Tag: #LGBTQ+

Chapter One

Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Band Hut, Marden Combe

The bus stank of commuters. It wasn’t like a night bus, granted, but the mix of sweat and cheap scent—and the pungency of diesel—was another reminder of how much I hated Marden Combe.

A Thames Valley town like every other Thames Valley town, Marden Combe had a posh, blingy bit, where the bankers, footballers, and celebrity chefs lived. The rest ran the spectrum from dilapidated through demolished to barely affordable modern rabbit hutches. The old town centre was closing down, and the new shopping centre was gridlock hell.

The bus lurched and swung left, past a school named for a long-dead parliamentarian. Or possibly a royalist. I ought to know; it had been my old school till I’d turned sixteen. But it had all seemed irrelevant to the more immediate problem of not getting picked on for being different. There were a dozen ways and more to be different, whether it was for being too ugly, too geeky, too slow on the uptake, too shy, too dark, not dark enough, having a funny accent, or a fundy religion, or being neurodivergent, being too posh, being too poor, liking the wrong music, or football team, or playing oddball sports, or using last year’s tech; not liking girls, not liking boys, not liking either, liking both. Plus others, plus combinations. By more than one marker, I was weird, and I hadn’t always kept my head down. But there’d definitely been no bullying at Sir Long-Dead-Parliamentarian School. Or Royalist, as the case may be. Oh no.

That didn’t come close to summing up the suffocating, hope-crushing, soul-sucking, shit-brown hole that is Marden Combe. I needed to escape.

If I had a plan, it was that music would save me, as currently embodied by two pairs of drumsticks in my backpack and the cymbals in their hardcase. I’d found a few other muzos with a similar plan, and I was heading for the weekly escape committee meeting.

*

The bus crawled through the town centre—the closing-down bit, where the last of the character pubs struggled to keep their doors open with, as always, the pressure on the landlords to boost profits, cut costs, and serve salmonella-free food, or be booted out with a mountain of debt.

I gave it a nostalgic glance as the bus passed the Lord Nelson, boarded up and awaiting planning permission for conversion to flats. Once, the very bricks had rung with rock and oozed the blues. Once. Now, it was just another live music venue, dead and gone forever.

Still clinging on: the Cherry Tree, where we played a one-in-four Saturday night residency, alternating with rivals the Dave Green Blues Band, the twice ill-named Silent But Deadly, and a guest out-of-town band for the final Saturday. That residency was our lifeline, our oxygen, dependent on our ability to bring in the punters and dependent on the other bands too. Rivals we might be, but every band had to pull its weight.

Last night’s gig had been borderline, thanks to the competition from freshers’ week at the uni. Jeff and Simon had shown the strain as they’d sat us down after the gig to pay us. A dear old couple, they did what they loved for bugger-all profit. Simon, a long-term AIDS survivor, was a respected leader in Marden Combe’s tiny LGBTQIA community. They were never less than friendly to us as a band or to me personally, but yesterday, Simon got as near to reading the riot act as made no difference. Times were tough, and if our audience numbers didn’t pick up…

We got the message.

The lights changed. The bus lurched into motion, taking us up the hill, towards Marden Combe’s main industrial estate.

*

The bus passed an abandoned car on the grass verge. Last week, a sign on the windscreen said Police Aware, but evidently, not so aware that someone couldn’t set fire to it in the interim. That was my cue to get off. I rang the bell, and the bus pulled to a halt about fifty yards short of a block of single-storey industrial units. It had been built in the 1960s, and the brickwork left much to be desired. Ditto the ironwork and the paintwork. Don’t even think about asbestos. The third unit along was the one I was looking for. The sign read The Band Hut, and it fit right in with Marden Combe…

I pushed open the door, and all was gloom within. Thick cardboard and felt covered the windows. I called “Hi” to Wally at the front desk, hunched over his phone, and the autopilot grunted back. I moved past room 1 (a folk-metal trio), room 2 (empty), and into room 3, signed with gloss white paint roughly slapped over its matt black outer door.

