"I was just having a good time," Snow said when asked about this after the concert. "I don't know why everyone is always reading into everything."
Kingsley was not available for comment on this story. Intemperance will play two more shows at Esparto Auditorium — one tonight and one tomorrow — before moving on to San Diego and the rest of their west coast tour to promote their new album.
Jake put the article down slowly and took a sip from his latest bloody Mary. He had a really bad feeling about all this. Mindy was up to something. He knew her well enough to intuit that. The question was: what?
Chapter 19b
The tour went on. After the third show in Long Beach, the band went to their own homes for the last time. The next morning, limousines took them to a truck stop on Interstate 5 just outside the Los Angeles city limits. Here, the tour caravan had formed up and they climbed onto the dreaded tour bus for the first time in almost two years. The first trip was relatively short. They went to San Diego and did two shows there. The following trip was considerably longer — from San Diego to San Jose, where they were doing another two shows. From San Jose they went to Oakland. From Oakland, they went to Sacramento. From there, they went to Heritage to do their obligatory two shows for their hometown.
By the time they left Heritage, heading for the next date in Portland (and their first extended travel day off), a routine had been established. It was a routine much different from that of previous tours, but a routine nonetheless.
There was not much talking on the tour bus. When they left their respective hotels in the morning, everyone found their own little portion of the bus, usually near their assigned bunk, and they stayed there for the entire trip. Jake and Nerdly sometimes talked to each other, and all of them sometimes had necessary conversations with Greg or one of the bus drivers, but apart from that, it was mostly silence as they rolled down the highways and byways to their next show.
Nothing that could be described as partying occurred on the bus. There was lots of drinking, particularly with Jake, Coop, and Matt, but they drank alone, timing their trips to the bar or the refrigerator so they wouldn't run into each other there. Nerdly and Charlie didn't drink much, although Nerdly liked to smoke marijuana on the bus and whine to Jake about how he didn't think Sharon should have to ride on the roadie bus with the other female technicians (Sharon was officially on the payroll for this tour as the head of concert sound). Charlie generally didn't do anything at all. He laid in his bunk and slept as much as he could.
Once in the city they were playing at, the band would filter off the bus and check into their hotel rooms. Except on the extended travel days, they would usually go immediately to the various radio stations and record stores in order to give interviews, record sound clips, and sign autographs. When at these events, the band looked at it the same way as if they were on stage and pretended to like each other, to be a team. They would lightly josh each other and proclaim that the rumors about their infighting were being wildly exaggerated. They would stand next to each other and pose for pictures, smiling all the while. And then, once they climbed back on the bus, they would resume their normal stances.
When they got to the evening's venue, they would perform the sound check under the direction of Nerdly and Sharon without complaining and without any unnecessary conversation. The only exception to this was when either Jake or Matt (by unspoken rule, they tended to rotate this duty) were forced to tell Mr. and Mrs. Nerdly that the sound was as good as it was going to get and it was time to mark the dials and knobs and call it good.
After the sound check, the band would go to their dressing room and lounge around in their separate corners until it was time to get dressed for the show. The four-hour moratorium on intoxicant use was still in effect but Matt did not need to rigorously enforce it or even mention it. Everyone drank water or tea or Gatorade instead of booze and Jake stopped smoking cigarettes two hours prior to each show to save his voice. When it was time to go backstage and meet the radio contest winners, the radio station personnel, the local media, and all the other people who had, by hook or crook, managed to get their greasy little hands on backstage passes, the band put back on their public faces and pretended to be happy and full of teamwork once again. When that was done, they came back to the dressing room and waited until their opening band — a thrash-metal group National had just signed eight months ago called The Goobers — finished their set.
At 8:30 each night, the band went onstage and did their hour and a half set. They did it well and they left each crowd wanting more when each show was over. They then left the stage and retreated back to the dressing room for more apathy and animosity.
The groupies were still brought back after the band had eaten and showered, but Matt and Coop were the only two who engaged in their services on a nightly basis. They would accept blowjobs in the dressing room and then pick out one or two apiece to accompany them back to their hotel suite. Charlie would usually let one blow him every night (always with two rubbers on his unit and latex gloves on his hands) and, maybe once a week would take one back to the hotel with him. Jake would politely decline any sexual attention from the groupies for two or three days in a row and then, when he started to really crave sex, he would pick one out early and keep her with him for the night, talking to her, asking her about her life, even asking her what her name was. He would then take her back to his hotel and spend the night with her. Try as he might, however, he could never remember their names the next day when he climbed on the bus. Only Nerdly shunned the groupies entirely. He had his wife out on the tour with him and she would always meet him back at his hotel room where they would sleep together and take care of each other's sexual urges. Nerdly was propositioned by the best of them, but he never even came close to giving into the temptation.
For Jake, the only thing that didn't change about the after-show festivities was his drinking. He still made a point of getting hammered every night after every show. It would start in the dressing room as soon as they left the stage. He would drink enough Gatorade to rehydrate himself from the hour and a half of performing under the hot lights and then he would crack open that first beer. Generally it took two or three beers to carry him through his after-show meal and then another five or six while the groupies circulated after the band showered. Once back at the hotel room, whether he had a groupie with him or not, he would hit the mini-bar and drink rum and cokes until one or two in the morning, at which point he would fall drunkenly into bed. On most days, he would be awakened at six-thirty to start the next day. He would order his breakfast with two bloody Marys and would climb onto the bus by eight o'clock, buzzed and tired. He would sleep for two or three more hours on the bus and then start the whole routine over.
On the extended travel days, when they would wake up later and leave later, but had the night off, Jake would climb onto the bus, sleep his two or three hours, and then start hitting the hard stuff while the bus rolled down the road. Usually he was smashed by the time they reached their destination city. A few times, he had to be physically helped off the bus and into his hotel room by Nerdly or one of the bus drivers.
Such was life on the road for the Intemperance tour of 1990.
A break in the routine occurred on February 21, just after the second of two shows in Dallas, Texas. The band ignored each other as usual in the dressing room after the show. Coop and Matt both had their blowjobs and picked out their groupies for the night, as usual. Nerdly went back to his own hotel room without engaging in any sort of flirtation, as usual. Charlie let a skanky redheaded groupie give him a blowjob, as usual, and then, deciding it was one of those nights, he took her back to his room and engaged in a lengthy session of anal sex with her. And Jake, deciding it was not one of those nights, turned down all requests for "getting to know him better" by the groupies. He had his seven or eight beers and then climbed on the bus. That was usual as well. What was unusual was that once at his hotel room, Jake only had two rum and cokes before retiring. He dropped into bed in a condition that could almost be called sobriety for him. The reason for this was that he had to get up at six o'clock the next morning in order to catch a 7:45 AM flight out of DFW going to Los Angeles. Tomorrow was the 32nd Annual Grammy Awards and, once more, Intemperance was in the running and needed a representative at the ceremony.