Unlike Any Other (Unexpected #1)

by Claudia Burgoa

  “Maybe we lied, but what we had was real,” I tell Dad before he thinks we faked our relationship. “It was a mutual agreement… not telling you. He suggested it, I accepted his decision.”

  My stuttering and the indecision in my voice aren’t helping my case. The big bed swallows me as I start to shrink.

  `“If I remember correctly, three years ago you called us a farce,” Dad reminds me. “Just so you know, it wasn’t. It was real, just like I believe what you had was real. I’m not approving, but I acknowledge it for now.”

  “So, how many years are we talking about here, AJ?” He asks and after I answer, he growls. “Jesus, why would he lie to us, damn it. God, we screwed up as parents. Then we screwed up with him—Porter.”

  “Do I even want to know what that means?” Dad doesn’t respond. This is like one of those times when MJ and JC did something and my parents spent hours with them until one of them talked. “What happened to Porter, Dad?”

  “He ended up in the hospital a year ago, an overdose. MJ found him unconscious on the floor of his dressing room during a tour. He barely made it, and even worse, when he woke up he screamed at us for not letting him die.”

  “That’s not Porter.” Porter changed so much the last months of our relationship that it’d be stupid for me to presume that I know who Porter Kendrick is. “What happened?”

  “MJ said that Porter heard something about you having a boyfriend the day before,” Dad explains. “When Porter woke up, he said there was no longer a reason for him to be around, that it was better that way.”

  I can’t think straight. For Pete’s sake, he did it.

  He cheated. He played me for years. He didn’t care about me… us.

  Then he dares to play the martyr by trying to commit suicide. I don’t understand anything.

  There are nights I stay awake thinking of the things I’d like to ask him in order to move on.

  What was I to him?

  Why did he give up?

  Why didn’t he care about us?

  Did he ever love me?

  Most importantly, how do I revive my heart?

  “Can you tell me more, sweetie?” he requests. “How complicated did things become? How was he driving you crazy?”

  2011

  The first time was when Porter performed in Portland; the city wasn’t too far from my parent’s home. We all decided to surprise him that night. I remember as if it was yesterday because the scenes played in my head over and over. The singer for the opening band was a petite, curvy, beautiful girl. My brothers called her the hottest number in the world. She wore a tiny skirt with a push-up corset and killer heels. It was amazing as she danced, ran, and did all kinds of tricks around the stage. Porter and her band had been touring for months and that night, Porter announced he had a bad cold and to protect his throat, he was going to have Sky sing with him.

  My family and I watched from the VIP section. Porter didn’t know we were visiting. Sky sang almost every song with him. The music, the lyrics, the insinuating sway of her hips, and the grinding of their bodies made the entire performance not only intimate for them, but felt as if we watched them fuck each other on stage.

  It was no surprise that as the concert ended; everyone yelled and clapped for an encore number. We chose to head to his dressing room, having heard him sing plenty of times and beating the crowd mattered more than another one of those performances.

  As we entered Porter’s dressing room, MJ whispered, “You know it’s just for the public, right?”

  I nodded and JC gave me a hug.

  We heard the last wave of loud claps and the standing ovation. I pulled the confetti bags out of my backpack and handed them over to my parents and my brothers. A little indoor celebration for such a successful tour. When he entered the room, Sky clung to his chest, sucking his face and her top was off. One of Porter’s skills was getting clothing off in less than five seconds.

  The words, ‘You fucking cheater,’ hung in my mouth.

  “We thought that was an act,” JC cleared his throat.

  Porter pushed the half-naked girl off and tried to cover her breasts.

  “Some relief after a tenuous presentation.” My father who had been on a tour before defended him and threw a t-shirt at them. Then looked at us while tilting his head toward the door. “Finish what you were doing, Porter, we’ll see you later, I guess.”

  See you later?

  Finish?

  Porter stared at me with that ‘contain yourself’ glare he used when he wanted me to keep the lid of my outburst on.

  I did to an extent. “So… this is your concert girl, the one you use while traveling? I see you like them trashy.”

  Sky, the singer, gave me a darting glare but didn’t defend herself.

  “No,” he answered with a casual voice, but his eyes were glaring. “We’re friends, my throat was hurting and… things got out of hand. I’ve never done anything like that before—ever.”

  “Not that we care,” I replied, then looked at everyone in the room. “Right?”

  All agreed with me, except, I didn’t agree with myself.

  I cared, it punctured my heart and no one could know I was hurting.

  PK: Don’t you dare say a word to them or me. It was a show, end of the story.

  That night it was only that lone text that came through. For an entire week, he let my calls go to voicemail and ignored my texts. By the time he arrived home, I had gushed about his visit and the whole Sky incident disappeared.

  It was only him and I, the world didn’t matter.

  2015

  “I was so stupid, Dad.”

  I confronted him about it a few months after I had left my parent’s home because of our own problems.

  “That is ancient history,” Porter growled. “You know how it goes, one moment you’re singing and the next you’re ripping each other’s clothes off. That happened to us often while we were composing, AJ.”

