Page 47 of Behind the Lights

“Ha, yeah computers and me we don’t get along so well. But I was happy to help, son. So I guess the tour was a success since you got asked to do another one right away?” He seemed genuinely interested, which pleased me.

“Hey Dad, can I ask you a question?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to it, but I needed to man up and listen to what he had to say. Try and put all the pieces to the Lucas hating puzzle together.

“Of course, what’s up?” he said, reaching into the drawer where we kept the menus and restaurant fliers.

“Why don’t you like Lucas?” I asked, twisting a napkin I’d found on the table around my fingers.

He sat there, thinking about his answer for a few moments before answering me. “I don’t like the way he expects you to wait on him hand and foot. The only thing missing was for me to come in and find you feeding him grapes while fanning him.”

“Oh.” Not the answer I expected to hear at all.

We ordered a pizza and talked while eating and in between, I washed a ridiculous amount of laundry. I hated using the laundry mats while on tour so toward the end, we started balling our shit up. Diamond magically appeared as the pizza was being delivered. I swear he had a sixth sense when it came to food and could smell it from a mile away. Too funny. But the three of us spent a comfortable night at home sharing the road trip antics with my father, watching his moods shift from laughter, to concern and back to laughing at the shit that went on.

After spending three weeks at home, we found ourselves back on the road for our second tour. Lucas and my schedules only worked out to where we could see each other a couple of times which sucked. He was in his final semester of college, which meant he needed to buckle down, and we had daily band practices, but I was happy I got to see him at all.

This time we shared a bus with the guys from Double Duty. This bill had four bands on the docket and we were still at the bottom. We’d been working on some new lyrics because Sal wanted us in the studio when we got back to town to put together tracks for a new CD. This time though, we’d be in a real recording studio which was totally new to us.

Sharing a bus with another band was good and bad at the same time. They gave up two of their four bunks for us to share and their two who were without opted to crash on the couches at the front. We kept the shared bunk set up the same as we had for the hotel rooms.

Diamond and Mickey were sleeping at opposite ends of their shared bunk and woke the entire bus in the middle of the night with Mickey yelling at the top of his lungs, “Dude get your dick out of my face.”

Everyone, driver included burst into fits of laughter.

“Don’t act like you don’t like it,” Diamond retorted.

“Enough guys,” Stoli, road father, reprimanded them.

But it was pretty fucking funny. What did suck though was eight guys plus a bus driver sharing a shoddy old shower toilet combo.

This tour started off by taking us through the Midwest then down through the southwest again and back up. We played in Seattle in the middle of the tour before heading to Wyoming. The way they had it mapped out literally put us all over the place. Whoever set this one up was graphically challenged as it would have flowed much better had there been more thought put into it beforehand. But it was what it was.

Most of the time we were parked at the venues which occasionally had some sort of water hook ups. Sometimes we opted to split a hotel room which left guys sleeping on the floor, but at least it gave us a full-size bathroom to take turns in.

But with us nearing the middle of the tour, that would land us in Seattle this weekend and Lucas was coming out to the show.

“Stoli, we need a quick band meeting,” I asked as we came off stage.

“Okay, DD won’t be back on the bus for at least an hour. Let’s head there.” The three of us followed him out to the bus. Once there, I made sure the driver wasn’t inside and shut the door.

“Um, Lucas is meeting me at the concert Saturday night,” I told him.

“Fine, thanks for the warning,” he said, stalking toward the back.

“No that’s not it. Fuck dude, calm down.”

He stopped. “What is it then?”

“I think it’s time we came clean with DD. I’m not gonna not kiss my boyfriend who I haven’t seen for weeks and act like I’m someone I’m not.” My anxiety increased the more I spoke.

Stoli’s initial anger seemed to dissipate as I finished with my rant. “Yeah, you got a point. At some point I’m sure they’ll catch Mickey and I with some rando.”

Mickey grinned the devilish grin we’d grown to know meant trouble. “Okay, let’s tell them tonight once we’re on the road.”

We agreed, meanwhile Diamond stayed focused on whatever game he was playing on his phone. I often wondered if the three of us being gay made him uncomfortable. If it did, he never said anything although he never spoke to Lucas much either.

We went back inside to get cleaned up and grab something to eat while we waited for DD to finish their set, so we could head out.

Once we were on the freeway, Stoli announced, “Hey guys, can we have a tour bus meeting?” I watched as he toyed with his dad’s dog tags, a move I alone knew he did when he felt uneasy about something.

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