In My Hour of Need

Chapter 24

I couldn't get out of the coffee shop fast enough. I was dragging Junior behind me. "Why are you in such a hurry?", he asked, being pulled by me, who were practically running out of there. "I'm not in a hurry!", I complained, "I just want to get away from James". Junior twisted his arm out of my grip. "You're acting like a little kid", he said, "I'm going back to James". How dared he? "Junior!", I yelled, "Junior! Fucking get back here!" He didn't listen, though, so I followed him. James was still sitting there when we came back into the coffee shop. Junior stopped right in front of him, then turned to me. "He's sitting right there", he said to me, as if I totally understood what he wanted me to do. "Yeah, I can see that", I answered. I could see how uncomfortable James was, and it was to no surprise; Junior was making this huge fucking deal about it. But then again, Junior hates fights. "Fine", I sighed, "James, you're cool, I forgive you". I rolled my eyes as I said it, but I don't think it mattered to either of them. "Thanks, man", James said, standing up, opening his arms to me, as if this whole thing wasn't awkward enough. I sighed, but hugged him anyways. "You know", James said, "The rest of the band's hanging out not far from here, wanna go?" Sure, why not? "Yeah, cool", I replied.

When we arrived at the hotel Metallica was staying at, the first thing I reacted to was that this hotel was so much fancier than ours. But at the time, it was only 1986, and Megadeth had only released two albums, while Metallica had this huge Master of Puppets tour. I guess this was their only break in a long time. The first person we bumped into was Kirk Hammett. He gave James a frightened look as he saw me, as if James wasn't aware that I was there. "Kirk, it's alright, he's cool", James explained. "Hi, dude", I said. "Uh... hi", Kirk stuttered. This was starting to get really stupid. Then we went into this enormous suite, which appeared to be Jason Newsted, Metallica's new bassist's hotel room. It was packed with people, they were having a party. Junior went over to Jason to talk about bass-stuff, so I decided to go look for Lars, since he used to be my best friend when I was in Metallica.

After a while of talking music with Lars and James, Jason suddenly came up to James, whispering something in his ear, which caused James to smack his hand to his mouth, to try and keep the laughter in. At first, I thought it was some kind of joke Jason had told him, and wanted to know what it was. "What?", I laughed, "What'd he say?" We were all drinking, but James hadn't had more than half a beer. That's why what he did surprised me: he couldn't have been drunk enough to not see through the stupidity of it. James got up on the nearest table and raised his bottle. "Can I have everybody's attention?", he yelled. Everybody stopped what they were doing, to look up at James. There were a fucking lot of people there. "I just wanna tell you all something", he said, talking louder than he really had to, "Jason told me something about Dave Mustaine I want you all to know". Wait, what!? I had to find Junior. James kept talking; I didn't dare to move, in case somebody saw me. I had an idea what this might be about. I thought James wanted us to be friends, I forgave him. I knew I shouldn't have. "Dave Mustaine is gay!" It was the worst moment of my life, next to being kicked out of Metallica. Everyone started laughing. Honestly, I didn't understand why it was such a big deal. I sunk down at the floor. How did Jason even find out? I wanted to die. I knew how depressed this was going to make me, it was worse than when Cliff died. Metallica just hires assholes, including me, excluding Cliff. Someone help me, please.