by Nigey Lennon
Somehow I found myself in Central Park. I sat down dully on a graffiti-scarred bench near the lake, staring out at the waterfowl and the transients. After some undisclosed and irrelevant period of time Herb Cohen, Frank’s manager, happened by and asked why I was sitting there like that.
“You don’t want to know,” I told him. He agreed; he didn’t want to know. He’d been working with Frank for six years, and he’d probably heard it all already.
We strolled around the park with the joggers and the muggers, munching on pretzels and hot chestnuts, while he regaled me with anecdotes about his experiences in the golden era of L.A. coffeehouses, the early ’60s. At least he didn’t mention Frank. I was glad of that.
When he went off again, I was feeling masochistic, so I decided to take a little trip over to Greenwich Village. It was my first look at it, and I was disgusted to realize that I loved it immediately. I loved the cobblestone streets and the little brass plaques honoring the artistic toilers who had formerly occupied the old, narrow brownstones. In L.A. these charming and admittedly useless monuments would have long ago been razed for parking lots. This is what Europe’s supposed to look like, I guess, I thought. Then I had a sudden vision of that writhing monster back at the Holiday Inn, and I wished I had a reverse phone directory and a flame-thrower.
In Washington Square Park there were squadrons of panhandlers and flocks of pigeons. I saw one guy who looked like a character in a William Kotzwinkle novel, all malodorous rags and matted hair. He was intently luring unsuspecting birds into an ingenious jury-rigged device constructed from what seemed to be a bunch of coathangers and a small rabbit cage. It looked as though the pigeons were his only source of sustenance; he was so thin he seemed about to blow away. I wondered what he used for bait, but not for very long.
After I’d wandered around some more, I too was starving to death, so I found a deli — and was roundly insulted by the counterman during a semantic imbroglio about what constituted a “plain” cheeseburger. Replete, if a bit mystified by the folkways of Gotham, I came out on the street and glanced at my watch. By now the vile Zurkon would have completed his evil experiment and would be duly ensconced at Carnegie Hall. It was time for me to head back to the Holiday Inn and get some sleep. If he thought I was going to show up for the gig tonight, he was going to be very surprised.
On the way back to the Holiday Inn, the cab passed Carnegie Hall. Dusk was falling fast, but I got a good look at the line-up stretching nearly around the block: desperate mortals hoping to snag tickets for the sold-out show. Boy, the things I could tell them about their idol Frank Zappa. Every single last one of them, no matter how fanatic they had been, would promptly turn on their heel, march to the nearest League of Decency office, and put in a complaint.
At the Holiday Inn, sure enough, there was nobody in the suite — just a faint vestige of old cigarette smoke and odious cologne in the bedroom. I climbed fully dressed into the unused bed and passed out.
I woke up to the ringing of the phone. Squinting over at the little luminous travel alarm clock on the nightstand, I saw the time was past 1 a.m. I didn’t want to answer; it probably wasn’t for me. But it kept ringing and ringing... Maybe it was Frank, checking up on my whereabouts. Finally I picked it up and mumbled, “Yeah.” Click!
I couldn’t get back to sleep after that, so I went into the living room and chain-smoked the remaining cigarettes in a pack of Camels Frank had left lying around. Along with the disputed Anthony Newman album, there were records by Penderecki, Takemitsu, and “Gatemouth” Brown all stacked neatly against the table. Idly I turned on the FM tuner in the stereo. I flipped past a rock station that was playing “Magic Fingers” from the newly released “200 Motels” soundtrack. I’d never heard it on the radio back in L.A.
It wasn’t long before I heard a key in the lock. I slid down to one end of the sofa and crushed out the butt I’d been working on. Frank swept in alone, a fast, fluid swirl of gruesome tweed, and set his guitar down. He came right over to me and, taking off his coat, threw it over the armchair.
“Where were you?” he demanded. When he went into interrogation mode, he was as intimidating as hell. Torquemada could have learned all sorts of things from Frank. I tried to think of him with his clothes off, hoping to reduce him conceptually to a ludicrous naked male, but it didn’t work. Towering over me, with those pitiless eyes drilling right through me, he simply refused to be a character in my movie.
