Chapter 12B: On The Road Again

The break-up went down as discussed and scheduled. Georgette and Shaver gave their press conferences and read brief statements written by Jake and Mindy in which both proclaimed that the reason for their break-up was personal and that they were still "dear friends" and would always remain so. The media went into a frenzy over the announcement, with headline stories and analysis taking up more room in some local publications than the stories about the pull-out of the US Marines from Beirut in the wake of the suicide bombing or the alleged use of chemical weapons by Iraq in their war with Iran.

On March 10, two days before Intemperance's departure for Miami, Mindy showed up at Jake's condo unexpectedly. She found him dressed in an old pair of jeans and a sweat-stained t-shirt, his hair in disarray. He was in a foul mood, the living room full of cardboard boxes in which he was packing all of his belongings.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "I thought we weren't supposed to be seen together."

"It's okay," she told him, looking around the condo in amazement. "The official story is that I'm picking up a few belongings I left at your place. What the hell is going on here?"

"I'm being evicted," he told her. "Since we're going to be gone for almost six months National decided it was cheaper to stop paying for this place and keep my stuff in storage until I get back."

"They're kicking you out of your home?" she asked, appalled.

"It's not my home," he said bitterly. "It's the record company's. All five of us are getting the boot. They say they'll find different lodging for us when we get back."

"That's horrible," she said, genuinely appalled.

"That's life in the music biz," he responded. "So what did you really come here for?"

"I just wanted to see you one more time before you went," she said. "I have to fly to New York tomorrow for an audition." She smiled. "It's for a new movie they're going to start filming in a few months. A real movie. It's called Back to the Future."

"Yeah?" he asked. "What's it about?"

"It's going to have Michael J. Fox as the lead," she said. "He'll play a high school student who goes back in time and accidentally interferes with his parent's romance because his mom falls in love with him."

"His mom falls in love with him?" Jake asked.

"Yes... isn't it deliciously kinky? I'm trying out for the part of the teenage mom in 1955. She's going to be a little slut from what I understand."

"I guess she'd have to be if she wants to bang her own son."

"She doesn't know he's her son," she said, rolling her eyes. "Anyway, it's the first role with the least bit of sexuality in it that I've ever been offered. I just wanted to properly thank you for helping me get a chance at it before you went. We probably won't be able to see each other again for awhile."

"You're welcome," he said. "Just call me the image enhancer."

"Oh come on, Jake," she said. "Don't be like that. You know this is the right thing to do, don't you?"

"Yeah," he said, tired of the whole subject. "The right thing."

"I've got a few minutes before people start to wonder why I'm up here so long," she said. "Shall we visit your bedroom one last time."

He made the obligatory protests but within five minutes they were retiring to his bedroom. By the time they were done he needed a shower in order to go back to the dirty, grimy work of packing up his life.

The convoy formed up on the morning of March 12 for the long trip to Miami. It was larger and more impressive than the convoy that had formed the Earthstone/Intemperance tour of 1983, or the Intemperance/Voyeur tour of later that same year. There were eleven tour buses forming the vanguard of the convoy. One for Intemperance, one for Birmingham — the rookie Southern rock band who would be opening for them — and nine for the roadies, technical specialists, and tour management who would be accompanying them. There were ten tractor-trailer rigs following behind the tour buses, four more than the last tour, including one with high-explosive placards pasted all over it. This particular tractor-trailer, which contained all of the pyrotechnic equipment and charges, was a particular pain in the ass to the planners of the tour because whenever the route took them over a large bridge or through a tunnel, it would have to divert around and rejoin later.

Jake, Matt, and the rest of the band were assigned to the exact same tour bus that had been their home during the last tour. The same two drivers were assigned to pilot it. And, of course, Greg Gahn, the hypocritical, Book of Mormon thumping, coke sniffing, drug pushing tour manager was assigned to accompany, intoxify, pacify, and generally babysit them.

"It won't be like last time," he told them as the convoy left the assembly area and started rolling towards the freeway. "We have nothing but luxury suites booked for you guys. You're big time now."

"That's real big of you," Jake responded, sipping from his first beer of the trip even though it was only seven in the morning, "considering that we're paying half the bill for those luxury suites."

