Page 74 of Shame Me
What time was the interview? I couldn’t remember but I didn’t have time to pull up the itinerary, so I focused first on getting dressed. Then I put on minimal makeup and packed up what little I had taken out of my bag, grateful for the fact that we’d learned to tour light. Of course, that meant that we did laundry every few days, but right now I was glad.
As I left the room, I vowed to never drink like that again.
By the time I found the business center, the interview had already started. All the guys were hovered around the older desktop computer at the end of the room—Mick sat in the swivel chair as if he’d rather be anywhere else. But then I noticed that he was holding a small webcam above his head pointed at the guys while looking at the computer monitor to make sure they were all captured on screen. After dropping my bag and placing it on the floor near the guys’, I tiptoed to the other end of the room. Mick mouthed,You’re late.
All I could respond wasSorry.
And, boy, was I.
But it wasn’t until Braden shifted his gaze from the webcam to me that I felt ashamed. His eyes communicated a clear message:I expected this from Zack, not from you. What were you thinking?
Maybe it was my imagination, but I was filled with shame and embarrassment—not just at my impulsive behavior the night before but at fucking up so royally that morning. I had let them all down, and here I’d been hoping I’d be a role model for younger women. I was nothing of the sort.
All because I loved this man too much and was finding it hard to find myself inside that big ball of emotion.
Zack was talking to the person on the other end of Zoom when I got close. Unlike the way I felt, he seemed composed, together, and completely lucid. It was hard to believe he’d had as much as I had the night before—except I knew better. And I was sure he’d continued after putting me to bed. He could function this way and clearly I could not. “Literally anything can inspire me. Like when I wrote ‘Where I Belong.’ I conceived the idea when I was at my job washing dishes. There came a time when I wondered if the point we’d gotten to was as good as it would get and I began coming up with lyrics in my head about how badthe job sucked, how it felt like no matter how hard me and my friends worked, we were barely getting the bills paid, about how the life I’d envisioned for myself was quickly flushing itself down the toilet.”
The woman on the other side said, “I suspect this is coming with a bigbut, because I know some of your lyrics have touched on those elements, but I don’t remember an entire song about them.”
“Exactly. Right after that, we had a show at a place called After Hours. It wasn’t our usual type of venue, but the crowd enjoyed us. And it was at that show that I realized I belonged onstage. When I was up there—no matter how shitty a day I’d had, like if my boss had chewed my ass or I’d fought with one of these guys or we got an overdue notice for the electric or some shit—when I got on stage, that all just melted away, like none of it existed. When I got up there, I felt completely alive.”
“It reallyiswhere you belong.”
“Yep—and I hope the lyrics convey that. The audience—they’re part of our family. They’re part of why it’s such a…an almost religious experience.”
“Thanks for that, Zack. Did I happen to see your drummer show up?”
“Yeah.” Turning the webcam in Mick’s hand, Zack focused it on me. “This is Dani Mankin.”
“Hi, Dani. Real quick, can you tell me what inspired you to be a drummer in a business that’s not always known for embracing women?”
The real answer would probably make me sound like a weak female—but this was the first time I’d ever been asked. I found that strange. But I wasn’t on my game, and I knew any answer I gave would probably be lame—so I decided to just be honest. And, rather than look at the monitor, I looked at the webcam so she could see my face, even though I knew I looked like warmed-over shit. “This wasn’t my dream—it was Zack’s. And he brought the four of us together. He had a vision and wanted his friends to be part of it, and it was hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. I wanted to…”
I paused there. After all my railing over the past year about the denigration of women in society but especially in the world of hard rock and heavy metal, if I told this reporter that I’d wanted nothing more than to be with Zack and that my love for him had been my first reason to join, I’d look like a passive, weak female. I hadn’t chosen my destiny. I’d let it be chosen for me. And while that was partly true, when I’d come back to the band after considering leaving for good, deciding that drumming and music were important to me regardless of Zack, I’d taken my fate by the reins. I’d continued to pursue our shared goal intentionally then.
So I told her the truth fromthatperspective. “I wanted to be part of this amazing band. These guys…they’re my best friends.” Again, I wasn’t going to say anything about my relationship with Zack. It was still too new and tenuous. “They’re mybestfriends, and creating music with them has been fulfilling in a way I can’t describe.”
“Thanks for that. So…I need to go. Any parting thoughts?”
I let the guys take that for me, especially since I still felt a little in the dark, not knowing what they’d already discussed. And I hadn’t caught the woman’s name, but I saw her face, and she was about our age—barely twenty, if that, with dark brown hair and high cheekbones, but already she had a knack for getting information. Her voice was soothing but, I found out later, her knowledge of music was unsurpassed by most, and we would most certainly be interviewed by her again.
No one said anything else after we piled out of the business center…but I could feel it. Maybe I hadn’t come to a soundcheckdrunk like Zack had our first time in Chicago and maybe it was just an interview, but I’d let my band down.
And it was all due to something I wouldn’t have ever confessed in an interview: it was because I was hopelessly in love with my self-destructive best friend, and I wasn’t sure how to cope with it.
CHAPTER 22
Afew days later on a Sunday in Philadelphia, we were playing at a smaller venue, but the crowd there was intense. The next day we were in New York enjoying another rare day off, and as a group, we spent the day exploring the city and picking up food from street vendors but otherwise not spending too much money. And although it had been cold out, it wasn’t any worse than it would have been back home. The biggest difference was the feel of the humidity in the cool air.
That night, we couldn’t do our usual because the hotel rooms, while more expensive than most of the places on our tour, were smaller than we were used to. But we found a halal cart—food we’d never eaten before—and tried gyros for the first time. Then we tried playing cards in the room Zack and I shared, with all of us sitting on the bed, using the center for card play. Even though we were getting along okay, I wondered if the guys were starting to feel the same way I was…like there was tension just beneath the surface. For some reason, every little thing everyone did was starting to get on my nerves. All I could figure was that it was due to fatigue and constantly being around each other without a moment’s peace.
With the road crew, I could understand, because those guys were often brutish buffoons. Only one of them had bothered to learn my name, so I extended the same courtesy and, for the most part, tried to ignore them.
But the band—these were my best friends, my brothers, one of them my lover…and so I tried keeping my shorter fuse to myself. I might have found it annoying how Cy would suck air through his teeth after eating, as if it cleaned them or something, but I knew I probably had little habits I was unaware of that irritated him as well. I knew it was irrational, so I tried to keep all my petty feelings to myself.
Unfortunately, much of it came out here and there—and it wasn’t just me. During soundcheck, we might all get short with each other. Instead of asking respectful questions, we’d make snide statements. On the bus, we’d snip at each other. Mick had even started calling us his kids, threatening to send us to a corner to cool off.
I knew it was the pressure of the tour—but I wondered if we’d be able to survive the next few weeks without saying something we regretted. We all seemed to have shorter tempers.
