We flew out of Newark at a halfway reasonable hour, but that still meant getting up too early for my liking to get our asses to the airport, and Barrett was all apologies that we were not in First Class, but as I kept telling him, I actually did not give a fuck about whether we were in First Class or not. And if Ziggy minded, he didn’t say anything.
Of course when we got on the plane, we had to walk through First Class to our seats and of course what was there was a mix of one or two A-listers going to the same place we were and the rest were record company executives who, in the end, still made more money than 95% of the artists they represented, but whatever.
No, actually, not whatever: if you think I could go to a big glitzy industry insider event without getting steamed about record companies at least once, you don’t know me very well. But at least none of the people on that plane were people I had specific grudges against.
On the Cleveland side of things, on our way to the limousine pickup area, Ziggy exchanged air kisses from a distance someone—I think it was Sheryl Crow but her sunglasses were so huge I wasn’t sure—but our car came before the guys in suits’ did. Petty victory, but I’ll take it.
It was going to be a busy week for the limo drivers of Cleveland, that was for sure.
I knew we were back in that same big old fancy hotel we’d stayed in before when I saw the leg lamp in the lobby. Did I ever tell you about the leg lamp? It’s from some famous movie that of course I never got around to seeing, but everyone knows it and it’s hard to miss. (I might have told you about the movie before, but if I did, this is where I confess I never actually saw it, but since everyone else has seen it I pretend I have, too.)
We went to our room with admonishments from Carynne to hang up our clothes when we got in. The hotel had switched over from real keys to card keys at some point, so we swiped our way in. My goosebumps prickled as I looked around. This might as well have been the same room where Colin and I had once had a foursome with two groupies. The door opened into a narrow entryway and then the room widened, with a right turn to where two double beds awaited.
Ziggy looked back at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“The Ghost of Christmas Past,” I said, “except instead of Christmas, it was the 1989 tour.”
He flung off his jacket and then flung himself back onto the bed nearest the windows, lying there with his arms and legs outstretched, like a starfish that had been flipped onto its back. “Decent mattress. So which one should we sleep in?”
The implied second half of his question was which bed was the sex bed. Best reason to get a room with two doubles instead of a king, then you don’t have to sleep in the wet spot.
To answer the question, I crawled atop him until our two zippers met…
(This part is censored. You can read it in The Side Sessions, though! As mentioned last 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!)
…Carynne was on the phone, so I didn’t stop. I could hear her perfectly well, though. “Universal is having a reception upstairs tonight at 8, but if you want take a preview look at the museum, we need to do it today before 5pm, once we pick up our credentials.”
“And where do we do that?” Ziggy asked, voice only a little strained as he tried to sound like he wasn’t in the midst of what we were in the midst of.
“At the museum, also. Are you unpacked? Let’s head over there now. I’ll meet you in the lobby?”
“Sure. Be down in a few.” He tried to hang up the phone without looking, missed, and grabbed me around the ears instead. “Fuck, I guess we better go.”
“I could finish y—”
“Nah-nah-nah. If you’re going to walk around with a hard-on for me all day, I may as well do the same.” The phone started making an angry sound because it wasn’t hung up properly. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“You have a twisted sense of what’s fun.”
“You know I do.” He slid off the bed and tucked his glistening, still wet dick into his pants and zipped up again.
We hung up our stuff. Ziggy changed jackets, opting for a white denim one that was almost like mine, except that it was white and had rhinestones in various places, and he added a single rhinestone to one brow like a beauty mark. He also added a fresh bit of eyeliner. I know because I just sat there watching him, because I never get tired of looking at Ziggy’s face. “All right, I’m ready to go,” he announced. “Are you going like that? Of course you are.”
Ziggy was still annoyed at that point that my regular, boring wardrobe of flannel shirts and jeans had somehow become hip.
Down in the lobby I can’t say I was surprised to see Remo. He was talking to a guy about my height. I saw him say “excuse me” to the guy and then he grabbed me in a big bear hug. Remo had been getting more physically demonstrative in recent years, and more emotive in general. I sometimes had the urge to bust his balls about it, but of course that’s the exact toxic behavior that leads men to act like their feelings don’t exist in the first place, right? Let’s just say I was pretty sure therapy had been good for him, and his singing was more open and expressive than it had ever been before, too.
“Daron, this is Paul,” he said, introducing me to Paul Simon.
Simon shook my hand. “Saw your unplugged show at Town Hall. Liked it. Had to leave early or I would’ve told you then. Glad to run into you.”
“Thanks.” I think I managed not to blush. Bart and I had done a rendition of “Me and Julio Down At the Schoolyard” for that. If I had known the original artist had been in the audience, would I have done it any differently? Probably not.
“Good to see you,” he said to Remo, and then off he went.
Turned out Simon was there to play in the concert. Remo, like us, was there to rub elbows.
Ziggy meanwhile had gotten distracted by another person I hadn’t necessarily expected to see, but shouldn’t have been surprised about. He put his hands over my eyes from behind and said, “Guess who’s here?”
I felt in front of me and touched someone’s lapel. “Jonathan.”
They both burst out laughing. “How did you know?” Jonathan looked down at himself. “I’m not wearing cologne or anything.”
“Just a good guess,” I said. “You’re in your writer uniform, after all.”
“Uniform?”
“Yeah, have I not said this before?” I looked him up and down. “You have a rock music writer uniform. It’s like the mullet of outfits, half party, half business. Who else wears jeans with a suit jacket?”
