Gagapocalypse Read online

  “What could you possibly have to say about her that hasn’t been said before?” she demanded.

  I shrugged, almost apologetically, and tried to explain, “Well, a few months back I was having lunch with my editor, and I started telling her about a couple of right wing Christian websites I’d stumbled on that claimed Gaga is an Illuminatus. We were just bullshitting, you know, talking about crazy shit online, but she seemed interested, so I explained how they had all this very painstakingly analysis of all the esoteric symbolism in her videos and photo shoots. And I had to admit, they made a pretty compelling argument. Her tendency to pose with one eye covered or with two fingers spread on her face, framing one of her eyes in a V (or triangle). The Hello Kitty photo shoot inside a Masonic lodge. The pervasive birth, rebirth, and metamorphosis imagery. The crosses, both inverted and upright. Multiple allusions within her videos to mind control. Honestly, haven’t seen this much blatant occult and anti-Christian imagery in pop music since Marilyn Manson. Anyways, my editor was sufficiently amused and suggested that when the new album came out I should do a tongue-in-cheek review about some made-up hidden symbolism in it.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes. “You’re only covering her because you want to fuck her.”

  It should be noted that a good amount of the time I spent hanging out with Jessie in high school was motivated by wanting to fuck her.

  I said, “Honestly, she’s never really done anything for me sexually. I mean sure, she’s got a great body, and obviously she’s not shy about showing it off. But it’s not about wanting to fuck her,” I paused, struggling to find the right words, feeling the booze weighing down my tongue, making everything come out sluggish and misshapen. “I just admire her, you know. I’m fascinated by her. She’s turned herself into a living, breathing work of conceptual art that both celebrates and condemns the narcissism of our culture. I guess there’s part of me that identifies with her, and another part of me that wishes I could be more like her. Haven’t you ever felt that way about an artist? It’s like, I don’t want to fuck her as much as I want to be her. I don’t want to just take off her clothes, I want to peel off her skin and wear it around like suit.”

  “You mean like the guy in Silence of the Lambs?” Dolores chimed in.

  “Yes,” I responded, then hesitated. “Wait, um… ”

  “The guy that did that tuck scene,” she continued, as if helping me along.

  I stared at her blankly.

  “You know who else has to tuck?”

  I groaned.

  “Dick bulge, son. Dick bulge.”

  ——

  I’m still on the floor, her bare foot still pressed down on my face, and she’s making me stick out my tongue to lick it clean. She’s smeared bright red lipstick all over my face then used it to scrawl “Holy Fool” on my stomach with an arrow pointing down to my cock.

  I try in vain to explain myself between licks, “I’m not crazy, just a journalist. No, that’s not all, though, I’m here as more than that. I’m a fan. I love you. Not sexually, though, I just want to wear your skin.”

  No response.

  “Sorry, I know I must sound like a crazy person. Look, can you just say something? Say you understand, say you don’t. Tell me to leave, call me a pervert, just say anything at all.”

  She removes her foot and kneels beside me, her leveling a vacant, mannequin-like gaze at me. “There’s eyeliner on my knee and blood on my elbow. Shady.”

  ——

  Cut to me coming home from the bar and laying out on my couch. Dre’s on my head. Leaked copy of the new album on my iPod, freshly-downloaded via a prominent torrent site. Hash pipe in hand, notebook and pen resting on my belly, ready to review the shit out of this thing.

  The album started off unassuming enough with “Marry the Night”. The lyrics are typical angsty teenager, black-lipstick and Sylvia Plath journal writing nonsense. “I’m gonna Marry the Night/I won’t give up on my life/I’m gonna Marry the Dark/Gonna make love to the stars.” Like Shirley Manson singing “I’m only happy when in it rains” back when I was in school.

