Sin Delicious

Chapter Three-2

It’s not quite Romeo and Juliet but I’m guessing it’s about as sweet as rock and roll gets – if one leaves aside the fact that Mr and Mrs Casanove are still very much an item. He zipped in and out, practically unseen, and changed people’s lives with just a few words. It was like a lottery win for the band, who thought they had been picked on merit rather than because of a certain someone’s infatuation for their lead singer. Just imagine, though, what it must be like to have someone as big and desirable as him admire you. Think what it is to be shot from nowhere into the stratosphere because one of the most famous faces in rock music unexpectedly likes you. Then consider how flattering it would be to learn that it was because he has the hots for you. It’s pretty much the best chat-up line you could ever use, without actually saying anything at all.

The bus goes over a bump and Sindee besides me stirs in her sleep and nestles her head further into my shoulder. She can sleep anywhere, anytime. Most of us have to wait for exhaustion to take over. Some of the guys try to defeat sleep altogether, heading for the medicine chest to stay wired. Do you know they have an official drug dealer following us around on this tour? He drives at the back of our convoy in his big red Cadillac that he somehow gets shipped around full of narcotics. He dresses like a pimp and he is called the Magic Man, presumably because he gets busted every few days and yet nothing ever gets found either in his car, on his person, or on the person of the two or three beauties he is always accompanied by. However, clean as he seems, come the party that same night and he will produce enough illegal substances to wipe out ten rock bands.

My legs are aching and I need to stretch. God knows how much darkness we have ahead of us before the lights of our hotel. There are six cramped bunks to the rear of this bus, partitioned off either side of the gangway by curtains and ostensibly for band members, although it’s not our band’s bus so that doesn’t necessarily include us. Anyway, some of the roadies are using them since they will be dropped off at the next venue along with the equipment trucks and will work for the rest of the night so that we can all do sound-checks by lunchtime tomorrow. They need their shut-eye, although judging from the slurpy sounds and saucy giggles emanating from one bunk, sleep isn’t the first thing being done behind that particular curtain.

Be aware that anyone connected to our bandwagon gets s*x on a plate, even the most tenuous of hangers-on. In fact, some of the lowly ones are responsible for the greatest excesses and depravities, wanting to cement their notoriety and entertainment value on the tour, aware that anyone could be picked to hump equipment on an off the back of a lorry. Of course, the extent of the excesses depends entirely on the appetites, demands and reputation of the major band on the tour. It just so happens that both Thunderhed and their prime support act, Coliseum All Stars, are caners of monumental proportions, who constantly defy medical science just by remaining alive.

There are two games I find myself playing when my brain is zonked but won’t let me commit to sleep. First is the Who on This Bus Has Had More s*x on Tour than Me game, to which the answer is everyone, including our driver. This even takes into account the fact that different faces may come and go on a daily basis. I’m not talking about s*x acts that they have claimed to have had, or ones I have presumed they have had. I’m talking s*x acts I know them to have had. That means acts I have witnessed, many of them perpetrated in this very vehicle. The Sunday shuttle bus to church it ain’t.

Game number two is the Who on This Bus Has Tried to Have s*x with Me one, of which the answer is often nearly equal to that of the first game. Any female within grabbing distance of this tour is considered a fair target, the general consensus being that it’s a question of when and not if. Often you get manly bits waggling or pointing at you without any preamble whatsoever, seeking attention as if it was owed to them. No female is safe. To put down any kind of solid marker upon a girl you have to marry them – and even then this might not deter others.

It’s not just the band members either, although they usually make their moves first. Having patiently and smilingly batted away countless crude invitations, I eventually had to relive my taekwondo days and boot the All Star’s drum technician in the head after he made one prick-out advance too many. My actions could have got us thrown off the bus, since we are only sharing the big full-on Tour Special laid on for the Coliseum All Stars. They are big in their own right – more so in Europe than at home in the States. When the tour began it was just them and us for a few weeks and they had no trouble filling out some very decent-sized venues. Many fans over here consider this tour to be a double-header, so there are no inferiority complexes going on amongst our fellow passengers. It’s all mammoth egos here.

Back at the start our band had its own little van but it was crap and had a faulty petrol gauge that saw us rendered unexpectedly fuel-less one night. Rather than find some gas to fill it up with, everyone decided it should undergo a Ritual Smashing Up Ceremony, so that’s what we did, using any weapons that came to hand. We thus had to move to the bigger bus. We were borrowing their roadies and our equipment was already on their lorries anyway, so it wasn’t much of a big deal. We will be paying for it somewhere along the line. Perhaps they thought it should be payment in kind, hence all the wanger-waggling.