Usually, with great rock stars taking interviews in their home studios, there wasn’t an amp in sight unless it was some boutique marque they’d been paid to endorse. The studio would be airy, bright, and wood-panelled in glossy pine, with walls featuring three or four iconic guitars. Double-insulated patio doors would lead onto a beautifully manicured lawn, the whole set tastefully in the Cotswolds.

In Marden Combe, they did things differently. Black felt covered the walls and ceiling of Studio 3. Underfoot, recycled carpet tiles clung to my shoes, sticky as only years of spilt beer could accomplish. Worn and curling patches showed where the bass drum spikes had caught between two tiles and where the studio’s cobbled-together frankenamps had been dragged too many times. Gaffa tape glinted under fluorescent lights, hasty repairs criss-crossing the floor. Other marks—cigarette burns mostly—clustered round the amps; the still-potent reeks of ancient tobacco and stale weed lurked at the edge of awareness. A tired but eclectic collection of posters hung on the walls, providing a potted archaeology of Marden Combe’s indigenous music of the last half decade.

Jake was already set up and sitting on a Band Hut amplifier, cradling his beloved Fender Stratocaster. He didn’t look up, but I didn’t expect him to. He hunched over the fretboard, fingers spider-dancing their scales. Half in shadow, he was a little spiderlike himself, all spindly limbs that gangled and writhed. His hair, too pale for a spider, was cut short and neatly combed.

After a minute, he finished his phrase, and we nodded to each other. Jake wasn’t a great conversationalist, so I didn’t push him out of his comfort zone. It was called ‘letting the music do the talking’. It suited both of us.

It took me about ten minutes to get the studio’s drum kit set up the way I like it, with my own cymbals in place. All the while, Jake happily noodled on his Strat. Clay breezed in just as I was finishing up.

Clay was the kind of guy you’d want fronting a blues band. Beautiful, with ebon-black skin and close-cropped hair, he had a solid baritone voice with a growl that went up to eleven. Today, he wore jeans and a T-shirt from a Kyla Brox show, but on stage, he was sharp-cut suit and moves. Twenty-six years old and—speaking entirely in my capacity as detached observer—hot and classy as fuck.

“Hi, Clay,” I called.

“Hi, Kai. Where’s Jamie?”

“He said he’d be a few minutes late. The boss is making him do overtime.”

Which, given that it was Sunday, was brother Jamie’s standard polite fiction for his housemates roping him into cleaning the kitchen. A little unfair, given that Jamie is possibly the tidiest human being on the planet. If Clay had been thinking, he’d have remembered that.

“That’s a bugger,” said Clay.

“Yeah. Tell me about it.”

But then he just stood there. Like a kid busting for a pee but afraid to ask the teacher.

“D’you need a hand getting stuff out of the car?” I asked.

“No.” He held up the flight case that held his mic and harmonicas. “How long do you think he’s going to be?”

“I don’t know. He said a few minutes, but I’ve no idea what that is in real minutes.”

Clay sat on an amp, then got up and walked over to the soundproof door. He opened it and the second door beyond it. He peered through the gloom. I could hear the folk-metal band getting into their groove, and good luck to them, but I was glad there would be a vacant studio between us and their sawtooth D minors.

No sign of Jamie though.

It was like something was up with Clay. I was almost tempted to ask him if he was okay. But what if he said no? That was why I didn’t ask personal questions within the band. We played blues together, and we planned escape. We memorised the names of one another’s significant others so we could be polite if they showed up at a gig. Clay’s significant other, Sirelle was—again, in my capacity, et cetera, et cetera—hot, but she was also Little Miss Disdain. Jake did not have a significant other that wasn’t made of wood and didn’t have six strings. Jamie had been a sore test of memory up until Louise, but he was currently unattached. That was it.

