Chapter 6: A KISS Between Strangers

Julia froze by the bed, her mind suddenly transfixed on the black mole on Paul's check. This she was just noticing and like a sudden flashback about to descend on her, it brought her life, up to this point, into painful relief.

She remembered his face, his baby's butt white face, leering at her on an album cover. She couldn't get the horror of Rod Stewart out of her mind.

Descending into the shock of post-traumatic stress, she had come so close to such brutalizing, old-fashioned sexism, such horrifying 80s nostalgia and she hadn't even blinked an eye. On that airplane, she had acted as if pink jeans and big purple hair bows had never happened.

Her mysterious lover Paul would have seen her eyes twitching if he hadn't been trying so hard pretending to fall back asleep. Lucky for him, because if he'd have been more a cliched night of romance on a plane bound for Chicago, he would have felt a twinge of guilt, the kind of guilt that would force him to made the mistake of engaging Julia in an explanation of her sudden strange altered state.

"Julia...what the hell is the matter with you?" he might have said tenderly.

As it was, Julia was left alone to her past. In the early morning hours of modernity, her 80s high-school past of Molly Ringwald movies and aerobics three times a week came rushing into her head.

Which always begs the question, why hadn't Julia slipped into a similar episode three months ago when her job required her to throw a party for Molly Ringwald's Pick Up Artist reunion party/fundraiser for Robert Downey Jr.?

No...it was something insidious about Rod Stewart. She could almost see him, sprawled out on the tarmac after he had been ejected from the plane yesterday.

And then it came back to her. It was 1987 and she was on her third date with Aaron Blitzer. She really liked Aaron Blitzer. He had blonde hair in a very Thompson Twins style mullet...a fun mullet, she thought...one of the more happy, colorful, gravity defying mullets of the 80s.

She and Aaron were watching old video flashbacks on MTV late into the night. Her parents were sleeping down the hall and Aaron had tapped on her bedroom window at 11:32. After she let him in, they curled up in her princess-style canopy pink bed on ruffled pink pillows and watched video after video, each one stretching into another and out into time endlessly, lulling her into the thought that there would always be videos playing on MTV for the sleepless masses. Comforting videos full of color, dancing and dramatically made-up gay men. Such was the innocence of her misspent youth.

At about 2:15 the mood changed. That was when Rod Stewart's Tonight's The Night video came on. Like a wall of fire from inside an innocently opened door! The white lace - the low light - the French cooing - the booze - the leering, lanky Stewart taking trickery to a reluctant Brit Ekland. Aaron stiffened in attention. Who's to say tonight's the night? And before her eyes, Aaron transformed. He metamorphasized from the loveable fushia hair-colored, shoulder pad wearing mini-tart into the lecherous copy of a throwback of cliched French charm and persuasion.

Julia imagined that her first experience of love would be like the video "Take On Me," some sweaty passion after an adventure of outrunning black and white sketched police on mopeds. Not this crock-pot paced cat and mouse, farce of a James Bond scene with an insincere boner.

Between Aaron's nervous emoting of "Come on baby" and "Let me come inside...get it...do you get it?" Julia lost interest in Aaron and moved on to Barry Vanderbotter, her 35-year old Biology teacher.

"Europeans...they're so manipulative," Julia said out loud, a little too loud.

Paul opened his eyes and sighed. "It's the British. Not the French."

"It is too the French!" Julia sobbed. "Don't forget Louis Jordan!"

"You insecure Americans! This is ridiculous! I have a full day tomorrow. I've been given two assignments for mysterious hot single male upgrade on flights to Boca Raton and Flagstaff. I'll have to be listening to this crap all day tomorrow!"

If times weren't so tough in France, he could be working on his passion, he told her, the job he was trained to do...seduce female spies into divulging their state secrets. That job had perks and damn it, he was good at it...not this insipid chit chat with business class drones who found themselves suddenly upgraded by some brilliant fortune out of their otherwise dull lives...upgraded into the very luxury of his company. It made him feel cheap.

"I'd rather run a froufrou dog kennel in Paris for the aggravation," he complained as he pulled on his French suit pants.

Julia left him to assemble himself and depart. She went into the bathroom and closed the door.

"Why do all my one-night stands end like this?" she wondered.

After a shower, Julia came out of the bathroom to an empty hotel room. She stretched out on the bed and turned on the TV. Snippets of The 100 Best Videos Using Animation Between 1980-1982 were playing on MTV. She turned the TV off.

She picked up the phone and dialed her mother in Bakersfield, California. The conversation turned tense when her mother, once a extra in the 1969 movie of the musical Hair, asked her when she was going to get a serious, life-affirming job.

"Mom! I'm happy doing what I do...parties make celebrities happy. And when celebrities are happy, they're more willing to prostrate themselves in blockbuster movies, they're more inclined to entertain troops overseas...and sometimes even throw charity parties if it's trendy that season...you just don't understand the subtle nuances of what I do!"

