I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone Read online

  Praise for Stephanie Kuehnert’s

  brilliant debut novel

  I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE

  “Stephanie Kuehnert has written a sucker-punch of a novel, raw and surprising and visceral, and like the best novelists who write about music, she’ll convince you that a soul can indeed be saved by rock and roll.”

  —John McNally, author of America’s Report Card

  “Kuehnert’s love of music is apparent on every page in this powerful and moving story. Her fresh voice makes this novel stand out in the genre, and she writes as authentically about coming of age as she does punk rock. She’s titled the book after a great song by Sleater-Kinney, and both that band, and the iconic Joey Ramone, would be proud of this effort.”

  —Charles R. Cross, New York Times bestselling author of Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

  “Some books play at trying to be ‘edgy’; some books try to hit the right notes; but Kuehnert’s prose doesn’t notice labels. It just is—which is the purest kinda edge. Teeth. Punk. Combat boots. Attitude. Feminism. Family. Girls with guitars. Relationships that jack you up. Sharp things of the not-good kind. Friendships. Love… . It’s all here; it’s all pure and real. I loved it.”

  —Melissa Marr, New York Times bestselling author of Ink Exchange

  “A wonderfully written and evocative story of a mother and daughter parted by circumstance and joined by music. I heartily recommend it.”

  —Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting

  “ I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone is intense, raw and real; a powerful and heartbreaking weave of Emily Black’s public dream of making music and the intensely private one of finding her elusive, missing mother. Emily, a gutsy, passionate and vulnerable girl, knows exactly what she wants and strides straight into the gritty darkness after it, risking all and pulling no punches, but leaving us with the perfect ending to a fierce and wild ride.”

  —Laura Wiess, author of Such a Pretty Girl

  “Stephanie Kuehnert writes with dramatic flare and all the right beats, as she spins a story with punk rock lyrics, big dreams, and one girl not afraid to reach out to her lost mother through music, while enduring intense journeys in between. A debut like an unforgettable song, you’ll want to read I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone again and again.”

  —Kelly Parra, author of Graffiti Girl

  Learn more about debut author Stephanie Kuehnert

  and see her mix CD song picks for

  I WANNA BE YOUR JOEY RAMONE

  at www.stephaniekuehnert.com.

  Pocket Books

  A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Stephanie Kuehnert

  MTV Music Television and all related titles, logos, and characters are trademarks of MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  First MTV Books/Pocket Books trade paperback edition July 2008

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-800-456-6798 or [email protected].

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Kuehnert, Stephanie

  I wanna be your Joey Ramone / Stephanie Kuehnert.

  p. cm.

  1. Punk rock musicians—Fiction. 2. Women rock musicians—Fiction.

  3. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3611. U3513 2008

  813’.6—dc22

  2007048888

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6269-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-6269-9

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4165-6279-5

  For Mom

  I like the comfort in knowing that women are the only future in rock ’n’ roll.

  —Kurt Cobain

  ACKNOWLEDEMENTS

  I would like to thank Caren Johnson, agent extraordinaire, for believing in this book from the first chapter and working so hard to make sure it saw the light of day.

  Jennifer Heddle is the woman who ultimately made that happen. She truly understood my characters and their world and provided priceless suggestions for revising. In short, she’s the dream editor. Thanks also to Jane Elias and everyone else at MTV Books who ensured that this book turned out perfectly.

  I couldn’t have done any of this without my writing partners in crime, particularly Katie Corboy. She’s read every draft and her advice triggered many breakthroughs, not to mention her friendship means the world to me. Jenny Seay and Vanessa Barneveld read the last draft very quickly as I revised and provided invaluable feedback and cheerleading. All three of these ladies challenge me to write as well as they do.

  Randy Albers, chair of the Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department, is hands down the best writing teacher in the world. He mentored me from the formative undergraduate years through my master’s thesis, working with me during summers, and when he was supposed to be on sabbatical, to get this book out the door.

