Of Drummers and Bodybuilders

“[Mark] sweetest baby of mine, I don’t know how you deal with me when I’m all riled up like this, when my soul overheats and seizes. Just fuck me baby, swing your hard-on over this way; it’s all OK in the end. And even though you’re miles away–with all our words and how fucking cool we are, throw me over your long-distance shoulders and hammer down my exposed nerves with one hardcore email fuck.”

The truth is, while trying to play it cool and easy, I’m pissed off. Listen schmuck, I want to say, I want details, like the date and time of day you first sucked and fucked your way into my heart. And what I’m wanting to know is you remember me, that you think of me, that yearning tugs at you like a lost child and will not let go.

“Lie on me,” I said that first night.
“I’ll crush you.”
“So how much do you weigh?” I said, although from my bodybuilding days, I was a pretty good judge of mass. Some men are really puny these days, although Mark was six-feet tall with moderate muscle mass.
“Two-hundred, maybe two-ten,” he said.
“Try me.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. All your weight. No prissy stuff.”
“You sure some woman,” he whistled. I didn’t tell him about my sumo-builder man, Garth.

I hear the tongue of a drunk becomes thick and woolly and I’m thinking my clit must have felt like that. Did it? I need to know because it’s details that make even dreams seem real─like how many times you kissed my cunt because I read somewhere― and I thought, wow, what a fucking hip bit, my drummer man’s gonna spin over this―circling Kailish, that famous Indian mountaintop in India, could cleanse the sins of a lifetime. And for one hundred and eight koras, one would be granted access to Nirvana and complete emancipation. Which is a really neat concept. I’m offering Mark my flange, my hair pie, my piss flapper, my quim to tongue in mesmerizing swirls so he’d be granted not only absolution, but also access to eternal paradise.

I need to impress him. Hung up on making a dent in this man with the gold earrings, who could phone fuck like an angel and a pirate. Except those times when his voice travels so deep low down and dirty. I have trouble hearing certain tones. I get it from my grandmother. So I’d moan and breathe whoo whoo into the receiver that he wouldn’t know low tones elude me and phone fucking is no great thrill anyhow. Not like skin to skin.

Phone fucking just doesn’t do it for me. Neither does body painting─when I was a builder, Crazy Bob the nighttime assistant manager of the Work-Out on St. Clair invited me over to his mother’s group home where he and his Greek lesbian girlfriend Sophie kept a room. Bob had this idea that if I painted Sophie’s tits and if she’d returned the favour and decorated mine, we’d all get turned on and fuck between all those swirls of colour. I’m an artist. I mean I paint, but painting tits doesn’t inspire me. I’m kind of good at design and colour, but I have a long ways to go in the rendering department. “Mind if I take a photo?” Bob said. “Sure thing,” I said. I grimace when I’m around cameras. My lips purse and the tip of my nose elongates. I have this thing about my nose.

“So, what ya think?” Bob was saying behind the camera.
“Kinda boring, really.” I said.
“You’re no fun,” Bob said, putting his arm around his Sophie.

There’s nothing like music. Music is like sex for me. (What was that Pygmalion quote? ─“Gin was mother’s milk to her.”) I stand at the side of the stage with the music streaming toward me. The audience is a backdrop. One night at Healey’s, I inched my way to my favourite listening spot. The room was packed. Some were there to revel in the music of a famous blues band. Others pissed away a night on the town, drinking and getting rowdy.

The band was American, most of them from Chicago–keyboard, drummer, bass player, lead guitar. I stood watching the bass player, his fingers shifting slides with such ease, shuffling his legs with a soft side-to-side hip tie-in. The lead guitarist wore a large gold cross on his chest. And then I saw a mountain range of drums. Heard the swish of snares that draws women in, the hot symbols, a bit of a steady one, two, three beat, and just when the drummer was immersed in that scene, he’d switch, slide in more snares, and using the soft balls at the end of the stick, mute and ease the sound. He was in a different place, just jamming away and in the groove with his eyes closed and smiling.

I was wearing a white Lycra v-neck shirt and tight black shimmering gym pants. The room was packed─ strangers standing close to each other, shoulders and assorted body parts touching. A drunk’s hand arced out toward the lead guitarist’s instrument and my builder’s muscles tightened, tension branching out into my biceps and hands. “You don’t want to do that,” I said, seizing the guy’s wrist, which was small and bony. “I got no feeling left in my wrists,” the drunk whined. It was a sweet builder’s moment.

