Intemperance Epilogue Volume I
Copyright© 2026 by Al Steiner
Chapter 7: Funeral For a Friend
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 7: Funeral For a Friend - Intemperance isn’t over yet—we still have lots of loose ends to tie up. Volume I picks up after Book X as Jake, Laura, Celia, Caydee, and the rest of the Kingsley orbit discover that life goes on, whether you’re ready or not. Expect music, love, grief, family, crows, weed, questionable decisions, and all the usual Kingsley antics along with the antics of the surrounding Kingsley orbit.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Polygamy/Polyamory
Heritage, California
April 4, 2005
TrueWest Field had opened in the spring of 2000, the year the Heritage Growers—the Oakland A’s AA farm team—relocated from Chico and planted themselves along the riverfront on the edge of downtown. It had quickly earned a reputation among minor-league people as one of the finest AA ballparks in the country. The sightlines were immaculate. The seating bowl wrapped tight to the field so that even the farthest rows still felt close enough to hear the crack of the bat without any perceivable delay between action and sound. There were no bad seats for baseball there—no obstructed pillars, no awkward angles, no distant bleachers that made the players look like moving dots. The park had been designed for intimacy and community, a place where a town could gather on summer evenings and watch something unfold together.
On this afternoon it was gathering for something else.
Three days earlier Matt Tisdale’s body had arrived in Heritage at the center of a motorcycle caravan so large it had stretched nearly a quarter of a mile by the time it crossed the county line. By nightfall it had become obvious that the town—and far more than the town—wanted to say goodbye. Fans began arriving almost immediately. They gathered outside Berringer Brothers Funeral Home with guitars, flowers, candles, and bottles of cheap beer. News vans appeared before midnight. By the following morning people were driving in from Stockton, Sacramento, Fresno, Modesto—everywhere the caravan had passed and plenty of places it hadn’t.
A funeral-home chapel was never going to contain that.
The Heritage Growers organization recognized the moment as quickly as anyone. The ballpark could seat ten thousand comfortably and more than that if people were willing to stand. It had entrances wide enough to handle a crowd, security infrastructure already in place, and a field that television cameras loved. The city owned the stadium and needed about five minutes to decide. They offered the park for free. Hosting the memorial would give the ballpark a kind of permanent cultural footnote—one of those “I was there” events that gets mentioned decades later whenever someone points toward the river and the lights of TrueWest Field.
And so the funeral moved to a baseball diamond.
Matt had left exactly one instruction in his will regarding his actual funeral ceremony.
No fuckin’ suits at my funeral.
The sentiment had almost certainly been directed toward record-company management, the people Matt had spent a career fighting with, being exploited by, and never trusting. Jake, however, interpreted the instruction in the most literal way possible to avoid an international-style incident. Matt Tisdale might no longer need to do business with those slimy assholes, but KVA Records did. Security was given one rule and one rule only: if someone showed up wearing a suit, they did not come inside. It didn’t matter whether they were a label executive, a city official, or Dubya Himself. The policy had been repeated often enough over the last forty-eight hours that by the time the gates opened, no one tried to test it.
The result was a stadium that looked nothing like a traditional funeral.
Nearly ten thousand people filled the seats, and most of them wore black—not the tailored black of formal mourning, but the black of concert shirts and tour merch. Intemperance logos dominated the crowd in every variation the band had printed over the last twenty-three years: faded skull designs from early tours, sharp modern graphics from recent releases, threadbare shirts that had clearly survived decades of washing machines. Here and there were the rarer black shirts from Matt’s solo tours, their designs more understated but still unmistakable to anyone who followed guitar music closely.
The third-base line lay empty for the moment. Folding chairs had been placed there in long, orderly rows, waiting.
The first-base line was already occupied.
