Gossip junkey

I parked at a 24 hour fitness and was finishing up my call to my grandma when an incoming call went to voice mail. It was a singing voice mail from a buddy I met 8 years ago while on a horrible tour of The Music Man.

Julie Kalu,
I miss you.
Call me back
You fucking bitch.

What girl can resist poetry?! I called him back right away.

A little background about me and my road buddy: We were on quite possibly the worst tour. Most of the company was very inexperienced, very young, not particularly good, and going nuts. To make things worse, the not so young members of the tour were 40-something year olds who never made it in the industry.......and for good reasons. It was the sort of experience that sent almost every member of the company looking for some way to drown their misery. Unlike most of our coworkers, neither my buddy nor I were into partying. As a result, we were the only two members of the 50-60 member company who would be up early, wandering the streets of America looking for a decent cup of coffee. That's when we discovered each other and our drugs of choice: coffee and gossip.

We had plenty of material to work with. We were on tour with beauty obsessed actors and dancers whose need for attention and positive affirmation was nearly unquenchable, thus they hooked up with everyone. There were troll like musicians who showed up to work drunk or stoned releasing beer and pizza death farts in the pit, then venturing out to bars every night until 3am trying to hook up with everyone. And of course, there was the crew, largely arrogant recluses who stopped acknowledging me as soon as they realized I wasn't going to hook up with them. You notice a common theme here? Yeah, we did as well and it kept us busy enough for 7 months to keep from slitting our wrists. It was Jerry Springer meets Melrose Place at a frat party kind of stuff where a love triangle wasn't interesting enough to be worth mentioning unless it was a married mother of an 8 year-old actor hooking up with one of the adult actors who had been gay for all 42 years of his life.

I work in a completely different environment now. Since we don't live with our coworkers, the gossip is mostly conjecture and office squabbling. I had forgotten how intoxicating it all had been until he called.

After some chit chat about gigs and such, I warned him that my phone battery was running low. He promised to hurry.

"You know I've been with my girl for three years now."

"Yeah." This might be good, I thought as I smelled the mild, sweet aroma of ripening gossip.

"Well, in all of that time, I haven't even wanted to look at another girl."

"Yeah?!" More! Feed the monster!

"Yeah." Beep. Phone shutting down.

"No!" I screamed, "No! No! No!" I thought about trying to power up my phone again. I'd just need about ten seconds. Just a quick, "Is it good or is it bad? Hurry!" The battery had been threatening me for a while and I knew there just wasn't any juice left. But I need the gossip! I need it bad! It was already 10 o'clock at night. Where could I score a gossip fix at such a late hour?!

*Sigh* Maybe its just as well. That was a dark period in my life. Maybe its better to go without.