Seasick Steve

The lights seemed so bright, piercing. My hands were sweating. A lot. My heartbeat loud in my ears, hammering out its own little drum solo and the sound of it overpowered nearly all other noise though even it couldn‘t drown out the terrifying sound of voices, so many that they all merged into one, in the next room I wiped my hands on my favourite jeans, a little scruffy but they were still my favourites and re-adjusted my guitar strap nervously. I ran my nail along the small dent in the guitars’ side repeatedly, like a track on a CD put on loop. It was the only imperfection on the whole thing. I still remembered when the day he’d found it:

I was walking back from Rae’s, worrying about a maths exam for the next day I heard a motorbike start up across the street. I lifted my head to watch it pass and I’d seen a massive skip filled with a ton of stuff. I was about to drop my eyes back to the pavement when noticed a flash of red and that was when I first saw it. Back then I hadn’t known a lot about guitars but I thought it looked great and I’d been brought up to be grateful of what I had and it seemed so wasteful just to let it be thrown away. I’d crossed over and tried to lift a wardrobe that was on top of it (why the hell they were throwing out so much stuff was beyond me) but I needed both hands to lift it high enough. “Damn!” I’d said, hitting my palm of the side of the skip. I’d slumped down, leaning on the side of it and racked my brains for a way to get it out. The thought came to me so quickly that I’d imagined one of those little cartoon light bulbs flashing above my head. It was so obvious it was a little embarrassed I hadn’t though of it straight away. I’d taken out his phone and sent Rae a short message.

“Can you help me out with something?”

I slid the phone up and down a few times impatiently and was about to put it back in my pocket when it buzzed in my hand.

“Suresies, what do you need?”

I remembered looked at the phone, thinking of how to word the next sentence

“Can you meet me? Just walk down the way to my house and you’ll see me”

I could almost imagine the confused look on you face as she read it. The phone buzzed again.

“Okay…?”

I didn’t have to wait long, in a few minutes I had seen her walking along the street, totally not paying attention, earphones in like always, music blaring. I’d had to wave to get her attention. She’d walked over and taken out one earphone,
“Right. So why the hell did you drag me over here?”
I quickly explained the problem and showed her the guitar.
“Fine, I’ll help you but you owe me!”
“Okay, just hurry the hell up, I was supposed to be back ages ago,”
After a lot of pushing and pulling they’d managed to get the wardrobe high enough for her to lift it out. And it had led me here.

I’d had to buy new strings and an amp for it but it was perfect. It was named Steve after a blues guitarist called “Seasick Steve” that I found on the internet. The real Steve had once lived as a homeless guy travelling from town to town looking for work, so the name seemed right for a guitar that had been found with the rubbish.

“You‘re on in five” said a voice, shattering my day dream and the panicked nervousness that I’d managed to forget about settled on me again. I knew this was nothing, tiny. Practically insignificant but god it seemed so massive. I lifted the guitars strap and put it back on my shoulder higher up. I could still hear people talking in the hall. We were on after these guys. It was just a rubbishy school talent show, seriously, the competition consisted of a dance group where most of them had tripped over halfway through and a group of brass players from the school orchestra. I knew we could beat the competition hands down. So why wouldn’t my damn hands stop sweating? I looked over at Rae, she was our drummer. She smiled at me but it was weak, she was just as freaked as I was, which was oddly reassuring. “Time to go” said Jason, he was on bass. He had an easy grin on his face, nothing ever seemed to bother him. Normally it was nice to have someone so calm about but now it was just annoying. We all stepped out at the same time, a collective unit, standing as one. I stepped up to the mike trying not to see the faces, trying to fool myself it was just another day practicing in the garage and that there weren‘t so many people there waiting to criticise me at the slightest fault. Oh well here goes nothing I thought. “Hi. We are False Reality and we hope you like our songs.” then the music began.