Standing On Top

Chapter 19a

Los Angeles, California

January 9, 1990

Now this is something new, Jake thought as he listened to the grunts and groans, smelled the smells, and felt the exquisite pleasure of a new sensation providing enjoyment to him. It really wasn't very often that he had such a thought about sexual activity. After ten years as a performing rock musician, the last eight of those years as the lead singer of one of the most popular bands of all time, there was little he hadn't tried at one time or another. Leave it to Mindy Snow to come up with something unique, kinky, yet not quite falling under the heading of total depravity.

They were in a Venice beachside condo that belonged to Darla O'Banion, Scott Winslow Adams' personal make-up artist. Jake was naked, lying on his back on Darla's bed. Mindy, her body naked, sweaty, and flushed, was atop him, her breasts against his chest, her mouth chewing on his neck, moaning into his ear, while Jake's throbbing erection was buried to the hilt in her shaven, slippery vagina, thrusting carefully in and out. Behind Mindy, her petite body almost (but not quite) naked, her red hair hanging in sweaty clumps in her face, was Darla O'Banion. Darla's only article of clothing — so to speak — was an eight-inch strap-on dildo. She was gripping Mindy by the hips and thrusting the fake phallus in and out of Mindy's lubed anus. It had taken awhile for Jake and Darla to establish a rhythm that allowed both of them move simultaneously, but now that they had, they were driving Mindy insane.

"Yes!" Mindy panted, her eyes wild. "Oh fuck yes! Fuck me, you guys! Fuckin' fuck the shit out of me!"

They continued to fuck. Jake had already come once about thirty minutes before. That had been while fucking Darla from behind while Darla first fingered and then actually crammed her entire tiny fist into Mindy's swollen vagina and began to thrust it in and out. It was a good thing Jake had had the release then because the sensation of the thrumming, vibrating dildo rubbing against him through Mindy's thin perineal membrane, coupled with the sheer kinky nastiness of what they were doing, already had him fighting to remain in control of himself — something he hadn't had to do in quite some time.

Jake had never met Darla before this evening. He had never even been told about her, although there was quite a story there. Mindy had simply given him an address to show up at for this Tuesday night rendezvous while her husband was going over some final paperwork in his study and he'd driven there. Her explanation had been that the condo in question belonged to a discrete friend. He had not known in advance that the discrete friend was going to be there as well, or that the discrete friend had always had a crush on Jake Kingsley and desperately wanted to get it on with him. He certainly hadn't known that the discrete friend — a petite, thirty-year-old natural redhead with freckles on her nose and her breasts — had been fucking Mindy's husband for the past six months and that Mindy had known about it.

"And... you're okay with her fucking your husband?" Jake had asked Mindy after being told the situation.

Mindy simply shrugged. "Why should I have all the fun with Scotty's golf-pencil dick? Darla's a cool girl. She's only doing what she has to do."

"Wow," Jake said. "This is a little weird."

"I'm only fucking him to keep my job," Darla said with a shrug of her own. "It's the way things work in Hollywood. I was actually kind of relieved when Mindy told me she knew about it and didn't care. I've always liked Mindy and I hated doing something like that behind her back."

"So you two are... friends?"

"Oh, we're more than just friends," Mindy said. "Much more."

"You mean... uh..."

"We don't go all the way," Mindy said. "Remember, I'm not a lesbian. I don't like putting my mouth on women or letting them put their mouths on me. That's just too much."

"I see," Jake said, although he didn't. Not right then, anyway.

"I do like women touching me though," Mindy said. "And... well... wouldn't you know it? Darla likes to touch."

"How convenient," Jake said.

"Yes," Mindy said. "And there are many different ways to touch another woman, aren't there, Darla?"

"Very many," Darla agreed, licking her lips.

"Would you like to see some of them, Jake?" Mindy asked.

"Well... if you were going to do it anyway," Jake said.

And so it had begun. Jake started out as an observer but that only lasted about five minutes — the amount of time it took the two women to shed their blouses and bras and start feeling each other's breasts. They then invited Jake to feel each set of breasts and judge which ones were the fairest in the condo. Jake did so, declaring a tie, of course, even though Mindy's breasts were far softer, bigger, and more squeezable than Darla could ever hope to achieve — even with the finest plastic surgeon in southern California on retainer. This activity quickly led to the three of them naked in the living room, Jake's condom-encased manhood thrusting in Darla from behind while the make-up artist and adulterer fisted Mindy to a violent orgasm. After that, they broke out the strap-on and Mindy demanded a rough, brutal double penetration.

Mindy was now panting her way through her fourth orgasm of the night, the second of this particular round of activity. Jake felt her clenching against him as she came and had to renew his struggle to suppress his own orgasm. Darla reacted to Mindy's spasms as well. Unable to contain herself, she leaned forward and attached her mouth to the back of Mindy's neck, licking and sucking the flesh there.

