Hard Core Hotel Hell by Hth Once upon a time, when life was a whole lot simpler, there were these two boys. And one of them loved music, and the other one loved...well, nothing much, really. But he sort of wanted to love the first boy, or at least he wanted them to stay together forever. Are you with me so far? So this first boy, he did everything to music. He took piano lessons and he wrote music and he sang -- in stage shows and for local commercials and all by himself, just singing everything he heard and a whole lot of things he'd never heard before, songs he made up himself. And he had this voice, this voice that sounded dark and merciless, like the prettiest nightmare you ever had, and he made it over with booze and cigarettes until he could kill you with it. He didn't like doing anything else, except hanging out with this one friend and smoking and drinking and singing and singing, so he figured he'd probably grow up to be a rock star. Stop me if you've heard this one before. There's this second boy, then, and he didn't really know what he wanted. But he had a speech problem, a stutter, and he was a little bit scared of everyone except this one friend, and the last thing he wanted was for his friend to go off and be a rock star and leave him behind. So he figured he should learn how to play the guitar. They had this band, even though it took a few years to get settled in, to get a lineup they could live with and a few songs of their own worth singing. But it happened. And they knew some people who knew some people, and this boy who wasn't even a boy anymore, but he was a tall, sexy, tough-shit rock band front man, he had a way of getting what he wanted, so their band moved out of the garage and played a lot of clubs and parties and things like that, all up and down the West Coast, and even opened for some pretty famous groups. They were kind of like the next big thing. Only somewhere along the line, things changed, and no one noticed until it was too late. The front man stopped singing to himself. He started trying on different drug habits like they were fashion statements, and he never seemed to want to go anywhere. He just decided that this was it, he was a rock star now, and everything from there on out was a long, not-so-slow slide into the grave. He got hard and demanding and laughed less than he used to, and he wrote more songs, but they were too good, and they almost hurt to listen to. Meanwhile, the guitarist, who was worried that he wasn't a very good guitarist, started trying harder. Really hard. He would drive around for hours with his headphones on, listening to warped bootleg copies of obscure punk bands with insane, Orphic guitar lines, focusing and focusing on turning his head and his hands into things that would hold music. He practiced, and finally he wasn't practicing anymore, he was just playing, because he needed to. Because it made sense. And then he wanted to do it more, and better, and he started thinking of himself as a guitarist. It was finally something he'd found that he could really want. His stutter went away, and everything seemed to come so clear to him. It all fell into place, like the perfect kiss. After that, whenever it happened, the front man and his guitar player were never the same. There was just no middle ground, not for either of them, even though I guess they both tried to find it, in their own ways. Stupid ways, usually, but they were still pretty young, and they were already big fish in the little pond, and it was hard not to be stupid. Eventually, the guitarist packed up and left, and there was no band anymore, and nobody was all that surprised. Except him, because everywhere he went, he woke up every morning and wondered how it could be true that there was no such thing anymore as Dingoes Ate My Baby. That's the big picture. Of course, some other things happened along the way. You're nothing like I pictured you. Not just because I never figured we'd meet in the lobby of the seediest hotel Olympia, Washington has to offer, and not just because it never occurred to me that you would slip a key into my hand and stare at me with those sulky, unfocused, lost eyes, like there was something you were missing and you couldn't figure out why I wasn't telling you where you left it. Not even because I didn't imagine that if I ever did end up in your hotel room, you'd pass out cold ten seconds after we hit the bed. I mean, all that has been on the weird side. But mostly I just never thought you'd look so...human. Yeah, so maybe that's a kink in my brain. Maybe I can't see or smell your humanness; maybe I just expect to find it there, so I can't get past it, but I always secretly thought that maybe big rock stars were a little like werewolves. Crazy, uncontained, violent, cursed. But there you are, Mr. Entertainment Weekly, drunk and snoring