“I decided I’d stay here and get some sleep,” I replied. In my stomach that damn cheeseburger was beginning to churn horribly. (Was I about to become the Spew Queen of West 57th Street?)
“Well, it was your show. I dedicated it to you. It’s going on an album, too.”
“Thanks, I guess.” Actually, I had to stop and think about that. I’d never figured Frank for the sort of sentimental fool who’d get up — in Carnegie Hall, no less — and make an idiot of himself publicly by mentioning names. Hadn’t he savagely trashed that whole dedicatory syndrome on “Ruben and the Jets"? I finally heard the tape of the show more than a year later. He’d made a rambling, awkward sort of speech, explaining how he never dedicated shows to anyone, but this was a special circumstance, ladies and gentlemen... “This show is dedicated to Nigey Lennon, who hitchhiked out here from California.” Phew! — I’d been getting worried there, but by turning the whole thing into an absurdity at the last minute, he’d just managed to save himself from coming across like the bandleader at the graduation dance at Antelope Valley Joint High School, 1958 (... “and I’d like to send this slow one out to darlin’ Mary Lou from her ever-lovin’ Chuy...”). What he’d really meant, of course, was “... who rode my face out here from California.”
Turned out there was a reason for this public spectacle, too. He frowned. “We better talk.”
“About what?” I asked, trying to sound indifferent. I knew I couldn’t fool Frank, but I’d be damned if I was going to let him see how awful I felt.
“Look, I know you’re upset,” he said, softening a little when he saw my pathetic attempt at coolness. Then he explained that one of the guys in the band had called Mrs. Zappa and told all sorts of lurid tales about our little ‘road romance’. Frank knew it was a bald attempt to get me kicked off the tour, but under the circumstances he had no choice. Clearing his throat, he said, “In the morning we’re going on to Toronto. I think you should go back to L.A. But” -- he cleared his throat (stalling for time, I thought) -- “I’ve been watching you go through changes over some of this stuff, and I don’t want to keep putting you through that. Do you understand?”
"Sure, I understand. You’re tired of me and want to get rid of me. You’ve gotten whatever you wanted, and now it’s time for you to move on. Don’t sweat it, I’ll go. There’s no point my having any feelings on the subject.”
Frank took an inadvertent step backward and almost stumbled. From the look on his face it seemed as if I’d suddenly breached the place where he kept his unbearable memories at bay behind rusted iron doors. Then with an effort he recovered, reached down, and tugged me to my feet, pulling me close to him and holding me there.
“You don’t understand. I care about you, but with you here all the time, there’s just too much going on. It gets in the way of the things I have to do if I have to be thinking about you and worrying about you all the time.”
Jeez, that sounded almost flattering. Was I that much of a distraction?
I should have been angry, but I only felt sadness — sadness unto death. If I could have managed to blurt out the truth, that I loved him and wanted him to treat me like a human being, with dignity and respect — I have no doubt that he would have understood. He’d always wanted to hear that from me. But it was probably too late. Miss Moviola wasn’t even part of the problem; the real problem was that I had no place in Frank’s life, and I never would have. I hadn’t wanted to think about this moment, although it had been inevitable from the beginning. Now it was here, and there was nothing I could say to f
orestall it. I just pressed my face against Frank’s shirt and stood there in dumb agony, too hurt and too proud to speak.
Frank held me close to him, his silence eloquent. There was nothing he could say, either. Whatever the situation, it wasn’t in his character to lie about it or even to soft-pedal it. My thoughts raced painfully — if he wasn’t going to say something, maybe I had better. But what? Something? Anything? He’d blasted away my reserve, but the abyss remained, an unbridgable chasm...
I was inundated with scenes from the previous two months: airports, coffee shops, cars, buses... motel rooms: dark universe, billions and billions. . . enveloped, exploding,. . . that voice: “Maybe we can get one together.” I saw him onstage, masterfully controlling the band... What was that hand signal again — “Let me know...”?
I thought of Miss Moviola, of the mutant beast with two backs. That did it: with a blinding flash of light Zurkon’s universe imploded, and all of a sudden I was standing in an antiseptic motel Living room with an ugly brocade couch and a shag carpet, in the arms of a tall, gangly Italian guy who smelled like coffee and cigarettes and desperately needed a shave.
