Chapter Eleven #2
I haven’t been here long, and I can tell that Denver is a city in constant flux.
Every few blocks, I see building equipment at work.
Bulldozers clearing spaces, excavators and dump trucks working in tandem like a coordinated dance.
Cranes of all sizes swing slowly against the sky.
Jackhammers pound into old side streets and walkways, breaking up the asphalt into huge chunks.
As Zeke and I pass through the heart of the city, the smell of street foods permeates the air.
The scent of cooking oils and grilling food reaches me through the open windows.
People from all stripes seem to linger in that area.
Office workers with a slightly frazzled look about them, unhoused folks pushing their belongings in carts, families and vacationers pointing out the city’s offerings to each other.
We get back around three in the afternoon, arms laden with groceries for the house.
Via and Cash are on the couch, snuggled together under a blanket, watching a movie.
They both rise to help us unload everything.
It’s such a familiar process. One or two of us will do a big shop for the month for the entire house, and the rest will help unload everything from the car when it arrives.
I haven’t even realized that I have fallen back into the pattern until we are nearly done.
I smile inwardly, feeling more settled at the prospect of living with them all again for the next few months.
“Have you seen the comments on the video from this morning?” Via asks me as I am putting away the last bag of chips.
“No,” I admit before pulling out my phone to open my socials.
Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, given that we’ve been an active band for over twenty years, but I’m completely overwhelmed by the number of red hearts, kissing emojis, and positive comments that the video has.
“Whoa.”
“Whoa is right! This has over four thousand likes and three hundred comments, and I just posted it this morning.”
“Shit,” Zeke says from the other side of the room.
I scroll through the comments, letting the general positive vibes fill me with even more hope than I felt just a few minutes ago.
“Hey, have you seen some of these comments?” Zeke asks.
“All of them,” Octavia says gleefully.
“Some of them are kind of weird,” he says.
“Yeah, there are always a few like that,” she says, sounding unconcerned.
As I scroll further into the comments, I start to see what Zeke was referring to.
@mus.a.vault Knox is BACK?! SOoo HOT. Happily suck his dick for free.
@profless I’d pay good money to be in that sandwich. Yummy!
@kian_ria I’m having Cash’s twins!
@ms.gill.pill We’d absolutely DESTROY that couch.
They range from light innuendo to outright sexual.
The bulk of the sexual comments seem to be directed at me, but there are some about Cash and Zeke.
But I also see some weirdo dudes making gross comments about Via, too.
I can’t delete their comments about her or us, but I can start with hiding them.
I immediately begin blocking all those commentators from our account.
I learned the hard way that letting those kinds of comments be seen by everyone always led to uncomfortable situations, from fights in the comment section to weird, aggressive DMs directed at us.
A few people have brought that same energy into the real world.
The worst incident was just a few weeks after Via officially joined the band.
We were playing at a local bar when some drunk idiot tried to jump onto the stage and grab Via.
He succeeded at getting onto the stage, but he wasn’t counting on the fistful of drumsticks he got.
I’ve never seen Cash move like lightning before that night, nor had I ever seen a man’s feet literally leave the ground and seemingly sail off the stage back into the crowd like a kite caught in the wind.
After that night, we got more serious about the kinds of gigs we were willing to take.
I haven’t had to deal with our most enthusiastic fans in a long time, one of the few unexpected upsides to the chaos that’s consumed my life for years. I’ve missed being part of the band more than I can put into words, but I can’t say I’ve missed everything that came with our growing popularity.
Success had a way of attracting people who forgot where admiration ends, and entitlement begins.
Most fans are incredible. They show up to multiple concerts over the years, shout-sing every lyric (sometimes better than me), and remind me why I love being on stage in the first place.
But there is always a small group who take things too far.
They demand endless attention, convincing themselves they know me because they follow us for a while on social media or heard a personal story through an interview.
If I didn’t respond online on their timetable, it became a personal insult.
If I acknowledged someone else first, a betrayal.
Every interaction—or lack of one—was treated like the smoking gun evidence in a case I didn’t know I was standing trial for.
The attention could turn unsettling in a heartbeat. What started as admiration sometimes curdled into obsession, and once someone convinced themselves they deserved access to my life, setting boundaries only seemed to make them push further into the rabbit hole of infatuation.
I spent the entirety of my 20s and my early 30s navigating that minefield. I know how quickly an innocent interaction can spiral. I’ve learned that sometimes the only way to protect my sanity was to hit the block button and walk away, no matter how much outrage it sparked.
I missed my friends.
I missed the music.
I haven’t missed wondering which stranger has decided they are entitled to a piece of me.