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Superstar
by Timothy Fogg
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Lance Rocker peered out the backstage door and looked at the gathering fans. Man, they were wild tonight. This was his first tour in two years, and his last album, Light Phase, was still selling well. In fact it was now listed as a standard; a record against which others are compared.
Lance was close to having stage fright this evening. He was growing older and he wondered if there would come a time when the fans would forget him in favor of a younger version. He worried about this in spite of the continued success of the
Stones and Aerosmith. The public can be fickle and he didn't want to be left in the corner.
He peeked out again. These people were of all ages and all walks of life. They had one thing in common - a homecoming mood, like folks attending a long awaited family reunion. Many carried pints of Yukon Jack, which had been his favorite drink back when he could drink. Funny, he didn't seem to miss it whatsoever. There was a time when he didn't believe he could live without it.
Those had been the days when the road was his home, each spent in a haze of pretty girls and booze. Drunk or sober the fans had always loved him, ever since that first album, Live Wired, went platinum and left him in a position to retire so many years ago. But he had not retired, just lived harder than before, and through the years bad investments and just plain waste had broken him. This next tour had to be a success, for it was his last big chance.
God he missed Anne. For six years she had been his one and only, the first woman he could say that he truly loved. But it came to a point when she could stand it no longer. He couldn't blame her. His life had been so wired and, and yes, depraved, that he was amazed she had stayed as long as she had. He wanted to call her, to ask her to come see him now that he was clean and sober, but his pride stood in the way. Unlike what Jagger sang, he was too proud to beg. Still, what he would give to see her face again.
His two years hiatus was a result of his hard life. The booze had done more than let him live in a half-light - it had hardened his liver and ate a hole in his stomach that opened in a five-inch tear. He had thought he had a hangover. In the one short day that it took to tell the difference he came within ounces of bleeding to death. In that first year he spent a total of four weeks in intensive care. In the second year modifications to his habits and interests had brought him to a health that was as good as possible, and now he had one last shot at making a new life.
His manager had tried to redesign the act to keep him from tearing his weak stomach and ending his new career before it even started. Lance tried to remain calm. He was more nervous now than the very first time he had performed with a band of high school musicians who all believed they would rock for the rest of their lives. Of them all, only Lance had.
His drummer, the best of the group, had actually gone to college and majored in percussion. He had stayed with the music for a long time, but as his family grew larger a foreman's job gained appeal for the steady paychecks and regular hours.
Of the others, two had married and divorced, one of them three times, and the organist had nearly been killed in a car wreck and was never the same since.
When that band had broken up Lance hadn't waited for anything - he just headed west and didn't stop until he was in San Francisco. For a long time after that his affairs climbed steadily upward. As often happens with sudden wealth, it was spent nearly as fast as it came in. Lance had been naive in those days and would sign almost anything. That's not a good way to act when dealing with unknown agents.
He had persevered. Never one to quit, he wrote an album called Strive that nearly reached the success of the first. And he had worked the road, loving it, all the hotel rooms and local foods and the virtual mélange of beautiful women. He shrugged. So what? He would trade them all just for one more chance to hold Anne's hand.
He could tell by the sounds that the crowd outside was going into a crush. It was much too dangerous and he made the motions to open the doors early. This was typical of him. Regardless of how self-serving his lifestyle might seem to an outsider his fans had always come first. "Always have and always will," he thought.
Now the seats were filling up and the crowd was chanting, "Lance, Lance, Lance," over and over again. He felt the adrenalin rush through his body and motioned to the band they were starting right now.
And he ran out on stage and took a giant leap and gave a scream that came from his boot tops - and the blood gushed out his mouth and he was dead when he came back down to the floor. And his fans saw the end of a superstar, and the start of a legend.
©2002 StoriesByEmail.com
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