Author's Notes: For Pearl and Estrella.

Story Notes: This takes place in the same universe as the movie <I>Velvet Goldmine</i>, but one does not have to have seen the movie to be able to read the story.
For those who have seen the movie: the Death of Glitter show, according to the <I>Velvet Goldmine</i> script, was 1975. So technically it wouldn't be on Betamax, except for who cares? I mean, probably some kid got a copy of the original tape somehow, stole it from the Rainbow Theatre, and put it onto Beta and started circing it around to his friends. Like, <I>whatever</i>.

SequelTo: Save your wild, wild life

When Ray drops out of college, he isn't sure what he's going to do with his life. He wants to go to the Police Academy, but they aren't accepting applications for months, and he wants to -- he wants to do anything but work in a meat packing plant for the rest of his life. Anything at all.

And he needs a job and a place to stay right now, because his dad kicked him out just for thinking about applying to the Academy and not even his mother's gentle manipulations can get him back into the house. She looks at him sadly when he comes by during the day, feeds him, and then sends him away before his father comes home -- he's staying with Johnny Roscizewki, in his parents' garage.

Johnny's calling himself Johnny Roses, wearing Sex Pistols and Brian Slade t-shirts, and can play two chords on an electric guitar and he thinks that's enough to start a band. While Johnny's at class sometimes, Ray picks up his guitar and strums it, and in two weeks Ray knows four chords, and maybe Johnny's right. Maybe a band is a good idea.

When Ray says that to Johnny that night, Johnny slaps his shoulder and says, "I knew you'd come around, man," and they spend the rest of the night getting high and thinking of band names. Plus, Ray needs a better name than Ray Kowalski, like how Johnny is Johnny Roses, and Ray decides, as he falls asleep, that he's gonna call himself Ray Kick.

**

Johnny Roses puts up fliers and by the end of the week they've got a drummer and a bassist, because everyone wants to start a band, and by the end of the month they're playing garage parties and dorms and open mic nights in bars down by U Chicago. They make enough that Ray can buy his own guitar -- okay, secondhand, but it's his -- and his own black eyeliner so he don't got to be borrowing Johnny's all the time.

After the best show they've ever done, their first club date, Ray gets trashed and lets a groupie -- he's got fucking groupies, man, he's made it -- blow him in the back room of the bar they played in. He's leaning on the table and the groupie's on her knees and Ray can see that she's got dandruff and glitter both in her hair, but he doesn't care, because she called him Ray Kick and asked for his autograph.

Ray almost doesn't even care that Stella walks in while he's thinking about how great it is to have groupies, and she totally doesn't want to hear that he was getting off on thinking about his groupies, not on the blow job.

"I can't trust you, Ray," she says coldly, and he stares at her, his dick is still in the fucking girl's mouth, and he doesn't even fucking care.

"Yeah? I can't trust you either," he says back to her.

"You're wearing makeup!" she says.

Ray can't believe they're really having this conversation while he's getting a blow job on a pool table. He doesn't say that, though. Instead he says, "You didn't think I could be in a band. You didn't want me to quit college. What, you want me to go fucking work in a meat packing plant?"

Stella just stares at him and then turns around and walks away, but she doesn't throw the cheap ring he gave her for her birthday back at him -- gold plate, he couldn't afford solid gold, but she said she didn't care -- so he figures she'll forgive him eventually, and he relaxes back into the blow job.

But it fucking hits him that night when he's falling asleep, his heart racing: Stella's gone. It's a chant with every beat of his heart. Stella's gone, Stella's gone, Stella's gone -- and maybe he's got groupies, but he's still fucking sleeping in Johnny's garage.

**

Johnny tells him to chill out, because he's in a fucking band, and they're gonna be rock stars, they're on their way, they get paid for screaming into microphones, and they're the best, the fucking best. He doesn't need Stella, that's what Johnny says.

"You don't need that bitch, man, she's fucking frigid, she didn't even get there in time to see us play," says Johnny, and Ray thinks he's right, even though he knows it's midterms and Stella's exhausted. He hasn't seen her for a long time, she's off with her fucking best friends in college, big guys who row boats and eat ivy and could kick Ray's ass without breathing hard, even though Ray's scrappy, dodge and punch, slide and punch --

"You want I should bleach your hair?" says Johnny, and Ray nods his head, and they get stoned while the peroxide soaks in.

"I should write a song about Stella," says Ray. "Stella, Stelllllllllaaaaaaaahhhh!" But Johnny doesn't get the joke.

"You should pierce your ears," he says, staring critically at Ray. "Hold on." Then he gets a needle from his mom's sewing kit, and an ice cube, and a couple of hoop earrings from his kid sister, and by the time Ray is washing out the peroxide, he's got two earrings in each ear.

"I look like a fucking pirate," says Ray, admiring his white-yellow hair in the mirror. It's kinda crispy, kinda awesome.

"You need a tattoo," says Johnny, laughing.

**

Ray gets a tattoo. It's the champion logo, cause he's a fucking champion -- and he rebuilt that car with his dad, that awesome car that he's never gonna get to drive again, and he fucking is a champion, a champion of everything.

