Two guys walked in and went straight to the bar for drinks. Neither was dressed up, and one guy especially looked like a bum. He had a white Iron Maiden T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, shorts, and Vans slip-ons. After he’d downed a tequila, I caught him turning to look at me quickly before turning back to the bartender. He had two more shots, then wandered over to where I was sitting alone on the couch. He looked even filthier up close, but handsome. He had long brown hair, tattoos all up and down his arms, and gauges in his ears, which I’d never seen before. A rocker guy with a soccer player body.
“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“Fine,” I said, my tone in keeping with the international code for “Not interested.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
I reached for the champagne and held it up as answer.
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
He came around the table to sit right next to me and then asked, “Is anybody sitting here?”
I turned to look at both ends of the long empty couch. “Nope.”
“Hi, I’m Glen,” he said.
“Stormy.”
“I’m the drummer for Hollywood Undead,” he said.
“That’s cool.”
“So, what do you do?”
“Oh, that’s cute,” I said. “We’re gonna play that game.” I was so pompous about it, but in my defense, I knew that the band knew they were coming to meet Stormy Daniels about directing the video. But in his defense, he was the drummer. And bands don’t tell the drummer anything. I realized he had no idea who I was, so I felt bad. I told him about my work with Wicked and he was completely unfazed. “Oh, that’s cool,” he said.
My friend Amanda arrived, and as she walked over I could see her taking note of all the slick band members—and the homeless guy next to me. She cocked her head, as if to say, “Um, excuse me, what are you doing?”
“This is Glen,” I said. “Drummer.”
She nodded, not offering her name. Suddenly Kayvon came over. “Hey, they want to get out of here,” he said.
“Um, no surprise,” I said. “There’s nobody here.”
“Do you think you can get us into the Penthouse Club?”
“You walk in the door and there’s an eight-foot poster of me, so it would be pretty embarrassing if I couldn’t,” I said. I was on the February 2007 Penthouse cover. Plus, I knew the owner. “Let’s go,” I said, already switching into hosting mode.
In the parking lot, the guys all paired off with the girls and everyone was climbing in cars. Except Glen, who looked like a lost puppy. He had cabbed it over and didn’t fit in anybody’s car. I was getting into Amanda’s car, which was a really beautiful white Mercedes.
“Do you need a ride?” I called to Glen.
As he turned, Amanda hissed at me. “He is not getting in my car,” she said through a closed smile.
“Come on,” I said.
“Dude,” she whispered to me. “I just had it detailed.”
“He’s harmless,” I said.
“Dirty,” she said.
“Here, Drummer Boy,” I yelled to Glen, overruling her. “Get in.”
The Penthouse Club is a study in neon and black, bright pinks and blues highlighting the bodies of the best strippers in town. When I turn into host, I’m like a cross between a cruise director and a dominatrix. You will have fun on my watch. I was talking to all the guys because I was trying to get the directing gig, but something kept bringing me back to Glen. He was constantly needing to find a place where he could smoke, so I would lead him places. If he wanted me alone, he had more game than I gave him credit for.
“You looked like an angel at that club,” he said, exhaling smoke up and away from my face. I laughed.
“No, serious,” he continued. “I turned around and saw you all in white on this white couch. There was a spotlight on you and I thought, I gotta go talk to that girl.”
He was dirty because he’d missed his first flight and had come straight from band practice. He said he’d done the tequila shots to get the nerve to say hi. He didn’t even like tequila and was more of a vodka guy. He’d been in bands right out of high school, living on the road with one band after another. We were both refugees of the road, and I began to feel that familiar feeling of wanting to look after someone. It creeps on me and I just think, Oh, shit.
“What’s your favorite band?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t know them.”
“I’m a musician,” he said. “I like all kinds of music. What, is it country?”
“No.”
“Try me,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “And you better not say Hollywood Undead.”
“Trust me, Drummer Boy, no,” I said, moving closer to Glen to make way for a couple of guys taking their drunk friend home.
“Why are you so sure I’ve never heard of them?”
“Because they’re a local band from Baton Rouge, where I’m from,” I said. “They broke up while I was in high school.”
“Why did they break up?” Glen asked.
“The bass player got killed and they never got a new one.”
He got a look on his face that I couldn’t quite read. “What if I do know what this band is?”
“If you know this band,” I said, “we are totally going to get married and have a baby one day.”
“Now you have to try me.”
“Acid Bath.”
He started singing, low, a smile creeping onto his face. “A creature made of sunshine, her eyes were like the sky…” he sang. It was one of my favorite Acid Bath songs, “Scream of the Butterfly.”
“Great,” I said, “now I’m stuck with you.”
We went back inside, just before the Penthouse Club stopped serving alcohol. The other guys in the band started to leave, but I didn’t want the night to end. I suggested that the next county over served alcohol later, and basically browbeat Amanda into driving us to the bar at the Hard Rock Casino.
We sat at the bar until four or five in the morning, with Amanda our over-it chaperone. She was miserable, cradling her head in her hands and absently eating peanuts left on the bar. Every bit of her body language said, Can we go now?
No.
“Are you coming to the show tomorrow?” he asked.
“No.”
“That’s a bummer,” he said.
“Yeah, real bummer,” said Amanda. “Listen, it’s five o’clock. I’m gonna go pee, and then I’m leaving with you or without you.”
As she trudged off, Glen leaned in toward me. “We should exchange numbers and keep in touch,” he said.
“It’s a waste of time,” I said. “It’s never gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“You and I live the same life,” I said. “We’re each like that thousand-to-one person that people meet, but every person is a thousand to us because we meet so many people. We say, ‘Oh, keep in touch’ every single night and we never mean it. Everyone gives us a card, we give our number, but we never have any intention of answering the text or ever talking again.”
“But what if I promised to call you?”
“Okay, Drummer Boy,” I said. “No. Our lives are just too complicated.”
We left, and Amanda dropped me off first. I slipped away, doing a Cinderella rush out of the car with a quick wave. Good-bye, Drummer Boy.
And I was fine with that, until I was sitting in a nail salon the next day. As the nail tech did my nails, I was seized with this one thought: I have to see that guy again. I had this impulse to jump up and run to find him, like some crazy heroine in a movie, but I didn’t even know this guy’s last name. My adrenaline was surging, and it felt like the universe had given me a chance at something after giving me all those hints about Hollywood Undead. I had fucked up. And when you screw up and need help, you call a lawyer.