Climbing the Rock

Chapter 5B: Never Kiss a Groupie

Jake's stage outfit consisted of tight red leather pants and a black, loose-fitting shirt that came down slightly below his waist and covered about half of his arms. For shoes he was given patent leather, ankle-length boots that had been polished to a high shine. The moment he got dressed he began to sweat. He knew it would only get worse out beneath the heat of the stage lighting.

"Fabulous," crooned Reginald Feeney, the wardrobe manager. "It accents that nice ass of yours but hides the skinny arms. Just fabulous!"

Jake said nothing. Reginald (who was to never be called Reggie) already knew the band's opinions of their stage clothing.

Reginald was undaunted. He turned to Matt, who was wearing black leather pants and a sleeveless black leather vest with metal studs protruding down the zipper line. "Now you," he said, fussing with a portion of the vest, "have the kind of arms we should be showing off. Nice solid muscle, bulging biceps..." He touched one of the biceps in question. "Mmmm, just beautiful."

Matt jerked his arm away. "Keep your fuckin' hands off me, faggot!" he barked.

Reginald huffed and turned away. "No need to start throwing labels around," he said. "Just because a man is a wardrobe specialist and likes to suck dicks you call him a faggot? How crude." He pranced over to Darren, who was also wearing black leather pants in addition to a white, wife-beater tank top that was extremely short on his torso. "Now you are the premium male specimen of the group." He ran his hand out and touched Darren's bare stomach. "Look at these abs. Just fabulous."

Darren slapped Reginald's hand away, almost panicked, too flustered to even say anything.

"You guys will all thank me when you win the best-dressed group award next year," Reginald told them. "And remember, after the show, get out of those clothes immediately so I can clean them before the tour bus leaves."

"You're gonna smell the crotches of these things, aren't you?" Matt asked him.

"And jack off while I do it," Reginald replied with a smile. "I just love the smell of male butt-sweat."

"That is fucking disgusting," Jake declared. He grabbed his water glass and took a tremendous drink.

Coop and Bill, since they were going to be seated during the performance, were allowed to wear jeans, normal T-shirts, and normal footwear, although Reginald insisted that Coop put on a red headband.

After getting dressed they sat down at their tables while Doreen Riolo worked on their hair. Doreen was almost sixty years old, a woman who had grandchildren older than Jake, but a woman who was dialed in as tight as a drum on the latest hair fashions. She clipped and trimmed, combed and sprayed, teased and tussled their manes until they were the very epitome of what she considered perfection. Through it all she hummed Frank Sinatra tunes under her breath or chatted to them about her long career fixing the hair of famous musicians. Jake and the rest of the band liked and respected her immensely, and none of them complained about the job she did.

"Now be sure you boys stay away from any pyrotechnics or open flames," she warned. "You each have enough hairspray in your hair to launch a small rocket."

They shared a group look of concern at this revelation, all of them imagining their hair going up in flames.

After Doreen retreated back to the roadie bus from which she came, they were finally allowed to sit down and relax for a few minutes. Darren, Matt, and Coop all sparked up cigarettes (being sure to keep the lighters well away from their hair). Jake and Bill simply sat and sipped from their water. Greg popped into the dressing room and whipped out his cocaine kit.

"You boys sure you don't want a little pick-me-up before the show?" he asked as he dumped a healthy amount onto the mirror. "You really look like you could use it."

Darren licked his lips longingly but Matt answered for all of them. "We're sure."

Greg grinned away and then crunched up two lines. He made them disappear.

At 6:15 Greg told them it was time to head backstage for the public relations portion of the show. He reminded them once again to keep in character.

"Right," Jake said, vowing that he was going to be nothing but his normal self. After all, if Matt did the same thing, that would be in character enough for all of them.

As they exited the dressing room the four members of Earthstone were exiting from theirs as well, their tour manager leading them. This was only the second time the two groups had come into contact with each other. The first had been when they'd boarded the busses back in Los Angeles and that had not really been an official meeting. Jake looked at them, more than a little starstruck. He - like the rest of Intemperance - had been an Earthstone fan since their first album. He had seen them in concert twice. He knew their names, their faces by sight, what instrument each of them played, and their basic biographies. And here they were, standing in the flesh before him, all of them dressed in their concert garb. He walked over to Richie Valentine, the lead singer.

"How you doing, Richie?" he asked him, holding out his hand. "I'm Jake Kingsley."

