by Teddy Wayne
Being a consummate professional means doing your job when you don’t want to, so I sucked it up and pasted on a huge smile when the camera light blinked and Robin introduced me as America’s Angel of Pop and the girls screamed like they were getting attacked and I got ready to give answers in Auto-Tune mode, where they sound right but have nothing behind them.
She asked me how I got my start, and I’d gone over this story so much I could recite it in my sleep. I talked about my music teacher in second grade and how I won second place in a local talent competition that year, and like every other interviewer in the history of the world, Robin asked what the kid who won first place was doing now, and I said what Jane coached me on, “I hope she’s still singing, because she was hella good.” You can say hella on TV, even at seven in the morning, Jane told me, but not hell. Networks are idiots.
I talked about how me and Jane decided I was old enough to busk on weekends in the Central West End, and a couple videos of me singing exploded on YouTube one week and my record label called, and a couple years later, with God’s help, here we are. I’m supposed to mention God once in a while, but after Jane’s lie the day before about us praying, it might have been too much Bible thumping.
“Everything happens for a reason,” Robin said.
Something about the TV-host smile on her face made me want to be like, No, it doesn’t, that’s the coastal way of believing in God without actually believing in him, and it’s a stupid thing morons like Mrs. Warfield tell themselves when bad things happen so they feel better about it, that’s why The Secret Land of Zenon is so good, things happen and no one’s keeping track of if it’s for a reason or not, experience points either come or they don’t and you can never totally predict why and sometimes it’s the opposite of what makes sense, like Jane can’t sing and my father probably can’t but I was born with a perfect voice from good luck, and if Jane had gotten an abortion then everyone here would be watching someone else get interviewed right now, or if YouTube hadn’t been invented I might never have been discovered and would be a normal kid in St. Louis who was the star of his school choir but nothing else and Luann Phelps wouldn’t have a crush on me, and there’s a girl in the audience in a wheelchair and if you think that happened for a reason, you have a fucked-up idea of why things happen.
“Totally,” I said.
“Did you ever think you’d become this famous?” Robin asked.
“I don’t think of myself as famous. I’m just a normal kid who likes normal things, sports, video games, hanging out, and who’s getting the chance to live out his dream and share the music and the love. And that’s why I love coming back to St. Louis”—the crowd cheered—“because I never want to forget where I came from.”
Right when I finished, I heard a guy in the crowd shout, “Faggot!” There was some whispering and Robin pretended like she didn’t hear it, but I could tell from her eyes she did and hoped like hell the mikes hadn’t picked anything up, which they probably wouldn’t. I glanced around for Walter, but I didn’t see him and didn’t know where he was. This was the problem with letting someone else run your show. You don’t have full control over performance protocol.
She segued quickly to the next question. “We hear you’ve been dating the actress Lisa Pinto, who has a debut album out on February 14—which is, of course, Valentine’s Day. Can you confirm if you two are going to be celebrating her release together?”
The way she said it, slipping in the reference to the drop date, I knew Stacy in creative had planted it, even though Jane had told the label to lower the volume on it after the tabloid. But Stacy could always claim that the show people just saw the story and ran with it. So I repeated what Jane had told me to say if anyone brought it up.
“Me and Lisa are just good friends,” I said, which was almost less true than saying we were dating, since you could get ice cream once with someone and say you were dating, but to be good friends you’d have to spend a long time with each other, like I did with Michael. “I’m still looking for that special girl to share myself with in my personal life, but until then the best connection I get is when I’m onstage, with my fans.”
“And you have a lot of them,” she said. “Here are some Tweets from two of our viewers.” They showed the Tweets on-screen, and while she read it and the camera was off her, her eyes were scanning around, I think to see if they found the guy who’d shouted before.
i love 2 listen 2 Jonnys voice when everything is Bad it makes me feel like theres something Good in the world thank u Jonny
That NOT awkward moment last night when @TheRealJonny sings “Crushed” and makes eye contact with you in the front row #willyoubemyBOYtoday
“It must make you feel great to hear that,” Robin said.
“If it wasn’t for my fans I wouldn’t be here,” I said. “Everything I do belongs to them.”
She lobbed a couple softballs, like, “What’s your best feature?” and even though I really think it’s my arms because they’ve got zero chub, I always pretend to be a little embarrassed and say, “Well, I don’t know, but people tell me they like my eyes,” and she said, “Can we get a close-up on Jonny’s baby blues?” and the camera zoomed in on them and I batted them like I was shy and the girls went nuts like they always do, it’s like they know they’re supposed to from other times they’ve seen audiences react.
She asked how I’m so natural onstage, and I said I always felt at home performing, which is bullshit and it took me a long time to fake being comfortable and if I told her I usually vomit before shows she’d cut to commercial. She used it as a segue to the music, and I sang “Crushed” and “Chica” and ended with “Guys vs. Girls.”
When I got on “Guys vs. Girls,” though, I heard the same guy again. The music was too loud for the audio to pick him up, but he kept saying things like, “Fag! Sing your faggy love song, faggot!”
My first thought was, Wait, what if this is my father? Like, what if he’s out to get me, or is crazy, and the emails were just a decoy?
