Entry #677225, added on 11-22-09 @ 5:24 pm EST
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| finally... 3453 | Entry #677225 |
The day after meeting Amber, that fateful moment when their stars crossed backstage at the Lady Gaga show, Braden tried to conceal his infatuation by sitting in the bus all day playing X-box and watching satellite tracking TV, twittering and facebooking, and finding new and innovative ways to harass any of his bandmates who happened into his line of vision. Basically, he was wasting time, trying to make it pass quickly so he could be in the same room with Amber again. He was the first one ready to go to the show that night, herding the others along.
“Is my watch wrong? What’s the hurry, mate?” Matt asked, in a teasing way.
Braden just shrugged, crossly answering, “Just git.”
Despite his rush, they arrived backstage just as Amber went on stage, so he was consigned to watching her back side on the stool, and listening to her deep, heartfelt lyrics, trying to make sense of them and remember some significant lines so he could discuss more of her topics with her after the show.
What he really meant to say was, “Oh, hey, Amber, don’t leave, ok? I’d like to see you again after our show tonight,” but passing her between Amber’s and Razzamatazz’s stage time, Braden was again only able to offer her an awkward nod and a stifled mumble.
He performed with more energy than ever that night, mostly because a) he was super pumped on adrenaline, and b) he was in rush mode, focusing on what would come after, not during, the show. Being Braden, of course, he didn’t make any mistakes, and Macon, Georgia fans were delirious with their worship of him.
Backstage at last, Braden managed to engage the sweet, extraordinary Amber in another hour of his life before she took leave to go back to her tour bus, a refitted ancient van that reminded him of a squished version of Uncle Razz’s Ford, to rest.
The following day was a day off from the tour. Since Amber was heading for the next gig, Savannah, too, Braden babbled his way into a date with her when they arrived. In Savannah, they spent the whole day and evening together. They walked along the boardwalk, took a bus to a mall and ate at the food court, and then did a ghost tour after nightfall. It’s amazing how many haunted places there are in Savannah, Georgia.
Another day, they all went to a movie together. Josh had some girl still around from the night before, so he suggested they go to a chick flick, the whole group: Josh and his bubblehead, Braden and Amber, Matt, and Jess. They saw a rom com and picked it to pieces afterwards. Amber said it was sexist, and pointed out that ninety percent of female love interests are kindergarten teachers, artists, or involved in the media.
“Plus,” Matt said, “it’s a formula. Every rom com is the same.”
“How many have you seen?” Braden asked.
“At least three. And in each one, it’s boy meets girl, boy does something completely retarded so she dumps him, then he mopes around in his flat in a robe for two weeks.”
“Right,” Braden said, laughing, “He doesn’t shave or wash, and eats nothing but pizza and beer, and leaves the boxes and bottles piling up.”
“Yeah, and then his best mate comes over,” Matt said, “and they have a totally impossible philosophical conversation that blokes would NEVER have.”
“Then,” Braden finished, “he gets so inspired he goes and does a heartfelt speech to get the girl back.”
Amber said, “You’re so right. And it’s always in a public place, like a Yankees game, or…”
“Or he chases her through an airport, and somehow gets past security without a ticket or passport, to give her the heartfelt speech on the airplane,” Braden said.
“Or actually has to go to Paris and find her,” Matt finished. They all laughed hysterically. Braden felt a real bond forming with Amber, and took her hand as they walked along through the mall.
Josh said, “I liked it.” Then he made out with his beached blonde beach bunny.
“Ugh,” Matt said, and walked off with Jess, laughing.
Braden still had Amber’s hand in his. It seemed so small and delicate, but she was no delicate girl. She had the idea she would change the world with her music. Through her lyrics, she was going to convince people to use cloth shopping bags, build wells in Africa, and stop eating animal products. She was so cute and idealistic.
During the two weeks that Amber toured with them, she and Braden were inseparable. Only Uncle Razz teased Braden about his romance; once you’re in the public eye the smallest most insignificant thing you do becomes a major concern for zillions of people. Matt thought Braden might be doing it to create a stir among his female fans (most of his fans were female). Josh didn’t care, and Jess was just glad he was out of her face for a while. Not to mention the fact that with his love interest, Braden was floating around with a big grin on his face and was chipper and pleasant around everyone. So that was good.
