by Sara Taylor
And it was.
I didn’t even have to throw up on anyone.
There’s a famous photo that was taken of us after this show. We’re all sweaty and dishevelled of course, because we’d just gotten offstage, but I love the photo anyway. Socks is giving the most insane leer — showing all his teeth, and his hair looks like a bunch of wet straw. Edgar has his arms folded and his chin up, like he’s all snobby or tough or something, which is hilarious. He’s glaring. Fern’s hair is half-covering her face and she’s grasping my hand in one of hers, holding the neck of her guitar off the floor with her other one. The one eye you can see looks dark and wet, like she’s been crying, but it’s only sweaty eyeliner running down her cheek. I’m staring directly at the camera, my eyes ringed with melted black makeup, my lipstick smeared across my chin. It looks like smeared blood coming out of my mouth. I remember I felt such a sense of accomplishment when this photo was taken. I remember that I was worried my hand was going to bleed onto Fern’s — I was sure the scabs on my palm had opened up during the show, and I couldn’t tell if my glove was wet with blood or with sweat or both.
This was the night Colostomy Hag signed a record deal with good ol’ Tom Manic, even though I disliked him. I guess I should add that it would be fair to say, as Edgar pointed out, that I pretty much disliked everyone we met, so my opinions couldn’t really be trusted.
FORTY-TWO
Everyone knows the horror stories of disappointment and swindling that come with the two words record deal. Some people get pissed when a band they like signs a deal, because it means they’ve sold out. And I guess there’s still some residual imagery that comes with it as well — rock stars wearing sunglasses, on inflatable mattresses floating in pools, drinking out of coconuts, getting wasted in hotel rooms, smashing glass tables, and the old stuffies at the record label chuckling and shaking their heads as they foot the bill — oh, those crazy rock stars.
Well, it isn’t like that anymore, at least as far as I know. You can’t trash a hotel room, because nobody wants to pay for your ass, because bands don’t really sell billions of albums anymore. This doesn’t mean that musicians are down-to-earth, humble folks who are just happy to play music. Oh, no, there’s plenty of ego and entitlement. It’s paired with a weird, panicky feeling, though. I think some of these clowns who get on labels end up confused — they really do believe that the poolside lifestyle still exists somewhere for them. They’d do better to stick to their basement cocaine parties, where they can truly feel they’re partying like rock stars. The whole “why be a small fish in a big pond when you can be the biggest douche in your neighbourhood” syndrome.
And of course you can do all the drugs you want and go to greasy parties and end up with a nosebleed, eating Vicodin, and depressed about your syphilis. But nobody’s going to spoon you till you feel better, because there’s someone better-looking than you who wants to party.
Is my bitterness showing? All of the things we saw with other bands were, of course, just background noise to the fact that getting on Recordead Records got us one step closer to being in the same room with DED. Who, I am willing to wager, were at one point the biggest douches in their neighbourhoods.
And I have to digress about Tom Manic too. Chest hair and woodpecker nose aside, he really did believe in Colostomy Hag and, from everything I can tell, we got a decent and fair deal from him. We didn’t have a manager. It was always Socks who stood at the helm of our business decision-making. But he never led us wrong, so we signed with Recordead for a three-album contract.
Scream into This ended up being released with all the songs we’d been playing for over a year. We’d already released it ourselves, of course, but Tom had us re-record it at a better studio. I scorned the whole thing — especially when the guy in the studio asked me if I wanted the lava lamp on — but the recordings do sound a hell of a lot better than our demos.
In case you don’t know — whatever a band does, the record label advances them the money. And then they recoup it. So when a band gets a chunk of money to do an album — paying for things like studio time, or a producer, et cetera — the label will get every penny back from record sales. Same with touring. It can get really complex, but let me just say that the band gets paid last. The label recoups, the sound guy gets paid, the bus driver gets paid, the merch person gets paid, everybody gets paid, and then whatever scraps are left, the band gets. That’s because it’s our investment. Besides, why should an artist need money for doing something they love doing?
