by Cecilia Tan
I should have stomped out of there like I was wearing combat boots, but no, that role was filled. So I merely stood and tried to walk in a ladylike fashion to my car. Ladylike to me meant with small, brisk yet not hurried steps, my eyes on the horizon, and hoping like hell the fake smile on my face didn’t look ridiculous.
Never let them see you cry. Dad had never said who “them” was, but I took it to mean everyone.
* * *
By the time I arrived at the Forum, the concert had already started. Thank goodness Ricki had gotten us VIP parking permits and backstage passes. The VIP lot was alongside where the band’s tour bus was parked—a massive thing with the THE ROUGH logo painted on the side—and I could see a security guard standing outside a side door into the arena.
I clutched my purse to my shoulder as I approached him. He was wearing black and the band’s crew jacket, and there was a lanyard hanging from his neck with a cluster of laminated passes at the bottom of it. “Hi, yeah, is this the right door? I have a backstage pass waiting for me,” I told him.
He looked me up and down. “Oh, really,” he said, as if he didn’t believe a word of it and was merely humoring me. “And who exactly would be responsible for putting you on the list?”
“My sister. Or her boyfriend. Axel Hawke? Perhaps you’ve heard of him?”
He laughed. “Try pulling the other one.”
“Okay, seriously, I’m Gwen Hamilton.” His attitude was really starting to piss me off.
Amusement twisted his mouth. “You know, honey, if what you really want is a good banging, plenty of guys in your home town would oblige.”
“Excuse me?”
“Okay, okay, I get it. You came all the way here to get some genuine, grade-A rock star dick. Which one do you want? I’ll tell you if you’re his type. The only one who’s off limits is Axel. He’s monotonous and his girlfriend’s here, to boot.”
“You mean monogamous and that’s what I told you; his girlfriend is my sister!”
“He’s into some kinky shit but I don’t think incest is—”
The door opened and another guy stuck his head out. “Gilbert, you got a problem here?”
“Excuse me,” I said. “Have you got the guest list? Because I am on it and this dork ass thinks it’s funny to sexually harass me.”
The guy came all the way out with a clipboard in hand. “Name?”
“Gwen Hamilton.”
“You got ID?”
“Yes.” I dug my driver’s license out of my bag and showed it to him.
“All right, come with me.” He punched Gilbert in the arm. “Be nice.”
Gilbert rubbed his arm and held the door open. “Come on, John. How was I supposed to know she was on the list? She looks like every other groupie.”
“By checking the list,” John said, waving the clipboard. “She’s probably some fan-club contest winner or something. Be nice or you’ll go viral on YouTube.” As the door shut behind us he said, “My apologies, miss. Here.” In the hallway stood a podium on wheels. From behind it he pulled out a lanyard with a laminated pass on it and signed his name on the bottom with a Sharpie.
I slung it over my neck.
“When the band comes offstage they’ll go through there to the green room.” He pointed down a hallway to the left—“main party’ll be over there,” to the right—“and if you want to watch the rest of the show,” straight ahead.
I thanked him and went straight ahead, the music getting louder as I went. There was a handwritten sign taped to the cinder block at a stairwell leading up that said “Stage Overlook.” Up I went.
As I was climbing the stairs I was still fuming a little about what an asshole the security guard had been, but then it struck me: he really had treated me like a groupie trying to sneak into a concert because that’s exactly what I looked like. He’d bought it. Even when I’d told him who I was he’d either not believed it or didn’t know my name. That was possible: I was far from a household name. But a thrill ran through me as I realized how convinced he’d been.
I came out on an upper platform where a couple of other people with passes around their necks were watching the show, too. Several of them looked like groupies to me and I wondered if the guard had been partly serious when he’d said some of the guys were “available.”
But I didn’t spend long looking at the other people there once I started watching the band. Axel, the lead singer, was at center stage, but on the side of the stage closest to me was the guitar player, Mal. We’d met once or twice in passing at industry functions. My impression of him from those occasions was that he never smiled and rarely spoke, looming in the background like a judgmental gargoyle.
But on stage he was animated, explosive, leaping into the air with his guitar and then landing, flinging his long, dark hair forward and then flipping it back with a head toss. He still didn’t smile, but he matched Axel’s energy with a feral grimace as he sang, and then he sauntered out onto the long runway into the audience, playing a solo and practically humping the guitar as he went.
Pure sex. One hundred percent pure sex that walked on two legs and played the guitar. When that song was over he tore his shirt off and flung it into the audience. His arms and chest looked like something from a fitness craze infomercial: You, too, can have these abs! These biceps! I certainly wouldn’t have minded if he’d let me touch them for a while.
