Our Dirty Kissable Lips

This story is a follow on from another story I wrote named Marion's story. I wanted to build on the story but to allow that to happen I had to go back and tell a little of the back story of the other members in the band. This story picks up Mel's life before the band and talks a little about how the band was formed.

I need to say a big thank you to my friend and fellow writer and friend Marina Kelly who helped with the editing and gave me direction and guidance. Thanks Marina, great work as always.

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Hi my name is Melody, an apt name for a musician right?

Sounds sweet and innocent doesn't it? Well fuck that I'm grumpy, well that's what others say, me I think I just don't suffer fools.

I'm the front person for a band named Our Dirty Kissable Lips. The band is my love, my life, my family and I love it with a passion far greater than life itself.

Growing up in Lawrence in the Midwest of America, which is a small city that owes its existence to one thing and one thing only, the University, It's easy to just get sucked into academic life. You sort of forget that there are other things in life aside from college. My parents both worked there. My mother as an administrator and my father a professor.

Music wasn't big in our house, my parents weren't the sort to have music playing or go to concerts. My father only had one passion in life and that was drinking and he was never happy unless he had one in his hand. Drunk yeah he was a drunk an angry mean-spirited drunken bastard who used to love nothing more than beating my mother, yeah I was wrong he was pretty passionate about beating mom as well, he certainly loved that and if she wasn't around us his children filled the bill.

Mom put up with it for years until the day she snapped. I guess it was bound to happen sooner or later, he made her life a living hell. I guess she could have just walked out and left him but no she decided enough is enough and killed the mangy prick with a tyre lever because that's what he had beaten her with the night before. His unfortunate demise came about after taking to her again except this time he was that hammered he collapsed and mom decided fuck it, his time was up. She didn't just kill the mongrel she beat him to a bloody pulp. How did it affect me you ask? Well I just wish she did it earlier so she could've had some peace.

She was the saving grace in our life keeping me and my brother safe.

The downside for Mom was going to jail, at least the jury accepted that it wasn't murder but even manslaughter brings a jail sentence. That you hope would have been it for mom but she sort of went off the deep end, she hated being locked up, she wasn't a damn criminal, she was just defending herself. Anyway she got transferred to the nut house I tried to see her but she has gone off to her happy place and has pushed me and Jimmy out of her memory. She seems happy by all accounts helping in the gardens and looking after other patients. She is more like a helper than an inmate. I guess she got the peace she wanted all be it in a strange way.

Me and my little brother got shipped off to foster homes, at first we were together but Jimmy was a handful. Me, I was surly and bad tempered, but he rebelled, he ran right off the rails and got involved with gangs and drugs, which led to a life of crime and incarceration. It started off in Juve but as soon as he was of age he went into the slammer which is where he is today. We sort of lost touch.

I bounced from foster home to foster home, I was bad tempered and hard to deal with, I had anger issues and I was hardly a good student. People tried but because of my attitude I got moved on pretty quick. It wasn't until I went to school that I fell in love with what became the burning passion of my life, 'music.' I remember the day I walked past the hall where the school orchestra was busily rehearsing and I was mesmerised. Don't get me wrong I listened to music, but this was different, it was live, it was real and it was right there in my face.

I walked in and found a seat, the sounds...oh my god. I'm not into that genre or form of music it's to regimented for me but the sounds, the vibrations the intensity and joy on their faces...I was hooked.

Of course I had no way to move it forward I had no talent no ability and didn't fit the requirements of the orchestra. I returned every chance I got to listen, I never went to the live performances I just loved to watch them rehearse. But life changed for me after that, music became an obsession. I didn't have a lot of spare cash but what I did have I spent on CD's and gradually my preferences started to evolve. I hated mainstream pop culture trash. It all sounded the same it was like a computer generated meme different artists singing different words to the same songs.

The orchestra wasn't the only group of musicians using the rehearsal room. The school was full of musicians, I mean the University is widely respected for its music courses. I found there were lots of other bands playing around the school. I found ways to make friends and sneak into studio's and rehearsal rooms.

