by Julie Cannon
“Well, look at you,” I said to the crowd. “Don’t you all look nice?” The crowd whooped and hollered again. The thrill of tens of thousands of people coming to see me would never get old. The excitement in the air was palpable, the sense of anticipation in what was to come so thick I swear I could pull a chunk out of the air and swallow it.
“How is everybody tonight?” Again, the sixty-plus thousand made noise, a lot of noise. “How did you like Black Mountain? Aren’t they awesome?” I referenced my opening act. They were good, very good, and would be headlining soon. Their lead singer had put the moves on me a few times, and after I told her I didn’t mix business with pleasure, she moved on to Cindy, a member of my band. From what I could determine, they were both enjoying themselves. Casual hookups on the road were common when traveling more than three hundred days a year on tour. It was hard, if not impossible, to maintain any type of normal relationship. But what did I know about normal?
My exposure to normality consisted of profanity-laced yelling with more than an occasional slap thrown in, no pun intended, just because. I don’t remember ever eating anything green, if you don’t include the mold I cut off the end of the bologna or the edge of the stale bread. My diet consisted of whatever was in the charity box that my brothers didn’t wolf down the day we got it. My father managed to trade our food stamps for the cheap beer that filled our fridge, and I don’t even want to think about what my mother traded for their cigarettes. I was about twelve when I stumbled upon my older sister getting up from her knees in front of the neighborhood drug dealer. She was high for the next three days. Strangers drifted in and out of our trailer, and more than once I had to crawl out the bedroom window to get away from something I intuitively knew would not be good. My brother mimicked our parents, and I escaped into music. Needless to say, “normal” has many different definitions.
I introduced my band, starting with my drummer. Russ had been with me when we started banging out noise in his grandmother’s barn. Russ could be a WWF wrestler if he wanted to. His arms were huge, and he reminded me of the cartoon character Popeye. He always wore sunglasses, even inside, not because he thought he was cool but because he had some type of eye condition that made them ultra-sensitive to light. Earlier that evening I’d asked him, “Where are we again?” All the cities we’d been in had run together lately.
“Chicago,” he answered, laughing. “Don’t worry. I’ll remind you.”
Chicago? How in the hell did we get to Chicago? “I appreciate that,” I said honestly. Normally I slept or had my hands on my guitar when we were on the road, so I had little frame of reference as to our location. The Tobin Parks Band traveled in a convoy of seven Class A motor coaches and three semi-trucks. I had my own coach. Russ and Jones, my bass player, shared, which was comical as Jones was also well over six feet but as skinny as Russ was not. Jones was a diabetic, and even though he was missing three fingers on his right hand from a childhood accident, he was the best in the business and I was lucky to have him. Charity, my second guitar, was all of five feet nothing, with wild curly red hair and blind in her right eye. She doubled up with Cindy, our only female backup singer. The other members of the band shared the remaining three coaches.
Introductions complete, the next five or six songs went flawlessly, and I chatted up the crowd for a few minutes between each. It gave me an opportunity to scope out my after-show-wind-down entertainment. One woman in the fifth or sixth row looked like she would rather be anywhere other than here. She had shoulder-length blond hair and, even though it was hard to tell with this lighting, looked to be in her early thirties. She was cute, but if she wasn’t interested in my music enough to dance to it, she wasn’t interested enough for me. When our eyes met she looked away. Her friend, on the other hand, was cute but very definitely straight.
A woman a few rows farther to the front was more than a little enthusiastic about our music. Her eye contact never wavered, which I’d always found very sexy. Shy or timid women weren’t for me. I didn’t have time or interest to persuade a woman to have sex with me. Seduction was not in my repertoire, and I don’t believe in it. I looked up the word once. According to the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, seduction is the act of persuading someone to have sex with you. Where is the persuasion in two people wanting to have sex with each other? A cross reference in the psychology dictionary defined seduction as enticing someone astray from right behavior. Well, in my experience, sex was definitely the right behavior.
