#queerbooks

It’s a hot night in New York City, and all eyes are on Pammie as she belts out Blood Red Rose’s latest hit, Scylla, a song about being in love with a beautiful girl who doesn’t love you back. Rick dutifully bangs away on the drums behind her, but as always, no one’s paying attention to him, even though he wrote the lyrics to Scylla. Scylla was a nymph that they learned about on their tour of Greece. They went to a museum together and learned the tragic tale of Glaucus and Scylla. Glaucus, a minor sea god, loved Scylla, a beautiful nymph, but she didn’t feel the same way. Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to stop pining for her, and he asked the witch, Circe, for a potion to make her fall in love with him. Much to his surprise, Circe fell in love with him, but when she confessed her love to Glaucus, he rejected her, saying that leaves would grow on the sea floor, and seaweed would grow on the mountaintops before he ever stopped loving Scylla. 

I’m a lot like Circe, in a way. What Rick and I have isn’t love. We met at a party and got talking while Pammie was signing autographs for some groupies who had somehow managed to sneak their way in. I’m Shelby Lee, one-hit wonder singer of Dice Baby. He’s Rick Grimshaw, the drummer of Blood Red Rose that nobody cares about. We bonded over being nobodies in the music industry who stand in the dark while people like Pammie hog all of the spotlight. Somehow, after a few more chance meetings, I convinced him to be my boyfriend, but I learned quickly that Rick only agreed to be with me because he can’t have Pammie, and he thinks that I’m the next best thing. He loves her, and if she ever said that she loved him too, he’d dump me for her in a heartbeat. 

Everyone loves Pammie. She’s beautiful in a way that makes women want to be her, and men want to be with her. It’s not fair. I practically had to beg for a record deal, and I’ve only produced one hit song, meanwhile Pammie’s gone triple platinum with her music. People are enthralled by her singing, her lyrics, and her killer guitar solos. Tens of thousands of people scream her lyrics back at her at her concerts. It’s her world, and she just lets Rick live in it. Because he’s her ‘best friend’. Rick is nothing compared to her—Every tabloid newspaper and gossip magazine says that he sucks, and that Pammie deserves a drummer with actual talent. They say that he’s riding her coattails, and Pammie dismisses them, because he’s her ‘best friend’. They blame him for her cocaine addiction—He convinced her to try it with him at a party, and when they do cocaine together, she thinks that they’re just two best friends having fun. That beautiful bitch knows what she’s doing, holding onto Rick. He loves her, I know it, and so does everyone else, but she either doesn’t realise it, or pretends not to. I’ve seen them talking backstage after their concerts; once, he asked her if she thought that they could ever be more than friends, and she said that they were already best friends. She didn’t need anything more. He spent the rest of the night in tears, drinking himself stupid. 

I hate Pammie. She has everything that I deserve. She’s a star, and everyone loves her, but she doesn’t let it go to her head. She’s genuinely nice to me, at first. She wants to be my friend, and I hate her even more for it. When I push her down a flight of stairs and she breaks her arm, her fans send her flowers and get well cards, and I rot in jail until Rick begs her not to press charges against me. When I steal her dead mother’s bracelet from her dressing room and flush it down the toilet, she sobs like the world is ending, and her fans tell me to kill myself on the internet. The internet doesn’t have proof that I stole the bracelet, but they think that I stole it, and that’s enough for them to want me dead. It was a gold bracelet with rubies, a family heirloom worth thousands, and Pammie didn’t deserve it. She stole the only man I’ve ever loved. Rick is supposed to be mine, but whether she wants him or not, his heart belongs to her. 

Rick makes our wedding all about Pammie. I know that he only asked me to marry him because he’s accepted that he can’t have her, and he thinks that he’ll never do better than me. I’m not marrying him because he loves me, I’m marrying him because I want to feel like I’ve won against Pammie for once in my life. Rick will be mine, at least on paper. But he insists that we plan the ceremony around Pammie. I wanted a church wedding, but Rick said no, it would be disrespectful to Pammie because she’s Jewish. Pammie isn’t Jewish; her gold-digging grandmother who married rich after escaping from Nazi Germany is, and so was her whore mother. Pammie never asks for kosher food, and I’ve seen the cokehead bitch eat bacon before, on the few occasions when she can be bothered to eat. Rick also insisted that Pammie be his best woman. I didn’t want her at the wedding at all, but he said that if she wasn’t allowed to be his best woman, the wedding was off. So reluctantly, I stand there in front of the registrar, watching Pammie steal my thunder on my own goddamned wedding day. Everyone’s looking at how beautiful she is, and not at me. They scoff at how boring the white dress I chose is. They ooh and ah over the black satin dress that Rick insisted that Pammie wear. It’s from the 1950s, and she’s wearing it with a pearl necklace and lacy fingerless gloves. With her eyeliner, and her iconic red rose tattoos on her arms, she looks like a punk Marilyn Monroe. 

