I dreamed I was on stage with Kiss in my Maidenform bra … well, not exactly my idea of the perfect fantasy, but I was curious about life on the other side of the footlights. Armed with an abundance of determination and a tight pair of Danskins (Danskins aren’t only for dancing), I approached Larry Harris, the vice-president of Casablanca Records, with my plan: “How about if I join Kiss for a night?”
No answer, and then nervous laughter. Obviously, Larry thought I just wanted to know what it was like to mouth-kiss a vampire. Sure, they were eager for a feature on the band, but this scheme was a little bizarre. I pushed the point, and they told me disturbing tales of other fresh-faced females who were transformed into raging teenage nymphs after attending a Kiss concert. “But I don’t want to see the show, I want to be in it!” I persisted. Reluctantly, the Casablanca crowd conceded (only after making me promise not to call Kiss a glitter band), assuring me I could join these contorted Kewpie dolls on stage for one number or four minutes, whatever came first, on the following Saturday.
On Thursday, I decided to drop in on the Detroit rehearsal to see what kind of atrocities I’d be in for. Soon after I arrived, I found some of the band lounging on the side of the stage, so I walked up and asked what they thought of the idea of me being a Kiss (Kissette?) for a night. They all looked at me vacantly, and I realised that NO ONE HAD TOLD THEM! I felt like a Rockette who gets told “no, thanks” at the open call before she’s had a chance to do her dance. Undaunted, I fumed at the executive-in-residence, and demanded he explain the plan.
I returned to a seat in the empty hall and watched the band rehearse, to “pick up some tips”. A stage hand divulged that bassist Gene Simmons had accidentally set his hair on fire while practising the fire-breathing segment of the show, which I admit made me squirm and fear for my own charred remains. My visions of stardom were quickly evaporating like warm Jell-O. During their break, Simmons came over and pulled out the few strands of singed curls, assuring me that “it was nothing”, but I couldn’t prevent myself from biting the Lilac Frost off my nails. I was beginning to have misgivings. I think Ace Frehley did, too, because he just stared over my left shoulder. But Peter raised a comradely drum stick when Paul Stanley pointed to the empty stage and stated: “Saturday night, that’s you up there!”
What am I going to pack to become a Kiss? I ponder over breakfast, wincing at the memory of last night’s show. What if that geekish bass player bites my neck, oozing red blood-goo on my shoulder? Anxiety knots my stomach so much that I can’t even force a single piece of Sugar Crisp down my throat, so I return upstairs to case my closet. One leotard (black), one pair tights (black), and one pair six-inch platforms (also black). I zip up my Samsonite and hurry out the door.
Stage manager Junior Smalling is a frightening and humourless man, who wears an oversized pair of blue plastic glasses and possesses the self-given nickname “Black Oak”. Last night, he demanded my presence at the Eastern Air Lines desk at 10.45 am. (for an 11.20 flight), and although it was now after 11 and my ticket was in order I still dared not move until Junior arrived. At 11:10 he strides in, lugging a battered briefcase and an ugly scowl. He doesn’t acknowledge me, but instead barks at the airline clerk. Finished, he whirls on the band like an angry parent: “What the fuck is wrong with you guys? We get you watches and you still can’t get here on time. We coulda missed the plane and the gig, so hustle them asses to the plane!” Finally, he looks down at me and spits: “What are you waiting for? Get to gate 34!” Then, almost kindly, he adds: “Didn’t anybody ever tell you to wear tall shoes around these guys?”
I am seated in 8A, and my fear of flying is mixing badly with my apprehension. After a round of Hail Marys, I look up to see Gene Simmons seated next to me, sans makeup of course, although he still makes a scene with his seven-inch platforms, cheese-coloured scarf and the black polish that he is presently chipping off his stubby nails. Of all the members of the band, his appearance is the most obscured by the paint: he might just as easily be Omar Sharif, or Joe Namath. Instead he is a former lifeguard, a former boy Friday at Vogue, and has a BA in education but confesses a desire to be Bela Lugosi (and is lovingly dubbed Mr Monster by his fellow inmates). Circulating around the plane is the current issue of one of Creem’s competitors, which has done a full feature on Kiss. The copy eventually drifts to our seat and Gene insists on reading the story aloud to me.
“How come after everything I say, they always add ‘Gene expounds?’” He pouts.
