Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

But my singing was off, too. I’d drunk all the Throat Coat in the world in the afternoon, but it was like I kept running out of saliva, and when I reached for high notes, which are usually a meaty fastball down the middle of the plate for me, I could feel my voice cracking, so I had to rein that in also, which screwed me for “Breathtaking,” where I’m supposed to hit a high C that sounds like my breath is being taken away. I wasn’t even sharp on “Kali Kool,” which is my easiest song, but at least it’s a sing-along so I could hold the mike out and let the crowd carry it.

I was sweating over my face and down my back, and when I brought this chubby girl with glasses onstage to sing to, she almost looked scared for me, because the sweat was dripping down my nose and I had to keep wiping it off with my sleeve.

The feeling passed for a few songs, and I got greedy and danced a little before the heart-shaped swing finale, and right when the swing came down my stomach bubbled again, and it turned a lot worse as the swing locked down and lifted me up. This was my nightmare, having an accident in front of all these people where they could tell I’d had one. I couldn’t crouch down and puke, since it would fall through the holes in the bottom, and vomiting wasn’t even going to help anything. I was trapped. And the more I worried about it, the gurglier my stomach became, which made me think about it more. The vicious cycle of performance anxiety, Rog calls it, but usually it’s about singing worse because you’re afraid you will, not about having diarrhea in your pants.

The audience was pretending to text and singing along with “U R Kewt” so loudly that I couldn’t hardly hear the band or my own vocals, which made me pissed. If they actually cared about hearing me sing they’d let me sing, but it’s really all for them, which is why like eighty percent of pop lyrics are about you, not her or an actual name, so the listeners can pretend it’s them. Or so they can pretend to be me for a few hours, even though they’re almost all girls, like the L.A. Times writer said, except at that moment if they knew what my stomach was going through, none of them would want to be me, and I couldn’t stop the show or anything, so for their sake I had to clench my muscles and fight through it and hold everything in while it was bursting to get out.

And then I had the thought of what would happen if I said fuck it, and pulled down my pants and sprayed diarrhea all over their heads and their iPhones shooting unauthorized video and their Be Jonny’s Valentine heart-design T-shirts with the picture of me next to a Photoshopped picture of them, just me coating the entire stadium with Jacuzzi jets of endless diarrhea. It was like, you all caused this in me, even though this one time it was the alcohol, but if I didn’t have to perform it wouldn’t be so bad, so now you get to feel what I’m feeling.

Thinking about that made me laugh, which I never do in concert, and the laugh helped the terrible feeling pass again. I made it through to the end without any problems. I was going to tell Zack about it. He’d find it funny. Except I’d have to make it seem like the diarrhea was from food poisoning and not from the alcohol.

After the concert I ran to the bathroom just in case, and I’m glad I did, since whatever I’d been keeping in was super-excited to get out. When Jane came to pick me up, I must have looked drained, because she asked if I felt okay and I told her I’d had some diarrhea but I was fine now.

But as we pulled up at the hotel, I grabbed my stomach and Jane quickly took me to her room to use the bathroom. I was taking awhile, so she opened the door, and I squeezed my legs together a little to hide my penis, but not all the way or it would look like I had a vagina. “How do you feel?” she asked.

“Not so good.”

“What did you eat?”

“A lot.”

“Did you sleep okay? Or take any pills?”

She’d turned into Dr. Henson all of a sudden. “No.”

She ran cold water over a washcloth and wiped off my face and gave me a glass of water and told me to drink all of it, but it squirted out a few minutes later. Diarrhea would be my new word for a song that you listen to and forget right away.

Jane sat on the garbage can near the toilet. It was an expensive-looking garbage can, gold-plated with a sturdy lid, so it supported her. It was kind of stupid to have such a nice garbage can in a place where people go to have diarrhea. She kept sponging up the sweat on my face and feeding me glasses of water and gave me a couple anti-diarrhea pills, but it didn’t do much to stop it. “I should call a doctor,” she said.

Maybe the doctor would take a blood test or something and find alcohol in there. “Don’t,” I said. “It’s embarrassing. And I’m already feeling better.”

She got a call on her phone, told me she’d be back in a minute, and closed the door behind her. I tried to listen, but it was hard because of the door and she was talking quietly and every fifteen seconds or so I’d shoot out another stream of water. All I heard was two sentences: “I’m staying in tonight… Not here.”

She came back a minute later. “I think you should sleep here with me tonight,” she said.

I was trying to figure out who could have called her and what it was about. But she’d lie if I asked. “Okay,” I said.

I stayed on the toilet another hour, and Jane got my pajamas from my room. And this is the most embarrassing part, but she ordered the smallest size of adult diapers from the lobby. Somehow they had them, and she made me wear a pair to be safe, because she said she didn’t want me shitting on her in bed. I had just enough strength to smile but not enough to laugh.

Jane wore her white satin nightgown to bed, and I climbed in and turned onto my side so my stomach hurt less. She spooned me and rubbed my stomach lightly, which might irritate it, but it was soothing. For a second I pretended it was Lisa Pinto doing it, but I was too sick to get a boner anyway.

She stroked my stomach some more and put her arm under my neck and cradled me inside it. “Can you sing the lullaby?” I asked.

She didn’t answer, but she sang it. I liked this part the most this time:

Way down yonder

In the meadow

Lies a poor little lamby

Bees and butterflies

Flitting round his eyes

Poor little thing is crying Mammy

I said, “It’s like the bees and butterflies are the diarrhea now flitting round my stomach.”

She laughed and said to make sure I told that to Nadine for extra credit. Then she said, “We haven’t done a sick night in bed in a while, huh?”

“I think the last time was that Christmas you gave me season tickets to the Dodgers and I ate some bad sushi.”

“Right. Two Christmases ago.”

On my father’s last Christmas with us he gave me my first baseball glove. I didn’t start playing Little League till after he left, and I don’t remember ever playing with it with him, so he probably left when it was winter. I used it the rest of the time in St. Louis, but we lost it when we moved. It was fake leather and a child’s model, and my new glove is premium leather and bigger and was autographed by Albert Pujols when we visited the locker rooms at Angel Stadium last year. It’d be nice to have my first glove still, though.

“Did my father play baseball?” I asked.

Jane’s breathing stopped its regular flow for a second. “What do you mean?”

“In high school or something, did he ever play?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Were the Cardinals his favorite team?”

“Jonathan, I know you’re curious,” she said. “But it’s really best not to think about him. Some people get good luck, and they get two good parents. Some people have bad luck, and they don’t get any. And most people end up somewhere in the middle, and that’s what you got.”