Rockstar

Rockstar By J.M. Snyder For my boys. Rock on! Chapter 1 Adam Blue sits in his bean bag chair, kicked back, guitar in hand and strumming through a few new riffs on his guitar when the phone rings. He doesn’t look up from his hands and his fingers don’t fumble on the strings. The phone rings again. He hums under his breath along with the guitar. He doesn’t think this little ditty is destined to become a song but he’s been picking at it for the past hour now. He has nothing else to do. The phone rings a third time. He’s just about to holler if anyone’s going to pick the damn thing up when it stops. Finally, he thinks, nodding his head with the rhythm he coaxes from the instrument in his hands. Two seconds later, his mom calls up the stairs. “Adam!” He scowls and doesn’t answer. “Adam!” she calls again. “What?” he yells. Doesn’t she know he’s busy? “Telephone!” It’s probably Janie. Adam isn’t in the mood to talk to her right now. She’ll want to know when they’re practicing next so she can show up at the session and flip her hair and dance around the garage in time with Trace’s drums. Between songs she’ll wink at Adam and drop hints that she wants him to take her to a rave later. She’ll ask him what he’s writing now…anything new? Because she loves all his songs and she just knows he’s going to be big one day, and she’ll see him in the magazines and sigh and say she knew him when. She’s their first groupie. How scary. So he doesn’t pick up the phone. Let his mom tell her he’s busy. “I’m busy,” he says, but he doesn’t raise his voice so he’s sure no one’s heard it but himself. His mother didn’t. “Adam,” she warns. “Who is it?” he yells. Damn it. He’s sick of this s**t. How old is he? Twenty-three, and still stuck in this house. He can’t wait until he gets out on his own. He has to get a job first though, and he can’t find anything he wants to do because everything takes away from his music. No one understands how important that is to him. No one. “If it’s Jane…” His mom talks right over him the way she’s always done. “It’s Trace. He says he’s at the deli so pick up already or he’ll get in trouble for being on the phone at work.” She waits a beat. “Did you hear me? I said it’s—” “I got it, Mom.” Adam jerks his hand across the guitar strings with a discordant sound as he snags the phone. He waits until he hears the other end hang up in his ear. “Trace, what the f**k do you want?” “What has you so pissed?” Trace Dixon wants to know. Adam flops back into the bean bag with another sigh, this one overly dramatic. “This f*****g place,” he mutters. “Your dad on your back again?” Trace asks. Adam laughs. “My stepdad.” Tim Bluefield hates him. He’s always saying Adam needs a job, needs to make money, needs to move out on his own…like Adam doesn’t know this. And he hates Adam’s music—he calls it garbage, and is always making snide remarks about how Adam fills the garage with trash whenever the band is over to practice. Adam can’t wait to leave the asshole behind. What his mother ever saw in that man, Adam will never know. At the moment Tim is out of the house, thank God. If he had heard Adam’s mother holler up those stairs just now for Adam to answer the phone, it would have caused a scene. Propping the phone between his chin and shoulder, Adam strums at the guitar strings to elicit a mournful sound from the instrument. “He isn’t here. What do you want, man? You just call to shoot the s**t? ‘Cause I’m practicing…” “I’m at work,” Trace reminds him, as if that’s somehow more important. “I had to give up my first born child to use this phone, you know? And I can’t tie it up for long—” “Then tell me already.” Adam has those chords running through his mind and he’s beginning to think maybe he can get a decent tune from them if he works at it long enough. If Trace will just get off the damn phone already. Trace laughs. “You sitting down?” “What?” Adam isn’t in the mood for games. “Just tell me—” “What would you say if I told you I got us a gig?” Trace asks, interrupting him. Adam’s heart quickens in his chest, but he warns himself not to get too excited. Trace has done this before. “If this is one of your brother’s lame frat parties…” Trace’s brother Robb sometimes hires their act when he wants live music at his keg parties, and without fail always forgets to pay them. And if Adam has to stand in front of a room full of college-aged drunks flicking their Bics and calling for one more round of “Stairway to Heaven,” he’s going to hurt someone. He has a feeling it’s going to be one of the Dixon brothers. He isn’t picky which. But Trace tells him, “No, this isn’t one of Robb’s things. This is a real gig, Adam. At the Lot.” He lets that sink in. The Lot. Only the best grunge club in town, the place for the underground indie music scene in Richmond. Adam’s been trying to get a gig there for years. When he doesn’t answer, Trace says it again, in case he didn’t hear. “The Lot, downtown? You know, in the Bottom? Adam—” “You’re lying,” Adam breathes. There’s no way they have a gig at the Lot. They can’t. Only signed bands play there, not groups like theirs, with a handful of original songs and most of their repertoire covers of old favorites with their own dirty twist to them, like Trace’s drum cadence throughout Nazareth’s “Love Bites.” The few people they’ve played for like it but damn…the Lot? “Trace, how the hell did you get us in there?” “You know that girl who runs it?” Trace asks. Adam nods, though Trace can’t see the gesture through the phone. “Steff. Man, she’s always