... Nothing.
There wasn’t a fucking thing I could say.
In the morning I rode to JFK on the band bus. I was full of raging emotions — despair, frustration, anger — but mostly I felt an aching sense of loss and injustice, as though I were being unfairly expelled from Utopia. Frank was plainly and visibly exhausted. He’d stayed up with me until almost 5 a.m.; I’d finally fallen asleep with my head on his shoulder, cut off in mid-whimper by a snore. He woke me an hour or so later. Now he was all business, the road rat on fast forward. He had his suitcases and gear waiting by the door, and in very few words he told me to get packed; the bus was waiting downstairs, and everyone but us was on it.
For the first time since I’d joined the tour, we didn’t sit together; looking like death warmed over, he deliberately took a seat by himself in the back of the bus. Miss Moviola had given him a parting gift, a smutty novel by Aleister Crowley. How very appropriate. I peeked back at him. He was pretending to read it, but the wasn’t turning the pages very fast.
At the airport I had to find a flight to LAX; I hadn’t had time to make a reservation by phone. At least I had plenty of dough — Frank had settled up with me before leaving that morning, in cash. (I couldn’t help wondering where those brand new hundreds and fifties came from. As I stuck the ‘wad’ in my wallet, it all seemed slightly sleazy to me, although the explanation wasn’t anything more sinister than the fact that Frank, knowing I didn’t have a checking account, had gotten the cash for me from Herbie or Dick.)
Frank and his band of merry men were bound for the international flight section. As they headed off in that direction, some of the guys were spiritedly bellowing a little ditty, full of charming obscenities about the tits and ass and cheap thrills to be found just around the bend. It sounded pathologically cheerful in that dismal terminal, and there were gloomy glares from the gray commuters waiting for their grim flights to their bleak destinations in the freezing North.
I had written a little farewell note to Frank, and I walked over and handed it to him. It said:
F.Z. —
I know you don’t believe in love. Well, then, take mine and use it for uacuum cleaner bags or something.
— N.L.
He tucked it into the back of the book, but didn’t seem about to actually read it, at least not in front of me. I knew better than to expect anything as conventional as “Goodbye, it’s been nice knowing you” from him; he’d bid me farewell in front of a sold-out house in Carnegie Hall last night, and then he’d kicked out my ass in private — what more did I want? Skywriting? What a fucking masochist I was!
I forced myself not to hesitate; without further ado I turned and began to trudge resolutely toward the domestic flight counters. I had to physically struggle not to turn around and take one last look at him, but I managed to get around the corner without doing it.
It was just my accursed luck that there were no nonstops available to LAX that day; the only flight out of there before midnight required a transfer at O’Hare in Chicago. When I boarded the plane for the first leg of the flight, I felt like I was being nailed into my coffin. The minute I was in my seat I accosted the stewardess and demanded a double dry vodka martini. She hesitated, and I groaned inwardly, Oh shit, what a time for me to get carded again. Then, seeing my haggard face, she quietly went back to the galley and brought out two plastic cups full of clear liquid, a twist of lemon dangling over each rim. “On the house, sweetie,” she said simply. A saint.
I took a deep, soul-saving quaff, opened my carry-on bag, and looked around inside it for something to keep me from going crazy. And what were the first objects there from to catch my eye? Frank’s sock — The Sock, my fetish totem — and my fucking journal. I heard Guitar Slim moaning, “You’re all packed up and ready to leave me, baby, and the good Lord knows I’m about to die... but just before you leave me, please give me something to remember you by...”
“I hate you, Frank Zappa,” I growled savagely into the first martini. It was almost gone. I drained it and seized the other with a hand that should have been covered in coarse black hair.
My seatmate, a motherly Midwestern sort of lady, who was sitting next to the window, turned and stared at me as if she’d just seen me take off my shirt and reveal a snarling werewolf tattooed across my tits in flaming red.
Stuck in the bottom of my bag I found the copy of “Slaughterhouse Five” I’d bought at some airport gift shop several weeks ago but had been too otherwise occupied to find time to read. Well, there was plenty of time now. Yes, I was choking on the stuff. Didn’t it just feel great, ladies and gentlemen?
