“Aw, fuck you!” he replied, avoiding Vivika’s gaze which was even more irritated than normal.
“And put your pants back on, you idiot!” Vivika joined in as Jakob’s pants sagged lower and lower by the minute, exposing his bright pink underwear (what could be called underwear, anyway), “Holy hell, Jakob, you look like an anorexic snowman wearing a banana hammock!”
“Hey now, all the fuckin’ girls want a piece o’ this!” With that, Jakob grabbed his crotch through that godawful pink thong he wore—for no good reason whatsoever—and began shaking his manhood, much to the chagrin of the room. All in all, he really was too proud of it.
“Jakob, I swear…!” Vortecx yelled, swatted him hard in his groin with a rolled-up newspaper, causing Jakob to fall dramatically to the floor while clutching his beloved man-parts.
“Fuck you, you strange fucking shit!” Jakob shrieked. “Fuck your weird hair, fuck your weird clothing, fuck your…”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s more where that came from if you don’t pull your pants back up.”
“Alright, alright! Fuck! The hell is your problem, you confused, scary idiot?”
“Hey Jakob,” Lena interrupted, lifting the pack of beer to full visibility, “guess what I brought for after your clothes are back on?”
“Beer!” the three others shouted at the same time.
As the three of them dug into her small cache of bubbly goodness, she had to smile to herself. Oh sure, these goons were insufferable idiots, but they were her insufferable idiots. For all the problems they caused her, they were still her children and she loved them all the same—even Jakob. And yet, as the three of them began fighting again, she had to marvel at how perfect they all were. They were almost too-perfect caricatures of themselves. They were exactly the image that Grandfather felt the West would take to.
Jakob, without seeing or attending a game in his life, was an absolute soccer-hooligan and dressed far more punk rock than even most punks did. He was a tall, tattooed, hyper attention-whore who fought, drank, and in general seemed to take an inane pride in his constant misbehavior. Not that Lena wasn’t a miscreant in her own right… but Jakob had a way of overdoing it. Yet even then, he ‘meant well’, of course, and never seemed to find himself in any actual trouble.
Vivika, in stark contrast, only looked like the vampire she pretended to be. She was otherwise just an apathetic young lady with a surprisingly killer smile that would look great on camera. Sure, she was gay, but she was stage gay—as if her ‘girlfriend’ was a secret that every idle stranger was entrusted to keep, despite the occasional (and maybe accidental?) mention of her ‘boyfriend’. Lena wouldn’t be surprised if either even existed.
And while Vortecx was strange, well, he was strange in all the right ways for the international counterculture community—exceedingly liberal, socially progressive, and artistic to a fault. Oddly enough, there didn’t seem to be any rules with him, and that appeared to be the point as far as Lena could figure—as in, ‘the lack of rules is the point’-point, while still putting a fine point on following all the rules of ‘not following rules’ to a ‘T’. Lena was a malcontent herself, yet she couldn’t quite figure out how she felt about the whole thing. For that matter, it didn’t seem like Vortecx could, either. In the end, it was just easier to accept what Vortecx said, rather than argue or question it.
No matter which way you sliced it, all three of them were the image of everything a perfectly Western-oriented band looked to be—confused, a little troubled, perfect-looking, politically progressive, emotionally abrasive and possessing of meticulous hair. There wasn’t any substance to speak of, if you really knew them, but the public wouldn’t care.
And well that they should be the image: the lyrics of the songs that ‘Lena’ wrote were contrived to a rather unfortunate degree. This was one of the few battles that Grandfather had fought hard on her behalf, and lost roundly. He wanted to write music that both the punks and rockers in the West would take to, but the State would have none of it, citing that “The rest of the world will appreciate good Socialist values when they see them.” Eventually, after a long battle that she wasn’t privy to, Grandfather and the State had finally reached an impasse: write lyrics about being generally sad for ‘the state of the world’. You would be surprised how very ambiguous such concepts could end up being.
It was something the West would likely pick up on, surely. Everyone could agree on the sad state of worldly affairs. And the Politburo could probably be convinced that it was everything except for the Wall and the Socialist/Communist experiments that the world was worried about, while agreeing completely with their lyrics. The problem was that the lyrics didn’t mean anything—not a single damn word of it. It wasn’t just that Lena hadn’t written them herself. They literally said nothing of conviction whatsoever. Sure, the songs would play in the West, but true aficionados would refuse them outright. She knew that, and Grandfather knew that. As much as Lena wanted to call this a ‘punk rock band’, well, it really wasn’t.
The only people that didn’t know that, predictably enough, were her band-mates. They absolutely loved the lyrics, believing them to be a ticket to easy street. And who was Lena to argue this with them? Jakob, Vivika and Vortecx had spent years ducking the Stasi and hiding out just the same as she had. The three of them did deserve a break. Lena did too, if she was being honest about it. Yet they were punk rock. They were supposed to be hardcore. They weren’t supposed to just abstain from giving a shit about what people thought, but to demonstrate this by giving a shit about the image they portrayed. Right?
“So what’s the plan, then?” Vivika asked, after she and Vortecx finished murdering Jakob, who now lay flat on his back playing the victim of a profound and undeserved beating.
“Well,” Lena began, “We’re gonna be playing live soon, of course. I was in touch with the producer today and he says they have a few shows they are trying to book on the other side.”
It wasn’t precisely a lie. Patrick, her handsome Stasi officer, had informed her that Grandfather was working towards this end. “Surely,” she had originally thought, “it couldn’t be easy to reach out across so many complicated channels and find a gig—doing so could take months!” But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The West was surprisingly disinterested in traffic crossing from the East, and booking a show required virtually the same meager phone call that anyone could make (long-distance charges notwithstanding, of course). No, Grandfather was biding his time.
Of course, he wasn’t strictly her producer. Little John had its own man, Walter, for that. Walter just answered directly to Amiga, and Amiga ran everything Little John did by the Stasi, who in turn ran everything Lena did by Grandfather. So, by proxy, Grandfather (whom Lena rarely talked to) was in control of the entire thing. She just didn’t know precisely what he had up his sleeve. Thus, she had to tell little fibs now and again. Change was on its way, however. She could smell it.
“Fucking lies!” Jakob shouted. “That’s what you always say!”
“I know,” Lena placated, “But you have to understand how difficult these things are. Walter is…”