Solid Gold Rock ‘n’ Roll in: Where is my Boots?

So, are you the responsible friend, or the carefree one?

Every duo has one or the other.  If you have to ask which one you are, you’re probably the latter.  Barry’s always been the former.

He remembers these things.  Trent was always far more charismatic, but also flaky, and responsibility made his dick soft, in a figurative and literal sense.  So bookings?  That’s Barry Business.  Getting money from promoters?  Barry Business.  Finding a replacement microphone at 7:30pm on a Friday?  You better believe it, Barry Business.  And most important right now?  Finding his absentee tag partner to try and pregame and strategize about the upcoming Tag Team Survivor.

He stomps down the streets, full Canadian tuxedo, but with no shirt on under the jean jacket.  Who even knew they made jean jackets in sizes like “Circus Strongman” and “Great Gama”?  And despite his frazzled state of mind, he is immaculate: The ‘stache is legendary, that hair feathered and golden, not a rip in those painted on jeans misplaced.  That’s not how Boogie Barry plays, even if he is panicking on the inside.  He fishes his phone from his back pocket again.  Taps a few buttons and holds it to his head.  Even in a city of sins, he stands out.  Part throwback, part super-muscular Alan Jackson cosplay, part radiating attitude.  He’s “The Quiet One”.  So Trent has to be stadium-speaker loud.

“Hey, Boots.  Boogie.  I haven’t been able to get a hold of you in a few days, which is like…I’m not here to cramp your high, brother.  Normal circumstances, you do what you got to, ain’t no big thing.  But we aren’t too far off from a pretty big show for PRIME, and I was wanting to talk over strats and plans and if we was gonna coordinate our eyeshadow and just…listen, I’m gonna go nab me one of them Vietnamese sandwiches, but if you ain’t get a hold of me within like an hour, I’m gonna have to call you know who to track you down.  Baby, I don’t wanna do that!  Hit me back.”

He hands up the phone and sighs.  For a brief moment you can kinda catch the exhaustion on his face.  Because this is Barry Business.  Boogie Business.  He stalks off down the street, throwing his hair back with a shampoo commercial flair.

Barry is worried.

But Barry is always a little worried.

It comes with the territory.

—–

So, are you the responsible friend, or the carefree one?

Every duo has one or the other.  If you know which one you are, you’re probably the former.  Trent’s always been the latter.

He remembers these things. Barry was just always better at it all, so why would Trent ever worry?  Keeping his mind free meant he could be a bit freewheeling.  Freewheeling lets you live a life that gives you all sorts of fodder.  Hard rockers about drinking and running from the law.  Slinky jams about sexy mamas.  Ballads about missing your hometown and your grandma’s byrek.  So drinking all night with a local biker gang?  That’s Boots Shit.  Two backstage betties at once as your regular?  That’s Boots Shit.  Diving into pools?  That’s Boots Shit.

So walking through his hotel room, damn near gloriously nude, that’s Boots Shit.  He’s clad in the skimpiest of bikini underwear, hot pink zebra stripes straining to hold onto rockstar hog, and little else.  There are women in the bed, sleeping off whatever night moves were engaged in.  The room is practically a catalog tableaux of rock star excess: half eaten room service, empty champagne bottles, packs of American Spirits next to still-smoldering ashtrays.  If there was ever an environment you’d expect to find Trent Sadikaj in on an early morning, it’s this.  But he doesn’t appears to be holding court.  He’s not talking about how him and Boogie are going to lay the hurt on everyone else.  Right now, he’s walking about.  He’s clutching his phone, and while we’re hearing Barry’s voice, he keeps stalking through.  Trent Sadikaj doesn’t look carefree.  He doesn’t look like he’s engaging in Boots Shit.  He looks like he’s in a solid panic, all caps, underlined, neon.

“…one of them Vietnamese sandwiches, but if you ain’t get a hold of me within like an hour, I’m gonna have to call you know who to track you down.  Baby, I don’t wanna do that!  Hit me back.”

He ends the call.  Tosses his phone.  Sadikaj begins to rummage through anything he can find.  Suitcases and duffel bags.  Bedding and towels.  Undergarments from his groupies.  Anything and everything we can see him do, he’s doing.  He upends a couch.  This is going from humorous to worrisome.  He looks haggard.  He’s breathing at a fast pace, close to hyperventilation.  He mutters to himself and it isnt the sex panther purr that he throws on for us.  He’s losing it.

