My Boyfriend Left Me for Jesus
Twenty-five years ago today, I exited my mama’s womb center stage and stormed Planet Earth, guns blazing, taking no prisoners. Crashes of lightning and thunder announced my birth. A cyclone killed nearly 600 people in Bangladesh and left half a million homeless. I’m not saying I had anything to do with that shit, but when a force like mine is born, the Universe takes notice. Cause and effect. Yin and yang. Pomp and circumstance.
Mom says I screamed nonstop for an hour after she squirted me out. I’ve taken a few breaks to catch my breath since, but for the most part, I’m still screaming today.
My name is Letty Dillinger, and I was born to rock your face off.
If you come to one of my shows, you’ll leave either wanting to be me or wanting to do me.
My music has that effect on people. Or it will once I bust out of these shackles of banality and show the world what I’m made of.
I’m the lead singer and bass player for an all-chick, ’70s-style rock band, Cherry Buzz Float. Yeah, the name’s a little lame, but guys like cherries and buzzes and tits that float on the water.
Me and my bandmates play up the bad-girl attitude to appeal to our audience, but I’m not really that pretentious. For me, life is about the music. That amazing ride you catch when the notes and rhythms snap into place, and you connect with the human beings involved in shaping audio beauty.
As much as I love the orgasms my bass gives me when I sit on the monitor and hit a low C, music is even better when people jump into the fray of physics and take it to a higher level.
Music is about my drummer Jinx—the female version of John Fucking Bonham on crack—beating the shit out of her skins in perfect sync with my bass vibrating the walls like an earthquake.
Music is about fishing for the right notes to match Kate’s awesome guitar riffs and complementing her screaming highs with my window-rattling lows.
Music is about freeing the lyrics my heart holds dear and watching meaning root, blossom, and spread like a virus across our fans’ faces.
Music is about The Rock, the roll, and the crazy shit that comes with the territory.
At least when I’m onstage, it is.
Real life is a lot less glamorous. I only play live a couple times a month these days. The band’s not really moving in the direction I’d like it to, and I sure as shit ain’t making any cash playing frat parties for drunk, rich squids.
Fuckin’ dreams. Who needs ’em?
I live in Athens, Georgia. It’s December 1. Cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra. The college kids are wrapping up fall semester and heading home soon. Trixies, squids, and townies troll downtown, drunk and looking for temporary love when they should be banging their books at the library. I glance wistfully out the window from my barstool perch. Instead of raising hell with my friends, I’m sitting alone at BAR-k, the bar whose clever name salutes the local football team (go Dawgs!), on my birthday, wondering where my life went wrong.
“Why the long face?” Bartender Rob tosses a stained white towel over his shoulder and leans across the nicked wood. He rests his meaty elbows in a puddle of liquor leftovers. I eye the spot and manage to keep my tongue in my mouth.
No licking the bar. You’re not drunk enough. Yet.
I do love me some booze, and I’m living off the coins I found in my couch cushions until payday. With a calloused index finger, I stir my vodka martini—the one birthday present I allowed my broke-ass self to buy.
“The short version? My boyfriend left me for Jesus. I’m stuck in a dead-end waitressing job, clogging people’s arteries at Fat Johnny’s Barbeque Shack, making jack shit. I’m earning even less busting ass at the gig I want to be doing.”
The part about my boyfriend is a white lie. He’s really just a guy I was bonking for a while. Technicality. But the rest is one hundred percent truth.
“No one gives a mangy monkey boner about art anymore. Nothing but a bunch of zero-talent sellouts in this fucking town.” I meet Rob’s eyes. “Man, I’m twenty-five today, and I have nothing to show for it.”
Rob straightens. “My mama always said, ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.’”
I shake my head. “Fuck that. I’d rather starve than sell out.”
Yeah, I’m a little rabid about this particular stick-to-your-guns philosophy. Some people find strength in religion. I believe in music, and I defend it with everything I’ve got, even when things don’t go my way.
I played the unfortunate role of a human pinball paddled back and forth between my divorced parents for most of my life. In my darkest moments, solace and light came from listening to my mom’s ’70s cassette tapes. For a few years, music was my only friend. Nobody else understood me. It helped me through the rough patches and gave me motivation to pick up the bass at fourteen.
Even though I haven’t made it yet, music is still the one thing that keeps me steady and sane. You don’t fuck with shit that does you right. Especially when it’s all you’ve got.
I just wish …
If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.
“Happy fucking birthday,” Rob says.
“Yeah, cheers, asshole.” I raise my glass and swallow the whole drink in three big gulps. Rob snickers and wanders over to a customer waving bills at him from the register.
The guy one seat away from me laughs, so I glance at him. He’s hunched over the bar like he’s guarding his drink, with his head turned toward me. Five o’ clock shadow, pierced eyebrow, dark brown fauxhawk, plugs in his earlobes—not too big, though. He wears a black wool pea coat-looking thing, jeans, and a pair of dark sunglasses.
“Something funny, Shades?” I ask.
