by Willow Sears
There is no romance going on inside the helicopter. For the most part Cas just stares out the window, shaking his head, muttering what a fucking shame it all is. It’s like the bassist has unfairly caught some tropical disease, or contracted cancer. It isn’t just those particular drugs either, supplied by someone less trustworthy than the Magic Man, although that was the trigger. It’s all the drugs. It’s the relentless partying, the offsetting of one downer with another upper, the refusal to sleep and face missing even a second of the good times. The blood pressure is always so high. So, how many of them will change their ways after this I wonder? None, I bet. The first thing Cas does when he steps out of the helicopter is light a cigarette.
Sindee and I don’t go to the hospital. We have to make our way to our latest hotel by public transport and cab. It’s weird having to do such things through one’s own initiative. I feel strangely out of place and vulnerable back in the real world. We have to borrow money just to travel at all. When we finally join up with our lot we find out that this is the third time in the last two years that the bassist has ended up in hospital through drug misuse. When he joined the band he didn’t even smoke. The mood is sombre but the All Stars guys are saying it was something they feared was coming. They had warned him he had to rein it in.
I can tell they are all going to get wasted tonight. They will do it to honour him or help them forget. The irony will be beyond them all. It’s just something else that needs blotting out. Sindee is looking anxiously at her watch every five minutes, hoping Cas will turn up with information. It’s not the news she is particularly waiting on; she just wants to see the singer before we leave. Gigs have been cancelled for the Coliseum All Stars but our show goes on. There is much hushed chatter about the logistics of how to get us and our gear to the next venue.
“I told you not to trash our bloody van!” says our hideously-shirted manager, as if that crappy death-trap would still be mobile now regardless of this.
There is other talk too, now that our gigs are being mentioned and drinks are going down throats. It is of who can replace the bassist and how soon. You’d think such things would be far from their minds but no. It was his fault. It’s not said but they are all thinking it. He knew he had to stay in a condition whereby he could still play every show. He is neither their songwriter nor their front man. He doesn’t do the guitar solos. He is just a bassist and thus essentially expendable. Their band does not end with him. Even if his role was more critical it would still be the same. Bands are a name, a company. If one employee leaves or cannot continue in their post you get another in to replace them. If he makes a full recovery, fine. But they can’t wait for that to happen. It seems heartless but then if I accidentally kicked Russell to death tonight, would I be on the next plane home weeping about how the tour had come to such a sad and sudden end, or would I be instantly placing a ‘Non-Stupid Drummer Required’ ad in Melody Maker?
“I could step in for you,” suggests Vinny, seeing dollar signs and not caring about the hole he would leave in our line-up.
“The fuck you could,” spits the All Stars’ singer.
It is a muted couple of weeks. The All Stars are withdrawn, closing ranks whilst they mull next moves. The drinking still goes on but it’s done in a morose atmosphere rather than a party one. There is an End of Days feel to it but you can tell it is boring them. They want the situation resolved one way or another so they can get back to how they were. They are all still here which means they don’t want to cancel the tour. We have all moved on from Holland, leaving their bandmate behind, as if the schedule is to be fulfilled. Thunderhed, meanwhile, are at the chateau and we barely see them. Cas and Sindee haven’t swapped phone numbers. It was a bit early in their budding relationship for this, and would it ever be sensible for a married man to do such things? It is obvious Sindee now wishes that they had.
She is missing him like crazy. She doesn’t go on about it but you can see it written all over her. I had this down as being the watershed moment, when her patience and commitment would be stretched beyond tolerance. This, I thought, would show how much for him was simple lust rather than deeper feelings. I thought she would be back to her old ways, knowing Cas was miles away and showing no signs of trying to see her – although it hasn’t helped that we’ve moved from our hotel near the hospital to a whole different country. To my surprise she stayed relatively celibate.
