Persuasive bastard. That's what Billy called me, just before he agreed to sit down with me one last time. I knew then that I'd never be able to use what he told me, what he shared with me. But I didn't know I'd be putting the whole goddamn documentary on the shelf and never taking it down again.
I fully intended to push the thing at major studios, but I should have known live suicide wouldn't make the grade with these assholes. Staged violence, okay. Maimings and killings and entire fucking buildings blown up, no problem. Real life tragedy, though - might as well have dipped the whole movie in blood, for as much as they wanted to handle it.
I thought about taking out the bits at the end and preserving Joe's dignity. But that's the whole fucking story, right there. No point in making a movie that doesn't have an ending. I had questions for Billy, things I needed to know so I'd be able to pick and choose the right footage - what to leave in, what to cut out. At least, that was my excuse. Deep down I knew it was curiosity. Unbelievable, unrelenting curiosity.
They wanted Billy to play a tribute concert. It had only been a couple of weeks since Joe's death and everything was still raw. John told me Billy wouldn't agree to it at first, but finally they got him to sing one song. I went to the bar and caught that song on film, more for me than for anything else. It was the epilogue, and it was fucking brilliant. Billy sat up there on the stage and sang this quiet little acoustic version of Ten Bucks Fuck. Nobody made a sound. Not one word. Sure, these were torn-up punks, but there was something beautiful about him on that stage, and we all felt it...whatever it was.
After closing, he'd agreed to meet me off the stage, at the bar. He looked good, lean and straight and tuned in, but there was something tired about him. His eyes were too bright. If I hadn't known better, I'd've thought he'd just crawled out of a bottle or a pipe, but he was sober. Too sober. Almost.
I had a long list of things to ask him, but as it turns out, he had his own ideas.
He pulled up a chair, set his foot on the edge of another chair, and put a cup of coffee on the table in front of him. "So, there was more you wanted to know?" His face was calm, but it was obvious he was laughing at me on the inside - an empty laugh, lonely and unrequited.
"I'm surprised you agreed to talk--"
"I'm not doing it for you." Billy ran his tongue across his teeth like an animal about to feast on its prey. "You know, don't you? That Joe would've thought this was the funniest fucking thing? For me to talk to you about...him? This?"
"So why do it?"
Billy hooked a finger beneath the handle of the coffee cup and tugged it toward him, then pushed it back. "For me," he said simply, tugging the cup forward, pushing it back again.
"What does...what do you mean?"
"This isn't the Joe Dick story anymore. Do you even get that?" He said it without malice, without condescension, almost kind in his explanation.
Made me think, for a long minute or two. Something made me follow Joe Dick into that shitty old van, chasing the fragments of his scattered life all across Canada. That guy was a compelling fucker, all guts and brains and naked truth, poured out through the filter of punk rock. I kept the cameras rolling even after I knew better, mostly because I wanted more of him, more of his life on film. I knew it would sell. I knew, but I didn't see. I was caught up in the image, not the man.
There's two things I wanted to be when I was a kid: a movie star, and a rock star. Light comes from stars, reflects on everything else, gets absorbed. Nowadays, I'm the everything else, but it's cool.
"How do you feel about Joe's death?" No point in beating around the bush.
"The way you say that, you make it sound as if he just slipped away in his sleep." Billy's voice was sharp, cutting, and it didn't match that sweet, bright smile, the one that could catch anyone off guard.
"Well, how would you put it, then?" I pulled back my anger. I'd never get him to finish the interview if I got pissed off at him.
Billy lit up a cigarette. "I remember one time, when we'd just finished up our first pre-booked, paying gig, and we were about to, you know, cut an album. It was a piece of shit nothing club, nothing to get excited about, but we were...we were fucking gods, and we knew it. There was a thunderstorm, and we danced around in the rain, like we were fucking insane, so completely fucked up that we had nothing better to do than take our clothes off and commune with nature." He paused, took a long drag on the cigarette, and a small, twisted smile replaced the big brilliant one. "I was thinking of that when I looked at his body. He looked like shit. Pale and sucked up, just...completely wasted. Completely gone." He looked up at me. "That's what his life is. Was. Completely wasted. Completely gone."
"You really think it was a waste?"
"Well, what did we accomplish, really? We left behind some albums. Nothing to get too excited about. Grieving fans. Yeah, there's something. No family, no friends. He used people up, he...he made them less."
"He always thought he made you more."
"That was his fucking hallucination, you know?" Another long drag on the cigarette. "I never needed him."
