Vera had hooked up with the lead singer of Slash Burn for their whole Australian tour. It was like a committed relationship for fifteen nights and then he’d never bothered to say goodbye. Just got on his private plane and went to the next city in the next country. He’d looked her up years later and apologized and she’d charged him a small fortune to style him for a shoot. They were Facebook friends now.
Being a good groupie wasn’t all about looks and a willingness to give blowjobs. It took skill to get invited to stay longer than it took to make your conquest come. And if you knew what you were doing that might only take ten minutes, which included being shown out by security.
You had to know how to appeal to a musician’s ego. You had to know how to engage them, even if that was just listening to them brag about themselves or tell you their problems. That meant learning everything there was to know about them and their band.
Successful groupies were sexy encyclopedias who had no needs of their own, apart from getting to hang with their idols.
It was a lot like the work Mena did now, with an excellent salary and without the music and the sex. Who knew being a groupie would be good training for running a multiclient investment portfolio?
But it had all been different with Grip.
He’d been in a class of his own. He’d been upfront with Mena. Promised her a good meal and a bed beside him for the night or a taxi home, which was already a lot better than a narrow bunk on a parked bus or a lounge in a room full of other people. He’d shown her a good time partying with his band and then bought her room service in his shabby hotel room before they’d even done more than hold hands and sit close. He’d asked permission to kiss her, even when it was obvious that and more was what she was there for.
It had been the softest thing anyone on or off her list had ever done for her. That simple can I kiss you, the wait while she answered, before he’d yanked her close and kissed her senseless.
They’d spent hours making out and having sex, but they’d spent longer talking. He’d told her how difficult it was to stay neutral when the Tice brothers, his bandmates, fought amongst themselves and how much his parents had sacrificed to give him music lessons and his guilt at not being
able to pay them back.
“I feel like I’m on a treadmill going nowhere,” he’d said.
As the sun rose, he admitted he was thinking about quitting because he couldn’t see how he’d ever be able to make a decent living with the band without having to keep his second and third jobs. And that he was worried about how he’d cope if Jay, the only other non-Tice family member, left the band.
Mena let him talk and didn’t try to solve his problems for him, then he’d kissed her into a stupor and woke her up again by asking her questions about her life. That was another first. She’d told him about her disapproving mother and her horrible café job and how she didn’t know what she was doing with her life. And then she admitted he was the top of her list. That having scored him, she’d made a promise to herself to go back to uni, finish her degree and get a proper job.
She could still replay their conversation in her head.
“I don’t really want to go back,” she’d said. It would be hard. She’d have to keep her shitty café job and carry HECs debt for years.
“So don’t do it.”
“I can’t do this forever.” She didn’t want to be broke and scared and running on bravado for the rest of her life. She wanted normal. She wanted secure but it was impossible to admit that out loud. “And everyone isn’t kind like you.”
He’d frowned at that. “I’m not being kind, I’m—”
“Most of the men I sleep with don’t bother asking about me.”
“That’s—”
“What this is. A good time, not a long time. This is the ultimate in hooking up but it’s not real life.”
“It’s my real life,” he’d said.
“Even knowing you might quit?”
He’d rolled her over then, so they faced each other. Both of them on the verge of quitting who they were to become something different. “Do you think I should quit?” he’d asked.
“Not if you’re doing what you love.”
“I don’t always love it.”
“Give me a percentage.”
He’d kissed her for a while then, as if he needed thinking time, and then replied. “Eighty, twenty.”
“You love it eighty percent of the time?”
He’d nodded. She’d opened her legs to him and when he was seated inside her she’d said, “The Pareto principle rules. Suck it up, sugar.”