A Sharing is Caring Story
As usual all thanks to Randi. for making, er, encouraging me do this, and for editing skills. If you find a mistake, I probably made it after the edit.
This is a two part story, hopefully the second will be out by Friday.
And special thanks to the gals and guys at SI, especially for the swimsuit issue.
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I walked around it, marveling that after eighty years it was still standing, even seemed to be solid. I tried the padlock, before breaking the rusty hasp with a hammer.
It was dark inside, but then it would be, We'd carefully covered the windows back then. The mismatched couches were still there, as well as the carpet covering the walls. The bandstand was still there, as well as the words Earl had spray painted behind it.
"The Love Shack"
It was at one time a country store, built in the thirties, abandoned when supermarkets and chain stores came into being. Earl's family owned it, and he wrangled permission to use it as a practice hall. We all chipped in together and had the power turned on. We'd scrounged everything we could. I had an uncle who owned a furniture store that also sold and installed carpet, and he let us have scraps, old carpets he'd removed on jobs, everything we could scrounge. We used the carpet to deaden the sound. We could get quite loud at times.
I moved the flashlight about, every corner revealing a memory for me. I got so sick on cheap wine I puked my guts out in that corner, then had to clean it up the next morning, hung over. I got sick all over again. And that corner there, with that old love seat, is where I lost my virginity to Wanda Jenkins, one cold November night when I was two weeks past my eighteenth birthday.
I had just joined the band, the youngest member. Everybody else was already eighteen, except Earl, who was twenty-one. I hit it off with everyone but the drummer, Gordie, but he didn't like anybody back then. It came out much later that he was gay, and deeply resented the fact that we basically screwed every girl that tended to hang with us, and he couldn't openly do the same with his boyfriend. I think we all knew, but he was such an asshole we never got to tell him we didn't give a shit.
That's right, we were a band, rock and roll at its most basic. We were pretty raw back then. It took a year to get us together enough to play for the public. Earl played a mean bass, Gordie was a hell of a drummer despite his attitude, Will was a decent lead guitarist, and me, James "Grunt" Thomas, played keyboards and guitar, even a little saxophone and once in a while harmonica. It gave us a little more depth than most bands around at the time. Gordie and Earl sang lead, Will and I supplied the backing vocals. Every once in a while we'd bring the Pointless Sisters out, composed of some of the girls that hung around, just for fun.
We were all young, just discovering life, love, and sex. Lots and lots of sex. We were in a unique position. We had a place to go where we could do anything we wanted, and with Earl being twenty-one, we could get all the booze we could afford, as well as pot and any other kind of drug we wanted. I was the dealer, hooked in thanks to my biker brother. We did a little acid, some THC, but never enough for it to be a threat. If I thought we were getting too far in to it I stopped getting it, telling them my brother needed to lay low for a little. Then he got busted and went to jail for awhile, and the lie became the truth.
The building was huge; the back was actually designed as living quarters, pretty common at the time it was built. We built a little stage with material I scrounged from my construction job. We also hit my uncle up for some used couches, and he gave us the best he had, ones he'd agreed to dispose of as part of the delivery service, so we had lots of comfortable seats. A couple were even foldouts. We usually ended up crashing there on weekend nights.
We weren't complete idiots, and when we practiced, we practiced. Oh, we might have a beer or two, but it was usually a weeknight, and we all had jobs. The parties were on the weekends if we didn't have a gig. We'd do a song or three, then party. Jerry was our newest addition, and he ran our sound equipment and lighting. He usually had a really cute little redhead with him on the weekends, but never during the week.
Earl and I were the two serious musicians of the group. Sometimes we'd show up and be the only two there. We'd take the time to sharpen our sound. Besides bass, Earl was a pretty good guitarist. I'd play the leads and he'd supply the rhythm. Sometimes we would be acoustic, and other times we'd turn up the amps and try to blow the walls out. That's exactly what we were doing one night when the little redhead, Bonny, showed up with her sister, looking for Jerry.
They sat down on one of the couches listening, smiling, clapping their hands. Her sister July went by Jules and had spent time in an all-girls band, and she surprised us all by sitting down behind the drums.
We played Zeppelin, Cream, Mountain, everybody we could think of. Earl liked the music of a past generation more than what was out then. He did a screaming vocal of Mississippi Queen, one of the best we'd ever heard. We were having a ball until Gordie rolled in, two hours late.
He went into a screaming rant about the bitch fucking with his kit, even though she hadn't touched a thing. It got ugly when he tried to slap her, and I jerked his hand back. "Try that on me, motherfucker. At least she was here, and we had a drummer to practice with."
He was high on something. "Fuck you! You want the little cunt, keep her. I quit!" He stomped out, slinging shit randomly. I followed him to the door to make sure he didn't tear up anything major and waited as he spun out of the gravel parking lot. I turned around and grinned at her.
"Well, Jules, wanna come out of retirement?"
She did.
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Having a girl drummer that could sing helped boost our following. Soon we were playing every weekend. Jerry drafted Bonny to help run sound, so she was always around. I was starting to get tired of playing on the weekend so someone else could party, so we talked it over and decided to take two weekends off and just hang out. We'd all pretty much lost our girlfriends because they wanted to go out and party like everyone else. Jules took her breakup hard, and we drifted towards each other. Nowadays they'd call it friends with benefits, but back then it didn't have a label.
We'd gone to the local lake a few times, and I'm here to tell you both Jules and Bonny could really rock a bikini. Bonny, though three inches shorter, had bigger boobs, and they stood out on her tiny frame. We were in the water, playing, having a hell of a time when Jerry decided to go jealous on Bonny. She was on my shoulders while Gene, another friend who happened to be there, had Jules, and we were chicken fighting. Jules got a little carried away and yanked Bonnie's top down by accident. Everyone got a boob shot but me, because I was under her. She shrieked and went backwards, pulling me with her. I thought I was gonna drown. I surfaced beside her and she was standing neck deep in the water, fumbling with her top, laughing as Jules ragged her.
