Read Stone Arabia for Free Online Page A

did my discarding, my righteous, relentless emptying, Nik was doing the opposite. He was organizing the year’s remnants. He was logging and archiving and filing it all. The whole swollen yearlong cumulus. He discarded hardly anything; he wanted souvenirs of every moment. And his accumulations somehow underwrote my eliminations. My liberation was brought to you by the ordered collecting and keeping of my brother. But of course his task was much more complicated than mine. He not only kept, he documented. He annotated, he footnoted, he wrote, he arranged. He updated the Chronicles. (Okay, the Chronicles. Am I already going to digress? Because going into the Chronicles at this point could be a huge digression. But okay.)
    By 2004 Nik had thirty-odd volumes of the Chronicles (going back to 1978 officially; unofficially they were retrofitted back to 1973 with the rise of the Demonics). They were all written exclusively by him. They are the history of his music, his bands, his albums, his reviews, his interviews. He made his chronicles—scrapbooks, really—thick, clip-filled things. He wrote under many different aliases, from his fan club president to his nemesis, a critic who started at
Creem
magazine and ended up writing for the
Los Angeles Times,
a man who follows and really hates his work. Nik had given him plenty of ink these past few years.
    It is odd to think Nik’s Chronicles took some weight off me and my life. I am only tangentially part of the Chronicles. They are truly all about Nik. When I am mentioned, it is largely as part of events invented by Nik. I am only ever in the Chronicles as a figure in Nik’s narrative. Like when he produced my girl band back in the early eighties—Hair Krishna. And when I sang backup, or when I happened to be in the house when an interview or photo session happened. It was always entertaining to read what he had me say about his latest record. Or when he had me trying to capitalize on being Nik Worth’s sister by launching my own failed TV variety show (which apparently I insisted be called
My Turn.
I thought that was pretty weak and just part of Nik conflating all the women in his life with characters from the
Valley of the Dolls
. I guess I was the Patty Duke character to him, with his projecting on to me a diva-like longing for fame and attention). In the later Chronicles I think I also visited him in one of his stints in rehab (court-ordered), and—oh yes, I testified on his behalf when he was suing hisformer manager. And one other time when his bandmates all sued one another for divorce. I apparently submitted a friend-of-the-court brief, an unsolicited
amicus curiae.
So the Chronicles were by no means a chronicle of my life. Ada, for instance, was hardly ever mentioned (a few Linda McCartney– style photos of Nik with baby Ada’s serious, round face peeking out from under his parka). Nik’s Chronicles adhered to the facts and then didn’t. When Nik’s dog died in real life, his dog died in the Chronicles. But in the Chronicles he got a big funeral and a tribute album. Fans sent thousands of condolence cards. But it wasn’t always clear what was conjured. The music for the tribute album for the dog actually exists, as does the cover art for it: a great black-and-white photo of Nik holding his dog with an intricate collage along the edge consisting of images of the Great K9s of History from Toto to Lassie to Rin Tin Tin (credited as “the border collieage compiled by N. Worth”—Nik loved puns, and in the Chronicles all his loves ran without restraint, unfettered and unashamed). But the fan letters didn’t exist. In this way Nik chronicled his years in minute but twisted detail. The volumes were all there, a version of nearly every day of the past thirty years.
    Perhaps that really is the reason I seem to have such bad recall. Maybe I threw too much out. Maybe I should have kept a few souvenirs. Or maybe I should have been making an accounting of some kind, not just