Excess
======

Long before she let herself through the front door it was 
obvious to Tabitha that Sunbeam was home. From several 
doors down the suburban street she could hear the sound of 
seventies heavy metal and, accompanying the record, 
Sunbeam's own guitar playing that was roughly, but not 
exactly, in tune. It was a wonder the neighbours didn't 
complain more than they did. 

As always, Tabitha couldn't help noticing the remarkable 
similarity between Sunbeam's own song compositions and 
those on the rock music records she accompanied. 
Sunbeam's father had given his daughter a comprehensive 
collection of vinyl records that represented his musical 
tastes before they shifted toward the anodyne whine of 
AOR away from the squawking cat-shriek and doomy 
chords of the records he'd enjoyed in his adolescence. At 
least in Sunbeam's hands, the records hadn't gone to waste.

Tabitha was the manager of Excess Baggage, the all-girl 
rock group for which Sunbeam was principal composer, 
singer and lead guitarist. However, she still had difficulty 
in relating her best friend from school, her first lover and 
the girl who used to deal pills in the school playground as 
Sunbeam, rock star. She still hadn't become accustomed to 
how much the stage name had superseded her real name. In 
fact, Tabitha even sometimes forgot what it was. 

But, as Tabitha reflected, pushing aside the bicycle 
propped against the hallway radiator and easing off her Dr 
Martin's airwear boots, the fortunes of Excess Baggage had 
a long way to go yet until Tabitha could afford to drop her 
gig as a Hard House DJ at the Marsh Club. Or until 
Sunbeam, for that matter, could close shop on her small-
scale dealing. And if Sunbeam's brother wasn't so generous 
in allowing his sister and her sister's best friend to share his 
suburban semi, would they ever have found somewhere 
else they could afford to live?

"Hiya, sweetheart!" Tabitha announced, pushing open the 
living room door, knowing exactly what sight would greet 
her. 

And, indeed, no surprise at all. There was Sunbeam, cross-
legged in the middle of the room, wearing only the baggy 
pair of thin cotton shorts they had brought back from their 
holiday in Morocco last year. Her rather large breasts 
overshadowed the guitar resting on her lap and strapped 
around her shoulder, and all around her, and spread in all 
directions were album sleeves, black twelve-inch vinyl 
records gathering dust, a coffee mug, ashtrays, cigarette 
packets and a small plastic bag where Sunbeam stored her 
stash. A soggy roach languished in the ashtray amongst the 
cigarette butts. Sunbeam raised her head toward Tabitha, a 
slightly stoned smile across her face, while she pushed a 
curtain of mousy-brown hair off her eyes. 

"Hiya, cherry bomb!" Sunbeam replied, pulling a cigarette 
out of a packet and lighting it up.

"Hey! What's the tune? It's a lot like your Pussy Power, 
only the lyrics aren't quite the same."

"It's by Atomic Rooster," replied Sunbeam. "And fuck, 
Tabby, if I hadn't changed the lyrics people would twig 
where I get my inspiration from."

 Tabitha nodded. She had guessed long ago that just as a 
techno or house DJ might build up a composition by 
sampling vinyl records, Sunbeam did much the same with 
her own song writing. And the more obscure the record, 
the less likely that anyone would figure out where it came 
from. So, Sunbeam's father's old records, by the likes of 
Bad Company, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Pink Fairies, 
Budgie and Vanilla Fudge were taking on a new life in the 
copyrighted songbook of Excess Baggage. Although 
Sunbeam joked about her systematic theft of the heavy 
metal legacy to deflect the criticism she so wholly 
deserved, Tabitha wasn't even so sure that her friend drew 
the line at just lifting the guitar chords. Her song lyrics on 
demons, fast cars, hobbits, guns and sex bore ever such a 
similarity to those of the selfsame rock groups. Although 
the sex of which she sang did not generally involve the 
participation of men.

"And Tabby, sweetest, I've had a thought..." remarked 
Sunbeam, blowing smoke out through her nostrils.

"Yeah?" wondered Tabitha, sitting down on the sofa and 
crossing her long black legs. She twiddled a plaited hair 
extension in her ring-festooned fingers.