“Your boyfriend leaving you for Jesus.” He has kind of a gruff voice. His face is okay, but it’s hard to tell what he really looks like with those glasses covering his most important features. I like his hands, though. They’re rough like mine.
“I knew something was wrong with him when he complained about me asking for anal. What guy doesn’t want anal?” I twirl my empty glass by its long stem. “He was kind of a dick trickle, so it’s not like I miss him or anything. Though the sex was decent. Better than my current prospects.”
Damn, I’m dying for another drink. Maybe just one more. I’m pretty sure I got a couple bucks stuffed in my car’s ashtray for emergencies. I shoot a bird at Rob, who nods.
“Definitely something wrong with a guy who doesn’t want to sodomize his woman.” Shades takes a sip from his glass. A wrist tattoo peeks out from his coat sleeve. I can’t tell what it is.
“Nah, I wanted to sodomize him. He wasn’t on board with the plan. That’s when the Holier Than Thou shit started. ‘Jesus doesn’t approve of butt-fucking.’ Jesus this. Jesus that. What the hell, man? Don’t you think Jesus would want you to be happy? How will you ever be happy if you don’t try new things? Christ, it’s just a dildo up the ass. Loosen the fuck up.”
Shades chokes on his drink, wipes his mouth with a coat sleeve, and laughs. Gorgeous teeth.
A glass slides across the bar from Rob a few feet away. I stop it with my open hand and smile.
Rob grins and saunters over. “I got you this Flaming Armadillo for your birthday, my dear. I hope it fits.” He flicks his lighter and ignites the liquid in the glass. Blue flames dance. I salivate.
“Rob, it’s perfect. You shouldn’t have.”
“You’re welcome.”
I pick up the shot and blow it out. To another year of dream chasing. Maybe this’ll be the one where I finally make it big. “Happy birthday to me.”
Gulp. Down the chute it goes, and I lose five IQ points as the alcohol gets busy with my already precarious brain chemistry. At least somebody’s getting some action.
Shades raises his glass and shoots whatever he’s drinking. “Did you make a wish?”
I’m not telling my real wish. That shit won’t come true if you spill it. Instead, I say, “All I want for my birthday is to get fucked unconscious with no strings attached.” Not a lie.
“What a coincidence. I’ve got a big dick, a bar tab, and the local cab company’s number on speed dial.” The guy’s eyes bore into me from behind the dark lenses, and I have a momentary lapse in vaginal secretion control.
Clean up on aisle twelve, stat!
His pierced eyebrow arches, his lips part to reveal an orthodontist’s magnum opus, and Shades suddenly looks pretty fucking hot.
I know it’s the alcohol and my raging libido ganging up on me. I know tomorrow morning, this motherfucker is gonna turn out to be the ugliest fucking turd a worm-infested dog ever shat. I know it’s the insecurities from my professional life urging me to take unwarranted risks in my personal life. But by God, if I don’t get laid tonight, my cooter will go nuclear and wipe out a city block.
Nobody wants that.
I face the guy full on and wave him into the empty stool between us. My brain sloshes every time I move my head. Shades scoots over, leaving his empty glass behind. Now that he’s closer, I take a good look at him. Mostly clean. Fingernails are free of dirt. Smells nice.
“What’s your name, pussycat?” he says.
I glance down at his lap in hopes of catching a hint of this Woodrow he’s so damn proud of. Too dark to see anything, so I lay a hand on his thigh. “Now why would you want to go and complicate shit by asking my name? Just call me Lucky. ’Cause you’re getting Lucky tonight, Shades.”
Yeah, I said that. I guess this means I’m committed. I really hope the dick comes through for me. I stretch my hand up a little higher and brush … oh yeah, there it is. Plumped halfway down his thigh and more stubborn than me.
Happy birthday, indeed.
“Okay, Lucky. It’s you, me, a trip to the adult toy store, and a hotel.” He pulls out his wallet and tosses a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. Shit, he wasn’t kidding. About anything.
Rob heads over. He can smell big money a mile away.
“Give me a bottle of tequila. To go.” Shades stands up and readjusts his boner.
As they negotiate the terms of the hostage tequila’s release, I watch this dude. He’s taller than me—who isn’t?—and has a laid-back, old-school vibe about him despite the modern tattoos and piercings. I like it. He must be as desperate as I am to get laid, otherwise he wouldn’t be jerking off Ben Franklin for a bottle of cheap tequila and an even cheaper date.
I stand, and the floor tilts left. I grab the back of the barstool. Oh yeah, this is gonna be some fun shit. Halfway in the bag already, and I have some guy I never met taking me out for drinks and dildos.
But you know what? It’s my birthday, and I’m horny as a teenager discovering Internet porn. I’ll never see this asshole again. Fuck it.
Shades tucks the brown-wrapped bottle under his arm and faces me. Still with the glasses, yet now I’m kinda grateful for them. Once my shameless shame is complete, I want to remember as little of his face as possible.
“Ready to rock, Lucky?”
I snort. “I was born ready.”
Rob salutes me behind him. “Have fun.”
“Oh, I will.” And out the door I go with a man I hope will have me living up to my new name in about ten minutes.
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