Instead she played with herself a lot – a couple of times right in front of me, as if trying to force my hand. She did it nastily too, and ordered me to take pictures, since what else was I here for? She is quite destructive in these moods. The self-effacing humour turns to barbed sarcasm. She sets fire to things with her lighter and throws other things out of windows. You see the little demon inside her that she is unable to exorcise, when most of the time, despite her appearance and stage persona, she is actually rather sweet. What she didn’t do, even with this destructive side always so near the surface, was have sex with a man. Only once did she go out intent on bringing someone back to her room and that turned out to be a waitress.
“She looks a bit like you,” she idly said. I couldn’t see it really. The hair was the same but I didn’t particularly see it in the face. She had a curvy behind for sure – bigger than mine in those tight black leggings. Sindee took her to a club after her shift, leaving me to fend for myself. Their lovemaking later seemed deliberately loud – in fact it didn’t sound like any love was being made at all. Judging from the noises coming through the paper-thin walls, I think Sindee might have done naughty things to this girl’s backside, and rather hard too. This is not something in her usual repertoire so I suspect she knew I could hear.
When, as expected, her craving for engorged male sex organs did rear its head she managed to counter it, taking me to a gay club and after many drinks paying two muscular dancers to suck each other off in one of the private rooms. It was a spectacle to behold and a night of tips: fatly swollen purple ones teased; other ones paid; and ones on technique duly noted. She didn’t ask to get involved – something I imagine that took all of her willpower. Privately I had rather scorned her feelings for Cas, since they had to be lust-based due to the little time they spent alone. But was it really any different from those first times I saw Elowen? When the chemistry is right it can be instant. This hiatus in Sindee’s burgeoning relationship with Cas must therefore have ached her deeply. I think it told in her performances.
Just when it might have caused more serious ructions, a few things happened to change everything. Firstly, the patient was discharged, to be sent home to the States. News was that results looked generally positive. Secondly, the All Star’s acquired themselves a fill-in bassist – the grizzled Eddie Sagan of Wrath’s Child, no less – and seemed raring to get back to their shows, in honour of the missing bandmate, who apparently wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. Lastly, the biggest surprise of all, Honey Casanove upped sticks and flew home too. She was pregnant – a week off the end of her first trimester. A fortnight earlier I had seen her in a bikini and sarong and seen no signs. She had apparently come on tour in this state but only found out once here. This explained her good behaviour drink-wise in stark contrast to the rumours, which I thought was purely so that she could monitor her husband more effectively. She had stayed with him as long as possible, doubtless worried who might get their claws into him, but the episode with the bassist had been the final straw. This was no environment in which to safely carry a child.
How did we find this out? Cas told us – or rather he told Sindee. With the missus safely taking her place in first class and the black beauty that is Mutha One barely on the airport helipad long enough to be refuelled, Cas was airborne again, heading our way for a clandestine meeting. He knew a guy who knew a very wealthy German record producer who had somewhere close by us to land. He contacted our hotel, or rather Bag Man did, and arranged for a limo with blacked-out windows to come and collect us two foxy ladies. We had been kicking about the hotel ba
r, bored as ever. Russell had been loudly talking about shagging women and I had been seriously considering instigating a game of Pin the Fist on the Drummer’s Face.
The concierge discretely got us out of there and put us in the limo. We got in without even knowing where we were going – that’s how bored we were at the time. If ever you want to people-traffic either of us without trouble, then just send us a limo with chilled champagne waiting inside. We drove up to the snazzy pad of the record producer and there stood a hero in cowboy boots. Odd, I felt quite a flutter on seeing him, so Lord knows what somersaults Sindee’s belly was turning. He took her off to chat, putting me in the hands of the record producer, who wore a style so bad I almost collapsed. He addressed me in accented English: “I’m gay before you sink about asking to fuck me.”