“Isn’t the bass player cute?” said a frizzy dark-haired chick to no one in particular. “I’m going to have him.” She swayed purposefully forward, her walk shifting into a ripe wiggle. I moved to the bar. The gym made me comfortable in my skin. Generally I ordered one white wine, two max. The whites were tasting cheaper and cheaper, so I usually brought gum for immediate after use. I flexed my pecs (for the sake of pecs and not tits, which are different entities). Flared my delts. Subtle flexing is an art.

The drummer ordered lemonade. “Thanks about the wrist thing. Man! You are strong!”
“It was cool, wasn’t it? Like the Olympics. Been training all my bodybuilding life for this moment. My arm was iron, man, one lead pipe. See I’m a certified hypnotist. So you got a witch and builder mix.”
The drummer stared. “My brother, Charlie, he’s the bass player, loved it. We were watching and man, you got some pipes there! I know he wants to thank you. We got this thing Charles and I, like if he sees you first, can’t have no fighting, two brothers on the road.”
“Where were the bouncers? My ex used to be a bouncer and he and his buddies would’ve been there in a flash. Probably broken the asshole’s wrist.”

I’ve always been intrigued with Garth’s dark side as he calls it. Charlie walked over. Short guy with a navy blue polka-dot kerchief wrapped around his head and tied in back and shoulder length dreads. Decent delts. A bit of a paunch, but builders don’t give a fuck about fat in the off season. He wanted to get ready for a photo shoot for a new album, kind of jazzy this one, he said, maybe I could give him a few work-out tips, though he was really into Zen these days, did I know anything about Zen and maybe we could talk? He was sharing a room with his brother the drummer, but if he could get a lift with me that would be so nice, we could talk and then maybe go upstairs and meet up with his brother.

Hey little girl, why the fuck you messing around with a musician? I brought Charlie to my silver rental. Almost slipped on the ice on Spadina Street, yelled whooeee, got lost along the way to his hotel, skidded in the snow, giggled a lot, and parked in a hopefully acceptable zone across the street from Quality Inn on Lombard, diagonally across the street from Gilda’s Club. Cancer across the street in a renovated fire hall and I was sashaying around, hoarding every ounce of available nightlife.

“C’mon just one kiss.” I opened the car door. “Kiss me,” he said, “c’mon just a simple kiss, just one. He leaned forward. His kiss was soft as candy and all the while I was telling myself off, even as we took the elevator to his room, which he did with such assurance, clinking his hotel room keys like he was congratulating himself. What the fuck you doing? Just another walk down another hotel hallway. I walked into the room. Two single beds with a small space between them and an equal space from one bed to the door, also from the farthest bed to the window and from each foot end of the beds to the window. He closed the door. I was definitely in.


“Your brother?” I said.
“Come let me kiss you.” he said, slipping his hands under my top and laying them flat on my stomach.
“Such muscles,” he whispered. “I bet you have a six-pack.”
“It’s a myth, sweetie, about builders and six packs. Only in-season. See I’m in my off- season. The world has this thing for rippling bodies. It’s about mass baby. Bottom line. You’re such a fine man, but I can’t, really. I’m not playing, I can’t honey. You should’ve grabbed the frizzy chick that was fucking hot for you.”
“I could’ve had her anytime. I love muscles. I chose you.”

I didn’t want any loving with a potential musician for my festival, because then, well then I was just a female among how many other eager mouths and cunts. So I told him no, but I could give him a massage, one of those upper body tough massages pressing out muscle knots while the masseuse politely inquires, “On a scale of one to ten, how does that feel?”

“Will you take of your shirt?” he said.
“No, but you can take off yours.”

At the end, I climbed over him, we both stood up, he reached into the “v” of my Lycra shirt and gently lifted my right breast. Took tender hold of my nipple and graciously kissed it. I will never forget.

“I can’t stay,” I whispered, straightening my clothes. “Gotta leave. You shoulda grabbed the young chick.with the dark curly hair.”
“But it’s you I want. I love a woman with muscles.”

I slid under his arm and out the door, apologizing all the way to the elevator. Can’t have the bass man fucking the impresario. There are those chicks who would run across hot coals for a musician. “Hey ya, honey,” a musician prick might call out, “you jest run across those coals for me and sure I’ll fuck ya.” And the wacko chick would dash across, purse, tits, and fake jewelry flying. An impresario was different. I was full of my art and in love with my soul. I had deep-set eyes. The attentions of various artists and writers did not cause me to feel honoured. I preferred . . . I didn’t know what I preferred, except I had no heroes and I liked it that way.

Copyright Janice Colman 2008