SUBURBAN TOURS EXCERPT 4: THE SLUT

She’d always been a woman, this guitar. Geoff had loved and abused her and handed her down to a favourite fan when he fled the toxic business, seeking peace, prosperity and sobriety.

His guitar remained a rival girl to that obsessed, shy, would-be groupie. Jackie left Geoff behind, when she moved house, by discarding the guitar in a dark cupboard. She’d insisted the honest removalist keep it, that thing, and she shut the door in his polite face.

Pete had it restored and tuned by a lavishing professional, and made a present of it to his would-be rock star mate Harry, for his twenty-first.

Harry wasn’t the type to name his guitars, and he found her intimidating, wasted on the dumb riffs he favoured. Harry didn’t even write on an acoustic, he needed the electric surge of slick rock. He had her meticulously wrapped and stored. Pete understood, and it became their sport to rate the worthiness of subsequent potential recipients.

Cath was precocious, just shy of being a prodigy, saved from that mixed blessing by her unschooled nomad’s life, following her hippy parents around the festival circuit, surviving through the ancient human arts of bartering, busking and selling what she’d grown.

Harry enjoyed handing over the guitar, and the advice. Don’t be too precious with it, make it a working instrument…

Cath loved the look and feel of the guitar immediately. She overheard Harry telling her dad that all performers were sluts, and made love to their audiences every night. He sounded like a man who knew himself and the world.

Early on, she just followed the music, and it blessed her. Even so, she was worldly enough to assert herself, by naming the precious, beloved instrument with her lipstick.