  Thanks to John Schultz and Betty Shiflett for creating the Story Workshop Method and, as a result, the amazing Columbia College Chicago Fiction Writing Department community. I’m grateful to everyone I met there, particularly the faculty who helped me and this novel grow, including Craig Gore, Ann Hemenway, Gary Johnson, Antonia Logue, Patty McNair, Joe Meno, Alexis Pride, Chris Rice, and Sam Weller; the staff, Linda Naslund and Deborah Roberts, who always looked out for me and taught me copyediting; Sheryl Johnston, who has been so supportive; and most of all my peers, the people who encouraged me, read my work, motivated me with theirs, and built a real “literary scene” in Chicago, especially Amber Abrahamson, Bobby Biedrzycki, Julia Borcherts, Ira Brooker, Nicki Brouillette, Nicole Chakalis, Brian Costello, Joe Deir, Rob Duffer, Max Glaessner, Aaron Golding, Monique Lewis, Tony Luce, Anna Medakovich (okay, you’re film, but whatever), Richard Santiago, Felicia Schneiderhan, Mike Sims, Jantae Spencer, Jessie Tierney (special thanks for the author photos), and Joe Tower. And to Frank Crist, devoted friend and brilliant writer, who passed away while I was revising this book, I tapped your manic energy to finish, so it’s for you, man.

  Then, the other authors who’ve been my mentors, guidance counselors, and in a couple of cases, drinking buddies: Dorothy Allison, Hillary Carlip, Charley Cross, John McNally, Kelly Parra, Don Snyder, Irvine Welsh, and everyone on the Teen Lit Yahoo loop.

  Of course, those outside my writing world have been equally essential. My best friend, Katie Lagges: everything I write about long-lasting, true friendship is based on her. My family, particularly my little brother Dan, who doesn’t know how much I look up to him. Jenny Hassler, a super-b individual who volunteered her amazing web design talents. Eryn Mulloy, who sends me surprises by mail and the sweetest encouraging notes. Tai Little and Lindsay Stanford, who have bolstered my sanity through the years; Kathy Lesinski, my newest sanity-keeper; Chris Lempa, who makes sure I stay true to my punk rock ethos; and Kelly Lewis for being admirably feisty. Jme, Dan, Scott, and everyone at the Beacon, ’cause a writer is only as strong as the folk
s at her favorite dive bar.

  The foundation of this book and my desire to write in general is music. This story was born of my fantasies about a rock world where girls rule, and I can only hope it pays fitting tribute to the women who’ve inspired me. Sure, Nirvana gave voice to millions of freaks like me and the Sex Pistols introduced me to punk rock, but the first time I heard Courtney Love scream that she was “pretty on the inside,” it saved my angry, thirteen-year-old girl soul. Then, ten years later, when rock ’n’ roll was suffering at the hands of macho dudes and whiny Pearl Jam knockoffs, I heard Brody Dalle of the Distillers, and she restored my faith. There’s also Sleater-Kinney (one of whose songs this book is named for), Mia Zapata (gone too soon), Babes in Toyland, Patti Smith, PJ Harvey, Kim Deal, Kim Gordon, and Pink, among many others—but my biggest rock star heroes are my friends, Heather Lynn of the Capricorns and Tamra Spivey of Lucid Nation.

  Saving the best for last: Scott Lewis, love of my life, your unending encouragement and sense of humor keeps me going. And to my mom, Nancy Napp, who I admire more than any rock star, who has supported me more than anyone, and who is responsible for everything I am, this book is for you.

  1.

