First chapter of my novella, Just Between Us, available May 28th 2021.
Obviously I was confused. Laying on my hotel balcony, unable to choose between them earlier, I had a mai-tai in one hand, and an aggressively healthy green cucumber concoction in the other. I was in this between state of certain comfortable failure or hope for either a smaller ass or a bigger one. The call came that she was ready. I’d already given up, due to her being notoriously elusive and prone to positioning interviews, I was already in my bathing suit, a drink in hand, sitting on my balcony half in my robe.
As I said I was between states. I was between being grown-up and professional and reveling in a lost weekend. Shenanigans to ensue and never to be spoken of again, or an article for Thunder Mountain Revue. I was in that odd frame of mind you find yourself in when you have unexpected waiting time and you’re in a different time zone and your girlfriend has just left you and taken your dog, and you’re thirty-nine so no bars to go pick up chicks because that makes you feel sad and old and that’s the last thing you want to feel right now. Plus the last Lesbian bars have shut their doors. It’s a wasteland.
I had flown out from Los Angeles, to interview Sara, and was supposed to have met up with her this afternoon. I’d let her team know I’d arrived and was en route to the hotel, and they uttered the dooming words “she’ll let you know.” But the call hadn’t come, and as the afternoon had waned so had I. Staving off the sadness of a breakup. And the loss of my dog, I’d opened my suitcase but not unpacked. I’d started a shower but changed my mind, put on a bathing suit, and then after ordering room service, put on a robe. I’d ordered the aforementioned fun-size mai-tai and then embarrassed at just ordering that, the green juice, and then on further thought steak and eggs from room service. If you are a sensitive and attuned person these things would be your first clue to my unraveling inner state of affairs.
After hearing myself agree to meet Sara in an hour, I hung up the phone and looked at the drink I’d set down on the side table, looked down, at my bare feet with chipped polish, puzzled at the one egg and half a steak looking back up at me from an unnecessarily big silver tray and looked out at the pool. At the hypnotic rounds of people doing water aerobics in the shallow end of the pool over the hibiscus vines. Who were these people? Who feels a sudden need to do water aerobics in a hotel as the sun sets? Come to think of it who does water aerobics while on holiday? I feel out of place and unsure of myself. Actually, as I take a sip of my mai-tai, I have that odd sensation of something, something in my mind sliding sideways, The hotel’s nostalgia makes me feel odd, unsure. It’s a strange inversion of time and space. Are they serious or joking, or is it a strange mixture of both? It’s how I feel about hipsters. I take a sip of the green juice that smells strongly of cucumber. It’s delicious. It’s confusing and annoying and I like it and that in itself is annoying.
I’d given up on tonight, resigned myself to settling in for perhaps a long weekend, hoping that the call would come, expecting it probably wouldn’t, and, was going to spend most of tomorrow drunk, laying in the sun or floating in the pool. That was the plan. I know Sara fairly well, I’ve interviewed her a handful of times since the nineties, and not only is she is notoriously moody, she had just gone through a very public, very speculated about relationship breakdown, about which little was actually known, and about which had been expressly stated as off-limits in the terms of agreement to do this interview. Actually doing this interview was not the plan.
I down my mai-tai and make some coffee in the tiny coffee maker and lay down on the floor which was a bad idea because it smells vaguely of sauce down here and steak fat, old socks, and dog, so I look out the window up at the darkening sky and watch the palm trees shake their fronds at me. Like Vegas showgirls, you stop noticing after a while, because you have other things on your mind, like how your girlfriend left you and took your dog, and the house is empty but strangely quiet and that’s why you took this sudden interview, even though you should be trying to get your dog back although deep down you don’t care and this frightens you and makes you feel bad. And makes you think that maybe the accusations Lila hurled at you are accurate. That maybe you are desensitized, and a bit of an asshole. You try it on for size, and say up to the palm trees,
“I am an asshole.”
but the palm trees shake on. They don’t care, maybe they’re the assholes.
Like I said, I know Sara pretty well and was counting on her either not feeling up to this interview, which in light of the recent speculative press would be understandable. Sara isn’t one to defend her work or herself and the current press is going to make it hard not to respond to that. We could do this whole interview and then she’ll pull the plug, and it will be for nothing, Sara, has clout even with editors at Rolling Stone, that’s how famous she is. Like I said, I’ve interviewed her a handful of times before, starting at Glastonbury in the late nineties. The nineties, jesus, just saying that makes me feel old.
I do take my work seriously though, despite what people may think of me. Preparing for this interview on the seven hour flight here, reading through my old interviews with Sara and up to the only two she’d given this year, it was interesting for a few reasons, one of which was reflecting on the passage of time from 1998 to now, twenty years is a long time. A lot has changed. In the first interview, I was using a battery operated hand cassette recorder, sleek and black, small enough to fit in my pocket and the epitome of cool at the time I thought. There is one point in that early interview, where I faithfully include that I had to ask her to stop while I flipped the tape over. I roll my eyes at the palm trees who are still faithfully waving their fronds at me, like idiots.
