by Teddy Wayne
The sky was the color of a mouse and matched the highway and all the buildings. The outside was like an animal that changed its color to blend in. “I’m still mulling it.”
“Entirely up to you, baby.” She returned to her phone.
We found Walter outside the airport and did our thing where we get special treatment and skip all the lines, even the business-class line, and killed time before the flight in the private lounge area. They were always filled with businessmen working on their laptops, so I didn’t need to wear my baseball hat and sunglasses.
The TV above us was showing a morning talk show on closed captioning, and I was watching because I had nothing else to do, and after a couple boring minutes, Rog appeared on it. I elbowed Jane. She perked up. “He didn’t waste any time, did he?” she said.
The closed captioning was screwing up a lot, like a few times it called me “Jenny,” but the interviewer was grilling Rog all about Jane, and he was saying things like, “She’s paranoid and a control freak,” and “She thinks she knows how to run Jonny’s career, but she doesn’t understand music—it’s everyone else who makes the smart decisions,” and “I only hope Jonny makes it out of this in one piece.” Every time he said something mean about her, my gut twisted up like it was my fiftieth crunch in a row. Jane had screwed him over, but I didn’t see what the point of bashing her in return was, unless he was trying to score a book deal or become a judge on a reality show. When people commit reputation suicide like this, it’s about money.
Jane made little sounds like she couldn’t believe him. She said to me, “If anyone interviews you about this, take the high road and say gracious things about Rog. Say he was a great coach and, unfortunately, sometimes people go their separate ways. Kill him with kindness.”
When they put up a bad photo of her near the end, she said, “The coffee here’s terrible. I’m finding a Starbucks.” After she left, I noticed a complimentary computer terminal in the corner of the lounge. This could be my only chance.
“I need to send Nadine follow-up questions for my slavery essay,” I told Walter, and I pointed to the computer. He nodded, and I ran over to the terminal and checked my email, though I really should’ve been asking her questions since I still had no idea what to write about. There was a message from him from a few days before:
I’m sorry I wasn’t in Cincinnati. I thought I might have the chance but it didn’t work out. Was it fun? Maybe I can see you perform in New York. I lived in Sydney, Australia. I moved there because it seemed like a place where you could really have an adventure and a friend of mine told me there was lots of construction work. Here’s a picture I took of my friend Dave on a hiking trip we took in Australia.
The picture was of some guy wearing sunglasses in the desert. I didn’t have time to think about what I wanted to say, so I quickly wrote
If you can get a ticket to my concert in NYC at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 14 I will find some way for us to meet. I can’t buy the ticket myself or get you on the list.
I ran back to my seat and picked up a glossy Jane had out and pretended to be reading it when she came back. It was published a few days ago, so there wasn’t anything on me or her. Anyone who says all publicity is good publicity never had actual bad publicity.
Jane typed something into her iPhone and said, “Rog’s career is essentially over, as of this email.” She said it loud enough so that Walter would hear, too.
She was trying to project confidence like you have to do onstage, but I knew my career might be essentially over if things didn’t go right the next two days. That was how quickly your star could fall. And I might meet my father. I tried not to think about either thing, and took out my slavery books and a piece of paper to outline my essay, but I couldn’t focus, and just stared at the blank page.
CHAPTER 20
New York (First Day)
Jane’s face sort of lit up when we landed in New York. She loves L.A., but wherever she is, she always feels like she’s missing out on the real business in New York. She says L.A. is for entertainment-industry people who dabble in business, and New York is for business-people who dabble in the entertainment industry, and business is what makes entertainment possible even though entertainment sucks up most of the media attention.
We had a few short-form interviews and one business meeting in the morning before my late-show performance with Tyler Beats. Jane cut out interviews with anyone that might be hostile press, and she’d had our publicist make sure that questions about Jane would be off-limits, so they were all softballs I’ve had a million times, like, “What’s your favorite song to sing?” (“Guys vs. Girls” is what I’m supposed to say, but it’s actually “Breathtaking”) and “What do you look for in a girl?” (a nice smile, which is something any girl can have, and someone who’s got a really fun and nice personality, because every girl thinks she’s got a fun and nice personality). Once in my life I want to answer something like, “I want a super-chubby girl so I feel less beefy compared to her.”
I asked Jane if I could skip the business meeting. She shook her head. “We make more off branding and ancillary deals than we do with the music. The music is the plane that flies you to the branding.”
“But the music’s still the most important thing, right?” I asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I didn’t mean to put it that way.”
Maybe Rog was right. Jane knew a lot about some things, but she didn’t know much about music. So I went but didn’t hardly speak, just shook the hands of all these men and women who told me their daughters were big fans and asked me to sign all kinds of crap merch for them, which was funny, since the meetings were mostly about producing more crap merch, like a cell phone decorated with pictures of me and with all my songs preloaded for ringtones. I don’t even have a cell phone yet. I was worried about overexposure, but Jane says it only seems like overexposure because we’re looking at it all, and the average consumer has to see something seven times before they decide to buy it. Maybe that’s another reason so many songs sound the same, to trick people into thinking they’ve heard it six times before and now they’re finally ready to buy it.
