On Monday night, everyone connected with the video, the album, the label, and the band, including Moe and Sal and our attorney, Jay, gathered in the conference room at MindRoller to watch a preliminary cut.  The parents hadn’t been told about the advance screening, so there would be peace.  Robert and Janey had set up a nice spread of cold cuts, cheeses, breads, and pastries, which MindRoller – not Floozie, for once – paid for.

After those who were going to eat (which was everybody except Heather) had done so, the lights went out and the film rolled on the big-screen.

     Heather is in her bed, on her back, on top of a pretty pink comforter, her head and shoulders propped up on oversized, virgin-white pillows.  She’s yapping on a pink Princess phone on the bedside table.  Her white cotton nightgown has lacy frills around the arms and neck.  Her straight, shiny black hair is in cute, pink-ribboned ponytails.

“No, no, no, I told you no,” she moans into the phone.  “Geez.  Don’t you ever listen?  I’m not going anywhere tonight.  Now get off my phone.  It’s late and I’m soooo . . .”  She lifts her beguiling eyes to the camera, and her lips fall into a vulnerable little pout.  (That look right there was enough to make me glad her mother was at home; it also made me dread Celeste’s mother’s reaction when she, inevitably, saw it for herself.)  The opening chords rip through the silence.  Heather winks once, leaving whatever she’s “soooo . . .” up to the watchers to figure out.  She cartwheels her legs and scoots under the comforter and lies down flat on her back.  Bed time.  The guitar stops, and the thundering drums and bass take over.

     “Since I was young I’ve known the score,” she lip-syncs, rocking her head to the beat.  “Known when to run and when to close the door . . .”  The guitar smashes back in.  “I know what it’s like to be alone on Friday nights, but then my tears . . .”  She places the tip of a finger next to her eye and shakes her head.  “. . . don’t come from here.”

     “I hope you’re planning on hiring more bodyguards if you expect to leave the house after dumbass teenage boys see this,” Krystal said to Heather, who was sitting in front of her.  Several people shushed her, but everyone surely felt the sexual pulse seeping off the screen.

     Heather throws back the covers and rolls out of bed and begins dancing around the room like a silly little nymphet.  With a longer and more childlike nightgown than you’d expect a fifteen-year-old to wear, and with her tiny stature and a chest flatter than Lilly’s, Heather on the screen can pass for eleven.

     “I’m headed for a desperate dream; I’m crying tears that can’t be seen . . .”  As she sings that line, she pulls two pillows over to the middle of the bed.  “Forbidden thoughts invade my room . . .”  Cameras flash across four angles, catching her face-back-shoulders-legs, all moving, all doing something, all over the screen.  When the flashing stops, we see she has climbed up onto the pillows, like she’s going to ride a horse.  “Just like a witch upon her broom; And now it’s all so very clear . . .”  And then she melts her upper body down onto the bed, still riding the horse with her lower half, and places her head right in front of a camera positioned two feet from her face.  “It’s so clear . . .”  Just before the scene flips to the bandshell for the chorus, her hips rise delicately, and then she very obviously thrusts herself down against the pillows.  Again I was so glad the girls had vetoed the idea of inviting the parents to this thing.  We were going to need to talk damage-control before any of the families saw it.

     The chorus kicks in with all four girls in their schoolgirl outfits, jamming it out in front of what really looks like the front rows of a large stadium crowd.  It was a little corny, but it worked, just like everything else we did.  The fans are going nuts, waving and screaming.  Some of the boys are tearing off their shirts.

     “I know a tear that comes from here, and it doesn’t come from crying . . .”  Heather is all red mouth and sparkly eyes, right on top of the microphone.  “I know a tear that’s very dear, it comes from scratching and surviving . . .”  Krystal and Lilly sway side-by-side, slamming their instruments, swishing their matching red plaid skirts, singing ferocious backup into the same mike.  “I know what mama said, ‘Go to sleep when you go to bed,’ but then my tears don’t come from here.”

     Switch back to the bedroom, bass and drums take over again, and Heather is sitting at her vanity, applying makeup, the horsey ride over.  She turns to the camera.  “Since I was young I’ve seen it all; I’m just the brat and I’m such a doll . . .”  (She had fought to no avail with Robert to allow her to dub the word “bitch” over “brat,” because, she reasoned, she always sang “bitch” on stage and “bitch” was the original lyric.  Robert shook his head and told her life’s a bitch.)  The camera pans to a wall, where the heads of five teenage boys in photographs are run through with black darts.  A pair of white cotton panties with pink lace trim hangs from one of the darts.  The guitar crashes in.  “I’ve seen sad, sad times when one friend I could not find, but then my tears don’t come from here.”

