Message-ID: <44197asstr$1062587408@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: X-Original-Path: extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!drn From: DrSpin X-Original-Message-ID: X-ASSTR-Original-Date: 3 Sep 2003 00:38:09 -0700 Subject: {ASSM} Maxine Superstar (MF) ~ by DrSpin (NEW to ASSM) Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 07:10:08 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, IceAltar Maxine Superstar (MF) by Neil Anthony aka DrSpin --------------------------------------------------------- * This story is published here by kind permission of Ruthie's Club, where it appeared stunningly illustrated by Brett Empty under an exclusivity period for six months. Ruthie's Club (http://www.ruthiesclub.com) carries about 80 more of my new stories. * The author welcomes comments and opinions from readers and is invariably motivated to respond. Write to: neilanthony@austarnet.com.au * DrSpin's Standard Disclaimer: I write and you read, if you care to. That's all there is to it. Any reader who is offended should not have been here in the first place. --------------------------------------------------------- I never did get married, and neither did Maxine Miller. But that's where the comparisons stop, because I never went on to have much of a life, while she's stacked up more life than a lucky black cat. When will I see you again? I asked when she left in 1994. I'll never forget you, she said. But she was scarcely paying attention, so far down the path of away and gone that she was only a speck in my eye. She even forgot to kiss me goodbye. I mentored her, you know. Taught her the look and the style that so many admire. Taught her how to dress, how to project herself, how to sing a song with more than her voice. She was barely anybody when she left me. Now she's Maxine Miller. You've seen her, heard her. Everybody has. Even if you don't know her name immediately, you know who she is. Oh, right, the sexy jazz singer. The one with the black hair, the long black gloves, and those, red, red lips. The one on all the big television shows. Yeah, a class act. She sings to slit your guts open. In the summer of 2001 I gave up the uncertain life of the professional musician and started selling power tools. The money came in every Friday, and I never had that before. After eight months I'd saved enough to buy a new keyboard, and I never had that before, either. At least, I never had it without owing a credit company more than I could raise on it. I still play with a band on weekends, and sometimes on Friday nights. Just a laidback little quartet, smooth enough, sweet enough, and way more polished than we need to be for the venues we play. No more sessions playing. No more making other guys sound good and getting paid a pittance for it. It's just for fun now. Pocket money. Sometimes I even manage to have a good time. /Long ago and so far away /I fell in love with you before the second show Superstar. Maxine Miller rescued that song from the marshmallow heap where The Carpenters left it. A sad song by Leon Russell sung first by Rita Cooledge but made sugary- famous by Richard and Karen. Maxine put the desolation and the agony back into it, and she made it her own gut-wrenching signature song. /Loneliness is such a sad affair /And I can hardly wait to be with you again I found that song and taught her how to sing it. More fool me. It always did tear me up inside, but not like it does now. Now I can't bear to hear it. Ah, Maxine. I fell in love with her before the second show, loneliness is such a sad affair, and it was long ago and so far away. She was eighteen and the year was 1993. I was in a pub on a Sunday night, and I heard her before I saw her. She was singing fairly badly, and flat at that, at the karaoke. It was as dismal a performance as any other, but she sang the song an octave lower than she might have, and her voice had a fetching hooky and husky snag to it. Intrigued, I broke away from my conversation at the bar and went around the corner to look at her. She looked pretty much like a young scrubber. She was with other young scrubbers, male and female, and they'd drunk too much, and they were getting boisterous and untidy. She was about as pretty as any other scrubber her age. Yeah, she was pretty, but not really. You know what I mean. "You ever thought about singing?" I asked her as she edged past me. She stopped and frowned suspiciously. "You trying to pick me up?" "No." She continued to frown. "You think I can sing?" "No, but I think you could learn." I could see she was dubious, so I gave her one of my cards. "Call me if you give a shit," I said, and went back to my pals at the bar. Back in 1993, it felt like I was on the threshold of something good. I was twenty-six and I had a cool little band that had drawn good reviews. I was on the lookout for a singer. It