"No no!" Mindy moaned, reaching back with her left hand and pushing Darla's face away. "You know the rules."

"Oh god, Mindy!" Darla pleaded. "Let me kiss you! Please? Let me put my mouth on you and lick you and suck you and..."

"You know the rules," Mindy repeated. "Keep your girly mouth off of me or you'll never touch me again."

Darla groaned in frustration but quickly turned the situation around. She grabbed hold of Mindy's breasts and, using them for leverage, began to slam rapidly in and out of her anus. "You're just a fucking bitch, aren't you, Mindy?" she asked.

"Yes! Yes! I'm a fucking bitch!" Mindy agreed.

"And you like my fake cock in your ass, don't you?"

"I fucking love it!" Mindy groaned. "Fuck me harder, both of you! Fuck me faster! Twist my fucking nipples! Somebody spank me!"

Jake really though he wasn't going to last another ten seconds under this onslaught. Fortunately, he was saved by the bell. Sitting next to the bed was Mindy's Louis Vuitton purse. From within it, a shrieking electronic warbling began to sound. That was Mindy's cellular phone, the gadget that was all the latest rage among the elite these days. Jake didn't have one yet. He didn't see the point in allowing people to call you while you were away from home or in your car, especially since there were so few towers to transmit the signal that it was out of range half the time anyway. But Mindy's husband had given her the latest, greatest, most technologically advanced model available on the market these days. It was actually small enough to fit inside of her purse as long as she took most of the other stuff out first.

"Oh god," Mindy moaned. "I gotta answer that. It's probably Scotty."

"Let it ring," Darla told her. "I wanna watch Jake come in you."

"I have to answer it," Mindy said. "He thinks I'm meeting with Georgette tonight about the premier party we're having next month. I don't have an excuse not to answer. He already knows I have coverage in Georgette's house."

"Asshole," Darla grunted.

Mindy leaned over and grabbed her purse. Darla and Jake both moved to withdraw from her but she wasn't having any of that. "No," she said as she pulled the fourteen-inch, four-pound phone from her purse and extended the eleven-inch antenna. "Keep fucking me while I talk to him."

They looked at each other and shrugged. By now, both were aware of Mindy's vicious contempt for her husband. Darla resumed pushing and pulling the strap-on in her butt and Jake resumed moving his more permanent structure within her vagina.

"This is Mindy," Mindy said brightly into the phone, not a trace of a grunt or groan in her voice. "Who's this? You're a little scratchy." A pause. "Oh hey, baby. What's up?"

Jake could hear the tinny sound of Winslow's voice talking in Mindy's ear but he couldn't quite make out the words.

"Oh, we're just finishing up here," Mindy told her husband as she ground her pelvis around on Jake's erection. "Yes, we had quite the session."

Darla had to stifle a little giggle. She then gave an extra-hard lunge into Mindy's body. Mindy let out a startled "hmmph" in response. Winslow's voice squeaked out a few more tinny words.

"Oh... nothing," Mindy said, casting an amused glare at Darla. "I had a little cramp in my tummy is all. Yeah. Must've been something that girl is feeding me."

A few more squeaky words.

"Scotty says hi, Georgette," Mindy said.

Darla leaned back a bit, put her hand in front of her mouth, and, using a voice much deeper than her own, said, "Hi, Mr. Winslow."

"Yeah," Mindy said. "She has a little bit of a cold. Well, listen, hon, we're gonna finish up here real quick and I'll be on my way home. Right. Okay. Love you. Bye."

She clicked off the phone and dropped it back in her purse, where it made a fairly respectable thunk.

"What a moron," Darla said with a giggle.

"Yep," Mindy agreed. "Now, how about we 'finish up' like I said we would. I need to get home pretty soon."

They finished up, although it wasn't exactly quick. It was thirty-one more minutes before they disengaged from each other. Jake said his goodbyes before Mindy and Darla climbed into the shower together to "clean each other off". He was invited to stay and watch but he politely declined. He was tired, sore, and pretty much used up for the night. He also had to be back at the rehearsal warehouse at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Now that the start date for the tour was less than two weeks away, they had actually progressed to the point that they were playing music almost more than they were arguing.

He drove home listlessly, sipping a can of beer from Darla's refrigerator and chain-smoking cigarettes. It was just after eleven o'clock when he pulled into his driveway. He was thinking that if he had just two more beers (just two, he told himself, not four or six), he could get into bed my midnight and sleep peacefully until the alarm went off at seven-thirty.

He found a note from Elsa on the bar refrigerator. It said that Pauline wanted him to call her, no matter how late he got in and, that if he'd been out visiting "whatever new friend you've made" and if he had not showered before donning his clothes again, that he was to remove his underwear and pants and place them directly into the washing machine so she would not be forced to handle them ("and remove your goddamn cigarette lighters and beer caps from the pockets", she added as a PS).

