“You remembered them?” I asked Killian.
The guitarist smiled and took a drag on his joint. “Oh yes. Derek made quite the impression.”
He tends to do that.
“I guess nobody else ever came up to you and said, ‘I’m going to start a band and I want you to join it.’”
“Yes. He was quite ballsy, even then.”
“That’s what I want on my tombstone,” Derek said. He motioned in the air like he was laying out the words as he spoke in a British accent: “He was quite ballsy.”
Killian laughed.
“Soooo… what about Riley?”
“Well, Killian moved in with Derek – ”
I looked over at Killian in shock. “In that house? You’re kidding me.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” Derek snapped.
“It was terrible,” Ryan laughed.
“It was a place to stay,” Killian said diplomatically.
“You don’t… still live there, do you?” I asked.
“Fuck no,” Riley said. “They were crampin’ my style.”
Ryan smiled. “We bought separate houses – much nicer houses – a while back. Anyway, we started looking for drummers, but there weren’t really any great ones around Athens or Atlanta. Anybody really good was already in a bigger band.”
“I said we should go to New York and have a look around there,” Killian said.
“So we road-tripped up to New York City. We stayed in this horrible flea-bag hotel – ”
“It was fine,” Killian said mildly.
“You had a bed all to yourself. I had to sleep next to him,” Ryan complained as he pointed at Derek.
“Woooo! Didja tap that ass, Ryan?” Riley hooted.
“We don’t kiss and tell,” Derek said, in a voice that suggested he was keeping a secret.
“No I did not,” Ryan said emphatically.
“Didja tap Ryan’s ass, D?”
“Wellllll – ”
“NO,” Ryan said. “Shut up, both of you. Anyway, Killian had played a lot of shows with some American bands during Gobsmacked’s tour, and he couldn’t stop talking about this one crazy chick in a punk rock band.”
Killian leaned forward. “What was the name of that group again, luv?”
“Pussy Killz,” Riley said matter-of-factly. “With a ‘z.’”
Figures.
“So we go to see… um, that band on Friday night, and she gets up on stage,” Ryan said, jerking his thumb at Riley. “And she just blew us away.”
“The rest of the band kind of sucked, but she was awesome,” Derek agreed. “We figured we’d play her some stuff we’d rerecorded with Killian – songs that were ten times better than what we’d used to get him onboard, and a hundred times better than anything her band could do. Then she’d say ‘okay’ and we’d get our drummer. Easy.”
“So we write her a note and send it backstage, and ask if we can buy her a drink afterwards,” Killian said, “and explain our proposition. It was a perfectly lovely note. And she writes back over the original text in big red letters, Fuck off. That’s her answer.”
I looked at Riley. She shrugged.
“I saw ‘em from up on stage. I thought they were fuckin’ weirdos. Nobody at our shows ever looked like them.”
“Yeah, it was an unusually large crowd of bull dykes,” Derek said.
“And every one of ‘em had a bigger dick than you,” Riley jeered.
Derek just laughed at her.
Killian blew out a mouthful of smoke. “So Derek, being Derek, goes and asks the bartender what the drummer of Pussy Killz likes to drink. Then he buys a fifth of whiskey off him and proceeds to bully his way backstage.”
“The whole band was in there, sitting around the table in this shitty dressing room, and I went in there and slammed the Jack down and said, ‘We want you in our band,’” Derek said.
“Just like with Killian,” I recalled.
“Yeah, except – ”
“I told ‘em to fuck off again,” Riley grinned. “But I drank their booze.”
“We tried to talk to her, but she just kept telling us to fuck off,” Derek laughed. “It was like, ‘Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuuuuck off. FUCK off. FUCK OFF. Fuck… off.’ Two dozen different ways to say ‘fuck off.’”
“Literally?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” Derek nodded. “I’d say, ‘We heard you play.’ She’d nod and say, ‘Fuck off.’ ‘We think you’re really good – ’ ‘Yeah? Fuck off.’ ‘We’ve got a really unusual sound – can we let you hear some of our songs?’ ‘Um – FUCK OFF.’ It was the first time in my life I ever wanted to punch a chick.”
