Can you feel the gears grinding, in desperate need of some sort of lubrication?

Honestly? No. It simply is nowhere near as off as you think, possibly because you've been submerged in it up to the frickin' armpits for weeks, and it's been kicking your ass.

The piece I read and sent back with edits is right at the edge of being done, and done right. In a weird way, you need to take yourself out of it a bit and let the piece itself breathe. Right this moment, there's too much of your own stuff overlaying it - I know, weird thing to say, but I think my notes explained what I meant, yes? - and that's stifling where the piece needs to go.

The fixes really are more in the take-this-out and add-this-in than in the underlying merit of the essay itself. That, m'dear, is solid.

But if you need distance, go do social capital and come back to this one.

Allyson, I agree with deb that it's solid. I just thought you needed some shuffling, and to rescue that one thing from your brain soup section, which I think might be your lead, all buried.

The rock and roll take on the in-crowd:

All-Access

The badge has a logo on it, familiar to millions, a skull surrounded by roses, laminated, hung on a cord around my neck.

That badge is amazing. It gives me access to everything: food, drink, drugs, dressing rooms. I can stay backstage, be onstage dancing in the wings, out into the house and backstage again if I start feeling claustrophobic.

Walking through the backstage door, eyes nailed me. Some were resentful, some were frankly envious. A few girls outside lasered me with hate, then flickered signals to the man I'm with.

Want, need, envy, resentment: it's all part of all-access.

Deb, Allyson needs that for her book. 100 words or less what it's like to be a BNF.

A childhood memory

“I’m in with the in-crowd/ I go where the in-crowd goes.” Mom, singing along with one of her Superfly seventies jams, on one of the stations my dad avoids for melanin. I’m...maybe third grade...too young to really know what an in-crowd is or even think about the kind of stuff they’d probably “know”, although something about the way the singer says “knows” makes me want to giggle and I’m not sure why. Like there’s a secret or something. We both sing along. Mom says she can’t sing and I’m lucky because that’s one thing I got from my dad, but I think she sounds fine. Dad music has more pianos in it...he would probably turn the station on this, although once in a while we can get him to keep Smokey Robinson on, if my brother and I agree on it for five seconds. But this would be different, I can tell. Dad doesn’t want to hang out with the in-crowd and find out what the secret is and why my face feels hot when I think about it, sometimes. And I know it’s not a school question either. School questions are about things like “How far is California?” and “What’s 25 plus twenty-five?” not feelings and not stuff on the radio. I’ve learned that because people laugh at me, sometimes, and I don’t even know why I’m funny, but I don’t like it.

I had this conversation with ita the other day. I'm physically incapable of thinking anyone envies me. But the all-access pass is familiar. For me, it's a drive-on pass onto a studio lot. But there's no groupies hanging around outside the gate begging to get in.

But there's no groupies hanging around outside the gate begging to get in.

Yep. Different when you're being glared at as the "ornament on the guy's arm". None of these women gave a shit about him. None of them knew anything about him. None of them had been there for the really miserable stuff. They all just wanted the glitter, the celebrity shine rubbing off on them. They couldn't tell the difference between the size of the organ and the size of the piano. They wanted a shiny shiny trophy. And walking in, I used to get those damned eyes on me, and I'd count: three miserable resentful envious little dolly-birds in short skirts who would have killed me without a second thought, for a crack at that damned pass, a crack at the man, to hang him on their wall.

And if you think the skull and roses all-access badge brought the haters out just outside the backstage door, trust me, the badge with the long red tongue sticking out was way the hell more intense.

Why yes, it's possible I have a few issues about the whole BNF fan thing...

Sure it was a multinational corporation, but it was also a family business. Geoffrey wasn’t family, but he’d been Junior’s friend forever. In fact, when Mike tried to fire him, Junior had created a job to keep him on. Mike was just the CEO’s nephew, Junior was the son, the heir apparent. That meant job security for Geoffrey.

Until auditors started questioning Junior’s mom’s expenses on the company books, and no one could explain accounting irregularities from 5 years back. When the in crowd became the indicted crowd, Geoffrey got his subpoena and his pink slip on the same day.

Heh.

Heheheheheh.

I like that one, -t.

Oh, crikey.

OK. So my agent wants to pitch Haunted Ballads to Ewan McGregor - something I was after my former agent to do, but she never did it.

They want to know if I'm willing to do one of the books up as a screenplay.

I've done one before - about, oh, twelve years ago.

Are they kidding?

They also want the HB's "high concept". This implies a pop culture reference knowledge that I simply don't have.