Crystal Passion Ch. 02

Kai's later guests were already pretty much out of it, especially the gay men. I don't know on what. I guessed it was E, but it might well have been poppers. The younger kids all looked like your typical American Grunge and Metal fan and were all totally out of it: generally more in a messy than inspiring way. It's a cliché that Americans know shit about the drug culture, but I think that's only because the American scene is so different to the British one. These kids, mostly boys in their late teens, weren't really much different to any you'd meet in London. But then the New York scene's more like the London scene than it is any other city on the planet. And these kids definitely liked to fuck. There was a mix of those with superhuman skill at maintaining an erection even if they were less than skilled at using it and those who couldn't even slip on a condom before squirting semen all over the place.

Obviously, with the major concern about the big AIDS epidemic at the time, condoms were very much the order of the day especially with so many gay men there: including more Muscle Marys than there are in the Chippendales.

And to top it all, there was also the Rock and Roll.

At first it was just music on the stereo, which mostly pumped out a mix of Hard Techno, New York Disco and Nuyorican Soul. But with so many kids there in leather jackets, long hair and all that Metal shit that had been around in the UK since the time I was a toddler, it was no surprise that the music selection shifted away from club classics towards Grunge and Alt-Rock. And, also not surprisingly, it turned out that these kids had been invited to the party because they were Rock musicians who'd been signed to Sanity records and that instead of listening to CDs they wanted to listen to live music.

I don't know where the drum kit and the electric guitars came from. Perhaps Kai kept them in his apartment for just this kind of occasion, but we soon found ourselves fucking, sucking and fisting not to the metronomic beats of the New York dance floor, but to a discordant, painfully loud and somewhat distracting set of Rock songs.

Those of us in the Crystal Passion band represented a wide range of musical taste. Some of us, like Judy, Bertha and Jenny were Rock fans. Others, like me, Jacquie and Jane, didn't like Rock music at all. And if there was any kind of Rock that annoyed me the most, it was the kind of unnecessarily loud, shapeless and (to my ears) cliché-ridden cacophony that our Sanity record label-mates were performing and which served only to fuck up the rhythm of the fucking.

So, it was actually quite a welcome respite to me when the music came to a sudden and abrupt end. I was in a Sapphic huddle on a black leather sofa with Philippa, Olivia and a teenage Goth girl with a ring through her nose, studs through her nipples and my fist up her gorgeously receptive vagina. I wanted to continue making love without the distraction of all that guttural yelling and predictable power chords.

But unfortunately this wasn't to be.

The impromptu Rock group had generated a din that was loud and shrill enough to upset all the residents in Kai's apartment block, so they called the police to break up the party and allow them a peaceful night's sleep. But when the cops arrived and unplugged the speakers, what they saw must have made the eyes light up of any police officer who wanted to augment their monthly tally of successful arrests. With all the drugs and explicit sex on display, this was surely the opportunity for a king-size bust.

Despite Kai Pharrel's attempt to defuse the situation with, I guess, the offer of paying a generous fine to the three police officers, Crystal Passion and her entourage would now have intimate experience of American Law Enforcement just over twenty-four hours since our encounter with American Border Control.

"Right, guys," said one of the police officers to Kai's assembled guests, while another stood by the door to make sure that no one slipped away. "We have a situation here. We've had a report of a major noise nuisance and we've now discovered that there's also been widespread consumption of illegal substances. However, there are far too many of you for us to arrest and take you all into police custody for questioning. So, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna take Mr Pharrel to the station for questioning and the one who's leader of the band that's been making this ruckus. What's the name of the Rock band?"

"They're called Crystal Parcel," volunteered one of the young metal fans. "They're a bunch of English Rock chicks."

"Yeah," said another leather-jacketed guy who'd only a moment ago been playing guitar but was now standing nowhere near a musical instrument. "It's the Brits."

"Point them out, son," said the police officer who was old enough to be the kid's father.

"It's these chicks," he said, pointing towards the group that included Judy Dildo, Andrea and a naked tattooed metalhead boy.

"So, young lady," the police officer asked Judy almost kindly. "Are you the leader of your group?"

Judy looked stunned. I guess she was anxious about the drugs she almost certainly didn't have on her person as such—as she was as naked as the rest of us—but mixed up in the pile of clothes. "I'm sorry, officer?"

"Who's the leader of your group? Who is this Christine Purcell?"

"Crystal Passion," Judy corrected the policeman automatically.

"OK. Crystal Passion. Which one is him?"

"Her," Judy corrected him again.

"OK. Her. Come on, young lady. Could you please just point her out to us? Otherwise we'll have to arrest you instead."

A little shame-facedly, as she was the one in our group least likely to cooperate with authority, Judy pointed towards Crystal Passion who was standing naked and slightly apart from everyone else.

The policeman also pointed towards her. "So, miss, this naked woman is Crystal Passion?"

Although the fact that almost all of us were still naked and therefore Crystal was no different to any of the rest of us, it was obvious he meant her.

Judy nodded.

"Is your name Crystal Passion?" the policeman asked.