Richie's head swiveled slowly toward him, revealing eyes that were bloodshot and swollen. "Wassup, Jake?" he replied, giving a brief handshake and then withdrawing his hand. "You got a pen?"

"A pen?" Jake asked.

"You want an autograph, right?"

"Uh... Jake's the singer for Intemperance," Greg spoke up. "Your opening band."

This struck Richie as deliciously funny. He broke up into peals of laughter. "Oh God, I'm fucked up," he said. "My fucking opening band. Jesus." With that, he continued down the hall.

Jake looked after him, his eyes wide. He was wasted! A little more than two hours before a show and Richie Valentine was wasted!

He quickly found out that this was not an isolated case. Greg decided that introductions were probably in order and did the honors. They all shook hands and muttered greetings and every one of the Earthstone members were reeking of alcohol and marijuana and were sniffing the frequent sniffs of recent cocaine use. Matt tried to engage Brad Winston, the guitar player - a man who had been a considerable influence on Matt's style - in some conversation but Brad was too far gone to even understand what was being said. He could barely walk without grabbing onto the walls for support. Mike Hamm, the bass player, was aggressive and tried to pick a fight with Darren. He had to be pulled away by his tour manager. Only Gordon Strong, the drummer, was amicable.

"I like that tune you guys got," he said. "That Descent thing. Good guitar work, good vocal range, good lyrics."

"Thanks," Matt said. "Are you gonna catch the show?"

Strong shrugged. "If I get enough blow in me I might. You guys any good live?"

"Yeah," Jake told him. "We're damn good."

Strong chuckled and clapped Jake on the shoulder. "Conceit," he said. "You gotta love it. Enjoy it while it's there, my man. Enjoy it while it's there."

The rest of the Intemperance members gathered around the drummer, since he was the only one who seemed to be capable of conversation at the moment.

"We've seen you in concert before," Bill told him. "Back in Heritage, California. The Wandering Soul tour and the Lightening Strikes tour."

"Yeah," Strong said whimsically. "I kinda remember them dates. Did you like us?"

"Fuckin' A," Matt said. "You guys rock."

"That drum solo you did in Lightening Strikes was bad-ass," Coop told him. "You gotta catch our show, man. I try to play like you do."

"I'll check it out," Strong promised. "If not tonight, than tomorrow, or some fucking night. Hell, we're gonna be playing together for months, right?"

"Right," Jake said. "Hey, you got any advice for us? Since this is our first tour and all?"

"Advice?" Strong said, his bleary eyes creaking open a little wider.

"Yeah," Jake said. "You've been on these tours through three albums now. This is our first tour, our first show. Anything you can tell us?"

Strong scratched his head for a moment and then grinned. "Yeah," he said at last. "There's one piece of advice I'll give you, one thing I've decided is more important than anything else when you're out on tour."

"What's that?" Jake asked eagerly. Darren, Coop, Bill, and Matt all leaned in to hear this as well.

"Never," Strong said, "and I mean never, kiss a groupie."

The rest of the Earthstone members cracked up at this advice. Greg did too for that matter.

"He ain't fuckin' with you there," Richie Valentine said between chortles. "Heed the man's words."

Earthstone and their manager continued down the hall, still laughing, leaving Intemperance to look at each other in confusion. Never kiss a groupie? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

As soon as they emerged from the tunnel into the stage left area, they heard the crowd. There were no cheers at the moment, just the low-grade babble of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of conversations, loud enough to compete with the recorded rock music that was playing through the amplifiers.

"Listen to that," Jake said, feeling a little of his fatigue dropping away. "Our first big audience."

"How big is it?" Darren asked slowly, casting a nervous glance at the partition that separated them from the stage.

"This is one of the smaller venues," Greg replied. "We sold it out, so that means there are going to be about 5200 people."

"5200?" Darren said, his eyes widening. "Wow... I mean... you know... wow."

"You okay, Darren?" Jake asked him.

"Yeah," he said, fumbling with his cigarette pack. He lit up with shaking hands.

There were about thirty people - locals, Greg called them - gathered near the rear of the backstage area awaiting the two bands. There were several DJs, reporters from both the Bangor and the Portland newspapers, even a television reporter who had been given permission to film small portions of the concert. The rest were fans - mostly of Earthstone since Intemperance was still somewhat unknown. They greeted people, shook hands, chatted, signed a few autographs, and gave a few impromptu interviews. Jake saw one of the female fans - an auburn haired beauty of about nineteen - pull up her shirt so Richie Fairview could sign her bare breast. He did so with a shaky hand and then leaned down and slurped the girl's nipple into his mouth, making her squeal in delight. Their road manager pulled the two of them apart before things could go any further.

