Wings & Hearts

Jyrki literally expelled me from his lap as the SUV ground to a halt behind the derelict-looking pub (apparently it was called El Vampiro), it was all I could do to keep from turning around and stalking out of the place as I walked into the dressing room with the quilted duffel slung over my shoulder. Really, this was horrible; the table had disease floating on it! I could see them! Quickly, I searched out the paper towels and a bottle of Windex and sprayed down the vanity and the seat in front of it before I set up my little “station.”

Officially, I was on tour as the resident stylist - of both of the bands. Strange, since if I had my way, they would all have been wearing a rainbow of bright polo’s, khaki and boat shoes; it had been the only way for Jyrki to get the “powers that be” to let me accompany him. It meant that on one side of the duffel bag I carried I kept my cassettes and books (busy-work for plane rides and long drives), and on the other I kept tons of black makeup, a bag of silver studs (and the pliers with which to install them), a brace of maroon, navy, black and white bandannas, and a bag of silver safety pins in assorted sizes. Truly, the split was more like 1:4, with the hair dryer, brush, tub of industrial-strength hair gel and the black makeup. I began to lay these things on the countertop, plugged in the hair dryer into the nearby outlet.

“My first victim better bring me cigarettes, else the loot of you are going to look really stupid tonight,” I raised an eyebrow at the 69 Eyes boys; none of them seemed very eager to subject themselves to my nicotine-less wrath. After a few moments (and a quiet exchange between Ville and himself), Jyrki grumbled his way forward with my missing Marlboros and an ash tray. Jussi trailed behind him with the suitcase of “goodies” - it was filled with an assortment of leathers for the boys concerts, belts, jackets, vests, pants, gloves, the works - which he smashed down on the table and unzipped for me. A quick search brought out a clinking bag of silver - an assortment of rings, - an assortment of buckle-less belts, and a shoebox of sunglasses.

I mussed up the top of Jyrki’s hair - it was easy enough with hairspray - and ringed his ice blue eyes with eyeliner; I barely managed to keep him from kissing my hands off. Around his neck I placed a necklace of what looked like a Catholic Rosary, I slipped a pair of fingerless gloves over his hands and a few chunky silver chains around his wrists. I directed him to stand, and slung a pair of belts - one studded with a plain buckle and one plain black leather with an enormous Jack Daniel’s buckle around the waist of his leather pants, ignoring his grumbles about not holding up his pants. After I tied a red bandanna around the leg of his pants and presented him with a pair of dark sunglasses, Jyrki placed a brief kiss on my lips and on each cheek before he surrendered his place to Baize.

Baize seemed wary of my makeup brushes as I tried to add a touch of black eyeliner around his eyes; he shied away from my hands like a scared child. Finally, I gave up, and attacked his hair with the can of hairspray, giving him an overly-tousled look for revenge. I stuck a pair of necklaces around his neck - one was a chunky chain, the other a thin silver chain with a skull and crossbones hanging from it. His ears were pierced, so I replaced the bland silver balls in them with thicker hoops. I handed him a set of rings for as many fingers as he would put them on - three on one hand, two on the other - and another thick silver chain for his wrist. Around his other wrist, I tied a navy bandanna, and handed him a single studded belt with a skull and crossbones belt buckle. He took a leather jacket and began attaching studs to it as Archie took his spot.

The man looked so much like a biker-gang leader it was ridiculous. He was wearing dark sunglasses and wouldn’t allow me to put any eyeliner on him. Rolling my eyes (how dare two men in a row ignore my guidance!) I tied a black bandanna around the top of his head, over the tops of his ears. A stud-covered leather vest and a few rings later and he was good to go, he relinquished his seat to Timo.

Timo’s hair required gel and a hair dryer to set the thick goo. He was one of the few who would let me do his eyeliner, too, so I went “all out” and added black eyeshadow as well (a “tasteful” amount - if anyone could call black eyeshadow tasteful to begin with. With a new cigarette in my mouth, I cut the sleeves off of Timo’s shirt around his arms, deaf to his protests on the matter, and provided him with a nice leather vest (which I hope didn’t match Archie’s too closely). Around his wrists I wrapped yet another chunky silver chain and a leather cuff, and a faux-rosary which I had thought interesting. He refused to wear rings, so I tucked a white bandanna into his belt, pushed an additional studded belt (with an elaborate seatbelt-style belt buck) into his hands and shooed him away.

