#actually he's probably asking the tour manager to be brought directly to Steve's motel room

[n33dlew0rk]

Bad Boy Boogie

I’m thinking about how in The Dirt they depicted Vince Neil as someone who was not into the alternative scene as much as Nikki Sixx and Tommy Lee were.

And I'm thinking about Steve being recruited in some glam rock band in a similar way after he’s been scraping the barrel for a few years because his poor excuse of a father kicked him out and cut him off for being queer:

He’s working dive bars, strip clubs, lame pool parties, whatever gets some food, smokes and the occasional joint on his table. He liked to sing when he was younger, but it was never something he thought would be one of his main income sources in his twenties. So it's like you know whatever, as long as it keeps him alive and kicking.

He’s not very social these days, too busy surviving the late 80’s. But someone from high school still remembers him from his King Steve days, knows what happened because of the typical small town talks + sees him kind of around the scene sometimes, between Indianapolis and Chicago, hears him sing lame slow ballads and chart stuff.

So after some laughs (he does not take the thing seriously at first) and some uncertainty (money is not guaranteed ofc), he gets recruited and slowly starts to fully embody this glam rock sexy kind of androgynous and ambiguously sensual charismatic frontman role.

They do good. Like really good. Papers talk about them, mothers pray clutching their pearls, kids go nuts. Their gigs are sweat, fishnets, smeared make-up, tall boots, short skirts, tight pants.

---

Now cut to Eddie and Corroded Coffin, still a small town band, still dreaming big. But someone in their extended friend circle, probably someone a little bit less socially awkward than them, knows someone in Indi, who knows someone in Chicago, who finally hooks them up to open for a bigger band on a small state tour. Only it's Steve's band.

Eddie is fuming.

Not only did a fucking jock got to get bigger in music faster than him, he also did it in a genre that was not popular among metalheads. Even Metallica had feuds with Mötley Crüe, after all. You know that thin veil of elitism that makes metalheads a real pain in the ass despite how intensely GAY most of Judas Priest’s lyrics are.

By the way, back to Eddie.

Fuming.

He doesn't wanna go. Pleads the guys to please have some integrity, for fuck’s sake. Tries to convince the owners of The Hideout to make them play more nights.

But when money is thrown into it, like actual money, money like a month’s worth of day jobs, he can’t really say no to the proposition.

So they go.

Eddie refuses to even listen to the other band's demos, determined to spend the entire tour playing his own set and then getting blackout drunk in the back of the van for the remainder of the night.

He manages to do just that for the first two nights, until he gets cut off from the free alcohol because the bar owner is a sad greedy bastard.

And since spending a whole evening sober inside a van is not nearly as fun as he thought, he goes back inside, searching for his bandmates, barely managing to move through waves of sweaty half naked people and groupies.

A disappointed growl leaves his throat as the lights go down while he’s still in the middle of the pit. Scorned and absolutely annoyed to the core, he turns towards the stage, fully prepared to boo his way to the side of the room.

So you can imagine how totally and utterly shocked he is when Steve fucking Harrington appears: red cowboy boots under the tightest leather pants ever created by humankind, held together by flimsy flimsy strings on the sides. A brutally ripped white tank top (more like a sad reminder of it) under a goddamned leather harness with spikes and chains, all of this on top of his hairy, toned (is that glitter??) chest. Black make-up beautifully ruined under his rich brown eyes, a shadow of red lipstick on his lips. A black bandana tied around his forehead like a crown over his messy mullet (still rich in volume, that’s a magic trick the king still brings along for the journey).

Eddie feels like a lost greek sailor hearing the sirens for the first time.

Mouth: dry.

Hands: sweaty.

Jeans: dangerously tight.

The place feels like a fucking furnace and he cannot, for the love of all things unholy, tear his gaze away from Steve’s body, his face, the way he cups the microphone, how he grinds on the mic stand, how he falls onto his knees during guitar solos panting in front of his guitarist.

Lastly, I'm thinking about when the show is over and a phantom trace of Eddie’s rationality tries to persuade him that Steve will turn back into his jock self, preppy clothes and all, like a rock'n'roll Cinderella; but instead Steve smiles big to the crowd, tears the bandana from his head, wipes away some of the sweat from his neck and then stuffs the very same black bandana right into his right back pocket.

Gareth and Jeff literally have to drag poor Eddie out of the venue because his knees are so wobbly they stopped working indefinitely.