I’m sitting alone in our dining hall when I get a message on my phone. I pull it up, and discover that Dirty Diamond has apparently got a gig lined up. We’d only done a few rehearsals, and already they were throwing me into the fires? I didn’t mind much, but this band’s confidence in me was starting to get a little frightening.

I arrive later at the joint, a local restaurant/bar called the Keel-Bridge. I enter through the front door to case the joint with my own eyes. The place is only slightly classy, with lacquered wood as far as the eye can see, comfy booths, and an overall blue-collar aesthetic, with a stage dominating the back of the floor plan. The lighting is decently bright, and warm without being outright blinding… though, they’d likely dim the lights a little for us once we got to work. That, though, was a mere intuition of mine.

I walked outside and around to the parking lot to find a van full of music equipment, with Nork and Teller lifting a speaker together. Felch at least has the dignity to put in a token effort by carrying one of the guitars in.

“What can I help you guys with?” I follow them as they make the slow march towards carrying a speaker indoors.

“I think we got it from here, girl.” Nork grunts, clearly being held back by Teller, who has a far more humble disposition with regards to receiving help from me.

“Don’t listen to him. Go ahead and help, any way you think you can, really.” I couldn’t help but chuckle at the contrast between their attitudes, as they walk up a set of stairs towards the concealed backstage area. I dart back to the van, and look around, and not wanting to touch a guitar, go for a smaller case and a mic stand. Over the course of the next 10 minutes, we finish loading up the stage, at which point Teller hands me a track list—all stuff that I had practiced before. But it was 15 minutes before we started, so where the hell was Sard?

“Ugh, Sard’s late for sound check again.” Nork sighed, letting his drumsticks beat lightly at the drum kit ahead of him.

Looking between the other band members, I ask the obvious question: “Is this normal for him?”

“Yeah, afraid so.” Felch tilted his head, tuning his guitar strings and then playing a few notes. “He likes being fashionably late, guess it’s to avoid having to tell us straight up that he’s too cool to be doing things like helping with carrying the speakers in.”

“You’re one to talk about avoiding speaker duty, Felch.” Teller quickly retorts, getting a chuckle out of Nork and myself. Felch resorts to a calm grin and a head tilt, almost as a sign of submission.

There’s a noticeable amount of ambient noise in the room, from people chattering, presumably talking about whatever workplace grievances came up that particular day, or gossiping about something else entirely. The ambient noise dims down as soon as the sound check starts-solitary drum strikes and guitar notes, though muffled by the curtains, ring through the room. I flinched; it was louder than I expected. Never thought I was gonna be the one up on stage for a performance, after all, but I was confident that I could fight it for at least tonight. “Hey, I can’t believe I didn’t ask earlier, but how long do these normally go for?”

“We train to go for three hours, but Sard usually calls it at two hours unless we’re getting a really good reception.” Teller looked to me briefly, and then back to his guitar.

Come to think of it, three hours is a really long time for one band to be playing straight. I can’t entirely blame him, but I can’t help but wonder if his ego is a bigger factor in that particular call than anything else. Riding right on the back of that thought, Sard slips in from the side door, in the same flashy vest as usual. “Well, well, gentlemen, we’re going to be facing a pretty decent crowd tonight, with a new vocalist. I’m almost nervous.” His vision snaps over to me. “Try not to fuck this up for me, yeah?”

“I don’t expect to.” I force myself to keep my voice and face neutral, but I didn’t like his attitude very much. He strides confidently, but I think he’s sweating it more than he lets on. Felch checks his watch, the motion visible in the corner of my eye as I approach my mic stand. “Showtime in less than 5 minutes. Check your mics.”

We flick on our mics, and I’m about to say something when Sard just goes right ahead. “Testing, testing, well, well.” He seemed to almost muse, and the silence after was almost long enough for me to get right of way, except he follows up; “Our backup vocalist is new, so if we end up being trash tonight that’s why.”

Nork covers his mouth and lets out a stifled laugh, almost in sync with the faint laughs among the crowd. Teller shakes his head slowly with a smile, the bill of his baseball cap moving back and forth in the air. I turn to see Felch waving me over shortly. “Hey. Don’t let him sweat you.” I nod, turn my head back to my mic, and run a hand through my hair as a devilish idea comes to me.

“Like I said, that won’t be a problem.” I spoke right into the mic, exposing our internal feud to the crowd. “And if it is, I’m sure you’d love to give us your brilliant standup routine.” At this line, Nork almost exploded with laughter, Teller was giggling, and Felch smiled before covering his mouth with his hand. I inhale and exhale with a smile as I watch Sard look behind himself at me, his shocked and probably annoyed expression in sharp contrast with the much more energetic response of the crowd.