"You were pretty eager to team up when you thought you had nothing else in the wings."
"Fuck you," he said savagely, and that twisty smile twisted more, became an ugly snarl. "You don't know the first fucking thing about any of this, Bruce."
"I know enough. I know you had a deal. I know you didn't care if you fucked Joe over."
"You say that like you gave a shit. He fucked you over, too, so why would it matter to you?"
"It says something about you, Billy." Said something about me, too, but I didn't think it mattered, not right that moment. Later, though, I went over it and over it, trying to find peace with the games I'd played.
At least we were all in it together, at the end.
"You have no idea how many times he's fucked me, how he's eaten up my life. That's why the band broke up before. In case you care."
"Is there still a band? Or are you going back to LA?"
"I wasn't even planning to stay for the funeral, if you really want to know the truth. It was his band, his deal. Now that he's gone it's a free-for-all. Nobody in charge."
"Except you." I could hear the sarcasm in my voice, but if Billy noticed, he didn't care. His expression became distant, his words quiet.
"Were you at the service, man? Johnny cried through the whole thing. He laid his face over on my shoulder and sobbed his heart out. It was pathetic. I was groping for a smoke, because I needed one. I was lighting up and I remembered what it was like, lighting Joe's cigarettes. Like a tradition, like a fucking memorial. Like coming home, that last time. Like burning bridges."
It's a strange thing about Billy Tallent. One minute, he's a complete asshole, and the next, he's a soft-spoken guy who can make pictures with words.
"Where'd he get that gun, do you think?"
He shook his head and stabbed out the cigarette, with short, staccato movements. "Don't know. From a fan, maybe. Or on the street. I don't think he had it in the van. Maybe. I don't know. Maybe. Did you see it? I didn't see it. I never noticed it, if he did...if he...had it."
I didn't answer. There was nothing to say that wouldn't earn me an ass-whipping from Billy Tallent, and I can happily live my whole life without getting my ass beat by a pseudo-famous guitar player. How is it possible you can be a guy's shadow, hear and see everything, and not see something fatal creeping up? Like a Mack truck out of the sky, and if I stopped to kick myself over not telling Billy, over not warning him, I wouldn't be sleeping.
Makes me wonder about how Billy's sleeping these days.
He pushed back from the table a little. The chair scraped on the floor, a fingernails-on-blackboard sound, and then it was quiet again. "You know what's funny? Before I came back here for this gig I made a pact with myself. No more outbursts, no more anger getting the best of me. That was always what fucked us up, me and Joe. All that anger. All that hostility. He was...it was just smarter for me to stay away. If I had a brain in my damn head, I would never have come back."
"So why did you?" I asked.
"You saw it all, didn't you? After that last gig, when he tried to kick my ass on stage? Did he...what was he saying? I know you said you weren't going to use the film, but maybe you should. I want to see it. I want to know what he was thinking, that fuck, that motherfucker, that fucking *fuck*..." Billy's hands were clenched into fists; he stood up abruptly and grabbed the cup of cold coffee, and hurled it across the room. It shattered into chunks. Shards of ceramic flew every direction, stained with the remnants of what had been inside.
He hesitated, stared at the mess he'd made, and his whole body strained forward for a few seconds like he was trying to decide if he wanted to stay or go. Then he turned on me, smiling softly. "I need another smoke. You got one to spare?"
I held out the pack, and after a second, I put my lighter on the table.
"Thanks," he said, and meant it. It only took a moment before it was dangling off his lip and wisps of smoke were curling up around his eyes. "You wanted to know about the band? It's over. Joe was the heart of this thing. He was... It's time to end it. I can't do it anymore, it'd be like he was still there on stage with us, talking his shit, spitting in my face...I just can't do that to him. He'd want to be there. Fuck that 'in spirit' shit. He's there, or he's not. And he's not. So it's time to move on."
"It's interesting how you bring up Joe spitting in your face." I meant it to come out bland, but of course he knew what I meant. "It's symbolic."
"Oh, that's rich," he answered, scornful. "No, this is not me spitting in his face. Symbolic...what? My ass. That's not what this is. This is...me leaving. What I was doing before he pulled the grand exit."
