"I'm doing pretty good," Matt told her as she examined the shots. "So far I've gotten a piece of ass in twenty-three of the fifty states, not including California, my home state."
"You record every one of your... uh... conquests?" Gloria asked.
"Every one that I'm coherent enough to take a picture of," he said. "My goal is to nail some poon in every state of the union, plus at least two in the District of Columbia. I'm almost halfway there."
"I see that," she said, flipping through the atlas in wonder. On some of the states like Missouri and Ohio and particularly Texas, where they had visited multiple cities, there were up to fifteen pictures stapled, all of them showing the same thing - a groupie with her mouth around Matt's penis.
"None of these pictures have names on them," Gloria noted. "Why is that?"
"Groupies don't have names," Matt said. "They're just groupies."
"I see," she said, making a careful note of that particular quote.
The official interview went on for another fifteen minutes or so. Gloria then retreated to the corner telling the band to just do what they normally did and ignore her presence. "This is a day-in-the-life-of story," she said. "I'm here to chronicle your life on the road."
"Remember," Greg whispered to each of them individually when she was out of earshot, "debauchery, debauchery, and more debauchery. Let her see you living up to the Intemperance name. It's your image we're selling here. Your image is what sells your albums."
Jake simply rolled his eyes, his intent to do nothing different than he normally did. Of course, by this point in his career, he had already forgotten that what he normally did was well inside the definition of debauchery.
As for Matt, he openly proclaimed that if they wanted to see debauchery, then he was going to give them debauchery.
"What could you do that you haven't already done?" Jake asked him.
"I don't know," he replied. "But I'll think of something."
Jake had no doubt he was right.
Gloria rode in the bus with them when they went to another local radio station for interviews and two more local branches of Zimmer's Records to sign autographs. She rode with them to Madison Square Garden and watched as they did the sound check. She accompanied them to the dressing and locker room area, stepping out briefly while they actually put on their stage clothes and then stepping back in for the hairdressing portion. Through it all, she snapped pictures and made notes in her notebook. When the time came for them to head backstage to meet the locals, she followed them there as well. She snapped a few more pictures just before the lights went out prior to them taking the stage.
"Listen to that crowd," she commented to no one in particular. "Do you guys ever get nervous about going out in front of seventeen thousand people?"
"Naw," Darren answered, taking a final drag of his smoke. "It's just like D Street West back in Heritage. Just a few more people is all."
The crowd roared as they took the stage for their second night in New York City. The set went off without a hitch. And went it was over, the crowd screamed and cheered for an encore that would not be granted.
As the band opened their first post-show beers and snorted up their customary lines of post-show cocaine, Gloria was there, snapping a few more pictures of them with their hair sweaty, their shirts sticking to their skin, of the ice chests full of beer, of the liquor bottles on the tables. She accepted a few lines of cocaine when it was offered but declined when Matt offered to rub his naked body against hers.
And then they entered the shower area. As had become customary, five groupies were brought in to help the boys shower and get them in the mood for more partying. Gloria, still fully dressed, trailed in behind them and watched impassively as soapy female bodies were rubbed and palpated, as blowjobs were delivered.
"Never kiss a groupie!" Darren yelled at her as a particularly voluptuous redhead slurped and sucked and slobbered all over his knob. "That's the most important thing about being on tour! Never kiss a fucking groupie!"
"It would seem that would go without saying," she said blandly, snapping a picture of Jake as his head fell back in ecstasy.
When they returned to Jake's suite to continue the party, eighteen girls came with them, filling the tour bus to capacity. Gloria parked herself in the corner, trying, and mostly succeeding, at being as unobtrusive as possible.
Jake had had reservations about her presence ever since the first interview. Just how much of this shit was she actually going to write down? But with each drink he consumed, with each line of cocaine he snorted, with each bonghit he sucked into his lungs, his reservations diminished, finally disappearing into the haze of gross intoxication. It wasn't long before he forgot she was even there at all.
He coaxed two of the groupies into the sitting room with him where he had them kneel naked next to each other in the doggie-style position, side-by-side. He slid into one, gave her ten or fifteen thrusts with his condom-capped manhood, and then switched to the other. When the two girls - who had not known each other prior to ending up as part of the "whore brigade" as Matt always put it - began to tongue-kiss each other while he fucked them, he felt his second orgasm of the night starting to churn towards eruption. That was when Matt's voice interrupted him from the other room.
"Jake! Come out here, brother! You've got to check this shit out!"
"I'm busy!" he yelled back.
"Make yourself un-busy!" was the reply. "I got a fantasy coming true out here!"
That was enough to pique his interest. He withdrew from the girl on the left and patted both of them on their bare asses. "Keep yourselves occupied for a minute," he told them. "I'll be right back."
Still naked, his wet condom still on his fully erect cock, he walked back into the main living room of the suite. There, amid the full-blown orgy that was going on, a naked groupie was lying on her back on the carpet, her legs spread wide while another groupie - an Olivia Newton-John wannabe - also naked, was kneeling between her legs and licking her. Matt, equally naked, his cock capped with a rubber as well, was kneeling behind Olivia and dumping cocaine into her ass-crack while yet another groupie was spreading it open for him.
"You've heard of body shots, right?" Matt asked Jake. "Well this is a fuckin' crack line! Check it out!"
And with that he leaned forward and stuck a drink straw into her crack and snorted up. The groupie raised her head up and giggled as she felt the sensation.
"That is something new," Jake said, impressed.
"Ahhh," Matt said, sniffing a few times and then dumping some more into the girl's crack. He handed the straw to the groupie holding the cheeks open. "You want in on this, hon?" he asked her.
She did. Matt took over the duty of holding the cheeks open while the groupie snorted up the cocaine.
"You want some of this, Jake?" Matt asked him, dumping some more into the valley.
"Hell yeah," Jake heard himself say. He walked over and took the straw in hand. He leaned in and snorted. It would be one of the last things he would remember doing that night.
On February 12, 1983, Descent Into Nothing - the album - went gold when the five hundred thousandth copy was sold. Two days later the band opened for Earthstone in Miami, Florida. It was the last date of the second leg of the tour and it would be the last time in their existence that Intemperance would open for anyone. The following day Earthstone would be bussed back to Los Angeles for two weeks off prior to starting the third leg of their tour in Tucson, Arizona. Intemperance would be bussed to Seattle where a small auditorium had already been rented for them to begin rehearsing for the first leg of their North American tour.
After their set was over, the band did their normal cool-off routine in the dressing room. They cracked a cold beer, lit up smokes, and took a few bonghits to put them into the mood for their post-gig shower and the customary blowjobs from nameless, faceless groupies. No sooner had those first beers been consumed than Greg utilized his patented schoolmaster hand-clapping routine and told them it was time for them to get out of those clothes so they could be cleaned and put away. Right at that moment the dressing room door opened up and Gordon Strong, Earthstone's drummer came strolling into the room. Dressed in his stage garb of parachute pants, a muscle shirt, and with a Kamikaze bandana around his neck, he was smoking a cigarette of his own and had a joint cocked behind his left ear.