That side of the diamond held the people closest to Matt: family and the inner circle that had formed around him over the years. Kim Kowalski sat near the front, composed in the same stoic way she had carried herself since the night Matt died. Jim Ramos was beside her, his paramedic calm translating easily to this quieter role. Owen and Tif were there. Bill and Sharon Nerdly. Coop. Charlie. Laura and Celia. Caydee sat between them, solemn and unusually quiet; Cap had been left with the grandparents for the day. Kelvin stood a few seats down with Pauline, Tabby, and Obie. Bigg G was present as well, along with a scattering of other friends whose lives had intersected Matt’s in ways too varied to catalog neatly.
In the shallow center field area behind second base were the special guests.
There were perhaps two hundred of them—National Records executives and staff who had flown in from Los Angeles. Not one wore a suit. Some had chosen black dress shirts and jeans, trying for a halfway respectable compromise. Others had leaned fully into the spirit of the rule and borrowed Intemperance shirts from the merchandising stocks or bought them from illegal vendors outside the gates that morning.
Mixed among them were a number of special guests whose presence had drawn murmurs when they first appeared in the seating area.
Alex Lifeson of Rush had flown in from Toronto the previous night. Kirk Hammett and James Hetfield of Metallica had driven up from San Francisco that morning. Little Stevie had come as well. Members of Matt’s prior solo band sat nearby, along with other musicians and industry figures whose names would have filled several columns of a music magazine if anyone had taken the time to write them all down.
For the moment, they simply sat in the shallow outfield seats and waited.
The service was scheduled to begin at ten o’clock in the morning, and that was exactly when it did. Matt Tisdale was not going to be late for his final public appearance. Jake had made sure of it.
The outfield service gate opened.
A moment later the distinctive sound of a Harley-Davidson engine rolled out across the grass and through the stadium bowl.
Ten thousand people stood almost instantly. Caps came off. Hands went to hearts.
The motorcycle appeared through the gate.
It was Reap on his Road Glide, towing the plexiglass trailer with Matt’s California flag-draped coffin resting inside. The bike moved slowly in first gear, the engine idling low and steady as it followed the narrow roadway of green plywood sheets that the grounds crew had laid out across the field. The path ran straight down the third-base line toward home plate.
Behind the motorcycle walked Jake Kingsley.
He wore jeans, motorcycle boots, and an original Intemperance—Descent Into Nothing tour shirt that a fan had given him several years earlier. The shirt had faded slightly with age, the black softened by dozens of washes, but the design was still unmistakable.
The crowd recognized him immediately.
A ripple of cheers spread through the stadium—low at first, then growing stronger as more people saw him. Jake lifted a hand and waved in acknowledgment as he walked behind the trailer.
Behind Jake came the Riders.
More than one hundred and fifty patched members of the Rough Riders followed in formation, representing chapters from nine California counties along with chapters from Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Leather cuts caught the sunlight as they walked across the field in disciplined silence.
The motorcycle reached the platform that had been built just behind home plate. Reap eased the bike to a stop and killed the engine.
The sudden quiet seemed enormous.
The Riders continued forward a few steps and then peeled away toward the rows of chairs along the third-base line, taking their seats in a long line of black leather. Reap dismounted and headed over to join them.
Jake continued alone toward the pitcher’s mound.
A podium and microphone had been placed there so the speaker could face the entire stadium at once. Jake climbed the low slope of the mound and stepped in behind the podium, adjusting the microphone slightly as the last murmurs in the crowd faded away.
He looked out across the stadium—ten thousand people, nearly all of them dressed in black band shirts, filling every seat. When the noise finally settled, he reached forward and switched on the microphone.
“Well hello, Heritage, California.”
He said it in exactly the tone he might have used bantering with a crowd after the opening number of a show.
For a moment there was silence.
Then a ripple of laughter moved through the stands, followed by a wave of applause that rolled around the stadium like distant thunder. It wasn’t loud or raucous the way an Intemperance crowd could be on a Saturday night, but it carried warmth with it, the sound of ten thousand people grateful for the small release of tension.
Jake smiled faintly and waited for it to settle.
“Matt would’ve liked that,” he said when the noise faded. “A full house.”
Another small murmur of agreement moved through the crowd.
