Asherbelle and Marilyn sittin' in a tree.... my 4 1/2 minutes with Marilyn Manson.

When I was a young girl, I absolutely loved Boy George. I knew he was a guy. He sang like a guy. He had an adams apple. And he was ass ugly without makeup on. It was his ‘stage persona’ that I thought was gorgeous. That lovely made up face….teased hair, glittery outfits.

Enter into the teenage years. I was introduced to the androgynous David Bowie. And oh, hello my delicious Robert Smith of The Cure. Hi there mystery man, Peter Murphy. The Cult. Ministry. Love and Rockets. And even today, the look of Jack Sparrow makes me… rush to the movie theater. Clearly, I have had, for a very long time, some type of innocent fascination for boys in makeup. However, if my own husband were to wear makeup, I probably would not be too delighted. And I would totally laugh at him. Right after I vomited. And I’m pretty sure I would not be attracted to him and his thick, caked on black liner and ruby red lips. Only a select few can get away with this look, I do think. And it is primarily for those who have a bit of a … tortured soul, I think. Oh, and they most likely have to be the lead singer of a band. While my husband has his ‘dark’ side… that's the extent of it and he surely is not dark hearted in any way nor does he have any weighty perspicacity that he feels the need to sing or write about. And therefore, a sun-deprived face with sad, black eyes and ridiculous over-exaggerated lips simply does not suit him.

I think a lot of it is the music, too. Even the music of Culture Club that was so…. 80’s…. so pop….. so bubbly had it's little hurt messages buried inside the lyrics. "Do you really want to hurt me?, "Church of the poison mind". As I type this, I am listening to the Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and it just wouldn’t make sense if a guy withOUT a trace of makeup on was fronting the band. It just makes sense. Like honey, peanut butter and marshmallow fluff smooshed between two pieces of white bread. Not for everyone, perhaps. But boys + makeup= makes sense to me just like a peanut butter honey fluff sammich.

I remember going to this place called The Fine Line during my high school years in the mid-80’s. Everyone wore trench coats. And steel toe combat boots. Including me. I loved being “goth”. “Alternative”. A “freak”. Whatever one wants to call it. At the time, we were different from everyone. Except for each other. But we were only sorta the same on the outside. On the outside, we each hid behind our hair... underneath the black clothes that, even in 100+ degrees of summertime, covered our bodies from head to toe.... and rather than wear our hearts on our sleeves and be a part of the school spirit club, we preferred to lurk in the shroud of mystery that seemed to surround each of us 24/7.

We each had our own torment within, however. Our own wreckage in our lives. I remember going to The Fine Line where it was all dark and creepyesque… and even while listening to the upbeat, joyous sounding Tones on Tail "GO!", everyone danced all sad like… only moving the arms and head… and never looking up from whatever it was we were fixated on at the time… be it the floor… a crack in the wall... our own hands. Just feeling the music. Absorbing it. And relating to it.


Okay, so I’ll fast forward about…. um…. 18 years later. I seem to still have some type of ‘thing’ for boys in makeup. Marilyn Manson, for example. Love him. Love his music. Love his voice. Love his scrawniness. Love his face. But, not without the mask. I need the crazy eyelashes and lips and teeth and that disturbing blue-white eye thing. Totally turns me on. Really. It does.


I have been listening to his music for years now and appreciated it quite a bit. I always found him to be very interesting…. quite clever… and extremely intelligent, at least from the interviews I have seen him on or read. Pretty much a pretty cool guy, all around.

So needless to say, when I found out he was coming to where I live, I was pretty excited. And he wasn’t coming for a concert. Honestly, I don’t know that I could ‘hang’ at one of his concerts. He was coming to the local art gallery that was hosting an exhibit with his watercolor works. And he was kind enough to make an appearance that night. It was, however, a private event. And one needed an invitation.

Good thing I have awesome friends. My husband and I were offered one of these private invites by our friends, who reside downtown and who know the gallery owners. Excellence.

That night, I was nervous. I didn’t know what to expect. I changed my outfit several times in the weeks leading up that night. I wanted to be comfortable, but sexy, and sophisticated, but chic. Normally, I would go with the black dress and black fishnets look. Red lipstick. You know… the same look that I imagined many others would be going with. So, I opted for a gold matte dress with a big, wide red belt that sat high on the waist with red and gold platform heels. I was happy with my decision, especially when I saw everyone else at the exhibit wearing black dresses.

In my mind, Marilyn Manson is like 9 feet tall. Tall. Lanky. Towering. In reality, he is like a mere 6' and he wears big shoes. Well, I’m 5’11 flat footed and I ,too, like wearing big shoes. So, I was about 6’3 that night. When Manson arrived, he towered over most...

But not me. I’m that big, tall girl in the crowd. In a gold dress, nonetheless. Hi! Look at me! I'm a freak!

He was rushed inside the gallery, where only a select few people remained and he was allowed to peruse quietly with only his entourage and new girlfriend. It pretty much, after about 20 minutes, looked as though most of us were not actually going to get to meet him.

I was pretty sad.