softly, little worry lines in your forehead, your wrist curled in so that you have your fist pressed against your chest like you're holding something I can't see. Just a human being, after all. A rich human being, famous, brilliant, troubled, all that good stuff. But not a deviant life form, and probably not cursed. Sorry, but I never had any idea what you looked like, not even when you signed on with Jenifur and got your face on all the posters and the cover of the new CD. I was never really keyed in to the business -- that was Devon's thing. Besides, I had other things on my mind by the time you made it big. Apocalypse, true love, lycanthrope. You can imagine. And anyway, Jenifur never flipped my switch. I like your older stuff. Your Hard Core Logo stuff. I still have those third-generation bootlegs. That's why it was a shock for me, just like it must have been for you. Meeting you. Seeing you. And maybe it's something publicity photos wouldn't have shown anyway, or something I wouldn't have believed if I hadn't seen it myself. You know, I was never really wedded to appearances -- again, Devon's thing, not mine. Inner beauty was always more real to me, that certain something about a man or a woman that made me feel like we could connect somehow, and I was lucky enough to know people in my life that felt the same way. But, I mean, you wouldn't believe me, would you, if I said I'd never even for a little while wondered what it would like to be good-looking? Everyone does, I guess. I mean, even if I never needed to, even if it never hurt me any that I couldn't...sure, I look in the mirror sometimes and wonder what it would be like. To turn heads. Stop traffic. Break hearts. I guess I'll wonder a little less from now on. I still don't know how it would feel, but I know exactly how it would look. I'd look just like Billy Tallent. Which is so ironic that it borders on the comedic -- all that time I spent trying to play like you, and finally realizing I'd never measure up. And it turns out I look like you, only not so I'll ever measure up. Just a pale replica, like the vaguely disappointing sequel to an Oscar-winning movie. *U.S. Marshals* to your *Fugitive.* *Carrie: The Rage* to your *Carrie.* All the odd-numbered Star Trek movies while you get to be the even ones. Not that it bothers me, really. There are worse fates than being the poor man's Billy Tallent. So let's talk about the poor man. I met him in Seattle, and I was sixteen. He was -- well, he was Joe Dick. I shouldn't have to explain it to you, of all people. We were opening for Lick the Pole, and he was backstage; I never found out why. I ran into him -- literally. Joe, Joe Dick. He seemed huge, wrapped in dark layers, both physical and metaphysical. He stared at me with those piercing grey eyes, stared and stared until I was so far beyond scared of him that it almost seemed perfectly normal. He had a cigarette in one hand and a bottle of whiskey in the other, and instead of telling me to watch where the fuck I was going, he just handed me the cigarette and said, "You wanna be a rock star when you grow up, Cherry?" What do you say? *You're Joe Dick, aren't you?* *I can play all your songs.* *I really used to like your band, back when you had one.* I pretty much just stood there. Eventually he walked away. I smoked his cigarette, even though I never smoked much. I figured I'd never see him again. Remember, I didn't know about you back then. I didn't think there was a snowball's chance that Joe Dick would ever remember meeting me. He was in the audience when we played that night. I remember his eyes -- I don't know if I could actually see them from up on the stage, but I could feel exactly where they were at all times. On me. On Devon as he throttled the mic and roared into it with a voice that should have come out of someone thirty years older. On the two of us as we leaned into the same microphone to sing the choruses, glancing into each other's eyes for our cues. I remember the way he watched us, like he hated us, like he couldn't look away. I figured he had something against the next big thing. Like a generic generational hatred -- turn that noise off and get a haircut, Cherry. There was a party after the show. Sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, exactly the kind of thing our parents probably should have been afraid of when they let us road trip off to these things, but never really seemed to be. Devon was in his cocaine phase, which I really disliked at the time, but looking back I think I preferred it to the heroin. I was brooding, smoking a joint and worrying about the band, wondering if Dev was caught in some kind of down cycle that would drag us all behind him. Joe's big hand, burning hot and just a little sweaty, in a good way, grabbed me by the collar of my t-shirt from behind. "You guys sleep in your