When Michael Reyji Ray took my hand on that cold autumn night and led me across the parking lot, it felt as if all my dreams had come true.
As we walked, I risked a glance at the god beside me.
Looking at Michael, even sideways on, was like looking at the sun. He was bright and blinding. Everything was clear as clear. Michael’s skin shone. His eyes were glittering stars. All around him was light.
When I was fifteen years old, the doctors found a life-threatening tumour. I’d nearly died. Now at sixteen, I’d gone to heaven. Or at least stumbled upon the meaning of life. His name was Michael Reyji Ray and he was my happily ever after. Our carriage awaited us: a giant black tour bus with wasp-eye wing mirrors and tube-light steps.
The world was brighter than it had ever been and time had slowed so I could take it all in.
‘So you like our band, do you?’ Michael asked me.
I nodded and nodded. ‘I’ve listened to Crimson’s Big Dreams album probably a thousand times. You have no idea what that album means to me. It literally saved my life.’
Michael chuckled. ‘Well, I am honoured.’
‘This is a fairy tale,’ I told Michael as he escorted me up the sharp metal tour-bus steps and into rock and roll fantasy land. ‘I can’t believe this is really happening.’
Everything on the bus was bright, like Michael’s presence had lit it up. The leather sofas gleamed, the chrome tables sparkled and spotlights twinkled like shy little stars.
Bottles of Guinness stood on the bar beside magnums of champagne. There were huge meat pies cut into slices, cocktail sausages and loaves of brown bread.
‘Who’s all the food for?’ I asked.
‘You. If you want it.’
The bus was empty when we boarded, except for a driver lounging in the front seat, feet on the dashboard. He wore a black-leather eye mask and snored loudly.
Michael flicked the driver’s nose playfully and shouted, ‘Danny!’
The driver fell about in his seat, sitting upright and ripping the mask from his eyes.
When he saw Michael, he looked momentarily terrified. ‘Shit. Shit.’
Michael’s eyes were stern as he ruffled Danny’s hair. ‘Have you been on the beers, Danny boy?’
Danny coughed a smoker’s cough. ‘Just sleeping. Power nap.’
‘Good lad,’ said Michael. ‘We don’t want you dozing at the wheel later on. We have a lot of good people on this bus.’
Danny pulled his mask back on his face.
Michael offered me a seat on a leather sofa and grabbed two Grolsch beers from a mini-bar fridge. ‘You’re over eighteen, right?’ He winked, popping open a beer and handing it to me.
I nodded quickly.
‘I know they don’t let you drink until you’re twenty-one in this country,’ said Michael. ‘But this bus is my home town of Dublin. International soil. And in Dublin, you can go to the pub when you’re eighteen.’
I nodded and nodded, a big, dumb grin on my face. He thought I was eighteen!
‘That is one totally cool jacket you have on there.’
I smiled, too shy to meet his gaze.
‘And with a jacket like that you can’t drink orange squash, can you?’ said Michael. ‘You’ve got to go the whole way. Sex and drugs and rock and roll.’
I kept nodding, swigging from the beer bottle.
‘Do you know what?’ said Michael. ‘You are a very beautiful girl. You’re like a little fairy. All tiny and delicate. I can’t stand women getting muscly like men. It looks wrong.’
As Michael was laying on the charm, Paul Graves and his wife climbed on the bus. Paul grabbed a magnum of champagne and moved to the back without saying a word.
‘Tell me about yourself,’ said Michael. ‘What brings you out to see a load of old men play music on a cold night?’
‘I love your music. I went crazy when I got tickets for tonight. Totally crazy. Everyone knew the gig would sell out.’
Michael watched me intently, his eyes twinkly and black. It didn’t feel like a forty-something man picking up a sixteen-year-old. It felt like the biggest rush of my life.
‘Hey, will you do something for me?’ said Michael.
‘Anything,’ I gushed, every bit the idiot fan.
‘Paul has got a huff on tonight because we cut one of his songs. Hop on down the bus and tell him you were glad we didn’t play “Come On Home”. Can you do that?’
‘You want me to … what?’
Michael’s eyes glittered. ‘Just tell him. Tell him you don’t like “Come On Home”.’ He patted my bottom. ‘Off you go. Go on, kiddo. I dare you.’
I swallowed and got up. In a daze I wandered down the bus and stood right in front of Paul Graves, who was sitting with his wife. The pair had their heads close together.
I cleared my throat and squeaked: ‘I-don’t-like-come-on-home. I’m-glad-you-didn’t-play-it.’
Paul looked up, eyes slitted and angry. ‘What?’
His beautiful blonde wife said, ‘Michael must have told her to say it, Paul. The little shit-stirrer.’
I scurried back to Michael, who was laughing. He folded me into his arms and said: ‘Well done. Well done. Oh Jesus, the look on his face.’
We talked and talked after that. Or rather, Michael asked questions and I talked. I got enthusiastic about Marvel and manga comics, showed him the Celtic cross tattoo I’d made on my wrist with a needle and black ink and told him about my cancer. Michael learned all about my treatment and my mother and what life had been like growing up.