Until the last day of the tour for Amber. She was heading back to Athens.
They were backstage, as usual, after Amber’s and Razzamatazz’s performances. Amber seemed a bit down. Braden assumed it was because she was leaving.
“You could stay on with us, for a while,” he said. “Just you, you know?”
Amber shook her head. “I already took two weeks off work for this. I really need to get back.”
“I’ll come to Athens as soon as I can,” Braden said. “We get a couple days off in a couple weeks. I’ll fly out.”
Amber smiled but didn’t seem happy.
“What’s the matter, babe?” Braden said, his hand on her chin.
“It’s silly,” she said.
“No, tell me.”
She made a tiny smile, her honey eyes peeking at his. “It’s just, like, I was kinda hoping you’d play one of your new songs, so I could hear it.” She looked all pouty into his eyes for real.
“We did play some new ones,” he said. “The Safety Dance. And No Rain, that’s a little out of our usual style, but-“
She was shaking her head. “No, one of your songs. The ones you wrote.”
“Oh,” Braden said.
Amber brightened up. “Would you sing one for me now? Acapella?” She had a naughty grin. It was like a dare, but she was daring him to sing acapella, not to have written a song, which of course he hadn’t.
“Well, like, nothing’s really done yet,” he said. He looked at his fingers and made spider wiggles with them.
Amber put her hands on his. The were warm like home-cooking, small and pale with dainty little clean child’s fingernails.
“Ok,” she said, “If you don’t want to sing here, that’s ok. I’ll hear them on the album, right?”
She thought he was writing all these stupid songs filled with meaning, about world peace and animal rights and stuff. “Amber, like,” he said. He was usually very eloquent and people believed in every word that passed his lips. She was difficult, though.
She was peering up at him, her enormous eyes filled with the innocence and faith of deep, true love, but he knew that she analyzed and contemplated everything he said. She was convinced that although he was happy-go-lucky and playful all the time, that deep down inside he really believed in all that stuff. She even thought that deep down inside he was a vegetarian.
“Like,” he said, “All that stuff, like writing songs, and stuff, it’s not that important, really.” She had a tiny spark of uncertainty in her eye. She was telling herself that he was about to explain his higher purpose, which was something even grander than writing evocative songs and spreading his word through all humankind via his performing. She would never see him as just a fun-loving guy.
“Like,” he continued, “this is just kinda fun for us. I mean, I know you like to use your music to try to change the world and stuff, but us…” She was still looking at him, all pale and delicate and unimpressed. “We’re just doing this for fun. These one-hit wonders, we thought, like, if we covered all these hits, we’d have all hits. Cool idea, hey?”
Amber’s pink lips were open, the corners pointing down just minutely. Her row of little perfect white gleamy teeth separated just a little. She dropped his hands and they went back to making spidery motions. He sniffed and rubbed at his cheek; he’d been letting his fuzz grow in a bit because it looked ruggedly sexy, but it was a bit itchy. “Like,” he said.
“You’re not writing songs?” she asked.
She was starting to get it. “Not really,” he said.
“How can you be ‘not really’ writing songs? You kind of are?”
“Well, Matt,” he explained, rubbing his cheek more briskly, “Matt’s kinda researching more good one-hit wonder songs for our next album. We might pick some that, you know, have meaningful, like, lyrics…”
“So you can lip-sync them and shake your ass and make all the girls love you?” she said. Her voice was somewhere in between angry and hurt.
Braden shrugged. He reached out and touched her hair at the side of her face, very gently. “Not all the girls,” he said. “Just you.” It was the first time he had ever had a conversation with a girl that went anywhere near the word ‘love’ and his head was getting hot.
Amber backed away a little, out of reach of his caressing finger. Her mouth was still open with the corners down, and her big forehead, usually smooth as a plastic dolls, was lined in the middle. He wanted to rub the confusion away with his thumb, but she was stepping back farther.
“I thought you were somebody,” she said. Her voice was really low. It cracked on ‘body’ and she turned away and started walking slowly out of the room.
Lady Gaga’s drummer and keyboardist walked through the room, said their ‘hey’s to Braden, and knocked knuckles with him on their way by.
