I step out of the shower and grab a towel off the rack and wrap it around my hips. I grab another and rub my hair dry with it while wandering into the bedroom. I sit on the bed and stare down at the carpet, mentally preparing myself for tonight’s events. We invited two couples and two girls back to join us. Plus, we’ve now added Lara to the mix.
The buzz from the coke I had earlier is wearing off and if the truth be told, I’d quite happily go straight to bed right now, but if I do that I’ll start to think, and the first and probably the last thing I’ll think about is her. I get the usual stab of pain in my gut and chest, the instant I allow her image to enter my head.
The night she didn’t show up, my life changed forever. That night, changed the course I thought my life was set on. Her not showing, resulted in my brother’s death and me going to prison. Ultimately, all of those things had led me to Jet and the band, but I’d give it all up in a heartbeat if it meant I got my brother back and if the accident hadn’t happened. I look up toward the door as it rattles and Jet calls my name.
“Reed, dude, hope you’re not in there getting all depressed. Get out here and have some fun. Stop thinking and come join us.”
I take a deep breath in and let it out slowly. It hurts. I don’t know why but by keeping my breaths short and shallow, it helps keeps the pain away. When I breathe deep, it’s like I let go of the tightness in my chest a little, which in turn, lets the ache and the pain out, or is it in? All these years later and it still hurts just as much.
“Reed, you hearing me?”
“Yeah man, I’ll be out in a minute. Go get them warmed up and wet. Put on a porno or something. Yeah, put on some gay porn. I wanna see how the bloke with the muscles reacts. Let’s see how far we can push him tonight.”
“You’re an evil, twisted genius, Conner Reed. I fucking love you. Don’t be long.”
Twisted, now ain’t that the truth. I’d moved on from my days of just liking to take charge in the bedroom. I’d joined the band just as they’d made it big. I hadn’t had to do the hard yards with the rest of them. Two months after Jet found me busking at Tottenham Court Road Tube Station and asked me to audition, we’d signed a recording deal. I’d gone from living on the streets and in homeless shelters, busking for a living, to staying at the best hotels around the world and having a lump sum of two hundred and fifty grand US paid into my newly opened bank account, with a weekly expense allowance of another three thousand added to that. I’d seriously died and gone to rock star heaven. That was peanuts compared to what I’m earning now. I pay more than that in tax a year.
What I discovered along with all of that is that women will do anything, and I do mean anything, just to be a small part of my world. But the biggest surprise came, when I found out it wasn’t just women, it was blokes too. And being the twisted little freak that I am, I pushed and pushed, just to see how far people would go to get what they wanted, and I soon discovered it was pretty much all the fucking way.
What resulted from that is what I’m about to do now. Mindless, dirty, filthy sex. It’s the only kind of sex, the only kind of intimacy I can handle. I hate soft gentle touches. I hate whispered words of love or terms of endearment. I want nothing personal about the whole experience. My attitude toward sex is fucked and as much as I know it’s wrong, I like nothing better than taking a seemingly happy couple and destroying everything they thought they knew about themselves and each other, sexually. And being Conner Reed, lead guitarist and sometimes singer for Shift, I always get people to do exactly what I want them to.
Yeah, I abuse my status in life, so fucking what. You want a job as a roadie? Sure, tell your girlfriend to suck me off while you watch and the job’s all yours. You girls want backstage passes and access to the after party? No problem, strap this on and fuck your mate from behind while she sucks me off and I’ll get you backstage at any concert you want. My life is fucked, so I didn’t see why theirs shouldn’t be too.
I step out of the tranquillity and solitude of my bedroom and into what looks like a scene from a brothel or sex club. On the big plasma screen on the wall, one bloke’s being spit roasted between two others. The sound is down and Alex Gaudino’s ‘Destination Calabria’ is pulsing through the suite’s sound system.
The girls from the two couples we invited are straddling their boyfriend’s laps, doing nothing more than kissing them. Oh dear, that just won’t do. The two girls we invited at the sound check earlier, are obviously a little more adventurous. One is sitting, naked, except for a bra, from the waist down on Jet’s face, the other is sucking his cock. Lara, the girl from the limo, is cutting a line of coke on the granite bench top in the kitchen area. The girl seriously has a problem!
The room is dimly lit by a giant fish tank built into the wall. The whole area is bathed in a beautiful blue light, only altering when the threesome on the telly changes position.