“He always hated empty seats. Said it made him feel like a fuckin’ failure.” Jake paused, glancing briefly toward the coffin resting behind home plate. “Of course, he also hated rehearsals, record executives, and anyone who told him what he could or couldn’t play on his guitar. But at least he got a full house for his closing number.”
A few more quiet laughs drifted through the stands.
Jake rested his hands on either side of the podium and looked out over the sea of black shirts.
“Three days ago we brought Matt home,” he said. “Some of you were there on the highway. Some of you watched it on television. And a lot of you drove a long damn way just to sit in this stadium today.”
He nodded once, slowly.
“That means something. It means he was important to you all in the same way he was important to me.”
Jake took a breath.
“And before we go any further, there’s something I should probably clear up right away. Matt left exactly one instruction about this funeral.”
He leaned a little closer to the microphone.
“‘No fuckin’ suits.’”
The stadium erupted.
“So I’m happy to see all of you here right now dressed in the proper attire for a Matt Tisdale fuckin’ funeral.”
Another round of laughter and then applause. Real applause, like they’d just finished I Am Time or Who Needs Love?
Jake let the applause fade a little before speaking again.
“Oh—something I almost forgot,” he said, glancing out across the stands. “I should probably introduce myself, right?”
The stadium erupted in laughter.
Jake nodded thoughtfully, as if considering the question. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “I guess that might not be strictly necessary here.”
More laughter rolled through the crowd.
“But for the record,” he continued, gesturing lightly toward himself, “my name is Jake Kingsley. And I’ve been working with Matt Tisdale since 1979.”
A ripple of cheers moved through the stands at that.
“Now I’m not gonna stand up here and pretend it was all sunshine and brotherly love the entire time,” he went on. “Anybody who followed the band long enough knows we had a few rough patches here and there.”
That produced another round of knowing laughter.
“But the truth is,” Jake continued, his tone settling, “ever since Matt’s last solo album—the one he asked me to produce—we’d been working together again almost constantly. Really working together. Hand in hand. Guitar to guitar.”
He paused briefly.
“Our friendship came back. Our fuckin’ brotherhood came back.”
He glanced toward the coffin again.
“And it held all the way to the end.”
The stadium was quiet now.
“I was there on stage with him the night he died,” Jake said. “Tried like hell to save him. I was there when he took his final breath.”
No one in the crowd made a sound.
Jake rested his hands on the podium.
“Matt was stubborn,” he said. “He was set in his ways. And he could hold a grudge like the sun holds onto its planets.”
A few soft chuckles broke the tension.
“But he was also one of the most honest and straightforward men I’ve ever known.”
Jake looked out across the stadium again.
“He lived his life the way he wanted to live it. Fast. Excessive. Right out there on the edge. And he was quite possibly the greatest rock guitarist of the late twentieth century.”
For a moment there was silence. Then the entire stadium rose to its feet. The applause rolled across the stands in a powerful wave, echoing off the upper deck and drifting out over the river beyond the outfield.
Jake stood quietly behind the podium and let it wash over him.
For the next several minutes he talked about the beginning—how two stubborn, guitar-obsessed kids from Heritage had first crossed paths in January of 1979 at Heritage Community College. They had both signed up for Professor Vernon’s advanced guitar class, each of them hoping to learn something new about the instrument they already loved.
It turned out they didn’t.
Jake paused in the middle of the story and shaded his eyes with one hand, peering out across the stands as if searching the crowd.
“Professor Vernon,” he called out into the microphone, “are you out there somewhere?”
The stadium chuckled.
“You were only like thirty back then,” he went on. “So statistically speaking you should still be alive.”
More laughter rolled through the seats.
“Do you tell people you taught Matt Tisdale and Jake Kingsley how to play guitar?”
Jake waited a beat, then shook his head slowly.
“You didn’t,” he said. “We were already beyond you when we signed up for that class.”
Jake leaned back from the microphone for a moment, as if remembering something else.
“I did manage to bone one of your students though,” he added. “Sorry about that. It was nothing personal.”
That brought a bigger wave of laughter.
Jake grinned and lifted both hands in mock pleading.
