4. Utryddelsessonaten
Utryddelsessonaten
BETTY
“Your Royal Highness, welcome!” Brita Lund chirped.
She was my official handler for the length of my UniVox assignment. For a Norwegian, she was especially effusive.
I stepped into my formal living room and looked at the huge crew within.
They’d set up to capture two hours of me talking, only to reduce it to fifteen minutes in a final cut.
All dressed up, but exhausted from flying over fences from five am to nine, I was already over this.
My goal? Talk about this competition, remain a confident host, and finish so I could complete my early evening rides.
“Smiles, smiles,” Brita whispered in Norsk. “The director is very… upbeat.”
A woman with bright purple hair approached. She wore a maxi dress that was best described as the product of Anthropologie doing the nasty with an IKEA couch. The muted-colored smock dress had so many gauzy layers that she looked like a minimalist doily.
The director stopped, made prayer hands, and bowed, “Well, is this our subject?”
It wasn’t a curtsy and I wasn’t interested in being known as a subject, but I preferred genuinely weird to stuffy and navel-gazing.
“Your Royal Highness, this is Kaldi Journey.”
Kaldi Journey? Is that her real name!?
“And Kaldi, this is Her Royal Highness Princess Elisabeth of Norway.”
“Gosh! I am like… so blessed!” Kaldi shook my hand before I reached out, then hugged me.
Confused, I went limp. My space was so violated and I was wholly unprepared. Of course, if I rebuffed her, I’d be a bitch. I made eye contact with Brita over Kaldi’s shoulder and mouthed “hjelpe meg” but she, too, was helpless.
“Your aura is so sweet,” Kaldi continued. “This is going to be amazing. And the light and ambiance here is so sick.”
Was sick… good?
“Uh… thank you?” I winced. “My mother is the decorator. Very Scandinavian. Clean lines. You know the type.”
“I don’t. I’m spiritually Australian.”
What the fuck does that mean? Her accent was Midwestern as my mother’s, a fact I pondered while following her to our makeshift set.
“So, just sit right there. We’re going to bring up some videos of some UniVox frontrunners,” Kaldi said.
I lowered myself, sitting in an armchair with my legs neatly crossed.
“You can relax. I promise I don’t bite. We just want some fun reactions. We’ll run a few of them as a teaser on social. I was told you haven’t seen any of the bands yet.”
“I was told to avoid the subject,” I said. “And living in America for the past few months has made that easy.”
“Great. Well, now is the time for an honest reaction!” Kaldi handed me an iPad. “Let’s roll, please. This first one is your entry… Giftehode.”
A man appeared, snapping a clapperboard to start the recording. What is this life?
In my hands, the screen flashed to several people dressed in black slowly appearing from a dark background.
A woman with thick pigtails opened her mouth as guitars played ominously behind her.
She started at a low growl before screaming unintelligibly.
I tried to remain open-minded, aware they were filming me.
“It is… metal,” I said over the screaming. “They are really into it.”
I listened to the words as they went along. It was my native tongue, but the dissonance made it hard to read. Finally, I figured it out. “Utryddelsessonaten”.
“I have no idea what the song means,” Kaldi said as the song ended.
“Utryddelsessonaten means ‘extinction sonata’. It’s about the end of the Earth because we destroyed it while the choir sang on. Sounds dark, but it’s actually quite beautiful. They’re from where in Norway?”
She cocked her head, “Yes, Norway.”
I snickered. “No, I mean in Norway. If I heard them speak, I would know, but…”
“Oh, they are from Boat-o?” She winced, looking at a PA.
“Bo-da,” I corrected. “Ah, Bod? is north of Trondheim. It’s a beautiful place to see the northern lights or catch a game with the Yellow Toothbrushes.”
“And you like it… the song?”
“It’s not my usual listen, but I appreciate the message,” I said. “I’m sure they are way cooler than I am. I look forward to meeting them in Trondheim.”
Brita shot me a dorky thumbs up. Nailed it.
“I gotta ask,” Kaldi said. “Their name is… interesting. What is a giftehode?”
“Well, gifte can mean two things,” I said. “I think it is a play on words. To you, it sounds like a present-head, right?”
She nodded with a grin. “Their fans are all over the world. They call themselves gifters. I wonder if that means they bring gifts?”
“Eh…” I looked at my hands. “I think it probably means the second thing which is poison.”
The crew stared at me, mouth agape.
“Why… why would they call poison a gift?”
I shrugged. “No clue. We were Vikings when we decided that. I would say they are actually Poisonhead. But it’s a fun double-entendre of sorts.”
“I’m learning new things,” Kaldi said cheerfully. “So, next up are the Swedes. And you know the controversy here?”
“People keep mentioning that, Kaldi, but I really don’t know much.”
