Breakthrough || Jeremy McKinnon (Writing & Editing)

1) Gig Night

Friday, January 11, 2019. 9:30 pm.

"Alow, get your ass up, it's 9:30, we have to leave," Sky, my bassist, and backup vocalist, screamed from the bathroom. "c'mon, you've been asleep all day! Our gig is in half an hour."

I groaned, peeked up at Sky, and watched her apply her "stage makeup", as she likes to call it; a messy, dirty looking smokey eye with blood-red lipstick, that will most definitely get smudged by the mic before the gig's over. I got up and searched through the clean pile of clothes for my sleeveless Gojira shirt and black skinny patch pants, an outfit I wear nearly every day. I dragged myself to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and attempted to half-ass do my eyebrows the way I like them, and smear some black eyeshadow under my eyes.

I threw on my shirt and skinny jeans, looked over at Sky, who was sitting on the toilet, giving last looks at her makeup before she was satisfied. She stood up and adjusted the strings on the v-neck of her modified Metallica shirt, then proceeded to pick up the red flannel at her feet and tied it around her black, frayed shorts.

We walked out of the bathroom and hunted down Keegan, our drummer, who was rummaging around in the equipment closet, which was supposed to be a pantry, but we never had enough food to completely fill up the whole closet, so we took out the shelves and installed guitar/bass wall mounts and put in two nightstands, to hold extra strings, picks, and drumsticks. "What are you looking for?" I asked.

"I can't find my 2B sticks. Have either of you seen them?" She questioned.

"Keegan, you know I know jack shit about drumsticks." Sky stated, harshly.

"Since when have you used 2B sizes?" I asked.

"I didn't have my usuals when I was practicing at Ben's a few days ago, and he doesn't use 5A, so I was stuck with 2B and -" She cut herself off as she pulled out two heavy looking drumsticks. "Found them." She laid them down on the kitchen counter and waltzed to her bedroom.

I sighed and looked at my phone, to check the time, "You need to hurry, Keeg, it's 9:37. We need to leave before 9:50!" I shouted, praying that she wouldn't take a million years to get ready. We lived in these apartments that were right across the street from Fulton 55, where we were performing, so we weren't really in a hurry, seeing as we could run there in less than a minute.

10 minutes later, she strolled out of her room in acid-wash high-waisted shorts with tight-laced fishnets underneath and a black crop-top that said "baby girl" in baby pink, and the same smokey eye Sky rocked, but with pale pink lipstick, to match the font color on her shirt.

"You look sexy, now let's go," I asserted.

Sky and I leaped from our seats, then all 3 of us managed to get our shoes on. "Fuck!" Sky shouted and ran to her room. A few seconds later, she appeared with my guitar, Steve, a sunburst strat knock-off, Peavey Raptor Plus exp with stickers all over the back of it, and her bass, Jax, a black Ibanez Gio GSR200SM. Yes, we name our instruments, hush, it's actually really common. We bolted out the door when we realized what time it was. 9:50. Fuck, we were late for setup.

-

It was a 45-second run from our apartment to Fulton 55, but this place already hated us. We were late every single time we had a gig there, not because we were horrible at time management, but because we always thought we had time to lay around in our apartment and do fuck-all instead of getting ready and being there 10 minutes before we were supposed to play.

We got there at 9:51, but nobody acknowledged us. I darted around looking for William, the venue manager. I looked forever backstage until I got sick of searching and turned to the nearest security guard, "Hey, I'm Alow, I'm in-"