  The next track, “Born This Way”, is the lead-off single. You’ve probably heard it; it’s been ubiquitous over the past month or so, but it’s one of her blander singles, to my taste. The lyrics are some vague notion of empowerment. It’s touchy-feely, everyone-gets-a-trophy-for-participation crap; the kind of thing that’s turned the millennial generation into a bunch of gutless mama’s boys who burst into tears if they don’t get an atta-boy pat on the ass every fifteen fucking minutes. It’s vapid, non-threatening sloganeering for the masses to give the illusion of control over their lives.

  I start to get a little worried that I’m not gonna find anything with some real meat in it to use in my article.

  This is pointless, I thought to myself. Why did I feel such a strong compulsion to find something to read into it? Did I need to create some intellectual, pseudo-ironic justification for enjoying an album, just because it’s popular or commercial? Why do hipsters find it so hard to enjoy something for its own sake? Why can’t it be enough to like a song because it’s catchy and fun and demands absolutely nothing of you as a listener?

  And just as I was ready to write-off the whole endeavor, things started to get weird.

  The third track, “Government Hooker”, jumped out immediately as being a much stronger song than the previous two, propelled by a manic beat with caterwauling refrain “As long as I’m your hooker.”

  But despite its bouncy, driving dance beats, there was a vaguely unsettling vibe to it. It didn’t help that the verses consist of a series of brainwashed, Stepford Wife-ish come-on’s: “I could be girl (Unless you want to be man)/I could be sex (Unless you want to hold hands).”

  And then there was the random allusion to JFK in the bridge. Ostensibly a dig at his philandering, it still stood out awkwardly. I started scribbling more excitedly in my notebook.

  Next came “Judas”, which is another single so I’ve heard it before, although the juxtaposition to the last song gave it a much more menacing undertone. First off, there were more references to hookers and prostitutes, forming a clear bridge to the last song. And then she hit me with this line: “I’ll bring him down/A king with no crown.”

  An image flashed in my head, frame 313 of the Zapruder film, JFK’s head disintegrating into a fine red mist. Kevin Costner repeating, “Back, and to the left.”

  I could feel the hash really starting to work its magic on me, getting the creative, free-association juices flowing.

  In my notebook I wrote: Possibly invoking Masonic/Illuminist symbolism connected to the Kennedy assassination? Reference “King-Kill/33” essay by Downard, claims assassination was a performance of the “killing of the king” ritual required of initiates into the 33rd degree of Masonry.

  Which I know is a stretch, but this is how subliminal messaging really works, despite all that crap your preacher may have told you about backwards masking. When you read it one word at a time, it’s either innocuous or nonsensical, but read only every third or fourth word and the pattern starts to emerge. The brain latches onto the strongest images that stand out, like the highest peaks of a mountain range that break through the clouds—death, crowns, crucifixion, JFK, killing the king—leaving the subconscious mind to connect the dots.

  A few songs later came “Bloody Mary”, which was about Mary Magdalene and shared a lot of common imagery with “Judas” with lines like, “I won’t cry for you/I won’t crucify the things you do,” and, “Kill the king upon his throne/I’m ready for their stones.”

  In my notebook I wrote: Overt allusions to Mary Magdalene, another prostitute, while subtext is King-Kill/33. Could be read to almost encourage or at least the violent removal of authority figures.

  Angle for article: Gaga part of Illuminist MK-Ultra/Manchurian Candidate program to brainwash a cadre of hookers to assassinate political and economic leaders, the Stepford Hashishin.

  Possibly also connected to Mary M
agdalene/Rennes-le-chateau/Merovingian/Sirius axis of conspiracy theories, but try not to get too Dan Brown about it.

  I kept moving through the album. Most of the other songs are tamer, echoing earlier anthems of hollow-toothed youth rebellion like “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and “Fight for Your Right to Party”. But taken as a whole, the album has a heavily anti-Christian, anti-establishment bent. I wrote: Maybe the fundamentalists & evangelicals are right to be freaked out.

  I could feel the hash starting to make me edgy and unfocused.

