“Locked & Cranked” – Ivy’s first diary entry

November 14, 2009 at 8:54 pm (locked & cranked, nanowrimo, writing) (fiction, locked & cranked, nanowrimo, works in progress)

As slow-going as it’s been, I have, in fact, been plugging away at this damned thing. I’ll have to break my back to make the November 30th deadline, but if that’s what it takes, so be it. I’ve been so sick for the past week, and it’s made writing next to impossible, but I just wrote (finally) Ivy’s entire first diary entry, so you can now see the other part of the plot that, up until now, you’d not gotten to witness. It’s rough as hell, but it gets the point across, I hope. These are the diary entries that get read aloud during group therapy at Phoenix…and here’s hoping I can make Ivy’s life sound interesting enough for people to understand why an entire institution waits with bated breath for her next entry. Considering this bit is heavily based on my own life, I’m sure there are some of you reading this who’ll remember just how interesting it was when I turned 21! Anyway, as usual, feedback and criticism and suggestions are more than welcome. Thanks for sticking by me. ~H~ xoxo

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August 22nd, 1997
3:04 a.m.

Oh, dear reader, where do I even start??? This whole day (well, okay, it’s yesterday now, since I’m writing this at 3 a.m. & have been out since about 6!) has been so surreal. Happy birthday to me, of course, but you wouldn’t think turning 21 in Canada would be a big deal. Even if it was, I don’t drink! Although I’m starting to reconsider that…but I’ll get to that in a minute. Or twelve. This could take a while…

Lily had already asked me to get the day off work for my birthday a few weeks ago, so I knew she was planning something, but earlier this week she said it might be better if I took the day after my birthday off instead. Um…sure. I don’t have to do the whole “but I don’t want to get druuuuunk” song and dance with her, ‘cos she already knows that. She’s under the table after one cooler. We don’t do the bar thing. But how was I to know what she had in store??

So I was a little (okay, a lot) pissed off when my phone rang at NOON and woke me up. If my call display had said anything other than “Lily” I’d have unplugged the damn thing, but it was her. I answered and gave her proper hell for waking me up before, oh, nightfall, but she had an excuse. A pretty good one.

“I was calling to tell you I’m taking you out shopping before dinner,” she told me. Shopping? What the hell for? “You need something to wear tonight.”

I dunno what made her think I didn’t have plenty to wear, no matter where we were going – I mean, I DO have three closets full of clothes – but when I asked who was paying, and she said it would be her, I wasn’t gonna refuse. But I did have to ask, “Why do I need new clothes…?”

And that’s when the way my birthday appeared suddenly changed. In a big way. I already knew that the BIG party we have every year to indulge my inner Leo was planned for Saturday, so my birthday falling on a Thursday meant, in my mind, that we’d be doing something pretty low key.

HOW WRONG I WAS.

Lily said she was taking me someplace we’d never been before. A place I’ve wanted to go for ages. And the reason I wanted to go was gonna be there.

She was taking me to the Cathedral. YES, the single hottest club downtown, with line-ups around the corner any time we happened to be driving past. She said she’d gotten us on a guest list or something, because it was my birthday. And Thursday nights just happen to be the night when you-know-who does his DJ stuff there, after he’s finished at the radio station.

Right while I was thinking about it, Lily actually said to me on the phone, in a scarily accurate impersonation of the man himself, “Head on down and hang with us! This is Damon Rayne at the Cathedral…keep it locked & cranked…”

I couldn’t help myself. I laughed so hard I nearly dropped the phone. But then I realized…oh my GOD…was I gonna have to face this guy, and introduce myself??? Yeah, okay, it sounds stupid, but I’ve had a crush on That Voice for, like, ever. What if I had to meet him and he was hideous? I mean, that old phrase, “a face for radio,” didn’t come out of nowhere.

So I said as much to Lily, who gave me hell for being “shallow” (I look at it as hedging my bets, personally) and told me to “lighten up” blah blah blah. “Who CARES if he’s not all that??” she said, rather wisely. “Just close your eyes when you drag him into the bathroom stall and…”

I had to cut her off. HONESTLY. “Anything I can do in a bathroom stall will probably require my eyes to be open, you realize,” I told her. She laughed her ass off at me.

“Uh, I don’t know how boring your sex life was with whatshisname -” She refuses to refer to Greg by his name, ever since that horrible night I gave back the ring… “- but use your imagination! And it’s YOUR birthday, which means Mr. Damon Rayne should be doing favours for YOU, not the other way around. Stop picturing yourself on your knees and make sure you’re ready when I pick you up at 5. We shop, we eat, and then we conquer the nightlife. Go back to sleep.”