Jake tossed the note into the garbage can, pulled a Corona and a lime slice out of the refrigerator, opened the beer and inserted the lime, and then picked up the bar phone extension, wondering what kind of shit had hit the fan this time. There was only one way to find out. He dialed Pauline's private number.

She picked it up on the third ring.

"Hey, sis," he said. "It's Jake. What's up?"

"Hey, Jake," she said, sounding a little tired and frazzled. "Where have you been? I've been trying to get you all night. Elsa said she didn't know where you were off to."

"I was out visiting a friend," Jake told her.

"Ahh," she said. "In other words, mind my own business. I get it."

"And I appreciate it," Jake replied. "So what's going on? More bad news?"

"I suppose you could say that," she said. "Charlie got arrested at about eight this evening."

"Oh shit," Jake said, shaking his head. "For what? Drunk driving?"

"Uh... no. For lewd conduct."

"Lewd conduct?" Jake said, not totally surprised. This was Charlie, after all. "What happened?"

"Two LAPD cops were on patrol and spotted his car in a back corner of Macarthur Park."

"Macarthur Park? Jesus. What the hell was he doing in that part of town?"

"Getting a blowjob from a known prostitute," Pauline said. "They caught him red handed — so to speak. He had his pants down around his ankles in the front seat of his car, two condoms on his whanger, and two pairs of latex gloves on his hands. The prostitute, one Bobbi Martinez, was orally servicing him."

"Christ," Jake said. "How bad is it going to be? Is it going to delay the tour?"

"Well... not directly. The most likely scenario is that he pleas guilty to the lewd conduct charge in exchange for fifty or sixty hours of community service — deferred until after the tour, of course — and the stipulation that he not have to register as a sex offender. He's already back home. They booked him and then released him on his own recognizance."

"Okay," Jake said. "That doesn't sound so bad."

"Uh... yeah... well... I haven't actually told you the bad part yet."

"What do you mean?"

"Bobbi, the prostitute, was dressed in a really slick leather mini-skirt and had a really fantastic set of knockers — from what I'm told anyway — but... uh... Bobbi's actual name is not Roberta, as you might think, but... uh... Roberto."

Jake took an extra-long, extra-deep drag from his smoke and blew it out slowly. "Roberto?" he finally said.

"Yeah," Pauline said. "Roberto apparently looked pretty hot, but she... he... is actually an outtie, not an innie."

"Wow," Jake said as he let that sink in. Sure, Charlie was weird, and he had made some... well... disturbing remarks in the past, but... Roberto? "Did Charlie know this... uh... chick was a guy?"

"He says he didn't," Pauline replied. "He told me he just likes to go out and score the occasional blowjob from a street hooker and he had no idea that drag queens did their business over by Macarthur Park."

"Did he seem upset by the fact that a dude was sucking his dick?" Jake asked. Jake could imagine how he would feel in such a circumstance. He was a live and let live kind of guy and if two dudes wanted to slurp each other's schlongs, it was no skin off his ass, but the thought of letting another person with the Y-chromosome put his mouth on him... and to do it by misconception, that was just wrong on every level.

"He seemed kind of dazed by the whole thing," Pauline said. "I only talked to him on the phone and it was kind of hard to get a read."

"Hmm," Jake said, shaking his head and feeling vaguely nauseous. He took a few sips of beer to help quell the sensation. "What are the odds that the media won't get hold of this?"

"Zero in a million," she said. "They already know about it, probably from contacts in the LAPD. Bobbi's booking photo and rap sheet have already been released to the press along with all the sordid details. It'll be on all the news channels and in most of the newspapers first thing in the morning."

"Jesus," Jake said. "What a mess."

"Yeah," Pauline said. "Charlie's gonna be a laughing stock no matter what, even if people do believe it was a simple case of mistaken identity."

The story about Charlie and the drag queen was indeed in all the newspapers and on all the television news programs the next morning. On the Channel 5 morning newscast it was actually the top story. Through Pauline, Charlie had released a brief statement to the effect that he was not a homosexual and that he had not known that the prostitute he was consorting with was a male (pictures of Roberto Martinez did lend credence to this statement — he really did make a pretty cute-looking chick), and that he was embarrassed and angry about the entire situation. Charlie granted no interviews and made no appearances before any cameras.

Charlie did, in fact, seem quite mortified by the whole situation when he showed up at the rehearsal warehouse the next morning. "Hey, guys," he greeted, his face flushed, his eyes downcast. "I guess you heard about what happened?"

"Yeah, we heard," Jake said and then was unable to think of a single thing to follow that statement up with. What the hell were you supposed to say to a guy when something like that happened to him? There wasn't really an entry in the Guy Handbook that covered this situation.

