Portia is staring at me intensely, and I can’t tell whether it’s love or regret or concern, so I go for a joke. “That line always gets big applause at Narcotics Anonymous meetings.”
Now she’s looking at me with those eyes that scare me, because they make me feel like she really loves me and maybe even admires me—and she’s nodding supportively.
“Anyway, Nikki Sixx is my hero. Stupid as it sounds, saying that at forty-three years of age.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I admire you,” she says. “You were brave. You fought to get here—right here, with me. And I won’t forget it.”
My phone rings, and I check it. “It’s Tommy. Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” she says, but she seems to mind a little.
“Little man,” I say. “You good?”
“Are you at the concert?”
“Not yet. We’re eating dinner. Everything okay?”
“Johnny Rotten left.”
“Good, right?”
“Mom’s crying.”
“Why?”
“Not sure.”
“You okay?”
“I’m being brave,” Tommy says.
“You’re the bravest.”
“I’m going to sleep soon. Just wanted to say good night.”
“We’ll see you tomorrow, buddy. And tomorrow is soon.”
“You’ll tell me all about the Mötley Crüe show? We’ll listen to Portia’s Too Fast for Love vinyl?”
“Swear on my life.”
“And you’ll answer the phone if I have a bad dream again?”
“You won’t have any bad dreams. The Quiet Riot mask is protecting you, remember? That thing is super powerful!”
We say good-bye and hang up, and I tell Portia I’m sorry. “Sounds like my sister and Johnny Rotten had a fight. Tommy just needed—”
“You’re a good uncle.”
“I just answer the phone when he calls.”
“Bullshit,” she says, and then gives me a smile so beautiful, I’m forced to look away.
We dip bread in some sort of hummus-like mash, which is pretty good, and then we have the gnocchi, which I think is excellent, but Portia says is overcooked, and I wonder how she knows things like that. Who can tell the difference between properly cooked and overcooked pasta?
“Did you tell Tommy you were going to propose tonight?” she says.
“We hid the ring in his bed for a few weeks. He was my partner in crime.”
“Whose idea was it to give me the Too Fast for Love vinyl?”
“All his.”
“I’m going to tell Tommy you and I are getting married eventually,” she says. “I’ll make him understand. Don’t worry.”
“Okay.”
“Because we are getting engaged and married eventually.”
“Good.”
After dinner, we walk arm in arm around the casino, digesting. We pass Judge Judy slot machines and a woman with a rhinestone belt buckle that spells journey, find a Thunder Moon and a Peeping Frog Moon on the carpet, and then we are in the mob of people assembled outside the concert.
“Everyone got old,” Portia says as we look around at a crowd mostly made up of people who seem to be at least ten years older than we are. “When did that happen?”
There is a weird mix of grizzled bikers with neck tattoos and pointy beards, fake bikers cleanly shaved and in shiny new leather that has obviously never seen the open road, parents with their teenage kids who were taught about 1980s rock just like Tommy was, dweebs in acid-washed jeans and pastel polo shirts who look like they weigh 110 pounds soaking wet, women in leather bustiers and corsets and stiletto heels, and us.
Inside we purchase concert T-shirts and little Theatre of Pain key chains with the tragedy and comedy masks before listening to a local band as we wait for Mötley Crüe to take the stage.
Portia and I hold hands and take in the scene until Mötley Crüe make their entrance carrying scantily clad women on their shoulders and medieval banners that feature the letters MC in white and red, swinging a giant incense burner that looks like what a priest would carry. The crowd goes wild.
They open with “Saints of Los Angeles,” and instantly we are teenagers again, banging our heads and flying the devil horns. By the time they’re playing “Wild Side,” I’m completely transported. There are strippers dancing and singing and doing acrobatics on chains hanging down from the ceiling and at certain points simulating lesbian sex, and the lights and swagger and noise, and Tommy Lee’s drum set, which is connected to a giant O and becomes a sort of drumming roller coaster at times, spinning him upside down forty feet in the air as he bangs away during his lengthy drum solo mid-show. My role model Nikki Sixx is mostly on our side of the stage. I’m only maybe twenty feet from him, and as he plays his bass and spits water at the crowd and bangs his almost Muppet-like explosion of black hair, I wish I could thank him for doing that I Survived documentary and writing The Heroin Diaries. They play many of my favorite songs: “Shout at the Devil,” “Home Sweet Home,” “Live Wire,” “Too Fast for Love,” “Dr. Feelgood”—and Portia dances her little ass off and loses herself too, forgetting about the degradation of women and her feminist views of rock.
At one point Vince Neil says, “We’re old motherfuckers up here,” and the crowd roars because it’s mostly made up of old motherfuckers too.