So I did. Set my alarm for 4, got up and showered, and couldn’t stop thinking about how much of a disaster this could be. Damon Rayne. I’d never even seen a picture of the guy. I just listened to him four nights a week on the radio. As does everyone else who has the slightest bit of good taste in music. He’s, like, my generation’s radio god, basically. And god, that voice! If there was a way, dear reader, to somehow put his voice onto these pages so you could hear it for yourself, everything would make perfect sense to you.

Anyway, I could go on for pages if I got into every detail, so I won’t, because my hand is cramping up already (not for that reason, just FYI!! Although…well, okay, I’m ahead of myself already!). Shopping was successful, and Lily convinced me to get an outfit I never would have DARED to buy on my own. But she was right in saying that we only ever see the Beautiful People standing in those long, velvet-roped lines, and we had to become that. “Glamazons” was the word I’d always used to describe the club set, and now I was twisting and turning in front of a changing room mirror, realizing that I was one of them. I admit it, I looked pretty fantastic. So did Lil, and she got a new outfit that complemented mine. I was decked out in shimmery black pants (size 8!! I guess the non-depression I’ve not been suffering post-engagement split has done good things for my ass?) and a respectably low-cut shiny purple tank top. Oh, and platform heels! I get to be 5’9″ in these things! Lil’s outfit was black and green, which was fantastic, since if we stood close enough together we’d look like the Joker. In the best possible way, of course.

I was nervous as all hell when we got down there, and was glad Lil was driving. I know she noticed how quiet I got as the car got closer to the Cathedral. She just kept cranking up the radio, and every time Damon Rayne’s voice would come on (usually to announce that he would be heading to the Cathedral as soon as he was off the air, which did nothing to calm me down, as you can well imagine), I would grit my teeth a little harder. The music was good, at least.

Lil got us a pretty awesome parking spot, mainly due to her superior parallel parking skills, and then we were there, amidst the throngs of the Beautiful People…and we fit right in. We looked like we’d been there every week. It was surreal. What was MORE surreal was when Lily grabbed my wrist and tugged me up to the gorgeous security guard at the front of the line, and told him that we were on the list because it was my birthday. He barely glanced at it, even when she told him it would be under “Ivy & Lily” (we usually get a hard time for that), and spent more time looking at what we were wearing. When he lifted the velvet rope and told us to have a nice night, and we heard the people who’d been waiting MUCH longer start to bitch and moan behind us, Lily just smiled sweetly and said, “I guess we picked the right clothes.”

Oh, dear reader. The Cathedral is even more incredible inside than it is from the outside, and that’s saying a lot. The first floor is all antique-looking pool tables. The second floor…well, we only sort of poked our heads in, because there was some sort of Top 40 dance crap playing for the dumb blonde set in there, but it looked like it was pretty swanky, anyway. Where WE were headed was the third floor, and wow…it is very aptly named “Heaven.” Lily and I must’ve looked like a couple of hicks, gazing up at the high ceiling that had windows in it, where people on the rooftop patio were looking down on the dance floor. There are these huge pillars everywhere, very Roman-looking, and the dance floor? IS MARBLE. Can you imagine??? I so wish I’d brought a camera.

The music, from the second we set foot on that dance floor, was also heaven. There’s a little DJ booth off to the side, all closed in and barely lit, so I could make out the figure of a guy in there, but Lily correctly said that there was no way Damon Rayne could be there yet. Even so, the guy in the booth, playing the wall-to-wall incredible songs, was of some interest to me. As it turns out, though, he’s more Lily’s type…but again, that’s a tangent that will take me too far off point. (As if I haven’t already gone there? Ha!)

Lil bought me a celebratory rye & ginger, and we toasted being 21, knocking back our drinks and trying to ignore the guys who were starting to circle like vultures around us. So not my thing. Lily’s always dealt better with that kind of attention, so I let her be the one to shoot them down. Besides, the clock was ticking, and any minute could see Damon walk through those doors…although I had no idea how I would KNOW it was him. I said as much to Lily, who immediately looked like she was up to something – after being best friends for 7 years already, I can tell what every smile and the narrowing of her eyes means – and she left me there, beside the bar, as she bounced over the the door of the DJ booth, which was closed. The music was loud enough, and I was far away enough, that I couldn’t hear what was being said when the guy who was in there opened it and answered whatever Lily was asking. But I could see immediately that this guy was into her, which made me smirk. Oh, Lil. She can’t go anywhere without breaking a few hearts on the ride. Then again, I did sort of wonder why she was so adamant about not bringing William along with her tonight. I like the guy, more than I’ve ever liked her previous boyfriends, even if he doesn’t smile much. She’s told me more than once that “our kind of music isn’t his kind of music,” although I still dunno what that means. But seeing her flirt it up with the mystery man in that booth… Yeah, I think this was meant to make up for her lack of a 21st birthday romp of her own.

