Skin in the Game
by Elizabeth Bear
Peter was waiting for me when I got backstage.
I had been expecting the publicist to show up for weeks, ever since I started getting the sense that the tour numbers weren’t what the label had hoped. But as I walked out from under the glare and heat of the lights, it didn’t make me any happier to glimpse his hollow-cheeked, handsome scowl off in the wings. I ignored him for a few precious seconds, gratefully burying my dripping face in the snowy, chilled towel that Mitchell, my road manager and best friend, handed me. Sweat and makeup flattened the plush Egyptian terry cloth. I gulped water while I dropped the first towel, handed the glass back to Mitchell as I took another, and wiped myself down again.
I gave him a questioning glance. He waited until I pulled the Dampitronics from my ringing ears and handed them to him to roll his eyes toward Peter and murmur, “You want some backup with the cadaver, Nee?”
I shook my head. My ears shrilled like a temple bell despite the earplugs; my body trembled with exhaustion. A line of itchy soreness ran across my back where the low band of my costume had chafed because I’d lost weight on tour. I wanted: my dressing room, a shower, yoga pants, a sandwich, and my bed—in negotiable order.
I did not want: a conversation with Peter Sullivan.
But there he was, curly graying-blond hair atop a tall frame, a debauched cherub in a bespoke suit. Making me tired.
I was slumping. I spackled my best smile across my face (pin the grin on the clown) and hauled my tired spine upright to sashay over to him. Don’t forget to look spunky but demure. The patriarchy hates it when you’re not appropriately deferential.
It had been a so-so night, and I had just now, without so much as a glance at the time, given up on expecting it to get any better.
“Neon, sweetheart,” he said, and leaned in to kiss beside my cheek. He glanced at his phone, then dropped his hand to his side. “Great performance. You’re looking better than ever.”
“Glad to hear it,” I replied. “Lost weight?”
“Good suit,” he answered, with a self-deprecating flip of his hand he probably practiced in the mirror. His VIP pass fluttered in the breeze. “Can we talk?”
No wasn’t an option.
“Dressing room,” I said. “Follow me.”
Once the door was shut, I stepped behind a screen to undress. I wriggled out of the drum rig with its electrostatic panels and synth triggers and touch plates, and hung it up to air out. Suzie, my dresser, would be along to disinfect it before packing. My costume was as sodden as if I’d walked into a swamp wearing it, and smelled considerably worse. I dropped the sopping scraps of sequined white stretch film into a laundry bag and sealed it, then toweled off and pulled on panties, bra, a V-necked T-shirt, and an old pair of ivory-colored jeans. Even here, in private, my clothes were in my trademark ivory, silver, and white, a scheme I’d selected years ago to set off the darkness of my skin and my auburn halo of zigzag curls, sweat-damp and frizzy now.
Branding, branding, branding. Cameras were literally everywhere.
Barefoot, on the balls of my feet, I padded out of concealment. The white shag throw rug stretched itself and massaged my soles as I curled my toes into it.
Peter handed me a glass of wine—my own Neon White Red, of course, from my own minibar in the corner—and settled into the visitor’s chair with one of his own. I chose to stand. I paced slowly, enjoying the ministrations of the rug, stretching sore calves with each step, aware that Peter was watching.
I bit my lower lip to keep from asking why he’d come. It didn’t matter if I chewed on it now; the lipstick was all over the dirty towels.
It was all about the dominance games with Peter.
I sipped my wine, which was about the only thing around besides me that wasn’t some shade of white. It was rich, not too sweet, a bodacious red with layers and textures. I had never had much patience for delicate, ladylike wines. I wanted something that tugged your shirtsleeve and demanded attention.
There was probably something Freudian in that.
I gave the silence a calculated forty-five seconds and glanced ostentatiously at my bangle. Blood alcohol content .01%, heart rate leveling off at 72 beats per minute, time 11:42 p.m. “Peter,” I said. “I’m exhausted.”
Awarding him the point, but maybe keeping a moral edge. He’d be easier to deal with if he thought he was winning.
His smile was stained with wine. Whatever it was, it was so important that he physically set his phone down. “We’ve got an opportunity to get in on the ground floor with a new marketing technology. Something that could be as much of a game changer as music videos were, or downloads. They asked for you specifically.”
A nervous shiver raised the hairs along my nape and arms. I could tell already: This was going to be a pain in the ass. He wouldn’t have come in person to pitch it to me—to pressure me—if it wasn’t.
I’d been dreading a deeply uncomfortable conversation about what we could do to bring my tour more relevance. I’d rather have that.
“Who’s they?”
He held up a hand. That was Peter for I’m withholding that data until the end of my pitch.
“Could be a career maker,” he said. “You need to get some skin in the game, something we can hook some press coverage on. Some pathos. You’re stable and professional, which is great—but you’re too stable and professional. Your image is, anyway. It’s getting boring. Stable and professional is not what sells rock ‘n’ roll. The fans are hungry, and you have to keep giving them something to chew on, or they move on. And you have a reputation for staying on the bleeding edge to maintain.”
That was the trick, actually. The actual bleeding edge was too far away for most people to stretch to comfortably. In reality, you wanted to be just behind it, safe-ish but plausibly trendsetting, so you didn’t make people uncomfortable, you just made them feel excited. As if they were taking a risk, when it was really a very, very safe investment.
The public likes to feel that they’re standing next to a visionary. But they don’t want to face the social consequences you get when you’re fighting for real change. Jesus was right about his own apostle Peter throwing him under the bus as soon as he got a little scared—and in two thousand years, the only thing different about people is what’s on the surface.
I started off on the actual bleeding edge, a long, long time ago. A real artistic revolutionary. Then I realized I liked eating and having a roof over my head, and I let that edge overtake me. Much better to surf it. Stay on the curl.
Putting up with Peter was just one of the prices I paid for the very nice rug massaging my sore feet right now.
I was probably a more effective double agent for social change here than further out, anyway. And that’s totally not self-justifying twaddle.
I drank my wine politely until I was sure he’d finished. “Can I hear the name now?”
“It’s an app called Clownfish.”
I didn’t drop my wineglass. Which was a good thing, because Envirugs were a bitch to clean. I glanced down at my bangle, thinking about adjusting my endorphin mix a little, but I didn’t want Peter to see that he was getting to me. I caught myself doing it and tried to make it look like I was checking the time.
“I see you’ve heard of it.”
I read Scientific American and The Wall Street Journal in addition to Boing Boing and Ars Technica. That wasn’t one of the things that made it into the carefully curated press releases, but I’d heard of it. I shrugged. “It’s a bit more than an app, Peter.”