Maybe we were avoiding each other.
When I walked out of the poolhouse on Thursday morning, I hadn’t seen her around the house for days. And there she was. Lounging by the pool, working on her laptop with little glasses on, suited up in full-on combat gear.
Another fucking skimpy, sexy-ass bikini.
How many of those things did she have?
It wasn’t the blue one I’d seen her in when she was hanging with her girls, or the white one with the ruffles.
This one was hot-pink and strapless. And left even less to the imagination than the other ones. A chick with tits that size and a body like that should not go strapless. Unless she wanted to incite a riot.
I hadn’t seen her since the tits-in-the-face incident, and I didn’t say a word to her now but “Hey” when I passed her on my way out to the driveway.
She looked up and said, quietly, “Good morning.” She didn’t smile. She might’ve been about to say something else, but I jetted out of there too fast.
No one needed a repeat of the last time I’d hung out with her while she was wearing a bikini.
I headed over to Trey’s place to work out, and then I went over to my studio space to play my drums. And when I sat down at my kit to play, that’s when it really sank in.
That I had no band to playwithanymore.
Two days ago, I’d met up with my Steel Trap bandmates and told them I was officially leaving the band. Not just leaving, actually.
I was already out.
Not a good day.
They didn’t take it so well, though they couldn’t have been all that surprised. Mike, Ross and Dustin all got pretty mad. Mike yelled at me, because that’s what Mike did. Ross threw shit and stormed out, because he was a fucking drama queen. Dusty said some whiny shit that wasn’t even worth listening to. It never was.
Dean just got really quiet and looked fucking depressed. I knew he didn’t want me to pull the plug, but too fucking late.
The plug was pulled.
If Steel Trap wanted to continue on, they could find themselves another drummer.
Which meant I was now a drummer without a band. In other words, the saddest thing in music. About as useful as a dick and balls at a nunnery.
Without other musicians to accompany, a drummer really wasn’t much of anything on his own.
Though, hopefully, this solo situation was a temporary thing.
I put on a couple of songs to play along to and got to work.
Once my blood was flowing and I’d loosened up, I put on “Good Times Bad Times” and got serious. I often warmed up with Led Zeppelin. This song was fun and it was fucking difficult, and it got me right in the zone. John Bonham was one of my idols. Obviously. You couldn’t really call yourself a rock ’n’ roll drummer and not worship Bonzo.
I followed that up with a few of my favorite Alive songs; I still played them all the time. Dean did his best vocal work in that band, mostly because of the strength of Cary and Gabe’s songwriting. I’d recorded my best work—so far—in that band, too.
Then I played one of Dirty’s biggest hits, “Get Made.” Loved that song, and Dylan Cope was an animal on drums. I fucking loved playing Dirty’s songs. Maybe because I knew Dylan, he came from where I came from, and that made the level of success he’d achieved seem possible. Attainable.
I was so fucking jealous of that dude and his band.
While I played, I just cleared my mind and thought about nothing but the drums. This was usually the way I figured shit out.
I played. I cleared my mind.
And when I was done, some kind of solution to whatever problem I was facing usually became clear.
This time, not so much.
