my curb chain (silver plate) and a photo of me (I always have at least one, like Paul Anka who poses in front of the Alhambra in New York. A certain look …) In the artists’ entry : two big Hell’s Angels, minus the Nazi badges. You had to be strong: I take my great airs, on me, I talk to one of them:
– Urgent! It’s for Kim W., I’m waiting for the answer!
It does not stop, sometimes rock critics (one recognizes them by their real cowboy boots and by their false casualness) who exhibit the press cards, real sesames, sometimes gummy kitties from Pathé Marconi, certainly, who come from there. These are lucky! I think of Kim. At this hour, she must feverishly prepare to enter the stage; between a last gargle and a hint of yoga, his surprise by opening the envelope! Five good minutes later, Hell’s arrives:
– Come on!
He hands me my curb chain, without blinking. She kept the photo! Not stupid, she guessed that I was a smart little broke who wanted to come back for free. Friendly. Impressive, behind the scenes, another bluntly world, the Holy of Holies, it runs everywhere: the final preparations, the rising tension. We are now behind the scene, the Hell’s shows me a canvas chair (like the one for directors, say so, except that it doesn’t have my name on it, of course …)
– Take a seat there!

I ask for nothing better. You who were in the room, you may have seen a funny guy sitting wisely behind the bassist’s amp: it was me (even as I ate bass, more than my turn, I sworn). Let’s not talk about the concert, you read the review in “Rock & Folk” and that’s not my point. For more than an hour: Kim, Ki, Kim, especially from behind. Nice, from the back, Kim W. Wow !! But still, I thought she was taller. Then everything will follow very quickly. I find myself in a huge black limousine next to (I give it to you in a thousand) the Kim W.  Like her balanced microphone, the pasionaria blonde hit on me (I exaggerate a little, but it is the effect that it made me, because I really did not expect it, she almost jumped on me) taken by the hand, trained with it. Imagine: all this little backstage world moves away to give us the passage, as if the scene had been repeated in advance: it, breathless, shiny, dripping with sweat, nevertheless hyper decided, me, at best, the air overtaken by events but following the movement. You will make fun (notice, I would have liked to see you in my place … well, that’s a way of speaking!), Clumsily clumsy in the deep armchairs of the Cadillac species (I inquired about the next, it was the ‘Potemkin’ model …) I was like paralyzed: it was too much for me. Unable that I was to get out a word. And it fell well, Kim seemed not to want the toyt to speak to me: an abyss of silence (was it because of the presence of the driver?). Well, it was his business. Had let go of my hand. Looked through the window on his side, and as if his destiny depended on it, the avenues which paraded coldly: Paris by night in winter, there was a light downpour of rain and snow. What was she thinking about? Mystery. Me, I wondered if the next moment she was not going to order me to go down like an undesirable hitchhiker. I stretched my back. Pure fantasy. Because basically, the situation was clear: quite simply, I had been chosen to be the groupi of the singer (in parentheses, what can this word be weird without ‘e’. Sexism?). After all, the nasty hardrockers didn’t do much more with the little girls who were just waiting for that! For her too it should be routine, but for me, what a prospect … We arrive at the hotel, the palace, should I write: the Novapark. Friendly. I will long remember the look of the young hunter in purple livery, who came ceremoniously to open the door for us: that look when he saw me get out of the limousine following Kim W.! A look where read more hatred than admiration. Kim, in the time of the short trip, has caught her breath. This superb indolence too, which is so charming. It is true that she sulks as if she always tried to escape a forced course. In vain. In beauty. Note that she will walk slightly ahead of me, as if, in a last attitude of feminine modesty, she proved to herself that I was following her, almost without asking her permission. Still my fantasy! But no, it must be said that even if I had fun scared myself probably to give me courage, I had regained my senses: was it my lucky day? Well, this time … I’ll be up to the task. First smile, in the elevator. Phew! We feel better now. At the entrance of the room, I immediately notice two large suitcases. Louis Vuitton, please! Only one was to cost at least five thousand bullets. I am fascinated by this world of luxury. Finding the floor, and taking advantage to make the spirit, I asked her if sometimes she would not have been through Italy lately. But she must not have understood. These suitcases, she won’t touch them. In fact, several details in her behavior thereafter suggested to me how much she was only passing through this vast room. Rather a kind of living room, moreover, with an extra large bed.