Coop, Nerdly, and most of the road crew who were helping produce the show were somewhat at a loss for words as well. A lot of the roadies flat-out avoided Charlie and then whispered things behind his back. Everyone seemed to go out of their way to avoid actually touching him. Only Matt treated him exactly the same, which was to say he didn't talk to him in any way unless he absolutely had to.

"Do you really think he didn't know it was a guy?" Coop asked Jake as they ate their sandwiches during their lunch break (Charlie was in the bathroom, washing his hands for the fifteenth or twentieth time at this particular moment).

"I think, for my own sanity, I'm going to have to force myself to believe him," Jake said.

"That's a good way to look at it," Coop had to admit.

Matt just shook his head. "He's a fuckin' fudge packer," he said. "There ain't no way in hell he didn't know it was a dude. You don't go to fucking Macarthur Park unless you're looking for some shit like that."

Matt's opinion on the matter was shared by about three-quarters of the road crew. After all, they knew Charlie, had worked closely with him through three tours now, and the thought of him specifically going out looking for a transvestite didn't seem that far off-base. As for the public, though they did indeed make a laughing stock out of Charlie by the end of that first day, the general consensus seemed to be that were giving him the benefit of the doubt. No one really believed that a member of the raunchiest band in history — the band that was infamous for the coke in the butt-crack episode and the notorious sex and drug orgies described in the news reports of their New York City arrest — could possibly be gay.

That benefit of the doubt shifted on its axis two days later, however, when Bobbi Martinez — now the most famous transsexual on the planet — held a press conference outside the Los Angeles City Jail (he had not been released on his own recognizance at the time of arrest due to multiple previous convictions and two outstanding failure to appear warrants). There, dressed fashionably in a pair of hot pants and a tube top, he told the world that Charlie Meyer had known very well that he was actually a guy because the night they had been arrested was not their first time together.

"I've been with him dozens of times," he said. "He asks for me by name when he's out cruising for some action, and what I got caught doing to him, he's done to me more than once. He knew what was under that dress."

Charlie, both in person and in a press conference of his own, emphatically denied that he had ever seen Bobbi Martinez before that night and that he'd ever knowingly engaged in any sort of sexual activity with a male. "Look," he said, "Something embarrassing and revolting happened to me because I was doing something that I really shouldn't have been doing. I've learned my lesson and I'd just like to put it all behind me now. I believe that this Bobbi character is simply trying to cash in on the circumstances and keep his fifteen minutes of fame going and maybe try to score a little money from my misfortune."

Public opinion swung sharply against Charlie for a few days. Despite his denials, people were willing to believe the transvestite hooker when he said Charlie was a repeat customer. It swung back in the other direction a little bit when, two days later, it was revealed that Bobbi Martinez had agreed to do a photo shoot and a complete expose on his activities with Charlie Meyer for one of the raunchier pornographic magazines. In return for this, Martinez was to be paid sixty thousand dollars.

"As I've been saying all along," Charlie said in a prepared statement released through Pauline, "this Martinez person is making this all up so he can profit from the circumstances. I find this all very disturbing."

He was not the only one who found it disturbing. Matt pulled Jake aside shortly after Martinez's first press conference and tried to get him to fire Charlie again.

"He's a fuckin' faggot," Matt said. "We've always suspected that, and now we have fuckin' confirmation. And not only that, the whole fuckin' world knows he's a faggot now. If we go out on tour with a confirmed faggot, people are gonna start thinking we're faggots too. Let's get Darren back in here, Jake. It'll delay the tour by a month or so, but we won't have people thinking were all a bunch of fudge packers out there and it'll ease some of the tension we've been dealing with ever since Freakboy started playing with us."

Nor was Matt the only one to express this opinion. Steve Crow, representing the rest of National Records' management, was worried about public opinion as well. Completely independent of Matt, he called Jake later that same day with very much the same concerns. "Whether he did it or not, a good number of your fans think that he did. The demographic you appeal to is a very homophobic bunch, Jake. There's a very good chance this may affect sales of the album and concert attendance on the tour if Charlie is still a member of the band. Now, I understand it's illegal to fire someone for being gay, but perhaps he could be persuaded to voluntarily resign his position in exchange for a monetary settlement in advance. We at National would, of course, put up half of any amount agreed upon."

"No," Jake told both of them. "I won't vote to out Charlie because of this. I'll uphold any decision a vote of the band dictates, but I'll vote no on firing him and I won't be any party to getting him to resign."

The issue fell along the same lines it had before, only this time there was no Darren to cast a vote since he'd been officially fired. Coop and Matt were both of the opinion that Charlie should go; Jake and Nerdly were of the opinion that he should stay. That left Charlie with the deciding vote on his own fate.