Clay was making me nervous though. So:

“Are you going to set your mic up, Clay? I’ll help you set levels so you’re all ready to go when Jamie gets here.”

No reason he couldn’t do it himself, but I was also music tech, so I was allowed to ask.

“Uh, no.”

Then, he expelled a deep, doom-laden breath, and I knew this day, which had started only medium crap, was going to end full-on shitstorm.

“I can’t wait for Jamie,” he decided. “Ah, guys…I’ve got an announcement to make.”

Jake looked up but carried on playing irritating little shreds.

“Good news?” I asked, more in forlorn hope than expectation.

“Well, yes. Sort of. I’ve got a new job.”

That doesn’t happen a lot in Marden Combe. Let’s not piss on the parade just yet.

“That’s good. Well done. So, what’s not to like about that?”

“It’s…in London.”

“Good pay, then, I guess. But I don’t fancy your commute.”

“Oh, it’s not Central London. It’s in Acton. But you’re right about the commute. Apart from that, though, it’s a pretty good job. It’s a real step up in my career.”

It was my turn to take a deep breath. “Okay. So why aren’t you dancing for joy?”

“Well, it’s a big project, and they need to get started right away. So, I’m starting next week. There’s no flexibility on that date. We’re up against the wire.”

“Right. What happens when you go on holiday the week after? Are they okay with that?”

“That’s just it, Kai. This is a huge project. It’s a fantastic opportunity. I’ll be in right at the ground floor. I need to be there. I’ve promised them I’ll be there.”

Ah. This is goodbye, then. Why can’t you just fucking say it?

“So what happens to the Clayton Paul Blues Band? What happens to the tour? Köln, Aachen, Berlin? All those German punters waiting to see us two weeks from now?”

Clay wouldn’t meet my eye.

“I can’t pass this up, Kai. It’s a dream opportunity for me.”

“And you can’t wait?”

“They won’t wait. I aced that interview, but there’s a bunch of guys almost as good, ready to start tomorrow. White guys.”

“That shouldn’t matter. There are laws…”

“Shit, Kai. Don’t tell me you don’t know how discrimination works. The manager liked me, stuck his neck out to make the offer. But if I start pissing them about, making conditions… It wouldn’t be discrimination, no sir. But it would be ‘we need someone who can start immediately’—that’s what they’d say.”

I nodded. I did know. White male privilege, Kai. “And the band? Your band. Us. The Clayton Paul Blues Band that goes on tour in two weeks?”

“I don’t know.” It was a scream of desperation, and it made Jake stop shredding. Something had gotten through to him.

“I don’t know,” Clay repeated, quieter. “It’s just a tour. It’s not the fucking Beatles going to Hamburg to find their destiny.”

“No, it’s not. In the great scheme of history, it’s just a piece of fun.”

“Well, then. You’ll get over it.”

Eyeroll. Do you know how crass that comes across, Clay? And a deep breath.

“With the greatest of respect, Clay, fuck you. I do not plan to ‘get over it’. I said it’s just a piece of fun, but that’s why it matters. Marden Combe is a shithole of the first water. Nothing happens here. Nothing good has ever come out of here. If we stay here all our lives, dying will be the best thing that ever happens to us.

“So yes, it’s a piece of fun. And no, it’s way more than that. It’s the hope of escape. It’s the dream in our waking lives that makes all the crap worth enduring—the crummy job or the even crummier no-job.”

A father who was too distant. A step-mom who was too close. But I didn’t say it. Nobody else’s business.

Clay shook his head. “I can’t be responsible for the crap in your lives, Kai.” It was a whisper.

Jake turned back to his guitar and started adjusting his pedal board. He wasn’t going to get involved if he could help it.

“Okay,” Clay continued, “you’d better cancel it—”

“Your band. Your tour. Haven’t you got the balls to cancel it yourself?”

