"Camaraderie is one thing," Greg said. "Homosexual behavior is something else. All it takes is one person to say that Matt grabbed Jake's buttocks and the next thing you know there's a rumor floating around that you two are engaging in oral copulation."
"Oral copulation?" Jake said. "You been hanging out with Nerdly? You're starting to talk like him."
"What's wrong with the way I talk?" Bill asked, indignantly.
"You seem awfully uptight about this homosexuality thing, Greg," Matt said. "Are you compensating for something?"
"What?" Greg asked.
"You ever smoke the old Havana?" Matt asked him. "Just to see what it was like?"
"Now you're being disgusting!" Greg spat. "I have engaged in sexual congress with exactly one person in my life and I think the subject of homosexual congress is both disgusting and sinful!"
"One person?" Jake asked. "Who was she?"
Greg turned red in the face and stormed off. He found one of the roadies and began yelling at him about a cable that wasn't properly taped down.
"I love that guy," Matt said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. "Should we make a point to fuck with him at least three times a day while we're on the road?"
"At least," Jake agreed, sipping from his water.
Dave Warden, the head pyrotechnician, came in through the stage door. He saw the band gathered in the corner and headed directly over. Dave was a tall guy, with brownish-gray hair and a scraggly mustache. An unlit cigar stump hung from the corner of his mouth. He was dressed like most of the roadies, in a pair of tattered jeans and a dirty T-shirt. He wore a tool belt around his waist that contained a variety of wire cutters, rolls of wire, and electrical connectors.
"You guys ready to go live with the pyro?" he asked them, his voice stern and unforgiving, much like a marine drill instructor's.
"Bring on the boom-boom," Matt said.
"Yeah," Jake agreed. "Nothing like a good blow."
"Hey," Darren said, "is it possible to light a smoke off one of them charges? I mean, wouldn't that be fuckin' cool? As the final boom goes off, me and Matt use it to light up our after-show smokes?"
Dave's face took on an expression of angry alarm. "Are you crazy?" he asked. "You're joking about pyrotechnic charges?"
The band looked at each other and then back at Dave. "We joke about everything, Dave," Matt told him. "Lighten up a little."
"Lighten up?" Dave asked, his eyes narrowing to slits. "You don't joke about pyrotechnics. You treat them will all the respect and caution you would a nuclear weapon."
"A nuclear weapon?" Jake said, raising his eyebrows.
"Hell, we joke about those too," Matt said.
"Really, Dave," said Bill, "don't you think it's a bit of a non-sequiturous analogy to compare destructive thermonuclear fusion to simple decorative flashes?"
Dave glared at Bill. "What the hell does that mean?" he asked.
"He's saying," Jake translated, "that it seems kind of ludicrous to compare your little pop charges to an ICBM warhead leveling Los Angeles."
"Little pop charges?" Dave barked, his eyes turning angry. "Is that what you think my pyrotechnics are?"
All five of them shrugged. "Aren't they?" Jake asked.
"Let me tell you something, you little punks," Dave said, looking from one to the other. "Those charges are made of some of the same high explosive components that the VC used on us over in Nam. Where do you think I learned this trade? It was my job to take those homemade booby-traps the gooks laid out for our boys and reverse engineer them to figure out how they worked. And I'm hear to tell you, those gooks knew what the hell they were doing and they blew off the legs, arms, faces, and testicles of many a good man over in that living hell of a jungle. Why, I remember this one time one of them booby traps blew up beneath this guy's legs and tore a hole so big in him that his intestines were hanging out where his cock used to be. You don't see shit like that in Los Angeles now, do you?"
"Uh... no, I guess you don't," Matt said slowly.
"Can't say as I've ever seen anything like that in LA," Jake had to agree.
"So... uh... are you saying," asked Darren, "that those charges you have set on the stage could blow my cock off? Because I'm not really sure I'm down with that, you know?"
"There's no shrapnel in my charges," Dave responded. "And they're shaped to produce noise and flash instead of bodily damage, but you lose respect for them, you treat them the wrong way, you bet your ass they'll blow your cock off. Remember that safety margin I told you about?"
"Yeah," Jake said. "We've been rehearsing our way around your charges the whole time."
"We'll make sure we're back at least six feet whenever one is supposed to go off," said Matt.
"You'd better make that safety margin your God, you ever-loving Jesus right down from the cross. Love my charges, love everything they'll do for you — hell, they're what's going to make your show — but never lose respect for them, and never — I mean never — let me hear you joking about them. That's just tempting the Almighty."
They all agreed to retain the utmost respect for his beloved charges. Satisfied, he left them to go man his detonation station. And, of course, the moment he was gone, they erupted into laughter and made fun of him for the better part of five minutes.
"Oh man," Darren said with dying laughter after the last round of listening to Matt and Jake imitate Dave's voice and speech, "I gotta go take a shit."
"A shit?" asked Matt. "Right now?"
"Darren, its only six minutes until we hit the stage," Jake said. "Can't you hold it?"
"Naw," he said, standing up. "I gotta go bad. I'll be back in time."
"You fuckin' well better be," Matt said. "Jesus Christ, dude. Why didn't you shit before you got dressed?"
"I didn't have to go then," Darren said.
"Then go," Matt told him. "Hurry."
Darren scampered off, disappearing back through the stage left access door.
"Freakin' moron," Matt muttered.
"Oh, cut him a little slack," Jake said. "There's nothing worse than having your bowels want to let go while you're up on stage. Remember that time in Santa Fe when you got the shits right before we went on?"
"I remember," Matt said. "And if you'll recall, I fuckin' held it until the encore break. I was cramped and sweating and miserable the whole time, but I goddamn well held it."
"That is a singularly miserable experience," Bill said. "The passage of time seems to reduce in fluidity to the point where it seems to evolve from a liquid to a solid."
"Actually," Matt said, "my feces evolved from a solid to a liquid. That was kind of the problem, Nerdly."
They had a chuckle about this and then looked at the clock up on the wall. Five minutes to go.
"How was your fishing trip yesterday?" Jake asked Matt. "Did you get your limit?"
During his vacation in Rio de Janeiro Matt had gone on a deep-sea sport fishing expedition the resort they'd stayed in had offered. He had gone mostly on a whim, having become a little bored with the endless drinking and fornication that had marked his first week in Brazil. Prior to that trip, he'd never even been on a boat before, let alone one that went out into the open ocean. To his surprise, he'd not only not gotten seasick, as he'd feared, he'd had the time of his life. He went two more times before the vacation ended, catching fifty and sixty pound sailfish, and had come back with a new obsession, one that seemed nearly as strong as the obsession he had for his guitar and for fornication itself. Since the return, he had been out twice more, saving up his allowance and booking private charter boats out of Marina del Ray.
"Not even close," Matt said. "We got four rock cod and a yellowtail. I hooked into what was probably a barracuda but the motherfucker snapped my line before I could bring him into gaffing range."
"That's too bad," Jake said.
"No shit," Matt agreed. "And to make it worse, the bitch I took with me got seasick before we even left the harbor."
"So you didn't get any puss?"