I told Michael things I hadn’t even told my closest friends – stuff about my mom using the San Francisco free-love no-rules culture to justify being a lousy parent, and how unsuitable her life was for children. How if it hadn’t been for Dee, we would have been taken away from her.
‘My mom wasn’t even up-to-date,’ I said. ‘All that hippy stuff passed through years before Dee and I were born. She clung on to it for dear life.’
I went into huge detail about my cancer too. How embarrassing the treatment was for a teenager just getting to know her body. Having things stuck here and there, being wheeled around without underwear on. So bad. And then having all my hair falling out.
‘The tumour was so big they had to cut it in half to get it out,’ I told him. ‘Do you know what helped me heal?’
‘What?’ Michael asked, dark eyes big and beautiful and fascinated.
‘You, Crimson and Big Dreams.’ I looked at my hands, feeling awkward. ‘You got me through some really bad times. Without your music, I honestly don’t think I would have got through the treatment. You gave me a reason to live.’
‘We touched something pretty deep when we made that album,’ said Michael. ‘It was special, that one. And it takes a special person to feel it too.’
I grinned.
Michael encouraged me to talk so much about myself that night, while he sat and listened. As I talked, he touched and twisted the leather bracelets on my arm and the chunky silver chains around my neck.
‘You’re quite a girl,’ he said. ‘You’ve really been through it. We’ve had a hard life, the pair of us. Harder than most.’
My eyes widened. ‘Did you get sick too when you were younger?’
‘No. But I had a bad time growing up.’
‘Really?’ I was fascinated.
Michael nodded. ‘My dad was a vicious bastard. Talked with his fists.’ He pulled up his black jeans and showed me a long, red scar running over his knee and down his calf. ‘I saw the bone poking out of that, once upon a time. But he made me fearless, the old sod. When someone that big pushes you around, you’re not afraid of anyone.’
‘Your mother—’
‘Died, God rest her soul. When I was two. I don’t remember her. Probably better that way.’
I think Michael’s sadness might have been real. But it’s hard to know, looking back. He was so good at fooling people. Maybe he was sad, but sad about something else. Who knows?
‘But that’s life, isn’t it?’ Michael continued. ‘You should know. You’ve been through it too.’
As Michael and I talked, crew members and girls filtered onto the bus. Some of the girls I recognized from the stage doors – teenagers, shivering in short dresses and Wonderbras. It seemed kind of sleazy, those young girls with bare legs, sitting with old rock guys. But Michael and I were different. We had a soul connection.
Michael whispered in my ear, ‘It’s getting a bit noisy. Let’s go to the bedroom.’ He grabbed a whiskey bottle and a few beers, then led me by the hand into the master bedroom at the back of the bus.
I hesitated at the door, feeling suddenly very sober. The flecks of grey in Michael’s stubble and the lines in his face were stark under strip lighting. I suddenly felt my age. A young, naive teenager with a much older man.
‘What’s up?’ Michael asked. ‘You look scared stiff.’
I tried to laugh off my nerves and misgivings. ‘No. Of course not.’
‘What, you don’t like the bedroom or something?’
‘I love it,’ I insisted, nodding at the compact bedroom with cool cube-patterned sheets and plump cream pillows. ‘It’s nicer than my apartment.’
‘Come here then.’ Michael pulled me forward, and I stumbled inside.
Michael closed the door behind us, then led me to the bed. ‘Are you sure you’re not nervous? You seem a little terrified.’
I tried to laugh again as Michael put on music: his own.
‘Just a little cold.’
As Michael undressed me, my body grew stiffer. He really was so much older. And was it okay to have sex? The hospital said I was fully healed, but was I?
Michael must have noticed I looked frightened, because he said: ‘I thought you’d done this before, honey. You really do look scared stiff.’
I faked a smile then, embarrassed. The last thing I wanted was to look inexperienced or naive.
‘No,’ I said, words steely. ‘Not at all.’
‘Good,’ said Michael. ‘We don’t want any amateurs here. This isn’t amateur night.’
I helped Michael take my clothes off then and he kissed every part of my body from head to toe. At first, he stayed away from any sexual areas deliberately and completely. In short, he knew the moves and I was able to relax. A lot.
I did things that night that I’d never done before. Sex in three different positions. Oral sex, giving and receiving. Truthfully, I would have done anything to impress Michael and show him I definitely wasn’t nervous. Even though I was.
When the sex finished, Michael and I lay in each other’s arms. He stroked my hair and watched me for a long time, then fell asleep and snored. I looked at the walnut dash ceiling, thinking how crazy life was.
Not so long ago, I’d been in a hospital bed, looking at white Styrofoam tiles and thinking they might be the last thing I would ever see.
Now I was in the arms of Michael Reyji Ray. This was my rebirth. A new beginning.
I’d spent my life running with a heavy backpack. Now finally, I could take it off.
Michael and I would get married and live happily ever after, just like a fairy tale.
I was sure of it.