It went off flawlessly, just like it had in the dress rehearsals. Jake played and sang, giving himself fully to the performance, feeling everything else in his life slip from his thoughts as he heard the crowd screaming out their approval, as he heard them singing along with their songs. The ninety minute set flew by, seeming to take only minutes, and when it was finally over, when the grand finale explosion finally ripped across the stage and the last chord was struck, when the five of them stood together at the front of the stage and took their bow, received their enthusiastic standing ovation, Jake felt that all was right in his world. He was doing what he was put on Earth to do and he couldn't wait to do it again.
The groupies in the shower routine of the last tour did not manifest itself on this tour. Instead, there was group of about thirty of them in the dressing room when the band emerged in their civilian clothing. Jake wasn't sure he was ready just yet to engage in the usual debauchery but his misgivings were neatly squashed after three rum and cokes and two bonghits. He hooked up with a young Cuban girl with a lush, exotic body and large, pillow-soft breasts. She gave him a blowjob in the dressing room while he finished his fifth drink and then accompanied him to the party in Darren's suite. Later, around one in the morning, he took her back to his suite and undressed her like a Christmas present. He capped his weapon and slid into her alluring body, feeling no guilt during or after, but also feeling no real fulfillment at the conquest. She would have a memory that would last a lifetime — the night she fucked Jake Kingsley, the Jake Kingsley. But a week from now, he knew, he wouldn't even remember her, not her name, not her face, not her scent, not even her existence.
They fell back into the routine of touring with practiced ease. The days and then the weeks went by in a haze of long bus rides, greasy hotel and truck stop food, screaming fans and sign-carrying protestors at record stores, interviews (some quite caustic, touching on the Satanism or the Mindy Snow topic), sound byte deliveries, roaring crowds and the exquisite thrill of performing live, and late-night after-show parties marked by gross intoxication and naked, willing, nameless groupies. It wasn't long before Jake had to be reminded what city they were performing in before stepping onto the stage. It wasn't long before they lost complete track of the day of the week, even the month of the year.
They moved northward along the eastern seaboard, working their way city by city, arena by arena, to New England. They then moved west to the Great Lake cities, and then south, through the Midwest. Though their performances became more focused and more automatic through sheer repetition, the joy of performing never faded and the spontaneity of each show held firm, thrilling and delighting each audience. The word traveled in many forms — through print-media, through television, through word of mouth — but it remained essentially the same: Intemperance knew how to put on a show. Venues continued to sell out weeks in advance and there were reports of people camping out for two days to get tickets, of riots started by people trying to cut in line at such campouts, of record-high prices being charged by scalpers.
Another thing spread about by the media — usually in tabloids like American Watcher — was Jake's trysts with groupies. This was very big in the first month of the tour, while news of the Jake and Mindy break-up was still reverterbrating across the country. JAKE COPING WELL WITHOUT MINDY read one headline in the Watcher. Inside the issue was a lengthy interview with a nineteen-year-old girl who claimed to have had an extended sexual encounter with Jake in Atlanta after the Intemperance concert there.
"Is that the bitch you fucked in Atlanta?" Matt asked as they perused the issue during one of the bus rides.
Jake looked at the picture of her carefully. She was certainly attractive, with brunette hair, a trim body, and pouty lips. "Could be," he said. "She does look a little familiar."
Other such articles followed this one but all shared the same theme. There would be pictures of a groupie that Jake had allegedly been involved with in some city or another, an interview with the groupie telling all that had occurred (at least within the bounds of the community standard of decency), and quotes from Georgette to the effect that Mindy was glad that Jake was moving on with his life and she wished him the best, and from Shaver, acting as Jake's spokesman (and raking his twenty-one percent off the top of their album sales) that Jake was living his own life and hoping that Mindy was doing the same.
It was only when they reached New York City when the articles finally came to an end, their monotonous theme replaced by one even more exciting, that of the arrest of the entire band on drug and indecency charges.
Since it was the scene of the infamous coke sniffing from the butt-crack episode of the last tour, the protestations by the anti-Intemperance crowd were especially vigorous in the Big Apple in the weeks preceding their appearance there. There were petitions to revoke Intemperance's concert permit, marches before city hall by local Christian and women's rights groups, even a candlelight vigil by an anti-drug coalition. None of it did any good. Madison Square Garden was sold out for three consecutive shows and the city council and mayor's office, citing first amendment issues as their basis for decision, refused to take any steps to prevent Intemperance from playing.
After the final MSG performance the band was in Matt's room engaging in their usual post-performance activities. Jake, now fully back in the swing of the touring lifestyle, was on the couch in the suite's sitting room, fucking a young Chinese groupie from behind while her face was buried in the widely spread crotch of a young Japanese groupie. Resting on the Chinese groupie's lower back was a three-quarter full rum and coke. The challenge Jake had put upon his two lovers was to complete their act without spilling the drink. It was starting to look like the challenge would be lost when the front door of the suite suddenly boomed open and a dozen uniformed NYPD officers came bursting in, their guns drawn, their eyes wide.
"Everyone, get down on the fuckin' floor, now!" screamed a voice.
"I'm already on the fuckin' floor," replied Matt, who was on his back while two groupies took turns blowing him.
Chaos erupted for the next ten minutes as more cops came rushing in. Girls screamed, cops yelled, band members yelled back. Matt tried to get up and was pushed roughly back down. In his drunken and coked out state he did what came naturally to him. He hit the cop that had pushed him in the balls. The cops responded by pummeling Matt with their batons until he fell unconscious to the floor. Jake tried to get up and was pounced upon by three cops. He felt kicks to his ribs and a baton strike to the top of his head. His hands were wrenched behind his back and handcuffs were applied and wrenched down brutally tight. He was left to lay there, completely naked, a condom still on his penis, bleeding from his head, each breath a ragged stab of pain in his right side, a cop's foot in the back of his neck.
All the girls were gathered in one place and told to identify themselves. This took the better part of twenty minutes since they had to find their clothes first. Jake heard the two plainclothes cops who seemed to be in charge of the raid discussing them.
"None of them are underage," cop number one reported.
"None of them? Are you sure?"
"We've checked all their ID's, Lou."
"What about consent? Any of them say they're here against their will, or that they were being sexually assaulted."
"No. In fact, they're all quite proud to say they were here. Some of them were asking the CSI team to photograph 'em."
"Oh well," Lou sighed. "At least there's the drugs. Let's start searching."
The search took another hour. During it, the cops confiscated eight grams of cocaine and more than an ounce of high-grade marijuana. Jake and Matt were covered with blankets and transported to the hospital. Coop, Darren, and Bill were transported to jail. No one else was arrested.