"It's for the good of the fucking band, Freakboy," Matt told him on the one occasion they actually got together and discussed it.

"Actually, it's not," Jake immediately countered. "It'll delay the tour by at least two months, if not indefinitely, and Darren is not capable of playing all of the music we have planned because he's not as good on the bass."

"We'll fuckin' pay you, Freakboy," Matt added, trying Crow's enticement. "You'll keep full royalties on the album and we'll give you half a million in severance pay. How's that shit sound?"

"I'm not gay," Charlie said. "I know you guys don't believe that, but I'm not. I want to go out on this tour. I've rehearsed for it, I know every song, and I'm ready. I won't vote myself out and I won't resign."

And so that was pretty much that. The arguments got worse and more vicious, but Lines On The Map continued to sell like hotcakes and three of the songs from the album were receiving extensive airplay, including, much to everyone's surprise (even Matt's), Grandstand, the rap song, which was touted as being the most innovative new style of music to come along in a decade. All this seemed to lend credence to Jake's school of thought, which was basically that people listened to Intemperance for the music and the scandals the band got into were of secondary concern.

Even Matt couldn't argue against the sheer numbers. She Cut Me Loose was currently number twelve on the top-forty chart and moving up fast. Grandstand was not on sale as a single yet (although National was frantically trying to get it into production) but it was the most-requested song on radio stations nationwide. The second most requested song on radio stations nationwide was I See You, Jake's slow, fingerpicked ballad about a person's aggressive and weak sides struggling against each other. As with Grandstand, National had not been expecting the song to be so popular and it had not been released as a single yet.

And then there was the biggest of the numbers: album sales. Lines On The Map had debuted on the album sales chart at number one and it continued to sell nearly two hundred thousand copies per week. It had gone gold less than one week after its release and had gone platinum on the day Charlie was caught with the transvestite. Despite Charlie's problems, sales were showing no signs of slowing and it was projected that the album would remain in the top ten for the better part of a year.

Since it was mid-winter, it had been decided that the tour would start on the west coast and encompass everything west of the Rocky Mountains and in the southwest first. This would, hopefully, keep any travel delays caused by snow at a minimum and allow them to hit the mid-west, the south, and the eastern seaboard in the spring. Since they were starting on the west coast it seemed only logical that the first performances should be in the Los Angeles region.

January 17 was opening night, the first of three shows at the eighteen thousand seat Esparto Auditorium in Long Beach. Present in the special guest section of the auditorium — front row, center, right in front of the stage — were Mindy Snow and Scott Adams Winslow, her cuckolded director husband. Mindy had asked Jake for a couple of tickets because she wanted to, "show Scotty how great you are live". Jake had granted her request even though he thought it a bit odd. Mindy had never showed all that much interest in his music before and had only seen him perform once during a dress rehearsal for the Thrill Of Doing Business tour way back in 1984 (and, that had been the day she'd broken up with him, as he recalled). Nor had Winslow ever expressed any sort of interest in or respect for Jake's music. Nor had Mindy really given much of a propensity for showing Winslow a good time lately. She had, in fact, been cruelly contemptuous toward him.

Jake, knowing Mindy as he did, could not help but think that some ulterior motive was afoot as he looked out over the gathered audience ten minutes before showtime. He spotted Mindy and Winslow sitting in their roped off section with the other VIPs. Winslow was dressed in a tuxedo, as if he were attending the opera. He continuously looked around nervously, as if he was expecting to be attacked at any moment. Mindy was wearing a pair of designer jeans and a form-fitting Intemperance — Lines On The Map Tour 1990 shirt. Based on the jiggle whenever she moved, it appeared she was not wearing a bra. He wondered again, for perhaps the thousandth time since she'd showed up at his house unexpectedly, why he had allowed himself to get involved with her again. And then he saw the jiggle of her breasts and it all came back to him.

He took a few breaths and pulled his head back inside, taking a look at the frantic, last-minute backstage activity. A large digital clock was counting down the minutes to showtime and the roadies were making final checks of their equipment and chatting back and forth on the wireless radios with the technicians on the soundboard. Nerdly and Sharon were, of course, in the thick of this, giving final instructions and getting final clarifications. Coop was sitting on an amplifier box, twirling a set of drumsticks and smoking a cigarette. Charlie was off by himself, chewing on his fingernails and being ignored by everyone, including his own personal roadie. Matt was also off by himself, sitting on another amplifier box across the stage-left area. He was sipping from a bottle of water and playing with a guitar pick.

None of us are sitting together, Jake thought sadly. None of us are talking. None of us even like each other anymore. How in the hell are we supposed to go on tour like this?

No answers were forthcoming. The clock continued to click down and soon it was time to hit the stage. The band gathered just outside the stage entrance. The lights went down and the crowd began to cheer.

