Too Close For Comfort

“Billy is it?” I look at the guy standing in front of me who looked like he didn’t know the meaning of hygiene. I tried not to visibly cringe at his appearance, I hated when I was forced to do this.

“Yeah, and you are?” He sneered at me, taking his time to look me up and down.

“I’m Lacey, and I’m one of your bosses, so how about you not treat me like a stupid girl, and we can get along just fine, okay?” I said as nicely as possible, putting my hands on my hips and looking up at him. I really hated this part of the job, but it happens. New people come to work, and they have to be told what to do. And no one else wanted to do it; I wonder if they knew how nasty this guy smelled.

“You’re my boss? I’m like twice your age, you can’t be my boss.” I rolled my eyes at him before turning around and beginning to walk off, hoping he would get the point and follow. I was sick of hearing that response. I could hear the guy running behind me and I slowed down. I reached in my back pocket and grabbed the backstage pass, before handing it to him.

“Keep this on you at all times, no matter what. You give this to some stupid bimbo in exchange for anything, I promise you your ass will be fired, you will be arrested, and I’ll punch you in the balls.” I smiled at him as he took it out of my hand. I watched as he went to place it in his back pocket. “Put it on now, you won’t get anywhere unless it’s on, and I will leave you out here with your stuff, and no one will care.” I watched as he placed the string around his neck. I flashed my pass to the security guard and walked through the gate, with Billy right behind me.

“Pretty much everyone else here has been with us for a while, so they have an advantage, but as long as you catch on quickly, you’ll be fine.” This guy was filling in for one of our video guys who stupidly broke both of his legs waterskiing. I don’t know how, but he was now home and I was stuck here with Bob. This guy was supposed to be good, but time would tell.

***

“So Lacey, how did you get into the business?” Billy finally asked as I showed him around. We had already visited the buses so he could put his bags down, and he had met most of the crew. I was leading him to the back of the building so that he could see the room that he would be working from, control the cameras and what would come up on the video screens.

“Both of my parents are in it, that’s how they met. I’ve been around this my entire life; it was my easy way out. I was good at this, so why waste my time trying something that I probably hate when I love this?” I smiled as we passed by people in the hallway, making my way through doors until I found my destination. “The guys offered me a job after someone saw me work with my parents, and here I am, three years later. Here we are.” I opened the door before being met with a chorus of greetings. “Guys, this is Billy, he’s John’s replacement.” I introduced him to everyone in the room.

“Lace, did you introduce him to the guys?” I shook my head no before walking back towards the door.

“I forgot that, we’ll be right back, I’ll catch them before they do sound check.” I pull my phone out of my back pocket and check the time before speeding up. They were supposed to start 5 minutes ago. But they were never on time, never.

They were never on time until today. I heard Zacky testing his guitar as we walked to the back of the stage. I walked past people until I was beside Rev’s drum kit, and smiled and waved at him. In return, he screamed into his microphone,

“Lacey’s here!” And this caused everyone to turn towards us and stop playing.

“Wow, thanks Jimmy,” I screamed as he motioned for me to come hug him.

“I haven’t seen you in like 12 hours and that is way too long.” I laughed as I climbed up the riser and hugged him.

“I’m sorry Jimmy, I will never stay away from you for so long again.” He let go of me and I made my way down. “Guys, come meet the new video guy.” And like the good guys they are, they did.

“Guys, this is Billy. Billy meet Jimmy, Zacky, Brian, Johnny and Matt. These are the guys that you’re gonna be working for.” The guys shook Billy’s hand, and I could see from their faces that they had the same first impression. “And now, I must get Billy back to the video room so that he can do his job.” Before I walked off though, I was pulled into a hug by Zacky. Then I quickly showed Billy his way back to the video room before actually starting my job.

As I was walking back towards the front of the venue, I realized how lucky I had it. I was only 20 and I had my dream job, and I’d had it for 3 years. That didn’t happen to people my age. All my other friends were either in college and complaining or in some dead end job and complaining. I, on the other hand, was not complaining. I got paid well; I was taken care of, and made awesome friends and basically had 5 brothers watching over me. I never took my job for granted though, I thought about how lucky I was everyday. But there was no time to think about all of this now; I had lights and video to check, but I still found myself reflecting about it as I ran wires.