Heather’s in bed again, reading a paperback edition of Lolita, of all things.  On the cover of the book, the title character stands coyly – or flirtatiously, depending on how you take it – beside a bicycle, looking a hell of a lot like Heather, or vice-versa.  Heather glances up from the book and into the camera.  “My eyes are dry and my face is clean, I’m crying tears that can’t be seen . . .”  She clicks off the lamp by her bed, and the room is swamped in a hazy green hue just bright enough to reveal her snuggling down under the comforter.  “I’m like a marigold in bloom, the smell of blossoms fills my room . . .”  The camera pans to the foot of the bed, where her pink-socked feet stick out from under the covers.  One sock is halfway off her foot.  The soles of both socks are filthy.  “And now it’s all so very near . . .”  Her feet slide apart about eighteen inches, then her face appears again.  “It’s so near . . .”  The scene shifts back to the bandshell, where the chorus is repeated twice.  At the end, the credits appear in the bottom right corner:

     “A Tear Comes From Here”

     Nursery Rhymes

     Floozie

     MindRoller Records

The screen fades to black.

Robert clicked off the television with a remote and turned up the lights with another.  Everyone waited a few seconds then started clapping.

     “It’s good,” he said.

     “God, it’s powerful,” Krystal said.  Then to anybody who was listening: “Those were my panties on the dart, FYI.”

     “But . . .” I said to Robert, because I’d heard a “but” in there.

     “But MTV won’t play it.”

     “Jesus Christ, why not?” Krystal said.  “It’s better than ninety-five percent of the crap they play all day long.”

     Behind me, I heard Celeste say to Heather, “The pillows, I told you.”

     “What did she say?” Krystal said.

     “The pillows.”

     “Oh, God, like it’s not universal.”

     Robert sat on the counter beside the TV, suppressing a laugh, and unwrapped his ponytail.  Janey made a big show of getting up and invited everyone except the band and Daphne out to see the new wallpaper in the foyer.

“You’re going to need to do the pillow scene again,” Robert continued when the crowd was gone.

“Why?” Heather said immediately.

“Because it’s way over the top.  That wasn’t in the original treatment.”

     “I know, I added it.”

     Robert kept looking at her.  Heather met his gaze and didn’t flinch, but she didn’t say anything, either.

     “It was debatable,” Daphne said.  “I kept it because I liked it.  I know what you’re saying, though, now that I really look at it.”

     “It’s just too intense,” Robert said.  “Too intense for a television network.”

     “Look – we talked about it among ourselves,” Heather said, “and we think it should be in there.  That’s what the whole song’s about, right Lilly?”

     Lilly nodded.

“Daphne made sure the camera was angled so if you’re not looking for it, you probably won’t even notice it,” Heather went on, with a little more volume.

“You’ll notice it,” Robert assured her, and he was right.

“So what?  I don’t see what the big deal is.  If we re-do it, it’s going to ruin the whole thing.  It’ll confuse the message.”

     “Uh, I don’t think there’s going to be any confusion with the way you’re straddling the pillows.  All I’m talking about is the movement you did on them.  I want you to shoot that section again.”

     “God,” Heather said.

     “That movement as you call it is gonna make sense to every girl watching,” Krystal said, “and it’s going to drive every boy watching insane.  How can that be a problem?  I thought that’s what we were after.”

     Heather just shook her head; she knew it was a battle she wouldn’t win.

The pillow scene was re-shot the next day, and when we watched the final version two days later, everybody was pleased.  Heather nodded and smiled as the tape played.  Krystal rationalized: “I guess since it is Heather on the pillows, it wouldn’t make sense for her to actually be doing anything sexual up there.”

Daphne gave Heather a hug and congratulated her on an excellent first video, the first of many, she hoped.  Heather hugged her back and said she wanted Daphne to produce all our videos.

“When we have the money,” Heather said, “we can do a whole video of just Krystal in a pillow factory.”

“Works for me,” Krystal said.

“Wait – no, that wouldn’t be a video, that would be a full-length porno.”