We did some awesome photo shoots, and there were some just of me (one that made the cover of Smasher magazine of me holding a sword) and some of me and Fern, naturally. One photographer guy wanted both of us to wear these weird metal bikini things. Fern was pretty into the idea for some reason. It weirded me out. One minute she wasn’t talking, the next she was dolling up in that crap. I definitely wasn’t into it. There was nothing else for me to wear, so I ended up yanking this white sheer curtain off the window and wrapping myself in it like a shroud. Fern looked pretty good in that bikini, which is probably why she started showing up in all that “sexy women in rock” stuff. It’s weird though, because I’d get mentioned in that garbage too. I guess all you have to do, really, is be female and show up.
One photographer who contacted us was particularly cool. She had a lot of ideas for band pictures, and all of them were pretty awesome, but naturally I love the one that I had suggested the most: us doing a reenactment of Judith slaying Holofernes. It was amazing getting to physically act out those parts for the shots — Fern holding Socks down on a bed, me bringing up the knife, and Edgar holding a candle, looking on, like some sort of guard. Of course there is no guard in the original painting, and Socks isn’t anything like the Holofernes I’ve imagined, but I wore blue and Fern wore red and the image is dimly lit and the bed has long white curtains and the pictures are amazing.
So what if so many of these pictures end up being used now to illustrate the crimes Fern and I have committed? PROPHETIC, the headlines read, but in all honesty I don’t know how realistic killing anyone was to me at that time. I don’t know what was going on in Fern’s mind. I’d definitely had my share of fantasies, and there was a hate burning inside me that would creep up at night, crawl up my throat like bile, almost burning. And then I would turn around and pour it into another Colostomy Hag design or another song idea.
I guess I was walking a thin line then, between trying to forget what had happened — quash it and compress it into a tiny little box — and then giving in to that sick fury. I’d let myself feel it a little sometimes, and my vision would go blurry, and my chest would tighten, and I’d press my lips together hard to keep myself from screaming till I was hoarse. And, of course, I would dig my fingernails into my palm and focus on the sting, and that would bring everything back around into focus again.
FORTY-THREE
I woke up in the vibrating coffin, and panic overtook me for a moment. It was dark. Absolutely dark. My hands jerked up from under the blanket and slammed into the ceiling right above my face, but the noise was absorbed by the rhythmic thrumming that accompanied the vibrating and jerking.
I’m on the tour bus.
Reaching to my right, I pulled aside the black plastic curtain that ran along the side of my bunk and peered out into the unlit corridor. My eyes adjusted, partially helped by a thin strip of light that shone beneath the door that led to the front lounge. Across the aisle from me was Fern’s bunk, her curtain closed. Above her was Timmy — our tech, which is basically a fancy word for roadie — and his curtain was closed too. Beneath her was Edgar’s bunk, with the curtain open. I could make out the wadded mounds of his sheets. Beneath me was Socks, and above me was our tour manager, Toad, who also did our live sound.
Toad was squat and chubby, with a belly so formidable that it always peeped out from beneath whatever black band shirt he wore. His hair was long and his face was bloated
, with a crooked nose that had clearly been broken for him a few times. His face was actually froggy — to the point that when he said that he’d earned the nickname Toad for his prowess at Super Mario Kart, I’d actually opened my mouth to tell him what I considered to be the more likely truth. Luckily, I guess, I’d immediately received warning looks from all three of my wonderful bandmates.
It had become sort of a morning routine, this peeking out of my bunk to see who was up and who was still asleep. This was only the beginning of the second week of tour, but a few times the first week it had only been me and Timmy awake for a while in the front lounge. Roger, our grey-haired and grandfatherly bus driver, was pretty decent at making conversation while he drove, but I didn’t really like being around Timmy. He was a quiet guy and just way too into gear and instruments. He and Edgar could talk for hours, but it was awkward with just the two of us.
