The boys are staying overnight at their dad’s apartment for the first time. A perfect opportunity, I’m sure, for my ex to introduce them to his twenty-five-year-old tart.

Flopped on my bed upstairs and partway through the Carol Burnett Show, I think I’m hallucinating when I see Gene Simmons hovering outside my bedroom window and tapping at the screen. After all my yapping to the kids: “No, the members of KISS don’t really have magical powers.” “The blood stuff is fake.” “All that flying in their tv concerts is staged.”

Maybe Gene got our address from fan letters from the boys. Perhaps the Universe thinks I deserve a dash of spice in my life. Something more thrilling than mediating sibling disputes, washing never-ending piles of clothes, and chasing child support payments from a man who abandoned our life together in search of fun.

Gene and I are having a nice chat through the window when he asks me to invite him in. I glance around at the cheap veneer bedroom set, pilled chenille bedspread and sagging mattress I used to share with my serial impregnator. I catch Gene giving me a naughty smirk. Surely this tall strapping young rock star has no interest in kneading my middle-aged, weighted-sock breasts?

I insist Gene come downstairs to the salon so we can get to know each other properly. Gene swears he’s “never met a lady” like me before.

“This is nice,” Gene says, between swigs of TaB cola as we sit side-by-side on the Chesterfield. “Sometimes, I just like to feel like a regular person, you know?” Our fingers brush and he lightly squeezes my hand as he reaches for the Jiffy Pop popcorn. Butter-flavored oil dribbles down his chest and I suppress the urge to dab a napkin to his lush chest hair.

* * *

The next time he visits, Gene is without makeup, and I find myself marvelling at his curved cheekbones and nougat-y lips. If I didn’t know he was a rock star in his mid-twenties, I might have wondered what grade he was in. His poor eyes, though, are red and beady behind heavy lids. Apparently, the stress of feuding with his drummer, Peter Criss, has been affecting his sleep.

“Why don’t you go to the guest room and have a wee nap?” I ask him.

He perks up and asks if I’m joining him. If I’d been a teenaged mother, I could have a child close to his age now.  Maybe my sleazeball ex doesn’t object to scarring young people by exposing them to his aging flesh, but I can’t, in good conscience, inflict such horror on this taut, handsome young man.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I say.

Gene’s face falls.

“I’ll tuck you in, though.”

I pull the comforter tight under his chin and he’s snoring by the time I close the door.

* * *

At first, the boys were thrilled to finally meet Gene. I fessed up that he had been coming around when they found hand towels caked with black and white makeup in the guest bathroom. Gene and I told the boys that, yes, the KISS band members have powers and can fly. We said the blood is fake though— little white lies never hurt anyone.

On the nights I expect Gene will visit, I find myself going all out. So far, his favourite is chicken breasts with rice, smothered with a sauce I make with my favourite go-to ingredients— Campbell’s cream of mushroom and Lipton dried onion soup mix. 

Tonight, though, nearly all the meat in the house is gone. My cheating ex showed up earlier with a burlap sack and loaded it with the contents of my chest freezer.  “I paid for all of this, Barb,” he said, looking around.  “And I’m still stuck sending you half my earnings.” I was too shocked to remind him that his children don’t cease to need food just because they are out of his sight.

The grocery stores are closed so I make do with what’s in my cupboards. I pull together a feast of Rice-a-Roni and fried spam with toasted Wonder Bread.

“Delicious!” Gene enthuses. After licking the last of the Jello pistachio pudding dessert from the spoon with his long tongue, he says: “I haven’t eaten like this in ages.”

The boys gripe that I always make Gene’s favourites. I tell them that maybe they should consider being as appreciative of my efforts as Gene is.

* * *

While Gene and I are watching Sha-Na-Na, I catch him peeking out the window at one of the neighbour girls. He’s licking his lips and I swear he’s salivating at the blood vessels in the young girl’s neck.

“Chaim Gene Witz Simmons!” I say. “Don’t even think of doing that!”

* * *

When a bouquet of two dozen pink roses shows up at my door, I’m stunned. Gene has kept track—he remembers it’s been one year since he tapped at my window. I pull out the card: “Dear Barb, thank you for being the best second mother a Demon could have! Love, Gene.”

Gene’s other mother was on the Phil Donahue Show just this morning. “My Gene may like the ladies, but he’s a good boy,” she boasted.

* * *

Gene doesn’t have as much time to visit now that he’s dating Cher. We are on the phone and I’m telling him that the boys’ father has convinced the tart to marry him. The boys told me the waiters at the engagement party assumed she was their sister. The old codger didn’t even have the sense or the decency to be embarrassed.

Gene puts Cher’s kids on the phone. I hear him encouraging them to call me “Nana Barb.”

Back on the line, Gene tells me he’s remembering when we first met and how he was immediately struck by an overwhelming mother/son type of connection between us.

“Yes. That’s what I remember, too,” I tell him.

* * *

Ⓒ Angela James