The whole time we bounced around the city in the car service, I looked out the window like I did in Cincinnati. I knew I wouldn’t spot my father on the street, but I kept thinking about how he was out there somewhere, and on every street I thought something like, My father could have walked on this street before. By now he’d probably read my email, and maybe he was trying to get a ticket. I wish they weren’t so expensive, though. They’d cost even more from a scalper.
We arrived at the late show in the afternoon for the 5:30 taping. The fans were already lined up, and a few held signs for me, but most were for Tyler, which wasn’t a positive audience predictor if he was supposed to be there supporting me in a secondary role. He even had some guy fans, and they were all older than mine, some in their twenties and thirties. His manager had done a really savvy job broadening his base through his music and image maintenance. I bet if Tyler got busted for drinking, he’d find a way to spin it into a positive.
Walter and the show’s security escorted me into the star/talent entrance. Tyler wasn’t arriving till later, so the show coordinator had me rehearse on my own with the house band and do a mock-interview with her. Since it was a special performance of two singers, we’d get three songs, then our joint interview. First I’d sing “RSVP (To My Heart),” Tyler would sing “Beats Me,” then he’d sing backup on “Guys vs. Girls.” I was worried that we wouldn’t get a chance to rehearse it together, but she said, “Don’t worry, Tyler’s a total pro, just do your usual thing.”
After I’d finished my rehearsal, Tyler came into the dressing room by himself. I wondered where his bodyguard was. He was smaller than I expected him to be, and his tight leather jacket and jeans made him seem even smaller, but with his head so big, it almost looked like his body hadn’t fully grown. He was good-looking, but nothing special, like someone had picked
out enough decent features and zero ugly ones and mashed them together.
He spotted me in one of the star chairs. “Hey,” he said, and did a military salute.
“Hi,” I said.
Jane shook his hand. “Very nice to meet you, Tyler.”
“Likewise,” he said. “Uh . . . can I ask your name?”
“Of course,” Jane said, like it was no big deal, but she hates when people think she’s just my mother and not also my manager. “I’m Jane Valentine, Jonny’s mother and manager.”
“Right.” We all knew he was thinking back on the headlines the last couple weeks. “I’m sorry about that. Jet lag.”
Jane pasted on a huge smile. “Is your manager here?” He said he was outside, and Jane excused herself to talk to him.
Tyler sat down in the other star chair a few feet away from mine. He sized himself up in the mirror and stood and leaned in closer. He squeezed his left nostril between two fingers. A bunch of white lines popped out of his skin like flowers sprouting out of the ground in fast-forward. Then he popped a pimple on his chin. Some white stuff came out of that, too, but so did some blood. “Fuck me,” he said as he tried wiping it off. “Who’s on makeup here?”
“She did me awhile ago,” I said.
“You mind calling to your mom? I can’t go out like this.”
I said no problem, and I opened the door and saw Jane talking to what must have been Tyler’s manager, who was this guy in his early thirties in a nice suit and glasses with thick black frames. Now, he definitely wasn’t good-looking, but something about the suit and the glasses and his neat haircut made it seem like this guy never messed up and got whatever he wanted. “Jane, Tyler needs makeup,” I said.
“Hundred-to-one he’s popping his zits again,” the manager said. “These are the pitfalls of managing a seventeen-year-old. Jane, when the time comes, go with Accutane, it’ll save you tons of grief.”
“I’ve already been talking about that with his dermatologist,” Jane said, which she hadn’t told me.
The manager found the show’s makeup woman and she came into the tent and cleaned up Tyler’s popped zit and caked on concealer and a new coat of foundation. It’s always like that when you see celebrities up close. They have all the same zits and blackheads and scars normal people do, only they’ve got better products and experts to cover them up.
We had some time to kill before we went on, so I asked if he wanted to do a dry run of “Guys vs. Girls” real quick, and he said he was cool, he knew it as well as one of his own songs, and that was maybe the biggest compliment I could ever get from another singer unless MJ came back to life and told me he’d gotten into my music after he departed the realm. If I invited him to play Zenon, he might think that was unprofessional to do preshow. It didn’t matter, though, since he said he was going to stretch and do warm-ups in the greenroom. He walked out the door to the right. “The greenroom’s the other way,” I said.
“Oh, they give me my own here,” he said. “From being on the show so much. I’m sure you’ll get one next time you come back.” That was cool of him to say. But they might not bring me back. Maybe they were only having me on now because I was bundled with Tyler.
So I played Zenon till the show coordinator told me to get ready, and I met Tyler backstage and we got miked up. After a commercial break, the host said they had two of the brightest young stars in music performing one of their own songs each and a duet. “First up is Jonny Valentine,” he said, and the audience cheered. “And then we have Tyler Beats,” he finished, and you almost couldn’t hear him through the applause. I didn’t have to vomit, but I also didn’t feel great. Late-night TV audiences are less friendly than morning-show crowds. I guess people who go to sleep late are more hostile than people who get up early in the morning. They’re waiting to laugh at you if you mess up. Tyler didn’t seem nervous at all.