I hope she fucking dies.

Rick refuses to dance with me at our reception, and instead, he drinks himself stupid and breaks down in tears. 

A week after our wedding, Pammie’s cocaine addiction finally does her in. Apparently the cocaine she took was laced with fentanyl. I’m relieved when Rick tells me that she’s dead, but nobody else feels that way, of course. Chester Bennington, Ashlee Simpson, and Jaret Reddick come to her funeral. They talk about how brilliant, and beautiful, and talented she was. The music industry will never be the same without her. Rick makes a fool of himself, crying, screaming, begging them not to put her coffin in the ground and leave her in the dark. He pushes me away when I try to comfort him. 

It’s not fair. 

Pammie is dead, but she still owns Rick’s heart. 

At my urging, Rick asks Triple Crown Records to replace Pammie with me. Now that that bitch is gone, I can finally be the star I deserve to be, or so I think, until I get booed off of the stage at Blood Red Rose’s next concert. My album doesn’t even sell enough copies to break even. It’s not fair. Even now that Pammie is dead, I can’t be a star. After six months of my music failing, Triple Crown Records drops Bloody Bouquet, so Rick and I do what all washed-up celebrities do; reality shows, and talent shows. Or at least, that’s what Rick does. I don’t get to, because nobody wants to see me on TV; all of my applications for reality shows get rejected. So I resign myself to being Rick’s Wife. I fritter my days away lounging by our pool in designer swimsuits while Rick does his big boy jobs. When he gets home, he doesn’t touch me unless he wants sex. The sex we have is terrible. No foreplay. No kissing. He doesn’t even look at me when we’re fucking, he closes his eyes and says Pammie’s name when he comes. 

After six months of loveless marriage, Rick says that we should start a family. I don’t have anything better to do with my life, so I agree. He doesn’t love me, but I know that he’ll love our children. He’s always wanted a big family. Maybe I’ll get lucky, and give him the pretty blonde babies he wanted Pammie to have for him. 

But luck isn’t on my side. It never is. 

When we think that I’m finally pregnant, we see a doctor, but the thing they find in my uterus isn’t a fetus, it’s a tumour. They run some more tests, and on May 27th, 2006, one day after what would have been Pammie’s 26th birthday, we find out that I have uterine cancer. It’s already spread everywhere, and there’s nothing they can do. 

I’m in too much shock to react. I want Rick to hold me. Cry for me. I want him to scream at the doctor and tell her that she’s wrong, I can’t have terminal cancer. I’m only 26, I’m too young for this. I don’t deserve this. I want him to beg her to try one round of chemo, or an operation, anything, as long as it might save me. Because he loves me. Because he doesn’t want to lose me. 

But we both know that that’s not true. 

Rick just nods at the doctor. “I see,” he says, as if he knew that this would happen. Or maybe it’s because he thinks that I deserve this. No, it’s because he thinks that he doesn’t deserve a wife, or a family, not after what he did to Pammie. It’s his fault that she got addicted to cocaine, and then died from a batch that was laced with fentanyl. 

I think about what Pammie’s fans will say when I die. They’ll say that I deserve this for all of the nasty things I did to her. They’ll probably gate crash my funeral and sing, ‘Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead!’. When Pammie died, everyone mourned for her. Chester Bennington, Ashlee Simpson, and Jaret Reddick came to her funeral. They talked about how brilliant, and beautiful, and talented she was. 

I seethe quietly in my seat as the doctor starts talking about end of life care options. She brings up a hospice near Yorkshire, by the seaside, like she’s sending us off for a summer holiday rather than sending me away to die. 

This isn’t fair.

I don’t deserve this.

 I’m going to die alone and hated, and it’s not fair. I don’t care what anyone else says, because I know that I don’t deserve this. 

Rick chooses a hospice down south for me. I will die in Winchester, an hour away from the town where he and Pammie grew up. He didn’t let me have my dream church wedding, but he’s letting me die in a converted monastery, where there are paintings of saints hanging on the walls. My room has a painting of St Dismas on the wall facing my bed. 

Rick spends more time praying in the hospice’s chapel than he does with me. My room is close to it, and when everything’s quiet, I can hear his prayers. His prayers are never for me. Only for Pammie. He never mentions God in his prayers. He prays that Pammie will hear him in Heaven and forgive him for getting her addicted to cocaine, and accidentally giving her the spiked batch that killed her. He says that he needs her to know that he loves her. He’ll never stop loving her. She’s the only woman he’s ever loved. 

I am, and always will be Circe, the witch who couldn’t win his heart. I will never be his Scylla. 

Leaves will grow on the sea floor before he stops loving Pammie.