Page 5 of Revel
If there’s anyone in this industry I don’t get along with, it’s those names, and for good fucking reason if you ask me. It’s like they handpicked anyone I’ve had a relationship with, or a beef in the past few years, and decided to put me on tour with them. It’s a fucking disaster waiting to happen, but that’s probably what they’re hoping. Drama brings headlines, and in this business, headlines mean money.
“You’re doing this tour, Revel,” Liz commands, noticing the permanent frown plastered on my face since we left the hotel this morning. “Regardless ofwhois on it.”
“I can’t believe you think I’d be okay with this.” My jaw snaps closed, a rush of adrenaline hitting my stomach with a jolt.
Liz isn’t having it and comes back with, “This might be your band, but the decisions made are for everyone in it, not just about you.”
Fury settles into my bones, and I make my way outside the radio station.
Outside, frosty air assaults my lungs, and though I wish for relief, maybe freezing to death, I’m given nothing but a deep chill to my bones. My eyes water with the wind, a reminder the seasons have changed and the dark nights of winter aren’t too far behind.
I draw in a breath filled with smoke and exhale roughly into the air, as if it’s the aftermath of a life I’m struggling to elude.
Do you see that guy standing in the bitter cold huddled in his jacket? That’s me. Revel Slade, lead singer of the biggest rock band in the world, and he’s full of unrelenting anger. I don’t even think he knows why other than years of allowing someone else to control him.
THE PRINCESS OF POP
TAYLAN
Sometimes I hate my life. Before you say that’s a drastic statement to make, hear me out.
Listen, I know what you’re thinking. You look at my age, twenty-one to be exact, and you think, girl, whatever. You’re too young to know anything.
You look at my garage full of exotic cars and think, I take the bus, bitch. Stop talking to me.
You look at my mansion in Beverly Hills and you think, are you kidding me? I live with my parents and tell everyone they’re my roommates.
You look in my closet and you’re baffled. Believe me, I don’t get it either. It’s like I’m trapped in Britney Spears’s music video for “Lucky” and I can’t escape it.
I’ve been under public scrutiny since I was three years old.Three. From that moment on, thanks to my dad owning his own record label, Hollywood owned me and everything I did. If they didn’t, the record label and my dad dictated everything else.
I’ve grown to understand the more you have in life, the more likely you are to hate yourself because of it, or, at the very least, the implications that go with it.
Let me give you an example. I like to go to the park, and given my popularity, I can’t visit them unless it’s at odd times of the day. Three in the morning to be exact, but it was there that I met a lady who lived in the park. Her name was Irma, if I remember correctly. Anyway, she lived there, and though she had nothing but the clothes on her back and a blanket, I’ve never in my life met someone so completely satisfied with their life. She had a community of people with her as they sat around a fire and, against my assistant’s advice, I shed my pop princess persona and was just me as I joined them and found the real meaning behind friendship. I have yet to experience anything remotely close to the comfort of that circle of friends around the fire since.
Here I am, surrounded by hundreds of people every day, and can I call any of them true friends? Aside from my cousin Bella, who acts as my personal assistant now, but you get what I’m saying, don’t you?
It’s easy to hate your life, and yourself, when everything around you has a price. Money can’t buy happiness. It’s the truth. It can certainly make being unhappy more comfortable. At least it pays for the alcohol to numb the pain of being unhappy, so that could be a win-win.
What it doesn’t numb for me is the anxiety that comes with the constant feeling of being an outsider to my own life and career. I exist outside myself and the image created for me. In all honesty, I’m not sure anyone knows me at all. They know the icon of Taylan Ash. A brand created by Ash Music Group. They know what’s presented to them on stage. Ever since I was three, I’ve been forced to change my clothes, hair, face, and attitude to conform to “Hollywood standards” that nobody in the real world resembles in the least. I’m not perfect. Girl, I don’t even have perfect hair. It’s red, wild and obnoxious. I’m incredibly flawed, have a southern accent from the deep south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and I make a living trying to prove to you that I’m not. I fail. All the time. But to the world, I’m the princess of pop. Outside this world are the non-conformers. The rock stars of the industry. The guys who look down on the pop stars from the pedestals of their own notoriety. The bad boys of the music industry.
And in that corner, Revved.
The hottest band in the world. The band I’m set to go on tour with.
“I’m serious. You know you don’t have to do this,” Breckin says, bringing his lips to my temple. “What was your manager thinking?”
She was thinking of my career is what she was doing. I think.
I can’t help but think Breckin’s reasons are selfish. He’s on the tour himself, and he certainly doesn’t want me, his ex-girlfriend, around to see what his “tour life” consists of. I’m sure there are blonde hookers who squirt for him on demand. I know, super graphic and ridiculous of me to point out, but it’s a valid thought of mine. Or nightmare.
My chest feels like there’s a heavy weight on it and my throat, it’s like knives are being shoved down it and a cluster of spark plugs igniting from the acid rioting in my gut. The tightness, the pressure, I should be used to this feeling inside me, but I’m not. Every time it comes out of nowhere, and I’m stuck on my knees wondering what went wrong. How’d I end up like this? How’d I let all my fears come tumbling down on me all at once? That’s anxiety and it’s all I’ve ever known.
My mind races with thoughts I can’t control from ridiculous notions of:I’m not good enough. I’ll never be what the public wants. They’ll always see me as the freckle-faced saccharine-sweet redhead who stole their hearts.
Somewhere between Breckin rubbing my back and the essential oils I’ve been sniffing all afternoon, it hits me. I’m not any of that. I remind myself that I’ve worked my ass off and deserve every bit of success I’ve been given because, damn it, I’ve earned the right to be in this industry and it shouldn’t matter what a delinquent alcoholic has to say about it.
You know those stories about princesses? The ones where a prince rescues her?