  “We were in a relationship,” I tried to breathe. “Weren’t we, Porter? Did it happen with others, that one song led to another fuck? How stupid was I to believe you?”

  “I didn’t have to know the last part,” Dad clears his throat several times. “Ainse, I wish we had been there for you.”

  “Me too.” I close my eyes and press a pillow on top of my head muffling the entire world out.

  After a long pause, I ask, “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m well, missing my family but hopeful about the future.”

  That makes me smile; at least our family might not break apart.

  “Sorry for the late call, Dad.”

  “Thank you for the late call, Ainse, and for sharing some of that story. I love you, sweetie.” As I’m about to end the call, I hear him again. “You’ll be fine, I promise.”

  I was better, but fine was too far of a reach to obtain just yet.

  2015

  “How are you?” My daughter asks after throwing a nuclear bomb.

  A ruby color flame had ignited inside me the moment Ainse told me that she dated Porter. Sixteen. Anyone but him. We knew about his sexcapades. That was the reason we wanted to keep her away from him. We love him, there’s no doubt about that; we just didn’t want a thug like him around her. Not while he was the immature boy, who felt entitled to everything, including all the women he came across.

  Porter partied hard and according to the roadies, he slept with every available girl; no exceptions.

  I want to kill him.

  Damn tours, I lived what musicians do during their free time. I saw what some did to their wives. They believed being famous made them immune to adultery.

  Hell, my own daughter became one of those significant others who’d wait at home oblivious to what was going on. Or believing that their partner is different from the rest.

&nbs
p; There’s a part of my story I doubt I’ll tell my kids. That time when my boring personality took a detour. It happened during the Dreadful Souls Tour.

  A bus tour, I learned, was like a high school field trip but without adult supervision, well, at least in my case it was. We smoked pot, drank, and had sex in the back of the buses while hiding from the teachers and supervisors. They never knew or cared what we were up to.

  Inside a tour bus, you do the same but without hiding. Then there are the perks: they have better booze and more expensive drugs. The girls are hotter and willing to try things I never thought about doing before. Not one boring moment, except when Chris’s band mates’ wives joined a few legs of the tour. Then no one drank, smoked or had sex.

  They had the decency of ignoring the groupies while the wives were around.

  1988

  “That’s what happens when you marry,” Chris told me as we had dinner at a hamburger joint in Morrison, Colorado. The next day they were playing at Red Rocks Amphitheater. “You stop having sex with the hot chick you used to bang—a lot. And you search for fresh meat.”

  “How would you know?” He hadn’t settled down with anyone.

  “I observe human behavior.” He pointed at his band mates who sat each in different booths with their wives. Chris, his bodyguard, and I sat with the sound engineer. “Ask Arthur here—didn’t all of them use to have crazy sex with those same ladies they now call wives?”

  “Yes,” Arthur Bradley, his trusted bodyguard, shrugged. “Similar shit as they did while the first wives were at home. That’s why I won’t marry again until I’m done with this shit. The temptation is huge, man. Plus the ex-wife never believed I was faithful.”

  “Here, here.” Chris lifted his glass of water and gave a side nod with a resigned shrug. “When I was younger—” The thirty-three-year-old front man of the band sounded like a seventy-year-old veteran. “—I wanted to have the shit they did: money, fame, family. That’s why I discriminated. I sent them home knowing they didn’t do it for me in the long term, only for the night. Between then and now, I realized that the issue is in me. I don’t see myself staying attached to anyone. Relationships aren’t for everyone. I should be the old uncle something… I’m glad I never did something stupid and tied myself to a life sentence with a woman I didn’t love.”

  Their world was a different dimension than the one I grew up in. For the past eight weeks, I had lived as they did.

  Women threw themselves at them—naked.

  Since the beginning of the tour, I had had sex with a different girl every day or two girls—not at the same time. I enjoyed it now but doubted I wanted it to keep rolling that way forever. My ultimate goal was a family. A wife and children.

  As I processed how my mother, no, both my parents would see this break from reality, a young girl barely eighteen—if she was—approached us. Long, honey-colored hair, bright blue eyes, and a curvy body; she handed a marker to Chris and then lifted her shirt, her plump breasts spread in front of us.

  “Can I have your autograph?” As if he had been handed a piece of paper, Chris signed her breasts—both. Then spanked her ass.

  “How old are you sweet-cheeks?”

  “Eighteen.” She licked her top lip.

  “When you’re twenty-one, look for me.” He winked at her and then went back to his food. “If I had a child her age, I wouldn’t let her go out dressed like that. Correction, I wouldn’t let her outside of the house until she was a hundred. Definitely, I wouldn’t let her get close to a loser like me.”

  I understood; the girl had a barely-there skirt and a translucent white shirt that let everything hang out. A guy like him or any other guy would take her to bed without any second thought.

  “I bet my next paycheck that she’s barely sixteen.” He shivered. “One time I almost bedded an underage girl. Can you imagine what would have happened if I wasn’t lucid? Which parent in their right mind lets these children behave like that? Beware of those girls; they have no idea what they are doing. You’re responsible to know how not to hurt their feelings as you let them down too.”