The house guitarist played the G chord to “RSVP (To My Heart),” which was my cue to go onstage. The rest of the house band was tight. When we rehearsed preshow, they looked like regular guys who joke around with each other, like the Latchkeys, except they’re not young and famous even though they’re on TV every night. It’s only a job to them. They come into work, do their thing, and go home.
My performance was an A and the audience was into it and gave me a warm ovation when it was done and I went into the holding area backstage. Then the opening bass line for “Beats Me” kicked in, and the crowd was like, This is what we really came for, and the monitors were showing everyone dancing in the seats even before Tyler sang his first line. I’d like to make music like that someday, not just diarrhea pop for little girls to cry to, but something that hits everyone and moves them.
They went wild when he finished, and it was so loud the band had to wait before they could begin “Guys vs. Girls” and I could come back onstage. Finally they started up, and the crowd came alive every time Tyler sang backup, which was way better than my real backups.
I got so distracted over how Tyler was outshining me that when the third verse came along, I couldn’t remember the first line. I froze up on something I’d sung ten thousand times. I let a whole sixteen beats go by and did some trademark spin moves to pretend like I was doing a dance break, but I still couldn’t remember it, and at one point I made eye contact with Tyler, and he must have seen in my face that my memory was like, Fuck you, Jonny, this is what you get for popping all that zolpidem. So he sang the verse himself:
Saw a lady walking down the street
Looking so good with her golden curls
Yellin’ and screamin’ at some loser dude
Just another case of guys versus girls
It was like the crowd had an Eric for me but comed for him. Tyler was the better singer. Even the lay listener could hear that. He had more range, more texture, more charisma, more vocal control. Jane was lying, or wrong, when she kept saying I was more talented than Tyler. I was a talented freak, but he was a freak even compared to other freaks. The only way I could ever beat him was to work twice as hard. And Jane said he had the best work ethic already. I’m not even sure I could beat him if I did work that hard.
We sang the last verse together, I think because Tyler was afraid I’d forget the words again:
Pay attention, fellas, I got something to say
Listen up, ladies, all around the world
We’ll never get nowhere if we keep this silly war up
You know what it is: guys versus girls
We did our bows at the same time, which I was happy about, because the cheers would’ve been way louder for him than for me. They arranged it so I sat closer to the desk on the couch, but I wished Tyler had taken the seat. The host asked me about my concert on Valentine’s Day, and I said all the things Jane had coached me on, like how I was super-excited to perform for the first time in front of my fans in New York and for the whole world on the Internet for just $19.95.
“For just $19.95?” he said. “If they act now, do you throw in a set of steak knives?”
I didn’t get the joke but I knew he was making fun of me. I fake-laughed along with the audience, though. Laugh all the way to glossy coverage, Jane says whenever a comedian makes fun of me. “And Tyler, what are you plugging?” he asked.
“I’ve got absolutely nothing going on,” Tyler said. “It’s a sad, empty existence. Thank you for letting me come here and be around other human beings.” The crowd loved it. He gave good interview.
The host turned back to me. “Now, you’ve had quite an eventful last few weeks.”
“It’s been a lot of work and a lot of concerts, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to play in front of so many fans,” I said.
“Uh, I meant more what’s been happening after the concerts,” he said. More hostile laughter. I knew Jane was watching on a monitor, getting ready to bitch someone out for letting him ask about this and going off-script from the mock-interview.
“People like to talk about me,” I said. “I don’t
listen to them. I just try to stay positive.”
“I stay positive, too,” Tyler said.
“Oh, yeah?” the host said, smiling, like he was passing him the ball for an easy assist.
“Yeah, I’m positive I’m miserable,” Tyler said. Even with a joke I’d heard in fourth grade and knew was coming, the audience lapped it up.
The host got serious. “But why is that? Why are people so utterly fascinated with you?”
This was different from, “What’s your best feature?” I didn’t have an answer besides that the creative department of my label had made people get fascinated with me. If there was another kid who was cute enough and sang good enough, they’d be fascinated with him. You can’t say that stuff, though, since people get pissed when they realize they don’t choose most things in life they think they’re choosing, that it’s all picked for them by someone who controls the purse strings.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m only a kid.”
“But an utterly fascinating kid,” Tyler said, and the audience whooped. He was trying to help out and change the subject, but the host wouldn’t let it go.
“That’s just it,” he said. “You’re a kid, yet everyone wants to know what’s happening in your life. And you’re, what, all of four feet tall?”
The sheep laughed again. But they’re the ones who waited in line three hours to see me when they had nothing better to do with their stupid vacations from the Midwest. Except they probably really came to see Tyler.
“People like to think about celebrities,” I said. “Sometimes they’re a little happier from watching us sing or act or play sports, because we take them away from everything.”
This was the standard line I’d seen other celebrities give, and pretty close to an answer I’d given a few times before. I was going to stop, but the host said, “Hey, he learned to talk!” and the crowd laughed again, and something flipped inside me and I started saying stuff I hadn’t said before, or maybe even thought before.
