A Roadie's Tale Ch. 02: Sessions
Hell of a show that night.
I was all ready to go home to the privacy of my tent for the night, but I stuck around.
I thought maybe, just maybe...
Got more work with Pacific Sibling on their second tour, they had a lot of gear to move so I earned my pay. It's pretty good as manual labour goes, I work in jeans and a t-shirt, I get paid to move stuff around and live relatively free of responsibility.
I hang around backstage as something to do. I'm not really allowed in here after the performance, we pack up in the morning. But then again these guys only lift beer by the bottle, not the keg. Someone has to keep the vital juices of creativity flowing.
My excusatory prop was an eighteen pack of lager I wouldn't give to a thirsty dog, and my CREW t-shirt.
I hear something going on behind a few doors but the only moans that are familiar seem to be coming from Becca the transport manager, who in turn seemed to enjoy the fact that everyone knew she was getting laid whether they liked it or not. Well, if she minded she might have closed the door at least. Not quite the intimate solo Elle favours, half whisper and half moan, but a sound that's happy just to be loud and exuberant. The puppy-dog panting of the skinny teenager under her kept an unsteady and excitable tempo, but we all start somewhere.
I was half-tempted to applaud as I walked past, but I wouldn't want to startle the kid into prematurity or encourage Becca's increasing exhibitionism to truly public levels.
I mooch onwards and backwards from stage access back to the crowd.
It was a decent gig tonight, they worked the kinks out of the stage effects so no-one was pulling overtime replacing melted cables or dud pyrotechnics. I found myself nodding along to the beat a few times; but there were more dyed fringes being flicked than shirts being lifted, more smartphones than lighters in the air.
I mentally select some Iron Maiden, the communion of the elder gods. I'm humming Nomad to myself as I find a discreet place to leave the gradually heavier eighteen-pack of piss-water where someone dumb enough to drink it will walk by unsupervised.
Cleansed of both Pacific Sibling's tweeny-bop rock and the weight of pretext, I move out through the security barriers and enter the mass of crowd.
I see people; men, women, gangling tweens of all ages and shapes, dolled up and decked out. Things are just finishing up, bottles are being opened, alcohol is infused into the bloodstream of this collective beast that makes a festival out of a field. After a solid week of slog everyone pretty much gets the night off. Work is tomorrow's problem, along with the hangovers and come-downs.
This is the night people tend to fuck, at least among the event staff. I'm not ashamed of following my glands, the call of the eternal horn. I guess I was looking for some nice girl to de-stress with, an amiable dance partner for the horizontal tango. Sometimes I just want to have a new friend over for breakfast, have a reason to be my best self instead of whichever random chamber will wake up staring through the barrel in the morning.
Not that sex is such a casual thing to me but that friend I made, that teasingly frustrated acolyte of groupie-dom, made me feel like I didn't always have to be looking for true love. Not that I wouldn't have called her but we got to orgasm before we got to contact information. She had eyes for the dude who paid me for work, weed, and discretion. I was okay with being a bit of fun for her, it was harmless enough except for a slightly aching jaw on my part next morning.
I missed Elle, if we're being honest. She went and got discovered, she was back in the states for a few months to sign a contract and cut a few tracks. Too talented and too beautiful to stay a voice and a silhouette behind the spotlights for long. Her wish, as she stood on the stage after our private little performance, seemed to be coming true.
My claim to fame is that I heard her first single before anyone else, she made it up on the end of my airbed with that beaten up Spanish guitar she cherished as a keepsake. Not that I'm the scumbag she's singing about. I would rather break my arm than a heart like Elle's, even if it would mean that song not being written.
She kissed me goodbye and it was that last touch of her soft lips that left me with a smile and the need for a long shower before bed. Over a month since then I was a hell of a lot cleaner but no less tense.
I wander along the rows of bars, trailers really, look for a queue moving quickly. Instead I find myself standing behind a particularly nice arse spray painted with faded denim that, to my glands at least, was only co-incidentally attached to a fellow being of sacred origin and unknown perspective.
I like the way she walks, rests her weight on one hip. I like the un-summoned picture in my head of that peachy round backside in my lap; my lips on her neck as my hand slides beneath the zipper to give her as much pleasure with my fingers as she gives me just by existing in my eye-line... Yeah, it's been a while.
I don't like her boyfriend much though, I'm paid to be strong but this guy is like one of those transgenic super hamsters that run in wheels for fourteen hours a day. He doesn't look like the type I could talk into getting experimental enough to bench him with a blowjob before the real fun begins.