"Excess Baggage is just too long a name. We ought to drop 
the 'Baggage' bit. Just call the band 'Excess'."

"'Excess'? Wasn't there a group in the eighties or nineties 
called that?"

"It was called 'InXS'. Bunch of ozzies. Anyway, they only 
ever did one decent song. I think 'Excess' would be a much 
better name than 'Excess Baggage'."

"But everything we've done or promoted has been as 
'Excess Baggage', sweetheart. We can't just change it."

"Course we fucking can! Massive Attack changed their 
name to Massive. Tyrannosaurus Rex changed theirs to T. 
Rex. Electric Light Orchestra became just fucking ELO. 
Loads of groups have changed their names. And anyway, a 
name like 'Excess' would be more appropriate for the 
group's image than 'Excess Baggage'. It makes us sound 
like some kind of fucking modern jazz group or garage 
house crew. We're a fucking rock group. Rock music's 
always been about excess. And it's about time we had the 
right kind of fucking name!"

Although Tabitha was reluctant to admit it, even to herself, 
the name was especially appropriate given Sunbeam's more 
recent tendencies. She was certain that Sunbeam was 
consuming at least as many drugs as she sold, and although 
she only dabbled in heroin, Tabitha wasn't sure she would 
never become addicted. And the sex! As her drug 
consumption increased, Sunbeam seemed to have lost her 
ability to discriminate. She called herself 'polyamorous', 
which Tabitha first misheard as 'polyandrous', which was 
nonsense given her stated sexual preference. But although 
Tabitha confined her interest to women, and still had 
frequent sex with Sunbeam, despite them no longer being 
an item, her friend had now developed an enthusiastic taste 
for sex with men as well. 

This shocked Tabitha at first. But she and Sunbeam had 
already chosen to sleep in separate rooms, and that wasn't 
only because of Sunbeam's frequent and open infidelity. 
Tabitha had sensed, sometimes too acutely, that she had 
become Sunbeam's token black woman lover and that the 
emotional content of their love, so intense in their early 
teens, had become subsumed by considerations of outward 
appearance. It had been difficult for Tabitha to reconcile 
her sexuality and her love for her parents, who were 
traditional black Baptists and so thoroughly appalled by 
Tabitha's unholy sexual preference that only the 
genuineness of their Christian love kept them from 
disowning their daughter. 

Sunbeam never experienced a predicament like that. Her 
parents had never hidden from her either their indulgence 
in soft drugs or their participation in swinging sex parties. 
And, as Tabitha only gradually came to appreciate, their 
daughter was intent on attaining a degree of libertarianism 
that even her parents had never entertained. So, Sunbeam 
not only distracted herself with hard drugs and sex with 
men, but also (and this disturbed Tabitha rather more than 
she imagined possible) sex with her own brother. But what 
upset Tabitha the most wasn't so much the fact of incest (a 
word that seemed to lose some of its meaning when 
applied to a real life situation), but that Sunbeam 
considered it as some kind of a token achievement, to tick 
off as something she'd done, like having a black lesbian 
lover, like having sex with two or three men at the same 
time, like drinking her lover's urine, like dropping GHB, 
like fucking that boy they'd met in that Moroccan hotel, 
and, like, as Tabitha had to admit, having sex on stage 
during a gig.

"Well, after that time at the Willow, I guess Excess isn't a 
bad name at all!" exclaimed Tabitha before leaning over to 
help herself to a plastic bag of grass lying on the ground.

"Oh fuck, Tabby! You don't fucking forget, do you!"

Tabitha shook free some papers from her packet of Rizlas, 
and licked the edge of them before piecing together the 
two-and-a-half skinner she was so adept at constructing. 

"I didn't agree to be your manager as well as do my own 
gigs just to run some kind of fucking sex show, Sunbeam."

"It was only the once. It's like the music got to me..."

"Or the coke. Or the E. Or some other stuff. And did 
Joanne really want you to stick that dildo right up her twat 
like that?"

"When Joanne's on stage and she's 'Marsh Mallow', she's 
like real uninhibited."

