EXCERPT

Rock ‘N Roll Mama

(Expletives altered on public page)

I’ll call him Lipz. I had never before fallen for a member of any of the famous touring bands I’d worked with. Partied, sure—till the koalas fell out of their trees—but dated? No way. Too dangerous. I’d seen too much in those green rooms, back stage, after parties, blackout nights only to wake up the next morning in… hell, I don’t even know when or where I woke up half the time. All in all, it was just too risky to date the talent.

I knew personally from my backstage green room experiences that what happens on tour stays on tour and that’s exactly where that crazy sh*t needs to stay, never to be intimately joined by management nor revealed to an innocent and unsuspecting public. …Buuut.

He’s different!

Grow up, Katie—they’re all the same.

Don’t blanket judge him! It’s not like you’ve met every muso in the world.

Enough to know better. Remember Mick the prick who denied his own child unless he could squirrel out of paying maintenance?

My dilemma batted itself back and forth in my mind like a battle of the bands.

Mick was a desperate wannabe! Lipz feels like the real deal. Self deprecating in a cute way. Kind. Funny. Gorgeous. Successful. Rich.

You don’t even know the guy—you just met him today! Lead guitarist of a famous rock band? Perfect cover for a whack job.

Or a perfect match!

Or maybe he’s hiding something.

He’s famous—the eyes of the world are on him. How could he hide anything? Just zip it and enjoy!

“Come with us, Love,” Lipz cooed at me in his irresistible north London accent. “It’s only two nights, two towns, two days. Bring the kid. Record company will have someone mind him during the shows.”

The kid? The kid!? That right there should have been a red flag. At least a bright orange one. But no, it didn’t even register as yellow in my love dopamined brain.

So I agreed, and the next day Ricky and I arrived at the airport to go with Lipz and the band on the final leg of the Australia portion of their world tour.

As little Ricky and I made our way to the plane and saw all the exciting activity and commotion on the tarmac, I was overtaken by a swoon of emotion like a silly girl in love. Which of course I was.

Lipz met me at the plane with a deep kiss that made me tingle. The band’s roadies greeted me, tousled Ricky’s hair and grabbed our bags. Lipz scooped Ricky up, and we tromped up the gangplank like some sort of rock royalty family.

Inside, he introduced me to a cute girl younger than me and explained, “This is Vicki. From the record company. She’ll look after Ricky during the shows.”

Vicki and Ricky—how cute! Least you got the kid’s name right this time.

The first show was a whirlwind. I took a space backstage with a view of Lipz and the boys out onstage, bashing it out for a packed crowd of thousands, screaming their lungs out so loud I could barely make out a word being sung.

And then, not twenty-four hours into my scheduled forty-eight hour adventure, reality began to set in at the after party, when I sensed Lipz’s attention wasn’t entirely on me. I get it. He’s an icon. Huge star. Everyone wants to be near him, meet him, talk to him, fu*k him or at least give him a blow job (can’t always get what you want, girls). All understandable. I’m no stranger to the biz.

But I draw the line when groupies want to sit on his lap. And kiss him openly. With maximum tongue, like they’re searching for a loose gold tooth. In front of me. And he seems to be okay with it!

Alright. I understand. They’re all drunk, high, blitzed, deliriously smashed. Me too, in fact—swimmingly so. But…

Bull. Sh*t!

I took a deep breath. Cautiously set my glass of iced vodka down. And stumbled in search of a loo, as if there I might discover an answer to what was creeping about in my mind.

What the fu*k am I doing here!?

The next couple hours were more of the same. Increasingly so.

Lipz would disappear for twenty or thirty minutes at a time, explaining to me, “Gotta do a dunny, Love. Back in a sec.” Then peck me on the lips and be gone.

Okay. Sometimes a bloke has to take a pee. When you have to go, you have to go. Even if it’s every hour or so—especially with all the booze he’s sucking down and blow he’s hoovering up his schnozz in this hard partying crowd.

But when he’s gone for ninety minutes, nowhere to be seen in the noisy, crowded hotel suite, it might be a good idea to go in search, make sure he hasn’t fallen in or whatever.

So I go look for him.

The sound of high-energy sex coming from a locked bathroom on the second floor of the lavish two-floor hotel suite at three in the morning after a raucous rock ‘n roll concert would not customarily alarm anyone versed in any aspect of the music biz. Unless it’s a voice familiar to you, and you become instantly out-of-your-skull alarmed—not so much by whatever the hell Vicki is doing with Lipz inside that bathroom but more like the “WHERE THE FU*K IS RICKY!” I shouted at the door as Lipz wailed “OHHHH, VICKIII!” from the other side of it in apparent feverish ecstasy.

