Now free from all devices, it was like surfacing from a deep-sea dive. We could hear and breathe normally again. In an hour’s time, we’d be ushered out of the arena under heavy security to the chorus of all those little screamers damaging their vocal chords just to let us know how much they loved and appreciated us. There would be pushing and cameras flashing and middle-aged men fighting to keep the makeshift fences from toppling over in the crush of overeager fans determined to adore us to frickin’ death.
But that was in an hour. Until then we were free to be the twenty-something guys we were instead of the larger-than-life perpetual teenagers our fans envisioned us to be. And with the veil of perfection lifted, we transformed into a group of frat boys trying to one up each other. In the short trek from the stage to our dressing room, I’d been shoved, punched, and grabbed in the ass. After five and a half years together, there was nothing off limits anymore.
“Can we all just take a moment to recognize our friend Dane here? I mean bravo, dude. It takes a special kind of stupid to trip over your own shoelace in front of a crowd of twenty-five thousand people.” Shawn clapped for our fallen brother before acting out a step-by-step replay of the entire event by pretending to trip and fake-slam his face into the floor. The slow-motion reenactment had us all in stitches.
“It came untied,” Dane grumbled, fixing us with his droopy, condemning stare. He had what was commonly referred to as bedroom eyes. You know, the kind that made a person look perpetually stoned? Even when Dane wasn’t high, like right now, he still had that ‘Dude, where’s my car?’ expression on his face. And it certainly hadn’t helped his cause when the guy had a spiritual awakening last year and shaved his head. Suddenly those eyes of his took center stage and, truth be told, he creeped the rest of us out in a Steve Buscemi kind of way. “And just so you know, while you dickheads were laughing your asses off, I had blood hemorrhaging from of my nose. I think it might even be broken. So, fuck you all.”
That only brought a fresh round of laughs. Certainly not the sympathy he desired but what did he expect? We’d all taken our tumbles on stage at one time or another. Dane’s clumsy ass wasn’t special by any means.
“You’re having your face fixed with plastic surgery, you say?” RJ flashed a satisfied smirk as he patted Dane’s shoulder. “I think that’s probably best.”
“Fuck you, dude. Your ass must be jealous of all the shit that comes out of your mouth.”
RJ made a show of speaking in a low tone as he addressed me personally. “He’s just upset because I matched with his mom on Tinder.”
Retaliation was swift with Dane jumping over a chair to get at RJ.
Completely ignoring the combat zone behind him, Shawn formed his hands into prayer and pleaded, “Please. Please let someone have Dane’s face plant on video. We could switch it to slo-mo and add a little music montage. No offense, Bodhi, but I’m getting tired of all your Barbie doll sex tapes.”
Oh god, don’t remind me. Shawn was referring to the special edition AnyDayNow collector set of dolls that some bigwig toy executive thought would be a moneymaker and preceded to sell the idea to our manager, also known as my father. Because we were just the hired help and had no real say in the business decisions, shit like those dolls flooded the market. Our images also adorned pillows, posters, key chains, and even toilet paper, where haters got to use our faces to wipe their shitty assholes. Sure, we got a cut of the profits, but was it really worth the loss of our dignity?
“Oh trust me, no offense taken,” I said, and meant it. If I never saw another Barbie doll of any kind for the rest of my life, I’d be a happy man. “I’m more than willing to hand over the YouTube crown to Dane here.”
He waved me off as if the words were beyond ridiculous. “Dude, it’s gonna take a lot more than me flopping face-first on stage to unseat your dolly’s gangbang sessions with Ken and GI Joe.”
When the faux Barbie dolls hit the store shelves, we tried to justify their existence by calling them action figures. “My action figure this” or “His action figure that.” It was our way of feeling better about the plastic, dickless versions of ourselves. And while everyone else’s doll was fairly well done, mine looked like a young Steven Tyler—had he been a boobless twelve-year-old girl. Okay sure, yes, I had the surfer boy fringed, shoulder-length dark brown hair… big, damn deal. A lot of guys had long hair without looking like chicks.
Anyway, as you might imagine, my doll was a hit. For entirely the wrong reasons. It took all of two days for videos to spring up on YouTube, starring my doll in bikinis, evening gowns, and high heel shoes.
The other guys harassed me relentlessly and what could I say? Had the stiletto been on the other foot, I never would have let them live it down. Still, it sucked that I couldn’t get behind my dolly the way the other guys had. In fact, every one of them had been thrilled with their likeness.
RJ scored with an Enrique Iglesias look-a-like doll.
Dane was more than stoked to discover his resembled the Dali Lama.
Shawn, or ‘Blackout Shawn’ as we knew him, couldn’t have been happier with his doppelganger. And why wouldn’t he be? For the first time in his life he had abs. His love of beer had resulted in a pregnancy pouch that was none too funny to our handlers, who expected nothing short of physical perfection from the five of us. But due to Shawn’s hilarious escapades with alcohol, he didn’t have the stamina in the gym that the rest of us had. Not to mention, he surely had brain damage after the many times he’d passed out in the last four years. So excuse me if I was a tad bit irritated that the guy who spent half his life draped over a toilet got a cooler doll than me.
And finally, there was Hunter. ‘The Sweet One’ as fans knew him. Oh Hunter. I mean if anyone deserved a pretty doll in our group, it was that guy. The dude spent more time in front of a mirror than anyone I knew. His hair alone took an hour to style, and don’t even get me started on his skin care regimen. Had I known charcoal masks were such a thing, I would have scooped the black residue out of the barbeque for him long ago.
Yet, instead of giving Hunter the high-maintenance doll he deserved, the toy makers inexplicably made him look like the ultimate player, complete with bulging muscles and a sexy come-hither expression.
Let me be very clear here when I say, Hunter was no ladies’ man. He wasn’t even a dude’s man. In fact, the oldest member of our band was as celibate as they came. Hunter was saving himself for marriage and wanted that same lofty commitment from his bandmates. You can imagine the brick wall he came up against when he explained the benefits of abstinence before marriage to the rest of us horndogs.
But a couple of years ago, after much debate, the four of us decided to open our minds to a new way of thinking… or at least humor Hunter with a stretch of celibacy. How hard could it be, right? Unfortunately, with our busses rolling through Sweden the first week of that crucial month, it was clear we’d chosen the wrong country to begin Hunter’s experiment.
“I keep telling you to report copyright infringements on YouTube,” Hunter lectured.
I groaned because it’s not like I hadn’t heard that exact same advice from his mouth numerous times before.
“It’s a doll, Hunter.” I replied matter of factly. “It doesn’t have any legal rights. Besides, don’t you think if I could prevent my Barbie from getting porked in front of a live audience, I would?”