Dear Friends,
What a difference a week makes. Last Friday I woke up in Santa Rosa, New Mexico. Nothing against the community of Santa Rosa, but it’s not exactly a place I look forward to visiting again.
Santa Rosa is way better than Tucumcari, though. Two years ago, my buddy Rick and I stayed there on the last night of our way back from Maine and it was a little spooky. We got pizza delivered by a tweeker and it was pretty lame pizza. At least in Santa Rosa, we had some leftover food that Rhondi made to eat.
Now, today, I am finishing up another week for the school year. Almost 1/3 of the way done. It’s crazy. Yesterday the kids and I were both feeling a little like “Is this week over yet?” Hopefully today will be a good day all around.
Club Placebo stuff tonight. I haven’t mentioned it in a while because we’ve been kind of dormant, but Killer Pussy is being celebrated tomorrow night and we are doing some interviews today. The royal “We,” is probably more accurate because I am only doing one interview. Michael P. is doing the other because it’s happening while I am at work.
I never saw Killer Pussy back in the day. By the time I got involved in things in 1985, they were kind of done. I’m sure I missed a few opportunities to see them, but when I first listened to their music, I either didn’t get it or I just wasn’t into what they were doing. In those days I wanted my music to be damaging and brutal and weird. I loved off-putting stuff that was blatant, and I wasn’t ready for the type of satirical attack that made Killer Pussy as good as they were.
Should be a nice afternoon and early evening, though. There will be a little gathering at Club Placebo and I’m really hoping Rhondi will come out and join the fun. I need her to, really. It might not seem real that she is home until we have some fun.
*****
Years later, Robert Smith of the Cure would sing, “It’s Friday, I’m in love” on his band’s hit song of almost the same name, “Friday I’m in Love.” When Aidan Mann would hear that song after it came out in 1992, his heart would stop for a minute and the image of Friday Vermillion (AKA Friday June Adams) would block out anything and everything that was on his mind. Mann hated that damn song.
He hated that he had fallen so hard for his co-star over a dozen years earlier. He hated that she was not there for him to call, hug, kiss, or love. It got so bad that Aidan Mann didn’t even like to use the word “Friday” anymore.
As Mann drove down a street he couldn’t name in a city he didn’t really understand why he was in, The Cure’s song came on the radio and he was transported back to the night after their love scene was filmed in Jimmy’s Brain. Friday Vermillion was sitting next to him on the couch in his rented house and they were staring at way too many small white boxes for Mr. Fung’s China Village.
The two of them had worked up quite an appetite before they finally decided on Chinese food. Aidan loved Mr. Fung’s sweet and sour pork and talked Friday into ordering almost the entire left side of the menu so they could sample it all. He was hungry, but if she kept looking at him the way she was, he could have skipped food for a year.
The truth of the matter was that Aidan Mann was even more infatuated with Friday Vermillion than she realized. A little bit of it was who her parents were. If he was hooked up to a lie detector test, he would have had to have admitted that he was hoping to get to meet them from the first time he met Friday. Deep down, Aidan was a true fan of old Hollywood and Freddy and Janet were a direct link to the days of yore.
After kissing Friday all day and pretending to make love to her, Aidan was putty in her hands. Being a bit older and a little more experienced, he played it off well, but if Friday wasn’t so smitten with him, she would have seen how he was about to be putty in her hands way before she figured it out.
The new couple wouldn’t have any more scenes together until early in the next week, so they were safe from being truly discovered just yet as a romance-du-jour around the set, but many of the more observant cast already knew where they were headed.
As Friday and Aidan sat on his sofa deciding what to try first, Friday’s friend, Melanie, was sitting at Trader Vic’s talking about what they were probably doing with Vince Trantella, Bob Bender, and Bobby Valencia. There were multiple umbrella-embellished cocktails strewn around the table and after each round, Melanie’s voice got a little louder.
“I bet,” started Trantella, “Ol’ Mr. Mann has shown her his motorcycle by now.”
“Friday couldn’t give a shit about motorcyclsh,” Melanie slurred.
“What does Friday give a shit about, Melanie?” asked Valencia.
Melanie stared at Valencia for a few seconds and a puzzled look started to drift across her face.
“Well?” Valencia added.
“Making moviesh, man. Friday loves to make moviesh,” she replied.
This made Trantella, Bender, and Valencia laugh as they looked at each other. Each one of them was thinking the same thing they had all thought before:
Friday Vermillion was going to steal this movie.
*****
See you tomorrow.
This is the motorcycle Aidan Mann would ride.
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