Chapter 2
“Hey, Braden,” I asked my bassist friend the next morning over coffee. “What do guys think about slutty girls?”
After sleeping on it, I needed to gauge how bad an idea I’d come up with the night before. In the light of day, it didn’t seem as brilliant and as perfect as it had when I’d been entering dreamland.
Braden almost spat out his coffee. “What? Why are you even asking?”
I stirred the brown liquid in the mug in front of me, hoping I appeared nonchalant and uninvested in whatever answer he gave. “Just…asking for a friend.” Seeming to ignore my question, Braden got up and set his cup in the sink. “Well?”
“I’m thinking.”
“I didn’t realize it was such a difficult question.”
He sat back down, his chair at a diagonal from mine. “It’s a difficult question because I don’t know why you’re asking. Or, um, why your friend’s asking.”
Why the hell was he making this so damn painful?
I just wanted a simple answer. Quiet Cy, though—he’d heard us talking from the living room where he was doing something on his new laptop and felt the need to contribute his two cents’ worth.
“Slutty girls are fucking awesome. I can’t get enough of ‘em.”
Of all the things I’d expected our guitarist to say, that most certainly hadn’t been one of them, and I immediately burst into laughter. “Thank you, Cy!” Lowering my voice and picking up my cup, I said, “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“Okay, yeah, but that’s the easy answer.”
“That’s all I asked for.”
“But it doesn’t take everything into account.”
“Maybe you need to go back to bed, Braden.”
Running his hand through his light brown hair, he said, “Maybe. But…here’s the thing, okay? Different guys will give you different answers. You can’t just assume we’re all alike.”
Oh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“You didn’t. I just—” When he sighed, I began to wonder why this topic agonized him.
Had I known, I might have considered asking Zack, the one guy I hadn’t wanted to.
“I just want you to know that some of us—men, that is—feel bad for women who act that way. We—I have nothing against a woman enjoying, um, the act, you know, but if she’s sleeping with a different guy every night, it’s… like a cry for help.”
A cry for help? I would have asked him what that meant—except for the fact that his response hit way too close to home.
“Thank you, Braden. I appreciate your honest answer.” I swigged the rest of my coffee, wanting to avoid eye contact now.
From the other room, Cy said, “Don’t believe it, Dani. Slutty girls fucking rule!”
Braden shook his head as he rose and made his way to the bathroom for a shower, reminding me that we all needed to enjoy the afternoon before our next show.
And I probably needed to begin another job search. After all, because I’d decided to stay, I needed to contribute and support myself.
I might as well not put it off.
This was my new life and I was going to live it the best way I could, even with a broken heart.
Three days later, we were playing at what would become one of my favorite venues, the Vertex Music Hall.
It didn’t look like much on the outside.
In fact, it looked like an abandoned movie theater, with its old-fashioned marquee sign and faded red bricks, but inside it felt like a real concert venue.
We were all so stoked on our first night there when we peeked through a side curtain backstage to see all the seats, including a huge balcony.
There was no way we wouldn’t sound great or feel amazing playing at this place.
Oh, and the acoustics were better than any other place we’d played so far. This spot was designed for music, and something I didn’t realize until later was that they even had great laser lights, another thing that made our shows look a lot more professional.
Playing drums that night, I felt like we were a real band.
A professional band.
Ours and another local band opened for Fully Automatic, a Colorado band that now had three albums out and had achieved worldwide fame.
That alone packed the house to the rafters, but it was also inspiring to know that a local band had made it—really made it.
They weren’t just selling their own independent CDs like we’d been talking about.
They were signed with a real label, getting played on the radio, touring worldwide.
Seeing them told us we could do it, too. The energy that night was through the roof.
I’d gone to a couple of thrift stores the day after our last show, looking for cheap clothes to wear as the drummer.
Encouraged by me, we’d started out with a group look that we’d lost after we moved to Denver.
Everyone in the band wanted to do his own thing.
But I wanted to be strategic and, if the guys weren’t interested, I’d do it myself.
It was hard enough getting attention behind all the guys moving around stage, so I’d have to make sure my costume worked for me.