Fortunately, my demonstration of my unique self-defence capabilities didn’t get us chucked off, which might have seen a premature end to Death in Venus’ tour before Thunderhed had even joined up with us. It merely brought howls of laughter and applause from the onlookers, since casual violence is seen as part of the entertainment. Perhaps the bigger stars feared a similar kicking of image-wrecking proportions. More likely they haven’t yet given up the chase and are just biding their time, knowing that eventually everyone gives in. They now all call me The Fridge, as in frigid. It’s a shame about the drum tech because he’s quite a nice guy when not dosed up on speed. He’s pretty funny and I got on well with him – and still do, since every tour beef has to be immediately forgotten or no one would be talking to anyone else.

He is called Skellz because he has black outline tattoos of his bones down his arms and on both hands – exact matches of his skeleton beneath. The artist did it brilliantly so that it looks like the skin has been peeled back and pinned, as if he is undergoing dissection. I took a close-up photo of his hands grasping the rather peachy bare backside of a model from the Thunderhed entourage. It’s an awesome shot, if I do say so myself – very rock ‘n’ roll. I reckon it would make an excellent cover for this s*x photo-journal that is never, ever going to be published. But if it does, just remember that it’s his brilliant bone-tattooed hands on that luscious rear end that you see. That will be the eternal claim to fame of this otherwise potentially dispensable behind-the-scenes lackey who thinks he has every right to have s*x with me, no strings attached, no effort made at romance.

It was actually Skellz who did the formal introductions when Thunderhed joined us on tour. We were at a party in some big house somewhere to celebrate this union. I was in the vast kitchen along with many others, including the oft wang-waggling drum tech, who was giving us an impromptu solo on the hanging pots and pans, using two wooden spoons for sticks. He’s actually a pretty good drummer. Better than Russell LeMuscle, that’s for sure. It amuses me that this lowly crew member, who is essentially the drummer’s b***h – responsible for looking after the kit, loading it, setting it up, tuning it, miking it, and preparing the electronics rig and the audio software – yet even he gets to be called a technician and thus sounds more gifted and important than the drummer himself.

So, plink-plonk-plankety-plankety-crash went Skellz, finishing with a rapid rolling crescendo to much cheering and whistling, and then a slow American drawl from behind me was saying, “Well, now, and who do we have the pleasure of meeting here?”

I turned and there he was: Jimi ‘Cas’ Casanove. I had seen pictures, obviously, but that never really quite prepares you for the aura. Charisma is difficult to define because it concerns forces we do not fully understand. It is an invisible field that rare people exude, and they don’t necessarily have to be doing anything to exert it. It is a pull. You can almost feel yourself being dragged across the floor towards them. It’s not just looks or physical attraction. It’s more complex than that.

They are the givers, the entertainers and performers of the human race. We are inexorably drawn to gawp. They use wit or song or skill to dazzle us and they are desperate for our approval. They want to give all of themselves so that they can be adored. They can’t help themselves. Some fly too close to the sun, losing the delicate balance that prevents admiration turning to jealousy and disdain. They can be loved and then hated in the same brief conversation, between one verse and the next. They tread the thinnest of lines between altruistic charm and loathsome self-aggrandizement. Whichever side of the line they are on it is very difficult to turn away, to not watch or listen. They are always compelling, and you may not even be able to work out why this is so. It is their magic.

He is big; the size was the first thing to hit me. Not just tall but solidly muscular too. Being a rock star he was in one of the few professions that allowed you to go about wearing only a brown leather waistcoat with nothing underneath. You can’t really see that kind of thing taking off in the banking sector. Being partially dressed allowed us a view of the powerful arms and shoulders and the broad chest, all tanned and smooth. He is blond. I’m sure blond males are no more deserving of typecasting than their female counterparts but there is an instant impression that mischief and raciness is at their core, especially when the hair is long and wavy – going for the Robert Plant look rather than the Axl Rose.

He is handsome but that is such a broad definition it is all but meaningless. The blue eyes got you staring, but there have been bluer. The nose is large but thin, and since his forehead is wide it doesn’t dominate. The teeth are straight, and I don’t doubt that an orthodontist has been at work here. There are lines on the skin. He looks at least five years older than his real age, perhaps more, but then you are bound to harden off quickly when you cram a lifetime of high living into a few short years. There is something else about him that always takes over my senses, and that is his smell. You have to be close to properly notice it. He smells of smoke. Not the ciggies or joints that he constantly has on the go but an exotic woody or peaty smoke, and it is faint, drawing you ever closer to better detect it.

There is sweetness to it, like caramel or toffee, maybe spice too. It smells like complex bourbon or malt whisky, minus the alcohol twang – although there is surely never more than ten percent blood in his alcohol system. I guess it’s his aftershave but it actually seems like it’s his body naturally producing it, letting all the fine and gorgeous aromas of the spirits he’s consumed seep back out through his pores, with all the unpleasant ethanol left behind. He doesn’t smell like a pub despite his mammoth consumption. It is soothing, warming. For all the danger he seems to embody, if you could lie in his arms, eyes closed and quiet against that broad chest, even on the wildest of nights, just breathing him in, you would surely never know a greater feeling of safe comfort as long as you lived.