Caitlin

During the first set of the night in Nashville I looked out across the smoke hazened bar. We were playing a real roadhouse, we were in the land of belt buckles and cowboy hats there were spittoons that I don't think were decorative. It was a large room with tables and chairs that filled the center, and lining the perimeter, on the walls were booths. People were coming and going out of one of the booths, like bees from a hive, including 'the girlfriends'. I wondered whose booth it was. A record industry executive’s? A local bigshot? Or maybe a country western star? All I could see through the spotlight and the people gathered around were flashes of a beautiful red headed woman. In between sets, everyone backstage and at the bar was talking about this woman. All the interest was starting to piss me off, so I asked Alex about her.
"That's Caitlin Stewart, she's the daughter of Jerry Osprey." Alex said.
"Jerry Osprey?" I said, "The Jerry Osprey? The guitar player?"
"I knew that would impress you. Yeah, him."

I sauntered up to the booth, putting on my best Morrison pout. She had burnt red hair. Nothing of the carrot there but of the flame, it was the color of a dark fire, hot enough to burn. She was dressed the same as every other woman in the club that night, in jeans and a blouse but she had a sense of style that was far and above the taste of every other woman there, including the sequined 'girlfriends'. Her breasts were as nearly perfectly rounded as could be and were pulling the fabric of her blouse in interesting directions, her jeans seemed melted to her skin. She looked like the type of woman I was looking for. And if she really was Jerry Osprey's daughter, maybe she could help me. I just couldn't figure out why a girl like her would come to a place like this.
"I'm Michael Desmond." I said, extending my hand, "are you really Jerry Osprey's daughter?"
"Really." She said. I examined her features, she smiled nervously under the scrutiny and a light entered her eyes as her face rounded to the familiar shape of her father's.
"Can I buy you a drink?" I asked. Before she could answer I saw the band milling around the darkened stage, "Oh sorry, it's time to do the next set." I sauntered back to the stage, making sure she got a good look at me.

After the last set, I walked back out into the club, into the glare of the house lights. A thin layer of cigarette smoke still hung in the atmosphere, and the sound of the band still rung in my ears and echoed off the walls. I could see the devastation of the closed club, cocktail napkins and cigarettes on the freshly beer stained floor. The waitresses silently milled about from table to table cleaning up the half filled glasses and overflowing ashtrays, and trying not to look interested in anything except what they were doing. The band and 'the girlfriends' stood in a circle around Caitlin and a guy who I hadn’t noticed before that seemed to be with her. The bouncers stood around the edges in a looser circle trying to look cooler than the band. They weren't succeeding. I joined the inner circle.
"We're just doing this to get a little exposure," Johnny was saying to Caitlin, "and do our own songs."
"You have originals?"
"Yeah. We even have a demo tape." The other band members stood around shaking their heads in agreement.
"Really?" She said, "so what do you have to say for yourself Mr. Morrison?"
I smiled politely, "Michael, please." From the back the owner of the bar came up to our group, he was a good looking young guy in a silk shirt, with slicked back blond hair, constantly fidgeting with it, running his hand over the sides of his hair, or adjusting his sleeves. I wondered what he was doing, speed or coke.
"Time to go now. That includes you, Caitlin." I could tell there once had been something between them, and that he hadn’t been the one who ended it, he kept glaring at the guy with Caitlin.
"I'd love to hear your tape," she said to Johnny, "why doesn't everyone come to our house for a little party and we can listen to it?"

Caitlin and I walked up the path to her house, it was a huge modern tri-level with windows that ran its length, it was surrounded by a copse of trees hidden by and meant to be part of the environment. Everyone else was lagging behind us.
"What kind of music do you like?" I asked.
"All kinds."
"Everybody says that."
"But I really do like all kinds of music!"
"Everybody says that too."
"I can prove it." She said as we walked up to the front door of her house. A warm light shone out into the night. We walked into the living room, everybody fanned out of the vestibule behind us, we were all taken aback by the sight that greeted us. The decoration, like Caitlin, showed a simple but eloquent taste. Lining the walls of the living room were record albums, wrapped in plastic, and neatly arranged on shelves that spilled over into the other rooms I could see.
"Wow." Was all I could say, breaking the awed silence.
"Start here." She said, pointing to the closest shelve in the room. I pulled out the album closest to me.
"Abba." I said.
"They're arranged alphabetically." I pulled out the next album.
"Abba, Waterloo."
"And in order of release," she smiled.
“How far to AC/DC?”
“Farther down.”
"Impressive." I said, "how many are there?"
"Eight hundred." I ran my hand over the albums and walked about two feet before pulling out another album. It was Black Sabbath.
"You ever hear of CD's?" I asked.
"It's too late," she said, "I'm invested. I've been listening to albums since I was about ten, starting with my father’s."