Crystal spoke up clearly and boldly. "Yes, officer. That's my name. I shall cooperate fully with your investigations. I shall take full responsibility if there's been a misdemeanour of any kind."

The policeman stepped forward and placed his hand on Crystal's shoulder. "Then you'd better get dressed, madam. You'll be coming down to the station house with us."

"If you're taking Crystal, you should take me as well," I volunteered with an act of courage that was untypical of me. "I'm just as guilty as her."

"That's not true, officer," said Crystal in her most authoritative voice. "Please just let everyone else go."

"We shall do precisely that, madam," the policeman said. "But not before we've taken a note of the name and address of everyone here. Now please put on your clothes and accompany Officer Malcolm." He indicated a young office with a strangely unfashionable moustache and rather longer hair than would be expected for a police constable in London.

And so, Crystal picked up the few clothes she'd set down in a neat pile beside mine and rather absent-mindedly trotted out of the room without bothering to put them on and had to be followed by Officer Malcolm who was clearly embarrassed by her promptness. "Excuse me, madam," we could hear him say as he followed her to the escalator beyond the door.

The more senior policeman shook his head with apparent disbelief. "Well, girls, I must ask you all to get dressed and line up against that wall there. Please be orderly. We don't want this to take all night."

So, we got dressed and lined up as requested. And then, while the older policeman stood by the door, a third officer pulled a small notebook and pen out of his inside pocket. He then asked each of us for our name, our address in the United States and our address in the United Kingdom. Following Judy's example, we each gave made-up names and an equally fictitious British address. And after each of us was questioned, we were allowed to leave the apartment.

"Name?"

"Tracey Thorne," I said.

"Address in New York?"

"Hotel Chattanooga."

"Same as the other girls?"

"Yes, officer."

"Address in England?"

"84 Charing Cross Road, London WC2," I said referring to the famous film starring Anthony Hopkins.

"Another one who lives there," remarked the officer, looking at his notes. "Doesn't Miss Katy Lang live there as well?"

He was referring to Philippa who was something of a film buff.

"It's a big house, officer."

When I got to the ground level in the same escalator as about half a dozen of the rest of the band and a few of the Metal fans who assiduously avoided catching our eyes, I could see both Crystal and Kai Pharrel sitting on the back seat of a huge police car. Crystal was looking towards Judy and me with a miserable expression.

"Excuse me, ma'am," asked a man in a denim shirt with a prominent paunch for someone so apparently young. He was holding a notepad and pen just like Officer Malcolm's. "Can you confirm some things for me?"

"Sorry," I said angrily. "Who're you? What d'you want?"

"I'm a reporter from the New York Post," he said. "You must have heard of it."

"No," I said. "And I'm not gonna answer any questions."

"Oh fuck, Pebbles," said Judy angrily and somewhat recklessly. "What the fuck difference does it make now? I guess you just wanna know what's happened?"

"Yes, ma'am," said the reporter. "That's all."

"Well, that woman in the car's Crystal Passion. She's the leader of our band: also known as Crystal Passion. The guy with her is our record label boss, Kai Pharrel. If you wanna know more, just contact the head office of Sanity records."

The reporter made no notes. I guess he already knew the answer to these questions. "And is she always naked, ma'am?"

"Naked?" I asked startled.

"She was butt bare naked when she got into the police car, ma'am. Is she always like that?"

"Fuck off!" said Judy angrily. "Just fuck off."

"Do I take that as an answer in the affirmative?" asked the reporter.

"Yeah, if that's what you wanna write in your fucking rag," said Judy who strode off away from him with me chasing behind. "Yeah. She's stark fucking naked from fucking morning to fucking midnight."

Of course, Judy and I knew, as the reporter didn't, that this was no exaggeration at all.

We hung around the entrance door to Kai Pharrel's apartment block until the police car holding Kai and Crystal drove off. I wept silently and bitterly as I watched Crystal's pale, apprehensive face stare through the window of the car as it drove past us and along the West Side Street. And then we were once again grateful for the late hours kept by the New York subway service that took us back to our hotel.

It was weird to see Manhattan in the brilliant early morning sun. It seemed that even more than London this was a city that never slept, although the night-time hours attracted a very different set of people. We caught our first glimpse of the seamy side of the city that we originally thought would define it. There were dark figures lurking in the shadows of the streets just off the main avenues. Some men selling drugs and some men and all the women selling sex. Jenny speculated how much these two different types of merchant exchanged the proceeds of one trade with the profits of the other.

When we got back to the hotel, most of the guests and staff, including the room maids, were getting up rather than going to bed. We had breakfast on the ground floor in the Hotel Gettysburg diner, which was all Formica counters, sullen Spanish-speaking waiters and a jukebox that featured the music of Bryan Adams and Meat Loaf on constant rotation. The breakfast was tasteless, soaked in fat and quite the opposite of what we wanted to eat before going to bed. And then I retired with Judy who was racked with guilt and remorse at having, as she put it, 'ratted' on Glade.

