Jem...Chapter 202

*And Now…

It was absolutely fantastic the whole experience and getting to be invited was a really big deal for me. I mean a lot of kids our age wouldn’t get it or might not get it but we got a peer invite.

That was literally called out to jam.

And by the local players, actually the Algona county players which is sort of just a loose group that keeps contacts and stuff or posts up possible gigs and things for each other but they’re the hobby guys, they’re the legion and church bands the guys that play at the small village and county halls.

These are the working players and musicians that asked us to come.

The people with solid names and reputations who gets the sick calls to come and play guitar for someone or gets recording work as a player and all of those things that are the actual backbone of playing music and singing.

I was on cloud nine all the way home.

We made out from there so well too with all of the food I took gone but the dishes returned and washed and we have a whole lot of things that were given to us food wise as the leftovers were distributed and Callie Scott and I hung out some more as we all did that with the others.

She’s a nice lady and she used to teach dance here in town and was from a family that’s been around here just about as long as The Marshall’s. No she’s not as rich or even in the league of rich but she is one of those people that’s known then as long as it’s possible I guess.

Yeah even the “good” ones were kinda...bad, like sometimes the average person didn’t see the stuff that they did but Callie told me the family was a combination of sneaky to self centered to bullying all led by the smarter ones that worked with stuff on like that rich person’s scale with companies and politicians and everything.

She didn’t know “our” Adam but she knew “Adam-two” as a teenager and he was a real assbutt.

Yeah lots of little stories about him cracking up car after car drinking and driving, driving ATV’s and snowmobiles on other people’s properties with his friends and not like backwoods stuff like scare the horses kind of stuff.

And a serious womanizer but then so is apparently all of them even Adam-Senior-Senior was a cheater but he was one of that generation that did it quietly or it was this whole thing that was like drama between the other rich families of who was sleeping and cheating with who and stuff.

I know what was in Adam’s eyes that night at Lucky’s and it’s a scary too because he definitely would.

And with those girls at the motel and things and the stuff with the credit card blackmail he was running on the girls I’ve no illusions on just how bad a human being Adam is.

Hell he barely qualifies in my book.

Sigh...anyways it was still a really good night, one of the best ones I’ve ever had really and it was all topped off by the food give-away and Max and Darlene getting loaded down with a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t have to buy.

Kimmie went home with us but had a serious snogging session with Max.

Even getting home we were all in a great mood and were floating and I was the one that stayed up more than the others still bouncing on the feelings and downloaded some videos and pictures of it all to our pages and everything plus answered a few e-mails and messages and chatted with the fans in other time zones and even skyped a little with some of them too.

Rayne didn’t stay up she went to bed after getting showered and kissed my neck. “Mmm...night chere, I’m too full and tired to stay up and we still have to be there working tomorrow.”

I slipped into bed with her about quarter to four and it was nice that I could still sleep pretty long with Rayne waking me up about nine with a kiss and a coffee.

That was really nice to wake up to.

“Oh….thank you baby.” I say after the kiss and she tastes like coffee herself.

“I figured about an hour before we have to be there is enough for you to wake up.”

Then she made it nicer by giving me a hot buttered freshly toasted bagel.

That’s it, it’s just the way I like them for me. I like either whole grain or sesame or plain but just toasted with butter. I don’t know I just like the flavors that way and don’t need the other stuff.

Then I’m up and wolfing that down and drinking the coffee as we both change the bed and then I shower and take the laundry down and get it going as Carmen’s not there and neither is well…?

“Where is everyone?”

Rayne smiles as she’s sitting on the steps to the basement. “Mike, Brook and Kim took off for classes instead of skipping the whole week for Fall Fair and Molly and Carmen are gone taking some of the money for the charities to the places for us and they’ve gone to do some shopping too that Carmen needed and Molly wanted.”

“So it’s just us?”

“It’s just us.”

I look at the clock and really there isn’t time enough for that.

I mean seriously sex is fun but it’s also messy and I just got showered and everything.

But still….

I walk over and sort of sway to the steps where Rayne is at and I kiss her. Long and sweet kisses and hands free kisses as I’ve both hands on the railings for the stairs.

I kiss with her until she’s sort of squirming and I can tell she’s getting wet and I kneel on the steps below her and I unbutton her jeans and I slip them down from her hips and her butt and I go down on her.

My first touch and tastes she drops her coffee cup off the stairs and it splashes and breaks and we don’t care.

And it’s not one sided either really I’m just as into this with me here doing this for her like this with all that in the semi-public space that is our house. There’s a thrill to it I guess being together, me eating her out and it’s not our room.

It’s really, really gratifying when I get her off twice and her phone alarm goes off and we’re late and scrambling to get ready or I am...Rayne waits too she doesn’t let me take a cab there.

