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I smile at him with a conspiratorial glance, but I’m actually going to walk out of this room, go back to my apartment and not come out until they drag me out. All by myself with a duvet and pizza. I won’t lift a finger to cook, just order takeout.

I’ve always been totally open with my friends, they know everything about me, and I know everything about them. Our past is inextricably linked. Still, it’s sometimes easier to make them think I have a different woman in my bed every night than to explain that I prefer to be alone because I got tired of one-night stands. At first, it’s fun, you feel powerful, and your young male ego benefits from that, but over time it just becomes a simple routine, exercises aimed at the pleasure that, in the long run, is not even that satisfying.

However, explaining it to my friends would prompt questions about why I don’t want long-term relationships where I have to be emotionally involved. These are explanations I don’t want to give, not even to them, because it would force me to look inside myself and discover my true motives. I would have to rethink my past and throw salt on wounds that never healed, ones I keep sealed under the layers I have wrapped them in for years to avoid feeling pain. If you have a stable relationship, sooner or later, that person will require your feelings in that fucking relationship and start pulling at the gauze and make those wounds bleed again. It’s easier for everybody if I keep up the goddamn rockstar facade.

*

Three days after the torture by “Jude” videos, I’m back at the label building. I take the elevator and immediately regret it. According to the badge pinned on her chest, “Cindy,” an intern, devours me with her eyes as soon as I set foot inside. I give her a forced smile and avoid taking off my sunglasses so as not to get involved in a conversation I don’t feel like having. I turn towards the door, one step in front of her and on the opposite side of this small space, to avoid eye contact.

“You’re Damian Jones, right?” she squeaks, ignoring my body language.

I nod my head with a fleeting glance.

“I’m a huge fan of yours. When I heard I got the internship here, I jumped at the chance. I was hoping to meet you.” She winks as she smooths her blonde hair and moves in closer.

I’m annoyed by her disrespect for my personal space. “You were lucky,” I throw in without enthusiasm, hoping the elevator will hurry to the top.

“If you want, I’ll leave you my number if you’d like me to listen to something new. You know, I studied music in high school, and I’m pretty good at it.” Her voice is soothing.

You’re also pretty shameless, I think. On the one hand, I like decisive women; but I get irritated by those who throw themselves at my feet without restraint.

“If I happen to want to share some music, I’ll definitely ask Evan for your number.” I smile at her as the elevator finally gets to my floor, and the doors open to the waiting room.

“I’m counting on it!” she purrs at me, clinging to my arm before she turns and walks down one of the hallways.

“You don’t miss one, do you, man?”

I glance at the amused grin on a young guy’s face. Calling me man without even introducing himself makes me want to slap him to teach him manners, but I’d rather not be charged with assault. Who the hell is this guy anyway?

“The perks of doing this job,” I reply with a bland smile, trying to get out of his grip.

In a few moments, I’m attacked by a group of kids who want a picture with me or an autograph. What the hell is going on? I smile and give them a few shots. Looking closer, I recognize some faces from the videos we’ve been watching—the bands that passed the last round. I direct a fleeting glance towards the waiting room and find four other kids on the sidelines, looking at me, but they don’t approach me. Clearly, the third band is doing a great job of showing self-control. I like them better already.

“Sorry, guys, but I have to go get my coffee, or I won’t be able to hear a single note you’ll play in there,” I chuckle as I try to get away from the iron grip.

Whoever invented this contest has absolutely no idea what it’s like to live in our shoes. They enjoy the money they make off of us, but they don’t really care whether we’re okay with it or not. It upsets me so much that I’ve thought several times about quitting the record company. The problem is that every label is the same, and the alternative would be to give up making music. I would never, ever, throw this job away.

Some laugh, others apologize as I finally manage to walk down the hallway to the recording room where my coffee is waiting for me, I hope. This is the record company floor I like the most: fewer glass walls, corridors full of photos of great artists who have passed through here, fully equipped recording rooms, and few meeting rooms. I like the air here where we actually make music, unlike the other floors of this building where we get treated like puppets to be manipulated by their sales strategies. This is where I do my job, and where I like to be.

“Evan hired a new intern?” I ask, annoyed the second I step foot in the room and see my bandmates.

“I don’t know. Why? Have you seen someone you haven’t fucked yet?”

I respond to Thomas by giving him the finger. “No, asshole, she threw herself at me in the elevator and told me if I want to share some new tunes, she was a music freak in high school.”

Everyone else is laughing but I’m not amused.

“She didn’t make these proposals to me when I met her,” Michael complains.

“She’s such a big fan of mine, I don’t think she even knows I play in a band,” I shoot back at him. “You can fuck her if she gives you a boner.”

“Why, isn’t she good enough for His Majesty Jones?” he replies jokingly.

I shrug my shoulders in annoyance. “I don’t think I’ve got any holes in my schedule to put her in.”

They’re laughing while I just want this conversation to be over as soon as possible.

“Have you been attacked by the kids, too?” Michael asks me as he hands me the steaming coffee. He’s the one who supplies everyone with caffeine in the morning. At the beginning of his career, he was still drunk at meetings and knew all four of us were too, and that we had to wake up. We were unmanageable in those days. We were little more than teenagers with a mountain of money in our hands that we wasted between parties and club nights. But now we’ve calmed down quite a bit, the work takes up an excessive amount of energy, and we realized that to be a rock star, you also have to continually produce good music. We had two choices: to end up in oblivion after the first album or to calm down. We chose the latter, but the tradition of getting steaming coffee from Michael before each meeting remained.