“Probably because you went to college,” I explain.
We exit the plane without incident, except that most of us are over six-foot-something. Me, I feel a lot like Lewis Carroll’s Alice after drinking the small potion, until I notice that Paul Stanley isn’t much loftier than me. As I remember, yesterday I came about eye level to his Keith Richards button.
“What did you do, shrink overnight?” I ask.
“No, didn’t you know I gave up platforms? I wanted a new look,” he says coquettishly, tossing back his head of perfect curls. But he blows the cool by dropping his screaming yellow zonker sunglasses.
“Hollywood?” I venture.
“No, I wear ’em because I don’t like to see people looking at me all the time,” he confesses. Stanley is a confident young man, bordering on arrogant. With or without makeup, he possesses an intense magnetism: Paul is the throb of the teenage heart, luring them away from their Barbie dolls and into the back room.
Believe it or not, the Gorgeous George of the group was once an ugly duckling, never getting any of the girls he wanted. “You know, I was an ugly kid. I looked like I was put together with spare parts. ‘OK Mac, here’s a set of legs, stick ’em on Stanley.’ I used to be fat and had the funkiest hair. In fact, I even used to iron it, or use this Puerto Rican product called Perma Straight that came with directions in English and Spanish. Back in 1966, the only thing I wanted to be was John Sebastian.”
We enter Johnston, Pennsylvania, in a rented limo driven by a freckle-faced strawberry blonde. “You know, whenever we have a female limo driver I feel like saying, ‘You get in the back seat, and let me drive,’” says Paul. “Or just get in the back seat …” he jokes. The driver titters, throws a toothpaste smile, and continuously sneaks glances at him in her rear-view mirror.
“Is this your regular job?” he asks.
“Yes.”
“What is your irregular job?” he jives. As we get out of the car, she anxiously waits for Paul to beckon her, and when he doesn’t she reluctantly pulls away.
“Paul, you’re just a tease,” I admonish.
“Yeah, I know, that’s all the fun. Getting it is nothing.”
“Room 421, miss.” Key in hand, I rejoin the gang and anxiously ask, like an old hand: “When’s the soundcheck?”
“What soundcheck?” Gene blankly answers.
“You mean, I don’t get to rehearse?” I ask nervously.
“Nah, you’ll catch on, just follow us,” says Paul.
“Yeah, but I’ve got nothing to wear,” I say with a trace of panic.
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of you, kid, your name in lights,” jokes Bill Aucoin, their manager.
It’s 4pm, and all I have between me and showtime is Saturday afternoon TV. I’m watching Soul Train without having the slightest idea what I’m seeing, when the phone rings.
“Uhelszki?” (By this time I was one of the boys, and was called Uhelszki or Kid.)
“Yeah?”
“What size shoe do you wear?”
“8½. Why?”
“Too bad. I thought we could snazz you up in a pair of silver boots.”
“Well, maybe I could stuff ’em with Kleenex?”
“No, won’t work. Don’t worry, I’ll rummage around some more.”
I feel like I am getting ready for that big date – you know, the prom or homecoming – when actually I am going to be on stage for a total of four minutes in an ice arena in Nowhere, Pennsylvania. Still fidgety, I keep trying on my leotard over and over, checking the image in the mirror, and feeling a lot like motorcycle mole in Naked Under Leather. Drawing the drapes, I practise a few classic Kiss kicks in the bathroom mirror without much success. This was cut short by a knock at the door and an ominous voice saying: “Be in the lobby in one hour!” The Voice commands; mine, as a mere member of the shock troops, is but to obey.
The dressing room, in all its filthy linoleum splendour, isn’t the worst of its lot. Once inside, I’m afflicted with a bad case of modesty, and become obsessed, like a cat searching for a spot to drop her kitten, with finding a secluded corner to change into my clothes. Would a phone booth do? Clutching my costume, I spot an empty stall and dart in relieved, bolting the door. Like a quick-change artist, I tear off my T-shirt, tug at my Landlubbers and don my basic black, feeling more like a naked seal than part of Kiss. Timidly, I sneak out of the stall and approach Ace: “Hey, do you have another pair of tights I can wear? I am freezing,” I lie.
“Yeah, but they’re size D,” says Ace.
“That’s OK.”