I leave a note saying there’s things in the washer and I don’t even check the dishes and we just go.

Driving a little fast to get there and kissing a lot as we’re holding hands just being there together.

There’s whispery talk about us with some of her Walmart co-worker girls at the booth and a lot of giggles as I leave Rayne there and head to the SLB booth and Josie is grinning at me as she passes me a semi-cold Timmie’s coffee.

“You look rushed?”

I blush. “We had the house to ourselves for like the first time and well….”

Josie grins and she offered me a high five which I did and I sat down and took out my make-up and checked everything over and touch everything up and I Josie and I end up talking about things last night and her shop and the Fall Fair and Sawyer’s Funrides.

“Thanks for watching the booth and helping out with all this Josie.”

“Hey no problem this is all good lately girl.”

“The shirts and things with Sawyer’s really have done pretty well.”

She nods. “We’re at this sort of cusp of things where there’s people my age starting to see that there’s stuff that we’re losing. Then there’s your generation that does all this whole new shop without a shop thing like Etsy stores and stuff. Heck I’m way, way busier since we’ve hooked up together.”

“I love that things are going well Josie I’m just saying above and beyond with all this stuff on short notice.”

She’s grinning. “Last night was really worth the work.”

I grin back. “Last night was really fun.”

She drinks some more coffee. “Jake’s got five or six new acts that he’s picked up that want to play The Amsterdam.”

“Cool!”

“You’re not mad?”

“Never, more acts mean that more people are going to come to see different kind of shows. And...it’s kind of going around.”

“Going around?”

“I was asked a lot about the Starlight Entertainment side of things, I might end up with us having a whole lot of clients.”

“A lot?”

“Well a few at least, it’s going to be touch and go with my sort of passing off jobs. I figure we can make links to them and their music and performances and fish for some interest that way. Plus like Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

“Oh if we can pull it off I’m thinking of a whole seasonal thing for town if we can get permission with things like live christmas music and rides downtown like a festival and maybe coupons or something for shopping in the downtown core.”

“Oh that’d be nice and seriously cool if we could all get that going.”

“We?”

“Oh I have sooooo many old Christmas style designs stored up even old stuff in stock that has never moved. Besides I think a dance or something at Jake’s would be cool.”

I nod. “You have stuff for Halloween?”

“Oh heck yeah there’s a lot of stuff I had in stock that I’m going to trot out plus the Brewers want event shirts and posters and we’re expecting a pretty big crowd from the buzz going on online.”

As we talk we’re still getting people coming over and talking and I find myself signing things and talking to mostly out of town girls that are here to see us and it’s surprising on how many of them are from out of country.

There’s a bunch of them from the United States stopping by because they were up here anyways for one thing or another. Some are teens with their folks, some are older college girls that are out of school and follow us online. Then there’s a lot of tourists that came here too with the same thing following us online or getting told about us from friends and even the curious tourists checking out what we’re all about.

It’s not being swamped from before but it’s still really steady and talking with folks and picking up bits of German and Swiss and Korean is pretty cool.

Molly and Carmen join us all smiles and openly holding hands fingers laced together. I smile and take a couple of camera pics of them happy as Molly is sort of beaming like the gothy punk she is but also that lesbian girl that’s been in the closet too long and is enjoying being out. Carmen, she just looks satisfied and happy in this kinda fancy-chic meets bohemian sort of way. She’s wearing great boots and her nice jeans those designer ones but like paired with this killer off shoulder blouse with that hippy-floofy peasant look and her hair is out and long and has her natural crimp to it that she’s rocking so well.

I like the fact that she’s also trying to embrace the black side of herself. She’s like said that her mom was like desperate to hide that part of her and kind of pushed that on Carmen too so she’s been trying to get that back.

They look happy especially Molly who starts talking about the charity drop offs and especially the Birch Street Youth Hostel which really, really needed it from the looks of it...Carmen shot some videos of the place and just...ow.

Molly’s said we’re sort of in this loop where you can find places to crash on your way to Toronto or needing to get out of it but I can see their excitement of getting anything.

I’m also seeing though the crappy paint, the run down look of the place and that they just look like one of those places saving kids but still barely scraping by.

I’m already thinking of what to do about some of it as we get ready for the lunchtime show and we’re in this sort of funny hurry as Brooklynn and Kimmie join us on their lunch hour and they’re playing in their uniforms.

And instead of the usual we open up with a little Chrissy Hynde and *Boots of Chinese Plastic* and that’s pretty old school boppy rock so we follow it up with *Forever and Always* By Starlight Butterfly and we’re doing some of our classic up sound because of the tourists here and a decent amount of them are out in the crowd.

