Loud Whisper

By Clifton Snider

Adam (a.k.a. Zed) Avery is the hub around which the spokes of Loud Whisper revolve. Sexy, impulsive, reckless, he is the dedicated leader of a Southern California rock band in the 1980s called The Spacs. Beneath his defiant veneer lies a sensitive, literate, generous individual. The product of an upper middle class family, Adam is never content for long with the numerous obsessions that occupy him-including drugs.

The members of The Spacs include Danny Devil, Adams school friend and the leveling influence on the band; Davey Dynamite, the Hispanic keyboard player; Adrian Cocksure, the sexy bass player; and Brenda Cashew, the alcoholic lead singer until Adam replaces her in that position. Other key characters are Mark and Melanie, Adams lovers, and Henry Langford, the reporter from the national music magazine, Nitty-Gritty.

The Spacs had begun to achieve national prominence when, at a concert at The Forum, drugged and lacking self-confidence, Adam falls from the stage, paralyzing himself from the neck down with, doctors say, no more than a ten per cent chance of his walking again.

The novel opens with this concert and quickly moves into Marks story. Langford has come to interview him for a feature article on Adam and The Spacs. The following chapters tell Adams story through interviews with the other band members and Melanie, so that the point of view changes with each chapter.

Then the focus switches to Adam in the hospital and his long struggle to recover and eventually return to the music business. The theme is recovery from drug addiction and a self-destructive life style and from the paralyzing accident caused in part by the addiction. Love is also a theme which, combined with determination and a spiritual awakening, allows Adam to pursue his recovery and return to the stage, so that the novel ends on an upbeat note, despite the harrowing experiences its central character has gone through.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 11, 2000
• ISBN: 9781462803859

Clifton Snider

Clifton Snider is the author of eight acclaimed books of poetry, including The Age of the Mother (Laughing Coyote, 1992) and The Alchemy of Opposites (Chiron Review Press, 2000). A specialist in Jungian literary criticism, his book, The Stuff That Dreams Are Made On: A Jungian Interpretation of Literature, was published in 1991. He teaches writing and literature at California State University, Long Beach.

Book preview

LOUD

WHISPER

Clifton Snider

Copyright © 2000 by Clifton Snider.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

PRELIMINARIES

I

CHAPTER ONE

Mark

CHAPTER TWO

Danny

CHAPTER THREE

Davey

CHAPTER FOUR

Adrian and Melanie

CHAPTER FIVE

Adam (I)

CHAPTER SIX

Brenda: Tear Me Apart

CHAPTER SEVEN

Mark, One Year Later

CHAPTER EIGHT

Adam (II)

CHAPTER NINE

The Party

PRELIMINARIES

I

She wouldn’t do this for any other star. Zed was special. She didn’t care that Zed wasn’t his real name. That, she knew, was Adam, and she had put huge A’s and Z’s all around the borders of one entire wall in her bedroom. Within the borders were posters of Zed and The Spacs. Her favorite, placed in the middle, came from Wham Bam, a fanzine. It was a picture of Zed by himself in studded leather—a jacket opened almost to his belly button, leather pants. Zed wore a pompadour of jet-black hair and a sexy gold earring. His made-up face glowed with red and white epicene vitality. Hands on his hips, his legs spread apart, he made her fall in love with him, from the picture alone. She had never heard him sing a single note.

Radiating around that initial poster were others of The Spacs. She liked Adrian too, and Danny. Davey was O.K., but she didn’t like Brenda. What was she doing in the band anyway? She was glad when the rumor spread (later confirmed in Tiger Beat) that Brenda had been kicked out of the band. The only reason she kept any poster with her in it was because it had tubular portraits of Zed and the other boys in the band. The Spacs were totally tubular—awesome, really far out.

But it was Zed she loved. When she bought their album, the only one the store had in stock at the time, she was prepared to like the music. Ecstatic, she cut the shrink wrap open with her sharp fingernail and placed the record on the turntable. The songs were fantastic on The Spacs Come Back, their second album. She loved them and she had to get the first album too, and the singles. Everything she could find on or by The Spacs she bought.

She had never been to a concert before, and to get tickets for this one at The Forum she had to wait in line all night, telling her mother she was spending the night at a friend’s house—the same friend who waited in line with her and was now standing beside her waiting for the band to appear. The opening group, The Goggles, had been a real bore. Hardly anybody liked them. Now the suspense was sharp. Just being there with a mass of people who, she imagined, worshiped Zed almost as much as she did thrilled her. She had a contact high from all the smoke in the building, but the only thing she smoked were cigarettes. And she drank a little beer some friends from school had managed to get. She didn’t care how—the important thing was she was going to see him in person any second now.

