Secret rock tonight. They are off the fucking charts. If they’re not signed in a week, I will eat my Tube Screamer. Toby has stripped naked and is playing in nothing but his guitar and combat boots, and he’s covered with stickers (with a Stars on the Floor sticker prominently displayed across his ass, and if a photo of that isn’t our next single cover, then fuck, we’re doing it all wrong). Everybody is dancing, everybody is jumping up and down to every song. They are on fire. The endorphins must be fueling Toby’s playing, his singing, because he is a monster on stage tonight.
The show keeps this unrelenting pace of awesome when Vampires and Assassins take the stage. It’s like they just feed right off of the crazy energy from Toby’s kidney stone ordeal and I think, shit, we should just move to Baltimore after we graduate. Fuck New York, fuck Philadelphia. I know that the Baltimore scene has the same problem we have—they’re too close to DC for anyone else in the country to give much of a shit about what’s happening here—but there are so many good bands. It’s a treasure trove of heavy guitar angst down here.
I go to the bar for a drink and look at the clock. It’s midnight now, and Vampires and Assassins are near the tail end of their set and it’s so good I don’t want the night to end. But then I remember that I’ve got an exam in the morning, and I break out into a cold sweat. But hey, it’s only midnight. We’ll be packed up and on the road by one a.m. at the latest. I’ll be home by three thirty a.m., and if I sleep in the van, I’ll be able to do fine on the exam. No big deal.
I’ve forgotten all about the asshole from the audience until he spots me at the bar and stumbles over while I’m waiting to get change from the bartender. (Because this is a college bar that has no idea how to treat bands so they give us each only one drink ticket. One. And then they make us use it for bottled water. What even the fuck is that?) I haven’t had anything to drink since the one shot I had before massaging Toby’s kidney, I’m just ordering myself ginger ales. When the douchebag asks me what I’m drinking, I tell him I’m fine, thanks. Then he asks me my name and I tell him, reluctantly: Anaïs Nin. He tells me his and then proceeds to tell me that I’m really “hawt” and do I have a boyfriend? For fuck’s sake.
“I actually have three boyfriends,” I tell him as I see Travis making his way through the crowd to us. “Here comes one now.”
“You’re . . . are you, you know, banging all those guys in your band?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I am. All at the same time, sometimes.”
“No way.” His face lights up in admiration.
“Get lost, asshole,” Travis says as he comes and drapes his arm around my shoulders. “I don’t like the way you were eyeing my girl up there.”
“We were just talking,” he says. “I swear, I didn’t realize.”
“Yeah, well now you know,” he says. “Don’t be such a creep with the ladies, they don’t like it. It makes them uncomfortable.”
“That’s crazy that she’s, you know, with all of you guys at the same time,” he says. “Is that even legal?”
“It is in Jersey,” I say.
“Emmylou, you’re not supposed to go around telling anyone and everyone about our polygamous love,” he says, wagging his finger in my face. “You’ll end up in Rolling Stone again and we’ll have to move back to Utah.”
“You were in Rolling Stone?” the guy asks. “Can I have your autograph?”
Why are guys so fucking dumb? I don’t know. It’s more proof of how public education is failing in this country.
I sign a bar napkin Anaïs Nin and the guy leaves, obviously impressed, and I notice that as he does, Travis doesn’t take his arm away from my shoulders. He keeps it there and twirls a strand of my hair around his finger and I don’t want to move because I don’t want him to stop doing that. It makes me feel safe. I didn’t really feel unsafe before, not with all my friends around here and hell, tonight’s asshole was just one more in the train of shitheads with bad boundaries that I have to deal with doing what I do.