“Don’t anybody tell Laura or Celia about that shit, okay? They don’t know what I was like before I met them.”
Down along the first-base line Laura and Celia were both smiling and shaking their heads at him, which only made the crowd laugh harder.
When the noise settled again, Jake continued the story.
He walked them through the months that followed—how he and Matt started playing together after class, trading riffs and arguing about tone and technique, pushing each other harder than either one had ever been pushed before. Matt had already been in a band at that point. He called it Intemperance. Jake thought it was a stupid name at first but went along with it. Matt and Coop and Darren Appleman (may he rest in peace) had gone to high school together and had been playing on again and off again for several years. Matt invited Jake to sit in as the second guitarist for more of a heavy metal flavor. And then they heard him sing and Matt replaced himself with Jake as lead singer on the spot. And then Jake told Matt about this nerdy friend of his he had grown up with who played a mean piano. They plugged him in...
“And the rest,” he said simply, “is history.”
Jake let the words hang there for a moment as the crowd responded again, the sound of applause rising gently through the stadium.
Jake went on for several more minutes, letting the stories come one after another the way they always had when the band gathered after a show or around a hotel bar somewhere on the road. He told them about the very first road trip of the band’s first tour, when he and Matt had stepped into a truck stop in Texarkana and managed, within minutes, to get into a fistfight with a group of truckers who had taken exception to their long hair.
“We got to briefly visit the Texarkana jail and get a tour of the facilities,” Jake said. “We were advised upon release by a member of the staff not to visit their fair city again. I know I haven’t. I’m pretty sure Matt didn’t either.”
The crowd laughed loudly at that.
He followed it with a story from the European tour years later, when Matt and Coop had somehow managed to get themselves arrested on a nude beach in the south of France for public indecency.
“That was where Matt made the acquaintance of a nice young lady from Iceland,” Jake said. “He always remembered her fondly. Made reference to her often up until his dying day.”
Jake told another story about the first time he and Matt flew commercially after the attacks of 9/11, back when airport security had become intensely serious about everything that passed through a screening machine.
Matt had forgotten that his stash box was still in his carry-on. When the security agents opened it they found a marijuana bud roughly the size of a human thumb, a pack of Zig-Zags, and a tiny pair of scissors about two inches long meant for cutting the bud up so it could be rolled into a proper joint.
Jake described how the screener had stared down into the box for a long moment before reaching in and picking up the scissors.
“He looked at Matt and said, ‘Sir, you can’t have these scissors when you fly.’”
Jake paused, smiling faintly as the crowd leaned forward.
“Then he closed the case back up and told us to have a nice day.”
The stadium erupted again.
One story rolled into another, each one pulling another wave of laughter from the stands. Ten thousand people listened as the stories built a picture of the man they had come to honor—reckless, stubborn, wildly talented, and almost impossible not to love.
Behind the podium Jake could feel the pressure building in his chest, the tears threatening at the corners of his eyes as the memories came back one after another.
But he kept himself steady.
He had always known how to hold a crowd.
When the applause from the last round of stories finally settled, Jake stepped back from the microphone and glanced toward the long row of leather along the third-base line.
“Alright,” he said. “I’m gonna bring someone up here who helped make sure Matt got home.”
He gestured toward the Riders.
“Give it up for my man Tater.”
Another wave of applause moved through the stadium as Tater rose from his seat and made his way toward the mound. Even among more than a hundred Riders he stood out—broad-shouldered, thick-bearded, his cut hanging straight across his chest as he walked onto the field.
He stepped behind the podium and adjusted the microphone down slightly.
“My name’s Tater,” he said simply. “I’m the president of the San Luis Obispo chapter of the Rough Riders.”
He described the Rough Riders as a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who believed in loyalty, respect, and looking out for their own. He made no mention of the weed warehouse he ran in SLO County or the far less legitimate streams of money that quietly flowed through it as they laundered the illicit income of other groups of motorcycle enthusiasts who dealt in drugs, guns, prostitution, and marijuana. There was no reason to muddy the water on a day like this.