This was going to be twelve hours in hell. I downed the last martini in a single horrible gullop, belched atavistically, and stuck out my poot-stomper to trip the stewardess as she came up the aisle wheeling the drink cart. From some recess of the damp, echoing grottoes in my mind I heard a strangled half-growl, half-groan, the sound of incisors quietly, efficiently rending epidermis as Werewolves Ripped My Flesh ...
By the way, I’ve never been back to New York since then.
My Continuing Education
Back in L. A, again, and things were, with due apologies to Fats Waller, slightly less than wonderful. I had been gone for more than two months, and my father had been forced to replace me in the shipping department. My mother, meanwhile, had appointed herself a media vigilante vs. The Zappa Threat. She had seen Frank being interviewed on the Johnny Carson Show (taped while we were in New York) and determined that he was a] a degenerate; b] a drug addict; c] suffering from some acute and nameless disease not classifiable by medical science, but still eminently communicable; and/or d] Sicilian, and therefore automatically a card-carrying member of the Cosa Nostra. She was batting. 500 on item d] and more or less in the ballpark with item a], but I was sorry she was so set against him. I wished there was some way she could understand how, despite the contradictory nature of our relationship, he had sometimes bordered on being the best mother I’d ever had.
Since I had no job, I therefore enrolled on probationary status at El Camino College, hoping I could pull down a student loan. (They were giving them out with a pretty freehand in those days.) I had a little trouble determining my major, since I was only allowed to take a limited number of courses until I had proved myself worthy of higher education. My first love was music, of course, but I had always had a fascination with science and language as well. If I learned, say, German, I’d at least be able to read the writing on the men’s room walls in Berlin. The way I was feeling, I might be able to do that soon — in fact I’d already checked with the French Foreign Legion about signing on, but unfortunately they didn’t accept female recruits.)
Battle fatigue: My sometime musical accomplice David Benoit took this snapshot of me pretending to be dead in my empty guitar case a couple of days after I got back from the tour
In the end I decided to go with a truly inspired program, majoring in music and minoring in General Semantics. I dropped out of premed, my third choice, before a mysterious explosion in the chem lab had a chance to land me on the dean’s list. To this day I retain a great fondness for nitroglycerine and potassium permanganate — otherwise I might be a brain surgeon, or worse.
It turned out to be a small world — Wally Bauer, my Music Theory and Composition I professor, said he knew Frank. He claimed Frank had commissioned him to orchestrate the composition “Igor’s Boogie” (a band version of which appeared on Frank’s “Burnt Weeny Sandwich” album) in the style of Stravinsky. I wasn’t entirely convinced about the verity thereof, but I liked Mr. Bauer’s teaching style. He had a snappy bunch of mnemonic devices — for instance, he described the notation of the two notes constituting a minor-second interval as resembling “a cat’s balls”.
In my Keyboard course, we had to specialize in a particular instrument. Everybody chose the piano because most of the students had pianos at home to practice on. I didn’t, so I signed up for pipe organ. There was a brand new three-rank pipe organ in a soundproof booth at the back of the rehearsal bunker. You had to start it with an ignition key, like a car; the key fired up an electric motor which drove the bellows that pumped the air through the pipes, thereby using the miracles of modern science to eliminate the troublesome serf that had been required to hand-pump the bellows back in the Good Old Days. Mrs. Hardester was the organ mistress (she also directed the a cappella choir, which I sang tenor in), and I imagine she’ll never forget the day when she came running back to the organ cubicle, terrified that we were experiencing the seismic Armageddon the pundits had been predicting. I had discovered the thrill of holding down the two very lowest adjacent pedals, B natural und C natural, at the same time. There’s something soul-satisfying about the low pedal notes on a pipe organ anyway, but in this case the resulting interference tone was causing such a vibration that every window and doorframe in the bunker was threatening to disintegrate. A crack had actually developed in the heavy plate glass of the window that isolated the pipe organ area from the rest of the practice rooms. I guess they replaced the window eventually; I was never invited back there, for some reason, so I never found out.
