With Theatre of Pain on a break, Mike learned enough about the internet to find a collection of Mötley Crüe lyrics, and he diligently tried to memorize the words. He got John to download the Crüe’s hits onto one of Katie’s tossed-aside, early issue iPods, and he spent hours walking the neighborhoods around his mother’s house, blasting the music while—he hoped—working off his thickening gut.
Usually after Days of Our Lives, he’d strap on the iPod and walk until dinner. With the volume in his ears cranked up to stage levels, sometimes he got so caught up in the music that he’d let loose with lyrics right there on the sidewalk. During Crüe classics like “Same Ol’ Situation” or “Girls Girls Girls,” he would spontaneously start aping the histrionic stage routines. With his long hair hiding the headphones, even those who passed close by couldn’t tell he was plugged in. He was just a wild-haired, seedy-looking forty-five-year-old, gesticulating madly while shrieking about the need to shout at the Devil:
“He’ll be the blood between your thighs!!!”
He learned how to lighten his own hair and tease it up so as to disguise the thinning parts. He recorded a Mötley Crüe concert on VH1 Classic and studied it like the Zapruder film, learning all of Vince Neil’s moves. John always ragged Mike about his laziness, but he resolved to become the best pretend Vince Neil the tribute act circuit ever saw.
So it was a humiliating blow when D.J. called to fire him.
“What the fuck, man?” Mike demanded.
“Dude, it just wasn’t working. We had a chance to pull this Danny kid out of a Poison act in Gurnee, we had to go for it. It’s just a better fit.”
“Poison is not the Crüe!” Mike sneered, genuinely offended.
“Dude, they really kinda are.”
An awkward silence fell over them. Mike was planning to play his trump card under better circumstances, but suddenly this was it.
“All right. Well, look,” he began, shifting gears quickly. “I was waiting to find the right time to bring you in on this, but…” He paused for effect. “I want to get Gravel Rash back together. I want you to manage us.”
D.J. coughed.
“Enough with this tribute band bullshit,” Mike said haughtily. “Gravel Rash never had its best shot. I still got the chops; you said so. So I couldn’t remember the words to fucking Crüe songs? Watch how I still kick the shit outta ‘Do Ya Like a Dog.’”
“Dude…”
“Taggert hasn’t lost a fucking step. The band was always just me and him. We’ll fill in with some kick-ass local guys, dust off the old set list. Start writing again. The Rash is back, motherfucker!”
“Dude,” D.J. said with zero tact. “Nobody knows who the fuck you are.”
Mike took the gut shot. “Bullshit! You did! The first time I got you on the phone, I thought you were gonna cum in your pants, you were such a Rash fan.”
“Yeah, when I was seventeen. Everybody around here knew who you were when they were seventeen. Now they’re, like, forty. They got jobs, kids. If their wives let them out of the house at all, they’re gonna go see the real Ozzy, or a fake Crüe, before they waste time on some band that never even got an album out to help them remember who the fuck you were.
“And if they do remember you, they’re remembering you at your peak. Time has fucked you up, man. And I’ve seen Jay Taggert.”
Mike simmered to keep from getting sad.
“Look,” D.J. said earnestly. “Thanks for filling in for us, we appreciated it. Hey, that Poison in Gurnee is still looking for a Bret Michaels. I could make a call, if you—”
Mike slammed shut the cell phone.
* * *
While licking his wounds with Taggert a few days later, Mike was offered a job. Taggert played with Cashmere, a steadily employed wedding band. Their set list ranged from the fifties to Kings of Leon, with enough white boy hip-hop and cowboy hat shitkickers to play to the widest demographic possible. Taggert, who took over his father’s carpet store over ten years ago, considered it a sweet deal, pulling in some extra money with his guitar while also getting out of the house most Saturday nights.
The wife of their sound guy just had a premature baby and things were dicey at home, so Cashmere needed someone for the next several weeks. Taggert could tell that Mike was hurting from the Theatre of Pain thing, and he also knew Mike needed money. If the job lasted into the busy summer season, he could clear a few grand, easy.
The first job with Cashmere was at the Radisson in Delavan, between Holt City and Milwaukee. Taggert insisted that Mike find himself a tuxedo, such was the level of panache that Cashmere brought to their gigs. After learning that renting a tux would almost eat up his whole take for the evening, Mike asked his mother about the boxes of his father’s things still in the walk-in attic space over the attached garage. The old man, with his cocktail parties and big fucking deals, must have owned his own tux.
“It’d be thirty years old!” his mother said doubtfully, surprised and skittish at the unexpected mention of those boxes of Larry’s things. “Who knows what the moths have done?”
“It’d be fine for one night,” Mike said. “I just need to take this one job to see if it’s even anything I want to do. It’s probably bullshit.”
“Mike,” she scolded.
“Sorry,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Come on, will you help me dig through his stuff?”
Her resistance to revisit the past seemed to fade as her troubled, distant son asked for her help. He took things from her all the time, but she couldn’t recall him ever asking for something.
“It might just fit,” she said, stroking her chin and studying his narrow frame as she warmed to the project.
* * *
Mike brought in a folding chair and settled his mother into the attic, its chalky air made thick by the sun beating down on the garage roof. Mike marveled at the crap thrown in here: an old toboggan, the cage for a pair of gerbils John and Mike tried to raise when Mike was barely ten, his father’s golf clubs. The boxes of Larry’s clothes were stacked neatly in the center of the space.
Rose sat with silent apprehension as Mike pulled open the first box. She sighed as she stood and walked to the box, touching the fabrics lovingly. She brought the lapel of one of the suit coats to her nose and breathed in hopefully, but found nothing of Larry there.
Uncomfortable with the moment he was sharing with his mother, Mike dug deeper into the box. He stopped with a jolt as he came to a jade blue jacket that cut through the muted tones of all of Larry’s other wardrobe.
“It’s the suit. From the picture,” he smiled. “The James Bond suit!”
She smiled as she took the jacket. “Oh, how I hated this thing. I thought it made him look like a gigolo.”
The memories rode in like a warm breeze, and then Rose lowered the jacket back into the box.
“No, wait. This is it,” Mike said with restrained enthusiasm, holding the jacket before him to estimate its fit. “This is hardcore.”
“You said you needed a tuxedo.”
“Nah,” he said, warming to the image. “This’ll be all right.” He pulled it on over his mangy T-shirt. “What do you think?”
The sleeves exposed his wrists by over an inch, and the jacket hung loosely on his wiry frame. But the intense blue and the retro cut had a certain rock-and-roll flare.
Rose delighted in seeing Mike wearing anything resembling adult clothing. “It’s not bad,” she said, still unsure.
Mike felt her hesitation and thought he was being insensitive to her memories being stirred up here. “I don’t have to, if…”
She straightened the lapels, then stood back to admire the view. “If this will help get you a job, your father would be happy for you to have it.”