It was exactly two weeks later when Mr. Easley sent me, Pete and Joe notes via one of the student office assistants that the pictures were ready and we could all come in after school to have a look at them. The quality of the shots ran the gamut from horrible to excellent. Of the 1000 or so snaps, maybe 20% were of some kind of usable quality. I expected that to be the case anyway. We critiqued the photos for the students, telling which ones weren't composed cor rectly for the purpose we had undertaken the project. Any obvious flaws (out of focus, etc) we didn't mention because they were readily apparent and thus didn't bear much discussion.

A good percentage of the high quality pics were by one guy, Al Snow, who took home five $20 bills. I also told him that if he wanted to be our band photographer that would be great, but he wouldn't get paid for it. Instead, he would gain experience for being a rock photographer by shooting show after show and doing further photo shoots on his dime if he was so inclined. He also had to agree to give us first shot at the photos and we would pay for development costs of the snaps we wanted and, if we used them, we would advertise that they came from him. I gained possession of the shots he took at the rec hall and had a professional photo house print the ones we needed/wanted.

I did choose shots from a couple other photographers, too, and reimbursed them for the rolls of film they shot those on, which was very little money. Those, too, I had printed. Jim wanted a color 8x10 of me playing live with my Les Paul tilted up toward my body as I was fingering a lead break and a couple wallet sized photos, one a head shot of me, the other a full length one.

With the black and white photos, we assembled a press kit and sent it out to Southern California clubs that used cover bands. What limited our opportunities was that we were strictly hard rock. We weren't going to do R&B, pop stuff or country rock. We did get some bookings, though, by clubs that chose to have hard rock nights after the first of the year since we decided we were going to shut it down after the junior high Halloween gig as  far as doing shows.

We weren't allowed to use our pyro at that junior high appearance, either, but we went down pretty well for what the occasion was.

November 1st, the Scorpions released what I think of as their first proper album (Lonesome Crow I view as a horrendous aberration), "Fly to the Rainbow." I had the band learn "Speedy's Coming" while I personally memorized every song on the record. Then on the eighth, Queen's "Sheer Heart Attack" was issued and I directed the group to nail "Now I'm Here," "Killer Queen" and "Stone Cold Crazy." When we re-started activity in February, we would open our shows with "Now I'm Here."

Deep Purple dropped their "Stormbringer" opus on December 10th and I added the title track to my personal repetoire, but not the band's.

With Christmas now looming, I told Jim not to get me anything because I already had everything I could ever want, including him. I said the same to Pete and added to both that I would be steaming mad if they showed up present handed. However, I did buy Pete a new black Rickenbacker 4003 bass since he had been mooning over them forever. For Jim, I took him to a couple of motorcycle shops and encouraged him to have at it, including whatever modifications he wanted made on his ride or parts he wanted to buy so he could do those alterations himself. He bought some new leathers and different parts, but I had to keep prodding him to make sure he was getting everything he wanted short of ordering a new custom chopper. I wasn't going to go for that.

I spent Christmas day alone. Jim saw it in with his family. He invited me to go with him, but I didn't want the pressure of having to deal with people I didn't know or couldn't tell to fuck off without making Jim looking like an idiot or worse for choosing me. I jammed for a few hours, listened to music and read. My Christmas dinner was spaghetti with meatballs and garlic bread. I missed not having him there, but Christmas has such a peculiar pressure about it that it was cosmically for the best that he wasn't over at my house again until the afternoon of the next day.

New Year's Eve we spent together in my bed having sex and we were already well into snoozeville when it became 1975. I had encouraged Jim to go out and party if he wanted, but he said that he didn't want to be out on his bike at night with so many drunks on the road, so he opted to be with me that evening instead. I was glad he was.

Two days later, the holidays were over and I was back in school. I now only had five months and change left in my schoolgirl career and I wasn't going to miss it once I put it in  my rear view mirror. I talked with the others in the band and we scheduled a legion hall concert for Valentine's Day. On the fliers we left in record stores and such was the headline, "rock hard with us on a day when everybody else goes soft and sappy!"

I went up to L.A. that weekend to leave flyers in record stores there. I brought my Strat with me because I decided to stop by Randy Rhoads' mom's music school and see if maybe I might be able to jam with Randy again. I came in with some fliers in my hand and my guitar on my back. Mrs. Rhoads came out to see who just walked in. "Melody!! How are you dear!" she greeted me warmly. "Hi Mrs. Rhoads. May I please leave a few fliers here about my bands upcoming show?" "Of course, dear." Then I asked if Randy was available for a jam. "I'm afraid not," she responded. "He's with one of his students right now and then he has a classical guitar lesson after that." Just as I was about to excuse myself, Randy emerged. "What's goin' on Melody?" he chirped. "Hi Randy! I was just distributing fliers for my band." "Cool! Hey, can you come back here for a couple minutes?" "Sure honey." Mrs. Rhoads let me in the back and we went into a room where there was a kid who appeared to be about 15. "Hey George, this is one of my former students Melody," he introduced while winking at me mischievously. George and I did the soul handshake thing that kids did back then. "Melody's going to show you what you can do when you practice religiously." Of course,  I knew what Randy was doing. I plugged my Strat into George's little Marshall combo amp, cranked it and began hammering out "The Song Remains the Same" and then tthe solo sections from "Burn." "So dude,  you aren't going to let yourself be shown up by a girl are you?" Randy teased. "No," George said defensively. "How often do you practice, Melody?" he asked. "When I'm not rehearsing with Atomic Sunrise, I play 6-8 hours a day," I advocated. Then I wacked the volume control on my Strat back up and did a hyper speed Yngwie style version of Bach's "Air on a G String." Both Randy and George's jaws hit the floor. "Well Randy, I have more fliers to distribute. Take care sweety!" I said and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, waved "bye" to George and left.

