Curtis the Roadie

Curtis the Roadie by Jason Earls, author of How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell & Zombies of the Red Descent http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711 First off, my name is Sam Delaney and I’m a guitar player. I’ve been in a lot of bands and I want to tell you about a roadie I once knew. You see, one particular band of mine, Vestigial Speculation, actually became successful enough that we acquired a roadie. Since we had gigs lined up almost every weekend, we needed someone to help set up our equipment, load and unload it from our van, and also run the sound board. Curtis was his name. He was an older gentleman with a lot of character and panache. Even though he was pushing 60, he still enjoyed being around younger musicians. But the thing Curtis especially liked was the company of young women, such as the females who attended our gigs. A few women we knew actually gave Curtis a lot of attention since he was affiliated with our band. We couldn’t pay him much for his duties, only give him free beer from the bars we played plus 10% of everything we earned from the gigs, but he knew we were poor and couldn’t afford to pay him a regular salary, and the women he met at the gigs made up for it. One more thing you should know about Curtis. He was slightly insane. But not in any “evil” kind of way. Only in a “problem causing” kind of way, which meant that our band did not grow with his help as much as we would have liked. So the moral of the following story is that you should be careful about who you select for a roadie, if your band ever needs one. Before I get into the actual details of the problem Curtis created, I will describe him a little more. Although he never divulged his exact age, we assumed from his appearance that he was fairly old. But at the same time he was in excellent physical condition. He must have weighed around 160 pounds but he possessed unbelievable strength. I once saw him put a 250-pound barbell over his head with barely any struggle. He had an abundance of energy too, almost too much. He acted like he was amped up on meth all the time, but he also had to take medication since his blood pressure was too low. That’s right, too low instead of too high. You would think that a hopped-up, spry, energetic old man would suffer from high blood pressure. But not Curtis. He always had the exact opposite problems of everyone else. He also didn’t have many teeth in his head. You could only see one little rotten black tooth hanging down in the front, although there were probably a few others near the back (I didn’t check). He usually wore an old black Fedora hat everywhere he went as he babbled on negatively about various political matters. Plus he loved to drink iced tea all day long out of a large Star Wars mug with mounds of sugar added. Whenever he would take off his hat, which was very rare, we would see short thick clumps of hair sticking up all over like a thousand porcupine needles. He was also a great fan of music, which is what brought him to us in the first place, and he claimed to have once played bass guitar in a popular Doo Wop group (I forget the band’s name) in the 70s. Since my band, Vestigial Speculation, mainly played heavy metal and punk rock tunes, many young fans did not fully understand why this old man was constantly hanging around working intensely to unload our gear and run our soundboard and make sure everything was perfect. They all assumed someone his age would naturally hate the loud, obnoxious and provocative sounds that were staples of our music. But we just laughed and told them Curtis was one of the hippest people we had ever met. He worked very hard for us and we liked him a lot. But he also gave us a few problems. One example of his unhinged behavior (before I relate the main scenario of this story) is that Curtis liked to dress up as a female. He would wear pastel dresses with huge flowers printed on them and put on fake jewelry and makeup while still keeping his black fedora hat on. “I only do it to shock people,” he told us, but we knew he was getting some weird thrill out of dressing up in drag. He even wore fake breasts and high heels and false eyelashes. Curtis dressing up in this manner brought us a lot of negative attention and flak that we really didn’t need. A natural hatred of authority, any type of authority, was also a large part of Curtis’s strange personality. He hated the police and the government, he despised the president and the military, he even hated security guards and toll booth collectors. He couldn’t stand for anyone to even suggest with their presence any