“Now,” Tommy said, “you gotta make your minds up. You gonna get a little because you’re all pretty and you can play in a rock band? Or are you gonna earn it all?”

[Slouches in seat]

Yeah.

That was the Larry Bird speech.

To this day, I have no clue if Larry Bird actually went out and practiced like that when he was a kid.

But it doesn’t matter.

No one bitched after that.

And we had a good number of gigs.

But we practiced.

All the fuckin’ time.

Lyla

Jesse:

They’d tease him, in the beginning, you know?

[Long pause]

[Off tape]

No, I don’t know.

Her name was Lyla. Dave and even Tim would tease him.

Lyla. Layla.

Get it?

[Another long pause]

They learned not to tease him, though.

I didn’t understand. Not in the beginning.

She was…

[Lengthy pause]

Not his scene.

Straight up, he didn’t seem to be hers, either.

Nothing seemed to be her scene.

We hooked up with her and her friends at the bar where we’d played, and she was not into it.

I mean, her friends and her, chalk and freakin’ cheese.

Serious.

She wasn’t into the bar, the music, the band.

Tight with her friends, you could tell, but us and everything around us?

Nope.

She didn’t even dress like them. Like a rocker-groupie girl.

She didn’t even dress eighties, Madonna teased out hair and rubber bracelets and lotsa lace. Or neon. Or whatever the fuck.

No, you know, that isn’t right.

She did.

Flashdance.

Shirt falling off her shoulder. Jeans. White Nike classics. Cortez. If I remember, with a blue swoop.

Nikes.

First time we saw Lyla, she was in Nikes.

[Smiles]

They told us they had booze and blow and mushrooms and maybe some acid and a pool.

And they were party girls.

Lyla wasn’t, but they were.

That was serious too.

Serious as shit.

Party girls like that and a pool?

[Smiles]

We were all in.

Even Tommy.

Josh took off somewhere else though. Found some other chick he wanted to party with, and he went with her.

Josh did that kind of thing a lot.

And he may say it different, but we wanted him with us, and we made that clear.

He took off and did his own thing.

So that’s on him, no matter what that guy says.

We went with Lyla’s friends. And I was twenty by then. I was in a rock band that no longer had trouble getting gigs. There were entire cities where I had pussy waiting for me when we got back to them.

But I was on my home turf.

Indy.

First time back after Dad died.

So, I was rattled, you know?

Preacher, I could tell, had a mind to me.

Tim ate the ’shrooms, Dave dropped the acid.

[Shakes head]

They didn’t have a mind to dick.