She came back and told me that the guy she’d spoken to is the infamous DJ Leumas, who we hear Damon talking about all the time on the radio these days, and that she’d made a few song requests for my birthday. “Oh,” she added, “and Mr. Rayne will be here in in the next ten minutes. So I think you should go fix your lipstick and pull your shirt down a bit. Play up the cleavage.”

I smacked her, but then did as she said and dragged her to the impossibly posh bathroom, getting her to check my appearance and give me the Lily Stamp Of Approval before I (potentially) met the Voice Of A Thousand Orgasms, as we’d started calling him. The mirrors told me that Lily was being honest when she said I looked good, so I was satisfied that I could proceed with confidence…until we made our way back to the dance floor.

And I saw him.

I don’t know how I knew it was him in that first second, because there was nothing about him that would’ve given away what he does for a living…but I did know. And oh, god, dear reader…he is beautiful. He’s everything I’m not usually attracted to – a bit on the thin side, long hair, a goatee – but on him it worked. Did it ever.

Lily noticed that she’d gone ahead of me by several feet and turned around, giving me this look of confusion, before she saw where my eyes were fixed. And sure enough, the man in the very expensive-looking black clothes made a beeline for the DJ booth door, stepped inside like he owned the place, and we could just barely see the friendly greeting between him and Leumas as the door shut behind him.

“Holy shit, Ivy!” Lily said, immediately grabbing my wrist again and starting to pull me toward the booth. “That’s him, isn’t it?? And you were worried about what he’d look like??? Uh…wow…”

“I can’t,” I told her. I couldn’t. I knew she wanted me to race right over there and do the cutesy “it’s my birthday, please fawn over me” thing, but…I was frozen in fear. I couldn’t remember the last time – has there ever been one?? – that had found me reacting so…strongly…physically!…to a guy I hadn’t even met yet. I knew I wouldn’t be able to put two words together if she tried to make me TALK to him. Lil kept pulling on me, like she was yanking on the leash of an unwilling dog.

“Come ON!” she hissed. “Do I need to buy you another drink for liquid courage? Because I will, if that’s what it takes…”

Just then, the music changed…and the song that came on was one Lil had requested for me. Nine Inch Nails. “Ringfinger.” I turned my gaze toward her for a second and said, “Let’s…just…dance, for now.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes at me, which she so often does, and let go of my arm, but kept an eye on me to make sure I was really following her to the dance floor and not readying to bolt for the exit. My heart was pounding. It was so bizarre. I’ve never felt like that just from seeing a guy before.

I closed my eyes while I danced, trying to think of the song, and how much I loved it, and how good life is right now, free as a bird and gearing up for days of birthday celebrations. Anything to not think about the fact that Lily was SO going to force me to talk to THE Damon Rayne, who was a thousand times hotter than his voice could have let on. Oh god oh god oh GOD. Just thinking about him NOW makes my heart hit triple time.

And then…and then…my eyes opened, ever so slightly. And I was facing the DJ booth. And in the faint glow of whatever tiny light they had in there, I saw Damon looking back at me. I could read Leumas’ lips. He was telling Damon that this song was a birthday request. And then…oh, god…I saw Damon pick up the microphone. I closed my eyes again as soon as he started speaking, because I was sure that seeing him AND hearing him at the same time would probably make my brain – or god knows what else – explode.

“Razor 99 at the Cathedral tonight,” he announced, his usual greeting when he introduced himself and the radio station, and my stomach felt the way it does when you’re a the top of a really high roller coaster hill. “Damon Rayne with you here, along with DJ Leumas, spinnin’ the tunes, and we’re gonna go real late for you…” I opened my eyes for a second and saw Lily smirking at me. I glowered at her and slammed my lids shut again. “Want to wish a very happy birthday to…Ivy!” Oh, god, he was reading it…the DJ had written it down…LILY HAD DONE THIS. “Happy 21st, Ivy!”

Lily elbowed me, hard, and called over the music, “At least smile or wave or something! He’s looking right at you!”

Oh, god. GOD. I took a deep breath and was barely aware of whether I was even dancing anymore or not (apparently I was), and managed a weak smile and a wave by way of thanks to the small window through which Damon was still watching me. He smiled back, and it was the most devilish smile I’ve ever seen. I was in way, way over my head if I even wanted to say HELLO to this guy.