“It’s not a suit jacket, it’s a sport coat,” Jonathan insisted, “and it’s practical because it has pockets for extra pens and the tape recorder.”
Ziggy snickered. “The blazer is classic old school. Needs one of those hats with the little piece of paper in it that says ‘press.’”
Jonathan chuckled. Then he turned serious and looked around before motioning for us to lean in. “By the way, speaking of writers and all. I have a warning to pass on.”
He told us about another member of the press establishment who would certainly be there, who was gaining a reputation for making inappropriate sexual demands, particularly of other men.
I probably should have asked what the guy looked like, since I might forget the name, but Carynne arrived then, and Jonathan tagged along with us to the museum.
Turned out J was a good person to have along while looking at the exhibits. All I was expecting to see was, like, a jumpsuit of Elvis’s and John Lennon’s hat or whatever. But it turns out you can’t tell the story of rock and roll without telling the story of social change in the United States. Which was cool and how you could tell the place was not put together by, say, the PR departments of the record companies. (If the record companies had done it, I bet they would’ve put it in LA or maybe Las Vegas.)
Some of the exhibits were clearly aimed at explaining “why is the hall of fame in Cleveland.” So there was stuff about the influence of Cleveland radio deejay Alan Freed, who supposedly coined the term “rock and roll.” And other things. J pointed one thing out to me: “Did you know that one of the first rock concerts ever was called the Moondog Coronation Ball?”
“What? No, I had no idea.” I got goosebumps looking at the poster. “Haven’t I told you the story of the name?”
“Maaaybe…?” Jonathan hedged.
Ziggy chuckled. “J doesn’t remember it because there is no story. It’s a non-story.”
“I wanted something that started with M and that I liked the sound of,” I explained, but I was sure J had heard me say it before. “If I got the word ‘moondog’ from anywhere it was from a Yes song. It just… seemed like a good idea once I thought of it.”
“Maybe it was just there in the gestalt,” Jonathan said. Whatever the fuck that means.
Anyway, the exhibits were interesting enough that I forgot for a little while that what I really wanted to do was get back in bed with Ziggy, but you know, I might have forgotten above the shoulders, but the rest of me kept angling toward him like a cat trying to get warm. And then my reflexes not to be too-too demonstrative in public would kick in, and I would angle away again.
While there of course we ran into a bunch more people who basically split into two categories: those more famous than us, and those less famous than us. The funny part is that I didn’t treat any of them differently—I am pretty much the same awkward introvert no matter who I’m talking to—but the way they treat me is the tell for which group they put themselves in. Fame is weird, no doubt about that.
I don’t know what it is about walking really slowly through museums that always makes me ridiculously tired. Shopping malls, too, though I always figured it was that malls just bore me to sleep. After an hour of looking at stuff and reading the description cards, I was ready to fall down. (The fact we’d had to be up kinda early to get to the airport probably didn’t help either.)
We went back to the room. Ziggy was a bit peckish and I was people’d out, so we ordered some room service and I found myself lying down in the “sleep” bed.
I figured I would wake up when the food came, but I crashed into one of those really deep daytime naps where the dreams are super intense and vivid. When I came to a while later, it was dark out, I was under the covers, and a naked, damp Ziggy was curled up next to me. I did that thing of trying to remember where we were and why.
(Smexy bits censored again!)
He sprang off the bed, leaving me gasping and suddenly chilly, and I pulled the nearest bedcover over myself. He had pulled on a robe. From the bed I couldn’t see the door, but I could hear his voice.
“Daron just woke up from a nap. I’ll tell him to hurry.”
Then he came bouncing back, straddled me so his cock and balls were lying on my stomach and the palms of his hands were on my chest, and grinned. “Our presence at the party upstairs is requested.”
“Do we have to?” I asked, cupping my hands around his asscheeks.
“Dear one,” he said, eyes quite serious, “one of the perks of being together as we are is that we can have sex anytime—”
“Yes, but—”
“—whereas one of the perks of being at a shindig like this is to rub shoulders with our own heroes.” He regarded me from above. “I mean, Barrett didn’t fly us all the way here so we could stay in bed all day.”
“And yet, your cock is literally drooling on me right now.”
“I know. But Chuck Berry wants to meet you.”
Oh. So, you know how I spent a lot of time teaching myself to play the guitar when I was a kid by sitting around Remo’s house and playing along to his record collection? Of course there was a bunch of Chuck Berry in there. All I really knew about him was that he was called the “Father of Rock and Roll” and that he was one of the guys who basically invented the early language of rock guitar, one of those guys who was imitated by everyone from the Beatles to the Beach Boys. Meeting him had never really entered my mind, though.
“I’ve been told not to keep royalty waiting,” Ziggy added.
“Okay, okay! Let me brush my teeth, though. Wouldn’t want to meet royalty with my breath smelling like your ass.”
He let me up and I threw on some slightly more stylish clothes. Carynne had taught me a trick for people with really straight hair: brush your hair with your head upside down, then flip it back when you stand upright. Instant style, no gel needed.
Ziggy, meanwhile, re-gelled his hair upward again and put on an even tighter pair of black jeans, rubbing his crotch and giving a little groan as he looked at himself in the mirror.
“Okay, seriously, is delayed gratification your new kink?” I asked.
“No such thing as a new kink,” he replied.
—