I told her that this was just a weird way to put it. We weren't like the noble gladiators in Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus. One of us would have to tell Police Sergeant Callaghan which one was the band leader. And Crystal would have volunteered the information anyway. Not surprisingly, this isn't the gloss that Polly Tarantella latterly puts on the event. This is yet another occasion in Polly's biography where Judy Dildo is the villain of the piece for having cowardly shopped Crystal merely to save her skin from being busted for heroin and cocaine possession.

We awoke late the following afternoon after a restless night's sleep to find Crystal shaking our bed. She seemed rather more perturbed than I'd ever seen her before, but she was trying to disguise it.

"Bad news," she announced, almost as soon as I was able to focus my sleep-starved eyes on her. "It's not going to be for a couple more days now till we get our gear released from customs. The woman I spoke to on the other end of the phone wasn't very forthcoming, but she said there's been some kind of delay processing our case."

"Fucking bureaucracy!" snorted Olivia from the other bed. "What d'you expect?"

"It means for sure that our first gig in America will be without almost all our musical instruments," said Crystal. "It doesn't bode well for the rest of the tour."

"Fucking shit!" said Judy angrily.

"Never mind that, Crys," I said conciliatorily. "That just can't be helped. What about you and what happened at the police station?"

"Oh that," said Crystal dismissively. "They just asked me a load of stupid questions. They didn't even take me into one of those rooms with a one-way mirror you always see them interview suspects in American cop shows. I just sat next to Sergeant Callaghan at an office desk almost completely hidden by ring-binder folders and was asked to fill out this really pointless form which had questions about ZIP codes and SSN numbers, and had very little in it that was relevant to me as a UK citizen. Then this Latino woman police officer, Officer Benita Barbara, asked me questions about the procedures we'd followed to book gigs and hotel accommodation for the rest of our American tour."

"Nothing about drugs?" Judy asked.

"Nothing," said Crystal.

"Nothing about noise nuisance?" I asked.

"Kai was the one who had to deal with those questions," said Crystal. "He told me that he might have to go to court for that sometime soon and that he expected just to get fined and that was all."

"So why did they haul you in if they weren't gonna ask you about drugs or being a public nuisance?" wondered Jenny who'd wandered in from her bedroom.

"I think it was to intimidate everyone," said Crystal. "To set an example so we'd respect the law in future. Anyway, I didn't have to stay long. I got back to the hotel late this morning and snatched a few hours' sleep before I phoned up Border Control at the airport."

"Well, let's hope the worst is now over," said Andrea who was arm-in-arm with a still-naked Tomiko.

Unfortunately, what we discovered after an evening spent roaming the local bars and restaurants and a third night at the insalubrious Hotel Gettysburg, my sister's optimism was totally misplaced.

Although it was by no means a front page article in the New York Post, there was still the dreaded but expected lurid news story about Crystal Passion (or Crystal and the Passions, as we were known). The headline read 'UK Punks Trash SoHo' and the article was accompanied by a grainy promotional picture of Crystal Passion singing on stage with oversized black rectangles blocking out her crotch and nipples (and the same also but rather unnecessarily for Judy who'd not been offending anyone's sense of decency on the occasion the photograph was taken).

"What's it say?" I asked Judy who was laying out the paper on top of a bed and repeated choice phrases sprinkled with her own swear words.

"You have a look," she said, standing aside and letting me squeeze between Bertha and Thelma who were also reading it.

A quarter of the article was the bold headline, a half was the unflattering picture and the rest was the prose which served more than anything else yet printed to herald Crystal Passion's arrival in America. On the plus side, it was the first time an article about the band had been printed in a national newspaper (even if in the States they pretend to be locally based). Until then, all the articles printed about the band had been in British music magazines like Mojo, MixMag and NME. But that was quite simply the only good thing about the publicity.

Just below the headline and to the right of the picture was the following:

Not since the Sex Pistols and the UK Punk Rock scene has Manhattan seen the like.

Wild London-based Punk Rock band, Crystal and the Passions, arrived in SoHo from the UK and made such a ruckus the neighbours had to call the cops.

Crystal (24), the slender blonde lead singer of the Passions, was taken for questioning to the NYPD 1st Precinct Station House.

The Passions are an all-girl Punk Rock group notorious for their deviant sexuality and wild drug habits.

Their manager, Kai Pharrel (48), who lives in SoHo said: "Crystal and the Passions are really going to rock New York State. There's not been anything like them since U2."

But given the band's notorious reputation for wild lesbian sex, the Post's recommendation is that you lock up your daughters when they rock the Five Boroughs.

"Why did they even print the article?" Crystal asked in despair. "We never made that much of an impact and most of what it says is plain wrong."

"I guess the reporter must live locally," Judy hazarded. "It was an easy thing for him to roll out of bed late at night and write a few column inches for the newspaper on a slow day."

"But even so," said Crystal, "what do you think someone turning up to our gig tomorrow will think. They'll be expecting to see some kind of punk rock group and all they'll get is me with a guitar and harmony vocals from Thelma and the Harlot. It won't be so much the Sex Pistols as Peter, Paul and Mary!"