type of rule that he had to follow. He also enjoyed writing offensive comments about the government on the sides and windows of our van. Some were permanent, others were not. The nonpermanent kind he would usually change from week to week, but normally he had phrases like, High Taxes & High Crime Pervade This Town, and Taxation Without Representation Is Tyranny, and You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains, along with quotes from the Bible and anarchy symbols and things of that nature. But again, the main reason I’m writing this, which I will relate starting in the next paragraph, is intended to warn you of the unpredictable nature of people so you don’t choose a roadie like Curtis who could create numerous problems for your band. Make sure you find a person whose mental health is sufficiently stable or they’ll cause more problems than they help alleviate. Here we go. We had a gig set up at a small bar. No big deal. Except we were supposed to be paid $1,200 dollars for this one – much more than usual. The normal gig procedure was that we would meet at the bar for soundcheck around 7 o’clock the night of the gig. On this occasion, all the band members arrived early, except for Curtis, which was highly unusual. Normally he’d be there 30 minutes before the rest of us. Also Curtis kept every piece of our equipment in the van which we let him drive even for his own personal transportation. The drums, P.A. system, guitars, amps, soundboard, everything. We trusted him with it. We knew he was dedicated. He had already proven himself trustworthy. But when we didn’t see him at the bar for soundcheck we knew something was wrong. We had planned to set everything up, do the soundcheck, go home, have dinner, return at nine, and start playing. But now Curtis was going to make us late. 7:30 arrived. Still no Curtis. We started getting worried. “Where the hell is he?” the drummer whined. 7:45, 8:00. We were all standing outside the club. Smoking cigarettes. Cursing and waiting. Curtis didn’t have a cell phone so we couldn’t call him. 8:10. We knew he was kinda crazy but he had never actually screwed up one of our gigs before. Finally when 8:15 rolled around the bass player announced, “I’m gonna go look for him, you guys stay here.” He gets in his car and just as he slams the door we hear loud sirens erupt in the distance. Long loud blaring sirens coming from several police cars and maybe a fire truck. I immediately think “They’re going after Curtis,” and we all jump in our cars and screech out of the parking lot and drive toward the sirens. They lead us up to main street and down to the southern end of town. We come upon six police cars with their lights flashing and our van surrounded by them. We get out and notice a crowd in front of the jewelry store. Our van has all of Curtis’s usual offensive phrases written on the windows. Next we see Curtis in handcuffs, wearing a bright red dress. Four officers are struggling to stuff him into a patrol car and he is yanking away and fighting them, resisting the arrest while screaming paranoid phrases about the government. None of us could tell what had happened by observing the scene. I stepped around behind one of the patrol cars and peered over to see a small group of pedestrians huddled around a man wearing an expensive blue suit lying on his back on the sidewalk, a small amount of blood pooling around his shoulders as two paramedics attended to him. We knew Curtis loved getting into fist fights. But we also trusted him to refrain from any violent behavior when we had a gig only two hours away. They finally got Curtis into the police car. I strolled up to one of the officers. “Hello,” I said. “You just arrested our friend there and I was wondering if you could fill me in on what happened?” “Your friend was engaged in a brutal altercation with the owner of this business establishment.” The cop pointed to the jewelry store. “The man he attacked is a prominent citizen of the community. I’m afraid that is all I can divulge at the present time, sir.” “Well, when can we bail him out of jail? He is one of our employees. My band is playing at a local bar here and we need him to run our sound board tonight.” “Your friend will be spending the night in jail, sir. You can bail him out the following day.” “What about the van, it’s ours and all of our equipment is in it. We need our gear so we can play tonight.” The cop grinned and looked over at the van. “Your vehicle will be impounded. You won’t be able to extract your property from it for at least two weeks.” “But... All right. Thank you, officer.” So the gig was off. No use arguing with the