CEX SUB CON

I'm in LA, sitting at a table in a nightclub, watching a band that's compromised mostly of ex-members of Guns and Roses, incl. the almighty Slash. He looks good. The singer is this kid Josh who used to play guitar in my friend Craig's mathrock band but who moved to NYC a good many years past. He wasn't a lead-singer type, more of a mathrock-frontman type, but now he's the semi-confrontational lead singer in Slash's new band. It's not a big nightclub and the audience is all sitting at tables with drinks. Abruptly, Josh leaves the stage and jumps on a table and starts hitting the wall. I starting howling and cheering, because although it looks kind of silly, I am always excited about the effort in these sorts of things. The rest of the audience, though, starts shooting me the stinkeye and takes me for a heckler, and it appears Josh suspects something similar. He comes over to the table I'm sitting at with my girl and picks up a plastic glass that used to be full of water and chucks it right over my girl's head. Not close enough to be scary but close enough to make some kind of aggressive impression. He does it again with a handful of napkins. All the sudden, I'm surprised to find myself shoving all the cups, plates, silverware, etc. right off the table onto the floor with a loud bang-- so there's nothing else for him to throw, right? He walks back to the stage, but the audience all clearly now think I'm some aggro asshole.

Just then I notice that someone else is singing--- it's the guitarist, who has a really dated wavy longhair style pulled back to a ponytail. All their other songs have been hard, but obviously this guy is on some George Harrison shit or something and gets to play his weenie sensitive ballad. He's singing kind of off-key and very pussy. I forget about the lead singer and look at this man's face. I can see how nervous he is. I can see him thinking that it isn't going well, that the audience wants more of the hard stuff. I start to sweat, start to forget that I'm not him, even though I would never write or sing a song as wussy as this one.