Jussi plopped down in his place; and immediately I started to revive his deflating spiked mess of hair. He and Jyrki were discussing the set-list with the rest of the well-styled band as I worked with the hairdryer, cutting off all speech for minute-long bursts. I splattered eyeliner and -shadow about his face with abandon - Jussi had no discretion, he actually would rub his eyes with his fists before going onstage for that particular “just been beaten up” look he desired so. As a drummer, he couldn’t wear rings, so I slid a pair of mismatched arm warmers up his thin forearms, with a thick leather cuff over one to hide the girly-looking skull on it.

“Give me your shirt.”

“What?”

“Give me the shirt you will be wearing on stage.” Jussi looked startled but did as he was told - I took the Texas Terri shirt he begrudgingly put in my hands; the look of horror spread as I cut the sleeves and the sides of the shirt off - right down to the hem line which held the shirt together at the bottom. I handed him back the nearly side-less shirt.

“You… you just turned my Terri shirt into a poncho! Ei, vittun woman!” I snipped the scissors beneath his nose, extremely close to the skin.

“You will wear it and you will like it, boy! I was going to do it to Jyrki’s shirt, but he said no.” I smiled over Jussi’s spiked-up hair at Jyrki, who had been scrutinizing my every move from a stool quite near to the vanity I worked in front of. Then, I tied a red bandanna about Jussi’s neck before I let him go - and surrendered myself to Jyrki’s waiting arms.

“God this job isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” I murmured into his shoulder, making certain I held my cigarette as far away as possible from his hairspray-infused hair. However much I wanted him to get a hair cut, I didn’t want him going on stage looking like he had made a failed attempt at using his hair like a wet blanket to put out a fire. It simply wouldn’t do.

“But you’re with me,” His voice was much closer to my ear than I had expected. After a few moments of smoke-filled kisses (the kind Jyrki only put up with because he loved me so much and couldn’t argue the point I had made once about my smoking being nothing compared to the clubs he preformed in), I felt eyes on my back, and turned to face them.

“What? I’m not going to style you all, you’re out of luck unless you want to look exactly like them or exactly like me. That’s all I can do,” I explained to Ville, who regarded me with the most ridiculous pair of lost-puppy eyes I had ever seen (barring Jyrki’s).

“I just want some eyeliner, ma’am. Please?” With a sigh, I reached over to grab the stick from the vanity’s counter - leaving my butt in Jyrki’s lap, - and sat up, beckoning Ville closer as I perched on top of Jyrki on a stool. Very precarious - I could feel that if we had been less sober, the position wouldn’t have worked out well at all. Ville leaned in ever so slightly, and with perfect balance I managed to rim his bright-green peepers in a manner similar to how I had done Jyrki’s - suitable for a front man who needed to make cat’s eyes at the audience all night in order to piss off his girlfriend in an interesting plot to eventually achieve make-up sex. Well, that’s how I figured it was.

My stomach gurgled, and I looked down at it as if to ask what it wanted; I was astounded to find that nearly everyone in the room had a tumbler of vodka - except me! A few quick glances brought my eyes to the glasses and the nearly-empty bottle, and I vacated Jyrki’s lap to make a beeline for it (why are they called bee lines anyway? I wasn’t meandering about the room, I was headed as straight as the crow flies, ignoring the bodies in my way) reaching out like a newborn with both hands. Instead of grabbing the glass, I snatched the remains of the bottle from the table, and cradled it in my arms as I made my way back to Jyrki.

“You want some?” I asked my black-haired beauty, as I unscrewed the cap and lifted the bottle to my lips.

“Not after witnessing that,” He growled as I took a deep swig.

“Oh shush, I’ve seen you do much worse,” A grin spread across that beautiful face of his, and I stood on my tiptoes to plant a kiss on the tip of his nose. Even sitting on a stool he was taller than me. I felt his palm fall onto the top of my head and commence the back-and-forth motion of mussing up my hair, and fell into his chest with a new breath of smoke as he chuckled at the sentiment.