Don't judge me. Mouthwash takes thirty seconds, Glory is eternal.
But I do want a beer, so I stay in line and admire the view and don't look up until she turns with an armful of plastic glasses. Her front is as attractive as her back, I stand aside as she manoeuvres half a gallon of beverages and Vin Diesel's stunt double past me, get one last look at her before I turn to order with a smile tugging my mouth.
Equipped with a pint from a genial but tired-looking chick with blue hair, I stand around and stare a bit.
I see the girl with the beautiful arse walk past me again, she gives me the open smile of a fellow human and it brightens my mood a little.
I stand at a blurry cross of drying footprints in the mud marked between areas of plastic garden furniture near the bars. I drink half of my pint, poured by an old friend and recent stranger, and watch the people.
Just me, since Elle told me not to wait for her. I kept expecting the 'I met somebody' text message, but it kept defiantly not coming. We both seemed to be focusing on our work for a while, though occasional inter-continental phone-sex kept us from getting lonely.
I know I should feel sorry for myself at this point but I'm good. The setting sun is still shining, there are people of all description walking by like my own personal daytime TV, there's half a pint of cold beer in my hand that I'm about 70% sure doesn't have any added saliva.
And nothing to do.
My soul groans.
What I would give for a...
"Hi." A voice snaps me back to reality. There's a woman standing in front of me.
"Hey." I'm surprised to be approached. She's my age, red hair and freckles, her scarlet lips held at a sly angle.
Staring right at me.
She doesn't say anything, just keeps staring. Somewhat confused I stare back, certain I don't know her. There's a look in those green eyes I would remember.
"Can I help you with something?" I realise I'm still wearing the t-shirt that says CREW on it in huge white letters.
"That's supposed to be my line." She's got an amused grin, a slightly glassy look.
I try to prompt her for more sense with my confused expression. Half the people here are getting stoned on something or other, my current sobriety making her words go over my head completely.
"I think you're mistaking someone for me." I say as something to say.
"No, that would be if I went up to some guy over there and thought he was you." She takes a rollup from her mouth, points the lit end at me like a swagger stick as she exhales herb scented smoke. "You mean I'm mistaking you for someone else."
My puzzlement intensifies.
"Okay love." I say and make a polite quarter turn to look at something else for a second. Maybe that beautiful creature will walk past me again...
She just stands there staring at me.
Eventually I start staring back, watching to see just how long she's going to keep giving me that look. Where all this is going...
Red trainers, red jeans with holes in the knees, a sexily well-fitted black top and a hairband were the only accessories to someone who clearly didn't need any of them. She's not skinny or tall or any of the things we're told are the measures of beauty. She's got a little Tilda Swinton thing going on around her eyes and a little Rita Hayworth thing going on around her hips. And I've got a thing of my own going on that doesn't feel little at all right now.
"You really haven't figured it out?" She asks me, I suddenly stop enjoying myself. Something tells me she's got a friend who can pull a pint, and hold a grudge.
"Look, I'm not here to pick a..." She steps forward and puts her finger to my lips. The boldness and the strangeness of it kept me still and shut me up.
"You called me here." She steps in close to me and whispers in my ear. "You knew what you were doing. Finish it."
This is the point where I might take a step back and walk away from a girl apparently on some decent mushroom tea. But my feet won't move. I can't even wiggle my toes.
"Finish what?" I'm still working on the part where I wasn't going to be talking to her anymore, but somehow I never quite get around to actually moving muscles.
"What I would give for a..." She groans in a perfect impression of how I feel if not how I sound. "Tell me what you would give."
I didn't say that out loud.
I think.
I still heard you.
Her voice bypasses my ears as she drags a final pull on the herbal rollup, ditches the smouldering roach.
"How the fuck..." My words cut off without her needing to interrupt me somehow. She waits a few seconds, steps in closer and pushes my unresponsive arm holding the beer close to my chest between us. I'm immobile as she takes my hand around the plastic glass and lifts it to her mouth.
The fact I was more distracted by her lips than her psychic powers tells you which part of me was hogging all the blood. She sets the now empty plastic glass down on the table, brings my still unresisting hand to rest on her hip like we're dancing.
She takes my jaw in her hand and leads my gaze left and right over her shoulder.
"You asked for this, I'm just here to help." I find myself looking at the two lanes of human traffic colliding and dispersing again.
I can give you what you want.
