Forbidden Fruit

     
August Riley selected an expensive European cigarette from a silver case and lit it with his diamond encrusted lighter from the Four Seasons Toronto and gazed out the floor-to-ceiling window, thirty-two stories above the city. His dark blue eyeliner was smudged from the night before, his pants were fashionably torn, his fingernails chipped black, but the Gucci boots and silver skull ring screamed money. He had bags beneath his eyes. He was tired — not the kind of tired you fix with sleep, but the kind of fatigue you wear like a second skin.

Sitting across from him in a velvet armchair and flanked by an untouched carafe of coffee, was Sir Dean Langdon, the rock critic whose pen could still move cultural tectonics. It was Langdon whose recent story about The Bushwhacker Boys had brought the band's decades long indulgences and misogynist hijinks to a screaming halt. But, he was tired too. He had finally reached a point in his long career where he was tired of interviewing rock stars, their managers, and their hangers-on.

His frustration was brought to his attention when his younger daughter Abby, writing for a college course, had asked him the most important thing he had written in his long career. He told her about all of his famous interviews for Rolling Stone and of the time his ten-thousand-word interview with Mick Jagger had been printed in the New York Times winning him a Pulitzer Prize.

She had said, “I know about those, Daddy. I mean like Shakespeare, or Steven King.”

Dean Langdon had reached that point in life that the European romantics had referred to as the Blaue Blume, or blue flower, a time you began questioning if anything you had ever done had any real meaning. He waited until August was situated, glanced at the voice recorder and asked with a smirk, “So, August… you ever worry your fans might actually catch on?”

August looked at wryly, exhaled slowly. “Catch on to what, man?”

“That you think they’re total morons.”

August chuckled, deep and dry. “They are total morons, Dean. That’s the point.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “You know how we started out? Playing cheap bars, rural town halls, opening for metal tribute acts with names Motley Brew or MetallicB in cities that didn’t even have a Dairy Queen. We were just four broke nobodies from the sticks — no money, broken down gear, holes in our boots, and our only plan was to make enough money to get high, drunk and laid and be able to make it to the next gig.”

He tapped ash into an $800 tray. “But one day Mitch — our bassist — got drunk and angry and just screams into the mic: ‘You people are so f---ing stupid!’ Crowd went wild. Chanting. Chanting, man, ‘We are Stupid, So F—ing Stupid!’ We thought, 'What the hell?' So we did it again the next night throwing in even more insults and outrageous comments. And again. And the more we insulted them — the dumber the lyrics, the more hatred and bile we spewed — the more they worshipped us. I mean Worshipped. If Mitch spit on one they would fall into an orgiastic state and demand, not ask, that he do it again. It made us a ton of money; beautiful girls would throw themselves at us, urging us to debase them in the worst possible ways. I mean, when you’re young, all that stuff has a certain lure. Some of us learn that it comes at a cost though. You start losing track of who you really are.”

Dean nodded slowly. “And Moronic Rock was born.”

August shrugged. “Our first album Imbecilic went triple platinum in a week. The song I wrote to tell them how disgusted they made me ‘Sick of You’, hell, they played it yesterday at the hockey game. They paid us a fortune to use ‘Aghast’ in a soda commercial. ‘When UR Gone’ — people played it at funerals, Dean. Funerals.”

Dean quoted: “’I feel such great delight / when I know you're not around / I fantasize your enemies / have run you into ground.’”
​
“Poetry,” August sighed before raising his coffee like a toast. “For the brain-dead.”

“But how about now?” Dean probed. “The money’s still good, the fame, the private jets, the posh hotels? Still feel like screaming bile into the void?”

August’s face softened for the first time. “No, they can keep all that. I smoke these damn cigarettes because I’m contractually obligated to only smoke this brand. The lighter was a gift from Elton John, you can have it have it if you want it.” Then he admitted. “My wife, Clara… my daughter, Ruth… they wrecked me in the best way. I can’t write that garbage anymore. But the label owns us lock, stock, and barrel. We’re all in debt up to our eyeballs for the houses and the cars, and the jets that our managers bought to promote our rock start image. We owe Black Sun Records three more albums under the ‘Moronic Rock’ clause.”

“So, you’re essentially trapped.”

“Trapped in a mansion, yeah. Cry me a river, right?” August snorted. “But I hate it, Dean. I hate who I am when I perform. The leather, the screaming, the fake nihilism — it's all theater for people who don't want to feel anything real. And as a musician, you hate to rip off the fans by not doing your best during a concert, but it’s hard to wrap your head around it all because you also hate your fans. You lose a bit of yourself every time you step in front of that crowd.”

Dean tilted his head. “Why not just flip the script? Put an image of cross on the next album cover. Sing about Jesus. That’s a guaranteed controversy.”

August paused. “I not going to lie and say I’ve never thought about it. But I’ve got no beef with God or Jesus.  They’ve been more than good to me, much more than I deserve. Saved me, even, in a way. So, no — I won’t fake that. That’d be the worst lie of all.”

Part Two: Berlin

Six months later. Berlin was a cold warehouse venue half-filled with hostility. A thunderous guitar riff rang hollow as August stepped onto the stage.

Twenty-five fans! That’s all who showed up. And they came armed — not with devotion, but with moldy fruit, middle fingers, and guttural rage. Rotten pears. Soggy peaches. Avocados that reeked like betrayal.
The small crowd screamed: “Traitor!” “You’re supposed to hate us!” ”We Want Your Rage!” “Stick This Sunshine Nonsense Up Your Ar###!”

They hurled their savage insults and fruit with equal force. August and the band never flinched. Bulldog Johnny even stood up as he played his drums. Mitch the Bitch kept smiling throughout, and Sal played his organ and wiped the tomatoes from his brow as he played his instrument as sweetly as imagined doing when he was taking lessons from his grandmother Anya, a refugee from Russia.

And up front, August took the brunt of the crowd’s displeasure never missing a single beat. They played through every track from the band’s new, unreleased EP titled Grace Notes — a quiet, melodic collection about early mornings with his daughter, about learning to love oneself after a lifetime of self-loathing, and songs about dancing in the kitchen with Clara while the world was asleep.

After the final note, after the crowd ran out of brutally sarcastic commentary, bereft of rotten vegetables and fruit, the warehouse fell silent but for the squelch of crushed fruit on the concrete floor.

Backstage, Dean Langdon reappeared, eyebrows raised. “Damn, what the hell did I just witness?”

August peeled off his leather jacket — the last he’d ever wear it on a stage. He knew that at some time in the future he might take the stage again, but he reasoned to himself that he’d buy a new jacket, something less rock starrish for the occasion. “That,” he said, “was more like it.”

“They hated it. They hated you. They hated your band.”

“Mostly they hated themselves,” August replied. “They came for bitterness, and we tried to give them something better.”

Dean leaned up against the wall, notebook open. “So August, …tell me how’d it feel? I mean the invective, being pelted with the fruit?”

August grinned, wiped avocado pulp off his cheek. “They brought the fruit to smear on themselves. Me and the mates just filled in for them.”

He winked, “I’ve never felt better in my life.”