The Worst Best Luck (18 page)

CHAPTER 5 – BATTLE OF THE BANDS

“You’re gonna ace this, son,” Sam Griggs said, clapping Dex hard on the back as they walked away from the trailer. 

Dex nodded.  “Yeah.”  He was ready for a fight, was itching for a fight.  He wanted to go to a bar and drink too much whiskey and shoulder some other drunk who’d shout at him, and he wouldn’t apologize, and then he’d get to swing a punch. 

He couldn’t get it out of his mind, the sight of Rocky in his tight black jeans and his sleeveless t-shirt.  Rocky’s arms were lean, and so pale, all the better to display his art – one tattoo Dex recognized as the M. C. Escher drawing of the interlocking black and white birds.  The splash of color on his right shoulder was from one of the Hockney paintings of Mulholland Avenue. 

Yeah, Dex knew that one, too.  The look on Rocky’s face as Dex examined his tats was full of contempt, smug fucking superiority.  He was so sure I had no idea what I was looking at.

But what had pissed him off more than that, had been Rocky’s fingernails.  They were short, neat, and painted – pink and black.  Like a girl.  Why did he have to do that?  Why did he have to flaunt his…gayness like that? 

An image flashed into his mind, stunning him with its force.  The picture he’d seen in the forest, Tim on his knees, his hands grabbing Jet’s bare ass… Only now they weren’t Tim’s hands, they were Rocky’s, the lurid fingernails glowing in the moonlight.  Rocky, taking that cock hard, so hard…  Loving it, squeezing his man’s ass with those fingers, demanding more…

And something else.  A hug, once upon a time, a parting embrace with a friend, a denial of everything he wanted, could have had, right then and there…

“Dex!” Sam shouted at him.  “Where’d you go, boy?”

“Sorry.  Just…distracted.”  He shook himself.  “I need a drink.”

“You’ve got a show to play in a few hours, son, you don’t wanna…”

“I said I need a fucking drink!” Dex shouted. 

Sam raised his hands.  No arguing with a man who needed a drink that bad.  “Okay.  Your decision.”

“Yeah,” Dex confirmed.  “My decision.”

The grounds were packed that night.  There were people who didn’t care about Rocky and the Boulders, or Dex and the Delta Devils, but who wanted to see something that social media had blown up into an Event.  Or a War, depending on your politics.

The border was clear enough, with the two bands set up on either side of the stage.  There was no worry about who’d control the lights or set off the pyros – there would be no light show, no special effects, just the music. 

Jason got onstage and introduced the bands.  Rocky stood on one side of him, and Dex on the other.  “We just want to thank Rocky and Dex and all the musicians here at CrossFest for making this such a great experience, so put your hands together for all our performers!  And give yourselves a round of applause, too, for opening your minds and ears to the kind of music you might not listen to otherwise.”  The audience whooped and hollered. 

“And now, without further ado…the friendly battle of the bands!”

Dex snorted.  We’ll see just how friendly, he thought, as he and Rocky were left by Jason to shake hands. 

Instead, Rocky faced Dex and raised his hands in a fighting stance, as if posing for the weigh-in picture at a boxing match.  It would have been comical, the five-foot-four Rocky facing off against the six-foot-four Dex, if it hadn’t been for the light in Rocky’s eyes. 

It reminded Dex of something he’d read in a book about dogs – a little dog will face off with a bigger dog with no fear, because it really doesn’t know it’s a little dog.  There was so much…anger there.  As if Rocky was blaming Dex for something, everything.

Dex raised his own fists, too, but kept his distance this time.  No face-to-face, in-your-face episode this time.  He wouldn’t let himself get that close again, wouldn’t let himself get distracted again.

Then they tapped fists as if they were gloves.  Dex felt the smooth, soft, warm skin on the side of Rocky’s hand as it glided past his own, and it was like a Taser to his soul.  Like a starving man who wanted to gorge himself after so long without food, the touch of another person, no, another man, triggered a hunger he’d refused to feed for so long.

No.  No, no no.  Not now.  Dex threw up the block, the barrier, inside his head.  He slipped into his acoustic guitar and nodded at his drummer.  Tap tap, go. 