seemed like the next step, maybe the one that would make the difference. There were singers around, but I wanted somebody with an off-angle look and feel about her, something special. She rang me the next day. I recognised that ragged little catch in the way she spoke. "You serious, mister?" Good question. But, you see, the voice got to me, the night before at the karaoke and again that day on the telephone. She said she could make it over to my place after she finished work. I rented a property on the town's outskirts. It had a big barn where you could make a lot of noise. Musicians often stayed with me, hung out, used the barn, but at that time there was only me. She turned up wearing a far-from-spotless blue uniform, and her hair was tied back. She had a job as a hospital cleaner. Her hands showed she was nervous, but she looked me in the eyes boldly. "What do I have to do?" she asked. "Just sing for me," I said, taking her across to the barn. "Just you. Not anyone else. No karaoke, no mimicking the voices and styles of other singers. I want to hear the undressed voice." I switched on the lights, the keyboards, the mike system. "Gee, you really are a pro," she said, looking around. I dug out a sheet of music and handed it to her. "I can't read that," she said, crestfallen. "Just read the words. It's a simple melody. I'll play it through for you first." "What is this song? Superstar? I never heard of it." "It was a minor hit before you were born. I keep rearranging it and waiting for the right singer to turn up." I played and sang the song myself. "Gee," she said, when I finished. "You sing pretty good." "Support and backup only," I told her. "I don't have what it takes to lead." "You think I do?" "I don't think anything yet. We'll take it a verse at a time." She concentrated fiercely on the words and got them in the right place. She missed notes, she scooped because she was flat, and she sang with all the emotion of a dead cat. I played and she sang, we went over it many times, and for nearly an hour I said nothing. She got to know the lyrics, but she didn't really improve. "Take a break," I said. "I'm no good," she said. "You have a long way to go," I admitted. "I don't even know your name." "Maxine Miller." "You want to be a singer, Maxine?" "You ever cleaned hospitals?" I made coffee and talked to her about music and singing. I told her about enunciation, shaping the words with precision, interpreting them. For the singer I wanted, the lyrics were everything. A singer is an actor. The musicians play the music, the singer plays the crowd. We tried again, and she was better. "Gee, it's a real sad song," she said. Bingo, and thank Christ for that. "When can you come back for another session?" I asked. Nearly four hours had passed. "Tomorrow, same time," she said. "That's if you still want me." There was so much she didn't know, but under all that ignorance, buried like a hibernating animal, was the voice. We worked together for three nights running. She was disappointed we came back to the same song. She wanted to try something else. "But we haven't scratched the surface of this one yet," I said. "Trust me. This is your song." We worked on her scooping problem, on hitting the note just right and not five per cent under, on breathing, spacing, and delivery. I explored her natural range from contralto to soprano. It was quite remarkable. She certainly had a gift, if she could learn to use it. I had to go away for a week on tour with the band. When I returned she had left a dozen messages for me on the answering machine. She'd been working on what I taught her, she said. She sounded excited. She came over and sang the song. Quite nice. No scoops, good spacing. Technically adequate. "What do you think?" she asked, eyes shining. "Good enough?" "Much better," I said. "But still not nearly good enough." Her shoulders slumped. "Fuck," she said. Clearly she had been expecting higher praise. "You sing without drama," I said. "You're not making me cry." "Fuck," she said again, bewildered. "Do I have to do that?" "Each and every time." She bit her lip. "I don't think I can." "Drop the guard," I said. "Singers should have no shame. It's all about exposure and exhibitionism. You have to let everybody see you naked. You want them to see you naked." "Oh, fine," she said, laughing. "I'll just take off my clothes." "Metaphorically, yes." "Metafuckit," she said, suddenly gravely serious. "I'm doing it." "What?" She was undoing the front buttons of her blue uniform. "I was ready to do this anyway." "Maxine, what are you doing?" "I have to sleep with you, Eddie Peters." "No, you don't. That's not part of the deal." She had the dress off and on the floor, and she was sliding the bra down her arms. "You may have been to music college and you may know lots about music," she said, "but you don't know much about women." The