Caitlin got out a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau and we sat around the living room listening to the boys’ tape, and it kind of reminded me of the party at the apartment except on a much more prosperous level. I watched the interactions around me, the waitresses and bouncers from the club loitered around the room outside the hub of, me, the band, and Caitlin. Caitlin was sitting next to her boyfriend Jake, Jack, Jess. I don't really remember which it was, and sure enough the manager of the club took a seat across from Caitlin and displayed a certain amount of familiarity as he fidgeted from whatever stimulant he had taken, while she looked amused by him. I smiled at her and looked at her intently, trying to communicate.
"Michael, would you like a tour of the house?" She asked me.
"Sure," I said, glad for the chance to be alone with her. We walked through a couple of the rooms. She pointed out some delicate facet about a piece of furniture, or of the room before asking, "do you sing the band's original songs?"
"No, The Unknown Soldiers and Ghost Dance are two different things.”
“You don’t write the songs or anything?”
“I don’t do anything creative, I’m the idea man.” I said, as we strolled to another room, moving farther away from prying eyes of the group. “What do you do?”
"I'm a publicist for a small record company, low wage, menial, I don’t know anything else except music, and love being around it."
"This house doesn't look like you're too low wage."
"Oh," she said, waving a hand, "my father has a lot of guilt and a lot of royalties.”
“What about the guy?”
“Judd? He’s my boyfriend."
“The nightclub owner doesn’t seem to think so.”
“Lance?”
"He's a loser." I said, cornering her against a wall. I could feel the heat pouring off her body.
"How do you know?" She said, softly.
"Because he's not me."
"Sure of yourself, aren't you?"
"I am the Lizard King." I said, grandiosely.
“You take that seriously?”
“It’s my job.”
“So, are you making a pass at me because you’re attracted to me? Or because you think Morrison would act this way? Or because you think I’m vulnerable?”
“Does it matter?”
"I met him once you know." She said, pushing me away from her as she moved on to the next room.
"Morrison?"
"Yeah, my dad's band opened for The Doors once."
"Really?"
"Yeah, it was during one of the times when my mother felt like my father should be spending more time with me, so..."
"How were they?" I asked.
"OK, I guess. I really don't have a good reference point. When Dad opened for The Doors, I was backstage for a few shows. Usually just long enough to see him play and then back to the motel. I really didn't get to see that much."
"What was he like?" I asked.
"Morrison? I don't know. Cool, I guess. I was only about nine or ten, we were backstage and I scratched his head and did a little curtsy, it was filmed, I’m sure you’ve seen the film. It was all pretty innocuous." We walked a few steps more, "so, let's talk about you. It must be pretty interesting to be in a band, what else have you done?"
"A lot of things. I'm just tryin' this music thing out to see if it leads anywhere." I said, staring at her intensely.
"Be careful, you just may get what you want. Just ask my father," she smiled, "just ask me."
"What's it like growing up with a father who's a legend?" I asked.
“I don’t look back much.”
“I guess that’s easy when you’re successful, and have what you want.”
"OK. Do you want the full length version, or the cheery, everything is roses version I use for magazine writers and fans of my father's?"
"Whichever is true."
"Basically, I paid for my father's Rock 'n' Roll dreams. I was conceived on tour, I was born on tour, and I think my parents even managed to stay together through that tour. Whenever my mother thought I needed a father figure she'd ship me off to be with him. I guess I did need a father figure, I ran away with a boyfriend who was nineteen."
"Nineteen?"
"When you're sixteen, nineteen seems a lot older. They seem, uh, cool, together, like an adult. He had this vague idea to go to L.A., we'd get jobs in a restaurant, and be discovered. I was this romantic sixteen year old, so we ran away. I thought we'd be together and be a famous couple. I thought someone would recognize me or find out I was Jerry Osprey's daughter and wouldn't allow me to live on the streets, but my father's career was well past its height, and no one cared if Jerry Osprey's daughter lived on the street." She smiled, it looked more nostalgic than wistful. "I got a lot of living done, waitressing, moving from city to city. We were living on Hollywood Boulevard, and..."