The first song was Patsy Cline’s “Walking after Midnight.”  Mikey’s steel guitar opened the song, the plaintive notes spreading across the crowd.  Then Dex began to sing the words, the lonesome lyrics, and suddenly he nearly froze.  His own midnight walk flashed into his mind, the scene he’d encountered.

A terrible sense of loss overwhelmed him.  How many nights had there been like that?  How many years of nights had he spent like that, alone, searching for...what?  For something to take the place of the thing he wanted, needed, couldn’t, mustn’t have. 

A great singer is a great actor.  You take your own pain and you put it out there, and you trick people into believing it’s your character’s pain they’re seeing.  Wow, people say, you can really act. 

Dex was so achingly lonely.  And the closer he got to the thing that could end his loneliness, the more it hurt. 

The one thing that made it hurt less was this – the place to put it, the way to express it, the cut that drained the poison from the wound.  He sang the words with heartbreaking sincerity, and for a moment, he allowed it.  Allowed himself to think of a man, as lonely as he was, walking for miles out in the starlight, looking for Dex the way Dex was looking for him. 

It was okay, here, now, to want that, to grieve for the want.  It went into the music, yet another sacrifice Dex would make.  And another pain he would feel all the more so later for having let it out now, for having acknowledged its existence.  Singing drained the poison from the wound, if only for a minute.  But a minute was something.

As he concluded the song, the crowd went wild.  He couldn’t help but take a look at Rocky’s side of the stage.  Rocky looked at him for a moment, and nodded.  One artist to another.  Dex nodded back, and stepped back, to let his opponent take center stage.

Rocky was floored.  He’d expected Dex to twang his way through the lyrics, slather on some cornpone and let the words carry him without…going there.  But Rocky had seen it, heard it, felt it.  Dex had sung from his heart.  And when he stole a glance at Rocky, like a nervous teenager, Rocky had seized the moment, had nodded his respect. 

I know that feeling, he thought.  I can do this.  I know what it’s like to look, and not find.

He strapped on an electric guitar.  He’d spent the afternoon practicing, mimicking the steel guitar line on his Fender.  The Boulders didn’t have a steel guitar player, so there was no other way to do it. 

The song started, and he opened the door in his head.  The door he kept closed, beyond which were all the stupid, useless, futile longings, yearnings, desires that would just clutter up his life if he didn’t keep them stored there, out of sight, out of mind.  The door behind which he’d installed Frank James, and Nico Paulus, the men he’d loved without being loved in return. 

Rocky sang about walking after midnight, searching for you.  And here, on stage, he let a little something out of that locked room.  He let himself think about a long dark road, a hill rising ahead, the full moon lighting his path.  He let himself think about Dex, walking unseen on the other side of that hill, walking toward him, looking as he looked for just one other person on that road.  He let the song carry him up the hill, towards the top, where he might find what he was looking for on the other side.

But the song ends, of course, before you get to the top.  Before you find out if there’s someone on the other side, or not.

It was Rocky’s turn to look at Dex.  But Dex wouldn’t look at him, this time.   Dex raised a hand, his head down, a musical salute.  But he wouldn’t make eye contact.

Rocky nodded.  No, there wasn’t anyone on the other side of the hill, after all.  That’s what makes the song so sad.

Then it was rockin’ time.  The Boulders sailed into “Jailhouse Rock,” but Rocky knew this wasn’t their style.  He went through the motions, but somehow he just couldn’t make the emotional transfer.  The feelings the Patsy Cline song had inspired were still lingering around him. 

Dex didn’t seem to have any problem with that.  “I don’t know about you guys,” he addressed the crowd, “but I’ve spent a night or two in jail myself.”  The crowd roared its approval, and Rocky knew this round was going to Dex.

Sure enough, he tore it up, working the microphone stand as if it was his swing dance partner.  Rocky could only watch with awe, and unabashed lust, as Dex danced and swiveled his hips as lasciviously as Elvis himself, pouring all his sexual energy into seducing the audience.  And the audience was wet for him, Rocky could see plain as day.  There was nothing more erotic than a man dancing well, and Rocky couldn’t take his eyes off Dex.

