Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

After sound check, I hung out in the star/talent room and drank warm Throat Coat and ate some of the filet mignon and other low-carb food because I was starving and had my hair and makeup done by this Asian woman who’s new for this tour. She was coiffing and gelling my hair, but it takes a light touch, since you need to gel it enough so it mostly stays in The Jonny, but not too much that it loses its floppiness. Girls historically love singers with sort of floppy hair. Besides the Beatles, there’s Elvis, Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, even MJ once he got whiter. When she was doing my foundation, though, she went, “Your mom’s gonna hate this,” and I asked what, and she said, “I think you may have your first zit.”

“Really?” I asked, more excited than anything else. I definitely didn’t want zits, but it would mean I was hitting puberty soon.

She looked closer and said, “You’re lucky, it’s a whitehead. They’re easier to cover up. This might hurt a little.”

She pinched my skin and said, “ Never do this to yourself, you might get a scar and then we’re fucked.” She showed me some white liquidy junk on her finger before she wiped it off on a tissue. It was gross, but cool to know my body was making something I’d never seen before. Maybe it was making sperm, too.

It’s funny how half my songs are about liking girls who don’t wear makeup, and I’m a boy who wears makeup. I once told Jane I should do a song about only liking girls who wear tons of makeup and expensive clothes, and she was like, That’s basically what most songs are about.

Later on, while I played Zenon, I could hear the vibrations of Mi$ter $mith taking the stage and kicking into his first song, which was supposed to be “I Loves Me Dat Ho, Don’t You Know” but he had to change for our tour to “I Loves Dat Girl-O, Don’t You Know,” and I took some liquid Pepto for my preshow butterflies, which were worse than normal because it was L.A. I couldn’t get past Level 64’s minion, and when he damaged me to zero percent the third time in a row from my saved game, I yelled at the screen, “You fucking motherfucker!” and Walter ran in quickly from outside and asked what was wrong, and I said, “Sorry, I was just screaming at the minion,” and he said, “Whatever the hell you’re talking about, let’s save the screaming for the show, brother, or Rog is gonna get pissed about you wasting your voice.”

I invited Walter to sit inside with me and I showed him what I meant about the minion. Walter still didn’t know what the hell I meant, since the last time he played video games was when he was a teenager and he spends his free time either watching sports or reading mystery books, but when I was describing the way the minion kept deflecting my side attacks and how I couldn’t figure out his Major Vulnerability, I accidentally attacked him straight at the middle of his body with a sword-punch-kick combo. Usually a Major Vulnerability is an attack from an angle that’s hard to reach, but with this guy, he was vulnerable to an attack right in front of him, where you’d think he’d be most protected. I damaged him and advanced to Level 65 and explained to Walter how it was like when soccer goalies jump to one side on penalty shots, so sometimes the smart move is to kick it straight ahead. He understood it, and I said, “Make sure Nadine gives me credit for doing my first Teachable Moment this month,” and he said, “I don’t think video games count.” She gives credit for stuff that’s not always about school subjects, though.

I got paged right before intermission, as Mi$ter $mith was closing out with his one hit, “Call Me $ir,” and I got into what Walter calls the Jonny Zone, when I tune everything out and deep-focus. He escorted me backstage to meet Jane. “How you feeling, baby?” she asked.

I said I was fine. My crew moved everything into position and Bill handed me my mike while he adjusted sound levels on this little machine, so I did the usual line, “Microphone check one-two-one-two,” over and over. They still want me to hold a wireless mike instead of wearing a headset so I look more like an old-school crooner.

“We’re all cool here, Jane?” he asked.

“We’re all cool, Bill,” she said.

He left, and the butterflies flapped their wings harder. It’s always the same backstage. You get worried you’ll forget the words even though they’re like the alphabet song by now. You’re afraid your voice will crack when it strains for the high notes. You’ll slip in a spin move. Your jeans will split and everyone will see your underwear. You’ll say something in a banter interlude that offends people and viralizes. Or something you haven’t even thought of will go wrong, and not only is your career hurt, but so are the careers of the 136 people who work on your tour, plus Jane’s. And no matter what, for the first few seconds you get onstage, you’ll look around and realize twenty thousand people are all watching every move you make, and you’ll be like, Why am I up here and not one of those people? Rog says that’s natural for musical artists to ask, and you’ve got to block it out right away and remind yourself that very few people in the world are born with the consummate performer’s gene, and that’s why everyone else is paying premium prices to see you, because they need entertainment and escape almost as much as they need food and water.

On top of all that, I was getting more worried about the heart-shaped swing. If you were the kind of person who had a fear of heights and of being trapped, it would be your nightmare.

I said to Jane, “I think I might throw up,” and she was prepared for it and had a big bucket nearby like usual and got it in front of me just in time, and she rubbed my back and pushed my hair out of my eyes and said, “Get it all out, baby, all the crap you ate in the star room.”

Once it was out I felt better, and Jane handed me a special Japanese-green-tea-and-honey drink she always requests for my rider, and I took a swig to flush out the phlegm. Jane did my psych-up routine, where she’s like, You’re the most talented singer and dancer in the world, everyone loves you, but not as much as me because you’re my beautiful baby boy, and the page tapped her and I nodded and she kissed me on both cheeks and my lips, and I felt less nervous, and the house lights went down and the countdown timer on the big screen and on the small backstage monitor ticked down from one hundred to zero as the audience chanted “Jon- ny! Jon- ny! Jon- ny! ” and the opening piano riff of “Guys vs. Girls” played and the crowd went crazy, and Jane patted me on the butt to send me through the talent passage and out onstage into the bright red smoke, and I could tell I was close to the Jonny Zone again. When I’m in there, I can do whatever I want and the crowd will follow me. But if you snap out of the Zone onstage, it’s scary. It’s like when you’re in an airplane or a car and you think, If the guy driving this wanted to, he could kill us all in a second.

Normally people say you should focus on one person in the crowd, but all that works for is small-scale performances. With arena shows, there are too many people, and if you think about focusing on one audience member, there’s a chance you’ll think about the entire audience watching you. The trick, I learned from the house guitarist on my first tour, is to focus on a vendor, since the vendors never care about you, they’re the only ones who don’t want anything from you, they just want something from the crowd, so in that way you’re on the same team, both moving product.

And once I sang, “Girls and guys, burgers and fries, all gets ruined with a coupla lies,” I forgot about the nervousness, it was just singing and dancing in the Zone. The crowd got even louder and the stage shook a little. It was probably ninety percent girls and their mothers and just ten percent their boyfriends. Jane wants a better balance, like seventy/thirty female/male, what Tyler has, for career longevity, but girls are way more loyal so it’s a good problem to have. I counted eight signs in the front rows that said something like JONNY, I WILL BE YOUR GIRL TODAY while I sang the first verse: