Anyway here is the first look at Drummer.
A Different Drummer by Deirdre O'Dare www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure (It will be on the home page for a few days come April 21 and then on my page--www.amberquill.com/AmberAllure/bio_ODare.html
Blurb:
Jest has been on his own since his mid teens and still blesses the chance that let him realize his dream of playing percussion in a band, one who has become his substitute family. Although he misses the close sharing, he doesn’t expect to find a partner and certainly not one as clearly out of his element as the man who one night wanders into the club where Jest’s band plays, looking totally lost and friendless.
Greene has struggled to build
himself a life far from the undisciplined communal community in which he grew
to his mid teens. He’s lonely though and not sure how to remedy that so he keeps
working as a game programmer in Silicon Valley
until he makes a faux pas at a party. Traveling aimlessly, he meets Jest and
the other members of Taken By Storm, and is intrigued but terrified of slipping
back into a disorderly world like the one of his childhood.
Excerpt From Chapter One--Meet Jest and Greene and share their initial contact!
Jest had almost forgotten his real name. It had been that
long since he’d used it. Maybe he’d done a little too much coke and certainly
way too much cheap whiskey, although he was off that stuff now. Oh, he still
wore his spiked hair in rainbow colors and still played drums like a mad man, but
gradually he’d gotten clean, gone straight. Well, as straight as a guy could be
who’d known he was gay since he was twelve.
Marcus Jestyn Ballard III was much more name than he needed
these days. He’d lived by his wits and will from the time his parents
discovered him in bed with a buddy and threw his sixteen-year-old ass out to
fend for himself. He’d done a lot of crazy things to survive before fate—or
fortune—led him to Tom Holden and his rag-tag band.
It had happened at a low-end bar and grill in Atlanta the night Swamp
Rats did their first gig there. Jest had been washing dishes in the place for
about ten nights. Bussing and washing in a joint like Bubba’s Beef and Beer was
about as low as you could go and still call it a job, although he’d done worse.
He’d quickly discovered being party boy for the night to anyone who had a
dollar or two just to get food to survive sucked a lot worse than any job. Even
without skills and references, he wasn’t afraid of work.
Once he’d dreamed of being a drummer in a big name band.
He’d played in middle school and two years of high school before he left home.
Even if everyone said he was good, nobody wanted to hire a skinny, scruffy teenager,
not even groups barely making it. Tom’s crew was one short step above that
bottom rung.
Caught up with bussing/washing/drying the glassware and
dishes as business slowed just before the night’s live music began, Jest heard
a commotion in the hallway behind the makeshift stage in the bar. Someone was
yelling and cussing. He could only make out a few words, among them “drummer,”
“late again,” “stoned,” “out of my fucking mind” and a disjointed string of
very colorful profanity. Curious, he stuck his head around the corner. A lanky
man in worn denims holding a beautiful black Telecaster was in full rant.
“We can’t fuckin’ do a gig worth hog shit if we haven’t got
a drummer. Where’s that worthless turd tonight?”
No one had an answer. That’s when Jest got the wildest idea
he’d had in donkey’s years. “Need a drummer? If you’ve got the drums, I can
play ’em.”
The tall, dark-haired guitarist swiveled on his worn cowboy
boots and shot Jest a sharp glare. “You? You really play drums?”
“Damn straight,” Jest declared, with way more confidence
than he felt. “I’m just— Well, kinda between gigs right now.”
“Humph. Let’s hear what you can do.” The man waved at the
partly assembled drum set and hit a couple of chords on his guitar before he
launched into a Creedence standard. Jest dropped into a folding chair and
reached for the sticks. For a few seconds, his heart stopped. Then he felt the
beat, picked it up and began to play. He played his soul out, scared to believe
this was not just some weird, dope-fed hallucination. Afraid to hope, yet
daring to dream, he pounded away.
When the piece ended, the tall man looked at him with a new
respect. “No shit. You can play.
Awright, I hope you pick up most songs as fast as you did this one, or you know
a shitload by heart. I’ll give you a chance tonight. Not that I have a choice.
Still, you’re way fucking better than nothing.”
