LADIES OF THE ROAD

Let’s be honest. You only give a shit about three things in life. And I’ve told you about the drugs and the rock n’ roll. Yeah, I owe you some stories. Fuck it, here goes.

The first one was after the Cleveland show, third date of the tour. It smelled like a sewer, gray gray town and all that, gets brutal when fall hits. Big tits, crazy red wig, must have been almost my height, all legs and arms and smile and satin pants. I noticed the red hair, couldn’t miss it, like a fire on top of her head, even in the dark outside the bus when the guys in the band said hey babes, wanna party with us in the bus, don’t be scared, you can trust us, we’re the band and all the bullshit those guys get to saying after a dozen beers and two dozen songs, even then the crimson flame lit through my years and I smiled at her and her friends. They was out to meet the boys in the band. The guys and the girls and me all sat in the bus and passed around the bong and cracked open some more beers ‘cause, well, we always had a few beers on ice back there, and rock and roll will never die.

So I sat next to her when I closed the door, never one to bitch out loud but still hating the goddamned north and its wind. The nights got colder, too, especially for boys from Florida, cold as hell. So I sat down next to her and started talking to her, ‘cause shit, I’d been on the road for a week already at that point, and she looked damned good in those sheer black pants. By any chance are you a dancer? I asked. Not professionally, she said, but I’ve been studying Haitian dance, and then I realized she looked a lot like Tori Amos, same mouth I guess. Haitian? Yeah, like from Haiti, she said, they have dances to all their gods, there’s well over a hundred of them, I already know the warrior dance and some others, it’s all very rhythmic. I don’t know how I knew she was a dancer, guess it was the long limbs. A few girls in my high school had been dancers, starved themselves and all that shit, they just seemed like chicks made totally of arms and legs. She was sort of the same, arms legs and red red hair.

Oh yeah, the bus. The record label fronted the guys a shitload of money after the first album took off so well, so their management got them a really nice bus, huge, room to load all the equipment underneath and sleep on the bunks. Bud and I, Bud was the driver and soundman and I was the roadie and guitar tech, we slept in there too, which was cool ‘cause the six of us partied a lot and let the good times roll. Saved money for flights but having the bus meant we had to drive everywhere they played, including the Phoenix show and the dates in Seattle. So the bunks were all up above and there were padded benches all around where we’d sit and drink (except Bud on driving days) and sometimes screw. The guys kept the weed and beer in the benches, the tops lifted up and there were coolers underneath, and put up some posters: Jane’s Addiction, a map of the U.S., a Dali I took from my dorm room when I ditched school.

It was a little cramped, and that night a bunch of groupies made it plenty cramped, but after a while two of the guys, Dave and Mason, took their girls up the bunks and made some more room for the rest of us, us being myself and Bud and Ian and Syd and four girls, including the one in the red wig. At least I think it was a wig. We didn’t really have to worry much about privacy, on account of the music that was always playing and all the smoke and plus all the guys had been friends for so long that no one gave a shit.

How does the warrior dance go, I asked her. I can’t show you in here, I’d bump into everyone she said, so we went outside, just catching a glimpse of one of the girls taking off her shirt in Dave’s bed before the door shut. The wind tore through my old shitty Army jacket like I was standing there buck-naked. She didn’t seem to mind, guess the fire on her head kept her warm. She seemed a little drunk too, or maybe just confused. We could still hear the beat of the music inside, it was either Ice Cube or NWA, some old rap that Bud put on, and she started doing the warrior dance, damned near one of the most fucked up things I’d even seen. She thrust her fists out like punches and kicked, this grimace on her face like she was about to shit those tight satin pants, and she sort of rotated while flailing her limbs out. I couldn’t imitate it if you paid me, but it made the cold a bit less harsh and I found myself smiling. I’m not prone to smiling.

That’s a pretty fucked up dance, I said, good shit. Then I walked up to her and kissed her and we went back into the bus. And that’s how it started, right there. The lady of the road and I took the seat closest to the door, everyone else seemed in various states of undress but with the lights off and the smoke and Ice Cube yelling in my ear about his gat I couldn’t have told you what was going on in that room. So things went according to plan, at least according to how things tend to go when two drunk people that don’t know each other are getting busy in a tour bus, except for two things: once she made me stop so she could feel my shoulders, and once, right near the end, she told me she wanted me to rape her. I wanted to ask how I could rape her if I was already inside her but shit, I wasn’t sure if I’d heard her right and that’s not the kind of thing you want to hear wrong. I told Bud about it the next morning and he said Yeah that sure is fucked up, and I’d have to agree with him, but I gotta wonder why strange shit always happens to me.

When I was younger, seems like I’m always looking back in time to explain shit to you, ah well, when I was younger I used to think that the drama chicks all fucked or the cheerleaders or the frat party chicks, but no, it’s the rock and roll women that really put out. Who knows why? But I’ll take it, and you would too. Wouldn’t you?