Something had been missing in Duchess’ life lately. And it wasn’t just that she had lost sight of who she was before she became “Duchess”—her much punned-upon stage name—but that she had forgotten why she started making music in the first place. The reason being to connect with other people. In fact, making music had been the only way that she had ever successfully connected with anybody. She would still be a friendless freakshow stuck in the backwaters of Wellington if she hadn’t found fame and fortune with a song she wrote and produced in her teenage bedroom: “Aristocrats.”

The unexpected, runaway success of the single catapulted her into the spotlight when she was sixteen. The same age, Duchess, noted to herself, that Britney was when “…Baby One More Time” came out. Maybe there was just something about sixteen-year-old girls that the public couldn’t resist. Especially when it came to casting them in the role of “pop star.”

Duchess didn’t fully realize this until it was already too late. Because, back when she was just Emma O’Day, becoming a musician was all that she had ever dreamed of. She didn’t think all that deeply about the potential “consequences” of fulfilling this dream. In her teenage mind, there could only be an upside to hitting the big time with her songs. It took about a month to fully process that there was quite a bit she hadn’t bargained for. Not just in terms of losing her privacy forever, but also being dissected in such scathing detail. This had nothing to do with her personality, of course, and everything to do with her body. Which was not only still developing, but also still enduring the vagaries of her not-quite-settled hormones. This meant that the highs of the “job” (though that word seemed too small—too normal—for what this was) were just as intense as the lows. In fact, Duchess quickly discovered that the lows actually felt far more intense than the highs.

This would be something she struggled to deal with in the rigorous years to come. Years of headlines and articles chastising her for not showing her body and, then, showing her body too much. Years of people weighing in on whether the man she was spotted “canoodling” with was just a friend, or maybe more. Years of tabloids offering that she wasn’t even straight at all. Years, in short, of putting her through the emotional wringer. It went without saying that being subjected to such treatment had deadened her inside. And much more prematurely than most people. She had hoped that she could maintain some small shred of what was supposed to be her youthful innocence and naïveté, but those characteristics went out the window by the time her seventeenth birthday rolled around.

Where once she had struggled to get even three people (besides her immediate family) to show up to her birthday parties, she found that year’s celebration was packed to the gills with guests. Guests she had never met, guests she had only encountered once before, guests who used to make her feel like shit but were presently her “best friend,” guests from “the industry”—so many fucking guests she had no real attachment to. That was to become her fixed landscape going forward. Constantly surrounded, yet never connecting with anyone. Save for when she was performing at more intimate concerts. But because of her meteoric rise, the “intimate gig” was also becoming a thing of the past for her. Duchess’ management soon insisted on larger venues, already talking about how she could be playing stadiums in the next couple of years. But Duchess didn’t want stadiums. All she wanted—all she craved—was connection.

After the first album, she decided to disappear for a while before presenting the next one. This would become a pattern of hers: waiting four years in between records before dragging herself out again to release new material. Which is why, despite having “burst onto the scene” twelve years ago, Duchess had only put out a scanty four albums—one of them not all that well-received. Compared to a chanteuse like Lana Del Rey, who had put out nine albums in roughly the same amount of time, it was arguable that the most captivating thing about Duchess was her ability to hold her audience’s interest in spite of being so unprolific.

When the fourth record was about to come about, however, something really clicked for Duchess in terms of remembering that “the fans” were the sole reason she did it all. Even if many of them were creepy, trollish, hyper-obsessive, etc. She started to come out of her protective shell, the one that had made her resent rather than respect her fans. The ones who, yes, had technically bought the palatial pad (befitting a Duchess, naturally) she lived in—throughout various cities. In truth, cultivating a varied real estate portfolio was the best thing about being a pop star. Because Duchess knew that if the bottom finally dropped out one day, she could always sell a few of her houses to make some cash.

The more ego-driven, narcissistic part of herself knew that wouldn’t happen though. That she was a “lifer” of a pop icon. Some women just were. Others (like Willa Ford), not so much. Duchess was reminded of this much when a club in Sydney called Queenie’s “atted” her in their post about throwing “a club night dedicated to Duchess.” She knew that they were doing it on a lark, mentioning her in the post, that is. Never imagining that she would even see it, let alone choose to show up. Duchess couldn’t even pinpoint why she felt so drawn to this event in particular. It wasn’t as if she didn’t get “atted” in these types of posts all the time. To the point where she often didn’t even bother to look. But, for whatever reason, she looked at this one.

Maybe it was the promise of drag queens and drinks flowing, or the fact that it was in Sydney, so close to her native land, that she was pulled to the club. Her lead single, “What on Earth,” had come out about a month ago, and the hype surrounding her new album, Maiden, was reaching a new crescendo every day as the release date approached. She knew she was going to make heads explode if she showed up, and that’s when she decided that she had to. It was time to not only “give something back” to the fans, but to get something in return from them as well. Recapture that feeling of connection that had driven her to write the lyrics to “Aristocrats” in the first place.

At one point while getting ready to go to Queenie’s, it suddenly occurred to her that this was how Timothée Chalamet must have felt before attending his own lookalike contest: nervous, excited, unsure…but also never more sure of anything. There was something so twenty-first century about this form of interacting with fans. Making them understand that celebrities weren’t gods, but mere mortals willing to mingle among the hoi polloi. So long as a member of said hoi polloi didn’t pull out a gun and go all Yolanda Saldívar with their “loving” obsession. That was still a viable fear. A reason to keep one’s distance from the fans. And yet, Duchess wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt. To prove to herself—as much as everyone else—that she continued to have faith in humanity. Regardless of all evidence to the contrary in her line of work.

When she arrived at Queenie’s, it took several minutes for the crowd to fully register her presence. After all, she had “slipped in” the same way as everyone else: through the front. Dressed in jeans and a hoodie, she looked like your average person. Maybe a bit like Duchess, but then, so did a lot of her fans. In all honesty, Duchess felt that if she had played her cards right, she might have been able to stay anonymous all night long. But she didn’t want to go unnoticed. That part of herself which had gotten her famous in the first place overpowered her shy side—the one that could make her dormant for four years at a time. No, this was an opportunity to remind everyone—especially the suits—what it was really all about. Relating to other people, tangibly, tactilely…olfactorily.

Duchess realized that, by having the advantage of the element of surprise, most fans were too stunned to treat her as they would have if there had been a big announcement about her appearance. Instead, they treated her as one of their own. Like just another fan vibing to Duchess’ hits and deep cuts alike. The images and videos that emerged from the event made for plenty of media fodder across the world. Although that hadn’t been Duchess’ intent, she recognized that, somewhere deep down, she had wanted to give international attention to this idea. This oft-forgotten notion that music, as Madonna—mac daddy pop star—once said, really does make the people come together.

As cheesy as it might have sounded, that’s what had compelled Duchess to go to the club. But now she only wished that people would stop asking her what the next venue she was planning to attend would be. As did the management of Queenie’s itself grow weary of fielding the many inquiries demanding when Duchess was planning to materialize again. That was the thing about the public though…they could never seem to understand that lightning never struck twice. And if it did, it was never even half as electric as the first time.