Yellow Mama E zine

Zebra

 

by Sophia Wiseman- Rose

 

Inspired by ‘Groupie,’ by Cindy Rosmus

 

       Many people say, “women don’t know what they want in a man”. But, I say, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

       Show me any dreaming 14-year-old girl and I will show you someone who knows exactly what she wants. Maybe a brilliant heroic handsome surgeon with strong hands and a warm heart? An artist, temperamental but tender only to her, pacing the edge of some wind-lashed cliff? Or a rock god, feral and glittering, skin slick with sweat, lightning cracking behind him like applause from heaven? Whatever her dream is, she knows it intimately—every line, every detail, down to the colour of his eyes and the shape of his feet.

       What women don’t know is what they will settle for.

       That’s where the rot sets in.

       Time does it. Routine does it. The slow, creeping compromise of living does it. The handsome surgeon liquefies into a man who fixes pipes and smells faintly of damp. The artist curdles into someone who never quite finished anything. The rock god dissolves into a grumpy man on a sofa, belly rising and falling under the blue flicker of late-night television. Prince Charming is traded in for Mr Acceptable. A man who stays. A man who doesn’t hit too much.  A man who is, at least, there.

       And there they are—oceans of women, bright and vivid as neon—dimming themselves beside men who barely look up.

       But then, there are men like me.

       I didn’t ask them to forget their dreams. I fed them. I gave them somewhere to put that hunger.

       Offstage, I’m nothing remarkable. A good Jewish boy from upstate New York. The kind of son mothers approve of. But onstage—under the lights, with the amps screaming and the air thick with sweat and electricity—I am something else entirely. I am the thing they dreamed about when they were fourteen and alone in their rooms.

       And when I stand there, we believe it together.

        It’s real. More real than the greasy counters of the diners they work in. More real than the man snoring on a stained couch back in some prefab box of a home.

        It’s like royalty—some fleeting, impossible brush with something higher. A look, a gesture, a second too long of eye contact. That moment stretches, distorts. It becomes everything.

       He is not a man. He is THE man.

       She is not one of many. She is the ONE.

        And something passes between them, unspoken but absolute: this is real. Come with me.

        Nobody’s perfect. But people surrender too quickly. That’s the tragedy. That’s the quiet crime no one talks about. If a nerdy theatre kid who couldn’t get a second glance from any girl can turn himself into a god under stage lights, then what excuse does anyone else have?

       Of course, I wasn’t doing charity work.

       I knew exactly what they wanted. And I knew exactly how to give it to them.

       They liked my chest? Fine. I’d give them that. I stayed sharp, stayed lean. No one pays to see a god gone soft. There’s a contract, even if no one signs it.

      And my fantasy babe? She wasn’t someone my Baba and my mother would have invited in for tea.

      She was something hotter. Harder. A warrior wrapped in leather and myth. Red Sonja by way of a backstage pass. A girl who could drink, laugh, bite back.

       Someone who knew the rules were already broken.

       There were plenty of them.

       “Groupies,” people said. Always with that little curl of the lip. Jealous women.

       Bitter men.

       But that wasn’t it.

       They were believers.

       And belief burns hot—but not long.

       That was the beauty of it. No time for the decomposition to set in. No time for disappointment to creep through the cracks. No arguments. No mornings filled with regret and laundry and questions. Just one night—bright and violent and complete.

       Fire. Steam. Then gone.

       I never asked how they found their way to me. They just did. Like moths. Like something drawn by heat they didn’t understand.

       Before a show, the guys would lay out photos for me. Faces frozen mid-smile, mid-pose. All of them wanting something. All of them offering something.

Sometimes I’d choose carefully. Sometimes I wouldn’t. Close my eyes, pick blind. Fate, chance—same thing in the end. They were all megababes anyhow.

       After the show, they’d arrive.

       Delivered, almost.

       The details—the transport, the non-disclosure agreements, whatever was arranged behind the scenes—I didn’t concern myself with. That wasn’t part of the story I was telling. That wasn’t part of the man I was being.

       Once the door closed, it was just us.

       And it was always good.

       Until it wasn’t.

        Her name was Julie.

       She stood out immediately. I grabbed her picture from amongst the others.  Not just pretty—though she was that—but something else. Something sharper. There was a look in her eyes that didn’t quite match the others. Less adoration. More… appetite.

