kid dynamo // silver & vero

[fox]

v e r o

Last night, coming off the concert stage, I stumbled blurry-minded to my dressing room, suddenly afraid I was going to shake out of my body. My hands wouldn't stop trembling, soul dying in the backseat of the car as my stomach dropped endlessly at every red light.

It was weird, I don't know.

So I had a drink, and then another, and another, and pretty soon my phone was ringing at 7 a.m. – still drunk, eyes bloodshot, a chicken sitting on my head – I answered the call to my assistant telling me, in a sunny voice, I had an interview in the morning.

Uh oh.

"Umm. Can I just dial in?"

Now, I'm here, sitting here in Fyre FM's green room, sucking on a mint after making myself puke up the alcohol in the bathroom.

I go through the cue cards of words that have never failed me – "purpose," "believe," "grateful," holy trinity of a spotless image, and here are all my palpable, relatable struggles – but in the end, "For me, it's all about the music."

Fifth, Sixth interview this month, and I'm getting so tired of this.

Bored outta my mind, scrolling through my phone and looking up how to tell if my hen is fat –

Man, I gotta stop buying things while high.

My assistant hands me a breakfast of caffeine chews and green juice. I'm about to say, "Thanks Clio," but I glance up at her for the first time today and oh my god – it's someone else now, some other bubbly, bouncing intern that has a knack for spirited intonation and waking me up at the crack of dawn. I literally don't even know who this is.

She's kinda hot though.

I'm just staring at her, wondering when this happened, when the people come and usher me into the studio.

The last of the set's playing, and there's Silver Steele seated with all the mics and the sound desk laid before her like a feast. She's the first radio interviewer I haven't met before, now three years deep into this, coming back to the same circuit for every album, every single, every time I need PR. I pull on the strings of my hoodie before offering a hand to shake. "Hi, nice to meet you."

And then I sit, go back to looking up the kind of diet I need to put Bertha on.

"Vocal rest," The new assistant says, wringing her hands but not skipping a beat, explaining away how I'm still kinda buzzed, how the room still feels a little lighter than normal. But I turn to Silver, slide over my phone and show her pictures of my chickens, pointing to the fluffy, curly-feathered brown one – "That one's Diana."

We've got a twenty minute slot, and who knows, maybe it'll be interesting.

{ if you move me, i'm your d a n c e r }

[calla]

S  I  L  V  E  R  !

—

I poured half of Jon's energy drink in my coffee cup when he went to take a leak earlier. It's a standard All-Caps cocktail now - two espresso shots, three shakes of instant creamer, a splash of 10 hour energy.

Life is good. Life is fantastic.

Got a retweet from Ariadne last night, started on a new Crowe track, I'm on top of the world baby! It doesn't even matter that I got called in to interview some new hotshot when everyone knows that it's Rena that interviews all the celebs.

But the music, she had said, Silver you'll understand it so much better than I would.

I guess?

And maybe it's just my ego talking - but, yeah, I took the job. It's past my bedtime but I'll survive. That's what you get when you play the night shift and the witching hour and the party time. That's what you get for being fun. The morning commute makes me want to gag.

The star of the hour gets ushered in the room and I fiddle with the gain dial on the sound board. One of the producers slid a list of pre-approved questions on the desk this morning, but what am I gonna do? Use them?

HA!

"Wow, you look like shit!"

Man, Xena's gonna kill me.

"Man, Xena's gonna love this."

She's my boss, but she's also not my boss, y'know? I'm my own boss. Live laugh love.

But the mic's not on yet, the light's red, I made sure. There's a six-and-a-half-minute long remix of River Russo playing over the line so we have time to settle in and it's when the trap beat kicks in that I realize I'm just sitting there bopping so I nudge the headphones off and shake his hand all proper.

"Welcome to the studio." I tell him, squint at him, trying to pretend like I'm dissecting him while I'm just trying to remember the name of his album.

Not my style alright? Too mainstream. Call me a hipster, I'll just say I'm underground. There's a mini folder in the desk drawer that's basically a brief on his whole career, but I didn't read it. I looked this guy up for about two seconds last night after I told my little sister about the interview and she started screaming in my ear about how I couldn't mess it up or she'd kill me.