Why was I reading through the interviews? I pride myself on continuing a conversation with my subjects, and while answering questions the magazine wants to ask, they are paying for this after all, I also try to take the subject into new territory, to be ready to wander off the path at any given opportunity. You’d be amazed how many people want to stay to a script. Safe, practiced answers, their replies practically bleeding, make me look cool.
But she is ready and now I’m half caught. The combination of the aerobics at sunset and the Atomic Age setting, the enthusiasm for retro is unsettling. I’m not at my best. The nostalgia for aggressively mediocre sanitized Americana has put me in a bad mood. I’m trying to figure her out at this hotel - the choice of this hotel is puzzling. It’s a squat mid-century haven for aging hippies who love good design, and love using that odious phrase. The type of people who use the word “sexy” to replace the word exciting, so grossly mediocre they think they’re original. There are outdoor fire pits, macrobiotic food, the option of a massage with cupping or crystal tipped acupuncture and a cold plunge pool. She’ll meet me at the back. She keeps a suite there. I’m relieved because I don’t feel like going anywhere at this point, dragging my heavy ass up off the balcony to answer the phone was a task in itself. As I get dressed, I’m puzzled, this is not where one would expect to find one of the world’s biggest rockstars. I clean myself up and slide into black pants and a bias-cut shirt, both are cut to flatter and hide the body and is my interview uniform. I look professional but not uptight, I look cool but not like I’m trying to hard, and I look a little sexy without drawing attention to myself. I quickly brush my hair. I feel like getting a haircut this morning was a mistake. I look like I’m trying to hard to impress, like a freshman taking the date his mom got him to prom, freshly shorn and vulnerable, like a target.
I look in the mirror, I’m tired. I don’t look haggard, just tired and exactly like what I am, a person who is still trying to deal with something, unfortunately by doing things like getting ill-timed haircuts. I’ve been drinking too much, my fingernail polish is chipped, so it’s very apparent I’m not dating again. The last few months have not been kind, I saw it coming and stuck in there too long, as always, and now I’m kicking myself for letting it go on, I feel emotionally sucked dry, and as evidenced by the choice of a green juice and a mai-tai, unbalanced.
Still, when the Revue had asked me to interview Sara I had jumped at the chance. We had talked over the years, we had been each other’s first major interview, so there was a nice symmetry to this. In the following years, we had maybe a handful of interviews, so I knew her, the new album had sold nearly ten million copies already, and although I had taken the assignment, I was fairly certain I would just get a free weekend.
But in the back of my mind, on the slight chance, Sara did go through with the interview, the raw honest power I had heard in the pre-release singles reminded me of that girl twenty years ago, and I had a certain curiosity about how Sara, the self-described ‘freak who grew up in a backwoods trailer park’ was dealing with having become the most famous musician in the world.
Feeling the familiar defeat and acceptance looking at the face in the mirror, I just have time to decide that some mascara and colored lip balm are probably a good idea and get those on. I try very hard to remember to tell myself to be grateful for the face you have it’s the one you’ll regret in ten years, which just makes me feel pissy. My last ditch attempt to look professional is to remove the chipped nail polish with those wipes meant to clean your shoes when there is a light knock on the door. Despite myself my heart flutters a little. The hunt is on, on track of something.
I check my watch as I go answer the door. It’s been about thirty minutes. There is a slight young man, with silvery blonde hair, a pleasant manner and forgettable smile.
“Ms. Reeve? I’m Justin, Sara is ready for you. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to her suite.”
“Nice to meet you. Just let me grab my things.” A quick handshake, friendly but businesslike. He has surprisingly big hands for such a slim man. You must be polite to the underlings but not too formal or too friendly. They are the gatekeepers and if they decide you are trying to sidle up to them to gain inside information you’re screwed. If you’re too cold or they perceive you are snubbing them, they might make it very hard for you to gain access to your interviewee. And sometimes it’s just a small mind on a power trip. It can screw you either way.
I grab my sleek Italian bag, double-checking everything is there depending on where we might end up. It’s big enough to carry a thin silk shirt, an inner pocket has an extra charger for my phone, two different sets of earrings, a bracelet, a roll of hundreds from the magazine just in case, and my passport.
Rule one. Don’t look like you’re doing an interview but don’t look like you’re going on a date. Rule two. Be prepared for any situation so that you don’t screw up the flow, hence the earrings and a nicer shirt that I can change depending on where we go. Rule three. Have more cash on hand than you think is practical or necessary. Much more. Rule four. Make sure you can charge your phone in order to record the interview. Nothing will make you look like an idiot quicker than your phone running out of juice. Your job is to be blank, safe, expensive looking, to make the interviewee feel better about themselves by confiding in you. Like a swiss bank. Or that’s the hope anyway. But once in a while you get to interview someone like Sara, with whom you already have a rapport, who is not just a vapid simpering press machine. Oh yes - and rule five. Always make the magazine bankroll all of it.