Rock Revenge: Alex's Story

“I shouldn’t have been driving that van. Dee knows it and I know it. Everything else is irrelevant.”

The air in the room became charged with emotion, too many unasked questions. What was going on with these two? Did I even want the answers to those questions? The friendliness between Alex and Pete fizzled, on Alex’s side, at least. It seemed like Pete thought he was doing Alex a favour, but it was a favour Alex didn’t want.

“Hey, guys, I’ve got rehearsal pizza!” Ferdie walked in carrying two pizza boxes.

The smell hit me, clearing the air. We had rehearsal to do and I wouldn’t let anything Pete or Alex said interfere with that. I just wanted things back to normal with the guys and, when I turned back to Alex, he’d gone. I’d meant to ask him about Jake’s songs too.

Alex

Pete should learn to shut his big mouth. I’d never tell Dee what had happened that night. She should keep the pristine image of Jake she carried with her. He was dead and there was no point stirring up shit now.

Jake had never been the person she’d thought he was. There are things you don’t do around your kid sister and, as much as she’d hung around rehearsal, she’d been too young to go to most of our gigs. Jake loved the rock lifestyle, that much was true. Living in a small town, he’d been careful about his image at home. Gossip spread fast and he liked being seen as squeaky-clean. When we hit the road though, in towns where no one knew him, that all changed.

It was nothing terrible, nothing a million people hadn’t done before him. If some girl approached him after the gig, happy to put out for him, he never objected.

“Drugs, sex and roll ‘n’ roll, I’m living the dream,” he’d say.

That night, I’d been sitting in the bar waiting for him after we’d played. Two girls cornered him at the bar, both offering to blow him. He’d been happy to oblige. He gave me the thumbs up, then took them backstage.

Pete went with them, maybe hoping to get seconds. I wasn’t sure who’d done what. I had no intention of sticking around to watch, that’s for sure. I was more interested in the booze.

Earlier in the day, I’d had a fight with my dad. The usual thing. He wanted me to quit the band, it took too much of my time. It’d been fine when I fit it in around my studies but since I’d graduated, he wanted me to get serious about life. I’d told him to go to hell, then stormed out of the house. That’d fuelled a lot of angst on stage but left me wiped out.

I wasn’t much into the groupies anyway. Not the ones who made it too easy. I’d been knocking the bourbon back hard, figuring one of the others could drive home.

Then the girls invited us all to a party. There was some fuzzy discussion about the logistics of it.

“Come on, mate,” said Jake. “It’ll be fun.”

He was wrecked, totally wrecked. There’d been more than just sex going on backstage. His pupils looked like pin holes and he buzzed with energy, not able to stay still. It wasn’t the first time. I never touched drugs. Never wanted to fuck with my head. But if the other guys wanted to and it didn’t affect their playing, that was their business. Jake had been getting pretty close to the line a few times but mostly it was after we played.

They hadn’t done an alcohol reading on me after the crash. My parents made sure of that. But they hadn’t done a toxicology test on Jake either. If they had, his clean image would’ve taken a battering.

“We have thousands of dollars of gear in that van. I’m not leaving that outside some stranger’s house. Especially in a town like this.”

I might’ve been drunk but I wasn’t stupid, and I sure as hell didn’t want to be going back to my father, asking for more money for gear. I didn’t want him to have that kind of hold over me. I had my degree, like he’d asked, now I wanted to get as far away from my parents as possible.

Pete added his pleading to Jake’s, and I’d almost been persuaded, until Jake started vomiting.

“Take him outside,” the barman told us. “In fact, get him well away from here.”

By the time we got Jake outside, he was doubled over with stomach cramps. Steve and I had to support him, because he couldn’t walk himself.