"It can't be easy to play bass and have someone pull down 
her jeans, lick her clit and shove a dildo up her front. But 
Joanne's performing as Marsh Mallow, bassist, not Marsh 
Mallow, porn star. And since when have you gone from 
just partial nudity, which we always agreed was OK, to full 
on stark naked? No wonder we're getting more men in the 
audience and fewer of the old lesbian crowd."

"You're just being fucking preachy. Just like your dad. But 
what about it, Tabby? Shall we change the name to 
'Excess'?"

"It's a lot of hard work you know. There's a lot of promo 
stuff I've got to change. And I've got that gig in Stockport 
on Friday."

"When d'you think we could get it done? I told the other 
girls: Joanne, Prissy, Anita and Carla. They think it's gonna 
be for the gig on Saturday."

"I guess I'll be able to do that," Tabitha sighed, knowing 
that she wouldn't have much time to buy new discs for her 
big session at the Tick Tack. She'd just have to hope the 
record shops in Manchester had some decent tunes she 
could feature.

Tabitha was exhausted when she got back from Stockport, 
having snatched only a few hours doze in the back of her 
battered Astra at a service station. She didn't have much 
time to do more than unload her record boxes in the 
hallway, with the assistance of Sunbeam's brother, Tom, 
who as always was trying to persuade her to have sex with 
him. 

"Sorry, Tom. I'm what it says on the label," Tabitha said 
with a grim smile after Tom had made his latest overture. 
"Where's Sunbeam?"

"She's at Anita's. Or Sticky Goo as she calls herself now."

"I guess I'll just have to hope she makes it to the Fig and 
Firkin for tonight," Tabitha sighed, knowing that when 
Anita and Sunbeam started making love it was often quite 
a huge effort to separate them. And if Carla got involved, 
well, they'd either be late or thoroughly wasted. Or more 
likely, both.

The landlord at the Fig and Firkin watched Tabitha as she 
set up the stage equipment with the help of Prissy and 
Joanne. As always, Sunbeam was not one of the first to 
arrive, and the fact that Anita and Carla were also not there 
made Tabitha fear the worst.

"So it's gonna just be a dyke crowd, is it?" remarked the 
landlord from the bar stool where he sat. "A load of grrrls 
with short hair and jumble sale chic. But what's this I hear 
about your group attracting the boys now?"

Tabitha knew exactly what the landlord was hinting at. 
"The group's emerging from the dyke ghetto. That's all."

"I heard that your singer's been having sex on stage. Not 
just taking her clothes off, which I don't mind. I quite like a 
flash of tit, me. But actually like fucking doing it on stage. 
I've got a license to worry about, you know. This isn't 
fucking Soho."

"That's just crap, Phil. And you know it. It's just queer 
consciousness. Getting away from denying our sexuality. 
That kind of thing. There's not gonna be any sex on stage."

"I dunno. You've changed the name. What kind of 'excess' 
are you intending to represent?"

"An excess of political correctness, Phil. What d'you think? 
Now, if you don't mind, I've got to test the sound system."

Tabitha's assurances were rather wasted. When Sunbeam 
arrived, she, Carla and Anita were quite obviously still 
high, not helped by a pint of beer drunk at the bar while 
Tabitha did a DJ set, mixing some of Sunbeam's rather dull 
heavy metal records with the hard house she much 
preferred. And then, finally, the group ascended the stage 
for the first time ever in their current incarnation.

"So give it up for Excess!" announced the landlord. "That's 
Sunbeam, Sticky Goo, Marsh Mallow, Krakatoa and 
Daffodil!"

The five girls strode onto the small stage, Sunbeam and 
Sticky Goo carrying their guitars and Marsh Mallow her 
bass guitar. Krakatoa, or Prissy, seated herself behind the 
drum kit. And Daffodil, or Carla, behind the synths. As 
they appeared, the crowd, many of whom were the same 
ones who'd been following the group for over a year now, 
erupted into a huge applause. 

Tabitha noticed with alarm that Sunbeam had already taken 
off all her clothes and was standing on stage with her guitar 
slung around her, just beneath her heavy breasts, and a pair 
of fourteen-hole Dr Martin's on her feet. She strode up to 
the microphone, took it in one hand, but didn't lift it off the 
stand, pushed her hair off her face and for a moment 
looked quite bewildered. Only the applause and cheers 
from the audience filled the space. And then she slurred 
into the microphone.

