room cot with an IV full of pain meds. Maybe.
“What the hell?” Travis asks when he comes into the gear room. Jimmy, the drummer for the Corporate Secret, is on the floor, karate-chopping the crap out of Toby’s back now.
“Toby is giving birth to triplets through his penis,” Cole explains.
“Joey, go grab the blanket out of the van,” Travis says.
“Hopefully he’ll pass it soon,” Rex says. “But would you guys mind going on first? I know we were going to sandwich you in the middle, but I don’t think Toby will be ready by then.”
We look down at Toby, his face streaked with tears and dirt as he moans in agony, curled up in the fetal position, gnawing on Jimmy’s stick case. No, I don’t think he’s going to be ready to go on for a while.
“I could pass the fucking thing on stage,” he groans. “On the Goddamned air!”
“We’ll go on first,” I say. “Is there anything else we can do?”
“Yeah, actually,” Rex says. “While I go get the whiskey, maybe you guys can take turns punching him in the kidney.”
“What the fuck?” Cole says.
“No, really, it works,” Rex says. “Helps break it up or something, and it helps with the pain, too. If Jimmy keeps going like that, he’ll wear his arms out before our set. Maybe we can all take shifts or something?”
“Yeah, of course,” Travis says.
“Kill me kill me kill me you ugly bastard motherfuckers,” Toby wails and grabs Jimmy by the shirt.
“Who’s up next?” Jimmy says. “I’m out.”
“I guess I’ll go,” Cole says, rolling up his sleeves.
Jesus.
I’ve been playing in bands since I was sixteen. I’ve played a lot of shows by this point, five years in, and I can tell you, I’ve never seen this. This right here is fucking surreal. Joey comes back with the blanket and we spread it out on the floor and roll Toby onto it, and it’s so fucking weird, I ask Joey to go get me a shot of whiskey, too, because the way Toby is crying, I mean sobbing, is pretty unnerving. Joey goes and gets us all shots. We all toast Toby for being a badass and then we get down to work, taking turns doing karate chops on Toby’s kidney. I’m still not convinced this method is medically sound, because after ninety minutes of this he hasn’t passed it, but we have to quit so we can get on the stage. Rex and Jimmy take over and ask us to extend our set if we need to. Then the guys from Vampires and Assassins show up in the middle of this, or the band of Johns and Brians, as we call them, since three of them are named John and the other two are named Brian. They take over kidney-punching duty for us so we can play.
The WJHU station manager greets us, and we get a nice little reminder, or a dressing-down, maybe, about how the show is being broadcast live, so to keep it clean, ha ha ha. Sure, dude. No worries. He’s in a bow tie and nothing at all like our folks at Rutgers, who know better than to even suggest such a thing because, derp, we’re professionals, we know this and we’re not idiots or lowlifes. But whatever. We’re not here to be a pain in anyone’s ass.
“So, I shouldn’t say, ‘Welcome all you motherfuckers’ on the air, then?” I ask.
“‘Where’s my cocksucking drink?’” Cole says. “Is that okay?”
“‘Any whores in the audience tonight?’” Joey says. “Is that FCC-approved?”
“Please forgive them,” Travis says. “They were raised in New Jersey.”
Now the guy laughs. Asshole.
We get our equipment set up on stage, and the place is already mobbed with people we’ve never seen who’ve been drinking all day at Spring Fair, and I always love and hate this feeling because I have no idea if they’re going to love us or boo us off the stage. It’s thrilling like a potentially very awesome ride at an amusement park, you know, like “Final Death Drop” or something, the new one that hasn’t been around long enough for you to feel confident nobody will die on it. That’s what playing a show like this, on the air, feels like. Except we probably won’t die doing it. I mean, Toby is in the back now passing a kidney stone so I guess you never know what can happen at these things.
With new crowds, especially college crowds, loud, fast rules apply—so the set we play would fit