Read Tryp's story in Somebody to Love here!
I was born in a place where little boys were thrown away when they turned thirteen.
Exiled.
Set out on the highway and told to keep walking and not come back.
I've been walking away ever since without knowing where I was going.
When I was set out on the highway, I can barely read and couldn't multiply because education was wasted on boys. Once we were old enough to swing a hammer or use the saw, we were taken out of school to work in the community's construction company. The housing developments and shopping mall construction projects where we worked must have looked odd with so many young boys working instead of going to elementary school, but the developers and even the government didn't ask questions because the price was right.
I was out there with them, sweating in the sun and hauling lumber, but my mother also brought me inside for a few hours in the afternoon to practice piano. In a town with no televisions, a kid who can play the piano like an angel is a valuable commodity.
After I was set out on the highway, it was music that saved me. Getting a job in a music store with a sympathetic owner allowed me to go to school and that allowed me to get a scholarship to the Colburn School, a music conservatory in California, which was where Xan Valentine found me and seduced me away from classical music with his rock ‘n' roll lifestyle to be his drummer in his band.
Oh, if only those kids working construction with me could see me now, rich as a skunk, playing rock concerts to arenas full of screaming fans, and drinking until dawn.
And then one of the roadies has to pour me into bed, and then another one comes with a bucket of ice to get me up for the show the next day.
One of the roadies is different. Her name is Elfie, and she took off my boots before tossing the covers over my sick body.
No one's ever taken care of me like that in my whole life.
I might be in love.
But she's the pyrotechnics technician, and if I make a move on her, she'll put a bomb in my drum kit.
It might be worth it.
Read Tryp's story in Somebody to Love here!