She had been lucky. Her tickets put her about ten rows from the stage, and now she and her friend were standing when the lights went down and then up. The crowd hushed momentarily in anticipation, then let out a collective roar when the lights went on, focusing on the stage and Zed Avery. The noise was so loud she could hardly tell what the opening number was, and she didn’t care. She screamed with the others around her, yelling, Zed! Zed! Others were yelling Adrian! or Danny! or Davey! But she was loyal: she uttered only the one name. He was the beginning and the end, a force beating through her entire body. Oh God, it was too much. She quieted only when the song ended so that she could hear what he was saying as he introduced the next number and took a sip from a bottle.

She turned to her friend, who turned to her. Oh God! was all they could say to each other, grinning and grimacing. Danny’s drums signaled the beginning of the next song, and they focused their attention on the stage. It was too great, too rad—she ran out of adjectives—being there. Zed looked super—better than the posters, and he was wearing a black shirt, open like the leather jacket in her first poster. She couldn’t believe it. And he wore her favorite—the gold, studded cross earring in his left ear!

She followed his movements and pushed toward the stage with the rest of the people surrounding her. Some of the girls were screaming, like her, some were dancing with the guys, others were just staring. Zed took the microphone out of the holder and walked around, singing Loud Whisper, urging the audience to join him over and over. This was unnecessary because the very first time he said it, she joined in. Why was he saying, I can’t hear you? Loud Whisper, she echoed back at him. Then something strange happened. He walked to the edge of the stage—oh God, if only she could reach him—and he fell into the audience. Maybe he knew what she wanted. Maybe she could touch him. It was too much! She surged toward the front.

A wheelchair can be as confining as a first kiss—and as liberating. This party beguiled him. Totally unlike his rock garden built in his special corner in the back yard, where he ran the hose, snakelike, behind the shrubbery, to where it provided a waterfall over the rocks. The water bled into the lawn and dribbled into the pool.

Yes. The party beguiled, for Melinda was there, with her hair gleaming like the sun burning through the next door neighbors’ eucalyptus trees. Her eyes shone like the silver dollar leaves on the trees, and her nose turned up authoritatively over commanding lips. He spun the bottle and it pointed at Melinda. Laughter burst over him, and someone said, Go on, kiss her, Adam. She won’t bite.

A cacophony of emotions resounded through his body, driving him simultaneously toward the girl and away from her, into his rock garden. Why couldn’t he eliminate these people who stood between him and his dream? If he had a magic gun, he’d make them all dead or unconscious or anywhere except here to witness him kiss the girl he had often slept with, at peace, in his garden.

It wasn’t to be, thought Adam as he wheeled himself away from the sliding glass door and its view of the pool. She’s probably living in Downey with three kids and some fat mechanic who comes home and drinks beer every night, watching TV. Adam smiled as he wondered whether either of them ever saw any of his videos. Maybe the kids were old enough to buy his records. Maybe Melinda bought them in memory of the kid who loved her from the fringes of their lives.

No. This was mere fantasy. That kiss was their only kiss. From it he retreated into his own province, where everything was as he wanted it, and nothing intruded from the outside world.

But that was not true either. Everything—everybody—tried to intrude. His father expected him to be a baseball star, even though the one time he made the team, his last year in junior high, he sat on the bench almost all season because he had no real talent for baseball. His dad had been a star in college, so he never understood why Adam couldn’t also be a star. Well, I’ll show him, I’ll show all of them, Adam continually thought.

He chuckled. He had shown them. He had become a star—in his own way. God, what a difference it had made. Always he wanted the adulation without the intrusion. But the two went together so that it got to the point where he couldn’t walk on the city streets without being besieged by people. They took pictures, asked for autographs, asked questions. It was wonderful at first. It was like eating truffles on crack.

He was privy to a world these people were outsiders to—just like when he was a child, only now the world had real players in it: executives, managers, roadies, lovers, band members, interviewers, too many players. They were wonderful and they were terrible. The cliches about fame and fortune (but his fortune was never as big as people thought it was) were all true. You lose your privacy, money doesn’t buy happiness, and so on. He, Adam Avery, or Zed as the public knew him, would never lose his identity—no matter how many hit records, how much adulation and money he received.

Somehow, though, the same fates that happened to so many—from Elvis to Sid Vicious—had happened to him in some way.

The details may have differed, but the overall pattern was the same—and here he was in this wheelchair—sober, clean-headed, returned to his parents’ back yard.

He stretched himself, stretched his arms out and sighed from all this pondering. Ohhh, he said out loud. Then he thought of Mark.

CHAPTER ONE

Mark

When I awoke that morning, I heard the sound of cars on wet pavement. The sky was still dark. A siren awoke me, probably someone’s car alarm. It lasted maybe two minutes, stopped, resumed while I took a piss, and stopped again before I drifted back to sleep.

Hearing the evidence of rain, I sighed. Though it was the beginning of March, I hoped for another tanning day—one warm enough for sunning out back, where a wall blocked the breeze. Perhaps it was just as well—the reporter and I could sit in the living room and drink coffee. He was coming to talk about Adam Avery, and perhaps wouldn’t’ve felt comfortable sitting out in the sun talking to a stranger who was wearing a Speedo.

