I often check in with the local band Dash Riprock - featuring my favorite drummer in the world, Spike. Also known as Mark Beihl (in more polite circles), he was the effervescent drummer in my band back in the 1980s - Teaser. In those days, as now, Spike plays with such utter joy and abandon that it should be clear to anyone who sees him play, there is nowhere else he would rather be. Never satisfied to merely keep the time, Spike's style is full of syncopation, variation and flash. Sure, he twirls and tosses his sticks; he mugs and pounds his head with them; he stands and taps them rhythmically at a variety of other objects near him. But his style goes beyond copped antics of hair-metal bands. He style is dense, syncopated and nuanced - even if he may not be able to define those words.
Now, every time I see Spike and we talk during his break, he likes to talk old times. Much as I prefer to stay in the now, he inevitably propels the conversation to the past, and invariably has a freshly emerged memory from the cloud of rock in which we both wandered in the old days. While we were in the same band and played the same shows, our offstage lives were full of unique and heretofore undisclosed experiences.
On one such night in Moundsville, as the band was playing I went to get a couple of beverages for my date and me. I could see the only opening at the bar was next to a worn-looking woman who looked like she had just gotten off her Harley, downed about a fifth of Jack Daniels and a couple of packs of Marlboros. Certain that there would be some sort of encounter, I told Deborah, "Watch this." I really didn't know what to expect, but I expected something.
After getting the bartender's attention and placing my order, I turned my eyes enough to notice this woman standing next to me, staring. I said hello to her, and through her drunken glaze she cried out, "I know you!"
I really didn't recognize her. She looked like Miss Moundsville to me. All she needed was a sash, some rub in her cheek and an 8x10 glossy of her posed on the back of a pickup truck - on cement blocks.
"You played in the band!" she exclaimed. "We used to come and see you all the time."
"Did you?" I asked.
"Yeah! Teaser - right?" she demanded. "You and Spike were in the band."
"That's right," I admitted.
"Don't you remember me?" she asked.
"No," I said. "I'm sorry. It was a long time ago."
"We used to come and see you every week," she went on. "Sometimes a couple of times a week. We drove to Pittsburgh to see you."
"Did you?" I said. I wasn't really asking.
"The Decade," she recalled. "Right? And the Electric Banana?"
I agreed that we had played at those venues with funny names in Pittsburgh.
"And you still don't remember me?"
I shrugged apologetically. "I didn't catch your name."
Outraged now, she hit my shoulder with the palm of her hand. "You don't remember me!"
At least we agreed upon something. "No."
Now she was furious. At the exact moment the band finished its song and the place fell silent, she shouted, "You fucked me! You fucking fucked me, you fucker!"
"I don't think so," I told her. Now, I know that I got around a good bit in that decade, and I also know that there were many times in those days when I drank a lot. And, sure, time can take a toll on our bodies. But even though the statute of limitations for any responsibility for youthful indiscretion was surely long past, I looked at this woman and I was sure that was a place I had never been. At least I could be grateful for that.
"Yes you did!" she insisted. She began calling her friends over. "You remember this guy? From Teaser, right? He fucking fucked me and now he doesn't fucking remember, the fucker."
It was time to take the drinks back to my seat. "Sorry," I said, even though I wasn't.
"Don't give me that!" she persisted, directly in my face again. "I can't believe you don't remember fucking me or my fucking name!"
I was walking forward now, but she was staying in front of me, walking backward.
"But I remember you," she cried. "You fucking fucked me - Jeff Burton!"