I lay lazily in my bunk, staring into that corridor, listening to the engine, somewhat lulled by the motion. The first few nights on the bus had been horrible. I’d alternated between lying awake, paralyzed with fear that we were either currently or about to be driving directly off a cliff, and being woken up every few minutes by the rocking and lurching and noise. I was becoming accustomed to it, but that was probably just out of desperation.
After the re-release of the album on Recordead Records, we’d done a few more shows around the area, a lot of promotion and interviews, and after a few weeks, the label wanted us to go out and promote the album. We were on tour with Gurgol — which was insane — and the headliner, Ripsawdomy. We were the third band on the bill, but it was an incredible tour to be on. We’d gotten the bus — paid for by good ol’ Tom — and, with our laminates coolly worn on our hips, we tried to look like we knew what we were doing. We had toured before, of course, in the U.K., but the first morning of this tour, when I’d looked out the window into the parking lot of the venue at all the rough-looking, long-haired dudes milling around smoking, I had felt like the most incredible novice.
Ripsawdomy was not a band I was very familiar with. I’d heard of them, but I’d never gotten into them. They were four immense guys — one of them had to be almost seven feet tall — all with long hair and very dour expressions. They mainly stayed on their bus, from what I could tell, which was fine by me. The singer looked old and grizzled, and the younger guys didn’t appear to have any interest in us at all.
But being with Gurgol — now that was fucking exciting. We hadn’t really talked to them, but because we were coming offstage when they were going on, we’d had a few small interactions. It was amazing to be on tour with Marie-Lise and see her every day. I’d watch her in the mornings, when the three tour buses were all parked at the venue. She came off her tour bus with a little white dog and she’d walk it around the parking lot, sometimes drinking coffee from a travel mug. Once or twice I’d seen their singer, Josh, take the dog out in the mornings, or one of the other guys. I would watch from the front lounge windows, grateful that they were tinted so no one would know what a creepy fucker I was being.
At the side of stage in between sets, I’d passed Marie-Lise a few times and she always smiled politely, clearly distracted, but looking so damn gorgeous and put together. When Fern and I had met her at that café she’d looked so cute and casual in her jeans, but to see her before a show, in her stage clothes, was just awesome. I’d seen her so many times in videos and photographs, but it was nothing compared to the real thing, and close up. Her hair was still white, without a trace of the yellowy orange that so often haunts people who bleach their hair — Fern included. Her makeup was perfect, her skin powdered as pale as her hair, her false eyelashes with little gems on them, her perfect red lips, and her amazing outfits. She was alternating between three dresses on this tour — three identical dresses in different colours, and black stockings. It was all I could do not to stare at her every time I saw her, to just walk past all casual.
Fern had curled her hair and put bright red streaks into it. I was sure it was so that she would not look so obviously like she was trying to copy Marie-Lise. I liked the look. It was as if she’d grabbed clumps of her hair with bloody hands and just wrenched her fingers through the strands.
I don’t know if I’d expected Marie-Lise to recognize us from that day in the café, but it didn’t seem like she did. On the first day of tour, she and the other guys from Gurgol had said hello to us briefly, which was clearly their attempt to be nice and friendly. On tour people tend to only care about their own band. Well, I guess that’s true in life, as well. At least they’d made the gesture. Here we were at the beginning of the second week and no one from Ripsawdomy had said anything to us yet. But, I mean, it wasn’t like we were going out of our way either.