"Entertain the military! The armed enforcement of third world exploitation, don't you mean. I can't believe you're talking like this. It's like you're a complete stranger to me."

"Look, I didn't call you to argue about my choice of lifestyle. I just want to know if you've kept my box of old 45s. I'm looking for my old Simple Minds records."

*****

Ten minutes later, Julia was suddenly startled by the sound of breaking wood. Someone was kicking in her hotel door! As she moved to grab an empty bottle of wine from the bathroom sink, she found herself face to face with none other than Gene Simmons!

Julia stared at Gene and then glanced at the broken bottle of Beringer White Zinfandel in her hand. She had pointed the broken bottle at the intruder in a vaguely threatening manner, sort of like the way she held her car key in between her knuckles when walking down deserted streets at night, having read in Reader's Digest this was a self-defense technique that would enable her to poke out the eyes of her attacker, but unsure if she'd ever have the nerve to actually poke out an eye.

In the time it took Julia to formulate that long simile, Gene had moved across the room and sat down on the edge of the bed. He leered at Julia and patted the bed next to him.

"I'm glad that's not a bottle of KISS wine you just broke, 'cause that would really break the mood," Gene said.

Julia recalled her past with Gene, the zillions of KISS marketing campaigns she'd dreamed up which he had taken credit for-KISS lozenges, KISS tampons, KISS fruit roll ups, to name just a few. And she remembered their tempestuous affair, the tickle of his obscene tongue in every orifice of her aerobicized body. It had ended badly. She vaguely recalled the commercial failure of KISS suppositories and being bitch-slapped by Shannon Tweed at the Playboy Mansion.

"Gene, you know it's over between us. What the hell are you doing here?" Julia approached him angrily and threw the bottle against the wall. It shattered much the way Ace Frehley's ego shattered when Gene kicked him out of KISS due to his out of control substance abuse problems.

"I'm not here to bang you, baby - this is strictly business. I have a new KISS venture to discuss with you."

"I'm listening, but I hope it's better than your idea of selling signed and numbered locks of Paul Stanley's chest hair."

"I heard you have a meeting with Robin Williams tomorrow."

"So?" Julia said, studying Gene's head. Was that a hairpiece or a nesting Australian fruit bat?

"Well, I've already spoken to Eugene Levy about this. Good man, Eugene. I want to open up a KISS resort in the Cayman Islands and I want to call it 'Club Paradise II: KISS Meets the Beach.' This will draw in both the KISS army legions and the rabid fans of Robin's movie 'Club Paradise' who Eugene tells me have been clamoring for a sequel for years. This will give them a sequel that they can participate, not just watch. It's going to be an interactive music and movie experience. Nobody's done this before. It's visionary. I've just got to get Robin on board. Do you think he'd like it if I wore these rainbow suspenders to the meeting? They don't really go with my black leather outfit, but--"

"Gene, I really think this is not the time nor the place. I'm meeting with Robin to try to get the account for the Mork and Mindy reunion party. That's it. I could lose my job if I lose this account. I'm not taking you along, especially not in rainbow suspenders."

"You'll take me," Gene said, laying back on the bed and spreading his chubby leather-clad legs wide enough for a 747 to land in between them. Julia recalled how the glimpse of his hairy white thigh through the holes in his spandex Demon costume had once made her bottom lip quiver the way her grandmother's strawberry and pretzel Jell-O mold had shook when molested by her fork.

"What makes you so confident?"

Gene reached into his jacket pocket and handed Julia three Polaroids. Julia felt the color go out of her face and she nervously stroked her black and white mohawk haircut.

"You know, you looked a lot better with the long red hair you got in those photos," Gene said, "Now your haircut reminds me a little of Cher after she dumped me."

"I got the mohawk for work," Julia said, recalling hazily the Sid and Nancy reunion party and a catfight at the punchbowl with Chloe Webb. She turned the pictures over in her hands. You could clearly see her face in a couple of them and Gene's hairy bum in all of them. "I think PR Monthly magazine would be interested in those," Gene said, with a fire-eating grin. Julia wondered what would be worse for her career-losing the Robin Williams account because of bringing this middle-aged rock star along or having everyone in the industry know that she had blurred the line between work and personal life by sleeping with such a beastly client. She slumped down onto the bed next to Gene and let the Polaroids slip through her fingers.

"Come on, kid, it won't be so bad. Robin's going to love my ideas for the KISS-themed cabanas." Gene stroked Julia's mohawk and proceeded to molest her in ways that violated the laws of several Southern states.

Afterwards, Julia pulled herself together, put on Gene's rainbow suspenders, and took a taxi with Gene to her rendezvous with Robin Williams, which was to take place in a luxury box at Wrigley Field. Gene offered her a KISS fruit roll up in the taxi. It was red and shaped like his tongue. As she unfurled the fruit roll-up, Julia thought about pushing Gene out of the cab and wondered if she could get away with it.

Continue on to the next chapter, following Julia's plotline...
Continue on to the next chapter, following the original storyline...