Ride Share (futa/male, dubcon)

Story by Kuroshio

Haven't been posting here for quite some time but might as well throw my hat back in. I've been a lot less active over the last few years but now I'm trying to pick my production back up and see if I can't get some quality stuff back out onto the internet. Always interested in comments and feedback!

Seventeen years old and I thought I had it all figured out. I was a musical genius, after all. Dropped out my last semester of high school, headed straight for the big leagues. Los Angeles, California. Nothing but guitar, a notebook full of half-written songs and a suitcase too small to fit more than a single washer cycle.

Reality tried to catch up to me, but I was fast and stayed ahead for a while. Lucked into a band and we played some gigs, moved a few crowds, made just enough to pay for food and enough gas to reach our next few shows. Dive bars, school gyms, park music festivals. Enough to make a living and just a bit more. There was always a flickering light at the end of the tunnel.

We weren’t exactly a stable crew though: when I joined the band the bassist was an alcoholic, the drummer was constantly going through a mess breakup or an even messier getting back together, the rhythm guitarist a junkie, and the lead guitarist came close to all three at once. I had lead vocals but did most of the back-end work – all except the money stuff – and occasionally the rhythm guitar when Rollo was too strung-out to play. On top of that, I was writing and composing most of the songs.

It was chasing gigs, chasing a big break, chasing a hopeless dream with a band of misfits, hoping that the next show would be the one to make us famous. 

And it seemed so close, at times – we made a name for ourselves all the way out to Portland. I was tall and handsome in a listless, mop-top sorta way. People remarked on it; it was the ‘in’ look at the moment. There was an interview with a local zine, our band splashed over the page, the name in bright, bold letters. “A pretty boy with bruises around his eyes,” they wrote about me specifically. Then we found out some band in Seattle that had been around twice as long had the same name, already copyrighted. New name, start from scratch as we crossed over the Columbia River into Washington state.

It was a treadmill. Band members fought, entered rehab, split off, got replaced. The cast rotated every few months, but the problems never boiled over to a breakup. The only constants were drama, drugs and self-destructive behavior. Oh, and an unwillingness to practice enough to improve. They were rockstars before they were famous. Night after night, in new places, making crowds scream for a few bucks.

Looking back, it was the happiest two years of my life.

But things couldn’t keep circling the drain forever. Two of the rowdier members, Dustin and Rollo, got into a punch-up somewhere on I-5, around the time we crossed from Oregon to California, heading to a series of gigs in Sacramento. Dustin was our bassist and a burly type who’d spent time on an Alaskan fishing boat and looked like it. Rollo, on the other hand, was emaciated from years of overindulging in substances, mostly Oxy and heroin.

There was no underdog story. It was a one way fight. By the end of it, Rollo needed several thousand dollars in emergency facial reconstruction, Dustin needed several thousand dollars in bail and our band needed several thousand dollars to buy the equipment they’d destroyed during their brawl. Pockets, the lead guitarist and most functional drug addict I’d ever met, somehow arranged for us to borrow enough gear to make our gigs. Cynthia, our drummer, knew people who could replace Dustin and Rollo for a few weeks.

The next few shows were solid. I thought we’d make it out, maybe without Dustin, but intact and back on track.

That hope died when Cynthia talked it over with the replacements. “They’re not staying. Neither of ‘em,” she said it as I handled the labor, manhandling all our stuff back into the van. Her eyes told me it was about the money. It was always about the money. Cynth and I talked it over, agreed to split things three ways between ourselves and Pockets. But Pockets was faster. He stole what little money we had in our rainy day fund then went on a binge. And died of an overdose in some run-down traphouse along skid row.

Sometimes I think he did it on purpose.

No money, no band, no gigs. Ringers were pissed and not understanding; Cynthia couldn’t get them to let it go. My hopes and dreams were well and truly fucking over. It was past time to admit defeat and head home. The van was in Cynthia’s name and she needed it to get back down to LA. I needed a way to get back to Texas.

“My aunt’s going on a roadtrip down to New Orleans,” Cynthia o

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