Twenty minutes later, when Russ started his drum solo, I stepped to the side of the stage. “Fourth row, middle, blue tank top, white pants, dark hair,” I said to one of the roadies. It was his job to ask whoever I pointed out if they’d like to come backstage after the show. “Come backstage” was a euphemism for having sex with me. Rarely did the women say no.
It always took me several hours to come down from the adrenaline rush from the crowd, music, and backstage meet-and-greets. The days leading up to the show were filled with interviews and promo spots. After the show was always several hours of the obligatory glad-handing with sponsors and radio and music personalities and those who had won contests to have their picture taken with me. By the time that was over, my face hurt from smiling, my hand from shaking, and spots were blinking in front of my eyes from camera flash. The band wasn’t quite as in demand as I was, but they too were pretty thrashed by the time everyone left. Typically the show would end around ten, and I would get back to my coach after one. Life on the road was tough and the music industry fickle, but I was at the top and did everything possible to stay there as long as I could.
We closed the show, and two encores, four beers, and a hundred photos later, the blue shirt and white pants were on the floor in my dressing room, and the woman from the fourth row was writhing on the settee about to come. An hour later I was back in my coach showered and sliding under the covers. I didn’t do drugs, I even hated taking Advil, but I did use sex as my drug of choice to sleep. Usually I was dead to the world until the next mid-morning, but tonight I was still keyed up. I lasted only a few minutes before I gave up and pulled a robe over my nakedness and sprawled out on the couch.
My coach was designed so the driver area was separated from the living area by thick folding doors. Frank had been driving me since I could afford him. He was reliable, safe, and, most importantly, minded his own business. We were on the road again, the rhythmic vibration of the big tires rotating millions of times as the Tobin Parks entourage snaked across the interstate highway system in the middle of the night.
I plucked the strings on my guitar, a tune I’d been working on beginning to take shape. I pushed the record button on my phone. I’d write the actual music later, but for now the chords and rhythm were my main focus. I strummed the strings as the lines on the road passed in the dark.
I felt uncharacteristically unsettled tonight. The show was good, one of our better ones as a matter of fact, but the backstage obligatory meet-and-greets had become more than a little onerous. Too many people expecting a piece of me, including Miss White Pants.
She was easy to please, but it took me longer than I expected to get into it, and maybe that was part of the problem. I felt like I was going through the motions and the motions had become repetitive and scripted. I almost said “Just forget it,” but the hit to my reputation and image would be ruined if she talked. It wasn’t her fault. She tried more than a few ways, but I knew what was or, more accurately, what wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t getting anywhere, and, tired of forcing something to happen, I just gave in and faked it.
Jeez, what was wrong with me lately? The grind of the road must be getting to me. I’d played over ninety gigs this tour and had another three months before it was over. Anyone who thinks going from one non-distinct city to another, day after day was glamorous and exciting had never done it. And they certainly had never done it for four years. Sure, I could afford to travel by plane, but that was another hassle I didn’t need or want. A private plane would eliminate mo
st of that, but then there were hotels, hotel food, and sleeping in a different bed every night. My coach was my home away from home and my getaway from the world, the hassles of notoriety and the pressures to be Tobin Parks. No one entered unless invited, and when they did they didn’t stay long, and I never, and I mean never, brought a woman inside. When I wasn’t on the road, my rig was parked and I lived in an obscure senior-citizen mobile-home park on the outskirts of Elk City, Oklahoma.
Everyone at the Hidden Acres Mobile and RV Resort knew who I was. I’d found this little oasis and had worked to get approval from the homeowners association so I could become a part-time resident. The residents valued their privacy as much as I and never told a soul Tobin Parks lived in lot 214. If they had, the paparazzi would have descended like a forty-year flood and never left.
My neighbor to my left, Mr. Justin, claimed to be a retired CIA operative. We shared morning coffee, watched sports on his sixty-inch TV, and drank more than an occasional beer. Mrs. Foster, whose forty-eight-foot ugly monstrosity occupied lot 213 across the street, was a fabulous cook and always had a pot of something delicious on her stove. She also had fourteen grandchildren and talked about them constantly. Thankfully they never came to visit when I was there, or my anonymity would go up in smoke.
