Read an Excerpt from Daron's Guitar Chronicles!
The show in San Diego finally arrived, my first outdoor gig unless you count busking in the street.
I found the feeling of the wind on my face while we played disconcerting. It reminded me of hanging my head out of a car window as a kid, going down a nighttime highway, slightly dangerous. This was good, too, in its way, and we played sharp and tight.
The lights were so bright there was no seeing the stars or anything like that, but the other difference between this and the little clubs we’d been playing was that I could actually see the audience.
They were pressed tight against the stage—I even saw two women in the front singing along to "Candlelight." I wanted to point it out to Ziggy, but the stage was so huge, it felt like he was miles away from me.
Well, I mean, it often felt like that, even when he was near me, because I kept telling myself that we were worlds apart. The only way I could let myself lust after him was to keep it completely hidden. After all, he had a girlfriend, and me being gay was something no one ever had to know, right? Especially not within the band.
The next night's show was even bigger. Now we were in LA, and it was the Real Deal. We had press all day long and I don't think I've ever met so many strangers in a single day in my life. Ziggy seems to take it all in stride though: he received all of their attention as his due. I would've been a little annoyed at how big his ego was getting, except... that was his job, wasn't it? A lead singer is there to get attention, and to keep it. He had his hair spiked up and his eyeliner at 10 o'clock in the morning and he was "on" when I could barely muster a "hello."
When we finally took the stage that night, it was a relief. Now it was just us, exchanging looks, and doing what we knew how to do.
We were on a wireless system to allow us to roam freely over the large stage, but Ziggy stuck close by me much of the show. It felt right to be there together, the music passing back and forth between us with little looks and smiles.
Ziggy danced in circles around me and we leaned on one another, back to back, sweat and heat mixing.
And then our set was suddenly over. As an opening act you don't get to play for that long. We trooped off backstage to get clapped on the back some more and shake more hands. A limo took us to the hotel while the headlining band was onstage.
The party hadn’t started there yet, but it did soon enough. It was mostly a blur to me. At first I had the tail end of my performance high, and then I had a little bit of shakes as I began to crash. Booze (and sponsor-supplied Pepsi) was flowing freely among a California-clad crowd of what might have been executives and fashion models and who knows what, or might have just been people who dressed and acted like them.
Most of the attention was on the headliners, so I just floated between the bar and the hors d’oeuvres, wondering where Ziggy had gotten himself off to. He was probably boffing Carmen in their hotel room, I decided. After all, that was why he had brought her on the trip, right?
But then I saw her in a conversation with some of the guys from the other band. Ziggy was nowhere in sight.
That was when MNB’s singer, a white guy with blond dreads of all things, put his arm around her. She rested her head on his shoulder. Then the two of them broke away from the group and were heading for the door.
I followed them into the outer room of the suite, toward the hall, threading my way through clumps of people. I saw someone else doing the same thing, cutting a path through the laughing, talking crowd—Ziggy moving to intercept them.
By the time he caught up with them they were partway down the hall and around the first corner. I heard the shouts, Carmen’s high-pitched nasal whine and Ziggy’s easily distinguishable voice. My thought: oh god, if I could hear it, everyone in the room could.
As I rounded the corner, Ziggy was pointing a finger at the other singer but still looking at Carmen, and yelling at her. She pulled the singer by the arm, took a few steps away, telling Ziggy to go fuck himself.
He called her a lying whore, and then took a swing at the other guy. The fellow deflected the blow, a look on his face that showed he was more amused by this whole episode than threatened. He rolled his eyes at me like “can you believe this little soap opera?” He was quite tall and that gave me the feeling that he was, literally, above it all.
Ziggy didn’t seem to care how tall the guy was, pushed Carmen aside and balled his hands into fists. Shit. As he was about to launch himself forward to tackle, I grabbed him from behind.
Carmen pulled the other guy down the hall a few more steps and they disappeared into her room. Ziggy’s room, I realized as I struggled to hold him still.
He swore and me and yelled, “Let go of me!” He thrashed and cursed in a stream, but I had my hands locked together in front of his chest. I didn’t even try to argue—what was I going to say? I hung on until he stopped thrashing and then I let go.
He resorted to calling her names then, and pounded his fists on the hotel room door. Tears ran down his face and through the eyeliner he was still wearing from the stage. “You’re dead!” I wasn’t sure who he meant, Carmen or the other guy, and didn’t want to find out.
“Ziggy don’t...” I tried.
He kicked the door once, hard, before turning his attention to the mirror and vase of silk flowers next to it. The whole floor was decorated this way, every couple of doors was an identical mirrored alcove with marble-topped table and vase of fake flowers. I knew what he was going to do the moment he looked at the mirror, which was not soon enough for me to stop him from kicking over the table and smashing his fist into the glass.
People were coming down the hall to see what the ruckus was about.
I pulled my own room key from my pocket with one hand, and lacking any more elegant method, wrapped my free hand around his mouth and dragged him backward into my room.
