“You were great!” I say.
“Think so?”
“Know so! You ought to go on tour.”
“I do!”
“Huh?”
Is there a tour for pudgy Joan Jett imitators?
“I mean, I used to before I got my new job.”
Douglas tells me he used to tour with bands as a gofer, the lowest rung on the roadie ladder. He spent a year on the road with the Dead, right before Garcia died. He loves rock’n roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. He pulls off his baseball cap and his thick, sandy hair falls over his face.
“I’m sweating,” he says. “I must smell gross.”
He smells like a boy, all keyed up, racing through his youth. He could talk for hours about his days with the Dead. Garcia was a god, aloof and quiet, usually on some other planet in a distant solar system. Jerry never actually spoke to him. No one in the band bothered to learn his name. Everything he needed to know the other roadies told him. They’d call him over, give him a list-guitar strings, picks, amp fuses, all the little essentials that constantly needed to be replaced-and make sure he wrote it down, send him off with a pocket of cash, tell him not to return until he’d collected everything they needed, and, for Christ’s sake, don’t dawdle and don’t call to say he’s lost.
He ran for cigarettes and rolling papers and herbal essences. But mostly he made calls from pay phones, dialing numbers the head roadie passed him on matchbooks and hotel message pads, getting an address and scribbling it in ink on his wrist while he juggled the receiver, hailing a cab, ringing the buzzer of some tenement flophouse, exchanging thick rolls of hundreds for a discreet-looking package. He had to be very careful. The head roadie threatened to break his neck and dump his body in a landfill if the tour manager, who was paying a small fortune to a Zen master watchdog to keep you-know-who clean and sober on the road, ever discovered their little operation. I tell him it sounds dangerous and ask if he ever got scared.
“Naw,” he said, puffed up with bravado. He was terrified, probably pissed his pants more than once, until, like everything, it became dull, a routine, just like any other job.
I ask where he grew up. The question makes him uncomfortable and he winces. He says his father is an ordained minister with a small fundamentalist congregation in the Florida panhandle. He left home after his mother died. He went back last year, thought maybe he’d stay a while this time. He lasted six weeks. The old man accused him of terrible things, of being a criminal, just because his friends would call and he’d have to go out in the middle of the night. He left in tears at three in the morning. The preacher’s not his real father anyway. Douglas is adopted.
“So, you gotta work tomorrow?” he asks.
“No. Naw. I have to be somewhere, though. I can be a little late.”
“Good. I’m gonna set us up here for another round. Let’s get real drunk!”
“What about you? You have to work tomorrow?”
“Hey, man, I’m working all the time!” he says.
“So you’re working now?” I ask, skeptical.
“Always!”
He fishes in the pocket of his warm-up suit and snags a ball of rumpled bills. He flattens them on the bar with his fist, scowling at all the George Washingtons. But, hey, bingo, hello, President Jackson, jackpot!
“Hey, another pair of shots this way!” he calls out to the bartender.
“Lemme buy this round,” I say.
“Naw, my treat.” He sees me looking at the bills on the bar. “Plenty more where that came from,” he insists. “Cheers!” he shouts, downing a shot.
“So this job must pay pretty well,” I say, trying not to sound facetious.
“You bet!” he swears. He’s says he’s working for a major recording label. On the creative side.
“Artist and repertory?” I ask, skeptical.
“Wow!” he shouts, slapping the bar with the palm of his hand. “Cool. How did you know that?” he asks, impressed.
“Come on,” I say, teasing him, urging him to come clean. I’m hard-pressed to accept that any major label would entrust the nurturing of its precious investments, its stable of artists, to a baby-faced kid in warm-up pants and a baseball cap.
“Okay. Okay. You got me,” he says. “I’m a college rep.”
Douglas swears Columbia Records is paying him a living wage and a car allowance and an expense account to hit every tiny club on every campus across Tennessee and the Carolinas. He says it’s his job to learn the names of every new band as they emerge from suburban basements and garages, to schmooze local radio marketers and program directors, to hit frat parties with live music, to collect “alternative” weekly presses and clip every review of a Columbia record, to make the scene, listen to the buzz, to funnel leads to the real A &R people desperate to sign the Next Big Thing.
Sounds plausible enough. Only one way for me to be sure.
“So how much do they pay you for all that?” I ask.
The figure is too high, confirming my suspicions. The label could offer peanuts, or no pay at all, and still turn away hundreds of kids for a job like this, if it exists at all. Maybe he knows a connection or two at the label from his touring days and maybe, at best, Columbia Records picks up an occasional bar tab and reimburses him for show tickets. I’m pretty sure those bills on the bar are going to have to last him a while.
Yeah, it’s a great job, he says, not so enthusiastic now, but not throwing in the towel either. He’s looking for a place to live. He thinks he’ll be able to cover a thou a month, maybe twelve hundred. Maybe I know a place? He’s going to lease a car. Something with a little muscle. A Mustang. Red.
Elvis has returned to the building. The queen on stage is singing “Suspicious Minds.” Thanks for the warning, buddy, but I’ll have none of that tonight. I like the boy, appreciate his fumbling, guileless attempt to impress me. The fibs, the little white lies, they’re harmless, easy to swallow, warm honey to soothe my scratchy throat. It feels good to have someone care about what I think, to talk to someone who likes me.
“So Columbia must think there’s a market out there for fat fruits who look like Elvis the day after he bit the bullet?” I ask, sitting back down and dropping a twenty on the bar.
“Huh?” he asks, confused.
“You said you’re working now,” I say, pointing at the stage. “Guess you’re here to check out the talent.”
He bursts out laughing. I order another round and offer him a Camel filter.
“Naw, I came with a friend.”
“So where’s your friend?”
“Dunno,” he says. “Ain’t seen him for hours.”
“So you’re stranded?” I ask, knowing he doesn’t have a car.
“Nope. I’ll ask them to call me a cab.”
There’s two sorry Georges left on the bar.
I ask where he’s staying. He tells me the name of a cheap budget chain motel famous for its coin televisions and scruffy sheets and tiny soaps that cause skin rash.
“Only temporary,” he assures me.
Last call for alcohol.
Where did this evening go? What time did I get here? Am I drunk? Can I drive? Well, one more won’t make a difference. I’ll slow down. Another shot and a beer for Douglas; just a beer for me.
He’s evasive when I try to nail down his age. I try some simple arithmetic. Garcia’s been dead how long? Douglas was with the band a year. He must have been a high school kid when he took off on the road. He asks if he can give me a kiss. Sure, I say, laughing. He leans forward and gives me an awkward, affectionate buss on the lips, a peck without erotic undertones, like the kisses my oldest nephew used to give me before he turned into a self-conscious adolescent.
The bar’s closed. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, the bartender shouts to the stragglers. I excuse myself for a last piss. Douglas is gone when I return. Fucking little hustler probably found a better john. Naw, I think, choosing to be benign. The kid was working, always working. Must have got called in. Probably has a delivery to make. It’s a few steps down from his heyday in pharmaceuticals on the road with the Dead, but, what the hell, it’s a living. I step out into the heat and see him pacing the empty parking lot, cell phone at his ear, a duffel bag in the other hand.