Someone had turned Sisters of Mercy on in the background of the room in preparation for the show - everyone had a different ritual they would do pre-show to make them feel better about themselves - and Jyrki hummed the tune, sending shivers down my spine with the deep rumbling of his voice. For a moment, I snuggled with him, reflecting on how lucky I was; before duty pulled us apart once more.

“Sin? I have… oh, ok. Here, this is your backstage pass -” The frightened-looking mouse of a man had stumbled his way in from outside, and was obviously associated with management. Begrudgingly, I pulled myself away from Jyrki to listen to the man’s tirade of what was acceptable behavior backstage - while sipping vodka straight from the bottle.

“Uh-huh. Gotcha. Thanks for that.” I snatched the laminated piece of paper on a lanyard from his fingers and hung it around my neck - marveling at how bitchy I had managed to come off as - and turned back to bury my face in Jyrki’s chest; I didn’t want to miss a single beat of his humming. He had moved from humming deep in his throat to singing the chorus under his breath, and I positioned myself just so that I could hear the lyrics.

“Hey now, hey now now. Sing this corrosion to me,” I nestled my ear closer to his lips, happy to listen, as he played with the collar of my polo - pushing the string of the lanyard beneath the Kelly green fabric just right. I lit a new cigarette and left the now-empty bottle on the vanity next to where my tools had been (someone had very unceremoniously dumped them all right back into my duffel bag, which I would now have to re-organize), watching the boys perform their various rituals with a smile on my face.

Jyrki’s was obvious - he liked a good cuddle before he had to go sing. Archie and Timo sat in the corner, adding more studs to their clothing. Baize was playing air guitar to the solo in the song Jyrki sang, and Jussi played drums to match, the pair of them looked like they might be trying to expend all of their energy before the show even began. Their rituals were familiar to me, though, I had seen them all before.

Ville sat with a bottle of beer and a cigarette in each hand (!), beside Linde, who appeared to be high as a kite - and probably was, judging by the joint between his fingers. Gas sat on the other side of the couch from the pair, reading some sort of guitar magazine in French - I wondered if he was high too, and only believed he could understand it. Burton was engaging in a philosophical conversation with Mige, who appeared to have some sort of prayer beads wrapped around his wrist.

Those men… those men were weird, I had decided before my face returned to Jyrki’s Misfits t-shirt. They were far too obsessed with being “legitimate” to last very long; but it wasn’t like I had any professional say in the matter. I wrapped one arm around Jyrki’s waist - apparently slower and more deliberately than I had meant to.

“How much vodka was in that bottle?” I shrugged in an answer to his question as Jyrki stood up, pulling me to my feet with him. “Come on,” The black-haired man pulled me along, out the door that the boys were filing out of like there had been some sort of signal I had missed.

“I feel strange,” I commented, a fistful of Jyrki’s hair in my hand like a reign with which I followed him.

“Why would that be, kulta?” I couldn’t tell if he sounded concerned or not as he settled me on an amplifier and leaned between my legs; he took my face between his two hands, acting as if he were checking my pupils for dilation. I shrugged as I exhaled smoke out the side of my mouth - at least, I thought I had managed to get it out the side of my mouth, it seemed to all come out right into Jyrki’s face.

“Sinikka, really. You can’t be this drunk off of… that open bottle…” Suddenly, he was gone, and I was left swaying side to side on the amplifier; an epic battle going on between my drunk and/or drugged brain, which very much wanted to rip off my shirt and dance about half-naked, and my sober and/or normal brain, which encouraged me to sit very, very still and wait for Jyrki to come back and fix me. Sound began to pour from the amplifier beneath me, and startled me half to death about three seconds too late for the reaction to be normal (thank you for taking notes, sober brain). I unfolded my legs from their crisscrossed position to stand, still swaying, and attempted to make my way on stage.

“Hey hey! Where are you going!” Someone’s hands grabbed my shoulders and brought me back to the amplifier.

“But it’s loud.”

“Of course it’s loud. Mita Helvetti, Sini, are you alright?” I recognized Archie as he spun me around, and recognized the floor as I collapsed in a heap on it, dizzy from the spin.