We follow that with *Fortune Favors the Bold.* Also by Starlight Butterfly and then we do *Time after time* By Cyndi Lauper to start to slow it down some as we’re just a small afternoon set and we finish with *Who’d ever think.* Again By Starlight Butterfly.

We’re done after that and as we take care of our gear we end up talking to some of the people that came over to see us play and we sign a few more autographs for people and we’re taking pictures as a group and it’s all pretty cool still for us and the Kimmie and Brooklyn have to take off back to school and pull out pretty fast.

They’re likely going to be late but I think that they have a good excuse and they are trying to do both school and their time here which is pretty good.

Though...it’s sort of hard and there’s a lot of running back and forth there’s only a few days left and to carry that out for all of us shows that we’re able to perform and to commit.

Plus there’s the whole thing of a week of this is going to be a lot like playing on the road in terms of frequency. This is kinda like a test of all of that.

It really is all about how you look at things.

The afternoon slows down after that with the occasional booth visit and honestly it’s mostly people from out of town still and seniors and parents that aren’t working with kids and everything.

I’m running through ideas in my head as the afternoon goes by and there’s a little writing and a little research as I’m looking at the town online with both Google Maps and just kind of snowballing things or potential things in my head.

Like we have a ski hill, it’s not much honestly and there’s a lot of years that it’s shut down depending on the snow and things but Maple Hill is a place that’s a maybe and it’s also a sugar shack.

Ideas and ideas.

Then there’s a few other businesses that I’m sort of interested in too that might be things that we could hit ups for Winter Carnival and just to sort of see or maybe like boost somehow online.

And there’s a little bit of me online talking to fans on our page which is always cool and important and fun.

I do get to play some with a couple of folks coming up and asking if I could play some of our songs so I take out the guitar and I play what they ask for and that sells shirts. I play *Fisherboy* Twice and I play *Invisible* Three times and I even play *Oncology* a few times.

Josie actually comes out with these really amazing sketches of me playing that make me blush but she also makes these designs for shirts that are our song titles as shirts.

Oncology has a person in a hospital bed with someone holding their hand and in behind them like on the other side of the bed there’s an angel with a guitar and she’s singing.

I add in the notes for the chorus in a wavey sort of bar and got down the words for the chorus too.

Dad shows up about supper time and we take off with some of Josie’s kids arriving to take over the booth and Dad and I meet up with Rayne and we meet with everyone else as we take a break from the fair and we all end up at Crystals.

Wow...We actually fill a place. Me and Rayne, Dad and Uncle Mitch, Mike and Brooklyn, Kimmie with Max and Janey and Darlene and Molly and Carmen plus Billy, Davey, Josie and that’s just us.

That’s like fifteen of us not counting some others that are there from the upturn in business and the place is busy, like really busy with The staff in full gear there and there are some people that are eating outside and some are doing the eating at their car sorta thing and the smells are amazing.

They have more people working here that just a little while ago.

And the atmosphere is bumping too as they have music cranked pretty loud and they have a dessert case now that’s got these great logos on it from Go-Go’s bakery.

I order the “Fisherboy.” A sandwich named after the SLB song and made of local stuff. The girl that took my order stared at me then at us and she took off and Crystal came back and we hugged as she came over.

She says. “I hope you don’t mind, we kinda thought it was a cool song and kind of wanted to make a sandwich out of it.”

I look at the girls. “I don’t mind do you?”

Molly says. “I can whip something up that’ll make it square.”

I nod and Crystal asks. “What do you want for it?’

“Nothing, friends helping friends.”

“You sure?”

I look at the other girls and they’re nodding. “Friends helping friends, it’s cool.”

Molly does a basic contract just stating that she has our permission to use the name in connection with us and the song for free on her tablet and Crystal signs it with the stylus pen thingy and she gets her copy with a ping on her phone.

We hug again. “Look I really gotta go it’s supper and we’re really getting slammed.”

Our stuff comes and the “fisherboy” is like a po-boy.

Baguette style twelve inch bread bun that’s crispy yet pillowy soft inside and made by Go-go’s. There’s locally sourced eggs for the mayo, mustard that’s from French’s which is Canadian and so is the canola oil that they use in making the mayo for the remoulade that’s on one side and then there’s this mayo that’s kind of like hollandais and there’s little beads of the lemon in there for some pop and there’s locally caught pickel fillets in it layered and covered in this beer and black pepper batter and some greens, there’s thin. Thin, slices of green tomatoes that have been pickled like sweet bread and butter pickles just to make it right.

I read the recipe description off online and I put the sandwich on Instagram and post it up wide to our site and that pages and we eat.

We’re all doing the same and we’re showing just how hopping the place is right now too.