Finally the locals were hustled out of the backstage area by the tour security guards. The members of Earthstone left as well, descending back into the tunnel as they discussed how many more beers they could drink before the shot.

"Twenty-five minutes until showtime," Greg told them. "Is everyone cool?"

Everyone said they were cool. They sat down on packing crates to wait. The roadies continued moving about from place to place, setting things up and doing double-checks on things that had already been set up. Jake heard the sound of his guitar being strummed by Mohammad, who was doing a final sound check. This elicited a muted cheer from the crowd - the first they'd heard so far.

"Jesus," Darren muttered, lighting up another cigarette. "5200 people."

"I gotta check this out," Matt said, standing up. He headed for the stage access door, through which the roadies were coming and going.

"Me too," Jake said, standing up and following him. After a moment, Darren got up as well.

They crowded around the door and creaked it open a few inches, staring out over the stage and into the crowd. As was the norm for venues such as this, the seating was general admission, which meant nothing was assigned. The bleachers were all about half-full, with people still streaming in, but the auditorium floor was packed with well over a thousand people. They were crammed in like sardines, pushing and shoving and fighting for the coveted spots near the stage.

"Oh my God," Darren whispered, backing away, his eyes wide.

"You okay?" Jake asked him again, looking at him with more than a little concern this time.

"I can't do this," Darren said. "I can't go on in front of that many people! Holy shit!"

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Matt asked. "You goddamned well better go on! It's a little late to get cold feet now!"

"Dude," Darren said, backing even further away, "it's just that... I mean... shit, dude. Five thousand fucking people! We ain't never been in front of that many before!"

"Darren," Jake started.

"What if we fuck up?" Darren yelled, approaching total panic now. "I mean, there are reporters and everything here. What if we go out there and just fucking bite?"

"If you chill out and play like we do in rehearsal, that ain't gonna happen," Jake said. "Get yourself under control, man."

"And do it fucking quick," Matt added.

All of this commotion attracted the attention of Greg, who had been over talking to the head of security about something. With a look of concern he came over. "What's the problem?" he asked.

"Nothing," Matt replied dismissively. "Darren's just getting a little stagefright. He'll be all right."

"He doesn't look all right," Greg observed.

"We'll get him chilled out. Don't worry."

But Greg wanted to worry. He stepped over to one of the tour security guards and whispered something to him. The guard nodded and spoke into his portable radio. Greg then stepped back over to Darren.

"Don't worry, Darren," he said. "I'll get you fixed up in no time."

"What do you mean?" Matt asked.

"You'll see."

Jake, meanwhile, continued to talk soothingly to Darren, telling him that everything was cool, that he needed to stop freaking out about the number of people out there, that he should pretend they were performing at D Street West instead of the Bangor Auditorium. Gradually, after two or three minutes, his words seemed to have an effect. Darren's breathing slowed. His hands stopped tremoring. He began to look a little less tense.

"Just like D Street West," Darren said, latching onto this thought.

"Fuckin' A," Jake said. "Just like D Street."

A security guard suddenly emerged from the tunnel entrance. He carried a black leather bag in his hands - a bag that looked like an old fashioned doctor's bag. He brought it to Greg, who took it and walked over to Darren. He set the bag down and opened it, fishing through it for a few moments and finally coming up with a brown pill bottle. He opened it up and removed one of the pills.

"Here, Darren," he said. "Take this."

"What is it?" Darren asked.

"Just a little something to help you calm down. Use Jake's water."

Darren reached out to take it but Matt grabbed his wrist, preventing the transfer.

"Wait a minute," Matt said. "What exactly are you giving him?"

"Just a mild anxiety pill," Greg said. "It's nothing."

"What is it called?" Matt demanded.

"Diazepam," Greg said. "It's a very common treatment for anxiety. It'll keep him from having a panic attack out on stage."

"Diazepam," Matt said, shaking his head. "That would be the generic name for Valium, correct?"

Greg's confident grin faded as he heard this. "Uh... yes, it is Valium, but..."

"Don't ever try to jerk me off about drugs, Greg. I've done too many of them. He ain't taking Valium before he goes on stage."

"Matt," Greg said, "this isn't an intoxicating drug. It's just to keep him cool."

"He'll keep himself cool."

"But what if he doesn't? I've got the show to think about."

"So do I," Matt said. "No Valium. He's a professional musician. He'll have his shit together."