"All right," Jake said, relishing that sound as he always had. "Let's do it."

"Yeah," Coop said. "It's time to earn our money."

Jake held out his hand, waiting for someone to slap their hand against his in their traditional show of camaraderie. Nerdly slapped his hand down. After a moment's hesitation, Charlie did too. Coop and Matt just looked at them.

"Let's get out there," Matt said blandly. "The clock's at zero."

"Slap your fuckin' hand down, Matt," Jake said.

"I don't feel like it," Matt said. "Come on."

"I ain't going out there until you slap your hand down," Jake said. "We've done this every live performance since our first D Street West gig. We ain't gonna stop it now just because you're having a temper tantrum."

Matt ground his teeth for a moment and then apparently decided that Jake just might be serious. He looked at Coop. "Put your hand down first, Coop. I ain't touching the fuckin' fudge packer's hand."

"I don't want to touch it either!" Coop said.

"Oh for Christ's sake," Jake said. "Put your fucking hand down, Coop. Tomorrow we'll make sure it's me and then Charlie and then Nerdly."

Coop reluctantly put his hand down, touching as lightly as possible. Matt made a touch that could technically qualify as contact. "All right," he said. "Let's do it."

"Let's do it," Jake said. They separated their hands and then took the stage. The cheers grew louder and the show began.

Once the band was actually out there and playing, it went just as it had in their dress rehearsals. The animosities and the hostilities were not forgotten, but they were temporarily buried in the name of putting on a good performance. Jake, Matt, and Charlie moved freely over the stage as they always had, occasionally bumping shoulders, occasionally singing out the same microphone. To the audience watching them, it looked like the five of them were the best of friends. The show went on as it always had and Intemperance put on a performance as worthy as any they'd ever done.

Jake was able to see Mindy and her husband in the first row during the performance. Mindy was very much into the show. She danced through most of the songs, waving her hands above her head, holding up a cigarette lighter at times, shaking her glorious bra-less breasts continuously. Winslow, on the other hand, simply sat there impassively, a polite smile on his face. He did not move to the beat or tap his feet. After each song, while the rest of the audience cheered wildly, he would give a brief four-fingered clap with his hands at ninety degree angles to each other and make no vocalizations of any kind.

Jake noted that the photographers from both of the major LA newspapers — who, along with the concert critics, were in the same VIP section — were snapping almost as many pictures of Mindy and Winslow as they were of the band. This was hardly surprising. Having such a famous couple seated among them at a rock concert was a very unusual happening. More than likely the two of them had already been interviewed before the show as to what their purpose was here. What had Mindy said? What had Winslow said? Jake had a feeling he'd find out when he read tomorrow's paper.

They finished up the main set with The Thrill Of Doing Business, instilling the tune with an extended, drawn-out ending full of drum and piano flourishes and a final guitar solo.

"Thank you, Los Angeles!" Jake yelled into the microphone after the final note. "Thank you, and goodnight!"

Acting on an impulse he didn't really understand, Jake tossed his guitar pick directly at Mindy. She snatched it out of the air and held it aloft triumphantly. She then blew Jake a kiss — an act that was not missed by the reporters or photographers.

The band linked arms and took a bow. They then headed offstage to re-hydrate and take a breather for a minute or two while the crowd screamed for an encore. The roadies had cold bottles of Gatorade that they passed out to the band.

Matt took a large drink from his bottle, belched wetly, and then pointed an accusing finger at Charlie. "You watch where you're putting your fuckin' hand when we're doing the bow, fudge packer!" he yelled, partly in anger, partly to be heard over the tremendous roaring of the crowd.

"Where I put my hand?" Charlie asked, perplexed.

"What the hell are you talking about, Matt?" Jake asked.

"He was moving his hand down toward my ass!" Matt yelled.

"I was not!" Charlie protested.

"Jesus Christ," Jake said, rolling his eyes.

"Just keep your fuckin' hands up on my shoulder when we have to do that shit!" Matt told him. "And don't be moving your fingers around either!"

"That goes for me too, dick licker!" Coop put in.

"Coop, he doesn't even touch you during the bow," Jake said. "You're up against Nerdly at the end."

"Just in case we ever have to switch!" Coop said.

"I'm bowing just like I've always bowed," Charlie said, barely loud enough to be heard.

"The fuck you are!" Matt said. "You were trying to get a feel of my ass! Your fingers ever come within a foot of my ass I'm gonna break 'em off one by one and shove 'em up your ass!"

Jake shook his head in disgust and took another drink of his Gatorade. He set the bottle down and looked at Matt and Coop. "You two are paranoid," he said. "Will you try to get over it a little so we don't have to do this shit every night?"

"Are you a fuckin' fudge packer too?" Matt asked him. "You must be, as much as you're defending the rump ranger here!"

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," Jake said. "Come on. Are we ready to get back out there, or what?"