Braden started to follow Amber. “I am somebody,” he said.
“You’re just in it for the fun, the money probably, the babes…” she said. “You just told me. I mean, I thought you were somebody… important. I thought you had the same ideas as I do. I thought you were going to use your position to do something.” Now she turned around and gave him a look, accusatory and incredulous.
“What’s wrong with just wanting to have a little fun?” he said. “I mean, when this is over, I’m going to university. I’m not, like, devoting my life to changing the world or whatever.”
Amber whooshed her breath out in a disgusted noise. “With your charisma and your looks, people follow you. You could use your fame to tell them things. You could tell people about all the suffering, the problems in the world, and how to change. People would listen to you.”
Braden didn’t answer, and she made a sound like a dog about to bite your hand when you’re petting him. Then she turned around and started walking out again.
He chased her out the back door, through a hall filled with crew, roadies, and crazed fans, many of whom tried to touch him. A very sexy girl in tight skinny-jeans and a tight, cleavage-spilling rhinestoned tank top grabbed his arm and said, “Braden James, I adore you,” and stuffed a hotel key on a plastic diamond tab bearing the number 35 into his hand.
Braden looked at the girl, looked at the key, and for a microsecond had the urge to let Amber walk out the back stage door and out of his life, and go to room 35 with these fake boobs. Then he dropped the key and pushed through the crowd. “You’ll regret it,” he heard. He wondered if he would.
Amber had disappeared; the back stage door was swinging closed when he reached it. More people thronged on the other side, in a wide hall, and he spotted Amber going through the fire exit, held open by a large blond police officer in a bulletproof vest. He gave her a polite little nod, probably had no idea who she was, just that she was on the right side of the security barricades.
“Amber!” Braden shouted before the door closed, and hurried after her.
The officer gave him a polite nod and a wide smile. Braden said, “Hey, man” and rushed behind Amber to her souped-up astrovan.
The other two guys were in there. Braden wasn’t invited in, but he went into the back of the van anyway. Amber was sitting on the single removable back seat.
“I’m still going to fly to Athens,” he said.
“Don’t bother,” Amber said, glaring. Her lips were puffy, making her look sexier than ever. He couldn’t believe she was just going to leave. They hadn’t even made love yet. It seemed wrong to let his first true love leave without sealing the deal.
“Just spent the night with me,” he said. Thinking about the girl with the key, he said, “I’ll get a nice room.”
Amber looked disgusted. “What, so you can f*** me before I dump you? I don’t think so!”
“No!” Braden said. It was foul to hear such words coming from her pretty mouth. “I just want to talk to you.”
“Braden,” she said, sighing, “You’re not going to convince me that it’s cool to just be an arrogant, ignorant sell-out. And I’m not interested in talking about anything. Could you please leave?”
Braden always got his way. He didn’t move. “I’m not leaving until you agree to spend the night with me. Just to talk.”
Amber’s pretty little brown eyebrows lifted. “Is that so? Then I guess you’ll have a nice drive to Ocala, because that’s where we’re heading tonight.” Raising her voice to the guys in the front seat, she said, “Let’s go, Daniel.”
Daniel turned around and looked at Braden. He had another show in Fort Lauderdale, and it was a long drive. He sighed.
“Fine,” Braden said, and got out of the van.
He walked half way to his bus, hands clenched in fists, then turned around when he heard the van tired moving over the gravel of the lot. He watched the old gray van carry her away, to Ocala and beyond. Out of his life.
His next several shows were terrible. Braden couldn’t dance and he couldn’t smile. His lips got messed up, so he wasn’t following the words properly. His fans didn’t seem to notice. He became edgy and grouchy, and nobody could talk to him.
“Sony wants some of our own material on the next album,” Matt announced. “Jess and I wrote this song, have a look at it.”
“That’s stupid, why?” Braden asked. “That’s what we’re about, covering one-hit wonders. That’s our thing. Why do we have to start writing music all of a sudden?”
Uncle Razz said, “It’s just what they want. Maybe because you’re getting so big now; too many royalties to pay out to all those artists. Or they just want people to take you more seriously. You can’t survive forever on other people’s music,” he said.