  I’m your worn-in leather jacket

  I’m the volume in your fucked-up teenage band

  A pack of smokes and a six-pack

  I’m the dreams you had walkin’ down the railroad tracks

  You and me

  I’m your first taste of romance

  I’m your first broken heart on a Saturday night

  Guys like us ain’t got no chance

  But I’m the thing that keeps you and me alive

  But not forever

  So take me down the road

  Take me to the show

  It’s something to believe in

  That no one else knows

  But don’t take me for granted

  —Social Distortion

  “Don’t Take Me for Granted”

  Sex, Love and Rock ’n’ Roll

  ROCK GODS

  Altars. Saviors. Rock ’n’ roll. I braved my fear of spiders, dust plumes as thick as L. A. smog, and the stench of dog piss that the last owner of the house had let permeate the basement to tirelessly search my father’s record collection for my next holy grail. Sitting on that cold, dirty, painted cement floor in my blue jeans, with the Wisconsin winter creeping through the tired walls and windows of our house, I dug through crates of albums, feeling their perfect square edges poke between my fingers. The slap of plastic dust cover against plastic dust cover was so satisfying, but the best moment came when I found the record I wanted, slipped it out of its paper jacket and onto the record player. The needle skipped and skittered for a few seconds until it found its groove, the first chord scratching its way through the speakers, a catchy chorus reverberating in my ears. Earthquakes. Rock gods.

  Music was in my blood. My mother left me with my father when I was four months old so she could follow the beginnings of punk rock around the country. Detroit. New York. L. A. We never heard from her again. Neither of us was resentful. She had her reasons. At least that’s what I told myself.

  Two months after she disappeared, my dad moved us from our tiny apartment in Chicago to Carlisle, Wisconsin, the small farming town fifteen miles beyond the Illinois border where he and my mother had grown up. When we first returned to the land of lush fields, acres of corn, and barns that sat fat and yawning at the ends of dirt roads, people talked. It was just that kind of place, a small, tight-knit community; any deviation from the norm was grounds for discussion.

  Before areas were incorporated, when land was simply land, Carlisle was born of a general store that farmers flocked to from miles away. Back then, the men talked about their work while picking up seed and parts for aging equipment. Their wives came for cloth and the foods they could not raise themselves. They exchanged advice about family matters and gossiped about the other women who had asked them for advice.

  As the years passed, the government bought up land to build roads, and corporations turned family farms into giant factory farms. People moved closer together, and from the general store sprung a main street scattered with businesses. Two miles away a food-processing plant opened. The sprawling community shrunk into a town made up of the farms that remained nearby and the former farming families who took jobs at the plant or opened storefronts. Side streets attached themselves to Main Street in a neat grid near the center of town, but farther out, roads meandered around fields. From above, the layout of Carlisle looked like straight hair—parted in the middle by Main Street—suddenly gone curly at the ends.

  But everyone still knew one another. Everyone still gathered in front of the store or at the tavern to talk. No modernization would ever change that.

  I don’t want you thinking I’m from some completely backwoods town, though. I grew up with all the modern comforts: indoor plumbing, cable TV. What set Carlisle apart from urban areas was the way everyone clung to history. Not like this-war-started-on-this-date history, more like where-was-your-grandfather-during-the-blizzard-of-1921 history. From snippets of conversation, I knew who I was, who my family was, and how we fit into town lore. The most popular topic from the time I came to Carlisle until the day I left was the high school football team. The second most common topic was the people who didn’t seem to care about normal things like football, the people who just weren’t quite right.

  Like Paula Collins, whose parents had both perished in a barn fire when she was sixteen. She inherited all the money they’d squirreled away and the land they lived on, and she never left, never married, never rebuilt that barn. Or Norma Lisbon, who was well on her way to being the town drunk even before her son, Eric, killed himself. After Eric died, her husband stopped speaking, became a total mute, and Norma was drunk, disorderly, and doing something gossip-worthy nearly every day.

  Or like my family …

  My parents, Michael Black and Louisa Carson, had created quite a scene in 1974, when they sped out of town on my father’s motorcycle. As a teenager, I walked into many discussions about it at the local gas station and grocery store, but my favorite version, the only one I took as gospel, was the one my mother’s best friend, Molly Parker, told me.