“But Jaan, yours look better. They’re much hotter, because you can see through them. Doncha wanna look good in pictures?”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
“Hey, hey, if you don’t watch those legs they’re gonna get grabbed,” leers Simmons.
Embarassed, I turn on Junior and shout: “Hey, how long until we go on?”
“Lookit her, give her a black outfit, and make her a Kiss and already she’s hardcore,” he laughs.
The first band is on and the crowd is a stiff. No encore. Bill Aucoin sticks his head into the dressing room, shoves five backstage passes towards us, and tells us we’ve got 45 minutes until showtime. My palms are sweating so much that they’re beginning to obliterate the lettering on my pass, so I stick it on my right shoe, thinking the local goon squad would never believe that I was “Kiss for a Night” and give me the shove, figuring me to be just another fanatical Kiss groupie who had painted her face like her heroes, which seems to be the current fashion among fans. In keeping with the code of concealing the real identity of Kiss, my photographer can’t start shooting until the guys have sufficiently obscured their features. Tired of pacing, I take a spin around the backstage area, which is littered with underage glitter queens of varying age and brilliance. A 14-year-old Patty Play Pal accosts me.
“You know Gene Simmons?” she drools.
“Yeah,” I reply matter-of-factly.
“Does he really do those things with his tongue?” she asks excitedly.
“I guess so,” I reply.
“Gee, I wish he’d use that tongue on me, “ she says wistfully.
I return, and Kiss are in the final stages of completion, and ready to give me cosmetology tips. I’m hesitant to let them know that the last time I put on face makeup was in 10th grade, in the girls’ john at Southfield High School, and all my technique consisted of was smearing Touch & Glow over my adolescent visage.
“Yeah, Uhelszki, you gotta get rid of those bangs!” barks Simmons, yanking two clumps of my hair and wrapping elastic bands around them, so my carefully blow-dried hair is imprisoned in two sprouts on the top of my head.
“Ouch,” I complain.
“Shuddup, kid!” kids Simmons.
“You’re the one who asked for this.” Suddenly Paul looks at Gene, and the two of them grin, nod their heads, and attack my hair with a rat-tail comb and a can of hairspray. “Ah, perfect,” sighs Paul, as he admires my new fright-wig concoction.
By general consensus, Kiss have decided to make me up as a composite of all of them, just like the back cover of the Hotter Than Hell album. Now for the actual transformation: side-straddling the bench, I face Simmons in his black satin prizefighter robe, trying not to giggle as English comes out of this Halloween-monster thing. “It’s time to make a little monster. Now watch, so you can do this,” he instructs as if he were a counsellor for the Elizabeth Arden School of Beauty. “First, rub Stein’s clown white all over your face. Smooth it very lightly, only using a little around the eyes.”
Gene etches Maybelline black on my dry-to-normal skin, sketching in his bat insignia. “Hey! Don’t make her up just like you,” yells Stanley.
“I’m not, I told you, we each get a crack at her.” Ace splotches a silver dot on my nose, and Peter adds his own feline touch in messy black crayon. Paul pauses over the conglomeration, and draws a smaller version of his star. Funny, somehow I feel some kind of immunity behind the paint, a little more confidence. Maybe this rock’n’roll business won’t be so bad after all. Gene holds up a mirror and stands back, telling me to look at my reflection. “Don’t you feel special?” he inquires.
“No, silly,” I admit.
“Come on, you look very groupie.”
“I do not!”
“No, that’s great! Get off on it tonight, while you got it,” he said.
“So then you think I look OK?” I ask.
“Yeah, but I look better!” he laughs.
Now the presentation of my plugless wonder. Junior shoves a red guitar in my hands and I fumble with it. “You mean you don’t even know how to hold a guitar?” he asks incredulously.
“No, do you know how to change a typewriter ribbon?” I retort. Paul comes to my rescue and shows me how to handle the Fender. “Here, hold it like this, off to one side. Now wear it low and slinky, so it looks sexy.”
My last touch is the freak paraphernalia, and I go from person to person collecting their junk jewellery and brutish decorations. Finally I was outfitted in a studded collar, a menagerie of plastic eyeballs (and other unidentified organs), rings, a metal cuff and a studded belt whose buckle encased a tarantula named Freddy. Unfortunately, Freddy kept slipping off my 35-inch hips, and had to be taped to my tights with gaffer’s tape.