I’d spend my days puttering around my little yard, trimming bushes and replanting flowers in the pots that lined my drive. Mr. Justin and Mrs. Foster would take turns watering and tending them until I got my exhausted butt back home. Thus was my life at Hidden Acres. It still surprised me that after swearing for years I’d live on the street before I’d ever live in a trailer park again, this little gem was where I felt most at home. In my little twenty-five-by-eighty-foot piece of paradise I also felt most like myself, whatever that means.
I don’t speak for other entertainers, but I think most of us are very different people while doing our jobs versus when we’re not. I know I am. My job is to entertain, and according to Thefreedictionary.com an entertainer is supposed To hold the attention of (someone) with something amusing or diverting. That is definitely my job, who I am cloaked in Tobin Parks. What comes with that comes with any job. Expectations, responsibilities, and definitely a pay-for-performance position. People pay to see me, and if I don’t give them what they want, they’ll take their money somewhere else. Thankfully a lot, and I mean a lot of people want to see me. But that won’t last and I know it. So I retreat to Hidden Acres to return to some sense of normality.
Mr. Justin and Mrs. Foster don’t treat me like a multi-millionaire celebrity. They expect me to keep my yard neat and tidy and my garbage contained. They expect me to abide by the rules of the park, join bingo in the rec room the Saturday nights I’m in town, and be a good neighbor. And I do. I live for the time I spend here, and lately I’m finding I want to be here more than on the road. Just a common, every day, twenty-five-year-old woman sitting on her deck in Hidden Acres. But, like most grown-ups, I have responsibilities. People depend on me for their livelihood and I can’t let them down. I really do love making music, sitting in the quiet of my coach in the middle of the night in the middle of God knows where telling stories through song. I pick up my guitar and start to pluck a few chords.
Chapter Three
“No.”
“You haven’t even heard the proposal, Kiersten.”
“It doesn’t matter. The answer is still no.”
“She’s perfect for us.”
“I don’t care if she’s Princess Diana or Mother Teresa. The answer is still the same. We do not need her, and we definitely do not want to be associated with her.” Good God, how many times did I have to say it? Not that I had to convince Daniel, my chief marketing officer, of anything. I was his boss, Kiersten Fellows, CEO of this company. My company. The company I started with eighteen thousand dollars and a dream. My sweat, tears, and sacrifice. My word was sometimes the first word, but it was always the last. And today, in this conversation, the word was no.
Daniel had stopped in my office twenty minutes ago, bringing two large cups of coffee from the McDonald’s down the street. JOLT offices were three blocks east of the fast-food giant and one block west of a twenty-four-hour gym. My office was on the sixth floor, offering me a fabulous view of the park across the street. I allowed myself one trip to Mickey D’s once a month and religiously went to the gym every day of the month except Sundays. That day I rode my bike along the twelve-mile path bordering Clearwater Lake, about twenty minutes from my house. Needless to say, I like to keep active. I’d spent too many years of sweat and tears to have it all recede to my hips and ass sitting behind a desk every day. I’d walk to work if I could, but twenty-two miles was, admittedly, a bit far. However, I had pedaled to the office on several occasions on a weekend when I needed to get caught up.
It was Tuesday, a week and a half after Courtney and I spent an action-packed evening with Tobin Parks, and my ears had finally stopped ringing. How could she be exposed to decibels that high every night? I thought about it for a minute before I remembered the speakers faced the audience and she had those things in her ears.
I wondered where she’d performed this past weekend. In the lobby of the auditorium, the vendors had hawked everything from key chains to magnets to multiple styles of T-shirts, one of which had the list of cities on her current tour. I’d noticed Chicago was sandwiched between Cincinnati and Michigan and wondered if her stop in Michigan was at the annual women’s music festival. I think I read somewhere that it had been a few days ago. Or maybe it was next month. I wasn’t interested so I didn’t pay attention. For someone like Tobin, that was akin to a kid in a candy store. Talk about tens of thousands of women to pick from. I wonder if she…
“You okay?” Daniel’s voice shocked me back to the here and now. I blinked a few times to focus. “Your face is flushed all of a sudden,” he stated, concern in his voice.
