After the third stanza, his eyes opened and his gaze met mine. The zing of the guitar pick squeal on my right wasn’t enough to pull me out of the semi-trance I felt looking at this man in the crowd. He was mesmerizing… intense. Fucking beautiful. Unlike anyone I’d ever seen.
Why him? Why all of a sudden? I’d never been inclined to lust after a fan. Ever. I kept my sexual liaisons casual and random—a guy in a club or a mutual friend of a friend—something I could control rather than risking a fan spilling details to the media. I wasn’t in the closet—hell, I wrote and sang songs about loving men—but I wasn’t very public about my sexuality either. Like many other celebrities, I simply tried to keep the personal details of my life private. Since I hadn’t really had much time in the past ten years for more than physical encounters, it hadn’t really been an issue. But this man? This man made me wonder if it was time to think about more than a quick fuck here and there.
He looked like the kind of man who deserved hours and hours of pleasure.
As I sang, I couldn’t help but imagine this sexy, sweating man beneath me, squeezing his eyes closed while I pressed inside him. Lying back on plush sheets as I dropped kisses over every inch of his hard body.
He said “take me” before he up and walked away from me.
I watched him so closely, I almost tripped over the mic stand between songs. When I had to introduce the next number, I glanced back at our drummer and the other guys before looking back out at the crowd. For a split second, I didn’t see him, but then he looked up at me and grinned. I must have smiled like a goof because the crowd noise ratcheted up a notch or twelve in response to my expression.
We went right into “Easy Crazy” and then “Birthday Girl.” I tried not to make it a one-fan show, but it wasn’t easy. Something about that guy kept dragging my eyes back. My mouth sang the lyrics, but my mind scrambled through ideas of how to find this guy after the show, how to get him back to my hotel room and naked in my bed. Maybe I’d get lucky and he’d wait for me by the stage doors with the other die-hards. Or maybe after our final good-nights, I could send a stagehand to give him a note.
When the tempo slowed down for my acoustic solo, “Belong to Me,” I gave up trying to do the right thing. I sang that song right to him. It was him and me, and I felt the world shift off kilter. This was crazy. I didn’t know him. He could have been married, uninterested, straight. But I felt it so deep in my bones. Even if he wasn’t for me, I wanted to make him feel something, make him feel seen, cared for, noticed.
If you were mine, I’d send the stars to greet you…
His hand came up and pressed against the center of his chest, and his chin began to wobble.
If you were mine, I’d bring my world to meet you…
The deep sound of my voice sounded rougher than normal to my ears, but the notes were true. I sang about wanting something I didn’t yet have—a feeling I was achingly familiar with.
A fat tear fell from his eye and caught the pink light from the stage.
If you were mine, I’d dry all your tears…
The line made them come faster, and he shook his head and laughed as if embarrassed to be touched by the words and the music.
If you were mine, I’d wish away all your fears…
We stood there, staring at each other while the earth continued to spin, and somehow I managed to finish the song. This was too much. I couldn’t keep up the level of intense connection without knowing his story.
He pulled his phone out of his pocket during the song break and took a picture of me—or maybe of the whole band, there was no way to know—and I couldn’t help but feel envious.
So I did the same.
“How’s it going, Denver?” I called into the microphone, pulling my phone from the back pocket of my jeans. I’d done this before, we all had, on particularly crazy nights with incredible crowds. But this time was different. I snapped as many photos as I could, making sure to capture him in most of the frames.
The crowd screamed and cheered. Phones came out everywhere to catch a shot of me doing the same. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Blondie frown at his phone and tap on the screen angrily as if responding to a text. A mix of negative emotions ran across his face before he looked back up at me and winced.