Whatever You Say I Am_ The Life and Times of Eminem - Anthony Bozza [21]
We sit in the limo at the curb and wait while the police and venue security clear a path for us. Along with Eminem’s bodyguard, we form a phalanx at the car door as the crowd starts to freak out. The kids push forward, some getting stuck between the cops and our ride, some climb over the limo’s wide hood. They yell at Eminem, or just about him, as if he were in front of them, not live, but still in two dimensions, on their MTV.
“You look good!” shouts one girl, who can’t be more than fifteen.
“Oh my gawd, he looks so much better in person,” another says, as much to us as to her friends.
We are in a tight circle, being pushed and pulled along, the kids packing in against the guards who can’t quite surround us. It is slow going, like swimming upstream, and we won’t fit through the doors of the venue without breaking rank. I’m holding on to one of the crew members as we push through the doors, flattening a few teenagers on the way. I start slipping behind as bodies push in against me and try to break our human chain. Eminem’s security guard pulls me forward by the neck of my shirt just before I’m squeezed out of the pocket and into the mob. Kids are screaming all of his names now—Shady! Em! Slim!—and trying to high-five him over the human wall.
Inside, this former movie theater is pitch-black except for the tiny toothpick-size glow-sticks that dot the dark. The fans have them stuck in loops of their clothing, in their hair, in their nostrils, and in their mouths. A boy trying to push through me into the circle has them jammed in his braces. It is the grand opening of this all-ages spot, and either the club handed out several gross of these glowing party favors or Staten Island teens are oddly obsessed with disposable light sources.
The club is basically still a movie theater. There’s no backstage and little security, and the dressing room/storage closet is a well-lit attic located at the top of a ladder at an end of the top row of seats. We make our way up the aisles, and while I hold on to the jacket of one member of the entourage in front of me, I look to the side and watch as the seated kids in the rows realize who leads this human train. Their faces change to those of tots on Christmas morning: They shake themselves out of a groggy recline and rush at us as if to tear the paper off of Eminem like he’s their new video game. After we are all up the ladder, a trapdoor shuts the fans out.
Waiting in the room, between boxes of plastic cups, is a man sporting Sopranos chic. “Hey, nice ta meet ya,” says the club owner in a thick Staten Island accent. “This is our big night. My daughter told me to get Eminem, so I got Eminem. It’s her fourteenth birthday today. Come on over here, say hi to her and her friends.”
Eminem is ruddy, bewildered, high, and suddenly shy. He looks pissed off. But he switches gears, takes off his coat, and poses for pictures while answering statements pronounced as questions, such as “You’ve got a cool video?” The girls say little beyond how much they totally love “My Name Is.” These fourteen-year-olds, little women, are like many of their peers downstairs, dressed older than their years, carrying themselves with a disturbing self-aware sexuality.
When his guests leave, Eminem retreats to a back corner by the chips and salsa with his stage gear: a towel and four bottles of water. He sits backward on a chair, resting his arms on its top. He is brewing, silently fuming. He’s quiet for the first time in hours, giving Paul Rosenberg a break in the hire-fire cycle and not talking to or about anyone else in the room. The rest of us chat, Stretch Armstrong cracks jokes as we all steal looks at Eminem. I’m trying to read him; wondering how much of his static stare is raw intensity how much meditation, how much preparation or chemical side effects. I’m wondering if he’s freaked by the crowd, their numbers, ferocity, or demographic. He must see, as I do, that these aren’t all underground hip-hop heads; these are MTV kids waiting to see him, their Total-ly Request-ed favorite, Live.
A snapshot of