Backline Confessions

I'm forty-two years old, and last Tuesday I got off in a recording studio control room with an old bandmate watching. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The studio sits in a converted warehouse over on the east side of Toby, the kind of place with a rolling door that sticks and a fridge that hums louder than some of the amps. Ollie has run sound there for years. I hadn't seen him in person since the spring, so when my friend Silas asked me to coach his band through some afternoon overdubs, I said yes partly for the music and partly because I knew who'd be behind the console.

Ollie is forty-three now. We were both in the same band in our early twenties, him on guitar, me singing. There was one night after a festival out in the hill country, one clumsy, wonderful night, and then we went back to being friends. That held for almost twenty years, which honestly might be the best track record either of us has.

I walked in around two in the afternoon. The rest of the band had already cleared out, gear half packed, cables everywhere like something had exploded in the live room. Ollie sat in the control room with his feet up on an empty road case, stirring a coffee that had probably gone cold an hour ago.

"Well, look who it is," he said, not getting up. "The famous Lia. I thought you only did stadiums now."

"Sold out, obviously. That's why I'm here." I dropped my bag on the couch and squeezed his shoulder on the way past. "Silas said you'd have the stems ready. Are the stems ready?"

"The stems are ready. The stems have been ready since lunch." He swung his feet down and pulled up the session. "Sit. We'll do a playback and you can tell me everything the drummer did wrong."

"He dragged on the fills."

"He always drags on the fills. Some things are eternal."

So we fell right back into it, the way you do with someone you spent your twenties crammed into a van with. He played the rough mix and I made faces and he made faces back. It was easy and warm and a little bit comfortable in a way that made me aware of him more than I expected. Not nervous comfortable. Just aware.

While we waited on a bounce, I rubbed the back of my shoulder and mentioned, mostly to fill the air, that I'd started bringing a little toy to coaching sessions. A vibrator, I said. I use it on my neck and shoulders to keep loose, because I stand for four hours at a rehearsal yelling over drum kits, and my trap muscles turn into rocks.

Ollie raised an eyebrow over his coffee. "A vibrator."

"For muscles, Ollie."

"Sure. For muscles."

"Everyone in the vocal coaching world uses them. It's not a scandal."

"I didn't say it was a scandal. I said it was news to me that half my job could've been done with a sex toy this whole time."

I laughed, and then, because I was feeling good and maybe showing off a little, which is a flaw of mine, I dug it out of my bag and set it on the console between us. It's small and curved, matte black, about the size of a large thumb. Very innocent looking. Not very innocent in practice.

"This," I said, holding it up, "is a miracle of modern engineering. Rechargeable. Three speeds. Fits in a jacket pocket."

"You really do carry it to sessions."

"I really do." I shrugged like it was nothing, which it mostly was. "You want to see the trick?"

He set his coffee down. "I always want to see the trick."

So I clicked it on low and pressed the rounded end into the muscle along the side of my neck, and I will admit the sound it made against my skin was not entirely professional. I worked it down across my shoulder, into the top of the trap, and Ollie watched with his arms crossed and a smile he was trying to keep off his face.

"That actually looks incredible," he said.

"It is incredible. Twenty years of carrying a gig bag and this is the only thing that ever helped."

I moved it lower, along the side of my throat, down toward my collarbone, and I'll be honest with myself about the moment I stopped pretending it was about muscles. I was watching his face. He was watching my hand. The vibe hummed against my chest just under my collarbone and we both stayed quiet for a second.

"Lia," he said, careful, like a man stepping onto ice he's tested before. "What are we doing here?"

"I don't know yet," I said. "Do you want me to keep going?"

"Yes," he said, no hesitation at all. "Yeah. Keep going."

I stood up and walked a step toward the couch, unzipped my jeans, and pushed them down over my hips. I kept my underwear on, plain black, nothing fancy, because I hadn't planned this and I wasn't about to pretend I had. Then I sat back down on the couch, spread my knees a comfortable distance apart, and pressed the toy to my clit through the fabric.

Ollie made a low sound in his throat. He had turned his chair to face me, one hand on his knee, the other gripping the armrest, and he did not move toward me. That's one of the things I've always liked about him. He waits to be asked.

"Is this all right?" I asked him. "I'm not freaking you out?"

"You're the opposite of freaking me out." His voice had dropped. "Believe me."

"Good." I rolled the toy in a slow little circle and let my head fall back against the cushion. The vibration came through the cotton, duller than skin but still good, a low warm pressure right where I wanted it. "Because I have thought about doing this in front of you exactly once before, and that was twenty years ago and I chickened out."

"That was one night. One very good night."

"One very good night," I agreed. My hips were