“I thought…you could find a stand-in for the tour. If you wanted it that much.”

“A stand-in? And keep the band going afterwards, Clay? Is that what you want? This band as your bolthole, waiting for you to return when the new job settles down?”

I let that sink in, then asked him, “Can you commit to that?”

“Shit! I don’t know.”

“Don’t know? Or don’t want to tell us?”

“Put it on hold. We can put the band on hold, can’t we?”

“How long for?” I asked him.

“I don’t fucking know! I’ll be flying over to the US quite a bit. And there’s a bunch of guys in Japan I’ll need to work with. Six months, maybe?”

And then it hit me. I knew why Clay couldn’t meet my eye.

“The Cherry Tree. You must have known about this last night, and you didn’t say a fucking word. We’re already in the Last Chance Saloon. This is Boot-fucking-Hill.”

I’d struck true. His mouth hung open, and the longer it stayed that way, the more certain I was.

“Y-yes, Kai. I had the offer, but I didn’t know if I was going to take it. Honest, guys. But I thought it over, slept on it, and knew I had to take my chance.”

Well, it might be true, but my money was on Clay being too chicken to stuff the band in front of Simon. It had been too long a pause, while he crafted a damage-limitation lie.

“This’ll cost us our Saturday slot,” I said. “You know that, don’t you? Simon knows we won’t find a new singer in time.”

“One of you could—”

“Simon’s already got a plan to fill our slot, else he wouldn’t have given us ‘the talk’ last night. He’s a lovely guy, but he’s a businessman too.”

“He wouldn’t do that to you, Kai. You’re one of his golden…kids.”

Well, it was true, about being a ‘golden kid’ at least. Simon had taken me under his wing when I first got the notion I might become Kai. But that didn’t change a thing because Simon taught self-reliance and owning the consequences even while he was still putting the pieces back together, with himself as the prime example.

“You know better than that,” I said. “He owes the band nothing. He owes me nothing. And neither of us would have it any other way.”

But I did owe Simon. Maybe what I owed him was enough notice to give another band a clear shot at the residency.

Which was all very noble but not the issue at hand. Time to wrap this shit up, Kai.

“You said six months,” I began.

Six months. Six months without a band. I felt the dread rise up like a wave, ready to pull me under. The Clayton Paul Blues Band was my life.

Had been my life.

Six months though. Six months was more than enough time to build a new band. If I could pull the rest of the guys through.

Jake was in shock, biting his lip. His eyes darted about the room, to me, to Clay, back to the fretboard, where spider fingers shaped chaotic chords.

“No good. Jake, you don’t want to be six months without a band, do you?”

Jake put on his best rabbit-in-headlights gurn.

Bad move, Kai. This isn’t ‘pulling the guys through’.

But maybe I hadn’t screwed up. Maybe Clay sensed that the worst was over.

“No, you’re right,” he said. “It’s not fair to ask you to wait. It’s been a blast with you guys, but all good things come to an end.”

He held out his hand. “Kai? No hard feelings? Maybe play together someday when all this is done?”

I shrugged. But…why burn bridges? If I’d had the chance, wouldn’t I have done the same?

“Maybe.” I shook his hand. “Good luck with your escape from Alcatraz, Thames Valley. And don’t cancel the tour. I want to think about that.”

He shook hands with Jake too. There was an awkward silence. Jake went back to his guitar and began dabbing harmonics.

“Look, guys,” Clay said. “I’d like to stay and say goodbye to Jamie, but I guess you’ll want to talk over what’s next, and you won’t want me around for that. I’ve paid the Band Hut man, so the room’s yours till ten o’clock anyway. Least I could do. Okay?”

The Band Hut man. Clay, his name’s Wally. He’s been the set-up guy for two fucking years here, and you can’t be arsed to remember his name.

Clay’s harmonicas and microphone were still in his flight case, unopened. He picked the case up, squared his shoulders, and left the Band Hut, leaving us to pick up the shards of a blues band.