Instead he talked about Matt.
He told the crowd how he had first met Matt and Jake and Coop, and how the friendship between the band and the Riders had grown since. He talked about the way Matt treated people—like equals, whether they were rock stars, bikers, roadies, bartenders, or the dude who cleaned the shithouse.
Mostly he talked about brotherhood.
He said the Riders had been proud to call Matt a friend of the club, proud to stand beside him whenever he needed their help, and proud—more than anything—to escort him home one last time.
“I’m sad today,” Tater told the crowd. “But I’m also in awe. People like to say somebody died doing what they loved, but Matt was doing even more than that.”
He gestured toward the coffin resting behind home plate.
“That man died doing what he was put on this Earth to do. And he didn’t go out until the last note of the last song was played.”
The stadium erupted.
Tater gave a short nod, stepped away from the podium, and walked back toward Jake.
Jake met him halfway. The two men shook hands and pulled each other into a quick bro-hug before Jake turned back to the microphone.
“Give it up for my man Tater,” he told the crowd.
They gave it up.
Jake let the applause for Tater settle before speaking again.
“Next up,” he said, glancing toward the first-base line, “is a man who has probably forgotten more about music theory than the rest of us ever knew in the first place.”
A few knowing laughs drifted through the stands.
“I give you master keyboardist, master sound engineer, and the most unlikely fuckin’ rock star you will ever meet, Bill Archer, also known far and wide as Nerdly.”
More applause followed as Nerdly rose from his seat and made his way carefully across the grass toward the pitcher’s mound. He looked slightly uncomfortable in front of ten thousand people, but that had always been part of the package. His Intemperance Never Say Never Tour shirt hung a little awkwardly on his narrow frame as he stepped behind the podium.
He adjusted the microphone with precise care.
For the next ten minutes he spoke about the earliest days of the band and his first weeks playing alongside Matt and Jake. He described himself in those days, as “the nerdy guy I used to be,” and explained how Matt had not only tolerated that awkwardness but turned it into a badge of honor.
“Matt didn’t care that I was a geek,” he told the crowd. “He saw that I could play some music that mixed well with what he and Jake were putting together, and that was enough. Suddenly I was in.”
He paused briefly.
“It was the first group of anything I’d belonged to since chess club.”
The line drew a warm ripple of laughter from the stands.
Nerdly continued, explaining that from the very beginning Matt had made it clear that musicianship mattered more than social polish.
“Matt affirmed my place among them from the first chord,” he said, “valuing my grasp of modal interchange and counterpoint over any social awkwardness.”
From there he drifted briefly into the kind of thoughtful analysis only Nerdly would attempt in the middle of a memorial service. He spoke about Matt’s personality—how it combined unapologetic hedonism with a complete lack of religiously based moral restraint. According to Nerdly, that combination had served to make Matt iconic. It had allowed him to dedicate his life entirely to the pursuit of happiness, artistic freedom, and—Nerdly added with gentle academic seriousness—sexual fulfillment.
A few amused chuckles rolled through the stadium at that.
When he finished speaking, Nerdly bowed his head slightly and recited a short Hebrew prayer for the dead—one that honored not only loss but memory.
When he reached the end, the final word carried softly across the stadium.
“Amen.”
Ten thousand voices answered him.
“Amen.”
Jake returned to the microphone and waited for the last echoes of the prayer to fade.
“Next up,” he said, “is the guy who’s spent most of the last twenty-five years hiding behind a drum kit.”
A few laughs drifted through the stands.
“My brother Coop.”
The applause that followed was warm and encouraging as Coop rose from his seat and made his way toward the mound. Even from a distance it was clear he was nervous. Coop had spent his life in front of crowds, but always behind cymbals and toms, where the drums did the talking for him.
Standing alone behind a microphone was a different kind of exposure.
He cleared his throat once and gripped the sides of the podium.
“I’m not good at this,” he said, voice rough and low. “Drummers don’t talk much. We just hit things.”
A soft wave of laughter moved through the stands—understanding, not mocking.