  That was a side of Christian Decker not many were aware of. He was irresponsible in the media’s eyes, sometimes stupid, but behind the cameras he cared. He took responsibility for his actions. He also loved to learn from reading. However, you wouldn’t see him holding a book even if his life depended on it. This entire tour had been an eye opener about their world, including an education that could best be summed up as: no glove, no love.

  “Always use those prophylactics—that’s condoms, college boy.” Condoms weren’t just to stop procreating but to avoid STDs. He lost a couple of friends to AIDS.

  “Now that our stomachs are full, let’s go and get ourselves some girls for tonight,” he spoke with the same steady tone he had used earlier when we all complained we hadn’t had a decent meal all day.

  Out of nowhere he found a toothpick and cleaned his teeth, then popped a few pieces of spearmint Chiclets in his mouth and offered me another.

  1988

  As we entered the lobby of our hotel, I spotted a blonde, curvy woman. We made eye contact, and she smiled widely. She was another guest who had checked in at the same time as we did earlier in the day. Without hesitation, I walked to where she stood suddenly realizing that Chris had done the exact thing.

  “Saw her first,” I informed him.

  “Fine, do her first, and then I’ll take my turn, Gabe.”

  “She isn’t a pony ride.” It angered me how he sometimes thought of women as nothing but objects.

  “Are you going to have sex with her all night?” He asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Then what is your problem? Let that prissy thing go. If things were serious between the two of you, I’d never think about it. Tell you what—let’s do her together and then we can call it a night.”

  My jaw hit the floor.

  “You need to learn how to live, college boy.” He patted my back. “Let me educate you, not that I’ve done this before but since you’re my best friend, I think I can share without inhibitions.”

  Share?

  For what I’ve learned during the tour, they had no inhibitions about having sex in front of other band mates or the crew. Swap, exchange, and pass the joint, the woman, and the condom box.

  This wasn’t a swap but a share. We’d be in the same room fucking the same girl, and he said it as if we’d be sharing food from the same plate.

  That became the first of many nights we shared a woman and that gave us dibs on the bedroom of the tour bus. We had wild crazy nights that came to an end as the tour finished.

  A couple of months later and during the last concert in New York, the band dropped the bomb to the public. Actually, Chris did.

  “You can’t fucking quit like that Decker,” Martin, the drummer, yelled. This came right after Christian had played the encore number and thanked his fans for supporting him through his years with Dreadful Souls.

  Robert, the bass player, pushed Christian. Arthur, his personal bodyguard, put himself in the middle.

  “I warned you I was done,” Chris’s firm tone, stormy, green eyes and puffed-up chest indicated he was as upset at his band mates as they were with him. One thing Arthur Bradley warned me about was Chris’s temper. Once he saw red, he went in for the kill. Arthur’s job was to protect Chris from himself. “My contract with the record label ended with this tour. If you want to fuck the band and continue, that’s your problem. Just remember, my music, my royalties.”

  “Go to fucking hell.” Martin tried to swing his fist at Chris, but Arthur and I stopped him.

  Chris headed to his dressing room, changed, and then we made our way to the parking lot.

  I had planned to head to Albany to visit my parents assuming the band would celebrate after the big concert.

  “Do you want
to head home with me?” I offered. “My parents have plenty of room. It’s not Santa Barbara, but you’ll get your own bed.”

  “Would they mind?” he stared at the floor.

  “No, they like company.”

  I didn’t have to twist his arm; he hopped in the limo I rented. The driver shoved his duffle bags in the trunk and we headed out.

  He remained silent and as the bright lights of the big city disappeared, I dared to speak.

  “What are you planning on doing now?”

  “I registered to take my GED,” Chris said, his eyes dull. The ride reminded me a lot of the time my grandmother died and Dad couldn’t voice his feelings. “Moving out.”

  “You’re not staying in Cali?”

  He shook his head twice.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Away,” he responded absently watching outside the window. “Seattle, I spoke with the dean of the state University. If I pass the GED, he’ll let me into the music program. Of course, my donation to build a new library is part of the package.”

  I recalled the document he handed me requesting that donation, as I had become his financial manager. I handled all of his personal finances but sometimes I simply signed off on documents without scanning them closely.

  “You sure your parents don’t mind us barging in?” he asked again. “Well, me.”

  “No, they have room,” I answered. “The only reason I didn’t invite you originally was because I thought you’d want to stay with the band. You never mentioned that this was your last concert ever, or that your drummer wanted to beat the shit out of you.”

  “Fuck up my face,” Chris corrected me, then he pointed at me. “You should have let me fuck him up, he deserved it.”

  I shook my head and said nothing.

  “He blames me for the poor sales of our last album.” Chris shrugged.

  It didn’t sell as well as the other albums they had released; the critics hated it, but the concerts sold out and so did the merchandise. Overall, it wasn’t great, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. I knew if they stayed together, the next album would be a total disaster.