"I dig your groovy tunes, man."
"Hey, thanks, but I can't take complete credit for the groove - I owe it to my crew."
"And whose that...?" He tried to sound casual, but I could see right through his sordid attempt. "Think it's that easy, huh? Folks have come up with a lot better."
It's rude to treat fans with disrespect, but it's the means to the end of keeping up the band's mystique. I got it down to some basic rules: Never mention another bandmate's name, let alone your own; never tell a stranger you're in a band, let alone a friend; and for god's sake, never play a live performance, let alone sign any merchandise. But one bandmate, who will obviously remain nameless, signed us up for a live performance which under normal circumstances would've heralded his removal from the band, but under the unusual circumstance of each of us being broke, it heralded us to let it slide.
The curtain had long since closed, and the dregs of the audience were milling around the lobby supposedly waiting for their autographs, but the joke was on them, for like the curtains, the band had long since left. Now that I thought about it, it was very odd that these folk were still here because after the performance's last note we immediately told the audience to "clear out." It was all seeming very fishy until I spotted a bandmate signing our names - my name included! - onto the arms and legs of other men in thick permanent ink. The ink sunk into the pours of their skin at about the same speed that I sunk into a pit of fear. I creeped through the sparse crowd with my head bent down, sliding up behind him to whisper "how could you" softly in his ear as he jovially scribbled his initials onto a retired forestry professor's left elbow. I saw the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as the weight of my soft words punctuated his heart, giving me an enormous sense of satisfaction because I, unlike him, made the rules, and I, unlike him, have never broken the rules, and I! Unlike him! caught him breaking the rules. As he turned around I set my face in an annoying "I'm right and you're wrong" expression, but the expression quickly evaporated when I saw the blazing look in his eyes.
"I'll show you how I could." And with the air of a man who'd recently fought out his docile tendencies, he raised his pen to the sky and said in a great booming voice: "My name is Harold. I play the drums. And no one can stop me from identifying myself." The fans, now adorned with Harold's magnificent loopy signatures, wooped and cheered at his words. My heart swelled with shame for myself and pride for my friend. I raised an invisible glass into the sky so that Harold and I stood side by side, fists jutted into the air - one with a pen and one with an invisible glass -and said, "To Harold: drummer of drummers and star of stars!"