While they continued to argue about it, discussing Darren as if he weren't even there, Jake wandered over and sat down next to Greg's open bag. He looked inside to see what else was in there and found a variety of pharmaceutical vials lined up in little holders on one side of the bag, packaged syringes lined up on the other, and multiple pill bottles secured on the bottom. He read some of the vials. There was Narcan, morphine, epinephrine, Demerol, Versed, sodium pentethol, and a lot of Haldol. Jake didn't know what Haldol, epinephrine, or Versed was, but he certainly knew what the rest of those things were. They were narcotic painkillers, except for the pentethol, which was an anesthetic (what the hell does he use that for? Jake wondered) and the Narcan, which was a medicine that reversed the effects of narcotics. He glanced at the pill bottles next but there were far too many for him to read them all. He saw enough though. There was Dexedrine, Flexoril, Vicodin, codeine, Quaaludes, Phenobarbital, Percodan, morphine, Seconal, Nembutal.

"Look," Greg was saying. "You go onstage in twenty-five minutes. He needs to take the pill now or it won't have time to take effect before you start."

"He's not going to take the pill, Greg," Matt said forcefully. "I'm the leader of this band and I will not allow it!"

"And I'm the leader of this tour," Greg retorted, "and he will take what I tell him to take. I know what I'm doing here."

"Oh?" Jake interjected. "Are you a doctor?"

"What?" Greg asked, turning to Jake and blanching a little as he saw him going through his bag.

"You got some heavy-duty shit in this bag, Greg," Jake said. "I'm pretty sure you need a medical degree to dispense most of it."

Greg rushed over and snatched up the bag. "Don't worry about what's in there," he snapped, his grin fully gone for the first time.

Jake turned to Darren, who was sitting impassively, as if he were meditating. "Darren, you cool?"

"I'm getting there," Darren replied, his voice level. "I'll be okay."

"There you have it," Jake said. "He doesn't need your pill. Let him face his fears on his own. That's what the rest of us are doing."

"But..."

"That's the final word, Greg," Matt said. "He ain't taking the pill. If you want to push a breach of contract issue because someone didn't take a prescription medicine that wasn't prescribed to him, you go ahead and do that. I have a feeling the judge won't rule in your favor."

Greg sighed and bit his lip for a moment. Finally a vestige of his signature grin returned. "All right then," he said, dropping the pill and the bottle back in the bag and closing it up. "Just don't screw up out there, Darren. Don't jeopardize the show."

"I won't," Darren said.

"He won't," Matt and Jake said in unison.

The clock turned seven and the recorded music was turned off. The murmur of the crowd picked up a few notches as they sensed that the first portion of the show was about to begin. The band stood in a group near the stage access door, Coop holding his drumsticks, Matt and Jake fingering guitar picks, Bill chewing his fingernails, Darren taking a few last puffs from a cigarette. They had already taken off their backstage passes.

"Ten seconds 'til the lights go down," said Steve Langley, the production manager. "You guys ready?"

"We're ready," Jake said, looking at his bandmates.

They put their hands together, doing their customary show of camaraderie for the first time in months. Langley counted down the last few seconds and everything went dark. As it did, the crowd began to cheer, the sound dozens of decibels louder than any cheers they heard in the past.

Listen to that, Jake thought. That's for us. Holy shit.

"Okay, go!" Langley barked at them. "It's showtime."

They had rehearsed this a thousand times. It was not pitch black on the stage, just dim enough that the audience couldn't see what was happening. Each band member moved to his position, operating half by sight, half by feel. Jake found his guitar and picked it up. He checked to make sure his cord was plugged in and then turned the volume knob all the way up. He touched his microphone stand briefly, just to orient himself, and then put his lips near it, ready to speak. He took a deep breath, beginning to feel a little of what Darren had been feeling. It had been months since they'd performed live and there were five thousand people out there! Five thousand! Sure, they'd rehearsed this set endlessly, had taken dance lessons and done tri-weekly aerobic workouts to keep in shape. But still...

The nervousness had no time to really get a grip on him. Bill provided the opening cue, playing a brief piano solo that was amplified and sent out over the audience. They cheered louder, whistling and clapping.

The solo ended and Matt hit the first guitar chord. That was the final cue. Out on the soundboard one of the technicians hit a switch and the stage lighting blazed to life, showering them in bright white illumination. The moment it happened, Matt launched into the opening sequence of their first song: Who Needs Love?