"You lived on Hollywood Boulevard?"
"I mean ON IT. Sleeping in the doorways of closed shops when we couldn't scrape together enough money for a crappy motel room. I finally realized he was more confused and screwed up than I was, so I called my mother and went home. My friends tell me I should write a book or an album, but..." She stopped and looked into my eyes. "I don't know why I'm telling you all this."
"People tell me all kinds of things. You'd be surprised." I said. "But what about now?”
“Now?”
“You get along well with him now, right?" She looked at me quizzically, "your father, I mean."
"Yeah, OK. He usually calls whenever he's in town." She looked at me out of the corner of her eye and smiled a little, "I don't understand why people would think my life is more interesting to them than theirs. Is that all you're interested in, my father?"
"No, uhhh…" I stammered.
"Don’t worry about it, I’m used to it. One of the reasons I fell in love with that nineteen year old, he was the first guy I met that was interested in me and not my Dad. He told me I was beautiful, and for as big a screw up as he was, he only wanted me. Some of the guys I've meet, I've felt like I'm a collectible to them."
"A collectible?"
"Yeah, just another thing to add to their Jerry Osprey collection, like the authorized guitar, the special edition album, The daughter, wrapped in plastic and put on the shelf, the ultimate collectible.” She looked uncomfortable and paused, “why don't you tell me about your dark history with your parents."
"What makes you think I have a dark history with them?"
"I don't know," she said, "you just look it."
"I don't know." I said, trying to decide if I could trust her.
"OK then, why're you so into Morrison?"
"I just always identified with him I guess."
"How?"
"Well, my father was military too, like Morrison's. We traveled around a lot until I was in high school."
"Well, that's you and several million other people." Then she paused. "Could it be you don’t want to tell me because you just think Jimmy was a really cool guy? Conqueror of women, befriender of men and animal, the mystical shaman?"
"I guess Morrison fit my mood when I read about him. He showed me a way to get what I wanted."
"What do you want?"
“I just want, well,” I struggled to put it into words, “I want to know what he knew. He seemed like he understood a lot of things, a lot of the mysteries of life. I'm just trying to find out what that was."
"The meaning of life?"
"I never looked at it that way, but, yeah, I guess you could say that."
"All you may ever figure out is the meaning of his life," she paused, "what if it means nothing to you?"
"Then I've discovered something."
"Is that why you started the band?"
"Let's just say I heard the voices of the gods calling me." Which I thought was one of my better lines. She was unfazed.
"So, what it comes down to is, you find me interesting not because I'm Jerry Osprey's daughter, but because I once met Jim Morrison. God! That's a new one!" She laughed. "Hmmm, what can I tell you about Morrison?" She said, "nothing really. I met the man for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes which is forever imprisoned in time, captured on film. I never knew the man, but it seems to me he had a lot of problems, and delving into him might invoke those demons, or awaken your own."
"How do you know it hasn't, I'm dangerous." I said, leaning in for a kiss.
"Why do all men like to think they're dark and dangerous?" She asked, "what can I do for you, Michael?"
"What can you do for me...no one's ever asked me that before."
"You made such a production out of letting me know you wanted to be alone with me." I looked like I didn't know what she was talking about. "Maybe we should go listen to your band's demo tape?"
"It's not my tape." I said.
"You realize I'm not going to sleep with you, don't you?"
"That's all I have time for, sex, nothing else." She didn't look amused.
"Yeah, right." She said, laughing as she pushed me away, again. "If you tried to see Morrison as a whole person instead of a hero, well, it doesn’t matter, what you reflect of him probably reveals some aspect of you, more than of him." She looked into my eyes one last time, "are you sure there's still a you in there?"

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