Fuck.

*

Jamie wasn’t best pleased when he arrived a few minutes later.

“No Clay? I thought I saw him driving past as I got off the bus. What happened?”

Jake let me do the explaining. When I’d finished, Jamie’s comment was brief.

“Stupid bugger.”

Huh? I expected more support from my brother than that. Jamie saw my worried frown.

“Easy, Kai. I didn’t mean you. You were right to force the issue. He wants us to give him a free pass back into the band if it all goes tits-up. No dice. Shame about the tour—”

“Yeah. Shame Clay’s going to miss it.”

Jamie started to say something, but I rode right over him.

“I’ve been thinking about it, guys. We’ve put a lot of work into rehearsing for this tour, and I don’t want it to go to waste. It’s a vital part of the Plan.”

The Plan, which was to practise like crazy and hone the set with a tour—yes, like the Beatles, but in less time. We had Deller Studio A booked in Oxford for our return, ready to record a sizzling demo to impress the A&R men in London. Get a record deal. Spend the rest of our lives playing music and counting money. And spend it somewhere that was not Marden Combe.

Meanwhile, Jamie was being practical. “But we’ve got no singer, no van, and no driver…”

“Hey, we can fix that stuff. Advertise for a singer. Find one who can drive a van. Hire a van.”

“That takes time, Kai.”

“We’ve got two weeks. One of us could sing.”

“Not like Clay.”

Jake perked up. Shit! The slumbering giant awakes…

“Yeah. What Kai said. One of us could sing.”

But not you, Jake. Please, not you. Behind Jake, Jamie rolled his eyes. One thing we agreed on.

“There’ll be a lot of admin too,” said Jamie.

“I guess that’s mostly me, then,” I replied. “You guys have got day jobs.”

Jamie nodded. “Jake—anything else on your mind?”

“Yeah. Can we play now, bossman?”

“Yeah. I think we need to.”

I fussed around with the drum kit a bit for the sake of something to do. Jamie plugged his bass into the studio’s amp and twiddled a few knobs until it sounded okay.

No microphone. Clay had taken his away with him. So I begged Wally, the front desk guy, to find us a decent mic.

And, of course, with budget rehearsal studios, nothing’s free; everything’s an extra. Wally played hardman with me. He took the tack that, yes, Clay had paid, but that didn’t include unlimited mics. He pointed to the price list on the wall.

“Ten quid, Wally? You cannot be serious. Show me something that’s worth that much.”

So, he reached into a drawer and pulled out an offering. “It’s a Shure. Top-line mic.”

I shook my head. “It’s a fucking museum piece. Look—the windshield’s dented. Somebody’s dropped this, hard. And the lead’s missing a grub screw. You can’t charge ten quid for this shit.”

He opened his mouth to reply.

I wagged a finger at him. “Here’s five quid and a five-star review for your customer service. Promise. Okay?”

“Done.”

I set up the mic—it crackled, and I wondered whether I’d sold my review too cheap. We argued about who’d go first, and Jake won.

Live, we always set up a special mic for Jake to do backing vocals. I mixed it up, prominent in the stage monitors, but it didn’t go anywhere near the main bus. We endured it so the audience didn’t have to.

That trick wasn’t going to work in the studio though. We had to be fair; we had to let him try. Jake gave it his all.

“‘Serves You Right to Suffer’, guys,” he said, grinning and bizarrely aware of the irony of his audition choice. “John Lee Hooker.”

Indeed, a prophetic choice. Jamie and I set up a slow blues pattern, and Jake dived in on guitar, catching the groove. He took the guitar down to nothing and growled the opening lyric. Then he searched for a pitch, found a note he liked and hung on to it, while Jamie struggled on bass to find the key he’d chosen. Then Jake played a riff in the original key, clashing horribly with Jamie’s bass. Jake glared at Jamie, who reverted to the original key.