  It was an unusually warm day in April when Michael and Louisa fled, Louisa’s eighteenth birthday, and she made sure all of Carlisle knew that she was an adult and finally free to leave the tiny town that had smothered her with old-fashioned morals. My father concentrated on the drive, thinking the only way to save the girl he loved from all the anger that ate away at her heart was to help her escape. His black leather jacket and wild, coffee-colored curls made him look so dark he almost blended in with the road, which was appropriate because before Michael Black was seen in the company of Louisa Carson, no one in Carlisle had ever noticed him. As she had since she arrived in the town at the age of ten, the pretty but untamed doctor’s daughter, Louisa, was the one causing the ruckus. Burning down Main Street on the back of his Harley, she held on to Michael with one arm, her bleached-blond hair tangling like corn silk in the wind as she turned dangerously in her seat to shout obscenities and shake her fist at Carlisle. Outside of Carlisle Groceries and Meats, a crowd of middle-aged women doing their weekly shopping and work-worn men picking up packs of smokes on their way to the job gathered to gawk at the spectacle. Louisa tugged off her black high heels and whipped one through the window of the grocery store, the other against the Old Style sign that flickered above the doorway of JT’s Tavern. With that final act of aggression, she wrapped both arms around my father’s chest and never looked back.

  So, when my father returned almost three years later in a blue Chevy Impala with me, Emily Diana Black, asleep in the backseat, everyone had questions. They contemplated why he’d returned alone, wearing a wedding ring and carrying a milk-skinned baby with a shock of hair as dark as her last name, and blazing, green eyes that left no doubt she was Louisa’s. They theorized about why Louisa had left him an
d wondered if I would end up as wild as she had been.

  Molly overheard one of the many conversations in Carlisle Groceries and Meats soon after our return. As Molly put little jars of baby food into her basket, Mrs. Jones, wife of the store owner, openly discussed the situation with her customer, Sarah Fawcett. “Well, Michael had some of those hippie tendencies. That’s probably how he ended up with that woman,” she stated frankly, pushing the paper bag with Sarah’s things across the counter to her.

  “Oh, I remember,” Sarah agreed. “Long hair, and that bike, of course.”

  “Yes.” Old Mrs. Jones tightly clamped her thin, pasty lips together to give a dramatic moment of pause before she shared her vast knowledge. As one of the most well-known people in Carlisle, she considered herself the authority on every topic. “Michael was from a good family. Not a rich family like hers,” she added snidely, “but the Blacks have lived around here forever. I don’t know what he saw in that girl, but I’m sure she was a terrible wife, which’ll drive even the gentlest man to his wit’s end eventually.”

  Sarah nodded enthusiastically: at the time she was a young wife, seven months pregnant, and wished to prove she had the moral fiber that others from her generation, such as Louisa, lacked.

  Molly emerged from the aisle and headed angrily toward the counter. Mrs. Jones continued, “I’m sure three years drained the rebellion from him …” When Molly slammed her basket down, Mrs. Jones paused and stared at her from wrinkly eye sockets, then finished her sentence. “Now he’s back to raise his daughter right.”

  That was the consensus of the town. When my dad took work at the plant, people seemed to remember that he was the quiet son of a respected farmer, so they disregarded any of his remaining eccentricities, such as never removing his wedding ring, and the talk simmered down to a whisper until I reached my high school years.

  My dad and I lived in a house that was big but cheap, weathered but solid, old but transformed by the rock ’n’ roll energy that he and I breathed. My dad raised me on music. Our living room was a temple, plastered with posters of Bowie and the Rolling Stones. A framed, signed Beatles record hung over the stereo, which was our altar in the center of the room. A photograph of my mother sat on the left speaker, and an ever-changing stack of records on the right. My dad’s taste ran the gamut, from classical to blues to punk to folk. Even into his forties, he amazed me by discovering the best underground bands before I did. Three records never left that stack on the speaker: one each by Johnny Cash, Leadbelly, and the Clash. The basement held crates and crates of other records, and as I grew older, that became the place I ran to immediately after dinner.