Chapter 4

There was a long silence. Alison’s heart was beating harder than the drums in Phil Collins’ 1989 uptempo stomper ‘Heat On The Street’.

“What are we having for dinner, Phil Collins?” she whispered.

Phil Collins approached the hostess trolley, his Converse squeaking on the richly polished floor. Grasping the silver salver with both hands, he removed it with some effort.

“Beats.” He growled, as a cloud of fake smoke billowed around them.

There, atop the trolley, was a full-size drum kit in sparkling purple, with PHIL COLLINS written in Comic Sans on the bass drum. In a flash, Phil Collins had stripped to the waist, mounted the trolley and seized the sticks with the urgency of a man possessed by the demons of rhythm.

A giant spotlight shone from the ceiling, and Abu, Phil Collins’ monkey butler,  wheeled the trolley into its beam. Alison gasped at the sight: it was as if the talented 80s rocker was growing in stature before her very eyes. He raised the sticks above his head and fixed Alison with a gaze as piercing as the guitar sound in ‘Easy Lover’.

“This is for you, Alison.” He said, and began an elaborate roll on the toms.

Alison was mesmerized. Phil Collins was not simply playing the kit; he was making love to it. Under his masterful percussive touch, it was as if the drum skins tightened and swelled with arousal. He caressed the tom-toms. He fondled the cymbals. He bent the bass drum over and made it beg for more. Not literally, but very nearly. And the drum kit thundered in ecstasy, as if it were begging the ‘Sussudio’ hitmaker for more. “More! More!” the drumkit seemed to be roaring.

Alison was no stranger in the ways of love or drumming. As a teenager, she had experienced her first tentative fumblings with the sticksman of a local band. In college, she had quivered her way to ecstasy with the bass drum player of the marching band, one hot summer’s night under the bleachers.

But as she watched the droplets of sweat gather in Phil Collins’ luxuriant chestwig, and as the one-time Genesis man attacked the kit with a remorseless tenderness, Alison felt as though she was discovering her sexuality anew.

As the drum solo entered its thirteenth minute, the very walls of the Genesis banqueting suite seemed to throb to the rhythm of Phil Collins’ expert sticksmanship. She gasped, shuddered, and screwed her eyes tight, no longer caring that her dress was soaked in a fine rain of perspiration.

She felt like she was floating on a giant, percussive cloud. It was as if the entire world was making love to the rhythm set by Phil Collins’ brawny arms. And as the beat reached a searing climax – a climax more stratospheric than the chorus of “Both Sides of the Story”- so Alison, too, gasped, and reached a climax all of her own.

Then – silence. The drumming ceased as suddenly as it had begun, and the Genesis banqueting suite was once again noiseless, save for a muted squeak from Abu The Monkey Butler as he wheeled the hostess trolley away.

When she opened her eyes, Phil Collins was standing before her. His manly musk – stirred up by the exertion of a 24-minute drum solo – was in her nostrils. He had replaced the smoking jacket over his rippling, hirstute torso, but an emergent tuft of chest hair betrayed what lay beneath.

“Did you enjoy that?” whispered Phil Collins. He brushed a lock of damp hair from her porcelain-smooth forehead, and teasingly removed Alison’s I <3 PHIL COLLINS badge, affixing it to his smoking jacket like a military medal for services to drumming.

Alison could only nod, dumbly, and allow herself to be led to the door of the Genesis suite. As the door swished open, and the strains of “One More Night” flowed out of the tannoy like warm Bailey’s, she could only wonder in awe where the night would end.