  There was one other song that struck me as significant, although I couldn’t place exactly why at first. It was called “Electric Chapel” and had lyrics like:

  Follow me, don’t be such a holy fool

  Follow me, I need something more from you

  It’s not about sex or champagne

  If you want me, meet me at electric chapel

  Shit, it sounded like some kind of creepy recruitment pitch. I thought of that cult in the ‘70s, Children of God, that sent young women into bars to recruit men by going home with them and then hitting them with proselytizing as pillow talk.

  Then my brain made another connection: electric as in light bulbs, as in illumination, as in Illuminati. Holy shit, did she intentionally name a song of after the Church of Illumination?

  Of course not, man, you’re high as balls, the clear-thinking, rational part of my brain responded.

  My creative/drug-addled brain responded back: I’m not suggesting that she’s actually part of some shadowy organization, obviously, but maybe she is into occultism. Wouldn’t be the first popular entertainer, Jayne Mansfield and Sammy Davis, Jr. both palled around with LaVey.

  I thought what you were going for was ironic, tongue-in-cheek, I’m-a-hipster-and-I-read-books-so-that-entitles-me-to-make-fun-of-everything vibe. That’s what you do, that’s what you’re good at. You keep talking like this and people will start to think you actually believe this crazy shit. Don’t be that guy.

  Okay, but she could be throwing this shit in just to fuck with people, like how Lennon threw that “the walrus is Paul” line into “Glass Onion” to fuck with the Paul-is-dead conspiracy theorists.

  Yes, the Beatles! Everyone loves the Beatles, and everyone loves that pop culture referential shit. Now you’re starting to talk some sense, man. Hidden messages to the true fans in the know, making fun of all those freaks and weirdos who just don’t get it. You should fly to New York and ask her about it, just to see if you’re right. That would be pure-fucking-gonzo journalism.

  Suddenly I found myself laying on the ground in an airport terminal, wedged between between a row of interlocked chairs and a window overlooking the tarmac, with no idea how I got there.

  ——

  “Tell me your confession,” she demands, leading me back down the spiral staircase on a leash.

  I take a hard swallow before answering, “I feel like I’ve betrayed my dreams, or maybe sometimes I think my dreams have betrayed me. I’d have been better served by simple dreams like marriage, family, stability. What right have I to dream of making my mark on the world?”

  She makes a disapproving tsk with her tongue. “Dreams are never weak like we are.”

  ——

  Cut back to me in the airport, clambering to my feet, trying to figure out how I got there.

  Presumably I’d taken a flight. In fact, the more I thought about it, I did vaguely remember sitting next to a middle-aged businesswoman who kept typing on her laptop while trying to ignore me spewing violently into the airsick bag.

  At any rate, it wasn’t as important how I got there, I decided; what mattered was what city I was in. Taking a moment to smooth out my clothes, I noticed a brown leather overnight bag at my feet. I didn’t recognize it, but assumed it must have been mine, so I picked it up and rummaged through it until I found a boarding pass with the destination airport code printed on it: JFK. I also found an envelope full of twenty dollar bills that looked suspiciously like the entire contents of my savings account minus the cost of a one-way plane ticket.

  I made my way out of the terminal and hopped in a cab.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I answered. “Where would you recommend for a first-time tourist?”

  “Well that depends what you’re looking for? You looking for pussy?”

  I considered it a moment. “No, not really.”

  “What are you, some kinda fag?” he asked in the kind of gravelly voice that you only hear from cab drivers in old movies.

  “No, I like pussy,” I responded defensively.

  “Damn straight you do. Sit back, I know just the place.”

  I rode out the rest of the trip in silence until the cab pulled up to a hotel next to Central Park with a giant metal globe in front of the building. I pulled a couple of bills from the envelope and slipped them to the driver, and he slipped me back a purple business card. One side was printed with a stylized eye in a pyramid design, while the reverse had a handwritten number: 333.

  “When you get to the room, knock on the door three times long, three times short, then three times long again,” he instructed. “She’ll take good care of you.”

