so the venue in toledo is the kind of place that has a loading dock that smells like old grease and someone’s attempt at bleach three years ago, and the band’s merch van is parked halfway up the ramp with the side door open to the august heat. it’s 11:47pm. the show ended at 11:30 and i’ve been counting tank tops since 10pm.
i have an all-access laminate. it hangs around my neck on a lanyard and it means i can walk backstage and stand near the green room and technically i can watch the shows from the side of the stage if i don’t block sightlines. what it doesn’t mean is that i’m in the band. what it doesn’t mean is that anybody calls me by my name in that voice they use for actual members. it means i fold shirts and i run the square reader and sometimes i get to eat the vegetarian pizza nobody wants.
the drum tech, whose name is danny, is loading the drum kit into a road case and not speaking to anyone. the bassist is already on the tour bus watching something on his phone. the guitarist and vocalist are in the bus too, probably playing that game where you call out every car in a certain color. they do it every night. it’s been three weeks and i still don’t think they like me. they definitely know i fold their band’s merch though. they know i know exactly how many small mediums we sold in columbus and how many extra-large we brought that we’re never going to move.
and the drummer. the drummer who plays shirtless every single night. who’s built like someone who actually does something with his time besides stand around and watch a merch table. who has never once said anything to me beyond the minimum. who is right now leaning against the loading dock railing in a tank top that says the band’s name on the front and has sweat stains dark enough to see from where i’m standing.
he’s watching me count.
“you do that a lot,” he said. just like that. his voice is lower than the band’s music. i’ve never heard him speak at full volume.
i looked up from the spreadsheet. “inventory?”
“watch things. during the shows. you’re always watching. but like, you’re watching us instead of the crowd.”
i didn’t know what to say to that so i said nothing and he didn’t look away.
“yeah,” he said, and walked over to the van. “help me fold these.”
the unsold extra-larges are in a bin in the back of the van. they’re thick ones, a limited run from some merch company that overprinted them by about two hundred units, and they’re heavy and kind of gross from the humidity. i pulled one out and he pulled another and we started folding them on the metal shelf that runs along the back wall. fold. quarter. stack. his hands were efficient. he didn’t look at me while we folded, just looked at the shirts, and that was somehow worse.
“i watch you too,” he said. to the shirt in his hands. “between sets. you’re counting something and then you’re putting your phone down and then you just. watch the kit for like thirty seconds before somebody buys something and you have to smile and sell them a hoodie that’s two sizes too big.”
“oh.”
“yeah. oh.”
we folded six more shirts before he said anything else. the van was getting hotter. the loading dock was getting quieter. danny the drum tech had finished loading out.
“do you want to maybe not fold shirts for a second,” he said.
i looked at him. he looked at me. he still had an extra-large bunched up in his hands.
“yeah,” i said, which is a stupid answer to that question but he nodded like i’d said the smart thing and set the shirt down and moved me from the shelf to the opposite wall, to a place where we were surrounded by shirt bins and the smell of laundry that’s been packed in a van for two hundred miles.
he kissed me like he’d been thinking about it since columbus, which maybe he had. his hand was on my jaw and his thumb was on my cheek and he tasted like the electrolyte drink they gave him after the show. he was warm and he was solid and he didn’t feel like the kind of person who stands around watching. he felt like someone who’d made a decision and wasn’t going to second-guess it.
“is this—” he started.
“yes,” i said. “yeah. this is good. this is like. the best thing that’s happened to me on this tour.”
he laughed. a real one. then he said “okay,” and pulled back just enough to let me get on my knees on the metal floor of the van.
the merch van is not a romantic place. it smells like fabric and the little packets of lube i keep wedged behind a bin. the light is fluorescent. there’s a sticker on the wall that says the band’s name and somebody’s tried to peel it off and given up halfway. but when he unzipped his jeans and his cock came out i didn’t think about any of that. he was hard already, thick, and there was a wet spot on the front of his underwear where he’d leaked through.
i wrapped my hand around him and looked up and said, “you really were watching.”