"And all of your fuckin' nose candy," Matt added.

Greg wisely kept his mouth shut until the band was a little more into the spirit of things.

This didn't take long. They rolled down Interstate 10, leaving Los Angeles and its suburbs behind. By the time the bus entered the desert of Riverside County a thick haze of marijuana smoke hung in the air, the trash was full of empty beer bottles, and the mood among the band members was almost festive.

This mood remained as they rolled across the southern edge of the country. The bus sound system was turned on and, like before, whenever the new Intemperance single was found on a radio station, it was cranked loudly and out came the air guitars and the improvised dance moves. There was reason to be festive about this. Only fifteen days after The Thrill of Doing Business was released across the country for sale, the album had already sold eighty thousand copies and the single had already debuted on the Hot One Hundred chart. It was the most requested song on rock radio stations coast to coast and the first twenty venues they were scheduled for had already sold out in advance.

"Listen to this," said Bill on the second day of the trip, as he read from a newspaper he had picked up in an El Paso truck stop while the convoy had been fueling. "It's a record review of Thrill. 'It is clear when you listen to the cuts on the new album that the band has both matured and become more sophisticated in songwriting and musical composition. The lyrics by Tisdale and especially Kingsley are an obvious reflection of the life lessons both have learned in the rough and tumble music business. The ballad Crossing the Line, by Kingsley, is quite clearly influenced by his tumultuous, now-defunct relationship with television and screen actress Mindy Snow.'"

"That's some funny shit, Nerdly," Matt said. "We've matured and applied our life lessons. I guess they don't know that every last one of the tunes on Thrill are leftover material from D Street West days."

"Mindy and I only broke up a week ago," Jake said in wonder. "They think I composed a tune about it and that we rehearsed it up and recorded it since then?"

"Who is the song about then?" asked Greg, who was hovering nearby and preparing his latest nose candy feast.

"It isn't about anybody," Jake said. "It's not a love song at all. It's about taking risks in your life, about going beyond the point where your instincts are telling you to stop something. The line is where you can turn back from a decision and still walk away. Crossing it means you put everything at risk, expose yourself, flirt with failure in the name of a new achievement."

"Yeah," Coop said. "Like when you're with a new bitch and you want to ass fuck her or have her dyke out with another bitch while you fuck them both. If you don't ask her, you'll never get to do it. But if you do ask her, she might dump your ass and start fucking one of your friends instead. That's the danger. But the reward you can get by crossing the line is that she might be down with it and you can get yourself into some ass or get a threesome."

Everyone stared at Coop for a moment, long enough to make him uncomfortable.

"What?" he asked.

"That's fuckin' deep, Coop," Matt said.

"Hell yeah," agreed Jake. "You nailed that concept right on the head."

Greg, as was his custom when the talked turned in this direction, simply shook his head in disgust and found another portion of the bus to occupy.

They rolled into Miami just after ten o'clock in the morning on March 15, ten and a half hours before they were to hit the stage for the first time. All five were hungover and strung out, badly in need of sleep. They stopped at their hotel long enough to check in and take a shower and then Janice Boxer gathered them all up for their first session of radio station interviews, sound byte recordings, and an autograph session at a local record store. They met the members of Birmingham for the first time when they reported for the sound check at four-thirty that afternoon.

Birmingham was a five-man band whose album had been released two months earlier and was selling moderately well with decent airplay of their single Texas Hold-em. Jake had heard their song on the radio many times and had also scored a copy of the album from Crow when he first found out they would be opening for them. They were obviously heavily influenced by .38 Special and Molly Hatchet, but not to the point where they were a complete sound-alike band like Voyeur had been for AC/DC. All in all, Jake thought their music wasn't bad and he told them so when the lead singer, who seemed awe-struck to be in their presence, introduced himself and his cohorts.

And of course, they asked if the veteran band had any advice to give to the rookies. They looked puzzled when all five members of Intemperance burst out in laughter.

"The best advice we can give," said Jake, "is the same advice Earthstone gave us when we opened for them the first time."

"What's that?"

Jake looked at Darren. "You want to lay it on 'em?" he asked him.

