Welcome to Gaia! ::

Being a senshi was great and all but Jayce was not about to give up his Saturday night. No, that time was devoted to the band. Pissing Orifice was on the verge of another name change and for their last gig as that which released bodily fluid, Corey had gotten them a gig in what had to be the seediest dive Jayce had ever seen. Any second now he was expecting see a rat scurry along the floor. The place was called The Broken Busboy. Who named their club/drinking hole/ramshackle hut of despair, The Broken Busboy?

The only patrons of the dimly lit piss-stained shithole were a bunch of truckers, all sitting at the bar drowning their sorrows.

Jayce curled his lip in disgust and gave Corey ‘the look’.

Corey shrugged. "We’re getting paid, mate. I wasn’t going to turn it up. You gonna turn it up? I’ve got rent to pay." The Australian shrugged again and wandered off to check his bass guitar.

Well, it was going to have to do. He just hoped Olga wouldn’t be too disappointed. Then again, he wasn’t sure she was capable of disappointment. So he added an extra touch of dragging one of the bar stools over right in front of the stage and wrote her name on a piece of paper. With any luck she'd get lost trying to find the place (it wasn't easy) and she'd get to see him perform somewhere decent next time.

He twirled one of his drum sticks and zoned out as Erin and Kate argued over who had eaten the last Twinkie.

The door opened and in stepped a customer that looked so remarkably, cheerfully out of place that that even Erin and Kate stopped arguing long enough to (in turn) elbow Jayce in the side and murmur, “your new girl’s here. Hey, she’s a cutie.” They were kind enough to vacant the immediate stage area, giving brief waves towards Olga before distracting themselves with setting up the sound equipment.

Jayce greeted Olga with a mini drum solo, a upbeat and easy rhythm. "Hey, glad you could make it. We’re pretty packed in here, so I figured I’d book you a seat." There might as well have been crickets chirping it was so ‘packed’. "Come on up." He beckoned her onto the stage with a point of the drunk stick and a grin.

"I know what you’re thinking. This place seems pretty upmarket and ritzy for a garage band but I assure you, we more than live up to hype."

“I’ll knock your socks off so far you’ll have to wear sandals for the rest of your life.” His sticks danced rapidly across the drums giving a ‘Ba-Dum Tshh!’ sound. “Actually, that doesn’t even deserve that. It was a terrible joke.” Jayce put both of the sticks down and leaned back on his stool, grinning up at his VIP guest. “Did you know that’s called a rimshot? Terribly name but also hilarious.”

After a moment spent sniggering like a child (ahaha rimshot), he wandered back into the path of her questions, replying with a far off stare. “Five yeaaars yeah. It’s been a while. I was, eh, fourteen? Yeah. I starting the drums then too. It just me Reggie and Erin then and some other wanker I’m not gonna talk about. He’d long gone. We started this shitty little band because Reggie can actually sing and Erin’s brother taught her how to play guitar.”

Over to the side Corey was swigging a coke and Jayce whistled and made a grabby hands gesture and then held up two fingers. Corey rolled his eyes and started towards the bar. “Anyway yeah, so I took up the drums. Eventually Corey and Kate joined up too and here we are, a semi-decent but mostly s**t emo punk band screaming that might have been relevant in the 90’s.”

There was never any shortage of sharing life stories with Jayce.

Corey returned and tossed the two cans of coke up to the Jayce one at a time. Jayce caught them and held one up to Olga with a poncy ‘for m’lady’.

You had to appreciate that about Olga, she was always down for a laugh, even if it was something stupid. Most of the girls he knew would just roll their eyes and call him an idiot. You knew someone could become a good friend if they enjoyed your worst jokes. “I am very serious,” Jayce laughed. He’d seen her Tumblr and followed all the various links and thought it was hilarious she could blush at something she’d described in exquisite detail before.

“Nineteen and enjoying the exquisite freedom. I’m looking forward to twenty-one though.” He cracked open his own coke, froth bubbling up. “November 13.” He sipped the forth from the top of the can. “Gotta admit, Backstreet Boys were pretty hot. I would have been good in a boy band. I’d have been the bad boy type with the long hair. Chicks dig that, right?”