That was how it began. Swamp Rats struggled, traveled,
barely hung on when Tom Holden got called up in the National Guard and went to
the sand box, but they kept going. By the time Tom got back, they’d settled in
Las Vegas and had found a couple of regular bars to play in. They lived out of
an old bus for a while…the one that broke down just when they hit Sin City
Once back, Tom renamed the group Taken By Storm and from
then on, things got better.
They cut a record, they opened for a couple of big name
acts, and they gained an amazing chick singer who put the cherry on their
sundae. Stormy Alcott had been a cross- country trucker before she picked Tom
up one night when he was coming back from his tour overseas, trying to catch up
with his old band. She sang like a whiskey-voiced angel and provided just what
the band needed.
The rest, as the saying goes, was history. They’d gone full
country now instead of the swamp rock mix they’d started with. Jest didn’t
care. So long as he could beat those drums, he was happy. Life could only get a
little better—if the right guy came along and they hooked up. He didn’t think
that was going to happen, not really, but he told himself he’d be okay anyway.
Tom was a good boss, fair and firm, and always honest. He
made sure they stayed pretty clean. He took care of his crew. Stormy had become
a big sister to them all. Jest wouldn’t have come on to her, even if she wasn’t
beautiful, sexy and joined at the hip to Tom. That didn’t mean he didn’t love
her to pieces, just more as a big sister or aunt. He could appreciate without
wanting. He finally had the family he’d lost so far back down a long and broken
road.
* * *
The birth certificate of the man now known as Greene Wilder
might read Green Man Shasta Wildwood. That was the last name he wanted to be
known by. Bad enough, Greene S. Wilder was the best he could think of fast when
he petitioned for a name change upon attaining his majority, three years ago.
By then, he was working in Silicon Valley and putting as much distance between
himself and his birth commune somewhere near Mount Shasta
as he possibly could.
Since he graduated from high school at sixteen with a full
scholarship to UC Davis and been declared an emancipated minor, he’d spent
every minute striving toward two goals: to become a strait-laced,
tax-paying—the more the better, for that meant success—upscale citizen and to
get one hundred eighty degrees and as many miles as possible away from any hint
of that stupid hippie, back-to-nature, New Age shit from his youth. Two
alienated generations behind him or not, that life wasn’t for him. He wanted no
part of it.
Things had been going well, too. That is until this Friday
at the office’s annual anniversary party. He’d finally gotten enough alcohol
into his system to gather his courage and tell Mickey Wong just how badly he wanted
them to hook up. Mickey was a full partner in MegaGames Ltd. He was also a
beautiful, athletic genius who captained the company’s soccer team, led the
crew keeping new versions of Deth Dealers and Uber-Strike Force coming out
regularly and Mega well ahead of the entire video game pack. Blatantly
bi-sexual, he changed partners like Greene changed socks. Mickey had just
laughed.
“You, Greene? You? Yeah, you’re a coding genius, have a gift
for anticipating what teenage boys want, and you’ve been a critical part of the
team. Despite that, you haven’t got it. Dude, you’re stuck in the twentieth
century in your personal life. Suits and ties? Shit, a person would think you
worked for the prehistoric Xerox or IBM. Frankly, I wouldn’t take you to a dog
fight and I’d rather kiss my kid brother, nerd-jerk that he is.”
Too many Mega folk had seen and heard the whole debacle.
Greene was not sure he could face them again—ever. Thank the powers, he had two
weeks of vacation coming and already scheduled. He fled the party, threw a few
things into his Volvo and headed out to the Interstate, not sure where he was
going or if he’d ever come back. Somehow, he ended up in Las Vegas , with only the vaguest memory of
how he’d gotten there.
Greene cruised slowly down one of the streets well back from
the strip with no particular goal in mind. He was getting hungry and very tired
of driving, but not quite ready to look for a room, much less decide what he
was going to do in the near term, to say nothing of farther into the future.
A flashing sign caught his eye. Without giving himself time
to think, he pulled into the half-full parking lot and eased the Volvo between
a couple of huge pickups. Not a single “save the whosis” bumper sticker in
sight. Good. Surely a place that
called itself a bar and grill would offer something to eat as well as
libations. Probably liquor was the last thing he needed, considering how
overindulging was behind his current fix. Still, a beer with a burger or a
plate of barbeque might not be so bad. His stomach growled at the thought.