Adrenaline is a neurotransmitter chemical produced by the adrenal gland, which gushes into the body’s nervous system in response to fight or flight stimulus. If you’re drunk, there’s no better buzz kill than the hot poker of an adrenaline rush to snap you out of your stupor. I was pegged hard right on the fight spectrum at hearing the vigorous sex taking place behind that thick oak door.

His moans and the loud music drowned out my scream and I went crazy.

“Where the fu*k is Ricky!” I bellowed again at the nanny and the nonce in the loo and promptly fractured my left wrist bone banging on the door.

Sounds of quick dressing, muffled thumps, nervous squeals.

“You’re supposed to be minding him!” I screamed at Vicki through the door and painfully grasped my bum wrist.

Whispered grunts about where are my knickers! and where’s my fu*kin diamond belt! Sound of another door creaking open from inside the bathroom, then quietly closing. The patter of drunken footfalls stumbling down another corridor outside the apparent second door to the loo.

Obviously, that was the end of me and Lipz.

I went in undignified… okay, screeching, wild-eyed banshee, search of Ricky. A roadie appeared and led me to him, curled up asleep on a fluffy pillow in another bedroom, covered in fur coats, leather jackets, a pair of leather pants, a guy’s underwear, and a zonked-out drooling lady snoring next to him. Butt naked (her, not Ricky). Being accustomed to his place in my life in the rock ‘n roll world, Ricky was sound asleep, contentedly snoozing through it all.

Outside in the cold, Lipz found me hurriedly bundling Ricky into the roadie’s car. I could practically hear Vicki the record company slut giggling at me from the safety of the party inside.

“She burst in on me, Katie!” Lipz shouted out to me. “What was I supposed to do?!”

The roadie bounded around, nodded at Lipz, slid in behind the wheel, started the engine.

“Oh, you suddenly found her on your lap in loo did you!?” I yelled at Lipz out the window as we turned around the circle and headed for the front gates. “You lying bastard!”

As we roared past him, Lipz folded his hands together in mock prayer and whimpered, “I love you, Katie! We didn’t do anything, I swear!”

“Fu*ck off! I heard you—the whole party heard you!”

We drove for four hours, the roadie in sheepish silence; me wondering how I had gotten so caught up in it all. The screaming, yelling fans outside the venue and hotel, traveling from the airport in a forty-foot limo with tinted glass, being rushed through secret back entrances, trying to act aloof and above it all as fans chased us and camera flashbulbs blinded us. For a few hours I had felt like I was one of the famous ones.

WHO AM I KIDDING!?

Only the lonely.

We arrived at home as the sun was cresting through the trees. The roadie got out and opened my door. I cradled Ricky precariously in my good arm and slid out.

The roadie stammered in a small, embarrassed voice, “Katie, can… can I ask you something?”

I looked at him, incensed at everything that had occurred in thirty fast, exhilarating, awful, fu*ked-up hours, more furious with myself than anything else. I must have been out of my mind—hell, rock ‘n roll gods are practically required by law to be total tossers!

“What?” I said flatly to the roadie, trying to gently rock Ricky in my arm, wanting to get him inside to his bed, drink a lobotomy’s worth of gin and forget the whole clusterfu*k.

“I’m really sorry about all that,” he began, fidgeting nervously.

“I need to get Ricky to bed,” I said. “What do you want?”

“What happens at these—”

“I’m in the business,” I snapped. “What happens on tour stays on tour. I’m not telling anyone about the bullsh*t he pulled on me.”

“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “His wife and kid wouldn’t take it well.”

I stared at him, barely believing my ears.

“…Oh,” he said, suddenly comprehending. “Thought you knew.”

He gave me a little nod, scurried back in the car, and sped away.

I stood there, unbelieving. His wife?! I should have known! (Yes yes, I know!—I was young and stupid! Bugger off!)

I carried Ricky inside, berating myself and nursing my shredded heart and fractured wrist.

I put Ricky to bed, closed the bedroom door and got busy on the gin in the lounge and screamed it all out of me into a pillow on the couch.

I couldn’t help but wonder what direction my life might have taken had Lipz been as nice as I’d thought he was when we met at the record company dinner. I mused about how every life choice I had made or that others made for me either took me off on a tangent that opened new doors of opportunity and experience that would never really pan out or caused me damage I could never fully recover from.

How I longed for some middle ground, where I could let my hair down and have fun, yet feel an abiding sense of peace, purpose and self acceptance. A place in life where I could relax and be loved for me.

Not for sex, not for looks, just for me, who I am, what I bring..