tommy Rock

David Serafino

We do our drugs as a team, bandmates at my back because I'm Tommy Rock and everybody knows it except this punk taita. Punk taita got a dirty eye. I say keep putting that eyeball on me I'll stick it in my pocket. Taita says I got bad juju because he don't know I am juju. I could burn down this tepee with all the juju I got. Punk taita calls it his healing hut, but it's the same knock-off, tea-stained canvas tepee you see in lousy westerns and roadside picnic parks. This dude ain't Native American. He's Peruvian or Colombian or something. This whole place reeks of appropriation and Nag Champa, and soon as we're back on the bus, I'm gonna post on this guy. My people need to know you can't be using fake tepees, calling them healing huts, charging two hundred bucks a head, throwing on feathers with your Diesel jeans, playing Native American for unhip gringos. Fact is, a lot of these taitas turn out to be rapists. My eighty million followers need to know that Tommy Rock don't jibe with heartless manipulators.

Taita's cooking up some dishwater, gray and grassy-smelling. I drink the first cup and it hits me wrong, turns my guts like being on stage in middle school. You're supposed to drink three times, then ride the vomit comet to profound spiritual well-being. Marty and Van start upchucking into the plastic bucket the taita has provided. Lola seems out of it already, tapping her feet and fingers, giggling at a lizard climbing the wall. Woman can bash the drums, but she sucks at drugs. Me, I'm a showman, but my other talent is smoking cigarettes and glowering, so I chain-gang about a dozen and generate serious glower power, blowing smoke all over the taita.

The second cup tastes worse because you know what's coming. You wanna puke your tongue right out of your head, which is what I try to do, then settle for finishing my first pack of smokes. Good thing I brought back-ups. It's gotta be about two in the morning and I don't feel anything except sleepy, bored and basically vexed by this sex offender posing as Chief Joseph.

They say the third cup oughta fetch you, but all it does is make me dry heave, which is why I told the band to lock their phones in the bus. I'm leaking snot, drooling, tearing up like my therapist just dumped me. I really need to get outside, get some fresh air. All the healing in here makes it hard to breathe.

It's easier to puke with nobody watching. I throw up things I ate as a kid, old bubblegum, coins, fried worms, barfing up frecklejuice, stars like a million glow-in-the-dark pediatric e-pills, coming on like a migraine aura, wormy light beams wriggling over your skull looking for the cracked place to crawl in. I'm terrified my inner child will appear and treat me cruelly.

Back in the healing hut Lola's gotten hold of the taita's bongos and is teaching him a rhythm, hopefully raising his awareness of his own inadequacy qua taita. Van caught the lizard and he's trying to feed it flies, which is making Marty cry. I don't see much healing going on. We're supposed to be here to work on our issues, which means accepting the paycheck's never going to be equal because we aren't equals, I got a hundred A&R men who'd sign me solo, the chicks come to our concerts for me, so do the dudes, and that's just the truth and the way. All this squabbling over money is unbecoming. It makes us look corporate.

So I say to them, Band, I love you all, I really do, because if not you, then who, and love is all you need, though I also would like a glass of water, and I need us not to break up. You don't break up after three albums. It doesn't matter what you get paid, because it's four – there have to be four great albums, then you're immortal, so I ask you, what is money beside immortality? Would you rather be rich, or would you rather live forever? Marty says he'd rather be rich. Van, too. Lola keeps beating the bongos. Some other things are said, mostly by me, all of which are regrettable, many of which are drug-induced. Then I doff my fedora and go into the desert.

In the tepee there are no stars but me. Out here they're all over, sprinkled right there on the horizon, and I gotta hand it to these stars, man. I mean, I obviously shine brightest, but there are others, and they burn like me. I'm in my proper place, shaking hands, slapping backs, seeing, being seen. High living. The desert's a real nice set-up. Nothing tacky, pure class. That moon, for instance. That moon is bling. I'm gonna grab it, get it to my glam squad, have them hang it on a diamond chain for the Grammys. The moon's onto my scheme, though. She keeps her distance. Whatever, I can track that ho all night.

Except after a few hours the moon skedaddles, goes underground. Been up all night, guess she got sleepy, which I can understand, because I'm feeling snoozy myself. I should wander back to the tour bus, get some roadies to dig up the moon and load it onboard.

Problem is, somebody moved the bus. I told Gary not to hire that driver. I don't care if he's a cousin, you don't hire an alcoholic bus driver. This is exactly why we need a fourth album, because then you get a private jet. Instead, we've got Gary's alcoholic cousin. I try so, so hard to make people understand we're not just some rock-and-roll assholes. My band is incorporated in Delaware. I have fiduciary duties. I can't have some lush driving off with the bus, though that's a great song title. I'm gonna give that to my writers.

Okay, so the bus is gone. Also, somebody moved the tepee. Fine, no problem. Tommy Rock doesn't do problems, only opportunities. People get lost in the desert, so what? It's a total cliche with how often it happens. Happened to Jesus and Jim Morrison, and I've got better hair and abs than either of those guys, so I'm pretty confident. I can see the interviews. People need to know Tommy Rock can hack it in the desert. That he's not only immortal, but invincible.

Something's going on, sounds like a gig, so I wander over and there's a stadium shoved into this canyon like a poor man's Red Rocks. I ease through a crevasse into the amphitheater, up in the nosebleeds. Some nimrod beach bod slithers across the stage, perilously close to snakewalking. The sound up here is garbage. I flash my VIP smile like a badge and people clear a path until I'm near the stage. Must be some half-assed lookalike contest. The guy on stage does look a bit like me, got that dragon energy, but he can't sing a lick.