He's a fucking badass, and all the girls know it, and when they play a show that night, Ray's got his eyeliner on, and his hair spiked up with glitter gel, just like that groupie whose name he can't remember, but he's got groupies, man, he doesn't gotta remember their names -- and he's got fucking button front jeans, and heavy silver rings.

Johnny Roses might be the front man, might be the one screaming in front of the crowd, and Ray's off to the side with his guitar and a cigarette, but Ray is the badass. Ray is the badass. Ray is the star.

**

Ray fucks a lot of groupies, fucks them separately and together, and always uses a condom, because he doesn't want a fucking kid with some nameless, faceless girl, doesn't want to -- he figures it like this: as long as he doesn't tie himself down, one day he might get Stella back. Always in the back of his head is Stella, always there in his fantasies, when he thinks about what he's gonna do with the rest of his life: he's gonna play guitar, he's gonna get Stella back. And she comes to the shows sometimes, when she's home -- he sees her, standing in the back, watching. She wears pastels and trousers and pointy-toed shoes with no platforms.

The leather jacket Ray always wears has become his signature look, and he starts wearing only button-front pants because they're easier to get open with one hand, and he puts glitter on his face, not just in his hair.

He fucks three girls at once -- one with his dick, one with his mouth, and one with his fingers while she's kissing the girl who's on his dick. He has made it, he has arrived, he gets free weed and free blow and free beer and free pussy, all the pussy he wants.

The first time a guy goes down on him, Ray is stoned out of his mind with glitter all over his face and neck, and still sweaty from the stage, and a mouth is a mouth, right? Who the fuck cares?

Ray doesn't care.

So the next time a guy goes down on him, when he's a little less stoned, Ray wants to try it, opens his mouth wide. It sucks, it hurts his throat, and dicks taste funny. Chicks dig that shit? Fucking weird.

But there's a next time, because there's always a next time. Ray never gives up. Stella says -- used to say -- that he's -- was -- tenacious. Ray's just a big fucking bull, trampling everything in his way until he has what he wants. Everyone comes to see his band, he wears glitter and platform boots and tight jeans and shirts with no sleeves to show off his tattoo, and he's learning to suck dick.

He's gonna be just like Curt Wild and Brian Slade, but he's not going to burn himself the fuck out in a year. He's still gonna be around, still gonna have his guitar, still gonna be rocking.

Rocking and sucking dick and fucking groupies, and life doesn't get any better because now that his dad's not around, telling him what a fucking loser he is, and Stella's not around to tell him to grow up, and his mom don't look at him sadly because they don't even talk anymore, and Ray's making enough money playing guitar that he's got his own fucking apartment, a 24/7 party, Stanley Kowalski buried so far inside Ray Kick that he almost don't exist anymore -- well, Ray feels like a winner. Ray's fucking won.

**

But Johnny gets a groupie pregnant and marries her, fucking marries her. Mike Rock, the drummer, whose real name is Mieczyslaw, fucks off to go to Hollywood, and then it's just Ray Kick and Pio Tear. Except when it's just the two of them and they're looking for people to replace Johnny Roses and Mike Rock, suddenly they're actually Stanley Raymond Kowalski, and Peter Wojciech, two loser Polacks from the wrong side of the tracks who smoke a lot of weed and drink too much beer and suck cock when no one's looking and watch VHS tapes of their old concerts, and Betamax tapes of Curt Wild and Jack Fairy and the Death of Glitter show.

It's not fucking cool.

**

Ray gets a job as a mechanic, and hates himself for giving in.

"What the fuck do you want?" demands Johnny. "You're a fucking idiot, nothing lasts forever."

Ray feels kind of betrayed, because it was Johnny who told him that they'd be stars forever, and Ray feels like an idiot, because he believed Johnny.

He takes out his earrings, throws away his eyeliner, buys a pair of sneakers, puts all the fliers and pictures into the sneaker box, and goes down to the Academy to apply. He makes it with two days to spare, passes the tests by the skin of his teeth, and shaves his head. No more bleach. No more glitter. He packs up the VHS tapes, the one fucking vinyl they cut, the boots, the tight jeans, the leather jacket. His rings. Shoves it all to the back of the closet, and leaves it there.

But he can't get rid of the bracelet, the Johnny gave him. They matched, because they started the band, and it's all he's got left.

Flowers to Stella, a sincere apology -- "Sincerity gets me every time," she sighs, and kisses his mouth, she's got no idea what the fuck he did with that mouth when she was gone.

"Let's get married," he says to her, and slides his last two paychecks from the garage and the last of his money from the last show they played and the money he got from selling his guitar and amps onto her ring finger. Real gold and a real diamond. "It's just a chip," he says apologetically, "but --"

"It's a start," she says, she's glowing, she's so happy, and all Ray feels is empty inside. "It's a beginning!" She hugs him, runs her fingers over his short, dark hair, and he puts his head into her neck, kisses her, bites her a little, smells her Cartier perfume that probably cost almost as much as the ring he got her, and thinks: It's an ending.

But he can't stop it, and maybe he wants it, just a little, because he wants Stella, and everything she represents, maybe, he's not sure, he doesn't know; he loves her, always has, right? That's gotta be enough.