Waxing Moon

Her career reads like an inventory of the crown jewels. She was the
girl that everyone wanted to be. The singer they all wanted to sign,
the model they all wanted to dress, the actress they all wanted to bed.
With the husband they all wanted to wed. From obscurity to orbit in one
lunar cycle.



We stood side by side on opening night, her arm around my shoulders,
and we smiled at each other with the same adoring eyes while the
Management threw flashing bulbs and glittering praise at us and
immortalised her body for the thousandth time but her soul for the
first.



She used to come and visit every Tuesday at dawn, dressed like the
queen in faded headscarves and cheap sunglasses lest any early birds
should spot the likeness. She would touch our faces lovingly and wipe
smears of greedy fingers from our cheeks.



For a whole summer, without the luxury of disguise, acne-laden
teenagers and crisis laden gents would smell my hair and cry at my feet
and picture themselves with the eternal star.



But the Management grew bored and the diamonds fell from her eyes. The
husband transferred his jewels to another hand. The waistline loosened
as the mini-bar emptied and the face down in the mirror was clouded by
white powder and cut into bewildered lines.



The Management were proud to announce that they'd destroyed her in two
weeks less than it had taken them to mould her.



I hoped she'd come less now. I couldn't bear it if she witnessed the
daily quick-step of young and old to the rhythm of "didn't she used to
be??" She'd want, like I do, to remind them that it was less than a
year since nothingness at the safer end. What did they have, goldfish
food for brains?



Plus the husband's new wife has just entered the room, there for being
the husband's new wife and nothing more.



Instead she comes more. On Saturday afternoons, mid-public, completely
invisible. She stares and she cries and then returns home to hit the
bottles at a respectable time.


And next week the Management will win. The complete
destruction. The cruellest blow. We will both cease to have existed.
She will be a has been, I will be no more.



There's a new jewel in town. A child with Zebedee breasts and balsa
wood legs. Won some TV talent show doing a cover of a Witney Houston
cover. The Management have booked her place, just waiting for removal
of the braces.



When they melted her down they could hear her heart crack clean from
top to bottom. When they melted me down I became Zebedee-Tits Pop
Princess. For a while, anyway.