Braden took the song and looked it over. At first glance, it seemed hollow and poppy. Something about springtime and butterflies. “Fine,” he said. He spent the rest of that day in his bunk, watching porn on his personal TV.
Another day, after another crappy show and on their way to the next crappy show, he sat at the table to play X-Box 360. Jess was sitting there with a pad of paper and a pen.
“What’s that?” Braden asked her, just for the sake of saying something. He wasn’t a complete asshole.
“I’m working on a song,” Jess said, low and slow.
“What, about Indians or something?” Braden scoffed. He didn’t really care; he focused on driving his computer generated car through the computer generated streets in front of him.
Jess said, “Sort of, I guess. It’s about something my grandfather told me, when I wanted to play drum.”
Not really giving a crap, Braden said, “Oh yeah, what he tell you?”
“He said it would be a struggle,” Jess said. “Indians don’t want girls playing drums.
“Why the hell not?” Braden asked. He squealed around a corner and took out a mailbox.
Jess didn’t answer for a while. “Tradition,” she finally said.
Traditions were stupid. They stopped awesome drummers like Jess from doing what she wanted. On the other hand, if it was some stupid Indian tradition that brought her to them, then it wasn’t such a bad thing. Jess was probably the most important part of their band. Braden said, “Their loss, our gain.”
Jess just looked at him. She wasn’t sure if he meant it or not; he rarely meant anything he said, as far as she could tell. But it was the only positive, nice thing he had ever said to her.
Braden drove through a red light, taking out a little old lady on a zimmer frame and careening off the car crossing him and into the side of a building. Game over.
“f***,” he said.
After the next crappy show, Braden sat in the passenger’s seat next to Uncle Razz.
“Unc,” he said.
Uncle Razz didn’t respond. He waited for Braden to say it.
“I think I’m done,” he said.
Uncle Razz nodded. “Guess it is time for a break,” he said. “We only have another three shows booked. I stopped making bookings a while ago.” He looked at Braden, who was busily trying to pick a splotch of congealed burger grease off his jeans. “Think you can manage three more shows? Or do you want me to cancel them?”
Braden thought for several minutes. He was sucking more and more. It wasn’t fun anymore. Partly, he missed Amber, and all he could think about was trying to get her back. But she didn’t want him the way he was, and he didn’t know how to change. All of that seemed so much more important than “I’m Too Sexy” or “Puttin on the Ritz”, so it was all he could do to get his ass onto the stage every night. His fans were starting to notice.
“I think it’s over,” he said.
Uncle Razz nodded. They didn’t have to take the bus back to its point of origin; they could fly home from Jacksonville.
Braden walked through the bus to his bunk. On his way past the rest of the band, who were sitting around the table, looking over Jess’s song, he said, “I quit.”
He refused to say another word to anyone about anything meaningful, barely uttered meaningless drivel, until they got off the plane in Calgary. His parents were there. They could tell things hadn’t gone the way he’d hoped. Wordlessly, they left the airport and were gone, taking Uncle Razz with them.
Matt’s and Josh’s parents had come to pick him up, too. Jess’s mom was working but looked forward to seeing her, so Matt offered her a ride. Everyone had realized, on the airplane, that they were actually very tired. Extremely tired. Mind-numbingly tired. Nobody said much to each other as they made their separate ways to their separate homes.
Two weeks went by with nobody from Razzamatazz talking to anyone else.
Josh needed a break from girls. He had been home less than 24 hours when he received a letter, a paper letter in the mail, from some girl in California claiming that she was pregnant with his child. He was certain that was utterly impossible; he’d used condoms with all the girls he’d slept with. At least most of them; he might have messed up once or twice while he was drunk, but California: that was at the beginning of their tour. He was still being careful then.
Jess’s mom needed Jess’s money to pay off her credit card bills. The band had managed to make some money; it didn’t seem like much to the boys, but for Jess, it was enough to get her mom out of debt. Jess got a job at Walmart.
Matt relaxed in his bedroom, his long-deserted sanctuary, where he had his video game systems, his personal phone, his personal TV mounted on his personal wall, his good old laptop and large speakers which blasted music at him. Rock music. No one-hit wonders.
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© Copyright 2009 katt (UN: kattbee at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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