       I picked her.

       Onstage, I caught glimpses of her. Or thought I did. Faces blur under lights, but hers seemed to return, again and again. Fixed on me. Wanting.

       It got under my skin in the best possible way.

       By the time I got back to the hotel, I was wired. Pacing. Drinking. Letting the anticipation build into something almost unbearable.

        When she came in, she looked exactly right. Nervous. Horny. Alive.

      “Jimmy,” she said, like it meant something.

       After that—nothing slow, nothing hesitant. It was immediate. Consuming. Like stepping into something already burning.

      I moaned, I gasped. It felt… bigger than usual.

       When it was over, I slept like I’d been emptied out.

       When I woke, she was gone.

       No goodbye. No note. Just a single hoop earring on the floor and the sting of scratches across my back.

       I laughed it off. What else do you do?

       That’s rock ’n’ roll.

———————

       It took years for the truth to crawl its way back to me.

        It came in pieces. A phone call. Another. My agent first. Then my mother—her voice tight, controlled, afraid of what she was saying.

        All those years ago, Julie had been attacked.

        Obviously not by me. But close enough to matter.

       She’d left my room and never made it far. Found later—broken, bleeding, violated. Hospital records. Police reports. All of it real. All of it kept from me.

       And worse— months after the attack she miscarried a baby. she’d been pregnant. Possibly with my baby.

       That part didn’t land all at once. It circled. It waited. Then it sank in slowly, like something ice sharp and dead cold.

       There were details. Ugly ones.

       She’d seen the attacker in question earlier that night. Someone wearing zebra print pants.

       Like mine – Like Bert’s, my tour manager.

       He denied it, of course. Calm. Reasonable. Too reasonable, maybe. Said it was coinidence. It had just been some hanger-on. Some stray piece of the circus.

       I wanted to believe him.

       God help me, I needed to.

       Then came the book.

       She wrote it all down. Not just what happened—but everything around it. The machine. The system. The way it all worked.

        And suddenly it wasn’t just her.

        More voices. More stories.

        Patterns.

        The narrative twisted. Turned on me. Made me something I didn’t recognise. Not a fantasy god—but a monster.

        I drank.

        That seemed like the appropriate response. Drink until it makes sense. Drink until something clicks into place.

        It never did.

 

 

       The industry turned. Slowly at first, then all at once. Doors closing. Voices changing. My name said differently.

        I became something else.

        A cautionary tale. A fallen angel.

         Or worse—a fraud, a creep in god’s clothing.

        Time passed. Enough for the headlines to fade, but not enough for anything to heal.

        Then they told me to see her.

        Said it would help. Said it was necessary.

        They drove me out to some place in New Jersey. Rain hammering the car like it had a point to make.

        A diner. Of course it was a diner.

        She was there.

        Smaller than I remembered. Harder, too. Like something had been burned away and what was left didn’t care about being soft anymore.

        I tried.

        Apologies. Words. Explanations that sounded thin even as I said them. I wanted her to understand me. That might have been the worst part. Because she did understand.

        She just didn’t care. She didn’t believe anymore.

        “Get out, Jimmy,” she said. “Before I decide I haven’t had enough revenge yet.”

        There was nothing after that. Just the sound of rain again. The weight of it.

 

       A week later, they showed me the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. An old dramatic picture of me playing guitar with my eyes rolled heavenwards;

       “The Rise and Fall of Jimmy Ryder”

        They had a plan. Of course they did. They always do. Rebrand the ruin. Sell the wreckage. Turn regret into something marketable. The times of heroes had passed.

       Grit instead of glitter.

       Confession instead of fantasy.

        I listened.

        Then I excused myself.

        In the bathroom, I stared at my reflection until it stopped looking like me. The entire thing had been a plan. I was becoming a thing of the past. Destroy me and then recreate me. They had done this to me. They had done this to Julie.

       Cold water on my face. Again and again.

       When I came back out, I knew what I had to do.

       By the door, the trophies gleamed. Polished. Heavy. Meaningless.

 I picked one up.

       “—so what do you think, Jimmy?” my agent asked.

       Bert stood nearby. Watching. Always watching.

        I tightened my grip on the trophy.

       “I think,” I said, feeling something clear and certain for the first time in years, “I need to have a word with Bert.”

        Now, let’s see what the world of rock ‘n’ roll does with this rebrand.