He tossed the newspapers on the bed. Kilo and the girls dutifully applauded in acknowledgement that my arrival was front page on every first edition. Even the New York Times had me stepping out of the helicopter, this descent into blatant populism excused by an ironic headline: ‘MAKE MONEY, NOT WAR: Brand Zero Appropriates Military Might for Marketing Assault on America’s Youth’. ‘Oooh, look, you’ve pushed the orphans off the front page,’ noted Kilo, perfectly aware this was exactly what Beasley wanted to hear. The plight of the so-called Orphans of MedellÍn, street children devastated by a combination of economic breakdown, political impotence and natural disaster, had become the hobby horse of the hour, with heart-rending pictures of photogenic victims going viral, and had dominated the news for several days running. But not any more.
‘They don’t buy music anyway,’ smiled Beasley, who delighted in affronting delicate sensibilities. Blowing smoke rings, he made a speedy inspection of my appearance. ‘Ready to face your public?’
I was ready to get back into bed but Beasley always made me feel I had to rise to a challenge, and that it would be craven to admit weakness or doubt. And to be fair to Beasley (though fuck knows why, I have no reason to be fair to him, of all people) it is hard to complain of overwork to a boss who works harder than you (was he my boss? Wasn’t he supposed to be in my employ?). He was usually the last man standing at night and up at the crack of dawn. Fuck knows why, since he had so many minions to do his bidding, many of whom had stealthily assembled in my suite while I was being made human.
Reflecting my status as the biggest swinging dick in town, the luxuriously appointed living area of the penthouse suite stretched the length of one side of the hotel. Which was just as well, since Beasley’s battalion of road managers, tour managers, product managers, assistant managers, assistants to assistant managers, assistants of every hue and gender, agents, publicity reps, record company reps and all the other small-credit people deemed necessary to bring my message to the world were colonising every polished surface with their smartphones, tablets, laptops and printers, comparing presentations across leather-topped tables, sticking Post-it notes to a cylindrical glass tank housing a family of exotic jellyfish and making Facetime calls from opposite ends of elongated sofas. My entrance created the usual micro-vacuum as every conversation paused, every eye turned, just for an instant. Then they all started chattering again, slightly louder than before.
I didn’t need two guesses whose bright idea it was to turn my suite into the war room. ‘If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad …’ Beasley growled, giving me a warning nod as I turned to acknowledge the digicam that had me trained in its sights, webcasting my every move to my most adoring, obsessive, or just plain bored-out-of-their-skulls-with-nothing-better-to-do fans on zero24seven.com.
‘Good morning, Vietnam!’ I bellowed, pulling a funny face. It was pathetic, really. I couldn’t fucking help myself. My inanity was greeted with gratuitous applause from the busy bees, who have perfected the kind of in-built laugh track that would make them an asset to any sitcom.
I’ve got to be honest, zero24seven was my bright idea, not Beasley’s, and one I had come to regret. Like every other homestar with a cheap mic and an IP address, back in prehistory my bedroom was my stage and the net my only spotlight. At first I wasn’t sure if the dark theatre of web dreams was empty or teeming with other lost souls until my hit counter started going haywire. I only formed The Zero Sums so I could fuck some of the honeyz in my inbox, if I’m completely honest, which, of course, I am. Maybe I should have just stayed in my room and ordered pizza, a legend in my own upload time. It was never as pure in the real world, never as easy to control, people kept straying from the script, it got complicated and messy and it all ended in tears. Not mine, obviously. So when Beasley came calling, I told him about my fantasy of webcasting twenty-four hours a day in real time, so that I could find that synthesis between my first and second life, real and virtual, invite people into my space without having to go out into theirs. At least that was the idea. Clearly, I hadn’t thought it through.
Everyone’s at it now, so it’s easy to forget that it was briefly hailed as a zeitgeist-riding nu-media sensation. I was top of the pods before I even released a single. But the 24–7 concept quickly became a royal pain. When I was younger the idea that God was watching my every move filled me with dread. Would I go to hell if I dropped dead in the middle of a five-knuckle shuffle? But when God Almighty was replaced with an all-seeing digicam and you can’t rip a fart for fear of complete strangers wrinkling their noses, or worse still your dad (although in my case that didn’t really apply cause my old man was so technophobic he needed the assistance of a child to plug in his electric blanket) then self-consciousness takes on a whole new dimension. The only way I could avoid behaving like a bad actor in the tragicomedy of my own life was to secretly get ripped off my tits behind the scenes (i.e. in any bathroom where I was not contractually bound to let Beasley install a camera). Thank fuck the impossible logistics of getting everyone we encountered to sign release forms put an end to the ideal of the over-examined life. We should be prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act because these days zero24seven was full of videos and repeats. I had live content down to a bare minimum, no more than a few hours max of the most public footage, though much of my courtship with Penelope was carried out online because she was never happier than when she was on camera. At least before the blowjob at the BRITs incident, which put her off a bit. Obviously, I hadn’t answered my own emails in years. I didn’t even write my own tweets.
That was Spooks McGrath’s job, among others, a bespectacled, frazzle-haired techie hovering at Digicam Dude’s elbow, ready to catch my every wink and stutter and feed it into the voracious maw of the beast. To his credit, in my view at least, he was the only one here who looked as bad as I felt. He had probably been up all night, editing footage and talking to the Chinese branch of the Zeromaniacs fan club while most of Beasley’s clean-cut college grads were getting a good night’s sleep under chamomile eyeshades.
‘Looking forward to the big day?’ said Spooks, which was just some inanity designed to get me going, I know, but you expect a better chat-up line from a webmaster and ghostblogger with an alleged IQ the size of a supercomputer.
‘Every day is a big day,’ I sighed through a fake grin, and looked into the unblinking lens, trying to imagine invisible hordes on the other side. I had to give them something better. ‘Here we are in New York, New York, so good they named it twice: once for the night before, and once for the morning after!’ That joke wasn’t improving with age. ‘First we take Manhattan, tomorrow … ze world!’
I screamed the last bit, obviously, jumping onto one of the leather coffee tables like a demented dictator and spilling someone’s latte. The minions applauded reliably, except for the latte drinker, who was trying to stop a pool of coffee swamping her spreadsheets while smiling apologetically, like it was her fault. Which it was. Now I was standing there like a virgin at an orgy, every face in the room turned towards me and a webcam broadcasting my antics to over 45 million subscribers. How do these things happen? ‘My people, my people,’ I brayed, waving victory fingers and wagging devil horns. Sometimes, my mouth and body function without engaging my brain at all. ‘We will fight them on the beaches, we will fight with their bitches on Coney Island beaches.’ All those eyes on me, puzzled but expectant. That’s when you either impale yourself or fall into the moment. When the room grows so still you can focus on particles of dust floating in the air. ‘Hi-fi, wi-fi, fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of everybody in the room,’ I spat, falling into a rap I had been working up for the live version of ‘Never Young’, which made no sense at all in this context but these words, this rhythm was all I had to hold onto, a lifeline tossed out from my subconscious.