Matt looked like he had more to say but he shrugged it off. "All right," he said. "Let's get this shit over with."

"Amen," said Coop.

They stepped back out onto the stage for the three-song encore set. Just like before, as soon as they were back under the lights and in view of the audience, the animosities were shoved to the background — or swept under the rug, if you prefer.

"All right," Jake said into the microphone as he shouldered his guitar again. "You talked us into it. Just a few more before we call it a night."

Wild screams of approval poured over them.

"We're gonna do a song now that Matt here wrote for the Lines On The Map album we just put out. It's kind of a different song and I'll be the first to admit that when he introduced it to us I was like, 'what the hell is this?' But as we started to play around with the tune a little, started throwing in some drums, some bass, a little piano here and there, and... especially... some ass-kicking Matt Tisdale guitar riffs..." Another loud cheer. Jake rode it out and then continued. "As we started to put it all together, to turn it from an idea into a song, I began to realize that this tune fuckin' rocks!" Another round of cheers erupted, something that happened whenever Jake used the F-word in his between song banter. "And based on the amount of airplay the tune is getting, it seems like you people think it fuckin' rocks too. So here it is for you now." He turned to the band, as if making a suggestion to them. "Let's do some Grandstand, guys. What do you say?"

One of the biggest cheers of the night rocked the auditorium. Coop hit a four-count with his drumsticks and they launched into it. Coop pounded his drums with precision. Matt ground out the multi-faceted riffs with raw, unbridled energy. And Jake sang the lyrics with all the passion and emotion he could summon, belting them out with machine-gun rapidity. The crowd stayed on their feet throughout it (except for Scott Adams Winslow, who remained demurely seated), waving their arms, dancing to the frantic beat, holding their lighters up. The applause when the tune was over was deafening and went on for nearly a minute.

After it quieted down a little, they launched into Point Of Futility, one of the staples of Intemperance encores. As always, this song was a particular favorite of the ladies. The bare breasts started to flash at the band. Bras and panties started flying onto the stage, most of them aimed at Jake, although Matt got a respectable amount as well. This time, however, it was more than just women's underwear that was tossed onto the stage. Several pairs of lavender BVDs flew at Charlie, one pair of which came in at the perfect angle and rate of descent to hang up on the headstock of his bass. Charlie was unable to dislodge them until the end of the song, which caused the applause to be mixed with a considerable amount of laughter.

For the final number, they did Can't Chain Me, once again adding on an extended, drawn-out ending that built to a spectacular climax of drums and guitars. This was followed by another "thank you and goodnight" by Jake and another group bow at the front of the stage. Charlie kept his hand on Matt's shoulder. He did not move his fingers around.

They broke apart and left the stage while the house lights came on behind them, letting the audience know that it was really over this time. The roadies handed out fresh Gatorade and then led the band through the tunnel to the dressing room where a local catering service had laid out food and drinks. Once out of the public eye, the band split apart into their separate units again. No one said "good show" or "we fuckin' rocked" or anything like that. Matt grabbed a plateful of food, a beer, and went over to a corner of the room that was well away from anyone else. Charlie didn't even do this. He simply headed for the showers — alone. Coop went to another corner of the room with a bong, a plate of greenbud, and a beer. Only Jake and Nerdly sat together at the actual table.

"I don't know if I can take this for five months," Jake said.

"I agree," Nerdly said. "The loss of cohesion coupled with the increase in lingering hostility has led to an impasse of fluidity in our interactions."

"Uh... right," Jake said slowly. "My thoughts exactly."

Jake stayed for a little while in the dressing room. He drank enough beers to give him a therapeutic alcohol level and even let a nineteen-year-old groupie with a pierced eyebrow give him a blowjob (mostly to shut her up). He did not have a terribly good time. Matt and Coop didn't drink with him or talk to him (or with each other, for that matter). They found groupies of their own, got their own blowjobs, and then left. Charlie wasn't there at all. And Nerdly had left with Sharon without either of them having so much as a drink first.

Jake left the auditorium in a limousine — not taking any groupies with him — and smoked listlessly as he drank a few glasses of red wine. Not even the novelty of going to his own home after a show instead of to a hotel room could detract from the sense of melancholy nostalgia he felt for tours past. In tours past, the band had been a tightly knit unit, a team of five against the world, united in all things. They had played together, partied hard together, fucked groupies together, and even sniffed cocaine of out ass-cracks together. There had been contests about 2x4s, 2x6s, even 4x2s. Was all of that gone for good? Was this entire tour going to be nothing but endless hours of misery and lack of communication followed by brief periods of artificial camaraderie up on the stage each night?

With a sigh and another sip of wine (more like a gulp, actually), Jake was forced to conclude that this might be exactly what they were in store for the next five months. It looked like — in the immortal words of Merle Haggard — the good times were really over for good.

