54
Wednesday, May 14th, 1986, 10:28 A.M.
As she left Belinda’s dressing room, there was little doubt in Jane’s mind that the afternoon’s musical shoot would be the usual batch of entertainment for the American viewing public, cleavage or no cleavage. Paul and his fellow directors were keenly adept at keeping things simple and non-controversial; not to mention they were probably receiving some instruction from the boys upstairs. It was a simple formula: Ninety-five percent of the time, the videos either captured the girls playing their instruments as a band, or showed them horsing around in some playful manner. There wasn’t much complexity to it. The fan mail that the studio received revealed that the female viewers preferred to see them jamming out— indicating that girls and women enjoyed seeing some kind of a skill or a role model— while the male viewers liked to see them in skimpy outfits and fondling each other. There certainly wasn’t much complexity to that, either. There was only a basic necessity to please both demographics.
While many of the independent videos that were being made directly for MTV were being shot with a more esoteric vision in mind, the idea that there was some kind of advanced, cryptic message involved was always up for debate. By their own admission, many of the bands and artists involved would later confess that the visual portion of their videos had little or no meaning whatsoever. Sadly, by contrast, many artists in the industry would later admit to the same injustice about some of their own lyrics.
Even though she had experienced this moment hundreds of times before, Jane couldn’t help but feel that every time she got off the elevators on the second floor, she was being sent to the Principal’s office or was in some kind of trouble. She chalked it up to spending a good portion of her life being a non-conformist.
She entered the appropriate hallway and began walking down the corridor. Charlotte’s office was the last one on the left. Just like before at Belinda’s dressing room, she knocked on the door and poked her head in.
“Hey, Char, you comin’ down soon?’ she asked.
“Yeah, I’ll be down in a minute,” Charlotte returned. “I just got a few more things here.”
Jane entered Charlotte’s office and closed the door.
“What are you doing?” Jane asked cautiously, almost afraid to disturb her. Charlotte looked like a teacher grading her student’s tests.
“Oh, I’m going over these time tables.. I’m trying to coordinate them with the pay rates,” Charlotte answered.
Jane had no idea what Charlotte was talking about, but offered up her assistance anyway.
“Is there something I can help you with?” she inquired.
Without thinking about how insensitive her answer might sound, Charlotte came back with, “No.. you wouldn’t understand it.”
Ouch! This was the second time in the last ten minutes that Jane had felt the sting of judgement coming from one of her bandmates. She couldn’t decide which one felt worse: Charlotte’s devaluation or Belinda’s scolding. Instead, she chose to focus on something that was glaringly obvious— Standing there in that office, watching Charlotte sit at her desk with her glasses on, pouring over a bunch of perceptively meaningless folders and paperwork — something didn’t seem right anymore. She remembered when Charlotte was a punk right alongside of her every step of the way. Now, she resembled one of those stuffy, bureaucratic automatons they all used to make fun of. It no longer resembled the old gang anymore. It seemed like a part of their history was slipping away.
“I missed your call last night,” said Jane, hoping to sound as if she were not dejected, but still trying to make Charlotte feel guilty at the same time.
“Oh, God, Jane, I’m sorry. I just didn’t get around to it,” said Charlotte, apologetically. “I was so busy last night.”
Even though Jane herself had been preoccupied the night before with some basic, domestic chores, she still waited for the phone to ring. It had become a routine that she looked forward to.
“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” she returned, trying to sound nonchalant about the whole thing. She didn’t want to reveal that she was relatively hurt by Charlotte’s dismissal. Because of this, Jane stood there and started to fidget a little bit. Since her primary objective of coming to the office in the first place was to inquire about the phone call, Jane found herself with nothing else to say. She decided to offer up a remedial alternative—
“Do you know where Kathy and Gina are? I haven’t seen either one of them today. God knows they must be up to some mischief together,” she rambled.
“No.. I haven’t seen them,” muttered Charlotte, not being deterred from her examination of the files. “They’re probably flooding the bathrooms somewhere… You know… I think CBS loses a lot of money over those two.”
“Okay, well, I think I’m gonna’ head back down,” Jane summed-up as she turned to leave.
“Oh, Jane, wait! I want to ask your opinion on something,” Charlotte blurted out.
The sound of those words coming out of Charlotte’s mouth was like an instant relief in Jane’s mind. She was already feeling a bit sheepish about not knowing what Charlotte was working on, so this change of direction came as a pleasant surprise.
“Sure, go ahead,” she said.
Charlotte got up from behind her desk and scurried over to Jane like a little girl with a new birthday present.
“What… do you think of a casino?” asked Charlotte with her eyes wide open.
“Oh, come on, Charlotte, I’m leaving for Hawaii on Monday— you know that.. I don’t have time to go to Vegas with you… Unless.. we’re going there to get married?!” suggested Jane, half-jokingly.
“No, no, no, I mean— what do you think of owning one? … Us— I mean — The Go-Go’s?!” asked Charlotte, completely ignoring the marriage proposal.
“Are you kidding?!” Jane asked back, her eyes popping open along with Charlotte’s.
“No, I’m not.. I’m meeting with a guy tomorrow right here in this office to discuss it.. What do you think?!! asked Charlotte, brimming with enthusiastic energy.