"Hell yeah," Darren said sourly. He looked at the members of Birmingham. "No matter what you do, no matter how much you might think you want to, never kiss a groupie."

And, as Earthstone had done before them, they said no further on that matter, leaving it to the newbies to find out how solid that advice was on their own.

In their dressing rooms they were assisted with their wardrobe by Reginald Feeney and had their hair done by Delores Riolo, just as before. Once dressed and presentable they went backstage for the obligatory autograph sessions and photo-ops for the various radio station contest winners and the other dignitaries who had scored back-stage passes.

"I'm sorry to hear about you and Mindy Snow," Jake was told no less than six times. Twice he was pressed for details of why they had broken up. He politely deflected these inquiries with vague statements.

Finally, they were led back to the dressing room so Birmingham could hit the stage. By this point they were really dragging ass, all of them wishing they had spent last night sleeping instead of partying.

"Does anyone want a little pick-me-up?" asked Greg, waving his cocaine kit before their eyes. "It would be therapeutic at this point, don't you think?"

"Don't start, Greg," Matt growled. "I was afraid of offending the record company last tour so I went easy on you. I'm no longer quite so afraid of them."

Greg put a nervous look on his face and slinked off, taking his cocaine with him.

The thumping of Birmingham's bass guitar could be heard but little else as they went through their set. After an hour it came to an end. Jake and Matt drank three bottles of Gatorade apiece to stave off the dehydration they knew was coming. Conversation was little. Finally it was time to go forward. They made their way through the tunnel and into the stage left area. As soon as they opened the door the sound of the crowd hit them.

Jake felt his fatigue slipping away as he heard that sound, replaced by nervous excitement. It was time to perform.

The lights went down and the sell-out crowd of fourteen thousand began to roar. The synthesized intro began. They were warned one last time to stay clear of the pyro charges. They clasped hands and hit the stage. Matt ground out the opening chords, the explosions fired, and their first set of the tour began.

It went off flawlessly, just like it had in the dress rehearsals. Jake played and sang, giving himself fully to the performance, feeling everything else in his life slip from his thoughts as he heard the crowd screaming out their approval, as he heard them singing along with their songs. The ninety minute set flew by, seeming to take only minutes, and when it was finally over, when the grand finale explosion finally ripped across the stage and the last chord was struck, when the five of them stood together at the front of the stage and took their bow, received their enthusiastic standing ovation, Jake felt that all was right in his world. He was doing what he was put on Earth to do and he couldn't wait to do it again.

The groupies in the shower routine of the last tour did not manifest itself on this tour. Instead, there was group of about thirty of them in the dressing room when the band emerged in their civilian clothing. Jake wasn't sure he was ready just yet to engage in the usual debauchery but his misgivings were neatly squashed after three rum and cokes and two bonghits. He hooked up with a young Cuban girl with a lush, exotic body and large, pillow-soft breasts. She gave him a blowjob in the dressing room while he finished his fifth drink and then accompanied him to the party in Darren's suite. Later, around one in the morning, he took her back to his suite and undressed her like a Christmas present. He capped his weapon and slid into her alluring body, feeling no guilt during or after, but also feeling no real fulfillment at the conquest. She would have a memory that would last a lifetime — the night she fucked Jake Kingsley, the Jake Kingsley. But a week from now, he knew, he wouldn't even remember her, not her name, not her face, not her scent, not even her existence.

They fell back into the routine of touring with practiced ease. The days and then the weeks went by in a haze of long bus rides, greasy hotel and truck stop food, screaming fans and sign-carrying protestors at record stores, interviews (some quite caustic, touching on the Satanism or the Mindy Snow topic), sound byte deliveries, roaring crowds and the exquisite thrill of performing live, and late-night after-show parties marked by gross intoxication and naked, willing, nameless groupies. It wasn't long before Jake had to be reminded what city they were performing in before stepping onto the stage. It wasn't long before they lost complete track of the day of the week, even the month of the year.