“So am I now,” I replied, recoiling from his moustache and truly horrible leather leg-wear. I barely had time to relieve myself in his luxury relieving room, complete with toilet that had sensor pads beneath the seat so that Mozart was piped in the second you sat down. It also flushed when you clapped your hands, so that you wouldn’t have to dirty yourself touching buttons (but clapping is so tiresome – I must get a servant to do it for me next time). Before I could even start my coffee Sindee was back and beckoning me to join her. Mutha One swooped low over our heads seconds later, whisking Cas back to the chateau before people started to wonder where he was.
“So what did he say to you?” I asked, trying not to burp from the champagne bubbles as we swept hotel-wards through the quiet back roads. Not much, by all accounts. He told her of the reasons surrounding his wife’s departure and very little else. There was nothing intimated by this, certainly no declarations of undying love towards my friend. Of course I wasn’t there to witness this, I was off applauding toilets, but I have no reason to think Sindee is withholding information. Cas simply being there quite probably told her all she needed to know. Perhaps he couldn’t bear to miss her for one more day. Maybe he was hoping to give her a silent message to remain chaste and wait for him now the coast was clear. Whatever, my fanciful estimated total cost for this frivolous romanticism: one billion US dollars – taken out of petty cash, no doubt.
Sindee is happy. Her heart can start beating again, as fast as it likes. She doesn’t seem bothered that Cas is set to become a father. Something in his face must have told her that this was no bar to their relationship developing towards the very naughty. I shouldn’t be prepared to help sponsor it and record it for posterity, but then Honey would have brazenly cheated with me given a chance. She would happily have bedded me knowing her husband’s child was growing inside her. People here are playing by rules I don’t begin to understand. And will I miss Mrs Casanove? There is something inside me akin to disappointment but a sordid affair is about to begin and I’m to be party to it, so maybe it’s just that. However, there goes my spanking!
We arrive back at the hotel an hour before we need to head off to tonight’s venue. The rest of the band are still slouching there, looking clueless.
“Where the fuck have you been?” asks Russell, apparently annoyed. He hates that people might be having any kind of fun when he isn’t, but hasn’t got the wits to think up anything to entertain himself.
“Trying to hire a hit-man,” I reply. “We hear there’s one local who specialises in nosy-bastard percussionists.”
“Yeah, well we’ve been stuck here.”
“Russell, the exit is that way,” I say, looking incredulous. “It’s not like you’re too famous to go out, and you might have noticed that they don’t arrest people here for having dreadful facial hair. This is Berlin – one of the cultural centres of Europe. There is a museum barely a quarter of a mile down the street.”
“A quarter of a mile? Do I look like I’m wearing fucking roller skates? And who the hell wants to go to a museum? I don’t want to see our own old shit let alone some other country’s old shit. There is a reason our ancestors buried all that shit – because it’s shit!”
This is what we have to put up with, daily.
“Why not go to a bar?” suggests Sindee, who is still looking very chipper.
“I don’t want to go to a bar. I’m in a fucking bar! Where the hell are all the women? Has no one told the bitches of Berlin which hotel we are staying in?”
He’s sore because the All Stars are off somewhere practising with new man Eddie, and it’s them that attract all the groupies that Russell feeds off. Sat beside me, somewhere under that hair of his, guitarist Ben sighs and rolls his eyes. He is looking more blank and unhappy than usual. If he ever spoke, I think he’d tell us he was close to breaking point. Being stuck with just Russell and Vinny can only accelerate this process. I fear he might find this happening more frequently from now on with Honey out the way. Sindee wears a smug, bigger fish to fry expression, if such a one is possible. I take pity on poor Ben, who doesn’t deserve bandmates like this, and ask if he wants a game of backgammon.
“Fuck backgammon – let’s fuck!” declares Sindee, grabbing me by the hand and pulling me out of there.
“Lesbos!” calls out an even more disgruntled Russell as we depart upstairs. In the room Sindee unzips her ankle boots and then peels off her tight jeans. She has a tiny G-string on beneath. That perky bum of hers looks very smooth.
“What are you doing?” I ask, somewhat panicked as she pushes me back and lands on top of me on the bed.
“I need sex,” she says. “I thought I could use your leg.”