I loved it and the more I listened the deeper the obsession grew, it festered inside me like an open wound afflicted with gangrene.

My preferences began to evolve, more than anything I loved punk and the more raucous it was the better I liked it. Locked in my room I danced and sang along to my favourite bands. Of course, it meant I wasn't that popular with the family I lived with at the time. They were good people but were elderly and they hated anything loud.

Me listening to the Ramones was never going to work.

I had been working my ass off trying to get a scholarship I wanted to study computer science but my marks weren't that good. Rejection letter after rejection letter flooded our mailbox and it put a dent in my plans to me the next Steve Jobs. I was smart just not smart enough I suppose.

Life at home was painful, the folks I lived with were running out of patience, not that I blamed them. Trying to raise a rebellious big mouth wasn't their idea of helping out. Looking back, they were wonderful really. I was a handful; I pierced my own ears, wore safety pins as ear rings shaved off my hair and of course scrounged through thrift stores for the scruffiest old clothes. I used the old scruffy clothes to emulate my rock god idols. Punk was the king man, I wanted to be like them, look like them...I wanted to be like them.

Dropping out of school was the last straw for my foster parents, they never kicked me out but it was obvious I wasn't welcome. Luckily, I had finally found a friend and she said I could move in with her. It was a shitty little apartment on top of a fast-food restaurant but she was a punk and loved most of the bands I did. Nights were full of screaming, supposedly singing along and dancing.

I worked as a waitress at the restaurant and made enough to get by (Just)

My personal style didn't really attract a lot of interest from boys, but I didn't care sex wasn't a driver for me. I was depressed and angry that my chosen path had been closed off and self-harm was my escape and method of showing the world TAKE THAT FUCKERS....

Lynette my roommate was wild, really wild and was right into drugs, she smoked a lot of pot and loved Meth. She was quite happy to trade sexual favours for drugs. Seeing her out of it really scared me. I wanted to be tough and tell the world to sit on it but I hated drugs. I saw what it did to her. I decided there and then to take a different path.

Sharing an apartment with Lynette opened my eyes sexually. Listening to her fuck guy's horrible disgusting guys horrified me. The noises that came out of her room appalled me. The names they called her, the things they did to her all in the name of sex, I knew straight away that wasn't for me. I started to develop an aversion to guys, they certainly didn't interest me, not that they ever really did, but now it manifested as revulsion, even open hostility, I pushed them away.

I guess I didn't have to try that hard, the way I dressed hardly made me seem interested or attractive. My appearance was my attempt to show the world I didn't care but that's bullshit, I know that now.

One of Lynette's lovers, god it's hard to call it that did one favour, before being locked up for aggravated robbery he left his guitar and amp at our place. I loved the look of it, OK it was only a cheap replica but I loved it. I started to play with it and the moment I picked it up I loved the feel of it in my hands so tactile. I found an old how to learn guitar tutorial book at the thrift store and I learned it word for word, every spare moment I practiced, maybe not until my fingers bled but they sure as hell were sore.

It didn't happen overnight but spending six hours a day playing meant I learned quickly. The book was full of old classics, I guess they're there because they're easy, but without too much effort I could play Green sleeves and the old folk songs in the book. That drove me to you tube and of course there are millions of tutorials in there. Learning the guitar opened avenues I didn't even know existed. The more I played the deeper the obsession bit. I came to the realisation I didn't want to play other people's music I wanted to play my own and being the rebel I was, I thought I had something to say. So with that I started to write songs, at first I just used existing songs and changed them using my own lyrics. Yeah, I know that's cheating but with no formal training it taught me enough about musical theory to understand how songs were structured, how to make them work.

Life isn't one dimensional, I wasn't just learning guitar. I was learning about life and choices and consequences. Let's face it a bald headed waitress who looks like a poor man's Joan Jett doesn't make a lot from tips.