Jake choked the guitar back again. His voice found another note he liked. This time, Jamie stuck to the original key and earned another black look from Jake. It went on like that a long time, back and forth between random keys, and whatever Jamie did was wrong. After a couple of verses, Jamie launched into an unmistakable this-IS-the-end-of-the-song fretboard run before Jake had a chance to start a new verse.

Jake turned to me. I guessed Jamie was in all kinds of bad books for pissing about with the bass line.

“How was that?” he asked, puppy-dog eager to start his new singing career.

“That was…astonishing, Jake.”

It was all I could think of to say. It was even true. Technically ‘astonishing’ could mean bad as well as good. But as I saw a puppy-dog joy fill his eyes, I knew I’d said the wrong thing. The unvarnished truth would hurt him deeply.

Jamie saved me. “What happened to the guitar, Jake? I don’t think I caught much guitar.”

“That? No. I guess it was a bit sparse.”

“We do need your guitar. Very much.”

“I’m not sure I could do both. I could learn.”

I jumped in. “Let’s make it our plan B.” By which I meant our plan Z. “Your guitar is too important to our sound. Jamie? Did you want to try?”

Jamie liked to bounce about on stage, so I couldn’t see how that was going to work, live. Despite that, he wanted to try out, so we ran through a couple of numbers. He wasn’t bad—we already knew his pitch and timbre were good enough for backing vocals—but he wasn’t happy.

“You don’t have to tell me, guys. That was shit. I can’t syncopate against the bass line. I can’t put any feeling behind it. Not the way Clay could. Your turn, Kai.”

So I pulled the mic stand around to the side of the kit, set it up so it didn’t get in the way of the hi-hat, and we gave it a go. I picked ‘I Come from the Blues’, which was one of Clay’s compositions. It had fallen out of the set sometime in the last six months, but I loved Clay’s soft, jazzy butterscotch vocals on it. If it had been up to me, it would still be in the set, but Clay had said he wanted to move on.

Where did I come from? I come from the blues.

Where am I going? I’m going to lose.

Where is my future? I’m sure I have none.

Where is my hope? My hope is all gone.

I’ve always sung along—off-mic and under my breath—so I didn’t have any trouble fitting the words in the right places. And I’ve got decent pitch and rhythm. So I think I did all right.

Now, Jamie wouldn’t meet my eye.

“What?” I demanded. “What was wrong with that?”

He mumbled something.

“I can’t hear you, bro. What did he say, Jake?”

Jake looked away. He didn’t want to get involved in any squall between me and my brother. Besides, he’d used up all his words for the day.

“I’m not sure how to put this, Kai. You’ve got a good voice. It’s, well…not very, well, rock’n’roll. No…grit. Too pure. Sorry.”

“I see.”

“Look, we’ll ask around our friends. Social media. There’s got to be something online.”

I didn’t say anything. I was thinking lots though. About how I’d discovered that this was something I really wanted to do. And could do. All that bullshit about ‘too pure’—no, my voice was good. Damn you, Jamie. I will sing. In this band, if possible. If not…

The rest of the practice was conducted with icy politeness. We mostly played instrumentals. Jamie sang the few bits where we absolutely needed the vocal cues. I sat behind the kit pretending to be okay.

It was crap.

 

William lives in a small Buckinghamshire village in England. By night he writes speculative, historical, crime and other fiction. His latest novel – TEARDOWN – is published by NineStar Press and is widely available in eBook and paperback formats. Previously, his debut novel, EXPIRATION DAY, was published by Tor Teen in 2014 and won the 2015 Hal Clement Award for better than half-decent science in a YA novel – the citation actually says “Excellence in Children’s Science Fiction Literature”. His short fiction has also appeared in DreamForge, Metastellar, Abyss & Apex and other excellent ‘zines. By day he writes software and in the twilight he sings tenor, plays guitar and writes songs.

 

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