He turns back to his mic. “Talking mad shit, I see. Let’s see who laughs when the heat really kicks up.” That wasn’t exactly much of a withering roast, despite his dramatic delivery making him almost sound more like a rapper than a punk rock frontman, but I let him take the last word before the curtains open.

The performance goes well. The patrons take us in with stride, with several tables being quickly relocated to make room for a developing moshpit about 30 minutes in. By the time two hours has passed, I can see Sard pause. “Well, well, well, normally we scram right about now, but I suppose we can stay for a little bit more. You feeling up for it!?” The crowd, ever receptive of us, beckons him on. “Alright...” he looks back to the rest of us. “Looks like we’re working overtime now!”

Looking around myself, I see Teller and Felch smiling, with Nork giving off a battle cry of his own in turn, his very movements displaying an abundance of energy and hype. I know what the guitarists are smiling about, though: I proved Sard wrong.

The performance goes on, and though my vocal cords are straining, I hold it together until the end. Across the last 15 minutes I can feel our collective work get a little sloppy, though not by nearly enough to upset the crowd before us. We then take a bow collectively, Sard taking a moment to take a picture of the crowd before joining us. The curtains close, and Sard finally helps with taking one of the speakers back to the van before walking off to collect the cover charge.

“She made Sard look kinda foolish tonight.” Nork laughs, jabbing my arm as I smile slightly.

“Yeah, I admit I was a little nervous when Sard put her on the spot back there. Thought she might’ve slipped just because of that.”

“I was pretty confident in her. That backchat was fucking insane, though. Got the crowd emotionally invested from the start-we might have to actually make that a planned part of our routine!”

Nork groans. “Oh, leave it to Felch to try and over-complicate things by mixing stand-up in with our rock music.”

“Hey, I think it’s actually not such a terrible idea. The crowd did react well.”

“I don’t mind it either, to be honest, though that would make it feel a little less special.” I shrug, letting the others handle most of the talking.

“Yeah, without the novelty of actually showing Sard up like that, it might just get a little boring, and cheesy.”

“I’ll admit, Teller, that was the best part of it. Overall, though, this was one of the best nights we had: the crowd liked us enough to let us play for three hours, we got a moshpit running, and Sard even got showed up, and it’s all because of June!”

“With the way you say that, it sounds like you want to give her a group hug.” Nork looks over to Felch as he speaks, half-smirking.

Felch pauses as he seems to think it over. “Ah, fuck it, why not.”

“Yeah, I guess we can afford to get a little goofy for once.” Teller joins the others as I sigh at the awkwardness of the situation, feeling myself preemptively tense up as they close in.

“We’re really doing this, huh?” raising an eyebrow, I slightly frown as the group hug happens, and wait for some… inappropriate touches that thankfully never came. As much as I hated to admit it, it did feel kinda nice to be appreciated by the boys. Reigniting my previous confidence, I offer up a half-smile. “Well… I guess I can let it happen just this once.”

The hug breaks up and the boys and I have a good laugh about it. Then, we’re back on packing up duty, as Sard ends up coming back and waiting by the van with a bucket of cash. By the time we’re done, it’s 10:17 PM. “Alright, what’s our payday look like?”

We watch Sard count out the money with bated breath, as singles and tens turn into hundreds. “So… We’ve got about 600 here.” It’s at this point I notice the others share a look among themselves-it seems they weren’t normally this successful. “300 gets cut off to the collective equipment fund, and that means 50 to each of you, and 100 for me.”

“Really? A double cut, you think you’re that important?”

“To be honest, he pretty much arbitrarily decides how much his extra cut is,” Teller explained. “You get used to it.”

“That’s right, because I’m the face, I’m the charisma, I’m the flame, baby!” To hear him so hyped about justifying this act to us was slightly annoying.

“If that’s true, then I did a good job of dousing you tonight, didn’t I?” I speak in a deadpan manner and raise a brow, evoking a generally positive reaction from the other band members. Sard, on the other hand, just looked exasperated. “Whatever… I talked with the bar owners. They said we can leave the van here until tomorrow, they won’t tow it or anything shitty like that.”

“Great, just what we needed: an excuse to drink away our new earnings.” Nork seemed to smile at Teller’s comment, who in contrast was shaking his head and smiling at the same time.

“About that, boys… I also convinced the manager to give each of us $40 worth of drinks, only available tonight. Drink it or lose it!”

“Huh. Maybe Sard is useful after all.” My thinking out loud was mostly drowned out by the cheers of the other band members, especially Nork.

They make to walk into the bar, with Felch looking behind himself. “So, June, you wanna come and have a drink with us?”

Originally I was going to decline, but since Felch was asking, I decided to give it a spin. “Fuck it, sure, I’ll give it a try.”