Dirty Rocker Boys by Bobbie Brown, Caroline Ryder Page B

Jani waited for his taxi to take him to the airport, he said he wanted to see me again.
    “Let me fly you out next time I play a show?” he said, taking my hands and kissing me.
    “Maybe.”
    On our way back from Shreveport, I made Tammy pull over at a small occult shop I had visited a few times in the past. Inside was a guy who looked like your average Joe, but he was a voodoo doctor, the real deal. My grandpa John had told me witch doctors would go into the swamps to dig up roots and wild plants for their medicines and potions. He told me about women who made magical dolls, and about the power of New Orleans gris-gris. I had grown up with my head swimming with tales of hoodoo, rootwork, and Southern conjure. I believed in magic, and I still do.
    “I want you to cast a spell on Matthew Nelson that takes away his money, love, and success,” I told the voodoo doctor. “You have to be careful with revenge spells—sometimes they come back around,” he said. “Are you sure?”
    “I’m sure.” He gave me a black fabric voodoo doll, a blackcandle, and some black-arts oil. Then he wrote down some instructions.
    When I got back to L.A., I spent nine days in my newly rented apartment performing magic. “First, anoint the black candle with the oil,” read the instructions. I had to burn the candle for seventeen minutes each day, for nine days. While it burned, I held the candle in my left hand and cursed Matthew Nelson, dripping the wax all over the doll’s body. It stared back at me with its helpless button eyes.
    “May Nelson’s career suck forever!”
    “May Matthew Nelson never love anyone more than me!”
    After the ninth day of incantations, I put what was left of the candle in a small box along with the doll, a small bottle of rum, and nine cents. I wrapped it in black cloth and tied it with twine. I was supposed to take it to a cemetery and bury it, but that was too creepy. So I shoved it behind some boxes and asked the black-magic gods to get to work ASAP.
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    “So, Bobbie, we hear you’ve been seeing someone.”
    I was being interviewed live on KROQ, L.A.’s biggest rock music radio station. Sometimes the DJs would call me and ask me questions about what was happening on the Strip.
    Had someone photographed me with Jani in Shreveport maybe? Oh well, the cat’s out of the bag, I thought.
    “Yes, we heard you were at the Cathouse last night, making out with Taime Downe.”
    What the fuck?
    Taime Downe was the lead singer of a hair band called Faster Pussycat and he looked like a Nazi tranny. The Cathouse was his club with Riki Rachtman, host of MTV’s Headbangers Ball , pure sleaze, full of fast sex and hairspray. It was the dirtiest, most punk rock of the Hollywood clubs. Lita Ford had puked in the bathroom. Christina Applegate worked coat check. Slash fell down the stairs. Axl wore a Cathouse T-shirt in the “Paradise City” video. Every seedy hair metal cliché you can think of had happened at the Cathouse. But never, not once, did I swap spit with Taime Downe.
    “Dude, Taime had something in his eye and I was trying to see what it was!” I protested. Fucking journalists. Later that day, the phone rang again. This time it was Jani. “So what’s this about you and Taime? Did you guys seriously hook up?” Jani was on the road, somewhere in Oregon. One of his buddies had heard me on the radio and called him. News travels fast. “Um, no . I don’t kiss drag queens,” I said.
    Taime wore way too much lipstick for my taste. And he was just an acquaintance. Jani promised he believed me, and we hung up. Wait, why is Jani acting all boyfriendy? I thought. We hadn’t had an official conversation about our relationship—apart from him asking me to marry him live on national radio, that is.
    A few days later, Jani called me again from the road. He had found a phone booth and called me long-distance. “The show was awesome, and our video is number one on MTV,” he said, excited. “Oh, and