Jake could hardly see the audience - the stage lights were too bright and the house lights were too dim - and he couldn't hear them at all over the music blaring from the amplifier stacks - but he knew they were there all the same, all 5200 of them, watching as he played his guitar, as he began to sing. He was nervous - as nervous as he'd been launching into that first show at D Street West - but he didn't let it show. On the contrary, he came across as almost cocky with self-assurance, projection confidence with his every movement, his every facial expression, and especially with his voice. And as he performed, that nervousness gradually disappeared, replaced by wonder and awe. All of his doubts, fears, and frustrations about the recording contract, the tour, his relationship with Angie, melted away. He was doing what he loved more than anything, what he felt he had been put on this Earth to do. And while he was doing it, nothing else mattered to him.

The audience liked Who Needs Love? The cheers they gave when it was over were much louder than the polite enthusiasm they had shown at the beginning. It was almost deafening, the sound of respect, the sound of an audience expressing their realization that this band they'd only heard of for a few weeks, that they'd only heard one song from on the radio, was a band to be reckoned with. The next song - Living By the Law - only reinforced this. By the time it was done they had the audience's complete and adoring attention.

In all, they performed every song on the Descent Into Nothing album, intermixing them with four songs that had not been recorded yet. With each number they did, the cheers grew louder and lasted longer. When Matt did an extended guitar solo about halfway through, they went insane. The biggest cheers occurred when they performed the final number of the set, the only Intemperance song most of the audience had ever heard before, Descent Into Nothing. They played the song pretty much as it had been recorded, at least until the end. At that point they drew out the final flourish for nearly a minute, throwing in a final guitar solo, a final piano solo, a minor drum solo, and a gloriously stretched, operatic style vocal finish with Jake moaning out the final syllable for almost twenty seconds. The audience went wild, standing, cheering, raising their lit cigarette lighters into the air. Several bras and pairs of panties came flying up onto the stage - one of them hitting Jake squarely in the face.

"Thank you, Bangor!" Jake yelled into the microphone. "Thank you and goodnight!"

The five of them met at the front of the stage while the glorious applause continued to wash over them, while a few more pairs of panties came flying at them. All five of them were dripping with sweat, their skin flushed, their bodies approaching breathlessness. They linked arms and took a bow and then another. Jake, Matt, and Darren set their guitars down and threw their remaining picks into the crowd. Darren's drumsticks went into the crowd as well. They then walked off stage, going one by one through the access door. The cheers followed them and the calls for encore began.

Alas, there was to be no encore. This was not D Street West. It was Earthstone's show and the stage needed to be cleared so they could go on in thirty minutes.

Mohammad was the first person Jake saw when he came into the relative dimness of the backstage area. He handed him a bottle of cold Gatorade and hung his backstage pass back around his neck.

"Awesome," Mohammad told him. "You guys were fucking awesome out there!"

Jake grinned and took a large drink of the Gatorade, swallowing half the bottle without taking the bottle from his mouth. He burped wetly and then drank some more. Finally he had the breath to reply. "Thanks, Mo," he said. "Couldn't have done it without you."

Even before their eyes fully adjusted to the dimmer lighting, even before the roadies all had a chance to congratulate them on a premium performance, Greg appeared and led them back to the tunnel entrance.

"Let's get you boys out of the way," he said, "so they can get Earthstone rolling. I have cold drinks and other refreshments waiting for you in the dressing room."

Greg wasn't kidding. When they stepped into the dressing room the first thing they saw was a large ice chest filled with bottles of Budweiser, Coors, and Miller. On a folding card table next to the ice chest were bottles of Jack Daniels, Bacardi 151, Jose Cuervo tequila, a bucket of ice, and various mixers. On another table were a jeweled water bong and a sterling silver tray full of high-grade marijuana. Packs of cigarettes - Marlboro and Camel primarily - and monogrammed lighters sat next to this along with a sack of crystal ashtrays.

"Drink up, smoke up, party down," Greg told them. "You guys put on a pretty good show. You deserve it." He reached into the inner pocket of his suit and pulled out a small wooden box. "And if you want something to wake you up a bit, help yourselves to a few lines." He tossed it over to Matt. "Just be sure not to lose the box or I won't have one for tomorrow."

"Holy shit," Darren said, going over and grabbing a Coors out of the ice chest. "You're all right, Greg. Let's fuckin' party!"

"Hell yeah!" Coop said, making a beeline for the bong and the pot.

