the mood to spread his love, everyone was invited.
We all were nailing serious tail, but I don’t think anybody but Dave had had a threesome.
But that was not unusual for Preach.
Or more, you know?
That night, I had one girl, he had two, three were in with Tim and Dave, tripping, and Tommy was fucking another one in what we would find out later was one of the girls’ dad’s waterbed.
And looking back, I knew Preacher was more into her than the two he had.
I also got why.
Kind of.
Now, again, it was the eighties. We’re talkin’ Jane Fonda workout videos and Jamie Lee Curtis in that movie Perfect and one-pieces making a comeback because the legs were cut so far up the hips, a girl had to shave.
And Lyla was not…
[Pause]
That.
I mean, there was a reason anorexia became prevalent during that decade and didn’t let go. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t good, but it was the way it was.
But Lyla was not that way.
Tits and ass.
A lot.
Of both.
And, from what I could tell that night, bad attitude.
But fuck, the longer the night wore on, Preacher couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
She’d do a lap to clean up ashtrays or beer bottles or whatever the fuck, and honest to Christ, he didn’t miss a step.
Not that first step.
She had what they now politically correctly, but also, it’s gotta be said, just plain correctly call curves.
Freddie Mercury called them fat-bottomed girls.
But man, she was pretty.
Lotsa hair.
Perfect skin.
You know, and a way about her.
It was part that attitude.
Part the mystery.
You know, tell a man, “don’t touch, you’ll get burned,” he’ll become obsessed with the fire. It’s just how it is.
She screamed don’t touch.
And Preacher, man…
Preacher could be obsessive.
In a big way.
But it was the eyes.
I gotta believe, and this would prove true, in a way, if it wasn’t Preach, it would be somebody. Another rock star. A photographer. A painter. Someone would fall in the muse of Lyla’s eyes.
But as you know, it was Preacher.
Eventually, my girl said she had some coke hidden in her purse.
We went in, did lines, she went down on me, I went down on her, we smoked a joint to mellow out, and then we banged.
When we were done, everyone was either passed out or boning. It was late, nearly morning, she said she had to go home, so she took me back to our motel.
We were staying in motels then. Shitty-ass ones, but we slept in beds.
Yeah, battle by battle, Tommy was winning the war.
We could only afford two rooms, though, and Dave, Tim, or Josh had to take turns sleeping on the floor unless one of them passed out in a bed another one was in.
This was because, most of the time, I shared a room with Preach and Tom always slept in the camper.
It just was what it was.
My band (at the time).
Preacher’s talent.
Though, a lot of the time, I’d end up in the other room or hanging with Tom in the camper because Preacher had company.
I thought for sure he was back at the party house tangled in girls.
I was looking forward to crashing and a shower, or the other way around.
So, when I opened the door to our room, I was not prepared for what I saw.
Not even close.
It didn’t rock my world.
It changed it.
After what I saw, it’d never be the same.
I’d never be the same.
And Preacher would never be the same.
Not again.
He had Lyla with him.
They were both on his bed, legs twined, and she was tall too, model tall. So, between the two of them, they had a lot of leg to twine.
Lyla’s head was on his chest, her arm around him so tight, it disappeared around his back because he was lying on it.
No shoes for either of them, but each fully clothed.
Preacher had both his arms around her.
She was asleep.
He wasn’t.
No lights, just the dawn coming in through the door I’d opened.
He looked at me when I was in the opened door, didn’t say a word, just shook his head.
He didn’t need to do that. I was already backing out.
I closed the door, hit the motel’s diner, ordered coffee and waited for the others to join me.
We did that by then, after every gig, no matter what we got up to.
We had breakfast together in a diner close to or in our motel, if it had one.
Just us six.
Tommy’s orders. He’d suss out the diner we’d meet at about ten seconds after we checked in to whatever motel we