Jessie Rose - Atomic Love: A Heavy Metal Memoir

ATOMIC LOVE

A Heavy Metal Memoir

JESSIE ROSE

Atomic Love: A Heavy Metal Memoir (Fiction) Copyright 2019 by Jessie Rose. All Rights Reserved.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover designed by J. Rose using Canva Pro.

Edited by Cat Hellisen

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Jessie Rose
Visit my website at www.JessieRoseAuthor.com

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing: Dec. 2019
Black Summer Press

ISBN- 978-0-578-56416-6

ATOMIC LOVE

Authors Note

Due to the sensitive subject matters in Atomic Love , I have decided to include a list of warnings below for readers who may need them. If you dont, skip to the next page.

Novel contains: Discussion of mental health, disassociation, anxiety, PTSD and trauma. Instances of violence, sexual assault, miscarriage, suicide ideation and the death of a child.

PROLOGUE

I came to, naked in a hotel shower. Water, full blast, turned from hot to glacial. Saliva, thick with blood, dripped from my swollen lips and swirled down the drain. Electric static, frequency unknown. Maybe it was that damn radio. Or the valley my fingers traced along my skull. My bet was on the dent in my head, but the radio wasnt helping.

I pressed my palm against the tile to brace myself. A sharp edge of bone cut into my skin. Water from the shower-head washed across my hand, flushing blood from the wound.

A tooth. My tooth. Buried in my palm.

How long have I been here?

Guttural groans escaped my cracked lips. Forehead pressed to tile. Ice water struck my raw flesh like shards of glass. Tooth gripped in fist. Body recoiling in pain. This was not supposed to happen. Not to me. Not to anyone.

I was an artist once. My paintings were alive, robust, and colorful. Until I became fractured into nothingwhich, by the way, only comes in blues and blacks. Dull plum and drab olive if you are lucky enough to heal.

Broken. Undone. Cracked.

Somewhere in London? Los Angeles? Dallas? Somewhere on the road. Not like Kerouac, but somewhere far, far away from my mother. A collision of two paths, where on the road became on the run.

This is not a story about Dallas. Or my mother. Actually, its not a story at all. Its a manual. A guidebook. What not to do.

Buy a good pair of running shoes. Dont believe anything you hear on the radio. Hide his matches. Hold on to your teeth.

Call your mother maybe do that first.

Red is the color that streams from pokes and punctures. Pull hard enough and Ill fall to pieces.

A towel was placed on my burnt skin.

You cant stay here. Suit Man screamed into my left ear. Can you fucking hear me?

My brain hemispheres were not communicating. This was some Jeffrey Dahmer shit. Five to one, baby.

Would I have stepped foot on that bus to Los Angeles if I had known what the universe had in store for me? Number 322, the overnight Greyhound from Phoenix; one-way express to hell. All aboard! Next stop: blood loss and broken teeth.

I wish something had stopped mea flat tire, an earthquake, the apocalypse. There would have been another night, another bus. Years later, I still wish for a bus to a different city.

If God were real, she would have sent me a different man.

CHAPTER 1

Summer, 1986

Y oure coming with us, the goth girl with purple dreads said. A ripped Bauhaus Bela Lugosis Dead tank slid off her shoulder. Shit-kicking combat boots, a sleeve of tattoos and vinyl hot pants completed her look.

Im Kaley, this is Kevin.

A lanky, bookish guy in a long, white button up, and black-rimmed glasses gave me a part shy, part apologetic half wave.

Kaley grabbed my hand, pulling me out of a university art fair and my life as a studious painter at the Institute of Art, dragging me straight into the L.A. underworld.

Doubling up on classes, I had made no time for friends or a social life. Los Angeles grit and grime was not for me. I wanted to get home to Arizona, visit my hippie parents, take a break to backpack across Europe, then move to the East Coast after graduation. I was fearless, adventurous, but my sweet parents had made me an overachiever and avid rule follower.

As an only child, I had to compete with the entire neighborhood. Id never fit in with other girls. They wanted to talk about high school boys. I wanted to talk about Bowie, Warhol and Pop. I loved dirt bikes and nail polish. A mixture of mud and glitter were the precursor to expensive oil paintsnow running off the edge of the neglected table in booth eighteen of the art fair while a total stranger pulled me around the building, down a wooded path.

Kissing ass had never been my strong point. If another Beverly Hills housewife dripping in diamonds asked me to take half off a painting Id spent six months perfecting, I would scream.

Of course, I went with the purple-haired goth girl.

It was more than that. My world was vanilla. My classes were vanilla, my boyfriends had been vanilla. Not French vanilla, but cheap soft serve, without toppings. Kaley was the sprinkles to my vanilla-strawberry twist. She was the Pop Rocks and Red Hots, too. A performance artist, she lit her painted canvases on fire, then jumped through them. Spray-painted herself blue when bored. Kevin was her film student boyfriend with hair band credentials. He learned a few songs on his keyboard to say he was a musician, so he could make connections in the 80s glam scene.

Kaleys energy was intoxicating. Her perfect skin and green eyes gave her an ethereal glow, her black clothes a shield. A contrast to my dull, blonde, whiteness. I hid behind my colorful palette. Pretty, not plain, but a barrier, nonetheless. Bravery ending at surfboards and dirt bikes. Oil paints keeping others at a distance.

Endless, hyper chatter poured from Kaleys black-lined lipsfilling a void. Spilling her life story like glitter in the wind, hoping it would stick.

I listened attentively, not wanting to miss a beat before this flittering black bird of a girl landed on her next captive audience. Her father, Freddie Dean, was a jazz musician from New Orleans. Quite famous at one point in his career, Freddie played with greats like Nina Simone and Fats Domino. The drifting bass player shacked up with Kaleys mothera London-based fashion designer named Bridgette. Bridgettes goals included moving to California and obtaining a green card. Things had not worked out between the two. At ten, Kaley was left stateside to raise herself with her alcoholic father. This betrayal gave her grit and determination. (Along with a slight British accent, that erupted into a spew of Creole dialect when she phoned her father). Freddie never forgave Kaley for petitioning to have his guardianship revoked. Her case was denied. She ran away, living in the home goods section of a J. C. Penney, at a mall in Ventura County for a week (making her an expert in uptight consumerismher words, not mine). Her father moved away from California, leaving Kaley behind. She sought temporary refuge with a cult leader named David who was twice her age. Shit got a little too Charlie in the valley, so I bailed, Kaley said.

The night we met, I made my first major sale. In hindsight, Im pretty sure thats why Kaley grabbed my hand. Shed been fidgeting through the sale, picking up items, flipping them over to look at the price. She cornered me outside the restroom, using the universal conversation starter, Hey girllove your hair.