The Backstage Pass

My name is Sian Erickson and I am thirty-four years old. I do taxes for a living. I have been married to Vince for ten years, and until last Saturday I would have told you I had that man figured out down to the last spreadsheet cell.

I was wrong, and it turned out to be the best news I'd gotten all year.

Here is how it started: with a broken car. We were on our way to Pine Hollow, this three-day indie festival Vince works every summer as a sound engineer. He had talked me into coming along for once. "You never leave the office," he said. "You'll like it. There's a hammock somewhere with your name on it."

We were twenty minutes out when the car started shuddering and lost power going up a hill. Vince coasted us onto the shoulder and popped the hood, and I sat in the passenger seat with the air conditioning dying and watched sweat crawl down the back of his neck. It was hot.

"Fuel pump," he said after a while. "I think. Or the relay. Either way we're not driving this thing tonight."

He called the festival from his phone and got us waved in through the crew gate, and a shuttle truck hauled our bags while we walked in behind them. Then he called a mobile mechanic he knew from years of doing shows. The guy, Doug, showed up within the hour, which felt like a miracle, and looked at the engine for about four minutes.

"Yeah, it's the pump," Doug said. "And it's not a part I keep on the truck. Rare-ish fit on this model. I can have one here by six, maybe seven."

It was two in the afternoon. I did the math, because I always do the math. Four to five hours sitting in a field with nothing to do.

"That's fine," Vince said. "I've got a trailer backstage. Come find me when you've got the part."

Doug drove off and Vince led me across the meadow, past the main stage where a band was soundchecking, past a fence line and a row of Porta-Johns, to a beat-up equipment trailer sitting in the shade of some big oaks. He unlocked it and there it was. A lumpy couch, a folding table, a cooler full of drinks and ice, a box fan in the window that moved hot air around without making any of it cool. His personal duffel bag sat in the corner.

"Home sweet home," he said. "Better than the car, right?"

"It's got a couch. The car has seats. I'd call it an upgrade."

* * *

We killed a couple hours easy at first. He showed me the festival map and told me which bands were worth seeing and which ones had a rep for throwing monitors. I drank a seltzer and watched a guy in a llama costume walk by for reasons nobody ever explained to me. Then Vince got a text about a mic issue on the second stage and left to deal with it, and I was alone in a trailer with a box fan and my own company.

I do not sit still well. Ask anyone. I straightened the couch cushions. I reorganized the cooler. I read the back of a tortilla chip bag. And then, out of pure boredom, I started poking through the duffel bag. Not snooping, I told myself. Just looking for a phone charger.

I did not find a phone charger.

What I found, wrapped in a t-shirt at the bottom of the bag, was a vibrator. A good one, sleek, rechargeable, the kind you'd buy on purpose. And tucked in beside it, in a little drawstring pouch, a leather cock ring with soft lining on the inside.

I sat there on the couch with both items in my hands and the fan humming and thought, well. Well well well.

Vince came back ten minutes later complaining about a blown cable, and I was still sitting there. I had arranged myself on the couch with the vibrator in one hand and the ring in the other, resting on my knee like I was judging a produce competition.

He stopped in the doorway. He looked at the items. He went a shade of red I have not seen on him since college.

"So," I said. "Find anything interesting lately? Because I did."

"That's, uh." He came in and let the door swing shut. "That's mine."

"I can see that it's yours. That's kind of my question. Why is it yours? Why have I been married to you for ten years and never seen any of this?"

He sat down on the far end of the couch, which was cute, like distance was going to help him now. "I bought them a while back," he said.

"How long is a while back?"

"January. Maybe February."

"Vince. It's August. It has been August for two days and this stuff has been in your bag since winter."

"I know." He rubbed his face. "I kept meaning to bring it up. I'd get up the nerve and then I'd lose it. You always seem so, I don't know, put together about everything. Work, the house, the budget. I didn't want you to think I was weird. Or that our sex life was some kind of problem I was trying to fix."

I set the toys down on the table and turned to face him. "Okay, first of all. You bought your wife a vibrator and then hid it in a bag next to a cock ring, in a trailer, at your own festival. That's not weird, that's just bad logistics."

He laughed, sort of, in a strangled way.

"Second of all," I said. "You think I've been having the time of my life with the same two positions and a bedside drawer from 2019? I'm not bored of you, Vince. But I am bored. There's a difference and I want you to hear it."

"I hear it."

"I do everything by the book. Taxes, groceries, insurance renewals. I am the responsible one in every single room I walk into, and it has been that way so long I forgot there was any other way to be. Then you go and leave a secret toy bag where a bored woman can find it." I picked the vibrator back up and turned it over. It was nice. He had taste. "So here's what I'm thinking."

"That sounds dangerous."

"It is. I'm thinking we've got three, four hours until Doug shows up