  I took the elevator up to the third floor. When I got to room 333, I gave the special knock, and a woman answered the door wearing a tasteful little red satin dress. She had short auburn hair and green eyes, and the first thing that popped into my head when I saw her was how much she looked like Jessie.

  “Put the envelope on the dresser,” she instructed while leading me into the room. Assuming that she meant an envelope with some money in it, I reached into my bag and tossed my envelope full of money onto the dresser. I briefly considered taking out a few bills to keep for myself, but I didn’t want to look cheap and besides I was pretty sure that asking her how much money should be in the envelope would be a breach of protocol at this point, so I decided to play it safe and just give her all of it.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Adam.”

  “Nice to meet you, Adam. I’m Celeste.”

  I could tell that she was lying and regretted that she knew my real name but I didn’t know hers, sensing that some power dynamic had shifted.

  “You can take your clothes off and lie down on the bed,” she said, although it felt more like an instruction than an option. I obeyed and watched her shimmy out of her dress. As I looked at her naked body, I thought to myself that she was definitely skinnier than Jessie and had smaller boobs and no glasses, but she still kinda looked like her anyways.

  Then she came over and put a condom on my dick with her mouth and kept her mouth down there to get me hard, or at least hard enough, and then she climbed on top of me and slid her pussy down onto my dick. We fucked for a little while but all I could think about was how much she looked like Jessie and so I kept going soft and finally she just gave up. I apologized and blamed it on all the alcohol and drugs although by that time I was pretty sure they had worn off hours ago. She said it was okay and we could just lie together and talk.

  She asked me where I was from, and I told her. She asked if I had a girlfriend back home, and I lied and said that her name was Jessica. She asked me what I was doing in town, and I told her that I was a reporter and was going to interview Lady Gaga. She pretended to give a shit about my job and asked what other famous people I interviewed, and I made up a few unconvincing lies before she told me that our time was up and I had to go. As I walked out, she took a couple of twenties out of the envelope on the dresser and gave them back to me so I’d at least have cab fare.

  I didn’t notice until later that folded between the bills was another purple business card like the one the cab driver had given me.

  ——

  Now she’s moved me downstairs, put one of her wigs on me, and is making me play her piano. She’s barking at me to write songs, to create spontaneously, to open up my mouth and my body and become a conduit for the music. She wants me to write an entire
rock-opera on the spot. Whenever I play a bum note or hesitate too long or flub the second rhyme of a couplet, she swats me in the face with a fly-swatter to show her displeasure.

  She’s been swatting me a lot.

  “When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.”

  “I can’t, I’m shit, I have no talent,” I whine. “I have nothing to say as an artist, I’ve never had a single unique or original thought in my entire pathetic life.”

  She swats me. That wasn’t in key.

  “Do you know what this says?” she asks, pointing to the tattoo on her arm.

  “It’s Rilke, right?”

  She swats me.

  “No, I don’t know.”

  “In the deepest hour of the night, confess to yourself that you would die if you were forbidden to write. And look deep into your heart where it spreads its roots, the answer, and ask yourself, must I write?”

  I let out an anguished cry, “I don’t want to work that hard for my art. I just want to be adored. Even if I’ve done nothing to deserve it. I am human and I need to be loved just like everybody else.”

  I get another faceful of swatter.

  “As artists, we are eternally heartbroken.”

  ——

  Cut to me alone in an elevator, not sure exactly what building the elevator’s in or how I got there. I glanced down at my hand and noticed I was holding the purple card that Celeste had given me. It looked exactly like the one I got from the taxi driver, except it had the number 777 written on the back. Then I noticed that the button for the 7th floor was lit, so I figured that must have been where I was headed. When the elevator doors opened, I walked down the hallway until I found the room and then knocked on the door seven times long, seven times short, an then seven times long again. There was no answer, so after a few minutes I tried the door knob and it was unlocked so I just let myself in.