“…uh… yeah, I guess – ”
“But grasshoppers are far more destructive than scorpions. Scorpions eat other bugs, but grasshoppers swarm in and eat all the crops, yes? Biblical plagues and whatnot. Whole multitudes starving to death. But people are always like, ‘Oh, nice little grasshopper,’ and ‘Nasty, horrid scorpion – ’”
I sat there wondering when he was going to get to his point.
And then I remembered that I was talking to a guy who was stoned 24/7.
“What the fuck does this have to do with anything?” I snapped.
“Just follow me for a moment.”
I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”
“The scorpion isn’t bad, in and of itself. It’s just a scorpion.”
“Okay.”
“So when it stings the frog, it’s not malicious. It’s just being a scorpion.”
“SO?! The frog still DIES!”
“Everything dies. Dying is a natural part of life.”
This really was like a 3AM conversation in a college dorm room with a stoned pothead – except I wasn’t high, so it was basically just annoying.
“But it didn’t have to die!”
“But, you see, perhaps the frog is acting according to its nature, too.”
“What, being stupid?”
“No, being kind. That doesn’t make the frog smart or stupid. It’s just acting according to its nature, as well.”
“So the scorpion’s not bad, it’s just a scorpion, and the frog’s not dumb, it’s just nice, but put them together and they’re both going to die out in the middle of the river. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Killian paused and looked confused.
“Alright,” he mumbled, “perhaps that wasn’t the best story to use to illustrate the situation.”
“You think?”
“Derek’s not a bad bloke, Kaitlyn,” he said softly. “But if he does something that hurts you, try to remember that it wasn’t meant maliciously. It’s… just his nature.”
Just his nay-chuh.
“Can I give you a piece of advice, Killian?” I asked as I stood up.
“Of course.”
“Don’t use that story to comfort any other women. Ever. Especially when they’re pissed off.”
“…right,” he said apologetically.
I walked over to the door. The irritation I was feeling had temporarily overridden my nausea.
Maybe it was time to get started on that bender.
Bloody Mary? Mimosa? Straight-up champagne?
“Kaitlyn?” came Killian’s hesitant voice.
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob and turned back. “Yes?”
“Sorry about bollocksing that up.”
He looked really apologetic. Downright pathetic, even.
“…that’s alright,” I grumbled.
“I guess cocking things up is in my nature.”
My nay-chuh.
He said it so pitifully, so seriously – and the story had been such an ill-conceived attempt to convey wisdom or condolences or whatever the fuck he had been trying to impart – that there was no way the words could support the grave earnestness behind them.
It was just… ridiculous.
Or maybe I’d gotten a contact high by sitting next to him for ten minutes.
Either way, I started giggling.
He looked surprised – and then he smiled, as though realizing he might have somehow miraculously snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.
“Bye, Killian,” I said, shaking my head, and walked out of the room.
“Toodles,” he called after me.
The last thing I heard before the door closed was the whisper of his guitar strings.
81
Killian’s little parable made me paranoid. I tried to put it out of my mind, but it tended to creep back in every time something less-than-perfect happened.
And a lot of less-than-perfect things began to happen.
You hear musicians talk about the Road, about the toll the Road takes. Back in 1973, Bob Seger wrote a song about it, “Turn The Page,” where his life as a rock star takes on this dark, relentless grind.
I’d never really understood that. I just figured musicians were talking about the driving and the traveling, like that scene in Walk The Line where a young June Carter and Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis are all in the same car late at night, and Jerry Lee kind of goes off the religious deep end.
But I thought that the driving and the boredom were all musicians were talking about when they mentioned the Road.
Then I found out by going through it.
It was the constant repetition of waking up in a strange room… hanging out, not really doing much… going to play a show… partying… waking up the next morning… getting on a bus… and doing it all over again.
It was a wandering gypsy sort of life, which I wasn’t cut out for. And yet it also had a lot of the hallmarks of a 9-to-5 job, except it was 24/7. Like a wandering gypsy who had to punch a time clock again and again and again.
