Tom Mendicino - Probation

Which is what I decide to do. But first, I need to hit the head before I hit the road, Jack. Standing at the urinal, shaking the last dribble of piss, I feel a surge of energy next to me. He’s shuck-and-jiving, trying to find his pecker in his baggy nylon warm-up pants. Hey, he says, looking up at me. He’s got a broad, friendly face and just enough baby fat to make him cuddly. He grins like a naughty schoolboy and leans over the modesty panel to check me out. I’m a grower, not a show-er, I say, embarrassed by the sorry state of my flaccid penis. We’ll see about that, he says. He steps back, proud to be a show-er. He shoves himself back into his noisy pants and says, excited, that he’s up next.

“Promise you’ll clap for me,” he pleads. “Promise!”

“What’re you singing?” I ask.

“It’s a surprise. Promise you’ll clap!”

“Okay, I promise.”

He’s on stage when I get back to the bar. I order another beer, all best intentions postponed for the time being.

“By special request, the King’s gonna leave the building for our next performer,” Miss Priscilla announces. “But don’t any of you tired old queens get any ideas and ask to sing ‘Over the Rainbow.’ Y’all ain’t as cute as Douglas, and he’s promised to massage my feet when I ditch these fucking heels.” She shoots the boy a lascivious grin and growls into the microphone. “Grrrrrrrr…” The kid blushes, dissolving into giggles.

“Okay, let’s have a big hand for Douglas!” she shouts.

A drumroll rumbles, followed by a three-chord progression. Douglas grabs the mike and dances along.

“I saw him standing there by the record machine,

Knew he must have been around seventeen.”

He’s got rhythm and enthusiasm to burn. His joy is contagious.

“The beat was going strong, playing my favorite song

And I could tell it wouldn’t be long,

till he was with me, yeah, me.

Singing…”

Everyone knows the words to the chorus. Everyone sings along, even the shy and self-conscious. Even me.

“I love rock’n roll.

So put another dime in the jukebox, baby.”

Douglas jumps off the stage and dances around the tables, doing a funky little backstep and waving his free hand above his head. It doesn’t hurt he’s a little drunk, maybe a little stoned. He goes from table to table, pointing, challenging everyone to sing louder, louder! The queens are out of their seats, pumping their fists in the air.

“I love rock’n roll,

So come on and take your time and dance with me!”

People are pounding the tabletops. The bartender has stopped serving and is singing along. Douglas rips open his shirt, freeing his little belly and budding love handles to bounce along to the beat. The boys are going wild, shoving dollar bills in the elastic waistband of his pants as he builds to his climax.

“I love rock’n roll,

So put another dime in the jukebox, baby.

I love rock’n roll,

So come on and take your time and dance with me!”

The Carousel goes crazy. Wolf calls and whistles and cries of Encore! Encore! Douglas ’s an astute showman. He smiles shyly and shakes his head no. He leaves them begging for more.

“Did you clap? You promised!” he gushes, flushed and happy to find me still at the bar.

“Naw,” I say, acting coy, “you didn’t need my measly claps.”

He looks crestfallen.

“But you promised!”

Disappointed, he looks even younger, jailbait almost.

“Lemme make it up to you,” I say, ordering him a beer.

“Yeah, but you still broke your promise.”

He recovers quickly, seeing he hasn’t lost my interest.

“You were great!” I say.

“Think so?”

“Know so! You ought to go on tour.”

“I do!”

“Huh?”

Is there a tour for pudgy Joan Jett imitators?

“I mean, I used to before I got my new job.”

Douglas tells me he used to tour with bands as a gofer, the lowest rung on the roadie ladder. He spent a year on the road with the Dead, right before Garcia died. He loves rock’n roll. Put another dime in the jukebox, baby. He pulls off his baseball cap and his thick, sandy hair falls over his face.

“I’m sweating,” he says. “I must smell gross.”

He smells like a boy, all keyed up, racing through his youth. He could talk for hours about his days with the Dead. Garcia was a god, aloof and quiet, usually on some other planet in a distant solar system. Jerry never actually spoke to him. No one in the band bothered to learn his name. Everything he needed to know the other roadies told him. They’d call him over, give him a list-guitar strings, picks, amp fuses, all the little essentials that constantly needed to be replaced-and make sure he wrote it down, send him off with a pocket of cash, tell him not to return until he’d collected everything they needed, and, for Christ’s sake, don’t dawdle and don’t call to say he’s lost.

He ran for cigarettes and rolling papers and herbal essences. But mostly he made calls from pay phones, dialing numbers the head roadie passed him on matchbooks and hotel message pads, getting an address and scribbling it in ink on his wrist while he juggled the receiver, hailing a cab, ringing the buzzer of some tenement flophouse, exchanging thick rolls of hundreds for a discreet-looking package. He had to be very careful. The head roadie threatened to break his neck and dump his body in a landfill if the tour manager, who was paying a small fortune to a Zen master watchdog to keep you-know-who clean and sober on the road, ever discovered their little operation. I tell him it sounds dangerous and ask if he ever got scared.

“Naw,” he said, puffed up with bravado. He was terrified, probably pissed his pants more than once, until, like everything, it became dull, a routine, just like any other job.

I ask where he grew up. The question makes him uncomfortable and he winces. He says his father is an ordained minister with a small fundamentalist congregation in the Florida panhandle. He left home after his mother died. He went back last year, thought maybe he’d stay a while this time. He lasted six weeks. The old man accused him of terrible things, of being a criminal, just because his friends would call and he’d have to go out in the middle of the night. He left in tears at three in the morning. The preacher’s not his real father anyway. Douglas is adopted.

“So, you gotta work tomorrow?” he asks.

“No. Naw. I have to be somewhere, though. I can be a little late.”

“Good. I’m gonna set us up here for another round. Let’s get real drunk!”

“What about you? You have to work tomorrow?”

“Hey, man, I’m working all the time!” he says.

“So you’re working now?” I ask, skeptical.

“Always!”

He fishes in the pocket of his warm-up suit and snags a ball of rumpled bills. He flattens them on the bar with his fist, scowling at all the George Washingtons. But, hey, bingo, hello, President Jackson, jackpot!

“Hey, another pair of shots this way!” he calls out to the bartender.

“Lemme buy this round,” I say.

“Naw, my treat.” He sees me looking at the bills on the bar. “Plenty more where that came from,” he insists. “Cheers!” he shouts, downing a shot.

“So this job must pay pretty well,” I say, trying not to sound facetious.

“You bet!” he swears. He’s says he’s working for a major recording label. On the creative side.

“Artist and repertory?” I ask, skeptical.

“Wow!” he shouts, slapping the bar with the palm of his hand. “Cool. How did you know that?” he asks, impressed.

“Come on,” I say, teasing him, urging him to come clean. I’m hard-pressed to accept that any major label would entrust the nurturing of its precious investments, its stable of artists, to a baby-faced kid in warm-up pants and a baseball cap.