Today as a task, W asked me to update my “Boys Jade Has Fucked” list. (For two more entries on this list, see Dear #16 and Cowboy #2 – Two Stories.) The next boy…hmmm…number 26, is a boy called Steve. Steve really was a boy, young and skinny and wild, a rebel kid that played in a local band.
Have I ever mentioned that I have a thing for boys in bands? A serious thing. If you play in a band and get a couple of drinks in me (and sometimes with no drinks), I’ll probably fuck you. You might not even have to ask.
It’s one reason I don’t go out to live music too much anymore.
In any case, this was before I decided that a boys-in-bands 12 step program would probably be a good idea. I worked at a local restaurant with Steve, and got to be pretty good friends with him before I realized he was the lead singer for a local band. We had flirted a bit, and I had gone out with him and others at after-hours places several times, as restaurant people do, but I’d never considered him as “date material” before. He really was kind of strange looking: very tall, very thin, with big ears (accentuated by his odd haircut), dark skin pockmarked just a bit by acne scars and a nose that had been broken once. He wasn’t ugly, just…odd-looking. But he was a super sweet guy, smart and funny, was always ready with a helping hand or something to make a girl smile when she was feeling down or overwhelmed, and had a ton of energy.
One night, as we were getting ready to check out at work, he asked me what I was doing the next night. I had to work, but was in the first cut, so would be off early. Well, he said, why didn’t I come see his band play downtown?
Now, I had seen lots of well-known bands. I knew I had a thing for bonafide rock stars. Who doesn’t? But I had no idea what the effect on me would be of seeing someone I knew, someone that I knew had a wee-bit of a thing for me, play on the stage.
It was a…seminal moment. OH MY GOD. This odd-looking fellow that I had known only in his work uniform, up there on stage, with no shirt on, sweat glistening on his–I now realized–ripped body, his mohawk (for that was indeed what his “strange” haircut was) at full stand, and his voice screaming out Red Hot Chili Pepper lyrics…I about came in my artfully-ripped jeans right then and there.
I had gone there with another coworker, a girl I only realized later was gay (and who, I found out later) had hoped that I was gay too that night.) When Steve asked me between sets if I wanted to hang around til after the show was over, get to meet his bandmates and hang out for the afterparty, there was no question in my mind what my answer would be. I don’t think there was a question in his either.
I drank and danced and listened to him and watched him and lusted after him. And I am going to go out on a limb and say he did the same, up there on stage, because every time I looked up, he was watching me. And when we got back to his place at close to four that morning, we fell on each other like starved animals. I’m not sure we were even through the living room he shared with two of his bandmates and into his room before we were stripping each other. We fucked for hours (there may have been some pharmaceutical assistance, I can’t recall now) and then slept in a sweaty tangle until I had to go to work the next day.
He and I remained friends, and in fact went out a couple more times after that, but I never saw him play again and his band broke up shortly thereafter.
It was just never the same, dating him in a normal way, and poor guy, I think he knew that.