If Patsy had resulted in a tie, there was no doubt in Rocky’s mind that round two had gone to Dex.

Dex raised his hat to the crowd and wiped the sweat off his brow.  All the frustration, all the pent up energies that “Walking” had stirred up, had been released via Elvis.  Nothing like vigorous exercise to clear the mind, he thought with a grin.  Rocky’s awkwardness with the song had been apparent. 

Self-defense mechanisms can be cruel, and Dex thought with black satisfaction that Rocky wasn’t much, was he, just a privileged little shit who’d obviously never gotten in real trouble in his life.  To knock him down made Dex feel better, made the hurt and the longing go away. 

Yeah, he thought.  Fuck him.

Fuck this, Rocky thought.  This is my song.  This is my story.  A lonely little Southern fruit from Georgia, who turns his whole life into a giant Fuck You to all those bastards.  He took the microphone, opened his mouth as if to say something, and then went right into it.  “A wop bop a loo bop a lop bam boom!”

Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” was the perfect outlet for all the frustration Rocky was feeling.  He’d discarded his guitar, ready to take the stage uninhibited by anything.  Did Dex think he could dance his way into the audience’s pants?  Rocky would show them a thing or two.

He tore the mike out of the stand, and began to strut and preen, dropping to his knees and arching backwards, the mike over his mouth like a cock he was hungry to take.  He nearly touched it with his wagging tongue, like a tease.

The Boulders were tearing it up, and Rocky could see the Delta Devils moving in time, the involuntary desire of a musician to join in on a great song.  Dex stood there with his arms folded theatrically, one eyebrow raised, a half smile on his face at Rocky’s antics. 

Then they couldn’t stand it. The Delta Devils started playing along with the Boulders, and the crowd went insane. 

Dex was swept up in the moment, the wave of musical ecstasy.  He joined Rocky at center stage, with his own microphone.  Rocky couldn’t help it.  He grinned at Dex as he deliberately changed the lyrics.

“Got a boy, named Tracy, he almost drives me crazy!”

Dex only laughed at him.  “Know a guy, named Rocky, he’s really fucking cocky!”

“Know a guy, named Dex, he really casts a hex!”

Then they both laughed.  “Tutti frutti!”  Rocky chanted.

“Oh Rudy!” Dex countered.

Rocky sang a verse about a boy named Lou, who knows just what to do, and Dex told him “You need a girl, named Sally, she’ll meet you in the alley!”

“Got a guy, named Frank, he really turned my crank!”  The knowing audience whooped at the reference to Rocky’s ex-“friend.”

“Here’s your lady, named Sadie…”

Rocky cut him off, “I’d rather go with Brady!”

They were both cracking up now, the lines coming hard and fast, Dex offering women who could cure Rocky, and Rocky replacing them with men. 

Dex did a smooth dance move, and Rocky copied it, then countered with a more complex variation, with a flamboyant spin.  Dex called his spin, and raised it a kung fu kick.

Then it was time to end it, both men sensing that a big finish should come before the number ran out of gas.  The band could feel it too, and brought the song to a crashing end as both men struck a dramatic Freddy Mercury “We are the Champions” pose, panting with exhilarated exhaustion.

The crowd screamed its delight as one, and Rocky and Dex looked at each other, both glowing with fever.  Rocky extended his hand for Dex to shake.

Dex took his hand, and then pulled him in for a bro hug.  A friendly pat on the back, no torso contact, a quick release, that was Dex’s plan.  Or so he told himself. 

But when the smaller man was in his embrace, his arms took their own initiative, clasped Rocky to him, both their chests heaving for breath.  Dex could feel the ridge of muscles on either side of Rocky’s spine through the sweat-drenched shirt, and Rocky’s wet curls soaked any dry spots left on Dex’s own shirt. 

Dex willed time to dilate, willed the crowd to cheer the hug louder, longer, to justify every extra second.  Rocky’s face was pressed into his chest, and he could feel it, a…relaxing in the other man, a surrender to Dex’s embrace, as if he’d been reunited, at last, with a long lost love.