I even say into the camera. “If you’re a Pointer, make coming here and supporting a local and a rescued business a Point for you. We’re all in this together.”

And we stuff ourselves really. Dad loves this place he’s spent a lot of time out in the real east and things when he was younger with family and he loves fish and seafood.

We stay for a little bit and I talk with Crystal before we go and I don’t get in the way since she’s so busy. We do end up hugging and taking off and heading back to the fairgrounds.

It’s toned down for a while with the supper traffic and things going on and everyone either eating or doing the post eating sighs and we just sort of mostly hang out and talk about stuff and school.

Rayne’s done for the day as soon as she passes the torch to Alex who’s the guy that runs the video department I guess and it’s just hanging out and downtime as we sell some merch and we do stuff online.

It’s slow and that’s nice and before too long we’re getting ready for the evening show doing our make-up and outfits and talking with some of the other bands in the prep area.

And again talking to them and filming some of it with their permission. It’s sort of a highlight and kind of behind the scenes thing for the bands and stuff and how it’s done that goes up on our site.

It’s something that I’m easily passionate about and I hope that it shows.

It’s a good night really we’re just in shorter sets because the fair is winding down so their not open quite as late so the shows are shorter and we’re seeing a few regular acts of course but the music organizers have some of the smaller bands and even a few of the solo acts there.

And some of them sure are really iffy or pitchy and they miss things here and there but on the whole everyone’s pretty good.

Kisses & Thorns is up before us and they do a pretty good rocking set as they’ve been doing more and more with their own stuff and they seem to be playing with more energy too and focus.

Hanners is definitely changing their dynamic over there and that’s started with their set starting with her and Summer tossing out a few free band and label tee shirts and bags of popcorn and cotton candy from the concession stand.

And yeah really big bags of cotton candy so they actually make it off the stage.

It’s a good show for the time that they’re up there and it gets people happy and excited to go see music and get free stuff.

We get up there and we get a lot of cheers and we wave to the crowd and take our spots.

I go to the mic.

“Tonight’s going to be a shout out to our regular Tuesday night gig and I know some of you have seen us there online but this is going out to Mr. Walker and all of the crew at The Pine Tree Cafe. If you’ve never stopped by really, really go.”

I take a few seconds before we start and as soon as we hit the notes there’s bumping and grinding as we open with. *I Love Rock ‘n Roll* By Joan Jett and The Blackhearts.

Then *Don’t Wanna* By Starlight Butterfly and now that we’re warmed up I hit them with.

*Brian Wilson* By The Barenaked Ladies….

“Drove downtown in the rain …”
“Nine thirty on a Tuesday night.”
“Just to check out the late-night …”

I mic the crowd.

“RECORD SHOP!” … ..God I love this.

I really love this and this is one of those songs where they keep singing along with the song close to three four hundred voices all just going with it.

“Call it impulsive, call it compulsive, call it insane …”
“But when I’m surrounded I just can’t … .stop.”

“It’s a matter of instinct, it’s a matter of conditioning.”
“It’s a matter of fact.”

“You can call me Pavlov’s … dog.”

“Ring a bell and I’ll salivate … How’d you like that?”
“Dr. Landy tell me you just not a pedagogue …”

“’cause right now …”

“I’m lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did.
Well I’m lying in bed just like Brian Wilson did …”

And we jam on from there with the crowd all hyper and kicked up with the previous songs and all of the sugar that K&T fed them and once we’re through that we go right into. *Soul Sister* By Train another of our cover classics and that’s still a fan fave for us and just for the song too.

Then it’s *My Best Friend’s Hot* By The Dollyrots and then we do *Walk like an Egyptian* By The Bangles and we finish things off with a little new stuff going for *Magical Power Panties* By Starlight Butterfly and *If I Was A Sailor Scout* By Starlight Butterfly.

Then we’re out of time and there’s cheers and stuff and there’s some people yelling for other songs and we just have to wave to folks as there’s other bands after us.

It was still a really good show and we head down and we start to ungear and getting our stuff put away and then with some time left we actually go over to the rides and the games were everyone else pretty much is and we get our passes out and we go on a few of the rides and just have some fun for the last hour or so.

It’s kind of funny how many people are stoked to be on rides with us and we talk to folks and sign things and take a lot of pictures in between the rides and having fun.

It’s still really, really romantic being on rides with Rayne.

I love the Ferris Wheel. I mean I’m not afraid of heights but here it’s placed so you can see all the fair easy and you can see out over town and then there’s the other side where you can see out over the lake.

And lots of kissing and that good kind of deep making out kissing too.

Oh yeah the complete stereotype but so amazing really when you get to do it.

I’m really all sorts of floaty and happy as we end up heading for home after everything is shutting down.