Perhaps the stars were lined up in my favor that night. They must have been because I was able to get back into the gallery. But not alone. My friend’s husband basically took it upon himself to make it happen. Everyone in “our” crowd knew that if anyone of us was going to get to meet Manson, it would be me since I was for sure the biggest fan of him out of all of us. So, I was pulled though the adoring fans and into the front of the crowd and the gallery owner saw that he knew my friend and her husband and nodded us in.

Then, there I was. Inside the gallery. A few feet away from Marilyn Manson and his body guards. Oh my god.

Holy Shit.

My friend’s husband [Joey, so I can stop referring to him as my friend’s huband] led me closer to Manson and started calling out his name and telling me that I needed to go up to him.
Yeah. Let me just approach Marilyn Manson and bump into him and be like “oh, fancy meeting you here.” One of the body guards was looking at me kinda funny because I was actually trying to be polite and said out loud “he’s with someone right now and I don’t think it’s nice to interrupt”. I think I was slightly horrified, though very excited to be in this situation, with the idea that in about 47 seconds, I could possibly be standing next to this…. to this…. person who is by far the biggest celebrity I could ever be meeting. Plus, he could easily just eat me or something. Just murder me and rip my head off with his evil teeth and chew me up and spit me out. Because that’s what Marilyn Manson does, right? Thuper Thscary.

Within moments, I was there. We had his attention. Marilyn Manson was looking right at me. I was looking right at him. I might have pee’d a little bit. So I didn’t know what to do exactly except extend my hand out for him to shake.

Lame.

But not nearly as lame as the 40-something-year-old woman before me who was like crying her eyes out after meeting him. One might have thought she had just met the fucking Backstreet Boys.

So he took my hand, after a moment of hesitation… which was probably because I was at his eye level and he was curious as to whether I was really a woman… or a man.

We stood there while some cameras flashed. And I know we spoke about his cats and his divorce agreement and who got what cat. Other than that, I’m not sure what was going on. Except…. my one little observation. That being that he was fiddling with my belt around the backside of my waist. Like little nervous fidgets. Like he really was pretty uncomfortable with everything going on. Like someone who often feels awkward might be. A person who has insecurities like anyone else. And this shyness and anxiousness is bottled up inside this big, crazy guise. It was incredibly endearing. Sweet. Soft. It made him human.

And not that I ever thought otherwise, but he is just this little wonderful spirit trapped inside this big, ridiculous world of paparazzi and fanatical crazies and judgmental idiots and stupid crap. And here I am… standing next to the guy who got blamed for the incident of Columbine. A guy who, in the eyes of some, has single handedly destroyed the minds of some of today’s youth. And he stood next to me… with his right arm draped around my waist for a photo op…playing with my belt. He probably didn’t even realize it. But I immediately recognized it. And inside, I was smiling because I always suspected that he was completely opposite of how he is sometimes portrayed, both by others as well as himself.

Maybe he’s not ‘your cup of tea’. Maybe he doesn’t make music that you enjoy listening to. Maybe he scares the bejeesus out of you. Maybe he believes in something different than you do. Maybe he has made choices that you would not have made.

Heaven forbid some of us stop to think that maybe we’re the ones who are different from “everyone else”.

Unfortunately, that photo op got very fucked up because my digi-cam died on me. Joey desperately tried to take a picture. To no avail. He even handed me the camera and I saw that it was, in fact, turned to the ‘on’ position. Manson even looked at it. Nothing. No life in it. I had already been standing next to him for a little while and I really felt as though my time with Marilyn Manson was up. I thanked him for the chance to meet him and told him I was a huge fan. He smiled. And not one of those “I’m going to cut you up into little pieces” smiles. A real smile.

I was ecstatic that I had just met him. It hadn’t really sunken in at that time. Then, I felt my heart break a little when I realized that I had no damn picture of it. Nothing. Everyone else had pictures. The ‘professional photographer’ there told us that we could pay $300 for a copy of what she had in her camera. I considered it while Joey went to the bathroom and I stood outside the door playing with my stupid digi-cam.

Suddenly it turned on. It fucking turned on without any problem. As if to say “Haha! Fuck you! That's what you get for being such a lamewad!” Joey came out of the bathroom and I showed him the camera. We both were completely perplexed. And Joey, once again, became determined that we were going to get a damn picture.

Manson and his bodyguards were moving around the gallery and Joey once again called out his name. And Manson, once again, looked right at me. And once again, he smiled a gracious smile. And I think… he remembered me. So, of course… I looked right at him and said, as any classy lady would say, “my camera took a shit on me.” He motioned for me to come back next to him. I happily obliged.

Even though I’m certain that that night at the art gallery is now a very, very distant memory in the mind of Marilyn Manson, for a brief moment in time, he “recognized” me. Ten or fifteen minutes had gone by from our first meeting to when the words “took a shit on me” spewed out of my mouth. That is awesome to little ol’ me.

Later that same evening, I flashed back in my mind to the fact that I was talking to Marilyn Manson about his cats. Of all the things…. I asked about the cats.. How stupid am I? But, then I had to tell myself that that asking about Lily White was SO much better than saying something like, “So. Marilyn…you got a myspace page?” Could you imagine?

No matter how dumb we might think we are sometimes. There is always something dumber that could have gone down.

Remember that. And feel good about it.

Oh, and... he is now my "friend" on my myspace page. Yeah. That's right. Don't be jealous.