“Yes, I’m fine.” I wasn’t but would be in a second, after I mind-slapped myself to pay attention. Daniel looked at me, the frown between his eyebrows the only lines on his otherwise smooth face. It made me uncomfortable that he’d seen my slip. I was always on, present in every conversation. At least I had been until ten days ago.
I couldn’t get Tobin Parks out of my mind. After her concert I’d gone home and spent the next hour reading dozens of headlines and articles about her. I’d spent the next fifteen minutes doing other, more personal things thinking about her.
“Kiersten?”
“What?” I snapped, more than my face feeling heat now.
“Tob—”
I interrupted him, my normally abundant patience rapidly disappearing. “Daniel, JOLT has an image, a brand, one that you and I have worked very hard to cultivate. You know how competitive the energy-drink market is. One wrong move, one small misstep, and we could find ourselves off the shelves and on an end cap at the dollar store. I will not let that happen. She has her own image, and it does not mirror ours.” My tone was harsher than normal, but I refused to budge on this, and the sooner Daniel accepted that fact the better.
“But she specifically asked for us.”
I hated when Daniel fell into trite reasoning. He was brilliant and fresh out of the country’s top marketing school when he came to work for me. That was five years and at least eight boyfriends ago. He was well over six feet tall, with blond hair and the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen. His skin was tanned from his latest vacation, and he had the glow of new love.
“So because she wants us we should want her? What is this, fifth grade?” I asked a little too harshly. I hadn’t been sleeping well and my ankle was throbbing. I’d broken it two years ago playing rugby and had aggravated it in a game last week. I recognized the look on his face and shut him down before he had a chance to get started. “That’s final, Daniel. JOLT is not going to sponsor the Tobin Parks tour.”
*
Muttering under his breath, Daniel left my office. I sat down behind my desk, nudged my mouse, and my laptop came to life, the dr
aft of the speech I was writing filling the screen. I was the keynote speaker at the National Beverage and Container convention, this year being held in, of all places, Bozeman, Montana. Last year it was in Boston, the year before that here in Chicago, and next year it would be in Washington, DC. How in the hell did they choose Montana?
When I was asked to speak, I readily accepted. JOLT was a sponsoring member of the trade group and had been since we first opened our doors twelve years ago. For many years I didn’t have money for lunch, but I knew the importance of networking, contacts, and allies. My speech would bore anyone that wasn’t in the industry, but I was proud of what I’d written so far. My final draft was pretty much complete. I just needed to add a few closing remarks, send it over to Angela, the head of communications for her editing magic, and I’d be done.
I had a great team helping me make JOLT successful. In addition to Angela, who I’d recruited away from Google, there was my assistant Bea Sanderson, a sixty-something woman with seven kids and nineteen grandchildren, who ran my office and my life like an army boot camp. I knew where I was supposed to be when and had everything I needed two days before every meeting. She renewed my season tickets at the symphony, my box seats for the White Sox, picked up my clothes from the cleaners, got me to the dentist twice a year and the gynecologist annually.
In a meeting earlier this morning, Randi, my CFO, had shared that our sales for this year were projected to be almost double what they were two years ago, and millions of dollars from year one. Some days I had a hard time keeping my eyes off Randi’s legs when she wore short skirts, but that was neither here nor there.
I never mixed business with pleasure. Never had, never been tempted, and never would. Not only was that bad business, but it was also playing Russian roulette. I would never do anything to jeopardize my professional credibility or the success of JOLT. It was my baby, my company, and hundreds, if not thousands of people depended on it. From the charities we supported to our employees, distributors, and stock boys, the success or failure of JOLT impacted many more lives than just mine. But I could still appreciate a good-looking pair of legs, and Randi had a pair that was outstanding. I wonder if she…