police over it. The guy wouldn’t have given us our equipment anyway. Seemed like a real stickler for the law. I informed the other members of Vestigial Speculation and they all became extremely depressed over not being able to play and collect our $1,200. We got in our cars and drove back to the bar and told the owner. He was pissed off about losing the customers and we probably ruined the prospect of future bookings with him. But it wasn’t our fault. So there went the biggest pay day our band would probably ever see, and the worst part was we didn’t even know why Curtis had been arrested. But I was going to find out. **** Next morning I began calling all my friends in the hope of collecting money to bail Curtis out of jail. The first person I tried, Joe, didn’t answer his phone. Second one I tried, Marty, answered on the third ring. I asked him for help with Curtis’s bail and he surprised me by saying, “He’s already out of jail.” “What? How did he manage to get out so fast?” “He has some connections back in South Dakota, that’s where he’s from. Some powerful senator made a call and now he’s out of jail.” “You’re kidding. What kind of connections could Curtis have?” “Obviously political connections if a senator got him out. Somebody said Curtis used to be a chief of police and also a sheriff.” “Curtis? No way. The man hates any kind of authority. You’re telling me he used to be a cop?” “Maybe something bad happened while he was on the force and that’s the reason he hates authority so much now.” “Hmm... Good point. Anyway, I’m gonna go talk to Curtis now. He’s at home, right?” “Far as I know.” I got in my crappy Dodge Dynasty and drove down the highway, which was relatively free of traffic. The surrounding scenery seemed dull: white houses, yellow weeds, brown trees, and the sky overcast with a dark bluish tint like a Picasso painting from his blue period. Curtis lived at the far northern end of town in a small shack that looked made out of tar paper. He had two large vegetable gardens on both sides of his house, dark green foliage with spats of yellow and red mixed in from various vegetables. Also there were large brown herb bushes hanging from his porch that had been tied and suspended there with twine. The shack was black with dull green tiles on the roof, which sagged and looked like it was going to fall in any second. I parked and got out and saw Curtis sitting on his front porch, still wearing the bright red dress that he’d been arrested in. He was sitting in a white plastic lawn chair and there was a fifth of whiskey beside him on the crooked wooden porch railing. “Hey Curtis,” I said strolling up the sidewalk, staring at him with feelings of confusion and curiousity. “What the hell happened to you yesterday?” “Yeah, I’m sorry for letting you guys down. I tried to make it to the sound check. I really did. I just ran into a bit of trouble down town.” I took a seat at the edge of the porch and stared at him. “Well, six police cars, I’d say you did run into a bit of trouble.” His face had bruises, scrapes, and long cuts all over it. His cheeks were a light purple color and his neck had deep red scrapes running down both sides. One of his eyes was black and almost swollen shut. “Jesus, look at your face, Curtis. It’s a friggin’ mess.” He smiled sadly and his little black rotten tooth in the front sparkled somehow; it looked pointed and sharp. “How did you get all those cuts and bruises on your head and neck?” I said. “It’s called police brutality, man.” He reached over and grabbed the fifth of whiskey and brought it up. I watched his adam’s apple rise and fall as the liquor poured down his gullet. He drank a large amount, probably trying to kill all the pain in his mangled face. Then he lowered the whiskey bottle and it boomed against the railing like a bass drum. He released a huge sigh of satisfaction as the alcohol went to work inside him. “I’m gonna nail those friggin’ pig scums to the wall for all the violence they unleashed upon my constitution,” he said. “What did they do to you? I mean you have a barrage of cuts and bruises all over your face. Why so many?” He gave me an incredulous look and scoffed. “About ten cops held me down and put their jack-boots on the back of my neck and worked me over good man. They stomped and punched and tortured the crap out of me in the back of the precinct where nobody could witness the unlawful assault.” “Why though? Why did they arrest you in the first place? I still don’t know what happened.” “I’ll start at the beginning. I had the band’s gear all loaded up for the gig but then I realized I was out of duct tape. So before driving to the