Los Angeles
I am a cyborg. I have crimson contacts in my eyes and I’m wearing a metallic bodysuit. During a short break in filming, I’m escorted off the soundstage and to my trailer in the parking lot. Wes is waiting inside. When I wrench the door open, he perks up, yawning. His hair is pointing in every direction.
“How many hours have you been gone?” he asks.
“I’m not sure. Maybe five or six.”
“I’m sorry, I’ll come watch.”
“It’s okay.”
He tugs me into his lap. “I want to watch.”
“We’ll wrap in a few hours anyway.” He can probably sense the annoyance I’m trying to tuck away. I lean forward to show him my contact lenses up close.
“Creepy.” He kisses my neck. “Is this the song you wrote with Axel?”
“Not this one.”
Lolli has decided “One More Chance” will be the first single off the new album. I fought for “Please Don’t Disturb,” the song I cowrote, but Lyle says “One More Chance” is the sure hit, so in a conference room full of men, I was overruled. I’m afraid Lyle will say I’m difficult now. That his opinion will disperse through the industry. He’s always calling women difficult or demanding—just euphemisms for bitch.
“Well, Axel said something about you on the phone. The other day, you know, when Ty and I called him to go over ideas.”
This shocks and excites me at once. “What did he say?”
“You know Axel. He never says much. But we talked about how talented you are, how everyone underestimates you. Even me.” He tugs on my hips. “Can we undo this suit?”
“No, it took forever to get into it. And I feel gross. It’s so tight.”
“Okay, well, you’re not gross. You know you’re not.”
“I’m just saying it’s uncomfortable.”
He sighs. “Sometimes I feel like you only say you’re ugly so that I’ll say you aren’t.”
This is sometimes true, but not right now. I stare at him, and I’m not sure what we are to each other. I want to know. I want him to finally draw a circle around me and say, mine.
“Have you talked to Mike about us walking the AMA carpet together, by the way?”
For a few moments, he doesn’t answer. He sighs, but he’s really saying, I can’t believe it, this again? “You know we have to wait.”
“What are you worried about? That everyone will think you moved on from Gwen too fast? That everyone will think you’re the slut?” This makes me laugh.
He looks out the trailer window to the lot. “No. I just know SMG won’t like it.”
“What are they going to do?”
“I don’t know. They can do whatever the fuck they want. That’s why I’m being cautious. You’re asking me to piss off my label, my manager, my mom—”
Softly, almost too soft for him to hear, I say, “I just thought maybe I was worth it.”
“You think a relationship is giving up everything for each other, but I don’t know if that’s love.”
“I don’t think that.” What I think is ETA has to remain preteen friendly, and I’m a reminder that he’s a man having sex. These two ideas are so incongruous—I can see why his label is concerned. His private life must bolster his public one. He prefers relationships in corners, in dim lighting, because of it.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
“Amber.”
“I said okay.”
“You don’t sound okay.” He’s very still. There’s a knock on the door and we both turn toward it. Another knock, then Sonny’s hand waving in the doorframe, gold rings winking in the sun.
“Coming!” I shout, pushing off Wes’s lap. He’s still holding my waist. Suddenly, I see his thumbs, just there, and maybe my entire life is beneath them.
“Can we not do this?”
“Do what?” I remove his hands, then pull on the trailer door more roughly than I intended. It slams behind me, shaking before it settles.
“Careful,” Sonny says, inclining his chin toward the window. The fleshy wattle of his neck shakes.
“Of what?”
“The kid.”
“He’s not a kid.”
“Oh, really? Honey, from my vantage point, he’s a little shit, and I’ve always thought so.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Yeah, I bet.” Sonny escorts me back to the set, where my dancers are already shooting, most of them men a foot taller than me. We’ve rehearsed for over a week; the choreography is deep, well-traveled grooves for our bodies to follow. Our director also did “Sweat,” but the budget for this video is astronomical: this time, we have green screens and special effects.
A makeup artist touches up my foundation as the director points to my mark. His face is crooked, permanently suggestive.
I incline my chin toward the green screen. “Is that where the giant city is going to be?”
“Yes, right there.”
“I want it to look futuristic, like Blade Runner.”
“It will. You’re the sexy, evil cyborg invading the metropolis. Capturing all the men who tried to control you. It’ll be fabulous. We’re going to do the wide shot first, okay?”
Wes emerges from my trailer and watches me from behind the director’s chair, picking at a turkey sandwich and a bag of chips. Taking a fistful, licking the yellow dust off his fingers. We exchange glances between takes. I remember how, when we first had sex, I was desperate to join myself with him. The lining between our bodies was too thick—I wanted it rubble. First love is ravenous in this way. It’s starved. It’s consuming the idea of someone else until your teeth snap against an unexpected bone.
For most of his childhood, Wes lived alone with his mother and two small Chihuahuas named Pearl and Garnet. After his parents separated, his mother moved through men. He doesn’t remember most of them. Only one face is clear: the man who introduced his mother to the megachurch with a cross visible from the highway, to the preacher with the voice like God. This cycle of men made Wes think love was continuous loss. He saw his mother broken down on the couch, crying in her room, unable to sleep or eat or do much of anything, and he didn’t understand why she kept putting herself through it. He blamed her for trying again and again to give him a father, when he was more than capable. When he helped pay the medical bills, when he won Star Search, when he was discovered through the walls of that dingy apartment in Los Angeles, he felt as if he had emerged from his childhood as his own father and mother and brother and sister; he had been all things to himself at once. So the fear is not just that he will lose everything with one misstep. The fear is that maybe he does need other people.
RADIO TRANSCRIPT
January 2001
Interviewer: We asked passersby what they thought of a few of your outfits.
Amber Young: Okay.
Interviewer: Here’s the response to one of them. You wore this to the Billboard Music Awards. This sheer dress. And a passerby said: “Was she born in that?”
AY: Ha. That’s funny.
Interviewer: Does that bother you?
AY: No. I mean, I have no control over what they think. All I can do is wear things that make me feel good. I felt good in that dress. The stylist I work with—actually, her name is Brenda, thank you, Brenda—we picked it out together and I love it. That’s a special dress for me. It’s the first time I was invited.
Interviewer: Yeah, but what if kids hear you on the radio and want to copy what you’re doing? Are you wearing that to get attention?
AY: Not for attention, no.
Interviewer: Okay. There have been a lot of rumors about you and Wes. Is Gwen’s song “Touch and Go” about the whole situation?
AY: Well, that song was recorded before, actually, so I don’t get why everyone thinks that. We’re all good friends. Gwen and I are really close.
Interviewer: So no drama?
AY: None.