Jake would have preferred to drink a little more non-alcoholic refreshment to rehydrate himself but since that did not seem to be an option here, he finished up his Gatorade and then grabbed a beer. He sat down on one of the couches and smoked while he drank it. By the time the first bottle was in his empty stomach, he was already starting to buzz a little.

The five of them discussed the show while they cooled off and drank and while Matt crunched up some celebratory lines and passed the mirror around. When it came to Jake, he snorted two of them, one in each nostril. It was excellent coke and within a few minutes he was feeling very good indeed. He opened another beer, lit another cigarette, and then topped it all off with a couple of bonghits. He was starting to think that this really was the life.

Greg snorted up a few lines from his personal stash but did not converse with them or even sit with them. Instead, he sat off in the corner, writing something in a ledger he carried. The band didn't mind. Finally, as they were having an unmitigated and passionate discussion about the panties that had hit Jake in the face, Greg stood.

"Guys," he said, clapping his hands together like a kindergarten teacher trying to get the attention of his class, "I hate to break up you little debriefing here, but Gerald really needs your stage clothes. Why don't you go shower up and put your civvies back on?"

"Gladly," Jake said, standing and swallowing down the last of his second beer. A thought occurred to him. He really needed to call Angie. He still hadn't told her he'd arrived safely. "Hey, Greg. I need to make a call to L.A. Is there somewhere around here I can do that?"

"Nowhere here," Greg replied. "The only phones are the payphones in the front of the auditorium and we can't have you showing yourself out there. You'll get mobbed."

"Oh... okay," he said, frowning a little, trying to remember exactly what day of the week it was and whether or not Angie would be working tonight. "I'll wait until we get back to the hotel."

Greg made no further comment on the telephone call. He simply hustled them into the showers.

It was as they were all naked and soaping themselves under the locker-room style shower heads that they heard voices coming from outside the doorway - voices and feminine giggles.

"What the hell?" Jake had time to ask before the door swung open and five naked girls came strolling in. There were two dyed blondes, one natural blonde, and two brunettes. All were curvy, large breasted, and quite attractive. Jack Ferguson, the head of tour security, was with them. He was still fully dressed.

"There they are, girls," Jack said. "As promised."

The girls squealed in delight and came rushing into the room.

"Groupies!" Darren yelled excitedly.

"All fuckin' right!" Matt shouted. "I'm now officially impressed. One of you girls come over here and suck me off!"

The led to an eruption of giggles and a brief argument between one of the brunettes and on of the unnatural blondes. The brunette apparently won. She walked over to Matt, dropped to her knees at his feet, and sucked his soft, but rapidly expanding penis into her mouth.

"Fuck yeah!" Matt said, his hand dropping to the back of her head. "I don't even wanna know your name, hon. In fact, don't talk to me at all. You say a fuckin' word and I'm kicking your ass outta here."

The rest of the girls entered the shower area. Three of them raced towards Jake - who was still trying to process all of this with his intoxicated mind. The natural blonde reached him first, thus staking her official claim.

"That was a bitchin show," she told him, her hands going to his soapy shoulders and rubbing.

"Uh... thanks," he stammered, taking a step backwards. She stepped with him, keeping hands in place.

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she asked, her rubs going down a little further, onto his upper chest and back.

Involuntarily his eyes did a quick scan. She was nineteen or twenty - twenty-one at the very most. Her breasts were well above average size, yet perky due to her youth. Her nipples were pink, perfect, and gloriously erect. Her stomach was flat and smooth, her bush sparse and light brown in color. Her legs were nothing short of fabulous. The sight of her, combined with the sensuous feel of her soft hands caressing him, caused blood to go slamming into his penis, making it twitch and dance.

"Mmmm," she said, looking down at it. "It looks like you do."

He started to speak - he really did - started to tell her that he was flattered by the attention but that he had a girlfriend back in Los Angeles - a girlfriend who definitely wouldn't approve of him showering naked with an attractive female in an auditorium locker room. But the girl didn't hear word one of what he said. She leaned into him, pushing her breasts against his chest where they began to slip and slide against the layer of soap there, the nipples tracing circles and ovals. Her mouth went to his neck, where it began to kiss and nibble. And her hand - that lovely, soft hand with the manicured nails - dropped down to his penis and began to stroke it with a pressure that was almost unbearable. His words trailed off and his arms went around her, pulling her soft, sexy body tighter against him. He slid his hands down to her ass and began to squeeze it.

"I just love your voice," she whispered to him as she continued kissing and licking his neck and his ears, as she rubbed the head of his cock against her stomach. "And the way you move up on stage. I was in the front row. Did you see me flash my titties at you?"

