Beautiful Boys: An insiders perspective on the Lola Ray experience.

In an age of Bluetooth, WiFi, double blended green tea lattes and hybrid Ford Explorers, it was only fitting that my union with dearest John and Brian came simply from the click of a mouse. After months of sifting through the rotten tripe polluting craigslist, I happened upon a simple post which read ‘touring band seeks drummer’. I replied, auditioned, and soon found myself locked behind the graffiti riddled doors of a black van…cigarette smoke pouring forth through the cracked passenger window. The singer looked to be of some unknown and terrifying ethnicity and I would sooner than later learn of his barbarian appetite for barbequed meat. The guitarist came off as a quiet man, a troubled man perhaps, but nonetheless an educated man. He spoke in foreign tongues for the first week of the tour and would not allow me to urinate unless I asked. Much of the time I was too afraid. I knew within the first few hundred miles that lessons would be learned, friends would be made, and enemies would indefinitely be butchered under the fall of darkness, their bodies lost in the muck of Floridian mangrove.
One fateful night, I can recall tossing and turning on the vinyl bench seat of the van, staring out the window at the millions of tiny lights giving sight to the grim edge of desert before us and wondering, “how much better does it get?” I hadn’t had to ask to use the restroom in at least 3 or 4 days, John had offered me a succulent rib bone left in the wake of a post-show kill, and finally they had begun to call me by my real name (until then, I was referred to as ‘the lorax’). My heart felt heavy with the prospect of eventually gaining the unconditional love of these beautiful boys, so no task was too large, too foul or too erotic. If something needed to be shaved, I would shave it. If the pangs of road lonliness proved too much to handle, a backrub or hug was on the way. Life took on a strange simplicity while barreling down the endless highways, a fraternal bliss where not even the lilac stink of woman seemed to matter more than a fart in the wind. We were as gay as slightly gay straight men with mustaches, long hair and flower tattoos could be without actually being gay.
When the tour ended and the van pulled back into my suburban new jersey home, a salted jewel danced its way off the tip of my nose and fell to the black macadam. Home was no longer home and I was filled with the sadness of a love lost and a pet death all at once. The boys were moving back to California due to an utter lack of decent trash Mexican cantinas and my heart was broken thrice. I remember the last thing they said to me as they pulled away, “Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you’re dumb…Beck, you are a God in our eyes, in every way, shape and form. Your penis should be cast and marbleized for generations upon generations to appreciate. We hate ourselves because you rule so much. Goodbye, greatest friend ever.” And then I moved to California. The end. - beck