As soon as the song was over – and honestly, I’ve never realized how short a song “Ringfinger” is – Lily demanded that I go over and speak to both Damon and Leumas, to thank them for the song and the birthday wishes. I said no way. She said she’d break the ice for me. I knew she wouldn’t stop until I said yes. So…I straightened myself up, tried to look confident – snobby, even, which is something that comes very naturally to me on any other night – and followed Lil to my doom. I could actually feel my heart pounding in my throat at this point, which is something I’ve read about and always thought was just a lousy literary whatever, but yes, dear reader, it happens. Actually, I can feel it again, as I’m writing this. Safe in my bed and miles away from saying anything humiliating to Damon Rayne, but still…

Lily didn’t even have to knock on the door this time. Damon was coming out just as we spproached. I was bowled over at seeing him up close this time. Good lord. I’m gonna need to trawl the intenet for pictures or something, because no words I use will do this man justice. And it’s more than just him being good looking – which he obviously IS – but he absolutely oozes sex appeal. I can’t tell if he knows it or not. He must.

I had no chance at all to think of something clever to say. Lily didn’t have to break any ice. Because Damon Rayne was mere inches from me, and he was holding out his hand and saying, “So you’re the birthday girl, huh? Let’s get you a drink.” And he kissed my hand. He kissed. My. Hand. I felt dizzy and I know I was about a hundred shades of red, and I felt like a complete moron as I wordlessly trailed him to the bar, having no idea what he was ordering for me, and I suddenly realized that Lily hadn’t come along. I shot a look back to the DJ booth, where she seemed to be quite contentedly involved in conversation with Leumas, and I wanted to kill her. But I felt a glass being put into my hand, and I turned my attention back to the man who was now leaning casually against the bar, looking so effortlessly sexy that I wondered if he could actually be human. I didn’t even look at the contents of the glass. I was too distracted by his eyes. Oh, god, those eyes. He smiled. I felt my knees wobble and hoped he didn’t notice.

“Happy birthday to you,” he said, and held his glass up in a toast. I clinked mine against his and watched for a second as he knocked back the drink in one gulp. Okay. So this was a shot of…something. I’d never had a shooter of any kind, and I certainly hadn’t had one in a regular glass, so there was some question of whether or not I’d look like a total loser as I attempted this. Damon saw me hesitating and gave me that devilish smile again, which…oh, god, like I needed to be any more nervous?…and said, “Take it all.”

Which, of course, made my mind race to places that it normally doesn’t. But god. GOD. The things I could’ve said to him at that moment.

Instead, I tilted my head back and poured the shot down my throat, and as I swallowed I realized that my insides were on fire, now for a completely different reason than just Damon being in front of me.

“Holy shit,” I gasped, and I know I looked stupid, waving a hand in front of my mouth as though I was trying to put out the flames. He laughed – his laugh is otherworldly – and patted my shoulder before ordering me a glass of Coke.

“Not a big Jagermeister drinker, huh?” he asked with a smirk. I shook my head. “Well, I’m happy to be your first, then.” His expression was quite plain about the meaning behind his words, and I blushed and ducked my head.

“Uh…thank you?” I don’t know why it sounded like a question. But it did.

“You’re welcome. Let me know if there’s anything else you wanna hear.” And with that he was off, I have no idea where, and I was alone at the bar, guzzling Coke and wondering if my esophagus was permanently damaged. Lily saw me – god only knows how, considering how VERY interested she seemed to be in her conversation with Leumas – and made her way over to where I was.

“Well?” she asked, smiling widely and looking pretty proud of herself. “How’d it go?”

“He set me on fire,” I croaked. Lily laughed.

“No shit.”

“No, I mean…whatever he bought me to drink…it sounded German…”

She waved her hand, like what I was saying didn’t matter. “Yeah, okay, but what did he SAY?”

“Not a lot…” I told her what he’d said about being my “first,” which left her squealing about how THE Damon Rayne was already flirting with her utterly irresistible best friend, and I was about to change the subject to ask her what she’d been talking about with Leumas for that whole time, but she interrupted me.

“Two questions,” she said. “One, are you gonna rewrite that erotica assignment and give it to him, now that you have a face to go with the voice? And two…what time do you want me to pick you up next Thursday?”

I set my Coke down and covered my face. She knows me too well. “I can’t believe you even remember that assignment,” I said. She’d joked at the time that I should look up his email address and send it to him, but because I’d had to make up so much about him, and how he looked, I’d refused. Besides, how twisted is it to email a perfect stranger and tell him that his voice inspired a university English paper for your creative writing/erotica section?? He’d slap a restraining order on me for sure! Still…I’ve been thinking about it ever since she mentioned it…and maybe if I don’t send it from my normal email address…

Okay, I need to stop thinking about that. And I need to stop writing before my hand falls off. We had an amazing night, dancing to the greatest music I could’ve imagined, and while I only got to see Damon for a moment before saying goodnight, that was enough to leave me feeling all butterflied and flutter-hearted. Still. After I’ve been in bed for an hour.

I cannot wait until next Thursday. Happy birthday to me.

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