“i told you.”
“i didn’t believe you.”
he grabbed my hair. not pushing. just holding on. “believe me now.”
i put my mouth on him. the head was warm and salty and he made this sound like something in him had released pressure. his hips pushed up on their own and i let him and took him deeper, my jaw opening up, his cock hitting the back of my throat and making me gag a little. he cursed. his grip on my hair got tighter.
“fuck,” he said. “your mouth. your fucking mouth.”
i worked him slow. i liked that he wasn’t trying to be gentle, that he didn’t keep asking if i was okay or if i needed a break. i liked that he watched my face while i sucked him off in the back of a merch van that was hotter than the stage they’d just left. when he started pulling me up i thought he was going to finish but he just brought my face up to his and kissed me, his cock still heavy and wet against my stomach through my shirt.
“i want to fuck you,” he said into my mouth. “is that—”
“where’s the lube,” i said.
he found it and found a condom wrapped up in a bag from a truck stop in michigan and we got my jeans and my underwear off and he bent me over the shelf next to the folded shirts. his cock at my entrance, the head pushing in just past the ring of muscle, and me trying not to tense up because he was bigger than he looked and the van was quiet enough that i could hear everything. his breathing. the squeak of the shelf. the rustle of shirt bins.
“okay?” he said.
“yeah. keep going. i want it.”
he pushed in slow and i felt myself stretch around him, the burn and then the heat, and when he was all the way inside he just held me there for a second with his hand on the small of my back, not moving, just inside me, and that feeling was somehow dirtier than anything. he was in me in a merch van with a spreadsheet and a square reader on the metal shelf not five feet away.
then he started to move.
it was not the kind of careful, slow thing you do with someone new. he fucked me like he meant it. like he’d been thinking about it every night from behind his kit, running through how it would go. his hips slapped against me and the shelf rattled and he grabbed the back of my shirt to pull me down onto him and i came up on my forearms and pushed back into it, his cock hitting something deep inside me that made my vision go white at the edges.
“you feel so fucking good,” he kept saying. “you’re so tight. you’re so good.”
my cock was hard and leaking and bouncing against the inside of my thigh. i reached down to touch it and he stopped me and did it for me instead, his fist sliding on me in rhythm with his thrusts, and it was too much and not enough at the same time. i was making noise and i didn’t care. danny was already on the tour bus. the band was inside. there was nobody to hear me but him.
“i’m gonna come,” i said.
“yeah. come for me. come on my cock.”
and i did. right there on the metal shelf surrounded by extra-large band merchandise, my cock pulsing in his hand, my whole body shaking, and he pushed in as deep as he could get and came right after, his hips shuddering against my ass, his hand coming up to grip my shoulder like he needed something to hold onto.
we stood there like that for a minute, breathing hard, his forehead between my shoulder blades. the van was sticky and humid and he was still inside me and the fluorescent light was humming and there was a spreadsheet on the shelf that i’d been updating since before the set started.
“that was,” he said.
“yeah.”
“can i. like. would you want to maybe—”
“yes,” i said. “whatever. yes.”
he pulled out and found the trash bag and took care of the condom and pulled his jeans back up and helped me get my underwear and my jeans back on and then we just stood there like idiots in the back of the merch van.
finally he walked over to the shelf and picked up my phone with the spreadsheet still open. the inventory count. the square reader record. i watched him look at it.
“you never updated this,” he said. showing me the last entry, time-stamped 11:47pm.
“i was busy.”
he smiled. a real one. the first one i’d seen from him that wasn’t, like, five-percent-effort polite.
“yeah,” he said. “you were.”
i got out of the van and updated the inventory. added the units we’d sold, calculated the new totals, hit sync on the square reader. the numbers updated across the screen like nothing had happened. like there wasn’t semen drying on my thighs and a drummer standing in the doorway of the van waiting to help me move the rest of the merch inside.
the band’s gonna be here for two more months.