"Hello, Fig and Fucking Firkin! We're gonna fucking rock 
you!"

And with that, Daffodil, Marsh Mallow and Krakatoa 
launched into 'Hot Dyke Dreaming', always a good starter, 
with its swirling Deep Purple organ chords, its Guns & 
Roses guitar sound and that thumping beat that sounded 
ever so much like 'Purple Haze'. Tabitha noticed with relief 
that the coke and beer hadn't too aversely affected 
Sunbeam's singing voice. Nor her guitar-playing. Not that 
anyone would really have noticed with the poor pub 
acoustics. In fact, the most wasted was probably Carla 
who, at one stage, actually used the wrong programming 
sample, of which she only became aware after Marsh 
Mallow strode across the stage, wearing what most people 
might consider to be her underwear, and pointed it out to 
her.

Tabitha settled down on a stool at the back of the stage, a 
pint of real ale in one hand, the least strong available, and a 
cigarette in the other. She didn't actually much enjoy the 
music Sunbeam's group played. Rock music sounded rather 
predictable and dull to her ears, and even when the lyrics 
were filtered through a lesbian consciousness they really 
didn't have the depth she associated with the soul or hip 
hop she preferred. And even though she got quite a high 
from caning hard house, it was generally a tape by 
someone like Macy Gray or Miss Dynamite that she put on 
when she drove back home after a gig. 

However, it was evident that Excess was doing something 
right. The number of people who turned up at an Excess 
gig was steadily rising. In the early days of Excess 
Baggage, when the name was meant as an ironic statement 
of there being two sexes, rather than just the one, there 
would have been only a couple of dozen people in the 
audience, all women, and almost all just friends or ex-
lovers of the group members. Now the place was full to 
capacity, and the crowd was quite a mix. In fact, a very 
heterogeneous mix with almost as many men as women. 
And these weren't all the kind of men who used to come to 
an Excess Baggage gig. Rather fewer of the gauche 
intellectuals, politically correct squatters and gay men. 
Indeed, many of the men were sporting tee-shirts by 
distinctly uncool rock groups like Iron Maiden, AC/DC, 
Metallica and the Scorpions. Many had the stereotypical 
long hair and denim of the heavy metal crowd, but even 
those without the standard dress looked rather less like 
men who appreciated the subtlety of confrontational gender 
politics, and rather more like men who practised air guitar 
in front of their mirrors.

Tabitha was also alarmed when the set became gradually 
more and more sexually explicit. Clearly, Sunbeam had 
been plotting it in advance with Anita and Carla, but, as 
always, Joanne was easily persuaded. In the midst of songs 
like 'Clit Lickers', 'Fist My Ass, Doreen' and the perennial 
favourite, 'Love Blouse' (which sounded ever so much like 
Golden Earring's 'Radar Love'), it wasn't just Sunbeam who 
discarded her clothes. Soon there were one partially and 
three fully naked women on stage, and Prissy on drums, 
who was actually straight, had a boyfriend and never joined 
the others at a post-gig party. She was quite podgy and 
never showed much inclination to reveal any extra flesh at 
all.

As the men in the audience acknowledged with huge 
cheers, Sunbeam took the opportunity of the synth solo in 
'Love Blouse' to kiss Marsh Mallow full on the mouth, 
while Anita crawled across the floor and started licking her 
crotch in approximate rhythm to the pounding beat. From 
where she sat, Tabitha couldn't tell whether the sex was 
simulated or real, but she was sure that when Sunbeam 
stood astride Anita, Marsh Mallow fondling her breasts 
and the synth solo pounding away almost wholly on a pre-
programmed loop, that it was real piss that came out 
between her legs and splattered over Anita's face, bare 
breasts and short cropped hair.

It was only after two encores and another session of on-
stage cunnilingus, this time with Carla receiving the 
pleasure of Anita's tongue, that Tabitha was at last able to 
confront Sunbeam, having first to push through a mob of 
mostly men who crowded outside the small changing room 
the pub supplied. She really didn't enjoy the ordeal of 
wriggling through the mass of black tee-shirts and leather 
jackets, with their studded tributes to bands like Limp 
Bizkit, Marilyn Manson and Rainbow, especially when she 
overheard one of them refer to her as a 'black bitch'.