bra was on the floor, and she bent over to slide her panties down her legs. "You get inside my head and muddle me about so I don't know who I am or what I want," she said. "You fill me with hopes and dreams. You're the teacher, the maestro who can get me out of this town. Everything I am is in your hands. You think you can get away with not sleeping with me? No way, buddy." She stood naked, facing me, hands by her sides. "I'm going crazy not sleeping with you," she said. "I have to have you, and that's just the way it is." Stunned, I looked at her body. Her very good body. I hadn't realised. Apart from the night at the pub, I'd only seen her in that drab uniform. Great legs. Great tits. She was fabulous. "What are you going to say?" she asked in a soft voice. "Not good enough? Try harder, Maxine?" Not good enough? Jesus. She was the best-looking woman I'd ever seen. She walked up to me slowly, came around behind where I was sitting on the stool at the keyboards, put her arms around my neck, and leaned her breasts against me. I was shell-shocked. Didn't know what to do. "Too much music and not enough love, Eddie," she murmured. Her warm breath in my ear gave me goose bumps. Dream-like, I found myself on the battered old couch with her, and she was undressing me. I hadn't had much luck with women. Nothing ever stuck, and I knew I lacked confidence. Other guys got the girls and I made music. She understood my near-paralysis, knew it for inexperience, and led me all the way. She was aggressive and eager, knew what she was doing, had her legs around me, guided me with her hand on my cock, told me where to go and what to do. Invited me into her home. Told me to take my time and stay a while. Bliss. Locked inside her, my body trapped by her legs, my face down at her breasts. Nerves tingling, but comfort and sanctuary, and there was no better place. "Got you, Eddie Peters," she whispered, stroking my head. "Now you belong to me." I might have liked to stay locked inside her forever, but muscles, hot blood, and primitive forces compelled me to move my hips, and once I started I could not stop. I thrust and ground. Panting, I spasmed and shot into her with no warning at all. It barely started before it finished, and I grieved for the loss of those warm and still moments. "It's okay, Eddie," she said, hands fluttering on my back. "You had a lot to let go." Sheepishly, I withdrew from her and started to get dressed. She padded off to the small bathroom, and returned still bare naked. I marvelled again at her body. She was beautiful. "That's gotten rid of a lot of tension," she said. "Let's try the song again." In languorous mood, I played the intro a little slower than I had been doing. It sounded good. On impulse, I flicked my left hand across to another keyboard and simulated a cello, sighing and moaning under the melody line. /Long ago and so far away /I fell in love with you before the second show. Jesus. Maxine was searing and glorious. Voice cracking, catching, the words brittle and pure, the timing superb. /Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear, /But you're not really here, /It's just the radio. No guitar. Cello. The cello was exactly. Maxine was exactly. My heart broke with the pain and the joy of it. She sang it through without a hitch, and I tied it off with just the cello sound. I looked up at her and she was smiling. "Eddie, you're crying," she said. So I was. "Gee, it's a real sad song," I said, dabbing at my eyes with my sleeve. "Suddenly I worked out this singing thing," she said. "It's all about sex." It was? Yeah, maybe it was. "You're going to be a great singer," I said. "You're going to be so good I'm scared." Maxine junked her cleaning job and moved in with me. She was one of six children, the youngest but one. Nobody would miss her for more than three minutes, she said. I never met her family. Didn't even know where they lived. Still don't. Maxine moved on from them, just as she later moved on from me. I taught her two more songs, and she learned them easily. Note perfect, word perfect. She'd cracked it. Then I brought the band to the barn and introduced Maxine. I handed out the arrangements, and we played and she sang her three songs straight through, one after the other. In the silence I waited for somebody to say something. Then Jimmy, the drummer, started laughing, and we were all laughing. It was as easy as that. We laughed because it was great. They knew we had found a front and centre singer. Maxine had become a singer with no shame. I never knew the word "naked" meant so much until she moved in with me. You couldn't get any more naked than Maxine. She exposed it all. I taught her music better than she taught me sex, or she learned better than I did. I was a nervous lover, watchful, uncertain, never able to wallow in it like she could. I watched in awe as she sucked my