Rock All Night

92




After the show at the KeyArena, the band had a break for about 36 hours before they had to hit the road again. Riley took me out the next night after the show, grumpily insisting that she wanted ‘to get this over with.’

That was how I ended up drinking with Riley in a lesbian dive bar in Seattle.

It didn’t start off promisingly.

I was getting out the Zoom digital recorder when she barked, “If we’re gonna do this, I gotta be drunker’n a motherf*cker. So I’m doin’ shots.”

I already had my reporter hat on. “Do you think maybe that’s just a way of numbing yourself to the – ”

“And you’re doin’ ‘em too.”

I stopped talking and just let my mouth hang open for a few seconds.

“Nunh-unh,” I finally managed.

“Yeah you are,” Riley insisted. She pulled off her thrift-store parka with its fake fur collar, slung it next to her in the wooden booth, and flagged down a heavily tattooed waitress with a Betty Page haircut.


Imagine this: you have just taken up boxing. You’ve worked the bag, done a lot of jump-roping, maybe even sparred a little. With an 87-year-old man.

Then you find out your first real fight is with Mike Tyson.

Not current-day Mike Tyson. Noooo. Time-travelling Mike Tyson, who has come here from the past, in his prime and fresh from biting the ear off of Evander Holyfield.

That was what I felt like when I heard Riley wanted to do shots.

“NO.”

“Then we’re not doin’ the f*ckin’ interview.”

“But – but – ”

I wanted so badly to whine, But Ryan made you promise!

But I knew that would torpedo the whole thing.

“Riley, you’d drink me under the table in half an hour. I will literally die from alcohol poisoning if I try to keep up with you.”

She considered that. “Okay, we’ll go three for one. I do three shots, you do one. And you can do little girly shots, with umbrellas and shit.”

That was actually a pretty good offer.

But I was still nervous.

“Four for one,” I countered.

She shook her head in disgust. “You are such a p-ssy, Blondie,” she muttered, before ordering her first round of Four Horseman – Jim Beam, Jack Daniels, Johnnie Walker, and Jameson.

And a shot of amaretto for me.