One Last Kiss...

After hugging the three of my boys that had decided they couldn’t wait for me to wake up to see me (and had also decided---despite the risk involved--- that waking me up was perfectly acceptable and safe), I kicked them out of my room so I could take a shower. They disappeared without a fight, deciding to find something to eat and drink, and bug Matt and Val for a bit. Still feeling the drunken-like fog of being in my hometown, in my old house, for the first time in a long time, I grabbed some towels and went off to find some clothes I could borrow from either Matt or Val.
I’d actually scored in both of their closets, finding a really cute shirt of Val’s that I instantly fell in love with and made a mental note to find out where I could buy it. The shirt was really cute.
It was a white halter-corset top with a black, deep purple and hot pink plaid pattern covering it. The lines of the plaid were thin, so the bolder colors it contained didn’t overwhelm the white. I decided to pair it with a pair of Matt’s old jeans that had that heavy-duty worn in distressed look going for them. Instead of throwing them out years ago, as the distress suggested they should have been, he’d cut off the legs and made them into a pair of long shorts that would be perfectly baggy on me. I’d also grabbed a black and purple studded belt out of Matt’s room since his shorts would obviously be too large in the waist on me.
Obviously the clothes I’d borrowed I had done so after asking my brother and Val. Hey, I may be home, but I need to wait at least a week before just kidnapping their clothes. I wish that was a joke, but it’s actually something I was famous for when I lived here last. My tendency to hijack everyone’s clothes isn’t as serious as it may sound, actually. Within a family, no member of that family has anything of their own…everything ends up belonging to everyone… This is ten million times more true when that ‘family’ is a group of your best friends with whom you spend an almost disgustingly excessive amount of time on a way too small tour bus for weeks on end. Clothing gets passed around so much in that situation that you forget what belongs to who, anyhow. Swiping--- or sharing, seeing as I like to put a positive spin on it--- each other’s clothing on tour is, really, the smartest way to go about it. Laundromats and time are two things that are hard to find during a tour. See, if you happen find a Laundromat, there’s usually no time to actually go and do laundry since the schedule is rather tight before shows and the Laundromats are typically closed after a show, when we have our main downtime. Then, when we actually have the time to do all of our laundry for some reason, we can never find a gosh-damn Laundromat. Therefore, the easiest thing to do is to basically pool all of our clothing together and simply ration between us the clothing that’s cleanest--- or at least, smelling the cleanest… or least. It makes far more sense to sacrifice (or depending on how you look at it, ‘donate’) your clothing to the ‘cause’, then to choose the alternative. The cause being everyone smelling as fresh as possible during four months or more we tour at one time; the alternative, of course, is to get greedy and horde or hold out on clothes and end up having to smell some pretty raunchy fumes coming off of those of us that have to wear last months shirt that’s caked in dried, petrified sweat. I’ll admit, while dirty clothes are horrid smelling, it’s among the nicer smells one encounters on that bus. Which is why rationing clean clothes is key to a tour--- the less rancid scents, the better.
Val and I actually got the better end of the touring deal. Not only did we get to benefit from everyone combining their fresh smelling clothing (since they realized that I would just wear their fresh clothes anyhow), but because we’re the only two girls on a bus of at least our five guys-- and sometimes our close friends and roadies Matt and Jason—our clothes were the only one’s safe from the community pile. For some reason, they weren’t into our girl clothes, go figure.
I smiled to myself, reminiscing silently as I climbed under the deliciously hot water. The heat and steam from the shower felt amazing on my skin and seemed to be washing away all the stress last night had left in its wake while soothing my muscles that had been stiff from my long drive.
The radio was blasting the soundtrack to my shower which, for the record, was Kill Hannah’s “Wake up The Sleepers” album. So, needless to say, I was rocking out in the shower with my singing. I shut off the water after rinsing the conditioner from my hair and danced out of the shower, wrapping a soft towel around my self and heading for my room.
I had just dried myself off and tossed the towel to the side to change into some clothes when the door flew open.