cock gleefully. Mostly I did what she told me to do. She sat on my face, laughing hysterically while I clumsily poked my tongue into her crevices. I tried hard to please her. She had an earthy, easy approach to sex. She'd been sexually active since the age of eleven, which shocked me deeply, because at eleven I'd been a barely visible stick boy who made model aeroplanes and played the piano. By the time she got to me, she'd had dozens of lovers, big and small, men and boys. I tried hard to please her, but it was never going to be good enough. It didn't come to me that I was most hopelessly in love with her until the night she gave her first public performance. I had planned to nurse her stage appearances carefully. The band would play, get the audience settled, and then we'd bring her on for her three-number set. Well, all that went out the window on the first night. I brought her on stage without introduction and she sang Superstar. The previously polite audience went crazy. Then she sang the old standard, My Funny Valentine, to a breathless silence. They went crazy again. She finished up with my jazzy rework of the bitter Abba hit, The Winner Takes It All, and people were standing, cheering, crowding the stage. She stood there, beaming. She looked wonderful in the long black gown, the long black gloves, with her black hair tumbling around her bare shoulders. I had tears in my eyes. She was sensational. I took the microphone. "Her name is Maxine Miller, and that was her stage debut," I said. They whistled and cheered, and called for more. I signalled to the boys and sat down to play the intro to Superstar again. I was going to have to teach her new songs in a hurry. That was the night Maxine began to become a great singer. It was the night I began to realise how much I loved her. It was also the night I began to lose her. She didn't come home with me that night. Somehow I managed to get left on my own. Eventually, not knowing where she was, I drove home alone. I got out of bed in the morning and found her, still dressed in her long black gown, sitting at the kitchen table. "I couldn't sleep," she said. "I'm still so excited." Maybe I should have asked where she'd been. Maybe, if I had, the pattern would not have developed like it did. Maybe, but I doubt it. She had a sly, evasive look in her eye, and it was a look I would come to know too well. I don't know who she fucked that night. It doesn't matter, because in the end she fucked just about everybody. All the band, certainly. Others, certainly. Maxine sang sex on the stage, and when she got up on that, she wouldn't come down. Maybe she's changed her ways these days. Maybe, but I doubt it. I got used to it. She lived with me, learned her songs with me, and slept with me on nights when she wasn't performing. When she sang on stage she'd fuck another guy. I got used to it, but it always hurt. Life got busy. There were always new songs to add to Maxine's repertoire, and the band stopped playing solo because it was Maxine who drew the crowds. I was refusing bookings because we had so many. I trebled our price, and we still had too many bookings. In the barn, just me and Maxine and a songbook that kept getting bigger, she sang so beautifully I couldn't stop forgiving her. /Yesterday's gone, /And now all I want is a smile. "Eddie, you're crying again," she said. "That's because you nailed it," I lied. "Gee, now that's a sad song." A smooth agent stole her away from me one night after a show. She went with him, and she didn't come back for three days. When she did, he was with her. "I understand Miss Miller doesn't have a contract," he said to me in my kitchen. Maxine stood behind him and looked at the ceiling. I turned away and went to the barn. It was all over. The next day, she came to see me on her own, and to collect her clothes. Then she was gone. She never did come back. She was too good for a little band like mine. I know that. I knew it from the moment she first hit the stage. She was too good for a guy like me, and I knew that from the first moment she took off her clothes. I have survived the time of Maxine Miller. Life, such as it is, goes on. I just wish the hell she wouldn't keep singing that song. ENDS Edited by Ruthie. Maxine Miller's songbook: /Superstar (1971) Leon Russell and Bonnie Bramlett /My Funny Valentine (1937) Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart /The Winner Takes It All (1980) Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus / Love On The Rocks (1980) Neil Diamond and Gilbert Becaud * Neil Anthony/DrSpin can be contacted at neilanthony@austarnet.com.au -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderators: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |ASSM Archive at Hosted by | |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}| +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+