bar I decided to stop off at the Dollar Store for a new roll. I shouldn’t have went in there wearing my bright red dress. I knew it would upset the citizens in this conservative craphole town. But hell I was in a jam and I had to get some duct tape. I entered the establishment and found the tape and I could feel everybody staring at me and scowling, but I just ignored them and paid for the tape and started to head out. Soon as I pushed open the door, I saw some dipstick standing by the side of my van. It was the owner of the jewelry store next door. The goofball is holding a pan of soapy water and a sponge and he’s actually washing off the political phrases that I have written on the van. You know, my antigovernment phrases and anarchy symbols and other things I have written on the windows?” I nodded, well aware of the phrases. He had recently changed a few of them to read: Welcome to Shyteville, Taxation Without Representation is HELL, Long Live the Second Amendment, along with Bible quotes and a few Anarchy signs. Curtis continued: “So I just stared at the douche washing off my truck and altering my personal property for awhile, then I yelled, ‘HEY MORON, WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING TO MY VAN ANYWAY? YOU ARE DEFACING AND CHANGING MY PROPERTY FROM THE WAY I WANT IT, GET YOUR GODDAMN HANDS AWAY FROM MY VEHICLE OR I WILL BE FORCED TO RESTRAIN YOU FROM YOUR PRESENT ACTIVITIES.’ “And what do you think the freak does? He just stands there. Continues wiping away the words on my van. Ignores me, doesn’t even look at me. And you know how I hate to be ignored by anybody. Makes me feel like I’m not even a human being. I reach over and grab the sucker’s arm so he can’t wash off another word and he jerks it back responding, ‘Don’t touch me you miserable queer. I’m a black belt in karate and I’ll rip that damn dress off you right now and beat you to a pulp.’ “I just laughed and said, ‘Karate, huh? I’m not the least bit worried about that fake trash. The UFC exposed that style of fighting as a total fraud style a long time ago.’ “So then, with my catlike reflexes, I reached out and tagged the jeweler right in the jaw. He dropped the sponge and pan of water and shot for a takedown. I stuffed it and we wrestled around on the sidewalk for awhile. I held him down and smashed his face with numerous elbows and every time he would start to rise I would jab him in the nose. He finally got to his feet, I drew back and pummeled him a good one in the eye. He staggered backwards but caught himself before falling, then he turned and ran into his jewelry store. I suddenly remembered we were fighting on main street so I scanned the area for witnesses. Amazingly no one was around. I ran into the store after the little freak and he hit me with a club as I entered. My adrenaline was surging by that point, I was in pure wild-animal mode so I didn’t feel a thing and I pushed over one of the big jewelry cases on top of him and heard a loud squeal. I revolved around for awhile wrecking other stuff in the place and then he pushed the big jewelry case off of his chest. He squirmed out and got to his feet and I took his back and quickly applied a rear naked choke that I’d learned in the jungles of Vietnam. I started pushing him forward, forcing him outside as I held the choke tight, but he tripped before we got out the door and I fell over and lost the hold. I pushed myself up while he was still down and started punching him in the face while screaming, ‘PROPERTY IS NINE-TENTHS OF THE LAW YOU DAMN CON-MAN JEWELRY STORE RIP-OFF ARTIST, DON’T EVER MESS WITH MY VAN AGAIN, THIS IS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, I FOUGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY WHILE YOU LAID AT HOME LIVING OFF MY BLOOD, YOU BOTTOMCRAWLER. I HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND I’LL WRITE WHATEVER THE HELL I WANT ON MY PROPERTY AND YOU WILL NEVER ERASE IT, DO YOU HEAR ME?’ “Then I heard blaring sirens and saw cops bolting out of their cars and I tried to flee but they tackled me on the sidewalk when I ran out the door. I fought them off the best I could, resisting the arrest, and that’s when you guys must have pulled up. The cops took me to the precinct and dragged me to the rear and started wailing away on me, calling me a STUPID HIPPY and a SLIMY COMMUNIST the entire time. Apparently one of the cops was related to the jewelry store owner because he was especially violent, attacking my face and neck as hard as he could. Finally they threw me into a jail cell but somehow my politician friend, Senator Jacob Bonnecamp Rawlings III from South Dakota found out that I was in trouble and made a phone call and I was out of jail after only six hours. He told them if they didn’t comply there would be hell to pay and they did believe him.” “Jesus, what a story,” I said. “Hand me that bottle of whiskey. I need a drink after such a long tale of violence and hysteria.” I lifted the bottle up and drank a good portion. It scalded all the way down my throat. But soon I felt a wonderful surge of vigor and relaxation travel over my body in waves when the liquor hit my stomach. I handed the bottle back to Curtis and stood up. “So how do you feel about everything that happened?” I said. “Well, you know how when you kick a dog and they run off screeching, Aargch, aargch, aargch... like that?” He made a high-pitched, wounded-dog noise. “Yeah,” I said. “Or, do you know how you feel when you’re riding with one of your buddies and they’re going over 100 miles per hour and your back is pressed against the seat and your eyes are open wide as far as they’ll go and you think you’re gonna die?” “Yeah.” “Well, that’s about how I feel right now. Both of those things combined. Like a dog that’s had the feces kicked out of him and like I’m racing to my death at over 100 miles per hour.” “Damn, that’s pretty bad, Curtis. Sorry to hear that. But you realize we lost $1,200 because of your little mishap with the jewelry story owner, don’t you?” “I know. Again, I apologize.” I nodded. “Apology accepted.” I turned to walk to my car. “Hey Sam,” Curtis said. “I still want to be your roadie. We’re still planning on doing that little club tour down south soon, right?” I went back over to the porch and stuck my hands in my pockets. I stood in front of him and looked him directly in the eye. “I don’t really know, Curtis. You caused us to lose a lot of money and we need to have a reliable person to help us at our gigs. You’ve shown yourself to be a great worker and all before, and you’ve really helped us out a lot previously, but we just can’t have you getting in trouble and fighting the citizens of the towns that we play in. I think you’re starting to hamper our band’s progress a little.” “Ah, come on, Sam. It was just one little scuffle. It happened only once. It was nothing at all, it wasn’t even my fault.” “I’m sorry, Curtis. I think we’re going to have to relieve you of your roadie duties and find somebody else. You’re just a little too wild of a spirit for us.” “Don’t say that, Sam. I really want to continue being your roadie. I’ve been getting a lot of incredibly sexy women from being associated with your band. They are real freaks, too. Most of the chicks love it when I dress up in drag.” “Well, I’m willing to give you another chance, Curtis. But I’ll have to discuss it with the other band members to see what they think. At the moment though, our decision is to find someone else. But I’ll come back and talk to you again soon and let you know what our final decision is. Don’t get your hopes up too much though. I’m sorry, Curtis. I’m glad you’re out of jail now. Best of luck to you in the future and I hope your face heals up soon.” I told the other members of Vestigial Speculation that Curtis wanted to remain our roadie, that he was very eager to continue working for us, but they still wanted to fire him. We decided as a band to find a more reliable person who wasn’t quite so eccentric. -end(Thanks for reading. If you have any comments, or know of any magazines that would like to publish this story, please contact the author: zevi_35711@yahoo.com. Also, you would be helping out the author greatly if you purchased one of his books from Amazon.com or another online book store of your choice. Thanks again.) http://www.youtube.com/user/zevi35711 http://becomeguitaristfromhell.blogspot.com/ http://zombiesofthereddescent.blogspot.com/ Bio: Jason Earls is the author of Cocoon of Terror (Afterbirth Books), Heartless Bastard In Ecstasy, How to Become a Guitar Player from Hell, Zombies of the Red Descent, If(Sid_Vicious == TRUE && Alan_Turing == TRUE) {ERROR_Cyberpunk(); }, Red Zen, and 0.136101521283655... all available at Amazon.com and other online book stores. His fiction and mathematical work have been published in Red Scream, Yankee Pot Roast, M-Brane SF, Scientia Magna, three of Clifford Pickover’s books, Mathworld.com, AlienSkin, Recreational and Educational Computing, Escaping Elsewhere, Neometropolis, Thirteen, Dogmatika, Prime Curios, the Online Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences, OG’s Speculative Fiction, Nocturnal Ooze, Bust Down the Door and Eat All the Chickens and other publications. He currently resides in Oklahoma with his wife, Christine.