I softened my approach a little, I knew I was hard work, my attitude scared most people away. The friends I did make though started to drive my growth. Most were alternate lifestyler's, gay, lesbian, people who lived outside the norm. They were like me rebellious and cynical. Being around a few girls who were openly gay meant my opinions on lifestyles and my acceptance of it was evolving as well. With my new found ability on the guitar came a new confidence in myself as a person. The music I was primarily listening to pushed me in a direction that at first was uncomfortable and confronting but oh so damn intriguing and enticing, it fascinated me. The runaways and Joan Jett, Babes in Toyland, The Donnas, Patti Smith was a big influence, Soiuxsie and the Banshees and of course my favourite the slits... The embodiment of pretty slutty rock. I loved the costumes and the fuck you attitude. This was my world and I wanted in.

Hanging around at the University, talking to real musicians and listening to them play also opened my ears and mind to other genres. I loved some of the newer indie bands. The rhythms were different, more open and less driven but still powerful. Strangely I became a little fascinated with bluegrass. I loved the foot stomping.

Of course, there was another element to the punk bands I loved, there was a huge lesbian movement around these bands and that affected me without me really knowing or understanding it.

My sexuality never took off. All my other friends already had boyfriends or girlfriends depending on their leaning, but me, I had never experienced a desire or an attraction.

Living with a prostitute may have driven me away from men, I'm not sure but I think I had always had an attraction to girls, pretty girls, girly girls. Not the dungaree wearing feminists who dressed like men, but real women. Sexy long legged gorgeous creatures.

OK it sort of took a while for me to get my head around the fact I was a lesbian...The word made me laugh, although when you say it slowly it is so erotic and sensual if sort of rolls off your tongue.

Being an alternative sort of girl I didn't care what other people thought. I was however worried about why I felt this way, the questions I couldn't answer, all I knew was boys just didn't do it for me, I had yet to meet one that made my heart beat faster, or my hands go clammy.

That might sound harsh or judgemental, but that's who I was. My hormones were kicking in though and once I discovered and then became skilled at the art of self-pleasure, digitally remastered as it were, my real desires floated to the top. When I had my eyes closed the images that filled my head and made my pussy tingle were Debbie Harry, oh my god she was delicious and sexy and could sing...I just hated her music, I had to watch her with the sound down. She was to mainstream to warm and fuzzy but at night with the lights out I flicked my little bean wishing it was her. Masturbation became my safety valve.

Discovering your vagina is mind altering, I soon found the guilty pleasure so addictive, sliding my fingers in as far as I could and swirling them around, it wasn't hard to find the erogenous spots, discovering my clitoris was world changing and when I discovered my bum well that was amazing. It amazed me that it was nice pushing my finger up my ass at the same time as my pussy, and then added playing with my clit and I was in seventh heaven.

Lynette's never ending stream of guys and the drugs pushed me to find somewhere else to live. Every day I trolled the notice boards around campus and supermarkets looking for something.

I loved to spend time at the music store and one day while I was in there playing with a new guitar that one of the salesmen came over and sat for a little jam. When we were finished, he said, "You know we are looking for a shop assistant, you would be perfect."

I laughed, what...me...dressed like this?"

He nodded, "Yeah I see the people you talk to, and yeah we might ask you to tone down your dress sense a little, but I think you would be great. That was the start of my new job at Mass music, and that was one of those life altering moments in life. It gave me some responsibility and made me talk to people, made me accept that I didn't know everything. That of course led to other opportunities, I met a guy who had a room over his garage that had been unused since his son moved out. The rent was cheap and being separated from the house meant noise wasn't such a big deal. The fact that he was an old punk rocker made it easier. He and his wife Caroline loved music and me hacking away on my guitar, yep I stole the guitar and amp from Lynette's place. She was that fucked up she didn't even notice.

Life took on a more natural upward swing, life for the first time seemed achievable. I stopped using razor blades and I started smiling, well occasionally at least.

I met heaps of musicians at the shop and got plenty of invites from guys to concerts. I did take up a few of those offers, I told myself it was just for the music but deep down I was confused, I know the norm is man woman and I had to figure out if I could do that, I wanted to fit in.