It was just after midnight when Jake arrived home. He went upstairs and sat at one of the chairs in his upstairs bar for another hour, drinking two more bottles of wine and smoking eight cigarettes. Finally, drunk, staggering, his eyes red, his lungs sore, he put himself to bed and slept until eight the next morning.

He woke up hungover and with the knowledge that he had another show tonight.

The Los Angeles Times did indeed have an interesting little article on the Intemperance concert and Mindy Snow's presence thereat. It was not in the entertainment section either, but rather on page eight of the A section — the section where the front page was found and that was usually reserved for international, national, and state news.

Jake came across it about nine-thirty. He had washed down 1500 milligrams of Tylenol, a Vitamin C tablet, and a Vitamin B-12 tablet with two bottles of Gatorade and two bloody Marys and was now recovered enough to eat some of the breakfast Elsa had made for him and peruse the newspaper.

MINDY SNOW AND SCOTT ADAMS WINSLOW ATTEND OPENING NIGHT OF INTEMPERANCE TOUR read the headline. There were two pictures accompanying the story. One was a picture of Mindy and Winslow during the show, the former standing and holding a lit lighter over her head, the latter sitting like a statue, doing his little four-fingered clap. The other was a picture of Mindy blowing a kiss while holding a small, red, triangular object between the fingers of her other hand. The captions explained what each scene represented.

Jake read the article from top to bottom. It had little to say about the concert itself, but much to say about Mindy and Jake's former relationship and their current one.

Eyes were wide and tongues were wagging last night at Esparto Auditorium in Long Beach when Intemperance, the raunchy, Satanic, death-metal group headed by the infamous and notorious womanizer Jake Kinsley, played for a sold-out crowd of eighteen thousand.

The surprise came, not from the concert itself, which was the usual loud, noisy production full of thunderous guitar and indecipherable, vaguely disturbing lyrics (see Rick Gormington's review of the show in today's Entertainment section, page E-13) but by the unexpected and unannounced presence of famous celebrity couple Mindy Snow and Scott Adams Winslow in the VIP section just in front of the stage. Snow, as is well known, once had a tumultuous six-month love affair with Kingsley that ended abruptly amid allegations of emotional and physical abuse — something that Kingsley has been accused of in several of his intimate relationships, before and since.

Snow confirmed that the tickets she and Winslow had for the show and the VIP section passes came from Kingsley himself.

"I called him up and asked him if I could see the show," Snow said with a shrug when asked about this. "It's really no big deal. Despite what happened in the past between Jake and me, he's a great musician and Intemperance puts on an awesome concert. I wanted to see it and so did Scotty."

When asked when she and Kingsley began communicating with each other again, Snow said that they'd met each other by coincidence in Fiji back in August of last year and had lunch together, resolving many of their old animosities. "Jake's got his dark side, of course," Snow said, "but he's basically a nice guy and I chose to resume the friendship we once had." Snow also acknowledged that Kingsley attended a New Year's Eve party at the couple's Malibu mansion last December 31 — something that had long been rumored but never confirmed.

As for Scott Adams Winslow, he didn't seem as much the Intemperance fan as his wife, but he did acknowledge enjoying the show. "They put on a fine performance," he said after the show. "Of course, I'm not much into this sort of music, but there is a definite energy and power about the group that cannot be denied." When asked if he was worried about his wife resuming a friendly relationship with a man who had once been photographed naked with her on a boat, Winslow simply chuckled. "I hardly think I have anything to worry about with the likes of Jake Kingsley," he said. "I'm pretty sure Mindy has outgrown that little early-twenties phase of her life when she was attracted to the bad-boy image."

Mindy wholeheartedly agreed with this statement. "I like Jake," she said. "I always have and I always will, but Scotty's the love of my life and Jake was just a passing ship when I was younger."

Passing ship or not, Snow certainly seemed to get into the performance last night. She spent the entire show dancing, singing along with the lyrics, waving her hands in the air, and holding up a cigarette lighter as she cheered Kingsley and Intemperance on. There was a definite and unmistakable flow of electricity between Kingsley and Snow as he sang and played his guitar and she cheered for him. Their eyes remained locked on each other through most of the show and, at the end, Kingsley threw one of his guitar picks down to her and she returned the gesture by blowing him a kiss.

"I was just having a good time," Snow said when asked about this after the concert. "I don't know why everyone is always reading into everything."

Kingsley was not available for comment on this story. Intemperance will play two more shows at Esparto Auditorium — one tonight and one tomorrow — before moving on to San Diego and the rest of their west coast tour to promote their new album.

Jake put the article down slowly and took a sip from his latest bloody Mary. He had a really bad feeling about all this. Mindy was up to something. He knew her well enough to intuit that. The question was: what?