That week, Jim was over at my place four or five times, but I only saw him twice during the two weeks after that. I wondered if something was up and, as I was to find out, there was. The last week of January, he said he wanted to talk to me about something. Now keep in mind that we had an open relationship anyway, so it's not like I was going to be shocked if he sprung the new girlfriend thing on me, especially after I rejected his kinda sorta wedding proposal a while back. He said that since he was now 34 he wanted to have kids while he was still young enough to enjoy them and so he had recently begun dating another girl and was going to end his relationship with me to focus on her.

I prefaced my remarks by saying that I was grateful for the time he and I were able to be together and that I thought he was a wonderful man and how lucky the other woman was for landing them. Then I interjected the "HOWEVER" on him and went into a long monologue about the pitfalls of marriage (especially on the financial end for males), how women operate and urged him to be very careful about who he got involved with. I also said that he was welcome back in my bed if he broke it off with her provided that I wasn't involved with somebody at the time.

"For such a young chick you're really smart about a lot of things," he complimented. "I've had to be, honey. I've been living on my own since I was 15," I lied. I hugged him, kissed him and he left. That was the last I ever saw of him and I hope that he found happiness with his new mate.

During our next band rehearsal, I informed Pete that Jim was out of the picture now, which he was conspicuously happy about. For the first couple of weeks after the break up with Jim it felt weird not to have him there, but I was eventually able to move on. I never quite found someone like him again, either, and I admit that even if I moved on I still often wished the guys I met had more "Jim-like" qualities. But everyone's different and you have to accept them for who they are.

Van Halen had a gig scheduled at the Whisky that Friday and so I went to see it. After getting in, I went up to the club's manager, Mario, who was always very personable and had a great sense of humor, and asked if he would allow me to have a quick chat with the band. He also really liked his patrons and so he led me upstairs to the band's dressing room. I was dressed in a black corset with red laces up the front, a black leather mini skirt, black fishnet thigh high stocking and matching four inch heels with black lacy panties underneath. "Fuck, it's you again!!" Eddie said when I entered the room. "Hi guys," I began. "Why don't you let me sit in with you?" I requested. I had my Gibson Explorer and Marshall amp and cabinet in the trunk of my car just in case, though I thought the best I would actually get out of such a request was probably a, "you gotta be kidding!" Nonetheless, I guess Eddie was intrigued enough and had his guitar tech go with me to my car and fetch my equipment. I took my Explorer back into the dressing room while my amp and cab were put alongside Michael Anthony's. Eddie did a run through of "D.O.A." and I picked up on it right away and then we jammed on it for a little bit, with me doing some tapping improvisations of some licks he put on the later Van Halen records while Dave was still in the band. "Where did you learn to do that? I thought I was the only one doing that," he said. "I learned it from you, sweety. When I saw you guys the first time it was pretty apparent what you were doing even with your back turned to the audience," I lied. We then jammed on a couple ZZ Top numbers, including "Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers," which was a regular part of their sets when they mostly did covers, Cream's "Crossroads" and a couple more tunes while the opening act was still hacking through their allotted time slot.

Eventually, Van Halen came on and were playing a blinder when "D.O.A." came up next. "We have something very nice for your naked steaming eyes tonight," Dave mused in his Jim Dandy-ish growl, "and you're not going to believe what you're about to see," he asserted. I scurried downstairs to the stage, plugged in and clicked my amp on. "Ladies and Gentlemen, Miss Melody Kang!" he declared and we slammed directly into the tune. As planned, we were going to stretch out the solo section. Eddie crouched with one leg outstretched and his guitar on the stage for the first part of his solo before leaping up, spinning around and doing a quicksilver tapping passage before he nodded to me and I did my take, playing fast pentatonic arpeggios before I also turned my back and unleashed a blistering hail of two handed hammer ons. Then Eddie came on for another solo, using some wittily phrased pick harmonics to conclude it before handing it off to me, whereupon I took some cues out of the Jeff Beck playbook and then finished up with a neat legato phrase before we took it home. Fuck, jamming on stage with Van Halen. Thank you Vishnu!!

After the show, Eddie complimented me on what I did. Michael was very sweet to me, too, and I told them to just keep at it since I believed they were going to be one of the biggest bands in the world by the end of the decade (which, of course, was true!). That was the last time I bothered them. Mario told me I "was quite a little player." I gave him a hug and thanked him before rolling my rig and my guitar out to my car.

On Valentine's Day, after me, Pete and Joe departed from school, we went to my place to get ready for the show that night. Our road crew came and hefted our stage and equipment into a rented truck and I followed them to the venue. We met the hall manager there and he let us in. Two hours later, we had soundchecked and were ready to go. We let what looked like a sizable crowd file in and just about filled the place, which had a capacity of 200. We kicked it off with "Now I'm Here," went from that right into "Stone Cold Crazy" and didn't look back for the next two and a half hours, including three encores, blistering the crowd with heavy riffs, intricate and showy leads and plenty of pyro. We fucking destroyed. What a rush that was!

I decided to cap it off with some sex and, after we stowed everything back at my place, everyone left but Pete. He and I repaired to my bathroom, where we showered together. I gobbled some more of his sperm down my gullet before we toweled off and flopped into my bed, where he returned the favor by giving my clit a good sorting out and me quite a number or orgasms. He climbed on top of me and I felt his stiff dick crawl into my cunt. It was then on with lots of humping, pumping and moaning before I began screaming in orgasmic euphoria, culminating in his cum making a mess of my womb. I invited him to spend the night with me and he did, though he had to go to school in the same clothes, including his socks, that he wore the previous day..