I was almost glad it was raining. Out in the sun, Henry Langford might sunbathe too. He probably had a sagging belly. I imagined it with an appendix scar and salt and pepper hairs, such as he might have on his back. Surely he wore thick, black-rimmed glasses and a man’s smell—not the sexy locker-room type, but the kind I always associate with my dad, a mixture of sweat and some kind of deodorant I’ve never discovered. His beard would be so heavy, despite his thinning scalp hair, he probably never looked clean shaven. So I was glad it was raining. A good day to talk about Adam.

Adam. The public facts everyone who was interested knew. He had been the leader of The Spacs, an L.A. rock band that specialized in its own kind of rock—a mixture of techno-pop, rhythm and blues, and hard rock. Although he occasionally sang solo, he was not at first the lead vocalist. Brenda Cashew was. She also played keyboards occasionally. Adam played lead guitar and harmonized. Also in the band were Adrian Cocksure (he played bass); Davey Dynamite (synthesizer); and Danny Devil (drums). Before the accident, The Spacs had one top ten hit and another that had just reached the top forty.

But it wasn’t these public facts Langford wanted from me. He wanted to know what kind of person Adam was. I wasn’t sure how much I was willing to tell, how much Adam would have wanted me to tell. As I sat down with my first cup of coffee, I remembered the time we first met.

It was at the Long Beach Art Museum, housed in a sprawling, two-story ocean-front mansion from the early 1900’s and best known for its video shows. My friend Jonathan, an artist, worked there. He set up shows and acted as a security guard and receptionist, occasionally curating a show or at least helping to curate it. On my way home from shopping on Second Street, I decided to stop at the museum, see what new shows were on. Jonathan, dressed in his brown uniform, was behind the desk. Though he was about 25, he had a teenage complexion, wore ‘50’s style glasses, and today wore his metallic brown hair back. Come to see the Dimnet show? he stated more than asked.

Yeah, I said, as if I knew who Dimnet was. I hardly ever knew the artists they showed. That was part of the museum’s charm—you never knew what to expect. Dimnet, as I recall, turned out to be a collage artist from the ‘30’s, one who associated with the big names of the era but never quite got wide attention.

After chatting with Jonathan, I worked my way through the two large ground level rooms and then went upstairs to see what remained. Upstairs there was also a new video show by someone else I’d never heard of and can’t remember. When my eyes adjusted the to the light, I saw two others in the room—a woman around thirty and a young man. It was the young man who struck me. His complexion was rosy, and he had greased back, black hair.

Over a torn T-shirt he wore a black leather jacket. His jeans had colorful patches as well as holes.

In the video was a woman made to look like Jayne Mansfield. Dressed as a waitress in a white miniskirt and nothing else but a frilly black apron that barely hid her tits, she was serving a strange set of people (a businessman, a matronly lady, a young boy, and a street bum). On her tray was a gigantic cake in the shape of a woman’s breast and a single lighted candle sticking out of it. Everyone at the table, except the lady, was delighted. The little boy jumped up and grabbed the waitress’s leg and began sucking her knee. Just then the picture turned into haze and static. Damn! said the thirtyish woman.

Maybe it’s part of the video, I suggested.

No, I’m going to get somebody. She left.

The young man looked at me for the first time, making a face. Had he not been there, I’m sure I would have left. What a drag, I said.

Yeah.

You’d think we were at the Palace Theatre. The Palace Theatre was an art deco style theatre which showed art and commercial reruns.

Really, said the young man. This is too sick-making.

You into Evelyn Waugh?

"Oh, yeah. He’s great. The greatest!"

"You must’ve seen Brideshead then."

Most of it. Real rad.

I taped the whole series.

You did? Man, I wouldn’t mind seeing some of those tapes.

You’re welcome to. Just then Jonathan came in with the woman. While he messed with the VCR I introduced myself to Adam and gave him my phone number.

I doubted I would tell Langford what happened later when Adam phoned. I could tell him Adam came over to see Brideshead. The rest was too personal and kind of painful too—painful to remember.

Adam called a day or two later, I think it was a Friday night, and asked if he could come over. I said he could. This time he wore black and white bell bottoms, ‘60’s style, and a black T-shirt with a woman’s picture on it. He told me the woman was Edie Sedgwick. On the back of his leather jacket in white was the name Rockets Plus. What’s Rockets Plus? I asked him.

Name of a group I was in.

Oh yeah? A band?

Yeah. But we don’t exist anymore. I have a new band now, The Spacs—for spectacular, sort of The Supremes of the Eighties, only we’re mostly guys.

Why Spacs instead of Specs?

You’re pretty smart to notice that. Specs would sound too much like spectacles.

I see. That makes sense. You want something to drink?

Whatta you got?

Oh, let me see—soda, some wine, beer.

I’ll have a beer.

I brought two beers. You sure have a lot of books, said Adam.

I know. I like to read.

I do too when I have the time. I like that abstract, he added, referring to a painting on the wall.

Thanks.

We watched the