I was so caught up in the performance that I didn’t notice the others had left the viewing area until the band was taking their bows. One of the women I’d seen before came back up the stairs just as I was trying to figure out what to do with myself. “Come on,” she said. “If you want to get picked, right after the encore is the time.”
Get picked? I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I had some ideas. I followed her downstairs and toward the green room. We passed several doors with paper signs taped to them: VOCAL WARMUP ROOM, WARDROBE, BAND ONLY. She led me into a room that was unmarked.
About a dozen women were there—some drinking bottled water from a tray on a table, some applying fresh lipstick, some gossiping. There were a few folding chairs but most of them were standing. I took my own lipstick out of my bag to give myself some time to figure everything out.
“I’ve been with Samson before,” a woman with thick, black cat-eye liner was saying to another. “But he tweeted this morning that he’s got a cold so I don’t know if he’s partying tonight.”
“Last night of the tour? You better believe they’re all partying tonight,” the woman who’d come back to get me said. She had red hair and a thick studded belt wrapped twice around her hips. “I don’t care if he does have a cold. I wouldn’t mind being the bread on a Samson meat sandwich.” She gave the other woman a high five.
Okay, so it seemed as if “getting picked” in fact meant what I guessed, i.e., getting picked for sex.
I should go to the party, I told myself. I didn’t really belong here. But I was curious just how long I could keep it up. When would someone notice I didn’t belong?
A third woman joined them, downing a bottle of water. She looked like she had been dancing, her thin T-shirt sticking to her skin in places. “Is it true Mal is really rough?”
“Never been with Mal,” Cat-eye said with a shrug. “But you figure with all the bondage and stuff in their videos at least one of them has to be mondo kinky.”
That would be Axel, I thought, smiling to myself. Axel who was so kinky he had even brought out my sister’s kinky side. I decided to see if I could keep up playing the wild child character. “What’ve you heard about Mal?”
The woman who had brought me downstairs shrugged. “I saw them in Indianapolis with a friend. She said he’s huge.”
“Pictures or it didn’t happen,” I snapped, and several of the women burst out laughing.
“Yeah, no pictures but she did have trouble walking the next day,” she said, which caused even more laughter.
A roadie came in then and everyone quieted down instantly. H
e was a lean guy with a shaved head and a slouch. He had a flashlight in one hand but it wasn’t on. “Okay, pussycats,” he said. “Mal’s ready.”
No one moved.
“Are you seriously telling me none of you is into the kinky shit?”
“I am,” I said, starting to raise my hand like I was in grammar school, then thinking, wild child wouldn’t do that. I ended it with a snap of my fingers.
“Great. Come with me.”
I followed him farther down the hall, past several more doorways, until we came to one that had a paper sign taped to it that read: KENNEALLY, GUITAR. The roadie took out a Sharpie from his pocket, added the words DO NOT DISTURB to the bottom, and then said, “Okay, honey, go on in. And be careful.”
I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant by that but I opened the door, slipped through, and closed it behind me, with no idea what I was going to see on the other side.
What I saw was Mal Kenneally, leaning back on a couch that had been covered with a batik-print cloth. The whole room had been hung with patterned fabrics so that it looked like laundry day at a pasha’s harem, and lush, exotic-sounding music was playing from somewhere. A woman was raking her long red nails through his hair, spreading it out behind him like the glossy black wing of some legendary raven. He was wearing leather pants and nothing else.
His opened his eyes when he realized I had come into the room and murmured something to the woman, who patted him on the shoulder and then quickly left, giving me a cursory glance right before she exited.
I reminded myself I wasn’t here to play demure, good-girl Gwen. I put my hands on my hips and announced, “They told me you like to play with fire.” I tossed my flame-red hair for emphasis.
He let his eyes travel up and down me slowly, as if he were drinking in every detail, from my black lambskin boots up the fishnet stockings to my denim cutoff shorts, tank top, and fake tattoos. (Well, I had one real tattoo, but that one he couldn’t see.)
His voice was low. “The question, my dear, is whether you like to play with fire.”
“I’m game,” I said, thrusting my chin into the air.
His smile warmed slowly. “Are you? I’m not your typical rock star lay.”
“I’m not your typical groupie,” I answered. Well, that was certainly the truth. Maybe too close to the truth? My heart rate sped up as I worried he might see through my ruse. That would be humiliating.
Just how far are you going to let this go? A little voice in the back of my head was asking. You can chicken out anytime, I told myself. I decided I’d leave as soon as he got too rough. If he grabbed me or manhandled me, I’d tell him it wasn’t my thing and walk out. Otherwise, I figured I’d play along and see what happened. Wild child, I thought to myself. Wild child.
“Lose the shorts,” he said.
