Alive and Amplified.

[Prose isn't my thing, but I'll give anything a try once]

I was getting impatient with my roadies. It was two hours until show time, and we still hadn’t done a proper sound check.

“Turn me ON!” I screamed at my manager/best friend Eve who was on the phone with the owner of the next venue.

“Holls, Chris isn’t even here yet. Just calm your jets. We’ll start soon, or else you can take...well, you can take your wrath out on Chris. I’m not getting in the middle here.”

Chris was the (habitually late) bassist of my band. Because of our shared love for Almost Famous, we decided that he could be Russell Hammond to my Penny Lane. If I didn’t detest him so much with every fiber of my being, I might actually like him.

“I swear to God, if I don’t get on that fucking stage in three minutes WITH A BASSIST, I’m going to go crazy New York girl on this joint.” She knew that I wasn’t joking around when I mentioned New York. We’d been all around the world together, and we both knew that there was nothing like a New York girl.

“Holly, why aren’t you already warmed up? You know you take way more time than I do to get ready for a show.” Chris waltzed into the club, flipping his black hair like Justin Beiber, forever trying to get onto my good side.

“Shut the hell up and get on my stage,” I snarled.

“Aww, is someone experiencing a bit of PMS? Or are you always this annoying? I mean, they kind of go hand and hand don’t they? Ugly and annoying?”

I stared at his ruggedly handsome, arrogant face, walking up the stairs onto the stage to his favorite bass. A part of me wanted to break it into smithereens, but I knew that he was probably the best bassist I could get. He started to play scales, one by one, until he had thirteen down and I was seething.

“Chris, could you please start playing an actual song? You know, one we wrote? And could someone please TURN ME UP?”

He winked at me, something he did to get me angry before almost every show. I’d say it was a ritual, but I don’t want to give it that much merit. All I could do was roll my eyes and turn away, because, even though it happened every night, it riled me up so much that I could only think of acceptable comebacks five minutes after. That’s the worst.

The rest of the soundcheck and the show went well, with Chris and I only mildly uncomfortable interacting onstage. We’d share a mic, share a chord and pretend to share a romance, something Eve told me would help our PR team sell us.

After the show, I packed up my Les Paul and strode over to my cab. Chris came up behind me and put his hands on my hips.

“Let me go. I’m not doing this again.” But lo and behold, I did.

When I woke up the next morning in Chris’ hotel bed, I could only think that somebody had to turn me loose on this goddamn world.