“Boots.  Boots.  Trent Sadikaj don’t go nowhere without them boots…where the fuck are they…”

Trent stalks to the bedroom.  One thing is for sure, a career of wearing heeled platforms and dancing on stage has left the man’s legs sculpted from marble.  He nudges one of his southern comforts.  When she doesn’t respond, he gives her a more violent shake.  As she blinks, he throws on his mask.  His voice gets its honey back.

“Hey there babygirl.  You been wonderful.  I’m gonna have room service send up frome fruit and mimosas here in just a second, but…where is my boots, baby doll?”

She blinks for a few.  Shrugs her shoulders.  Lays her head back down and is out like a light within five seconds.

Trent don’t like that.

Trent storms out.

Trent makes it to the balcony and shuts the sliding glass door behind him before dropping to a crouch.

Trent is holding himself.

Trent is holding back tears.

—–

So, are you the responsible friend, or the carefree one?

Every duo has one or the other.  But they both have to work in concert for the duo to work.  Trent may be an open drone string, but it’s just noise unless Barry is right alongside, playing the difficult notes.  You mix the drone and the note.  You get a riff.

And if Rock and Roll is a body?  Daddy them riffs is the bones.

It’s later.  We don’t know when.  But the women have absconded.  The hotel room is in even more disarray.  Trent Sadikaj is crouched on the couch in a bathrobe, taking tugs straight from a bottle of some manner of cognac.  It’s a whiplash to see him this way, not put together, not the prancing peacock that everyone fawns over.  Shell-shocked.  The door to his hotel room opens and he doesn’t even look at it.  Delgado has some small difficulty due to the upended room service cart practically pinning the door closed, but look at him.  Doors don’t hold back a guy like Boogie.

“Boots?  Bro you didn’t sound so hot on the phone…”

As soon as Barry Delgado sees his lead singer on the couch, he rushes over.  He drops the laundry bag that he was clutching and grasps the much taller half of Solid Gold Rock and Roll in a tight hug.  This isn’t a moment that is patronizing or romantic.  But us viewing it feel a bit of a prickle on the back of our neck, a voyeuristic self-consciousness.  This isn’t a performance or anything for the cameraman.  This is a friend who recognizes his friend is in a bad way.

“Hey hey hey, breathe for me, man.  You fell apart.  You fell apart but Boogie Man is here, big dog.  What happened man?  What happened??”

He sniffles.  Barry reassuringly grasps his shoulder.  When Trent speaks, his voice is small.

“…lost my boots, Barry.” 

Delgado releases his pal and smiles.

Because every duo has one or the other.

He looks down to the laundry bag.  Trent’s eyes follow his.  They lock their gaze, and Boogie Barry Delgado smiles and nods.

Trent scrambles to the floor and grabs the bag, opening it.  You haven’t seen joy, not really.  This is you getting exactly what you wanted on Christmas Morning.  This is seeing your first boob.  This is watching your child graduate from college, doctorate-tier, summa cum laude.  Because Trent doesn’t just smile when he sees the contents of the bag–he transforms.  That shell shocked guy, the weepy worried giant of cut muscle and beautiful hair?  That’s a ghost, baby.  It’s like when Dorothy steps into Oz.  When Peter Pan imagines the food.  He gets his color back, his face softens.  He doesn’t just sag with relief–it’s like the energy of who he is, Electric Boots Trent Sadikaj, made whole once more.

“The front desk roped me when I walked in.  They found them by the hot tub.  Had them shined and waiting for you, Electric Warrior.  You’re good.  All’s right with the world.  You’re…Boots.”

He pulls his boots out and regards them.  If a pair of platform stage strutters can be Excalibur, call him King Arthur.  He stands up and grasps Barry in a hug of his own.

“Come on, man.  Get yourself put together.  We got a big time event.  Lots of eyes.  They need to see that Stallion and the Stud in full 1080!!”

Trent smiles.

Trent pops to his feet.

Trent dances into the bedroom to turn into a butterfly again.

Every duo has…ah, who cares?

Every duo is a duo.

That’s all they need to be.