What Would Journey Do?

Dave Brooks walks into the Hi-Fi again, only this time, there are customers inside. Billy Morris, the bar's owner and Breakfast Club guitarist, recently launched a new Ladies' Eighties Night, a regular Thursday party devoted to two of his favorite things: women and '80s rock. This breezy night in May is the inaugural party.

Brooks is sleeveless and in sunglasses again, but this time he carries a brightly patterned duffel bag, where he keeps his accessories: body glitter, pomade, apricot lotion, highlight spray, and the bulge-accentuating pants he got at Hot Topic. He also carries this bag because he has no idea where he'll sleep tonight.

It's been like this for much of Brooks' life. He has an uncanny ability to fend off money. In Los Angeles, his days consisted of waking up late, going to rehearsal, working out for a couple hours, and going out to get wasted. He ate a lot of ramen noodles and frozen vegetables. He slept, for the most part, wherever he landed -- often in the beds of excessively young and beautiful women. Off nights would find him on couches or closet floors.

Little changed when he came back to Ohio. The Breakfast Club is his only job. During the week, he mostly stays with an old friend in Cuyahoga Falls, a woman he took home after a gig 25 years ago. On weekends, there's a bed waiting at the Lakewood apartment of another old friend. And there are other people -- mostly women, but old band guys too -- who will gladly open their doors to him.

"For a while there, he didn't have a car," Dossa says, sounding dumbfounded. "He would call me for a ride . . . I'd be like, 'Are you gonna need a ride home?' And he'd say, 'Nah, don't worry about it. I got it.'"

Over the last few weeks, he's slept at least at eight different places, often in the beds of women he's just met. "It's good to be the singer," he acknowledges.

Earlier this year, he was dating one of his superfans, an aspiring actress named Leah. She was 23 when she discovered the Breakfast Club last February. She started showing up every weekend, and before long she was dating Brooks. But she was "living with the rents" at the time, so they sort of "floated together," crashing at his friends' houses after shows.

"An adventure is a good way to describe it," Leah says. You can now find her at Ladies' Eighties Night, behind the bar -- unless she's on top of it. "I can't not dance when I hear 'Talk Dirty to Me,'" Leah says.

Brooks' lifestyle awes his friends.

"Half the time I think he wouldn't care if he got paid, as long as he got laid at the end of the night," Dossa says. "Sometimes I think, 'How can he not settle down and get a house and that sort of thing?' Other times I think, 'What a great life.'"

"If you don't have to have a day job, how fucking great is that?" friend Matt Cleary adds. "What else do you want out of life? Money's one thing, but having money is just our way to get chicks. We're all just animals who want to eat, sleep, and fuck. If you're not hungry and you're not tired, what else is there?"

Or as Gladys drummer Steve DeBoard puts it: "He's like David Lee Roth that never got famous."

Brooks is just as awed. He thought his career as a sex-and-booze rock star died with Slammin' Gladys. But it turns out, he was just waiting for the world's sorority girls to discover the pure, uncut joy of "Don't Stop Believin'."

But Brooks sometimes seems conflicted about the frolicking life he's carved out. He lugs around CDs he's recorded over the years, funky tracks with thoughtful lyrics that very few people have ever heard. He still slaves at music, writing at least a song per week and furiously recording originals with local musicians. Those endeavors cost him money and earn him nothing, save for the occasional self-inflicted case of goose bumps. "I don't think I worked hard enough," he says of his career. "I'm kind of lazy by nature. I didn't try hard enough. But I'm still trying."

He recently cut a new record with two local musicians. It's called Blood Moon.

"It's a really good record," he says. "And it might get picked up. You never know."

Brooks realizes his history with women is the sort of thing therapists dream of. After all (he finally admits), he's almost 48 years old.

"I just don't know what to do. When you get girls throwing pussy at you, it's hard to turn it down. I know that sounds like a pig thing to say, but . . . I don't have any malice. I never did."

Even the obvious joy his work brings people doesn't always please him. After the Put-in-Bay show, someone pointed out that his singing had just made a lot of people genuinely happy.

"So does McDonald's," he said dryly.