I figure I'll give the people some joy, jump up and jam with my doppelganger, but the crowd's getting pushy and security moves in. One of them grabs me so I deck him in the face, dodge a couple rent-a-pigs and rush the stage. People start booing. The fake Tommy Rock acts like he can't even see me, then somebody throws a cup of piss and the atmosphere turns hostile. I gotta chill these people out, so I hit my straddle pose and belt out STOP! Nobody stops. Somebody throws a shoe, which I throw back harder, grab the mic from the poseur in the Hammer pants and scream, “I'm the real Tommy Rock. I'm the one you love!” Security tackles me. I punch one guy so hard he turns to sand. The other guy, though, is a rock.

Fade in on a bloody, maybe broken hand. The rock is undamaged. The desert, smug.

I gotta keep on keeping on. I'm probably going the right way, but if not, whatever, I'll just announce a concert right here. First one to find me gets a private show. I'll crowdsurf outta here and into legend. Even easier, I'll just sing, because when I sing, people come. I belt out a bit of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, but I guess I only know the chorus. That's why I always keep a back-up teleprompter on the bus.

The sky blushes. I know the feeling. Maybe the drugs are wearing off. I hope so. I'm thirsty and tired and it's definitely hotel time. I'm not sure where the next hotel is, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. Doesn't matter. I've traveled so much I've literally become one with the universes, so these minor differences mean nothing. Still, it seems like something I should know. I remember my name, that's good. Thomas Augustus Arbuckle, no relation to Fatty or Jonathan Q. Probably the worst name you could give a kid, the direct cause of at least half the beatings I took before I got cool.

Sunrise shows I wasn't far from the tepee. It sits there like it's been waiting for me. I might kiss that taita. His cure worked. I've never been so happy to see the band. I might give them a raise. It would be nice if they were a little more desperate, combing the desert screaming my name, but I understand and I forgive and now we will be brothers and sisters again. Nobody sees me come in except the taita, who gets up to close the flap behind me. Marty and Van are a couple fried eggs, greasy and comforting. Lola's shooting frisky looks at the taita. They'd make a good couple. They both emit the same bad-touch vibe. 

I clear my throat and they all ignore me, but I don't even care, I'm so suffused with goodwill and I'm about to lay some wisdom on everybody. You can't trap healing in a tepee. You gotta go into the world, surrender to the beauty. This is the sublime state of my soul when Lola looks up from the bongos and says, “If they can autotune his voice, why don't we find an ugly guy who can sing, then autotune his face?”

I don't take it personally. It's the flagrant sexism that offends me, on behalf of my ugly male fans. I mean, we're a world-famous rock band, idolized by millions, ergo it is our duty to fix this broken world and you don't do that with snide, bigoted comments. But okay, I'll let it slide, because after all, there are no cameras. We gotta be ourselves sometimes.

Marty says he doesn't care if the band breaks up. He'll go back to school, or join the army. The army pays better and you get to go home sometimes.

“We're fine. He doesn't turn up by tomorrow night, we'll tie a cat to the microphone.”

“With its tail on fire.”

“A cat with attitude.”

“A cat with web presence.”

“The cat will be an ally.”

“A radio-friendly, unit-shifting cat.”

“Get it? An ally cat?”

I bust out before the puns get worse. The taita shuts the flap behind me, I guess to keep all the sweet healing in, and the tepee vanishes, probably for the better. Good riddance. Tommy Rock's going solo, baby. That's why the light's all shining on me. Sweaty out here. I should have some mineral water. I need an all-terrain roadie for situations like this. I remember reading that when you're lost in the desert you should drink your pee. Funny, I don't have any. I've got a classic car collection, got my Malibu Barbie Mansion, closet full of leather pants, seems like I oughta have some pee.

But it's all good. All good. I'm having a real experience now, that's what's happening. I'm reaching a new level of authenticity. I'm becoming a survivor. People love a survivor even more than a victim. I'm gonna hit a hundred million followers after this. I feel more real. My bloody hand throbs, I've got sand in my socks, the start of a sunburn. I am very, very thirsty. I have that in common with African children.

Unlike African children, I have my mansion and my mansion has a swimming pool, so that's where I'm headed. Fuck the tepee, fuck the tour, I'm going home. Los Angeles is west, but the sun's going down again and I don't wanna walk all night with the sun in my eyes and my attache case of custom Prada sunglasses locked in the bus, so I'll just head east until I hit a town, or someplace I can buy a car or helicopter.

I must've been heading the right way, though, because here's my house. That's so like me, trying to go the wrong way, ending up exactly where I want to be. Maybe my staff wheeled the mansion into the desert. If so, I'll have to thank them. There's nobody inside, but that's for the best, since it'll save me the trouble of trying to remember their names. All I want is a quick dip and a sandwich, and I can do both by myself. 

But the fridge is empty. So is the pool. There's a crack in the deep end and all the water must've leaked out. There's an inner tube deflated on the deck beside a forlorn rubber ducky. I raise up the duck. I will teach the duck this secret: if you keep a positive attitude, anything is possible. It doesn't matter if there's water in the pool. With a positive attitude, you just jump in and swim.

The water is so cold, smells like bleach, like teen spirit, like a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I haven't felt this good since I was a kid. When I was a kid, you couldn't get Thomas Arbuckle out of the pool, not for ice cream or comic books, not for Reebok Pumps or a Jose Canseco rookie card. Tommy Arbuckle was an aquatic being. Maybe that's where I went wrong. I got out of the pool. I shoulda just stayed in the water, right through the winter, into summer, year after year, until I grew flippers and gills. I was happy in the water. At least I made it back where I belong.