Finally, she squeezed the changing room door behind her, 
drowning out the sound of the men and their banter with 
the huge bouncer who guarded the door, and looked over at 
Sunbeam who was only now covering her breasts with a 
tee-shirt emblazoned with the picture of a Moroccan 
minaret and sunrise.

"We've been told not to come back to the Fig," she told 
Sunbeam urgently.

"What the fuck! The ungrateful fuckers! Why's that?"

"Because you pissed on stage mostly. And Phil, the 
landlord, who I've known for years actually, said that his 
license doesn't cover all that... all the... you know..."

"Clitlicking."

"Yeah, that! And it's not just him. These three women, old 
fans of the band from way back, Piggy, Di and Grace, said 
they were disgusted, that they couldn't go to another gig by 
the group again, that you'd crossed the line from dyke irony 
to straightforward male-oriented pornography."

"Piggy, Di and Grace! Fucking prudish dykes. Who 
fucking cares about them!"

"Well, I do, Sunbeam. I care. They're your audience. 
They've been loyal to the band since our first gigs in the 
basement of the Itchy Hamster. They say you've got like 
fucking Rockbitch."

"Rockbitch! They're just a load of fucking media whores. 
And anyway I don't go for all that witching black magic 
stuff. You won't see me stick a candle up my quim in a 
moonlit field. We were just having fun on stage, that's all!"

"Well, look Sunbeam. I love you. I always have. I always 
will. But I can't carry on being your manager if you 
continue doing what you're doing."

"What d'you mean? Doing what I'm doing?"

"Not just you. The whole band. Having sex on stage. I'm 
managing a rock group not a bunch of lap dancers."

Tabitha then became aware that the rest of the band was 
watching her as she argued with Sunbeam. 

"Don't worry, Sunbeam. I'll let you dance on my lap any 
day!" Carla sniggered.  

"It was only a laugh, Tabby. It was nothing more," Joanne 
protested.

"Don't look at me! I didn't do nothing!" asserted Prissy, 
towelling the sweat off her brow with a tubby hand.

If Tabitha thought she'd resolved the issue to her 
satisfaction, she was quite mistaken. From now on, the gigs 
were harder to get, but when she arranged them, they were 
attended by more and more people, and a greater and 
greater proportion of the audience consisted of men. And 
Tabitha had to find larger venues. Pubs were no longer big 
enough. And, for her, the final moment of irony must have 
been when she actually got a gig at a converted cinema that 
for a while had also been a lap-dancing club, a period of its 
history enshrined in the name: The Pussy Parlour. 

And the gigs got wilder and wilder. Only Prissy stayed out 
of the on-stage sex, which was now engulfing the music to 
the extent that less than half of Sunbeam's time on stage 
was spent playing the guitar or singing. Rather more was 
spent cavorting with the other girls, sometimes engaged in 
simulated intercourse, but on one memorable occasion, for 
a full fifteen minutes, for unsimulated three-way sex 
between Carla, Sticky Goo and Krakatoa, while Daffodil 
and Marsh Mallow kept up a rather monotonous rhythm in 
the background.

Tabitha told herself after every gig in which there was a 
further extension of the sexual license that had become an 
expected and inevitable part of the performance that this 
was it; that just one more repetition of this, just one more 
humiliating evening, watching the men in their Black 
Sabbath or Blue Oyster Cult tee-shirts crowd around 
Sunbeam, getting autographs signed on their penises or on 
their bottoms, with the prospect of once again tipping the 
cleaners a few extra quid to clean up the urine on the stage, 
that this time, most definitely this time, she would leave 
the group, even though she had no suggestion as to who 
should succeed her as manager. And this was despite the 
fact that she no longer had the time or the need to do her 
own gigs as a DJ. The split she got from the group's 
concerts was actually beginning to be worth something.

