About "Sue Me"


Ever wonder what would happen if the writers you enjoy reading were actually discovered by the Boys?

This is how I envision my dear friend Terri's "unmasking" as it were.....

~ Hath

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Part Two

Jon’s day wasn’t going much better. Bad weather kept them in Canada longer than he anticipated, and when they had finally landed back stateside, he learned that their hotel reservations were all screwed up. He berated his assistant until she was in tears, then felt like shit for making her cry. But, damn it, it was her JOB to make sure that all these details were taken care of.

He was sitting in the back of an SUV with Richie while the sobbing assistant argued, pleaded, and negotiated with the hotel manager to get them the suites they had requested.

“Man, you were a little hard on Danielle, weren’t you?” Richie asked softly.

Jon just shot him an icy glare that told his friend to shut the fuck up. “Don’t start in on me, Rich, I’m not in the mood.”

Richie just smiled. “I know what would cheer you up.” He reached for his laptop.

Jon groaned. “Bro, you have got to be kidding me,” Jon said. “You’ve been trying to get me to read that shit for months now, and I told you, I am NOT interested.”

Richie had discovered a whole new genre of what he’d loosely call literature: fan fiction. Earlier in the year, an anonymous fan had posted an excerpt from a steamy story on the boards at bonjovi.com. Jon had been outraged, and had demanded that Obie have someone take care of it, and was not impressed when the author of that particular bit of porn pleaded with the board moderators to delete the post.

Obie promptly ignored Jon, and Richie had him find out as much as he could about the author. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much. Obie was able to find Richie her website and email information, and Richie’d been a happy puppy ever since. There were stories on there for all the guys, from her and other authors, and Teek and Dave had been intrigued by them as well. Jon was the only one who resisted.

“C’mon, you prude,” Richie needled. “Like you haven’t read porn before. Besides, this one story? Right up your alley. Vampires. You know how you like that paranormal shit.”

Jon rolled his eyes at his best friend. “Really,” he said, grudgingly admitting to himself he was curious. “And just who pray tell are the vamps?”

“You and the lady lead.” Richie laughed. “You have to read it. I die at the end.”

Jon chuckled. “That may just be reason enough to do it.” He sighed and pushed a hand through his hair. “Look, if I look at it, and I said ‘if’ and I said ‘look’, will you kindly shut up about it?”

“For a while,” Richie said. “It really is quite entertaining. We’re trying to figure out how to get Hath’s real name. We know it’s Jen and she lives near Boston, but that’s it.”

“You seriously aren’t wasting Obie on this, are you?” Jon rolled his eyes at his friend.

“Hell yeah,” Richie said. “We find her, we can find the rest of them. Teek really REALLY wants to talk to that Gail woman from England, and D can’t decide if he wants to fight him for her or me for Hath.”

Jon laughed. “You guys are really pathetic, you know that? Alright,” he said, “gimme the fucking laptop.”

Richie dialed up Hath’s website from his Favorites, and navigated to the “Other Stories” section. He clicked the link for the website he wanted, and handed the computer to Jon. It was an unassuming site, pretty innocuous looking, actually.

“T’S LITTLE SLICE OF THE WEB” the site’s title proclaimed.

Jon read the story descriptions, smirking to himself. So, seems this woman was one of ‘his’ girls. He scrolled down the page to “Completed Stories” and there it was: “Dirty Little Secret”. He read the story description, and was just about to click the link when he scanned the next bit of text.

“Jesus Christ,” Jon swore.

“What?” Richie asked.

“Look at this,” Jon said. He pointed at what he had just read. This woman had published PUBLISHED one of these fan fiction stories. About HIM. And she helpfully listed the name of the book and her full name. Terri England.

He closed his eyes. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and clicked the link.

Jon laughed out loud when he saw the doctored photos, the ones giving him vamp fangs. “Damn,” he said, unconsciously running his tongue across his teeth. “If I didn’t know for a fact that my teeth don’t look like that…” He shook his head and started to read. Richie smiled a knowing smile, then stretched out, closed his eyes, and waited for Danielle to return.

* * *

Several days and several shows later, the tour wrapped, and Jon finished reading the vampire story. He sat back on the overstuffed couch in his SoHo apartment and steepled his fingers, tapping them against his chin. He had to admit, the story was a good one. The plot was interesting, the sex was explosive, and the dialog sounded like shit he would really say. He wondered if he had met this woman before. He had gone onto Amazon and ordered her book, under an alias of course, and it should be delivered any day now. He was not letting Rich know about this. There was no way he’d ever let Jon live it down.

He Googled “Terri England” and got lots of sites for a jazz artist by that name. No, he thought, that wasn’t her. He looked at her site again. “view my complete profile” it said. And he did. Now he added “Arkansas” and “radio” to his Google search and a few clicks later, he was looking at Terri England’s page at the radio station where she worked. He read the little bits about her that she shared, and checked out her MySpace page. He grinned. She couldn’t make it any easier to find her.

Jon reached for the phone and called his assistant.

“Danielle,” he said, “I need to get out to Little Rock.”

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