From: richh@netcom.com (richh)
Subject: RICHH:  DANGEROUS
Message-ID: <richhCCLH5G.8pM@netcom.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1993 22:58:27 GMT
Lines: 108

                MONEY TO BURN AND TIME TO KILL

     So I'm watching MTV and they're showing a Mariah Carey video
and I'm thinking, "Jeez, this girl needs some *help*."  So I gather
up some fake credentials and id's, hop in my ride and tool on over
to Kalamazoo or Wichita Falls or East Bumfuck or wherever the hell
it is she grew up.  And I stop by her high school.  I go to the
yearbook office, make a few pencil sketches of Mariah as she looked
in high school and then start asking her old teachers questions
about her.  They're only too happy to talk about her.
     "What kind of boys did Mariah date?" I ask.
     "Date?  Oh no, not Mariah.  All she ever used to do was sing.
Yep, just sing."
     "But surely there must have been someone?  She's hardly an
unnattra--"
     "Mariah didn't really um, fill out, until late in her senior
year.  I always remember her as skinny and awkward.  She spent a
lot of time with those kids from the school musical.  You might
want to talk to Mr. Browning--he runs the--"
     "That's fine, thanks.
     They were absolutely no help so I went straight to Mariah's
house where she grew up, an aluminum-sided split-level suburban
kind of nightmare with a station wagon in the drive.  With
simulated wood on the doors.
     "Mrs. Carey--"
     "Please, call me Pookie."
     "Pookie, did Mariah have many friends in town here?  What were
they like?  Every girl has a best friend.  Who was Mariah's?"
     Mr. Carey entered the room and sat in the recliner by the
piano.  "Anyone could tell you that Pookie was Mariah's only friend
back then.  Kind of worried us for a while.  But she seemed so
happy just to sit in here and sing while Pookie played the piano.
Pookie, play something for our guest--"
     "No, I couldn't.  Really."

     So I left East Bumfuck armed with a few pencil sketches and
the knowledge that Mariah was not the most social kid in high
school.  I caught up with her in Philadelphia, where she was in a
a friend of mine's studio working on her next album, "Emotional
Bliss."  A duet with Michael Bolton, "Deep sincere love gunk", was
slated to be the first single.  Well since Mariah was on *my* turf
here in Philly it was a simple matter to arrange a chance meeting
with her at a bar near the studio.
     I saw her in a booth at the back of the bar, her hair all up
and under a hat.  I walked over to the jukebox, put in a buck, and
played "Vision of Love" three times in a row.  A woman at the bar
who *had* kind of been looking my way promptly scowled and left the
place.  Ah well. . .  The next thing I knew Mariah was on the stool
next to me at the bar(I had asked the producer, who owed me a
favor, to steer her my way).  She ordered a ginger ale and asked me
if I liked that song.
     "It's all right.  But there's something about the woman who
sings it. . .I don't know, maybe I'm nuts but I swear. . .ah I
don't know.  You?"  I looked right at her and made it clear that I
did not know who she was.  She felt safe talking to me.
     "I like the song a lot, yes."
     "She's new, isn't she?" I asked.
     She nodded.
     "Do you dance," I asked, knowing full well from watching her
videos that she didn't.
     The smoky atmosphere of the bar and three watered-down ginger
ales had made Mariah bold.  "Yes.  Okay."
     On the dance floor I confirmed what I had long suspected.
Maria was, in fact, a virgin, and quite uncomfortable with her own
body and bodies in general.  I guessed that it was the result of
her fairly strict Catholic upbringing.
    I asked her what she did.  She said she hoped to be a singer.
I told her that I play a little piano and would she sing a song for
me in the back?
     "Okay."
     I started in on "Time, Love and Tenderness" and she sang.  She
covered every inch of twelve-octave range. She sang for hours.  She
sang until the bar was packed.  She sang until the dogs outside
stopped howling and just listened.  She sang like she wanted to be
with me tonight.  And she was.
     Back at my place she saw my pencil sketches that I had drawn
out of her high school yearbook.  Trembling, she asked me what they
were all about.
     "This girl has been haunting my dreams for about five years.
It had gotten to the point where I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep,
couldn't work, could hardly exist.  So my shrink thought it would
be good therapy for me to draw this girl, since I *am* an artist.
Anyway, that's her." I put my hands around Mariah's biceps.
"You're shaking.  What's wrong?"
     "She buried her face in my chest.  "Rich, I--I--"
     I stroked her hair.  "I know," I whispered.  "I know."

     After she finished the album we moved in together in a little
apartment out in L.A.  Our nights were spent wrapped in the
envelope of each other's flesh and our days were spent in the
living room and the kitchen, teaching Mariah to dance.  Which was
*not* easy.  I played Samantha Fox and Sheena Easton and Prince
videos over and over on the vcr, explaining to her exactly what
'sexy' was.  Finally, she seemed to catch on.  "Rolling Stone" did
a cover story on "the new Mariah".  "People" did something lame
entitled "They call the wind Mariah".  But she was still not
complete.
     One day she came home to find Christina Applegate, naked but
for a long wig, lip-syncing lewdly to "Emotion" while I watched,
also naked.  She ran from the apartment, her heart broken.  But
finally complete.  I quickly left that city and moved back to Philly
and started doing some research on Debbie Gibson.

     The next year Mariah nearly swept the Grammys and won
tremendous acclaim for her portrayal of Nora in "A Doll's House"
opposite Jeremy Irons.

RICHH