Extracts

Break On Through - Chapter 22 - Party Girl

I’d smoked pot a few times. When I was younger I used to road with a friend’s band. We’d gig every weekend travelling up and down the coast in a wrecked orange VW van. They were called The PlayGirls, even though they were an all boy line up and though they never made any money out of it, it was just the best fun ever. The venues were usually grotty bars and clubs but we didn’t care.
As I didn’t pay any money towards gas I used to help load and unload the van. I earned my keep in other ways too. Sometimes I’d work the door, selling tickets and luring guys in by implying that they were a girl band and that they did a live-act type thing. I got a kick out of the ease with which I took their money and would laugh as I imagined their trouser driven disappointment later. I would also pretend to be part of the audience, to loosen them up, like the comedians who go on stage before the main act to warm-up the audience, I’d get up and dance and take photographs and drool adoringly at the band, whistling and clapping loudly.
The band did struggle through some hard times. One night, after a really good gig at a club in Clearwater, we piled outside, tired and hammered, only to discover that someone had slashed a tyre on the van and, stupidly, we didn’t have a spare.
It was two in the morning and we were literally stranded but still, no one would telephone their respective parents, it was better to be stranded than labelled uncool. We made a call to a local late-night radio station stating our plight, which resulted in some welcome and interesting responses, although none of it any use. A local army base sent out a truck with an airline. We stood around giggling as the air just kept whooshing out of the head-sized gash in the rubber tyre wall. After we said goodbye to the kind army guys a wacky beatnik couple turned up in a beat up pickup truck with a variety of different sized tyres and invited us to help ourselves, but unfortunately none of them fit.
After standing around for another couple of hours we decided to wait until morning and then Dizzy, the guitarist and owner of the van, would phone a buddy who he knew would have a spare.
Luckily, the owner of the club let us leave our equipment in the bar so there was plenty of room for us to bunk down in the van, which most of us decided to do. Weirdly, two or three of the crowd decided to walk to a gas station near Brooksville, which was miles away. To this day I don’t remember why or what they planned to do once they got there, but I do know that they all got home okay and before the rest of us too.
It was summer, but drunk at four in the morning it was icily cold. I’d been in charge of the flash powder that the band used for visual and atmospheric effect. It was like gunpowder and I’d managed to burn my right hand quite badly. I’d gone back to re-light a pile of powder that I thought hadn’t lit. Basic firework safety, never go back.
It was all very crudely done; there were no fuses nor touch papers. I am often quite surprised that I’m not clinically blind from that experience as I was looking straight at it when it went off. I couldn’t see jack shit for about ten minutes. The audience must’ve been pissing themselves as this Madonna wannabe stumbled drunkenly about probably looking a lot like the cartoon character after the Acme bomb has just gone off in his face, black faced, wide eyed, stunned and mumbling, “What happened?”
My sight eventually returned as the disco balls in front of my eyes soon became the little dots you get when you look at the flash when you’re having your photograph taken. As the night wore on and the whiskey wore off my burnt right hand really started to sting.
Without access to more whiskey or any painkillers it was going to be a very long night. However, I found an empty beer glass by the club door, like a bar version of a milk bottle waiting to be picked up and replaced full the next morning. It had rained earlier and a hole in the club wall had filled with cool water. I managed to fill the glass and then slide my hand in and the water went some way towards easing the pain.
I still didn’t get any sleep that night. Not just because of the pain and the night chill but because where ever I decided to curl up, whether it was the cab of the van or in the back, I was relentlessly accosted by members of the band and road crew who just wanted to fuck away the coldness of the night.
We eventually made it through to daylight, though no one got fucked. Except all of us, originally, by the dumb shit with the flick knife, who slashed the van’s tyres in the first place.
So my first experiences with pot were with The PlayGirls. I don’t remember enjoying the actual pot very much, and don’t to this day, but I do remember enjoying the atmosphere it created.
We’d usually end up at Dizzy’s house after a gig, which was best, because it was central for all of us. Someone would spark up a joint and we’d all go upstairs to wind down and bathe in the post gig after-glow. Sometimes we’d sit around and talk about the band and the music and making it big in the industry. Sometimes we’d get stupid and fool around. I didn’t get involved in the fooling around too much because I had a six foot jock boyfriend who I was shit scared of annoying. We were all young and no one could ever keep their mouths shut so whatever debauchery went on would be all over town the next day and I didn’t want to give my boyfriend an excuse to stop my rock and roll weekends.
One of the guys had a pink negligee, which he would put on while standing in the window dancing and wiggling to music and taunting the neighbours looking like a very tall, deranged, skinny hooker.
The manager, Bilbo, a fat greasy guy who could talk his way into most things and although no one really liked him that much, was actually quite efficient at getting the band gigs, seemed always to have on hand a couple of strawberry yoghurts. He’d beg the groupies to let him pour the yoghurt over them so he could then, laboriously I assume, lick off. I don’t know if he ever got his wish but thank god I wasn’t around to see it.
Cassy and I used to sit on the bed, sometimes we’d take our tops off and the guys would just sit and stare at our breasts, hypnotised and stoned. Sometimes we’d all watch Dizzy fuck Lisa and make bets on how long it’d take them to come.

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