If it hadn't been for the recording offer, or, in fact, the 
several recording offers, from three major labels and five 
minors, Tabitha might well have left the group and 
foresworn a management career altogether. It was, after all, 
getting to be quite difficult back at the house she still 
shared with Tom and Sunbeam. It had been a long time 
since she'd made love with Sunbeam, who was now 
proceeding through a frightening number of sexual 
partners, always more than one at the same time, of either 
sex, and both noisily and frequently. And it wasn't just the 
sexual partners. Her drug consumption was continuing to 
rise. Sunbeam's stake in the drug-dealing business now run 
by one of her new male friends was paying quite good 
dividends. 

Tabitha's only compensation was her new relationship with 
Nikki, a DJ like herself, whose repertoire consisted mostly 
of drum & bass. Otherwise she would have had to spend 
rather more evenings under the same roof as Sunbeam and 
have to listen to her many and rather vocal cries of 
orgasmic pleasure.

Fame and fortune came to Excess very suddenly. It was 
almost overnight. The major record label with whom they'd 
chosen to sign wanted, in fact demanded, prompt returns 
on their investment. And a huge amount that was too. Only 
the background of a second class Business Studies degree 
steered Tabitha through all the negotiations, which she 
knew Sunbeam, especially in her current constant drug 
haze, would have been totally incompetent in handling. All 
those zeros on the cheques and the reams of small print on 
the contracts were enough to intoxicate anyone, but 
Tabitha knew she had the fortunes of five women riding on 
her level-headedness. Not to mention the roadies, the 
lighting engineer and the make-up assistants who were also 
now dependent on the financial fortunes of Excess. 

But Tabitha knew inside herself that she was not really the 
right kind of person to manage Excess. Especially now, as 
only the merest sliver of radical lesbian ideology acted as a 
fig leaf for a rock group rather less famous for its 
uncompromising sexual politics than for its sexual 
behaviour on stage, now filmed and displayed on huge 
overhead screens, and was, if anything, the more extreme 
as the group became more notorious. Although the 
interviews, for NME, Rolling Stone, Kerrang! and, rather 
more prestigiously, the Guardian, still gave Sunbeam 
plenty of opportunity to pontificate in the way she always 
did about the power of pussy and the gender revolution, no 
one, except perhaps the persistently naive Joanne, really 
believed that what Excess was achieving really furthered 
any causes at all. Indeed, it took very little cynicism for 
Tabitha to admit that the rock group had rather more to do 
with porn than politics. 

It was a very different venue that Tabitha attended on the 
last day of her rock management career. The auditorium 
was massive and sloped with a rake toward the front 
where, from the rear seats, the fans (mostly Dutch and 
Belgian as the band was on their first international tour) 
could see rather more on the huge overhead projections 
than they could of the pale pink naked dots on stage. There 
were no seats in the audience for Tabitha, who had to sit 
off-stage in the wings, perhaps grateful she couldn't see 
Sunbeam don her strap-on dildo and fuck one of the 
several guest performers who were now a regular part of 
the act. Nor could she see the musicians, excluding Prissy, 
indulge in the on-stage orgy in the ultimate number, the 
number one hit 'Relapse', something she found rather 
troubling whenever she viewed the reaction from an 
audience that was now almost wholly male.

She waited a while after the show before she entered the 
changing rooms. She knew the girls would be excited by 
the gig and would probably already be working out who 
they would fuck in the after-gig party the record company 
had organised in the Antwerp hotel. Not to mention 
chopping up lines of coke, heating up tin-foils of smack or 
rolling up huge spliffs. But she had to be careful not to 
leave it too late or her presence would be only distantly 
felt.

"Wow! That's a pretty cool outfit you got on, Tabby 
sweetest!" remarked Sunbeam when Tabitha wandered into 
the changing room.

Tabitha smiled. At least Sunbeam was still lucid, although, 
judging by the kit in front of her, she'd soon be mainlining 
and, for a few minutes later, be quite disinclined to make 
any coherent observation at all. Of course, one benefit of 
the group's improved fortunes was that Tabitha could 
afford to buy exactly the clothes she wanted to wear. Now 
that she had the choice, her taste was definitely toward the 
expensive tailored suit. It was as nothing compared to 
Sunbeam's huge wardrobe of clothes and shoes. Not that 
there was much evidence of this on her person. Nor indeed 
on any of the other naked women in the changing room.

"I've got news for you, Sunbeam."