"You trying to tell me you never liked being a part of this band? That you don't think you-"
"I am talking, and you are *not* listening." Impatient, and his foot was jiggling the table under my elbow. "There was that time I was talking about, in the rain. We had these little wands some fans gave us, clear wands full of sparkling stars, different colors. We were out of our minds, and we turned those things over and over, watching the colors as they ran up and down, and the rain was cold, and the wind, it woke us up. It made us feel alive. Like we had some kind of purpose, you know? Like...we weren't just instruments, like we were...important to the music. Like it meant something, wasn't just momentary."
I nodded. I know that feeling.
He went on, dreamily, with memories crossing his face like shadows, leaving imprints. "You know, nobody gets this, man. Nobody gets it but the people who lived it. We *lived* it. Bigger than life in our own shitholes. Hell, yeah."
"What about the rumors about the two of you?" I asked, and I was surprised at myself for having the balls to do it. But really, it's why I wanted the face-to-face.
Billy flicked ashes at me with a tip of his chin. "Rumors. Yeah. There were rumors, weren't there? Joe Dick and Billy Tallent, fucking ourselves senseless at every stop, having every chick who hung it out there at the bookings in drugged-out threesomes. That isn't the way it was. Ask anybody who was there. Ask Mary. You met her. She knows. It was crazy, we had groupies everywhere, but I didn't fuck them all. Only half. Three quarters." That feral smile was back.
"I'm talking about the other rumors. You and Joe."
"What? You want to know if we were fucking? Is that it? Is that what you think brought on this bullshit?" Billy sounded amused, and he snorted a little bit of air and smoke out his nose. "No. No, we were not. We were *not* fucking each other. We were part of something. Part of...whatever. Each other. Something. It was more than anybody ever understood. All your little cameras, your microphones, your authorized access...shit...your...I can't believe he gave you money for this thing."
"Don't get so fucking personal, man. I'm curious. Sue me."
"If you get this fucking *right*, I won't have to." He popped the table with the flat of his foot. "Fucking asshole."
"Personal."
"We fucked each other in the figurative sense. Constantly."
"How about the literal sense?"
"What the fuck?" His jaw tightened. "What are you looking for me to say?"
"Truth. Off the record. You and me."
"And this matters how, exactly? Jesus Christ," he muttered. That foot was jiggling again, nerves or hostility or what, I don't know. "I should knock your fucking teeth down your throat."
"I thought you don't choose to be angry," I mocked. It felt good. I couldn't reach Joe anymore, but Billy was the next best thing in this clusterfuck.
"I'm sorely provoked, motherfucker." He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and ran his thumb over it. "Did we? What the fuck do you think? Do you think a story like that makes the rounds without there being some truth to it? Do you think I care anymore?"
"Yeah. I do."
"We lied to ourselves so we could make it through." Billy looked around, like he expected to see someone leaning over his shoulder, but there was nobody in the bar but the two of us. It didn't seem to make him any more comfortable. His voice dropped low. "That's not so unusual. He was good at that, telling the truth and making it seem like a lie, lying and making it sound like the total truth. Joe was a master manipulator. He seemed so up front, but it was the persona, it was just...you couldn't trust it."
I waited for the rest. I knew there was more.
"I couldn't really trust him any more than he trusted me. It was...there wasn't anything left. If you want to know why he did it, that's the answer. It's not very complicated. He had places in him, dark places I never was allowed in, where he hatched all that sneaky shit he tried with me to get me to stay. You wouldn't believe, if I told you...he planned some of the most fucked-up bullshit, and nobody could rein him in. He was just Joe Dick, wild and free. Too fucking free. Over the top, out of control free."
"He's about as free as it gets now."
"Yeah. Fucker. I envy him." Said as cool as you please. He was staring at his cigarette, drawing his thumb back and forth across it, and I was holding my breath, looking for something to say. But he went on. "I couldn't do it before. I ended up right back where I started, talking a lot of shit about leaving but where was I? Where was I, eh? I was here. I was right...fucking...here. Right here...and he's in me, man. He always was. He's been there before, he's there to stay."
"I don't understand," I said, and that was the fucking truth.
Billy tipped his head up, listening. "Hear that? On the roof. It's raining. Nice and dramatic. Guess this interview is over. No bonus footage today, eh?"
"Fuck you."
This time, he crushed out the cigarette on the tabletop, and reached out, and gently smacked me on the cheek. Not a real hit, more of a pat. I'd seen it before. It made me cold.
With one hand, Billy pulled his coat closed. "Go find somebody else to torture, Bruce. I don't have a gun."
I remember what he looked like as he walked out of that bar. Like a ghost, all done up in black for the holidays, pale and without much substance at all.
I envied him.
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