“The most selling single of all time last year should have gone to UniVox but there was a supposed payoff, so another act went. The same producer is back with this talented young woman, Alia, and this DJ, JayMan, who make up this group, 4l?t. They do a fabulous job, but the artist who wrote the should-be winner…”
“Allegedly,” a producer added.
“Yes, allegedly, well, she is now working for Britain. Very scandalous!”
I wasn’t sure why any of this mattered as I spun up the next song, a sad ballad called “Completely Forbidden”. I questioned the singer’s age and her sexy lyrics.
“She’s how old?” I asked.
“Eighteen,” Kaldi replied, as if this was a question everyone asked.
“She’s… young,” I said as the girl gyrated her hips and danced around a stage in a hall of mirrors. Still singing, the girl fell to the floor and ground against it, her face to the camera. To say it was uncomfortable was an understatement!
“That is… very charged,” I said, as the song finished. “Good beat, though.”
“We aren’t sure if they will show it in Ireland,” Kaldi said, as if this were a badge of honor.
A producer whispered, “Too hot for TV.”
“Well, that is… something!” I folded my hands. “What is next?”
“The band from the UK.” Kaldi handed me the iPad. “The Zamboneys. Now, they don’t have a music video for this one yet. This is their BBC Session. It was a last-minute entry but as the kids would say… it slaps.”
I nodded, praying this woman would never again utter those words.
Though the production quality wasn’t the same as the Swedes or as edgy as the Norwegians, the grittiness of the session added to their vibe.
“It’s a bit of a Y2K throwback, yeah?” I avoided implying it was low rent, but not as super produced as the exploitative Swedish video before it.
“I suppose,” Kaldi agreed.
The song began, but I felt a strange, familiar pull.
Somehow, it was like I knew this song or band.
I reflected on my recent drives, but I couldn’t place the intro.
The band remained in the dark and the singer faced away.
The lights came up on the band, revealing a woman with a fantastic ass—still facing away from the camera.
I couldn’t have cared less what the rest of the band looked like since I was drawn immediately to her.
I tried so hard not to stare at her adorable back dimples.
I hated girls that could get away with low-rise jeans.
I never could without looking more balloon than woman.
Then, the singer spun, staring dead into the camera as it pulled close.
She was blonde with a geometric, sharp haircut and big brown eyes.
Again, I felt some sense of familiarity I had no business feeling.
How did I think I knew her? She wasn’t a typical sort of face.
Cheekbones like those didn’t just show up on everyone.
Bitingly, she sang, “You thought you were the judge, but your gavel is a hammer.”
It hit me. I knew her. She was the guitarist in the bar five years before.
If I tried hard, I might have been able to conjure the way her lips felt pressed to mine or how I wanted so badly to grab her ass and have her throw me against a wall.
Suddenly, all those feelings rushed back—all while my reaction was recorded.
I needed to tamp it down or I’d give myself away.
“Catchy,” I said.
I didn’t want to look so thirsty that I tripped over myself, nor could I be anything more than polite. They weren’t the home team.
“It sticks with you, right?” Kaldi asked.
Yes, just like my bi awakening with the lead singer!
I couldn’t look away. Yes, she was talented and fit and had that sort of take-charge-no-fucks-given thing I loved, but it was more.
I couldn’t cut away from the feeling of wanting to kick myself for not getting her number.
I hadn’t kissed anyone since that night without thinking about how good it felt to kiss someone who seemed so authoritative.
Thankfully, here she was—still a babe and still doing her thing.
“Just wait for this part!”
Thinking back to the revenge song before me, I admitted it was a bop. I found the song’s chorus infectious. At the end, the guitar solo kicked ass. Every line was more cutting and cleverer than the last. When it finished, I had to tone down my smile.
“So, you were into it?” Kaldi asked.
“That is a certifiable hit, I’d say. I need to ask Ingrid if she’s listening to it in her car. She’s a car singer.”
“Ingrid?” Kaldi asked.
“Oh, the Duchess of Inverness,” I said. “My brother’s wife.”
“Ah, okay!”
“She’s one of my besties. I bet she’d love this.”
“It’s going to be a house divided then, isn’t it?” Kaldi asked.
“Well, every World Cup is a mess. Thankfully, I do not care for football and Lars and Keir have mostly stopped their fistfights.”
Brita glared. The truth was, my brothers were all half-brothers, my lineage confused even me, and Lars and Keir were fiercely competitive. Hell, they’d once fought at a family barbecue over Ingrid and that was less than ten years ago!
“So what do you think so far?” Kaldi asked.
“I think it will be an interesting six months,” I said. “We shall see who wins.”
I downplayed it, but I knew full well who thrilled me—and not just because the song was good. No matter what, I could not stop thinking about Mary’s back dimples, wondering how the hell she was, and—more importantly—if she was single.