“But Matt would’ve kicked my ass if I didn’t say something today,” Coop continued, managing a small, crooked smile. “So here goes.”
He took a breath, steadied himself.
He talked about high school in Heritage—about him and Matt and Darren Appleman getting stoned in basements and garages, passing guitars around and arguing about music long before anyone outside their little circle had heard the name Intemperance.
He told the crowd about those early jam sessions, the ones that happened before Jake and Nerdly ever entered the picture. Back then it had just been the three of them trying to figure out how to turn noise into something that sounded like a band.
Eventually Coop glanced out toward the shallow outfield seating where the special guests were gathered.
“Alex,” he said, pointing toward Alex Lifeson in the crowd.
Lifeson looked up, smiling.
“When Rush’s Hemispheres came out,” Coop continued, “Matt got obsessed with La Villa Strangiato.”
A ripple of recognition moved through the crowd. Anyone who was hacker level and above with the guitar knew La Villa Strangiato.
“He wouldn’t work on anything else,” Coop said. “Not a damn thing.” He shook his head, grinning at the memory. “He made me and Darren sit there and play rhythm for two fuckin’ weeks until he nailed it.”
Lifeson nodded and laughed along with the crowd.
“That’s how you influenced him, brother,” Coop said, gesturing toward him. “You, Kirk Hammett sitting next to you there, and Jimmy Page. Those were the three guys he always talked about.”
Coop gave a small shake of his head.
“That’s some serious fuckin’ company to keep.”
The crowd cheered at that.
Coop rested his hands on the podium for a moment before finishing.
“I’m gonna miss him,” he said simply. “But the truth is Matt went out exactly the way he would’ve wanted to.”
He glanced back toward the coffin behind home plate.
“If he couldn’t die in some Icelandic gash,” Coop said, “then going out on the last tune is probably the next best thing.”
Jake returned to the microphone once Coop finished and waited for the applause to settle.
“Next up,” he said, glancing down the line of chairs along first base, “is a man who has shared the stage with us for a long time.”
Jake paused for just a moment.
“Charlie Meyer.”
The applause that followed was polite but a little uncertain as Charlie rose from his seat and made his way toward the mound.
Jake watched him approach with a slight tightening in his chest.
Ever since Barb had had her little talk with him a few hours before they took the stage for the TSF, the band had seen no more of Clambake Charlie or Dick Smoker Charlie. Those personalities had apparently been retired. What they had now was Everything Bagel Charlie—a man who had enthusiastically embraced both poles of what he described as his perfectly balanced bisexuality.
The problem was that none of them had yet spent enough time around Everything Bagel Charlie to know exactly how weird—or how creepy—he might end up being. So far they had only seen him in the aftermath of Matt’s death, when grief and stress had kept everyone more or less grounded.
Jake wondered, not for the first time, if the Law of Unintended Consequences might decide to poke its ugly little face out into the daylight now. Did Barb unwittingly create the next Adolf Hitler or the next Jeffrey Dahmer? They had no way of knowing until a little observation of the personality in its natural environment was completed.
Charlie stepped behind the podium.
To Jake’s mild surprise, he did nothing strange. Not at first anyway.
Charlie began by admitting that he and Matt had not always gotten along. It was a small white lie—the truth was that the two of them had never gotten along—but the audience didn’t know that, and Charlie delivered it with enough sincerity to pass.
He said that despite their differences he had always respected Matt tremendously on a musical level. He spoke about the years they had spent sharing a stage together and the music they had made along the way. He said he was proud to have stood shoulder to shoulder with Matt night after night and proud to have been part of something that had meant so much to so many people.
So far, so good.
Then Charlie cleared his throat and added that he was now fully comfortable with his sexuality and that neither males nor females were off the table if anyone present might wish to make his acquaintance later in the evening.
The stadium went very quiet.
Jake stepped forward almost immediately, gently reclaiming the microphone.
“Thank you, Charlie,” he said. “Those were ... inspiring words.”
Charlie nodded once, satisfied, and returned to his seat as the crowd responded with a polite, slightly confused round of applause.
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