Chapter 85
85
GAVIN
“ S o, what of all the rumors about drug use?” Sean Reynolds asked without preamble.
Gavin had braced himself for such a tack, so he wasn’t surprised, even though the live audience seemed to be. They murmured collectively and then hushed. James had arranged his appearance on the acerbic presenter’s show just the day before. James had been at the band’s jam session and was delighted to see that Gavin was several days sober. The idea behind putting him on the show was to combat the cocaine and stripper stories that had dominated the tabloids. James had even begged Gavin to have Sophie join him, but Gavin was not only adamantly against drawing her into this, but also unable to as she was in Prague for work.
“Lots of rumors out there,” Gavin agreed. Though he was too thin, he had cleaned up well for the show. A trip to a barber meant his short hair now had some style, with the sides and back at a close fade and the top a bit longer and tamed by gel. Even with jeans that were baggy on him, the rest of his ensemble—a dark blue fitted wool coat over a blue-green striped V-neck sweater, with a brown leather belt and boots—negated his recent sloppy tabloid images.
“Yes, let’s talk about all those pesky cocaine rumors. Clear the air, if you will. Don’t your fans deserve that much?” Reynolds asked with a salacious grin.
Reynolds had a reputation for putting his guests in uncomfortable positions, and now was no exception, especially since he had a personal stake in this. He’d been the radio DJ to play Rogue’s first demo and gotten in trouble with the station for it. Though he failed to air the more polished demo Gavin and Conor later asked him to play, he had taken every opportunity to tell the world he had discovered Rogue. When the band hadn’t backed him up on this claim, he’d grown bitter and traded his praise for barbs, especially as he gained his own platform with his chat show.
“What they deserve is to know that everything’s fine with me, everything’s fine with Rogue. In fact, we’re working on our new album now and it’s going really well.”
“The artful dodger, aye?” Reynolds asked. “But we all know you’re here for damage control, don’t we? Let’s talk about Sammy-the-stripper.”
“Listen, that episode was not one of my proudest moments.” Gavin paused to let the sincerity of that statement sink in. “But, to be honest, haven’t we all at some point had a drink too many and gone a bit too far? Most go down to their local and only have a few witnesses, yeah? It can still be a bitch to get past all the good craic that comes out of making an arse out of yourself.”
There was a ripple of knowing laughter in the audience.
“My fuckups, if you’ll pardon the expression, are a bit more documented. But, really, aren’t I tame compared to the likes of that Justin Bieber kid? All that underage drinking and public pissing in buckets,” he said with a wink and a tsk.
Reynolds ignored the new round of laughter from the crowd and pressed on. “She claims you got on quite well, that you were intimate.”
“You all saw what that intimacy entailed,” Gavin said, alluding to the tabloid photo of the stripper on his lap. “Nothing more to it than that.”
“Interesting. Then what’s this about her claiming familiarity with a tattoo of yours?”
Gavin sensed a shift within the audience. There was a restlessness that suggested they were growing weary of Reynold’s dogged pursuit of this angle even after Gavin had, for the most part, won them over with the comparison of the average guy making mistakes after too much drink.
Deciding to take a risk to shut this down, Gavin said, “What, are you of the mind that the tattoo is some sort of smoking gun?” He laughed. “Plenty of people have seen it.”
“Why don’t you give us a look, then?” Reynolds said and the audience cheered in response.
“Right here?” Gavin asked.
“Yes, here and now. Give the audience what it asks for,” Reynolds said, and succeeded in getting the crowd to rally for this request.
Gavin shook his head slightly and then stood up. He removed the lavaliere mic from his collar and then pulled off his coat, tossing it aside. He faced the camera and pulled his sweater and shirt up high for everyone to have a look. His torso was pale and thin, his ribs plain. And the tattoo on his chest clearly read “Sophie.” The tattoo was intricate and beautiful, without any of the raised redness that would indicate it had been recently drawn. There was a hum in the audience as they murmured to each other.
One of Jackson’s friends had volunteered to touch up his original tattoo when Gavin was in London, and he had readily agreed as he had wanted to make the original, unremarkable, ‘S’ tattoo into something more befitting its extraordinary namesake. He hadn’t known then that the final version would be the key to getting back into the public’s good graces, as most people would infer that the stripper had not truly been intimate with him since she had incorrectly identified his tattoo. The tone of the interview changed after that. Reynolds knew he had lost the audience’s will to interrogate Gavin, so he let Gavin dictate the topics. And besides Gavin’s mildly controversial claim that Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys had an “aggressively unremarkable voice,” he never strayed far from talking about Rogue, past, present, and future.
James congratulated him heartily afterwards, claiming he had never seen Sean Reynolds at such a loss of control over one of his guests.
Gavin knew it wasn’t his doing. The audience, his fans, were much like Sophie. They just had no stomach to see him in a negative way.