Guess she's a fan? She slammed her bedroom door in my face when I asked if I could practice my interview questions with the brooding poster on her wall.

Vero just takes a seat and doesn't do anything else and when I glance at the assistants painted on smile I can kinda see why Rena passed the job to me now. Then he slides something across the desk, and I look at it, because that's the way it goes.

"You've got a chicken." I say, because popstars101.pm didn't have that one in their top ten facts. But I still nod sagely, like he's just said something profound, "She looks like a Diana."

"We go live in-" I glance at the timer, "-4 minutes and 3 seconds."

"Anything off limits?"

I take a big swig from the mug and look at one of the interns sitting in the corner just staring at Vero. I'm about to buzz outta this damn seat, I need some sugar to take me down. "I thought there were supposed to be doughnuts?"

Where's the hospitality?

[fox]

v e r o

She says I look like shit and yah lmao true.

My assistant, not-Clio, was telling me over the phone how I needed to get dressed and head to makeup, not roll in wearing yesterday's clothes and a massive rager clinging onto my skin, and I said for what? It's radio.

Silver agrees with my chicken names.

I already like her more than half of my family.

There's the set of questions I rehearsed a thousand times, recited like a prayer to the pop gods – the first thing they got me was a publicity coach, hailed her like a biblical figure for the number of miracles she's done and careers she's revived from the dead. Stay humble, be grateful, and don't ever talk about relationships.

I think she actually wrote a textbook with that title.

But when Silver asks if anything is off limits, somehow I find myself interrupting not-Clio as she attempts to hand over a printed list. My hand closes over the paper, crumples it up, and suddenly I'm saying "Anything you want."

And then, as an afterthought – "I would also like a donut."

I turn to not-Clio, her face stretched into possibly the most pained smile I've seen in my life and I think I'm about to get another assistant haha. "Can you please get us some?"

{ if you move me, i'm your d a n c e r }

[calla]

S  I  L  V  E  R  !

—

'Anything you want,' he says, and I just wanna know where this guy’s been all my life.

Vero's assistant starts to hand the list over and I'm like okay great, I love reading, that's fine. My own research doesn't even matter, right? Then it gets intercepted, crumpled up, WOWZA we shoulda done this ages ago. I turn up a dial on the soundboard and get ready to jump in, the assistant over there looks like she's about to have a conniption.

"Yeah, I'll take a honey glazed."

I take sip of my energy-drink-coffee combo and grin real wide. I think about ordering some chicken wings too, but then I think of poor Diana, that's probably not a good idea. No time anyways though, the intro rolls over, the light turns green, we're on baby!

The sounds of River Russo fade away and I pull the mic towards us, "Welcome back listeners, it's DJ Silver and I'm here with pop-star extraordinaire, man of the hour, thee Vero."

I push a button and a hundred little fake people start clapping.

"It's so great to have you here," I say, twirling my chair around a bit, "Tell us, what's new in the world of Vero?"

[fox]

v e r o

Not-Clio goes to get us donuts after wringing her hands for a sec, and I bet she's wondering how the last assistant got let go. Same. I've been wondering if it was the swimming pool incident or if it was the tattoo incident, and I make a mental note to ask my manager but I don't know if I actually care that much.

We go green, Silver does her thing as I sit with my hands folded in my lap, soundbites of a nonexistent audience punctuating the pause. I have my own soundboard too, just flip on the switches and I'm barely there, noise and spectacle filling the emptiness, and suddenly I'm tired of doing this.

"Tell us, what's new in the world of Vero?"

The best thing about my job is that they can't fire me.

"Thanks for asking, Silver. Let's see…" And I give them my idol voice, the kind that's perked up on infinite energy not from cocaine but pure popstar magic.

"Sooo I tried to get a tattoo the other day. I showed you right? Of my girl Diana – yeah, I was trying to get her inked. The artist said no though. Apparently you have to make an appointment," A pause, "And be completely sober."

And drop kicking the rest of the script out the window, "Shoutout to Flying Colours. Heard Sampson Crowe got a sick tattoo there. But remember to make an appointment, kids."

{ if you move me, i'm your d a n c e r }