When Avenged Sevenfold came out with City of Evil I was asked to come and work for them. I was months away from graduating high school, but management offered to get me a tutor, and they offered me a good bit of money. It was no big deal, I had been getting offers for years, but the time was never right.

And there was something about this band that just felt different. They weren’t big at the time, especially compared to how they are now, but I had faith in them. As soon as I met them I knew this was the job for me. I agreed to work for them, even with half of the crew talking shit about me behind my back. They thought I got the job based on who my parents were, not by my actual talent and work. I’m pretty sure I proved them wrong within the first month, and soon everyone was warmed up to me. I wasn’t so worried about the crew, I was scared shitless about the band.

Just reading up about them worried me. Who in the hell uses stage names? These guys, and I knew from others that they partied. In the first few months I worked for them, I had maybe five conversations with all of them. I stayed away. But somehow they convinced me to eat lunch with them here, play video games there. And now, they are what keep me going. They made sure that I was getting to do things that I wanted, like help design what the lighting was like for the latest tour. They also protected me. They watched over me to make sure that I was behaving. Everyone that I worked with watched over me. I was the youngest person out of the crew, always was, so everyone just seemed to keep an eye out for me.

“Lacey, will you check on the strobe lights behind Jimmy’s set up, one’s not working, I don’t think they’re all plugged up.” My walkie talkie churped to me and I headed out from the side of the stage to the drum set, and checked the wiring, having to eventually get on my knees and follow the cords, where I found one that one had come loose from the outlet, so I plugged it back in before reporting that I fixed the problem. I got up and dusted my knees before walking back to the side of the stage before hearing my name ringing out from the walkie talkie again.

“Laceyyyyy.” I laughed before answering.

“Yes Zacky?” I waited a minute before his response came out.

“We have ice cream. Get off the stage and come to the dressing room now before it melts.” I laughed before looking over to my boss who just waved me away and made my way to the guys’ dressing room where I was met with Zacky sucking on some type of ice cream bar and holding a firecracker ice pop out towards me. I gladly took it and opened it.

“Thank you Zacky. Where did you get ice cream?”

“We got lucky and caught an ice cream truck as it was driving by. Jimmy ran after it and now we have ice cream.” I laughed before sitting down beside Zacky, noting that Matt was missing.

“Where’s Matt at?” I asked before thinking.

“Talking to Val.” I should have known. Val was Matt’s girlfriend, and had been so for 12 years. I always thought that they made an amazing couple until the past year. Val was constantly on the road with the band, but now Val seemed to never come. She was busy working on her “career” as an actress. I never hear of her doing anything but going out with her new friends. She was supposed to be coming sometime soon, and Matt had to beg her to agree to come.

It was weird. I loved Val to death, but I had no clue what was going on. They were fighting everyday, and I think everyone was getting sick of it. I don’t know how many nights I got to see a drunk Matt all pissed about his conversation with Val earlier that day. And then there were the numerous calls I got from him wanting to talk about it. We’d either spend a few hours on the phone, or I would get off the crew bus and jump on the band’s bus when we had a rest stop. I was just hoping that they would get through this soon, because it broke my heart to see him hurt like that. A man like that should never go through what she was doing to him.

I quickly finished my ice cream before getting up and telling Zacky thank you, and deciding to pop in on Matt for a second, just to make sure everything was ok. I knocked on the door that Zacky pointed at before opening it, seeing Matt sitting in an arm chair looking up at me, his cell phone attached to one ear. The look on his face said everything. I walked over to give him a quick hug, he held me there for a moment,

“She doesn’t want to come.” I frowned at him before kissing his cheek.

“Just do the best you can to convince her otherwise Matty.” He nodded and with that I left the room, closing the door behind me and telling everyone goodbye, and returning to my job.