"Was that you?" Jake asked, although he had seen no such thing.

She giggled. "That was me. And when some of your sweat came down and landed on my arm it turned me on sooooo much. I licked it off."

Jake had no reply for this, he only groaned as her fingers found his balls and began to gently squeeze them. He turned his head to her, meaning to put his lips against hers but stopped at the last second, remembering the advice from Gordon Strong. Never kiss a groupie. He had no idea why Strong had told them that and it was obvious that it had been meant as a joke of some kind, but it was also advice that seemed to contain a strong grain of truth. He diverted his lips at the last moment and kissed her on the nose instead. This produced another giggle and then she slowly slid down his body, until she was kneeling before him. She sucked his erect cock into her mouth and began to bob up and down on it.

Jake sighed, a sound of pleasure mixed with repressed guilt at his weakness. He looked around at the others to keep his mind occupied and saw that Matt was slapping his cock across his groupie's face. Bill had paired up with the other brunette and was currently palpating and squeezing every portion of her body while explaining to her the path that nerve impulses took from the surface of her flesh to her brain and how her Bartholins gland was secreting slippery mucous to provide lubrication for sexual penetration. Coop, like Matt and Jake, was enjoying an enthusiastic blowjob from his groupie. And Darren had either forgotten the advice from Gordon Strong or was disregarding it. He was locked in a passionate embrace with one of the dyed blondes, his mouth firmly connected to hers, his tongue obviously driving as deep into her mouth as he could get it. Jack Ferguson, still fully dressed, was standing in the corner of the room, smoking a cigarette and drinking a bottle of beer. He was watching the whole thing impassively, with the eye of a man who had seen such shenanigans hundreds, maybe thousands of times before.

Darren suddenly broke the embrace he shared with his groupie. He put his hands on her shoulders and spun her around. "Bend over, bitch," he told her. "I'm gonna fuck you!"

The bitch in question obeyed without any sign of hesitation or offense. She even reached behind her and spread herself open. But before he could line himself up and enter her, Jack stood up and took a few steps forward.

"Stop right there, Darren," he yelled. "No fucking in the shower!"

"What?" Darren asked, turning angrily toward him. "What the fuck are you talking about. Where the fuck do you get off telling me..."

"You like paternity suits, do you?" Jack asked him calmly. "Or how about the drip? Or how about fucking AIDS?"

"I don't have any of that stuff," the groupie said haughtily.

"Maybe not, but you're of child-bearing age, aren't you? And getting knocked up by a rich rock star would get you out of this shitpot town you live in, wouldn't it? You were told the rules, sister. None of my musicians gets in your puss without a rubber."

"Well gimmee a fuckin' rubber then!" Darren pleaded.

"You son of a bitch!" his groupie yelled, standing up and turning angrily towards Jack, Darren forgotten. "How dare you talk to me like that - accuse me of that!"

"It's just my job, hon," Jack told her, blankly. "If you don't want to follow the rules, you can just get the fuck out of here. There's a hundred other girls out there who'd love to take your place."

"You can't do that!" the groupie yelled. "I sucked your fuckin' cock so I could get back here! We all sucked fuckin' cock to get back here! We had a fuckin' agreement!"

"And you just tried to violate the rules," Jack said.

"Wait a minute," Darren said, his face starting to turn a little green. "What do you mean you sucked his cock?" He turned to Jack. "What does she mean, she sucked your fuckin' cock?"

Jack shrugged. "The security boys and some of the higher seniority roadies are the ones who pick out a few girls to come meet you guys after the show," he told Darren. "It's been worked out over the years that there is a certain price to be paid for that privilege."

Darren looked like he was going to throw up now. "You mean... you mean..."

"You really shouldn't kiss groupies, Darren," Jack told him, a faint smile on his face. "Didn't anyone tell you that?"

A second later, Darren was rushing to the toilet, vomit spraying from his mouth.

They didn't see Earthstone's show. They didn't even hear it. They partied in the dressing room for a few hours, all of them smoking and drinking and snorting until all of them were quite obliterated. Jack allowed more groupies back to party with them (after they paid the admission price, of course) and soon there were twelve girls in addition to the original five. The entire group climbed onto the tour bus and were taken back to the hotel rooms where the party continued. At this point Greg passed out condoms to everyone, admonishing them to use them.