They moved northward along the eastern seaboard, working their way city by city, arena by arena, to New England. They then moved west to the Great Lake cities, and then south, through the Midwest. Though their performances became more focused and more automatic through sheer repetition, the joy of performing never faded and the spontaneity of each show held firm, thrilling and delighting each audience. The word traveled in many forms — through print-media, through television, through word of mouth — but it remained essentially the same: Intemperance knew how to put on a show. Venues continued to sell out weeks in advance and there were reports of people camping out for two days to get tickets, of riots started by people trying to cut in line at such campouts, of record-high prices being charged by scalpers.

Another thing spread about by the media — usually in tabloids like American Watcher — was Jake's trysts with groupies. This was very big in the first month of the tour, while news of the Jake and Mindy break-up was still reverterbrating across the country. JAKE COPING WELL WITHOUT MINDY read one headline in the Watcher. Inside the issue was a lengthy interview with a nineteen-year-old girl who claimed to have had an extended sexual encounter with Jake in Atlanta after the Intemperance concert there.

"Is that the bitch you fucked in Atlanta?" Matt asked as they perused the issue during one of the bus rides.

Jake looked at the picture of her carefully. She was certainly attractive, with brunette hair, a trim body, and pouty lips. "Could be," he said. "She does look a little familiar."

Other such articles followed this one but all shared the same theme. There would be pictures of a groupie that Jake had allegedly been involved with in some city or another, an interview with the groupie telling all that had occurred (at least within the bounds of the community standard of decency), and quotes from Georgette to the effect that Mindy was glad that Jake was moving on with his life and she wished him the best, and from Shaver, acting as Jake's spokesman (and raking his twenty-one percent off the top of their album sales) that Jake was living his own life and hoping that Mindy was doing the same.

It was only when they reached New York City when the articles finally came to an end, their monotonous theme replaced by one even more exciting, that of the arrest of the entire band on drug and indecency charges.

Since it was the scene of the infamous coke sniffing from the butt-crack episode of the last tour, the protestations by the anti-Intemperance crowd were especially vigorous in the Big Apple in the weeks preceding their appearance there. There were petitions to revoke Intemperance's concert permit, marches before city hall by local Christian and women's rights groups, even a candlelight vigil by an anti-drug coalition. None of it did any good. Madison Square Garden was sold out for three consecutive shows and the city council and mayor's office, citing first amendment issues as their basis for decision, refused to take any steps to prevent Intemperance from playing.

After the final MSG performance the band was in Matt's room engaging in their usual post-performance activities. Jake, now fully back in the swing of the touring lifestyle, was on the couch in the suite's sitting room, fucking a young Chinese groupie from behind while her face was buried in the widely spread crotch of a young Japanese groupie. Resting on the Chinese groupie's lower back was a three-quarter full rum and coke. The challenge Jake had put upon his two lovers was to complete their act without spilling the drink. It was starting to look like the challenge would be lost when the front door of the suite suddenly boomed open and a dozen uniformed NYPD officers came bursting in, their guns drawn, their eyes wide.

"Everyone, get down on the fuckin' floor, now!" screamed a voice.

"I'm already on the fuckin' floor," replied Matt, who was on his back while two groupies took turns blowing him.

Chaos erupted for the next ten minutes as more cops came rushing in. Girls screamed, cops yelled, band members yelled back. Matt tried to get up and was pushed roughly back down. In his drunken and coked out state he did what came naturally to him. He hit the cop that had pushed him in the balls. The cops responded by pummeling Matt with their batons until he fell unconscious to the floor. Jake tried to get up and was pounced upon by three cops. He felt kicks to his ribs and a baton strike to the top of his head. His hands were wrenched behind his back and handcuffs were applied and wrenched down brutally tight. He was left to lay there, completely naked, a condom still on his penis, bleeding from his head, each breath a ragged stab of pain in his right side, a cop's foot in the back of his neck.

All the girls were gathered in one place and told to identify themselves. This took the better part of twenty minutes since they had to find their clothes first. Jake heard the two plainclothes cops who seemed to be in charge of the raid discussing them.

"None of them are underage," cop number one reported.

"None of them? Are you sure?"

"We've checked all their ID's, Lou."

"What about consent? Any of them say they're here against their will, or that they were being sexually assaulted."

"No. In fact, they're all quite proud to say they were here. Some of them were asking the CSI team to photograph 'em."

"Oh well," Lou sighed. "At least there's the drugs. Let's start searching."