Okay, yes, it was a very high-powered party. Bob Dylan was there. Aretha Franklin was there. Bruce Springsteen was there. The person who left the biggest impression on me, though, was Melissa Etheridge, who got to talking with me and Remo at one point, and then Remo got dragged away, and then it was just her and me, and like happens sometimes, it became clear we were basically exchanging our gay credentials. I can’t really explain it exactly. (She had been seriously out for a couple of years at that point. I think she had come out at a performance for Bill Clinton’s inauguration or something like that? Clinton, for all his faults, might’ve still been the first politician I heard use the word “gay” in public while campaigning. I mean, the first I heard use it where it wasn’t to condemn “the gay lifestyle” or worse.)
Of course, the party had afterparties, and somehow we ended up drinking in BonJovi’s suite with Remo and a bunch of the E-Street Band guys, though I don’t recall Bruce nor Jon BonJovi being there. I think it was ostensibly something about New Jersey that had glommed us all together. For the record, I was drinking ginger ale, and ice water, and I noticed Remo stopped after one whiskey, which didn’t stop it from being a kind of raucous time.
And then we were hungry, and there was apparently nowhere to go eat in the wee hours in Cleveland in those days, but we heard that on another floor of the hotel Chrissie Hynde (of The Pretenders, who was from Ohio) had catered in hot dogs and bratwurst. So we migrated to another part of the hotel. (Of course, it was a different sausage I was thinking of. Badum-ching.)
And it was while we were separated on opposite sides of a crowded room, while I was coming back from taking a leak or something, that I saw Ziggy talking to the bigwig J had warned us about. The guy was looming over him a little, talking a blue streak, but literally not looking Ziggy in the eye, and instead he was running the back of one finger up and down the tattoo on Ziggy’s upper arm (the one that matched mine). It would be one thing if the guy had done it for a couple of seconds like he was actually checking out the texture of the tattoo or something. But he just kept doing it without stopping.
Ziggy was gnawing his lip impatiently, and swiveled his eyes without moving his head, until he caught sight of me.
I was well past people’d out by that point, and having had some bratwurst, the only thing I was hungry for at that point was Ziggy. What I was not hungry for was getting us both on the radar of a powerful closet case who might retaliate in the press if spurned too hard. (Or if I marched over there like I wanted to and pulled Ziggy away and hissed at the guy like a cat. No, Daron, no.)
Instead, I had to leave that up to Ziggy. I pointed at myself, then him, then at the door, and jerked my head like he should follow as soon as he could. And then I went out into the hallway.
There were a couple of random conversations going on out there, too, and the smell of weed was pretty strong, and I definitely did not want to be there much longer, and I didn’t want to get pulled into yet another party. I went to where the hall made a 90 degree turn, and stood there until I caught the shine of Ziggy’s single rhinestone turn in my direction as he poked his head into the hallway and looked for me. I waved and went around the corner.
There was a door marked Stairs. It opened. I went in and then held it open a few inches until Ziggy went jogging past. I hissed and he came jogging right back. I took his hand and up we went.
Someone should have probably been asking, hey, is this a good idea? But when has Ziggy ever been the one to do that? And it was my idea, so I wasn’t going to question it.
We climbed up to the roof. I know, I know, hotel roofs and I don’t exactly have the best history together, plus that hotel and I overall didn’t have the best history together, but you make do with what you have. I didn’t want to go back to our room and just get interrupted again, even if now that it was like four in the morning it was unlikely.
The section of roof we were on had some bubble-like skylights sticking up, and a couple of brick outcroppings, but no noisy exhaust fans or anything like that. (No water tower either, if you must know.) I led us around the back of the stairwell outlet, took off my jacket, laid it down, and then flattened Ziggy onto it. There was a much taller building overlooking us, but it was all dark, probably offices, and I really did not care that much at that point.
I rucked Ziggy’s shirt up until I could get a tongue on his nipples and make him make that squeal he makes when he’s trying not to be too loud. Then he pulled at me until I moved my mouth to his.
What a luxury a kiss is. Ziggy once accused me of not liking kissing and that is not true at all. I just sometimes forget to do it. And some people are better kissers than others. But when it isn’t trying to stand in for something else, a kiss can be an indulgence. Unlike a lot of the other things we do in sex, it’s got a kind of balance and equality to it that make it a different kind of dance from all the this-on-that, this-in-that. Ziggy had a way of darting his tongue that was enticing to my whole being, and I couldn’t even tell you why. It wasn’t something I thought about: I merely experienced it.
There comes a time when the kiss becomes a cul de sac on the way to the destination, though.
(Censored! As per usual, smexy stuff is not online, but only available as a bonus! You can read it in The Side Sessions, though! As mentioned in an earlier post, you can either pay what you want for the ebook, or help us out with a review of books 11, 12 or 13 and get not only the book to review, get The Side Sessions as a bonus!)
A shower was starting to feel like a good idea.
“And a massage,” Ziggy suggested. “If I remember right, this is one of the hotels where they’ll send a masseuse up to your room.”
“Is it?” I had a sudden flash of hot and cold. “Wow, did I freak out for no reason?”
“Are you freaking out? You seem really calm.”
“I don’t mean now, I mean, then.”
“Is that why you said Cleveland, why did it have to be Cleveland?” he asked. Apparently I had said that aloud without intending to. “When are you talking about, dear one? 1989?”
“One time when we were here, I went to your room to talk to you, and I could hear a woman laughing, and I… I ran away.” I remembered that it had hurt at the time, but now I couldn’t really feel it at all. “Maybe all I heard was a massage therapist and I was freaked out over nothing.”
He sighed, nuzzling me. “Don’t play that second-guessing game. Even if one particular incident you took the wrong way, I was terrible to you and we both know it.”
“And I was a terrible closet case with my head up my ass, too.”
“Yes, dear one. It just shows how far we’ve both come.” He kissed me on the cheek. “You know what? I like it when you’re a little bit bossy. Proves you aren’t just letting me push you around. Plus two imaginations are better than one.”
“I don’t think I imagined sex on the roof tonight. It just kind of happened.”
He clucked his tongue. “You of all people know that improvisation is an advanced form of creativity.”
That made me laugh. Okay, sure. We didn’t run into anyone on our way down the stairs. I did get completely lost looking for our room, though, because I had forgotten the number. I was fully prepared to go down to the desk and plead to be told my own room number, but I didn’t have to, because Ziggy remembered it. Two heads are better than one.
When we got out of the shower I noticed the rhinestone had migrated from his cheek to mine.
The next day was the big concert, where all the gathered luminaries would be playing on stage. We stayed right up until the house lights went down. Then Ziggy slipped a piece of paper into Barrett’s hand, and we slipped away.
The paper said “Ibiza” on it. That might have even been where we went.
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