In My Hour of Need

Chapter 8

The date was now September 30th, 1986, three days after Cliff Burton's death – and I was still an emotional wreck. But I wasn't the only one. Junior seemed better now that he told me he was gay, but something was still bothering him. We arrived in Denmark around twelve, but our gig wasn't until like 8 P.M., so we had all the time in the world to do whatever we wanted to. The band walked down from the plane and got our luggage. We didn't have a hotel to put our shit in, since we were flying to our next gig right after this one, so we had to carry it all around. I sighed. "Can't we have one of the roadies to take care of this?", I asked the rest of the guys. Junior shrugged, and looked over at Gar and Chris. "I'll ask", Gar sighed, and went to find the roadies.

I sat down at a bench nearby, and looked over at Chris and Junior, who were pushing eachother around. Now that I thought about it, Chris did say that Junior had a crush on me... but he was kidding. Still, how did he know Junior was gay? I didn't even figure that out, and I've known him longer. I looked at Junior, who still looked pretty sad. Then I looked a little closer, and saw the reason why. They weren't pushing eachother around: Chris was pushing Junior around. Oh, god, I thought, what is it this time? I got up and went over to them. "Chris, fucking cut the shit, alright?", I demanded, "Leave him alone". Chris' reaction to that was to push me instead, and that was his biggest mistake so far. I got tired of his bullshit, so I punched him in the face, which caused him to stumble backwards, holding his hand in front of his now bleeding nose. "What the fuck, dude!?", he yelled at me. I just shrugged and ducked when his fist came flying towards me. Chris just glared at me and went to sit on the bench instead; I guess he got sick of trying. I turned to Junior. "You alright?", I asked him. He nodded. "What's his deal anyway?", I said, "Always picking on you like that, and for what reason?" Junior looked away; he probably didn't want to talk about it. Oh well, I thought, as long as he doesn't bail on the gig tonight. Where did he go anyway? There sure wasn't anything in Germany for him to do for five minutes before our gig. So I decided to ask him. "Junior", I said. He looked up at me. "Where did you go to when you bailed on our gig in Germany?" His face immediately went red. "Uh... uhm", he stuttered, playing with the bottom of his shirt, "To visit my fam-" "Yeah right", I interrupted, "Honestly, Junior, where did you go?" He was still avoiding eye-contact with me, and only mumbling something that I didn't hear. "What?", I said, not understanding a word. He repeated it, but I still couldn't form the words. "God, Junior, talk so I can understand!" He then sighed heavily, and finally spoke properly. "I wasn't going anywhere", he said, "I just needed some time away from you, but that didn't seem to work". I didn't understand: time away from me? But I had only done things to help him! "What, why would you need that? I'm only trying to help you out!", I explained. Then he started stuttering again. "Because uhm... Because I kinda like you...", he mumbled. "Wh-what?", I stuttered, "Me? But why?" Junior looked at the ground, for understandable reasons, kicking the dirt. He only shrugged, which was probably the best answer I would get. God, it was like asking why he was gay, you don't do that.

After some awkward silence, Gar finally came back with a roadie, who took care of our luggage. "So what's up?", Gar asked us, looking at the bleeding Chris at the bench, then at me and Junior, in complete silence. "Nothing", I told him, and got a shrug back. He just went over to Chris. "Hey... Junior?", I said. "Hm?", he replied. "Its fine", I said. He only nodded. I didn't expect him to do anything else, even imagining myself in his position made me feel uncomfortable. But what the hell should I do?