“You woulda drawn back a bloody stump, asshole,” Riley smirked.
“Anyway, I left her a CD we’d burned, and we just walked out, figuring that was that,” Ryan said.
“And I stole the Jack Daniels bottle back and told her to go drink on somebody else’s dime,” Derek said.
“Yeah, I was pissed about that,” Riley laughed.
Derek pointed at her. “But that was what made you listen to the CD.”
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Hardly.”
“Anyway, so we go to a bunch of other shows and talk to some other drummers, but none of them are interested in moving down to Athens,” Ryan continued. “We go back home five days later, all depressed – ”
“And who walks out of my house when we finally drive up but this bitch right here,” Derek said, pointing at Riley.
I stared at her. “You were in his house?”
She frowned defensively. “I needed someplace to stay.”
“We weren’t even home yet,” Derek laughed.
“His roommates just let you stay there?”
Riley waved her hand like Pff. “One dude was so stoned out of his mind, he thought I was his roommate already… and the drag queen was cool. I just told ‘em Derek was expecting me. They didn’t give a shit.”
“Except Derek wasn’t expecting you, though, right?” I asked.
“His roommates didn’t know that.”
“How’d you find out where he lived?”
“I went to the clubs and said there was this buff musclehead and a tall geek and an English pothead, and everybody knew who I was talking about immediately. One of the bartenders told me where Derek lived, and I just drove around till I found it.”
“Tell her what you said when you opened the door and saw us,” Derek said.
“‘Saddle up, bitches – I came to play!’” she hollered gleefully.
“No, before that.”
“Oh, yeah – ‘What took you so long?’”
“Why’d you change your mind and leave New York?” I asked.
“You ever been in a band with three other chicks, Blondie?”
“No.”
“So I guess you’ve never been in a band with three other chicks you’ve fucked, then.”
“That would definitely be ‘no.’”
“Well, I can let you in on a little secret: it’s too much fuckin’ drama.” Riley gestured to her bandmates. “As soon as these fuckers left, Sibyl – she was the lead singer – started screaming at me, telling me I wouldn’t dare quit the band, I was a traitor, I was fuckin’ guys behind her back, yadda yadda yadda. I wasn’t even seriously considering listening to the CD until she went off – then I was like, ‘Oh yeah? FUCK YOU, BITCH.’ And then I listened to the CD, and, well…”
“She liked us,” Killian said.
“I wouldn’t go that far. But you didn’t suck too bad,” Riley teased him.
“And you just picked up and left?”
“Yup. Said, ‘Fuck all y’all bitches, I’m OUT,’ and drove my van down… and the rest is history.”
“And you guys went on to record your first album,” I marveled.
“Oh, oh – wait – Ryan hasn’t told you the part where he almost pussied out,” Riley said excitedly.
“I didn’t… wimp out,” Ryan said.
“You just pussied out right there, you big pussy,” Riley snorted.
“Ryan was getting a lot of flack from his parents,” Derek explained. “He wanted to be a music major, and they wanted him to be a business major. They were even pressuring him to quit the band – ”
“And he almost fuckin’ did!” Riley shouted in disbelief.
“No I didn’t,” Ryan said, shaking his head and giving me a look like Don’t listen to them.
“Yes he did,” Riley said, pushing his head up against the window of the limo and getting up in my face. “The drag queen was moving out and we wanted Ryan to move in so we could work on the album, and he was all like Uhhhh and Waaaah – ” she said, imitating a baby’s cries.
“I was not!” Ryan said indignantly as he pried Riley’s nicotine-stained fingers off his face.
“So I was like, ‘Bitch – this is decision time here,’” Riley said dramatically. “‘There ain’t no Plan B. I came all the way down here from New York, and Killian flew all the way over from England. We believe in this band – do you believe in this band? Because you’re either all the way in, or you’re all the way out. And you had better not pussy out on me now.’”