The shows had been good so far. We were easily playing in front of a thousand people a night, which were the biggest crowds for us yet. I’d seen a few of our T-shirts here and there, but based on the fact that pretty much everyone in the crowd was tall, long haired, scowling, and basically looked exactly like the guys from Ripsawdomy — it was a Ripsawdomy crowd. Some nights I’d noticed people watching us from the side of stage: some of the guys from Gurgol, maybe one or two of the Ripsawdomy guys, but I didn’t want to gawk, so I wasn’t sure. None of them watched the whole set, but I have to admit that when I knew they were watching, I tried to look extra awesome. We all felt like pros. Timmy would run onstage if any problems came up, we got a soundcheck every day (it was Gurgol who didn’t — our gear was set up last, as we were first to play) and when we were done, we’d go relax on our tour bus, for god’s sake. Timmy, Toad, and the guys would go have a drink or something, or we’d stand side of stage and watch the other bands. When the night was over, we’d get on the bus and sleep or watch a movie or whatever. If the next venue was really far, Roger would drive through the night with the other two buses, like a fleet. If it wasn’t so bad, he’d stay at the hotel and arrive early in the morning for the drive. It was starting to feel like a real tour.
I walked out into the front lounge, blinded for a moment by the sun. Edgar and Toad were on one of the couches. The countryside swept past the windows; I could hear Roger whistling up in the driver’s seat.
“Where are we?” I said, squinty.
“Washington State,” Toad said around a mouthful of cereal, balancing the bowl against his chest so as not to spill. “Not far from the club.”
“Maybe about twenty minutes out,” Roger offered in a jolly voice.
I plunked down next to Edgar on the couch and gazed out the window.
“Nice to see you too, Little Miss Sunshine,” Toad said.
“Whatever, Toad,” I said, glad that the name was also an insult. I didn’t really like Toad, and mornings on the bus did nothing good for my mood. I looked like shit, I felt like shit, and it was impossible to fix it. Bus water is kind of gross, so you brush your teeth with bottled water. And you always wait till you get to the venue or a gas station so you can use their toilets and wash your face and whatever else, with what is hopefully clean water. But let’s be frank. Venue bathrooms are horrible. Some backstage dressing rooms are nice, some have showers, and even laundry. But most of the time you’re washing your face in a sink where some kid probably threw up a bunch of beer a few hours earlier.
The bus pulled up to the venue, Bennys — I found the missing apostrophe irritating. It had a huge parking lot and there were some buildings on either side of it, but otherwise we were in the middle of nowhere. I saw that Ripsawdomy’s bus was already parked; Roger pulled up alongside it, grinning out the window at the other driver, who was smoking in the lot. Gurgol’s bus was nowhere to be seen.
“This place seems weird,” I commented. “Sort of isolated.”
“They’ve been having big metal shows here for years. This place is a classic!” Toad said, and from next to me I heard Edgar suck in a quick breath of annoyance. We both knew was what going to happen next. Toad launch
ed into some long-winded story about some band he’d toured with a few years ago, and how they’d played at Bennys, and how those were the days when the club could serve booze past 2 a.m. and the Hells Angels would show up and whatever else. I had a bowl of cereal and gazed out the window.
I’d picked up the somewhat revolting habit of smoking, but only because it afforded me the chance to gracefully exit a situation and buy myself ten minutes alone outside. When I was done my cereal, I tiptoed through the bunk area to the empty back lounge, found my clothing bag, took off my stupid flannel pyjama pants and pulled on the dirty jeans I’d been wearing every day. Then I changed into a T-shirt, grabbed the hoody with the cigarettes in the pocket, went through the bunk area, noted that Fern’s curtain was still closed, walked back up past Edgar, Toad, and now Timmy and Socks — who were all talking about guitar strings or something — and left the bus.
It was a little bit chilly, being the end of September, and I walked down the thin space between the two buses towards the open lot behind them and lit my cigarette.
When I cleared the two buses, I hesitated. The very tall Ripsawdomy guy stood there by himself, slouched in his hoody, also smoking. We made eye contact and I froze, intimidated.
“Sorry,” I said, as if he owned the parking lot and I was a bothersome insect.
“No, no, it’s okay,” he said, waving his hand at me for some reason. “You’re in the opening band, right?”