Without a Candle, Onward

Ch 1 - The Benefit of Christy

The first thing I noticed when I got back to Milwaukee after the tour was that nothing had changed.  I don't know why I expected it to have changed, but I did.

I took a bus in from the airport and I didn't bother to stop at home first, just went straight to the Benefit of Christy.  To be honest, I didn't want to go there either, figuring that all the old regulars would be there and they'd want to know about my newfound success.  They'd want all the crazy stories from the tour.  They'd want to know what was next for me, for the band.  But since, as far as I knew, I was no longer a part of the band, I didn't want to deal with any of that.  Maybe I went because wanted to get it over with quick as possible.  Grit my teeth and deal with it.  But now, thinking back, I think what I really wanted was to go back to where it all began.  So I could try and figure out just what in the hell had just happened to me, and also what was going to happen to me now that it was all over.

It was dark inside, as usual.  A couple of the beer signs were shorting out, blinking and buzzing crazily.  I took a seat at the bar, same seat I had always taken before.  The bartender, Christian, walked over and stared at me a moment.

"Where you been?"

"Hey, Christian.  Out of town, remember?"

"Oh, right.  The tour.  Our little nobody lifted into the stratosphere.  I suppose you're drinking Cristal and single malt now, huh?  Wrong place, pal."  He sounded serious, but the friendly grin gave him away.

"Pabst, you ass."

He already had a tallboy in his hands, hidden below the bar.  He cracked it open and handed it to me, then pulled out another one and cracked that open and held it up.

"Cheers, brutha."

"Cheers."

We both drank off half our cans at once.  Christian belched, and said,

"So what's it like, being famous?"

"I'm hardly famous."

"What's it like, then, traveling the world?"

"It's...a confusing world, Christian.  You got it good here, you know that?"

"I got an itchy dick from this chick I hooked up with last week, that's what I got.  How 'bout you?  You bring us back a sampling of exotic foreign VDs?  Hong Kong spots?  Eurasian gonorrhea?  Caribbean crustaceans?"

"Not that I know of."

"Shit.  What good is it then?"

"Where is everybody?"

"It's six o'clock on a Monday, you twat.  They're at work.  You know, work?  Real men do it sometimes."

"Yeah," I took another strong pull.  "I guess I'll have to look into that."  The tallboy was almost empty already, so I told him to grab me another right away.

"Whatchou mean?" he said, cracking open the second can and setting it down beside the first.  "You got yourself set up.  Ain't no time for the grind like the rest of us.  I was just fuckin' wit'chou, rock star."

I didn't have the heart, or the balls, to tell him what had happened.  There really wasn't much to say about it anyhow, since I didn't understand it myself.  So I just said, "I know," and filled my mouth with beer.

He smiled at me in an odd, mistrustful way, and then went to take the order of an older couple that had just stumbled in, supporting each other as they struggled to mount the barstools.  They sat across from me and ordered a couple of martinis and Christian turned around cursing under his breath.  He hates making martinis and he hates people who order martinis.  He doesn't give a shit if you like to drink martinis, but more than once I have seen him tell customers to come behind the bar and make their own damn martinis.  But it was, apparently, still early in the evening, so he hadn't yet had enough to drink himself to discard his sense of customer service.

I had already finished both my beers by the time Christian poured their drinks.  I signaled to him, knowing he'd be expecting my help (the drunks were a chatty couple), and as he attempted to extricate himself from their slurred compliments and talk, I noticed a woman over by the jukebox.  A song was just ending, something by Tom Waits, I think.  But late Tom Waits, 'Make It Rain,' maybe.  The jukebox had changed.  I hadn't noticed it before, but only now, when I should have been noticing the woman's long legs and short skirt and perky ass.  The old manual 50-disc changer had evolved into one of those new-school, high-speed, internet-connected machines that can play just about any song you can think of, assuming the artist isn't a prude.  The woman made her selection just as Waits called for those final drops of rain.  Then she turned around and stared straight at me as the next song started—an old Chylok and The Actual Movers fan favorite, long before my time with the band, but a song that I had been performing at least every other night on the tour—'Carry Me, Sensei.'

Again, I probably should have noticed more about her.  She was a wildly attractive woman, older than me, slightly Asiatic, and glowing confidence like an aura.  I didn't know what she was doing in a dive like the Benefit of Christy.  It looked like she belonged in one of those exclusive cocktail bars uptown or a Hollywood afterparty, some goddamn Gala at the Met.  All I could focus on was her jacket, a waist-length fluffy fur ordeal that looked exactly like the jacket Chylok had been wearing all tour.

Thanks for reading!

Stick around for Chapter 2, coming soon.

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