on my jock, you know? Well, I was in there last night with Jane and Steff’s all like what’s a girl have to do to catch your eye and I laughed and said give us space on the stage here, I’ll do you. And damned if she didn’t say yes!” He laughs again, like it’s funny. “Talk about sleeping your way to the top, eh? I knew I was holding out on her for a reason.” Adam glares at his guitar. There’s only one reason Steff would give in that easily, and it has nothing to do with the legendary Dixon charm. “I think it’s that Battle of the Bands s**t,” he says. He hates that. It’s up there with karaoke night—anyone who thinks they’re a group can get a spot onstage. “I ain’t doing that, man. You know how I feel about that crap. Am I the only one in this band who does it for the music? Am I the only one who isn’t going to compromise my beliefs just to cut a deal? Am I—” “That’s why we’re still where we are,” Trace argues. “Jesus, Adam! You and your f*****g principles. We need to get noticed, okay? We need the studios to hear us. And this is the perfect chance. Steff swears it’s tight this month, not like it has been in the past. She says there are only five or six bands—she picked them out herself. It isn’t an open mike, Adam, I promise.” He waits a second, then adds, “And there’ll be scouts there. Studio reps, looking to sign someone. Like us, man. Like us.” Adam doubts that. He thinks Steff’s just lying to get a taste of Trace’s d**k. He thinks Steff’s full of s**t. But if she’s telling the truth and there are only a handful of bands there, then that might be okay. And if the studios are there, how can he not go? He could get a deal, they could cut an album, go on tour so he can get out of this house, start living the life he was meant for, the one he dreams about, the one he can feel so badly it hurts, and make so much money he can shove it up his stepdad’s ass. Look at me, he’d say, hands full of hundred dollar bills. You said we’d never make it and look at me now, will you? f*****g prick. It’s a nice image. “Five or six bands,” he echoes. Trace laughs. “That’s it, man. Tomorrow night, I’m telling you.” “Studio reps there, too?” Adam asks, just to make sure. “Yep.” Trace laughs again. “Scouting for new talent, not one of those winner gets a contract things. I think we have a chance, Adam, I really do.” I think you’re just glad you’re finally getting a piece of Steff’s skank ass, Adam thinks, but he doesn’t say that. He isn’t above sleeping with someone to get something he wants. Too bad the Lot isn’t run by one of the guys from the Slip. As the only gay club in town, the Slip’s right across the alley from the Lot and if he thought it’d help their band he’d be there every night, wiggling his ass until someone offered them a gig. But they only do canned music, nothing live, and it isn’t alternative anyway, it’s that pop s**t he’s so sick of hearing on the radio. Every damn channel anymore. What happened to the classics? He blames it all on MTV. That channel killed rock. The only good bands out there are indie acts like theirs and maybe a few others he could name on one hand. That’s it. “Adam?” Trace is waiting for an answer. “Hey, man, I have to get going. I’m at work, you know? And I have to call her back if we want to do it—” “We do.” Adam can’t tamp down his grin. “Tomorrow night? s**t, we need to practice. How many numbers do we get?” He can hear the smile in Trace’s voice when he replies, “I’m not sure, but I’ll ask Steff when I talk to her. Got another hour here and then I’m off for the rest of the night. Your place? You said Tim isn’t there.” Adam’s stepdad is on a business trip, what Adam likes to call a f**k fest, even though he doesn’t really think Tim is creative enough to screw around on his mother. Adam just likes to stir things up and nothing gets his mom more upset than when he hints that Tim’s trips are just a string of one-night stands in a hotel three states away. He tells Trace, “He isn’t back until Friday so we’ll practice tonight and all day tomorrow…” When Trace starts to protest, he talks over his friend, “Don’t give me that work s**t. This is the band, Trace. This is our chance. You get Nick to cover for you, he will. Hell, get Janie to work your shift, someone, I don’t care. We’re practicing tonight and all day tomorrow, and you can bang Steff after the gig. We’re walking out of that club with a contract, you hear me?” Trace sighs. “I hear. f**k, Adam—” “Not right now.” Adam laughs because he knows Trace is blushing—he hates when Adam makes queer cracks like that. One reason why Adam does it. Trace likes his girls, that’s fine. Adam likes the boys. If Trace wants to talk a good game, Adam doesn’t see why he can’t do the same thing. And it pisses off his mom almost as much as his harping on Tim. Almost. “Look, Trace, one hour. You call Mike and tell him to get his fat ass over here. We have work to do.” He hangs up before Trace can answer and turns back to the guitar in his hands. That tune’s still playing in his head. A gig, he thinks. Tomorrow night! And it isn’t one of Robb’s charity bits, either. The studios will be there, they’ll see the band—they’ll see him. He’ll make it big, he can feel it. He imagines he’ll be the one to breathe new life into rock and roll. He’ll be on the cover of Rolling Stone and he’ll tour with groups like Green Day and the Chili Peppers, maybe even Rage, maybe even… You’re getting ahead of yourself, a little voice inside his mind cautions. But he can’t help it. He’s destined for greatness, he just knows it.