She is already jokingly grinding her crotch against my thigh, holding me by the wrists whilst looking down with a mischievous smile, threatening to kiss me.
“I’m not going to be your humping post,” I say. She rises up onto her knees, shuffling up me to pin my arms down either side of my head. Her crotch is dangerously close to my mouth. The fabric is tight against it, defining what’s beneath. I could throw her aside but I don’t. I give her my best nonchalant look, even though inside I’m anything but.
“Sit on my face while I do it then,” she says. She’s joking but she isn’t.
“I’m not sitting on anyone’s face ever,” I reply, trying to keep my cool. Her expression doesn’t change. She peels off her top and unclips her bra with me still pinned and supposedly helpless.
“Suck my tits while I do it then.”
I am momentarily mute. I had potential answers in my head but they were waylaid by thought of those nipples of hers with the little rings through them, always slightly distended because of this. She quickly takes my silence as a yes. She dismounts and bounces down onto the bed beside me on her back, throwing her thighs apart. Her eyes close but the grin stays. Her hand instantly slides down her bare belly and inside the cotton of her knickers, and she sighs and smiles wider.
“Please do it,” she says, seizing the moment. And so I do. She has broken me. I move down the bed and lean over her. I do as she asks and she lets out a sigh as my mouth closes over her. I hold each breast in turn and use my tongue and my lips upon them. I bite upon the metal rings and tug gently. She breathes loud and deep, gasping, her fingers busy, no signs of bashfulness. She writhes next to me and I increase my suction as her climax gathers. When she comes I take my lips from her and pinch both nipples hard.
“God, I love you,” she breathes, and I know she has been thinking about Cas.
Chapter Eleven
Purchasing Power
Sindee killed it last night. It was as good a show as she has given. Smiles were back on faces and groupies were back in the hotel. The All Stars were brilliant too; a seamless transition of bassists. Tonight Thunderhed rejoin the tour and it is bigger venues and festivals from here on in. My friend’s good mood continues this morning. She impertinently squeezes my backside three times in quick succession and has me slapping her hands away.
“You aren’t going to rush into things, are you?” I say.
She doesn’t for one second think I mean things between me and her.
“He’s a married man,�
�� she replies, but her face tells me this doesn’t count for damn-diddly.
I wonder how Cas is going to play this. Now the coast is clear his bluff might be called, but this is a man who made a whistle-stop visit to Europe not long after his wedding day, just to seek out a porn actress he fancied. He has a weirdly romantic way about him so I don’t imagine it will be an instant jumping of my friend’s bones. I will watch for signs of wooing. I’ve got my feet up on the low table and I’m sipping coffee – real rock and roll stuff. Ben has popped off for something and left his lyrics book on the seat. He is very precious about anyone seeing this so he must trust me – the fool! I lean across and sneak a look. It’s all standard shite: ‘Black magic baby gonna tear down my soul’, and so forth, but then as I riffle absent-mindedly through, I notice at the back there are attempts at far more poetic stuff. Some is not bad at all, but you can’t see Sindee belting these lyrics out between bouts of head-banging. I can hear Russell turning the air blue and questioning Ben’s sexuality if any of these lines tried to make it into a Death in Venus song. I wonder, therefore, what he plans to do with them.
The concierge approaches and informs Sindee that a car is waiting for her outside. It could be the people-traffickers again but she’s straight out of her seat with a “Woo-hoo!” She does a little hip-thrusting dance with fists clenched, perhaps more resonant of a Beyonce video than a heavy metal performance. The grin is massive.
“So long, suckers!” she cries. “Mowdy!”
“What the fuck?” gripes a bitter Russell, turning up at that moment with his first beer of the day in hand.
“Oh, go visit a museum, Russell, you sperm-donut!” says Sindee, and speeds me out of there. Poor Ben. When he returns he is going to find himself marooned with Beavis and Butthead once more. I can see more angst-ridden lyrics being secretly penned in the back of that notebook.