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No one has ever filmed me in the shower. For a lot of reasons. Here's one: I am not the lead singer of The Killers. Never have I starred in a music video where I spit arcs of bathwater and strain my AutoTuned lungs. There's an epiphany most of us reach at a relatively young age, so here goes: Lord, I am not a rock star.
Believe me, I've tried. That three-day beard, that cowboy shirt with roses on the shoulders. Those pipe cleaner jeans. Had them all. And one night — and one night only — I had a groupie.
Here's what I know about groupie sex: even John Mayer does it. It's faceless. Demeaning. Autographs scrawled under shirts and panty bouquets onstage. Lars Ulrich complementing his bass solos with handjobs. Groupie sex might be why the preacher Jimmy Lee Swaggart called rock music the "new pornography," and why Swaggart's first cousin Jerry Lee Lewis had to stand up when he banged out "Great Balls of Fire."
At the very least, the rock star should have more tattoos than the groupie.
There too, I flunked.
I was going to college in Oregon when my friend Jordaan emailed, wanting me to arrange a gig. Jordaan's a Canadian singer-songwriter who sings about horse glue and transsexual housewives. He's amazing. That spring, he was touring cross-country on a Greyhound bus, playing house shows and coffee shops. So I said sure, let's do an acoustic show together at my apartment. We'll invite all my folky friends. It'll be transcendental and shit.
The night of the show, my landlord called. The neighbor had caught wind, felt concerned about these "guitars." Rock stars don't have to deal with eighty-year-old neighbors, but I did. My landlord, who had a soul patch and sympathy, told us we could have the show two doors down, at an unoccupied apartment, so long as we kept the peace and didn't spill anything.
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All I knew was her name, Juniper, and that my friend James had been weakly pining after this name for a long time, like a week.
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So we spread the word and the kids came. We sat in a circle, twenty-odd and earnest all, on the carpet of an empty living room lit by a single lamp lugged over from my place. I played first, to warm up the crowd: finger-picked Townes Van Zandt rip-offs of my own composition, very delicate and emotional, oh boy. Between the first and second songs, a girl moved to sit next to me. She smiled. After the last song, she reached over and gave me a high five. She had dreadlocks and sculpted eyebrows. I didn't know her very well. All I knew was her name, Juniper, and that my friend James had been weakly pining after this name for a long time, like a week.
When the show finished, our after-party consisted of drinking Bud Lights in the empty kitchen. Juniper walked up to me and put her can against her forehead. "I like your songs," she said. "You remind me of Van Morrison or something. I like the song that goes" — and she sang, a little shy but with a nice rasp — "my life, my life, I've danced on a knife."
"Thanks," I said. It wasn't even my line. It was stolen. "Are you hot?" I asked, pointing at the can.
She shrugged. We made a lot of significant eye contact.
"You look hot," I said.
She rolled her eyes and laughed.
Here's a partial list of people who have handled that situation better than me: Tommy Lee, Rod Stewart, Ian Gillan, and those fat guys in Uriah Heep.
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, featuring curious yet marvelous infusions of cucumber and rose petal.