And my second thought was, Or one of the Latchkeys? Which didn’t make sense, because the label would drop them in a second for a prank like this, plus Zack wouldn’t let them.
I scanned the crowd, which I shouldn’t have, but I had to see who it was. It wasn’t my father, unless he’d gotten really fat since his driver’s license and had grown stringy hair like sound equipment cables all twisted up backstage. And now he was right next to the stage, and the only people around him were all these little girls and their mothers who were clearing away from him so they were actually making it easier for him, and security wasn’t nearby since the stage was high enough to prevent any girls from rushing it, like five feet tall, but if an adult really wanted, he could find a way to jump it.
We locked eyes for a second behind his thick glasses and sweaty face even though it was February. He smiled this gross smile, like he knew he’d gotten my attention, and he shouted, “You want me to fuck you in your little faggot ass?”
I knew the mikes wouldn’t pick it up because the music was so loud, but security was taking a decade to break through the crowd. If there ever was a time to stampede a bunch of tween girls, this was it, when the talent’s safety is compromised, which is the result of amateur event planning and operations.
He put both hands on top of the stage, like he was maybe going to climb it, and I’d been worried before, but now I was seriously scared, even if he was fat enough that he might not be able to get up. I turned away from the guy and danced quickly to the other side of the stage, to move away from him but also to make sure the camera didn’t catch him at all, and finally I heard some commotion, and when I had the guts to turn around, Walter was a few feet away from the stage, on top of the guy and wailing at him like it was a bare-fisted battle in Zenon, punching his face with a right-left-right combo. It would’ve been fun to jump in as Walter held him down and be like, “You think I like performing in front of child predators who want to fuck me in my ass? How about I ki
ck you in the teeth first?” and bash away until he didn’t have any left. I wish I’d seen how Walter tackled the guy. He played defensive end in high school.
Then security peeled Walter off and led the guy away, but he kept trying to yell the whole time they dragged him away. It wasn’t the first time some asshole had yelled at me during a show or on the street, but usually it was a young guy who was doing it to impress his friends, not some scary-looking child predator. And plus this time it threw me off and I accidentally switched the second and third verses, which I hadn’t done since my first tour and probably no one noticed, but it got me pissed.
When we wrapped up I was supposed to do autographs, but Jane grabbed and hugged me and said, “Are you okay, baby?” I said yes, and she said, “You’re not doing autographs. They’re supposed to screen the crowd. You don’t let in a fifty-year-old man who looks like a crazy. And you always have security at the perimeter of the stage.”
I let her bitch Kevin out and went with Walter and additional security into the car service in a restricted area behind a building. I guess I was playing around with the buttons inside more than normal, because Walter asked, “Everything cool?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And thanks, for before.”
“It’s my job, brother,” he said. “Just wish you hadn’t been in that situation in the first place.”
“Unprofessional performance protocol,” I said. “But what do you expect, with a morning show plus a public event in a third-tier city?”
“I guess.” He scoped out the windows, in case any more crazies were thinking about breaking into the car. “Hey, when we get to Nashville, I saw we’ve got the night blocked off. You feel like visiting my daughters with me? If Jane clears it?”
“Like, at your house?”
“My ex-wife’s house.”
Some bodyguards might have been like, I just saved you from getting attacked or molested by a child predator, the least you could do is give my kids a story to tell their friends, but that wasn’t what Walter was about. Plus I was curious to see what his old house was like and to meet his daughters. “That’d be fun. I’ll ask Jane.”
“They’d like that,” Walter said. “Thank you.”
We were quiet for a minute or two while we heard Jane still yelling at Kevin outside. It was pretty loud and she was cursing a ton. Walter said, “Your mom doesn’t take shit from no one, huh?”
“She’s good at business.”
“There are always gonna be people who don’t like you just because, you know?” he said.
“The haters, who are insecure so they have to tear someone down to feel better themselves.”
“And there are gonna be people who love you.”
I’d gotten this speech from the label and Jane about fifty times before. “And those are the ones who count.”
But he shook his head. “They do, but that doesn’t matter.”
“I know. You have to love yourself and everything.”
“Nah,” he said. “That’s the kind of bullshit they say on TV shows like this. There’s a saying, ‘What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.’ ”
In Zenon, you can sometimes drink an invincibility potion that makes it so the world can’t hurt you, but it lasts just a minute, and after that you can get damaged like normal. It’s a little different from Walter’s saying, which would be like if your damage percentage got lowered, you somehow became healthier. The only way that was kind of true in Zenon is that when you’re at a hundred percent health, you’re always worried someone’s going to damage you and make it so you’re not perfect. When you’re already pretty damaged, you stop caring as much.
“Except when child predators are at my show,” I said.
He smiled. “That’s why you’ve got me around.”
Maybe having Walter nearby didn’t make me feel like I had an invincibility potion, but it was at least like being inside the fort me and Michael Carns used to make from his couch cushions, and he was the cushions providing buffer.
Jane finished up outside and got in the car and snapped at the driver to go and not let any fans stop the car if they spotted us. She typed angrily on her phone, and me and Walter were both afraid to make any sounds. When we arrived at the buses, though, she seemed calmer.