Jayce laughed. “Last thing I asked Santa for was a new dad and that was when I was nine. Didn’t work out well for me.” He held the can up high. “To being naughty and to never finding your name on the side of a coke. It was never going to happen for me either and I know it’s the fault of that ‘Y’.”

Jayce laughed and hoped that whoever had chosen that name had known exactly what they were doing. “Indeed, the big two-one. It would be helpful, not that it stops me anyway.” There was an upside to doing band gigs at seedy locales, nobody gave a damn how old you were and happily supplied as much booze as desired.

“Backstreet's back, alright!” He added some ‘da da da daas’ at the end. “Maybe when this whole thing-” he motioned with his coke can to the surrounding setup, “comes crashing down, I’ll start a boyband. Though, no offense, I’d rather not go for the pretty boy K-Pop vibe. I can’t do that many costume changes.”

He shrugged, a no big deal motion. “It was actually because he’d refused to to buy me a bike that year but I realized later that he was an actual piece of s**t, so I only regret that Santa never came through. You know, just family drama, whatever.”

“Yeah and maybe I’ll become a superhero who can jump over buildings and has a weird connection to centipedes.” He laughed but it was still impossible for him to imagine their little band ever being anything other than what it was. There wouldn’t be any huge concert or legions of fans and he was fine with that. “I’ll pass. I’d like to be able to go out and flirt shamelessly with everyone and not have to worry about my fans getting butthurt.”

Jayce couldn’t help but sigh. He didn’t really mind talking about it but it still wasn’t what he wanted to be wasting precious moments on. “Yeah, yeah. Of course she is. I’m the troubled child, you see. So they took his side. Look, it doesn’t matter. I don’t give a s**t about any of them anymore. Done and dusted. I don’t even-”

“Yo Jay-C! Are we gonna play or are you going to be talking to your new girlfriend for the rest of the night? I dunno ‘bout you but this place needs some serious TLC. Look at these sad ********, drinking their lives away.” Reggie had arrived on stage, talking non-stop and looking like an emo vampire had just had a shopping spree at Hot Topic. “I’ll sing them a love song they’ll never forget.”

Jayce rolled his eyes at Olga and popped his can down near his feet. “Whatever. Let’s do it.”

Reggie grinned and thumped him on the back. “Atta boy.” He winked at Olga. “Off the stage, gorgeous, and prepare yourself for some magic.”

“Just friends, she says! That means I’m in with a chance!” Reggie clasped a hand to his chest and gave Olga his best smouldering look. “Sorry, Jayce, but she’s fair game now. By the end of this song, we’ll be practically married.” The singer laughed and winked at Olga again. “Feel free to throw your panties on stage, sweetheart.” Then he was in performance mode, microphone stand in hand and gesturing wildly at the others as they moved into position.

Jayce paid his lead singer almost zero attention and opted instead to take up his sticks, saluting Olga with one of them. Reggie had always been ridiculous and was better off ignored.

“Helllooo everyone, we’re Pissing Orifice and you’d better enjoy the show. One, two, let’s go!”

Jayce set the backbeat and the band rolled into one of their favourites, Go to Hell, aptly named because Reggie spent most of the number screeching, ‘why won’t you just go to heeeeeeeelll’ down the microphone. But it had a major drum presence with crashing cymbals and caught up in the heat and the music and the angry deluge of punk rock was intoxicating.

It didn’t matter that they were in a dive and only one guy at the bar bothered to turn around, this rush was what he lived for. It was perfect.

It was a good thing Reggie was too busy getting into gear to give Olga’s last words the full focus they deserved, otherwise he probably would have taken his shirt off.

If Jayce was completely honest, he wasn’t exactly a fan of the genre either. He didn’t listen to any of the same stuff in his free time but it was what he’d once loved and what they were semi good at, so that didn’t matter at all.

They played three songs and after a short drink break, in which Reggie made eyes at Olga and had an empty can of coke thrown at his head, before settling into the fourth. It was a sudden departure from the screaming as Erin and Reggie traded vocals in a good old fashioned love ballad.

Jayce grinned the entire way through and made sure to give his audience one last drum solo before they finished for the night.