Jake ended up using two of them. He took his original groupie into the bathroom with him and had her sit on his cock while he sat on the toilet. She ground herself up and down while he suckled her breasts and felt her ass. The second girl was a tiny aspiring ballet dancer with short black hair and a heavy French accent. She gained his favor by asking him if he'd like to see her eat out another girl.

"Uh... yeah, sure," Jake had answered. By that point he'd done nine lines of cocaine, drank eleven beers and four rum and cokes, and had smoked half a gram of marijuana.

She pulled a random girl from the crowd, whispered in her ears for a few moments, and the girl nodded enthusiastically. They both took off their clothes and the second girl - a brown-haired, brown-eyed beauty - lay on her back on Jake's bed. The ballet dancer dived between her legs and began to lick her, running her tongue up and down, down and up, until the brown-haired girl was writhing in ecstasy. The rest of the partygoers who happened to be in Jake's room at the moment all stopped what they were doing to watch the spectacle.

"God damn I love being a rock star!" Matt yelled. "Look at that shit, Jake. Fuckin' look at it!"

"I am," Jake replied. He was in fact staring at in, transfixed, his cock hardening quite nicely despite the fact that he'd already come once in the first groupie's mouth and once in the condom while fucking her.

The dancer pulled her face out of the brown-haired girl's pussy long enough to look back and say, "Come on, Jake. I'm sooooo wet. Fuck me while I eat her."

One of the security guys - who were watching the festivities from the corner of the room without participating - walked over and put a condom in Jake's hand.

The rest of the room's inhabitants began to chant, "Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake," over and over again.

Jake's doubts and inhibitions were driven deeply into the back of his brain, so deep they couldn't even conceive of daylight, much less see it. He dropped his pants and put the rubber on his straining cock. He entered the dancer from behind and pounded almost violently into her for the better part of fifteen minutes while she continued to lick and suck on the brown-haired girl's clit.

By the time he finished there was a full-blown orgy going on in the room, the only non-participants the security guys.

At some point after that, Jake's brain stopped recording memories for the evening.

A hand shook him awake some time later. His eyes creaked open to see Greg's face illuminated by sunlight streaming in through the windows.

"Wake up," Greg told him, his usual grin firmly affixed to his face. "We have to leave for Concorde in forty-five minutes."

Jake groaned. He had a tremendous headache and his mouth was as dry as the Sahara. His lungs hurt and his body ached everywhere. And he was tired. God was he tired. He wanted nothing more than another six hours of sleep.

"I got your breakfast for you," Greg told him, putting his hands on Jake's shoulders and pulling him to a sitting position. "Come on. You need to eat."

Jake had never felt less like eating in his life. He shook his head. "No. No food."

"Yes food," Greg said. "I must insist." He put a fork in his hand.

Jake rode out a wave of dizziness and then looked down at himself, seeing that he was completely naked. He looked around the hotel room and saw that Bill - who was also naked - was unenthusiastically putting bites off egg and bacon into his mouth.

"Here," Greg said, handing him a bottle of Gatorade and a handful of pills. "Drink this down and take these."

"What are they?" Jake mumbled.

"Tylenol and a vitamin B12 supplement. They'll help you with your hangover."

Jake didn't argue. He drank down a huge swallow of the Gatorade and then washed down the pills with another huge swallow.

"Now eat," Greg insisted. "Ever last bite of it. You need nourishment."

Jake ate, putting bite after bite into his mouth, fighting down the nausea the entire time. He did not feel better when he was done, nor did he feel any more awake.

"Now let's get you dressed and out of here," Greg said. "We've already packed up your belongings and put them on the bus. There are some clothes for you right there on the bed."

Jake looked over and saw that a pair of jeans, fresh underwear and socks, a T-shirt, and a sweater had been neatly laid out. He staggered over and began putting them on.

"Where did all the girls go?" he asked.

"They were taken back to the auditorium around five o'clock this morning when the party finally broke up."

"Five o'clock?" Jake asked. "What time is it now?"

Greg looked at his watch. "Seven-thirty," he said. "Now come on. We need to get on the road. There's a show tonight."

Ten minutes later the entire band was on the bus, all of them looking considerably worse for wear. They climbed into their bunks and were asleep before the bus even left the parking lot.

Four hours later Jake was shaken awake again.

"We're in Concorde," Greg told him. "Let's get your stuff in the hotel and then we need to get you over to the local radio station for some interviews."

Jake groaned. It felt like he had only just closed his eyes. "Can't we get just a little more sleep?" he asked.

Greg shook his head. "It's time to go to work," he told him. "You got a show tonight."