He still wore the suit he’d had on when he went to the party
straight from work. Was it only yesterday evening? The summer-weight fabric was
now crumpled and drooped, looking as if he’d slept in it. In truth, he had—a
few hours at a rest stop when he caught himself nodding off as he drove down
I-5 in the deepest darkness of the previous night. That was probably dangerous
and doubtlessly stupid. He really didn’t care. If he got mugged, car-jacked or
shot in cold blood, it didn’t make a rat’s ass to him. Who’d even want to car
jack a four-year-old beige Volvo badly in need of a good wash?
After he got out, he took off the coat and threw it back on
the seat. As an afterthought, he removed his tie as well. The wrinkled shirt
and trousers would have to do for now. He wasn’t about to drag a bag into the
place and try to change in the men’s room. The chance he’d see anyone he’d ever
cross paths with again was slight indeed. If the patrons chose to laugh at his
appearance, let them. He was tired of a bunch of mother humping fools judging
him and telling him he came up short. From the looks of the vehicles parked in
the lot and the décor visible at the front of the place, it was a cowboy and
trucker bar. So he didn’t own one item of clothing that would fit in, anyway.
Greene found a table, back in a corner away from the
bandstand and the dance floor. A table-hop in flame red Daisy Dukes, matching
silver-stitched boots and a top showing lots of skin sauntered over to take his
order—after the more alert bartender spoke to her.
He ordered a Bud Light with a burger and fries, determined
not to overindulge. As he’d guessed, this was a workingman’s place. The room
was jammed with boots, big hats and garish shirts. The women dressed much like
the men in tight jeans and bright tops, many sporting wide-brimmed hats in a
rainbow of colors. Although he felt as out of place here as with the hip crowd
in San Jose , no
one paid him any attention.
Across from his corner, he noticed an alcove filled with
arcade games and slots. He smiled to himself when he saw the familiar logo of
Deth Dealers on the panel of one game machine. That would be the arcade version
of MegaGames’ newest rage. Every time someone played it, a few cents flowed to
the Mega coffers and of that, a fraction went to Greene’s growing investment
account.
Right now, the game room wasn’t busy, though because the
band had taken their places and begun to play. The group was evidently known
and favored by the regular customers because they whistled and stomped in
boisterous appreciation, especially when a gorgeous redhead in black, skintight
jeans and a sparkling, clingy top approached the mike.
Greene might not be into girls or country music, but he had
to admit she was good. A whiskey-silk voice with an impossible range from
growly bass notes to bird-clear trebles took familiar, ordinary songs to a new
level. The back-up music supported her perfectly. A spark of unexpected color
drew his eye to the back of the band. The elaborate arrangement of percussion
instruments almost obscured the drummer, although his multi-colored topping of
mohawk mixed with mullet could not be ignored, anymore than the flashing neon
it resembled.
Finally, Greene got up and moved along the wall to a spot
where he could see the drummer clearly. He wasn’t sure why. He only sensed he
had to see this man and watch him play. Although every musician in the band was
good, better than good really, there was something special about the drummer.
The rainbow-haired musician almost seemed a misfit, despite the seamless way
his input melded with the rest of the band’s sound.
Certainly his whole appearance was at odds with the group’s
typical 2013 country look. He was almost a sixties refugee, a throwback who
could have supported Jimi or Janis, played with Starship or Iron Butterfly. Not
at all what Greene normally wanted to see or hear because it took him right
back to the hated roots from which he’d torn free and fled with all his might.
It felt as if an outside force drew him with the power of a strong magnet. Who
was this mad drummer and what was his magic?
Before the first set ended, Greene had almost reached the
edge of the bandstand, elevated a foot or so above the jam-packed dance floor.
He wedged into a corner, unable to move until the sweating dancers halted and
the crowd began to shift back to stools and tables to grab another beer or step
out for a short break. Then, suddenly, he was conspicuously alone, a solitary
stranger in a rumpled white shirt, as obvious as a burned-out bulb on a game
board.
The drummer stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders so
the tattered camouflage shirt pulled out of his jeans and stuck out at the
waist between the bands of his striped suspenders. Then he turned and looked
straight at Greene from less than a yard away.
“What the fuck?” His lips shaped the words clearly, although
Greene could not hear him speak. The next words were all too audible. “Who the
hell are you and what are you doing
here?”