“Jane,” I said, “I don’t think I want to come back to St. Louis on my next tour.” Even if it meant never seeing our old apartment again. Or Michael.
She gave a tired smile, where you could see all the cracks and wrinkles around her mouth and eyes that the makeup couldn’t cover, and pulled her sunglasses off the top of her head and over her eyes. “Me neither, baby,” she said.
CHAPTER 9
Memphis (First Day)
We had to wait for some bus maintenance before we could take off for Memphis, so I stretched in the cold air. The Latchkeys were outside their bus, smoking and talking with each other. Zack waved at me to come over. “Sir,” he said, and he shook my hand. He always did when he saw me.
Zack looked good in photos, but he was more handsome in person, even at nine in the morning. His hair was a little spiky but soft and long, like black ferns, and he hadn’t shaved yet so he had stubble on his face like the rough top of a mike. “How was the prodigal son’s return?” he asked. I took a few seconds trying to figure out what prodigal meant from the context, like Nadine tells me, so he said, “How was it playing your hometown?”
If he hadn’t heard about the crazy guy, which it sounded like he hadn’t, I didn’t really feel like telling him there was a child predator who nearly got onstage and kept shouting that he was going to fuck me in my ass. “It was okay. I’m glad we’re leaving.”
“Tell me about it. Thank God Memphis is next. Before this we were touring the sticks.” He turned to his bandmates and said, “We’ve got to do Europe next time. I’m through with this Walmart bullshit. No offense to your fans, Jonny.”
“I might tour Europe next time,” I said.
“That right?”
“And Asia. Maybe you guys could come along.” I was going to add, “To tap their markets,” but that wasn’t how Zack and the Latchkeys spoke.
He put the cigarette in his mouth and held it there while he clapped my shoulders with both hands and said out of the corner of his mouth, “That’s why I like this man right here. Spreads the wealth through globalization. Like a young Bill Clinton.” I wasn’t sure what any of that meant except for “That’s why I like this man right here,” but I tried to play it cool and not smile too big. Zack added, “We’re partying tonight in Memphis. You in?”
I looked behind me. Jane was still on the bus. “I’m kind of supposed to stay in the hotel at night.”
“We can party in the hotel, too. I’ll come get you late, okay?”
I didn’t exactly know what Zack meant by partying in the hotel, or what late was to him, but it would be lame to ask. “Okay,” I said.
The driver of his bus said they were ready. “Looks like this bus is bound for glory. See you tonight, Jonny,” Zack said. He ground his cigarette beneath his boot and shook my hand again, and him and the other guys piled into the bus and I went back to mine and sat behind Jane near the back.
She was on the phone. I could hear the voice a little on the other end, because Jane’s hearing isn’t great and she has to turn the volume way up. It sounded like Stacy. “I simply want your assurance that this won’t happen again,” Jane said. I thought she was talking about the security breach, but she continued. “I didn’t want to do this in the first place—he’s just a kid. And we certainly didn’t sign on for tabloid coverage.”
I knew what Jane meant, we always want to have as much control as possible over my image, but the Lisa Pinto exposure made sense from a packaging-strategy perspective, since even if it was driving off some of the fat girls, it would bring in more of the pretty girls, and if they liked me then the fat girls would like me more to try to be like the pretty girls, plus the pretty girls would bring their boyfriends to my concerts, which
effectively doubled gate receipts and they also had to buy them crap merch to make them happy, but the fat girls didn’t have boyfriends. They had to buy the crap merch for themselves to feel happier. But Jane says we’re in the business of making fat girls feel like they’re pretty for a few hours and that most pretty girls are afraid other people think they’re fat anyway, so maybe it’s all the same.
If the media kept covering me and Lisa, I wondered if we’d get a combo name like Jonnisa, and I imagined the tour bus was the school bus on her album cover, and put an issue of Rolling Stone from the back of Jane’s seat over my lap to hide my boner, and since no one was behind me and Jane was in front of me, I rubbed myself under the magazine but over my jeans.
Stacy talked but I couldn’t hear, and in my mind me and Lisa were wrestling in the back of the school bus, with me pinning her down so she couldn’t get up, and then Jane said loudly, “With Tyler?”
I popped open my eyes and stopped rubbing and leaned forward to listen. “A joint appearance on the show, February 13,” I heard Stacy say. “Terrific exposure for Jonny’s concert.”
“And his people suggested this?” Jane asked.
“No, I did, but they were on board from the start.”
I couldn’t see Jane’s face, but I could tell from the way she paused that she was pissed she hadn’t come up with the idea. “All right,” she said. “That’s a scheduled free day, so we can do it, as long as our crew doesn’t have to work.”
Stacy said something about the house band backing us and they hung up. I pretended to be trying to sleep when Jane turned around and told me what I already knew, that I’d be meeting Tyler Beats for the first time and performing with him the night before my Valentine’s Day concert on one of the big late-night shows.
A week ago I would’ve been super-excited and nervous to be bundled with Tyler Beats. But I didn’t think he was all that cool anymore. The Latchkeys were cooler.