No wonder so many musicians turned to drug abuse and alcoholism and sex addiction. You needed something to take your mind off of how much a routine you were stuck in, with no end in sight.
And I just barely got a taste. The band had been touring for four months before I came along. I was there for the very last leg of their North American tour: Los Angeles. Irvine. San Diego. San Francisco. Sacramento. Portland. Vancouver. Boise. Seattle. Salt Lake City. Denver. Albuquerque. Phoenix. And finally a two-night engagement in Las Vegas.
Even the partying began to take on a desperate quality, like being trapped in some kind of Groundhog Day purgatory. The same types of fans. The same look to the groupies. The same faces on the crew. The same concrete corridors in the stadiums and arenas. The same drinks, the same drugs, the same jokes, the same rituals, the same everything.
The Road was its own peculiar sort of hell.
And it was taking its toll on Derek and me.
I’m not entirely sure it was just the stress of the Road. I think part of it was my paranoia over what Killian and Shanna had said. Either way, I began watching Derek on the sly, taking mental notes, totting up marks on a mental chalkboard.
And overanalyzing everything.
Although there was a lot to overanalyze.
I could give you dozens of stories, but part of good writing is judicious editing, so I’ll just hit the highlights.
We began snapping at each other, for one thing. Not in the ‘building sexual tension’ way before we’d slept with each other, but out of genuine irritation.
We had our first fight – our first ‘relationship’ fight – over toothbrushes, for God’s sake.
“Jesus, Kaitlyn, can you not put your toothbrush right next to mine?” Derek asked one morning. He said it with a sense of humor – but that ‘Jesus, Kaitlyn’ got under my skin.
I came over and looked at what he was talking about. He kept his toothbrush in a glass, and I’d casually stuck mine in there earlier.
“What do you care?” I asked with considerably less humor than he’d used.
“I just like my toothbrush to be by itself,” he said, the humor fading fast.
“What does it matter? We’re sleeping together. Any germs I have, you’ve already got by now.”
“That’s not it.”
“Then who cares?” I snapped.
“I’m asking you – ”
“It didn’t sound like you were asking me.”
Now he was getting really irritated. “Well consider this a formal request, then: put your own toothbrush into your own glass. There’s, like, five of them on the counter – ”
“Why do you care?!”
“Why do I have to have a fucking reason?! Just don’t put your toothbrush in my goddamn glass! CAN YOU HANDLE THAT?”
In answer, I took my toothbrush and walked out – not just out of the bathroom, but out of the hotel room.
I probably looked pretty odd stomping down the hallway with a toothbrush in my clenched fist, but there was no way in hell I was going back in there.
Derek apologized later and just explained that he liked his space. I apologized for getting angry so quickly.
What I didn’t tell him was that I had a creeping apprehension that the toothbrushes were just a stand-in for something else.
But, I mean, that was just the stress of the Road, right?
The constant togetherness, with only a couple hours’ break here and there, right?
…right?
82
One of my biggest problems was that the jealousy came back. With a vengeance.
For the first five or six days after we slept together, Derek only had eyes for me. No matter how beautiful the groupies and models and actresses were who flirted with him, he didn’t give them anything other than the obligatory (but still dazzling) smile. Boobs came out en masse, but the most risqué thing he signed was a girl’s arm. And then he would turn away and put his arm around me, and walk me through the crowd introducing me to rock legends and movie stars.
The green-eyed monster was still lurking in the background, but it wasn’t gnawing at my guts like it had before.
Then… something changed.
I think it was an exceptionally beautiful hotel concierge. Brunette, six feet tall, crystal blue eyes. She didn’t know who Derek was, and she didn’t give a damn. She was polite but perfunctory, and acted entirely blasé during the beginning of their interaction.
Derek was having none of it.
He turned up the charm to 11. He leaned over the counter in a ‘hey baby’ kind of way and kept cracking jokes like his life depended on getting her into bed.