fuckin' van?" he said into my ear, and his breath was wearing all that whiskey I'd seen in his hand earlier. "Yeah, usually." We pulled in about enough off of these gigs to afford the gas and food for the trip. That's showbiz -- another thing I definitely shouldn't have to tell you. There wasn't exactly an offer. He just let go of me and walked out, and I knew he was expecting me to follow, and I did, because...Joe. Joe had a force. Fuck. If I still miss him, what's it like for you? No wonder you're drunk. Look, it wasn't like we had a love affair. I was scared to death of him, the way he slammed me around from wall to bed, the way he held my head still between his hands while he knelt over me and pushed his dripping dick -- of Joe fame -- against my lips. He was this man, this drunk and hate-eyed man twice my age, and I was all alone in Olympia, Washington, and Devon and I had fooled around a little in the past, but still I'd never done anything like this before. Okay, now I'm overcompensating. It wasn't a love affair, but I wasn't exactly molested, either. Joe had that inner beauty. We had that connection, and it was because of the way he handled me, and pushed me, and tore through me with his eyes, not in spite of it. Maybe I'm justifying; maybe I just fell prey to whatever demon is in charge of eating the brains of groupies, got off on it because he was Joe-honest-to-god-Dick, and I was his ten buck fuck. I don't know how to explain it. He was never gentle with me, not for one second. And I'm no masochist, and I really did wish he'd slow down, let me feel him against me, maybe smile or something along those lines. It should have been therapy fodder for the rest of my adult life, a major adolescent trauma. Joe, Joe, Joe. We had a connection. It seems so -- miniseries, but it changed me. I wasn't a fanboy any more; I was the next big thing, out on my own, with the man I wanted to be with. Powerful medicine, you know? So I sucked him off, and he jerked me off, and we shared one more cigarette, and as I was getting dressed to leave, he said, "You've got talent," almost like he felt sorry for me, or thought I would have been better off if I didn't. "Thanks," I said. He cocked a little grin at me and said, "I am talking about music. In case I got you worried." "Thanks." I left feeling older and wiser and all wrapped up in how strong Joe was, how clear and ruthless his focus was. I had Joe Dick Joe Dick Joe Dick in my head for a while, and for a while I played better than ever. How the hell did Iever fall for a screwed-up son of a bitch like Joe? I still don't get it. If you were conscious, maybe you could explain it to me. Then again, maybe your problem is that you couldn't explain it either. So now I know a lot more than I used to. I know that Joe's strength wasn't as bottomless as it seemed. I didn't cry when I heard about his suicide. I just closed the door on that part of my life, locked it, and threw away the key. Joe's gone. An awful lot of things are. I know that he had to be seeing you when he looked at me, which puts a whole new spin on things. What were you to him? A lover who walked out, like I walked out on Will? A chance he never took, except by proxy with me? Either way, you're the only link I have to him now. But by the looks of it, you have more links to him than you can handle, Billy Tallent. Talk about your Scylla and Charybdis. Too much Joe, too little Joe -- he never made anything easy in his entire life, I'm guessing. Am I onto something there? I know that sometimes you have to get out, when nothing is changing except everything under your skin. Leaving Sunnydale was a kind of suicide. You have that look in your eyes, that dreamy death wish, like you're looking for an exit yourself, one way or another. Hope that alcohol poisoning thing works out for you, I guess. I mean, it sounds pretty dysfunctional, but sometimes there's nothing left to hang around for. You've gotta take it to the next level. Wherever that is for you. I know that you're sort of insanely beautiful, and definitely not a werewolf. I know that I'm still going to be here when you come to in the morning. After all, even this chintzy hotel (and I know you have a better one, just not one you were about to take me to) is better than sleeping in the van. I know that it's always gonna be Hard Core Logo playing in my mind, long after the Dingoes are just a piece of my past that I'm too drunk and tired to find my way back to. That's what separated you from us, what made you great. I'll never go back. Everything's so broken, and when they look at me they see this boy with the guitar, this boy who wanted one simple thing, and I'm so damn different now that there aren't any words for it. I just have to keep going on like I don't have any past at all, and I should be okay. Stop me if you've heard this one before.