But I didn’t just want outrageous clothing.
I wanted clothes that felt like me—and that was hard, because I’d always been a t-shirt and jeans kind of girl.
But during my thrifty shopping, I found plenty of great clothes for super cheap that, if I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t cry over spending the money.
I bought a couple pairs of faded jeans and took my scissors to them, putting in a few rips and tears.
Washing them a few times would only help the look.
I also managed to find an old Papa Roach tour t-shirt, a black blouse covered in lace, a silver dress decorated with sequins, and a black leather jacket.
I cut fringe into the t-shirt and immediately regretted it, because it didn’t turn out the way I’d hoped, so I wound up cutting the fringe off.
Then the shirt just looked stupid, so I cut more off the bottom, making it now show off my midriff and the toned upper arms I could display.
Good enough.
Then I tore the sleeves off the lacy black blouse and loved it lots more, as I’d discovered that the more skin I exposed, the cooler I felt onstage, and I needed that.
The jacket I left as it was and I’d use it when it was cold, but I cut the sequined dress off at the waist. Eventually, it would fall apart because of that—and maybe sooner rather than later, considering I kept finding sequins all over my bedroom floor after that.
But thrifting was now going to be a major part of my life. Until I had seven complete outfits to wear to different shows, I would continue making purchases.
For the show that night at the Vertex, I wore my cutoff Papa Roach t-shirt and a pair of my ripped-up jeans. Because it was cold like a typical Colorado night in early winter, I also wore my new-to-me leather jacket, and the guys didn’t see my full outfit until we were preparing to go onstage.
“Cool shirt,” Braden said, looking at my exposed belly.
“Think I should get my navel pierced?”
He shook his head. “Nah. You look great without it.”
“Thanks.” But could I trust his opinion?
Fortunately, Cy leaned over to insert himself into our conversation. “Slutty girls pierce their bellybutton, Dani.”
“Shut up, dude. Dani doesn’t want to be a slutty girl.”
That was sweet of Braden, trying to defend my honor and all, but he really didn’t know what I wanted. Still, I was beginning to question myself.
“Thanks, but neither of you know what I want.” Even while I said it, I knew deep down that I did want to try out being slutty, but it warmed my heart that Braden was looking out for me.
And admitting to myself that I wanted to be loose and free sexually was hard enough. “Do slutty girls get tattoos?”
Cy had a ready answer. “Ever hear of a tramp stamp?”
Zack came in the room then, cutting our conversation short. “Ready to go, guys?”
Braden pumped his fist. “Hell, yeah.”
“Good, ‘cause we’ve never played to a crowd this fuckin’ big before. This is gonna be epic.”
As pissed as I still was at Zack as a friend right now, I had to admit that his management of the band had already far surpassed any expectations I had.
Our piddly-ass band from small town Dalton, Colorado, was going to play to a sold-out crowd with a huge well-known metal band.
Could it get better for us from here, or would this be the peak of our success?
Rather than question the future, I had to enjoy the present.
And we all did. The Vertex might not have been a huge stadium, but it was the biggest place we’d played up till that point, and the crowd was full of crazy energy from start to finish.
As much as we’d enjoyed our past shows, this one blew them all out of the water.
We got applause, devil’s horns, singing along (once they figured out the lyrics Zack was screaming)—everything except moshing, and this venue, with its bolted-down chairs, couldn’t accommodate audience members crashing into each other.
The best part was, when we were done, the cheering lasted longer than any applause we’d ever had.
We hadn’t made it yet, not by a long shot, but I felt like we’d finally made an impression on Denver.
We broke down our set fast, because the Vertex encouraged us to join the crowd after our show.
The problem, as far as I could see, was that there didn’t seem to be any place for us to hang in the audience.
And by the time we made our way out there, the local punk band Clara’s Dolls had already begun playing.
Zack quickly wandered deeper into the crowd and, had I not already been intoxicated by the music and pulled into the beat of the band, I would have yelled at him, asking if the rest of us were chopped liver.
God, he’d turned into such an asshole.