Brief description of the place: everything here is covered with cloth, diffuse lighting, well-proportioned bourgeois decoration, a few masterpieces on the walls, dominant color: a sophisticated pink. In short, an atmosphere extremely conducive to tenderness to start. A little too fast for my taste, the preliminaries. Rocker heart. No need to make a drawing or add more, it’s not my style, you noticed. Only, memories of a perfect body with a milky complexion (she must be allergic to the sun), pristine skin of a magazine girl, glossy paper, turned and turned pages, crumpled paper …. and shock. Kim, you believe me if you want, was a virgin! At the time it was almost me that almost passed out! I couldn’t believe it! She, the undisputed Sex Symbol of the early 80s, virgin !!! What a scoop if I was a journalist: “Paris Match” was a stone’s throw away! Rest assured, everything went very well. French know-how. […] Then the moment of confidences on the pillow came. In high school, I was not bad at English, apart from my pronunciation which made the whole class laugh. And Kim spoke softly, very softly. After a few cigarettes (I remember well: menthols, do I have to say that since that evening, I only smoke menthols?), She ends up admitting that, unless I am mistaken, her father is a great guy but tyrannical on a certain point: “His fixed idea was to make me a big star. And, according to him, there was a foolproof way to succeed (all apprentice singers, listen carefully!): I had to stay pure for a certain period of time, a very wise little girl in a suggestive pin-up body until I metamorphosed into a monster of innocence and therefore of perversity, then my voice would touch in full heart the libido of the masses who are always more or less in this area in a situation of lack. ” I told him, in order to approve the thesis, that in French, we had an expression: “You have to suffer to be beautiful”, that was a bit of it.
– Yes, and you see the result!
We laughed. It seems, according to her, that by listening to one of her songs whose title I have forgotten since, I would understand better. It was not worth it, I got it. First: frustration, repression; second: understanding, sublimation. Finally, that was the star-system recipe. Elementary, my dear Sigmund. Papa the crooner must have worked his Freud funny. She continued:
– Then, overnight, I was thrown into the jet set and I only frequented the gratin of the show-bizz, you see the kind, lunch at noon with the Jaggers, the evening invited to the parties with movie stars. I was stuck: imagine that I find myself in bed with such guys, I would never have supported my naivety or their condescension. At that moment she stared sadly at the work ceiling, then changed her mind:
– No, in fact, do not believe, I am a very romantic girl, you know, and as long as I do, I was waiting for my prince charming, I would have liked him very much and to him I would have given a present of my virginity. But tonight, I couldn’t take it anymore. I don’t know if it was Paris, the sex capital, that made me feel like this, but it took me there, in my stomach, to go mad. And you, I immediately found you so “mignon” (she said it in French, please), so shy, not like the others!” Nice.

I would have liked to discuss again and again with her, but after making me swear not to say anything about all this (I would have signed my death warrant if she had asked me), that it would be our secret to both and that, anyway, no one would believe me. She fell into a comatose sleep. For a long time I watched him sleep (an exceptional spectacle). Maybe she’ll take me with her tomorrow? Ten in the morning. Disaster! More than me in the big bed. I realize that Kim must have spun English very early. She did not have to make a lot of noise, just to take her suitcases ready, yesterday, she had only taken a shower. Abandoned, I was abandoned, it was not nice of him! In addition, and I do not know if it was to have made love with a star, but on waking I had a hell of a headache. Quickly, at eleven o’clock, from the Champs-Elysees post office, I call Pathe: “I’m a journalist and I want to know where we can reach Kim W.” I was told that we are sorry for me, but that it is too late, she continues her tour in Japan … I was still going to hijack a plane to follow her! Since then, I have written her a good dozen pathetic letters (with my photo always, just to refresh his memory), letters that have remained unanswered until this day. In my opinion (even if I do not despair, because in the heart of a girl of which you were the first, you can not occupy the last place) Kim does not want to hear about me anymore. She must have met her prince charming. And I say that since that night, how unreal, I am a little bit more in love with her than you. Friendly.