Daron's Guitar Chronicles: Vol 4

216 RHYTHM AND BOOZE

RHYTHM AND BOOZE

Colin had called a cab while I was still drying off, and of course for once they came right away. So I had soaking wet hair and nearly broke my neck trying to pull a boot on and cross the living room at the same time. Turned out the insole had gotten twisted inside. I tossed the boot across the room and pulled on my high tops instead and didn’t tie them until I was in the back seat of the cab and we were on the way.

We got into traffic a few blocks from Lansdowne Street. “Ballgame traffic,” the cabby said. He was a bulk of a man with almost no hair and a neck like a whale’s belly, tattooed with something I couldn’t read. That was kind of surprising to me, given that I expected to see neck tattoos on guys like Colin and not ones twice his age.

“Let us out here. We’ll walk the rest of the way,” I said.

We took the back stairs behind the Nickelodeon Theater up to the Mass Pike overpass and were walking down Lansdowne Street probably before he even got to make a U-turn. The Red Sox game must’ve been just letting out and we were going against the flow of the tide. Colin ended up in the lead, which was fine with me. He was bigger and had put his mohawk up so people were a lot more likely to get out of his way than mine.

We made it to the door of Venus without incident. Jonathan was leaning against the wall, reading a folded up copy of the Boston Phoenix.

Maybe it was that I surprised him. Maybe it was that he was expecting me to be alone. Maybe it was that I didn’t know what to expect in public. But there was this awkward moment where he put a hand on my shoulder and tried to kiss me on the cheek and I sort of panicked and shied back. I acted for a second like a gnat had flown into my eye, and then I acted like nothing had happened.

“Hey. Jonathan, this is Colin. You guys might have met, I can’t remember…”

They shook hands and Colin said, “DC. Yeah, I remember you. The Rolling Stone guy.”

“Spin,” Jonathan corrected, but smiled. “Come on, they’ve got my name on the guest list. I’d only put plus one, but I’m sure it’s fine.”

“I’m not against paying to get in, you know,” I said.

“Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to. Buy a round of drinks instead.”

And so everything seemed totally normal, except I did catch Colin looking back at me sort of furtively as we went in.

What could I do? I just looked right back at him and shrugged, and it felt weird then that Colin was the one who looked away sheepishly.

They waved us through the door.

Inside, we passed down a hallway lined with black lights, which lit up the laces in my sneakers and the places where my denim jacket was getting threadbare. In the main room a modicum of people were dancing but most of them were just standing around. Venus de Milo was one of three clubs side-by-side all owned by the same guys–the Lyons Brothers. Citi Club was the largest, Axis was the smallest, and Venus was sort of in-between. Venus was the one that seemed to me the least usual to have a live show, and on a Saturday night light tonight the crowd was an odd mix of club kids just out to dance and the people like us, who had heard the open rumor about the band making a surprise appearance.

The main room was aggressively pink and they had recently added giant fluorescent flower petals to the walls. Or maybe they were paisleys. Something like that. I was busy trying to get the attention of a bartender.

J. pointed to someone he needed to talk to–I think he expected me to recognize the guy, which probably meant he was a show promoter or agent. I nodded and J. moved to intercept the guy.