It led to a few clumsy grope sessions in the back seat of their cars but their coarse hard bodies did nothing for me and their continual forcing my hand down their pants and trying to get their cocks in my mouth disgusted and revolted me. Guys can be such assholes, well the ones I was with were. Everything was about their own personal gratification; life seemed to revolve around their cock.

It all drove me to believe that I was never going find the right guy or that I even wanted to. It was a little depressing and I started to understand that I am not normal, maybe I was different. I couldn't grasp was why? Why didn't I have this driving desire to rip my panties off for some guy" It wasn't just the guys, although I liked and was attracted to pretty girls I never felt like I was in love, or that I needed to be with that person, I was happy by myself and masturbation taught me one thing, I didn't need anybody else for sexual pleasure.

Then I met Anabelle... She was gorgeous. She walked into the shop one day looking for some violin strings. Tall, with long shiny auburn hair that glistened under the neon light. I guessed she was about thirty...maybe... I'm hopeless at guessing ages. What attracted me was the way she moved. She didn't so much walk as she glided, moving with the elegant grace of a preying cat and as I looked around the store every eye was on her. I was transfixed and instantly in love. Her beautiful pouty lips moved as she ran her tongue over them. Every guy in the store stood motionless afraid to move but it was me she chose walking up to me with that graceful gliding hip swaying seductive strut, "Hello, could you help me please I need violin strings."

Her voice was soft, like I imagined liquid honey would feel like as it cascaded down concrete stairs.

We walked over to the strings and I pulled down a set, "What brand do you usually use?" I asked.

"Oh they're not for me they're for my girlfriend, she asked me to pick them up because she's busy."

GIRLFRIEND....holy shit... She smiled as she saw my expression of dismay. "Does that shock you? That I have a girlfriend?"

"Um no, not really."

"You look shocked, is that repellent to you?" She leaned in close and I could feel the heat of her body as she glared defiantly at me, "Does my sexuality frighten or offend you?".

"No, I don't care. How much money do you want to spend? I think these other ones would be better but they're far more expensive."

She slid her hand slowly over mine as she tugged them out of my trembling fingers.

I heard the loud intake of breath from around the shop as every eye in the place took in our encounter. Her hand toyed with mine holding the contact longer than necessary as she stared at the strings. She stepped forward her breasts touching mine, "Do you play?" She whispered.

With a shake of my head my voice barely audible I muttered, "No, I play guitar."

Her smile ignited and she moved forward again, our breasts now crushed together, her linen shirt caressing my Ramones T-shirt, "Guitar...Hmmm I love the guitar, so sexy and strong."

My voice dried up, my lips were as dry as the Mohave. Her smile beamed teasing, flirting. Jesus.. She's flirting with me.

"Do you play in a band?" She asked. Again I shook my head.

"That's a shame I would love to watch you play." I could feel her heart beating through my T-shirt, her head leaned further forward until her lips caressed my earlobe, "Could you come to my place to show me how to fit these?"

My pussy tingled, the shiver travelling the length of my spine, "What about your girlfriend?"

"Oh she's hopeless, she is away on business, we would be all alone."

"OK." I stuttered, "Where do you live?"

"I'll stop by after work and pick you up."

That's how I found myself standing on the pavement outside Mass, waiting. A packet of violin strings in my clammy hand wondering what the hell I was doing. My racing heart gave away the fact I was nervous yet expectant. My anticipation grew quickly, but anticipation for what? All I knew was she affected me deeply and I wanted to be near her

As I pondered my intent, my aspirations a car pulled up beside me and I saw that beaming smile lean over and push open the door, "Hey There sexy, going my way?"

I smiled back as I eased into the car, "looks like it."

As we zoomed away from the curb she asked, "So little miss guitar player, what's your name."

"Melody, but everyone calls me Mel."

"Ooooh Melody what a beautiful name, perfect for a musician."

I nodded as she eased us casually through the peak hour traffic. Lawrence wasn't exactly a huge city but peak hour was a rush.

I watched in awe as her hand worked the gearshift on her sporty little Alpha Romeo. We raced through the traffic, squirting into tiny gaps as she manoeuvred the car expertly.