Readying for a gig with Kiss falls short of my expectations and their reputations. I had expected some gruesome ordeal, but instead we take turns mugging in the mirrors, exchanging gossip (“Did you see the set of tits on that 15-year-old broad?”) and advice. I feel more like I’m at a Tupperware party than in a rock’n’roll dressing room, but then the “worst” is yet to come. Stage fright. “I got a run in my tights.” I whine.
“Don’t worry,” comforts Bill, “who’s going to notice 50 rows back?” Like a rock’n’roll Casey Stengel, Bill gives me an impromptu pep talk about standing up straight, not watching the audience and looking “like you belong there”. As he finishes, we are out the door. And believe it or not, I am raring to go, running down the hallway. Without realising it, I am halfway up the stairs to the stage when Junior grabs me. “Hey sweetheart, where you going?” he says, laughing.
What he doesn’t realise is I am getting a little trigger happy, and maybe even stage-struck, but just in case I motion him over to me. “I have every intent on going through with this, but when it’s time for me to go on stage, don’t give me a hand sign, just shove.”
The set seems to take forever; I feel like I’m sitting through the rock version of Gone With the Wind. I have already shredded four Kleenexes, I have to go to the bathroom and the makeup is beginning to itch unbearably. As I raise one fingernail to scratch, Bill Aucoin is at my side, like a trained pro, grabbing my hand. “That’s a no-no,” he says, and fans my face to relieve the irritation. “Did you know you’re on next?” he inquires.
I don’t. Visions of graduation day float through my head, that fear of slipping on stage before the entire school before you got your hands on the diploma. Only difference was that if I slip tonight, Kiss will use it as part of the act. So this sense I can’t make a mistake. Just a damn fool of myself.
Countdown. Then the shove, and I’m on stage, moving like I’m unremotely controlled. Forgetting completely that I’m in front of 5,000 people, participating as one-fifth of this sadistic cheerleading squad, bobbing and gyrating instinctively, I no longer hear the music, just a noise and a beat. On cue, I strut over to Gene’s mic and lean into it and sing. Singing loud without hearing myself, oblivious to everything but those four other beings on stage. Gene whispers for me to “shake it” and I loosen up a little more, until I feel like a Vegas showgirl going to a go-go. Suddenly it strikes me: I like this. And I venture a look at the crowd, that clamouring, hungry throng of bodies below me. All I can think is how much all those kids resemble an unleashed pit of snakes, their outstretched arms bobbing and nodding, as if charmed by the music. I wonder if they will pick up on the hoax? But they keep screaming and cheering, so I might just as well be Peter Criss, unleashed from his drum kit, as anyone. The only difference is, I am the only Kiss with tits.
I slide over to Stanley’s mic, sneaking up behind him and mimic his calisthenics. He whirls around and catches me, emitting a huge red crimson laugh from his painted lips. I push my unplugged guitar to one side and do an aborted version of the bump and the bossa nova, singing into Paul’s mic this time.
“I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day! Oh, yeah! I wanna rock and roll all night, and party every day!”
And right on cue, to add that last dash of drama, Junior’s beefy arms ceremoniously lift me and the guitar three feet off the stage, and I look like a furious fan who’s almost managed to fulfil her fantasy but was foiled at the end. But you know something? I feel foiled: I want to finish the song. My song!
We trek back to the dressing room and now, after the ordeal, my legs go marshmallow. Wanting to appear blase after my big debut, I grab a wooden chair and drape myself over it.
“It was hysterical!” laughs Paul. “I knew you were gonna be on stage, but then I forgot about you, then all of a sudden I look and see you dancing, looking like Minnie Mouse.”
“You’re a perfect stage personality,” says Gene. “All of a sudden you were hogging the mic. You took over, stealing scenes like a pro. You know, the kids thought you were part of the show.”
The party was over, the fans dispersed, but the five of us are armed with five boxes of Kleenex and four bottles of cold cream. “You know, if we don’t get rich, I’m gonna need a padded cell,” confesses Peter.
The next morning, as we sleepily wandered to the coffee shop to await the limousines, each member of the group greeted me, not with a “Good morning,” but with a mimic of my stage shimmy. “You deserve it, Jaan. You told us you were shy. I never thought you could be such a ham,” explained Bill.
As we said our goodbyes, Gene Simmons called over his shoulder: “Whenever you feel like putting on that makeup again, give us a call.”