"Whassat Tabby? Gig in Slovenia? Record company not 
happy with the follow-up to 'Relapse'?"

"No, they're quite happy with 'Love Blouse', though there's 
a certain Dutch seventies rock group that's threatening 
legal action. No, it's nothing like that. And the next gig's in 
Munich, exactly as planned. No, it's about me."

"Oh yeah!" said Sunbeam, almost instantly losing interest. 
"Hey, Sticky Goo Nita sweetheart, don't you Bogart that 
joint!"

"'Sif I would!" Carla replied, passing over a huge spliff, the 
roach still dripping with saliva.

"I'm no longer your manager, Sunbeam."

"Whassat?" wondered Sunbeam, toking long and deep.

"I'm not going to be managing Excess any more."

"Zat right?" Sunbeam slurred. 

Tabitha wondered how much of what she was saying 
Sunbeam was actually taking in. Her drug consumption 
was now so great that her normal state of being was in 
some kind of narcotic high and it was relatively rare for 
there to be a great deal of coherence about her.

"You remember I spoke to Johnny Logan. Of course you 
do. Manager of the Racing Turds, Sonic Blue and Mary 
O'Connor."

"Mary O'Connor. She's a kind of Irish folkie, ain't she?"

"Yes. Johnny Logan's a top manager. He only deals with 
the big acts. He gets the huge multi-million dollar 
contracts. And he'll represent anyone if they turn a profit. 
Johnny Logan's not small fry like me."

"Yeah. Mary O'Connor. She's fucking naff. I like Sonic 
Blue. They're good. I got their CD. They're a bit like... 
Fuck! Who're they like?"

"Don't worry about them! I'm not going to be your manager 
any more. It's going to be Johnny Logan. I signed you over. 
He'll make you rich. Or richer. Richer than I ever could!"

Sunbeam nodded her head, but Tabitha wasn't convinced 
she really understood what Tabitha had said. Especially 
when her next comment was: "Fuck! I know! They're a bit 
like U2. Fucking Bono and that kind of shit. They're 
fucking cool!"

"Well, you're going to be working in the same stable as 
Sonic Blue now, Sunbeam. I'm not going to be managing 
you. Johnny Logan is."

"Oh!" said Sunbeam. She looked momentarily confused. 
"So, where are you going?"

"I dunno, Sunbeam. I got a good deal from Johnny. More 
money than I ever thought possible. I might, you know, 
start a record label. Or open a record shop. You know, all 
the things we used to talk about doing."

"Record label? Sounds like a good idea. That's what we 
were gonna do, wasn't it? So we wouldn't ever sell out. We 
were gonna call it Pussy Power Records. That's why I 
wrote that song. Remember!"

"Yes, I do!" smiled Tabitha, suddenly remembering 
another Sunbeam who she'd once known so well, one with 
whom she had sat at the back of the class, giggling and 
drawing naughty pictures on the back of the hand with a 
felt-tip pen. A Sunbeam who coughed and coughed when 
she tried out the cigarette she'd stolen off her father, and 
swore she'd never smoke again. Not the Sunbeam in front 
of her, who was carefully filling a syringe with smack and 
who had tied a pair of knickers around her upper arm as a 
makeshift tourniquet.

"'Pussy Power! I've got a cunt. We've all got cunts. We've 
all got Pussy Power!'" Sunbeam sang. And then she called 
out to Anita. "Hey! Keep a line of that stuff for me."

"After or before you mainline?"

"Shit! Who fucking knows or cares!"

Tabitha smiled. She turned around and left the changing 
room, quite happy not to have to find yet another excuse 
not to accompany Sunbeam to the party at the Antwerp 
Hotel and looking forward with more anticipation than 
she'd ever imagined toward her own room in the other 
hotel where Nikki was waiting for her.

And as every step took her further away from the changing 
room where Sunbeam was busily ingesting drugs and 
around which were gathered a huge crowd of adolescent 
men in their denim and heavy metal tee-shirts, it felt like 
more and more of a horrible weight and responsibility was 
at last being taken off her. She felt that when she would 
finally meet Nikki and the two of them would collapse as 
one mass of black and brown limbs that she would be so 
light and unencumbered that she would be able to flap her 
wings and fly.








