Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

I then repeated the word niggardly seventeen times. Everyone started talking, probably to ask what niggardly meant. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. I figured I had to speak down to the level of people who don’t understand big words, so I should have shortened it and referred to it just by its first letter. “I guess I should’ve called it ‘the N-word.’ Is that better?”

I kept getting calls after the show from a group named the NAACP, which I assume stands for the National Association for Awesome Costume Parties. They probably want to know where I got my ghost costumes and dunce caps.

I’m going to ask the NAACP if they want to sponsor my next tour through the South! ♦

I recognized the writer’s name, because he flew in from New York to hang out with me for a day for a softball profile in a music glossy last year. I must have made him a few months’ rent on his crap apartment by now. Not only did he not sound like me at all in this article, but we only released “I Like Girls with Curves” as a digital single because we knew it was weak. I understood the jokes about the KKK and a bunch of the rest, but I didn’t think it was that funny. People in the cultural-elite demo usually aren’t. They just like making fun of my music so they feel special about liking their own boring classical music that no one listens to anymore, the same way that New York Times writer bashed Jane to feel better about how good a mother she is. They’re probably even happy that no one else listens to classical music now, so they can feel really special. If you listened to Mozart when he was alive, it was like saying you listened to MJ. And they’re just as into reading and talking about celebrities, only their celebrities are politicians and serious musicians and writers and movie directors. Jane’s big into publicity that reaches people high up on the cultural food chain, though, even if they’re way out of my fan base, because there’s always a trickle-down effect. I’m sure she was happy about this.

I almost forgot what I’d come in for, so I signed into my email and read my father’s letter again, and it was different here, since it was like he’d written these words himself, not ones I’d printed out later.

I’d had all these questions before for him, but now I didn’t know what to write. Or I knew some things, but I couldn’t click on the reply button and type them in. I just stared at it.

I heard the elevator ding down the hall and two people laughing, and one of them sounded a lot like Jane, so I signed out of the email fast, which I was getting a lot of practice at, and closed the computer, which made the room completely dark, and the voices were louder and one of them was definitely Jane’s, I can ID her laugh a mile away, and I remembered there were closets in the living room, so I ran out of the bedroom and almost tripped over a suitcase, but I heard Jane sliding her key-card and it kept beeping from her not doing it right, and I didn’t have time to hide in the closet so I crouched in the small space between the back of the big white U-shaped couch and the wall. I was doing that a lot lately, like I was in the movies. General Jonny, hiding from the enemy.

“Abracadabra,” Jane said, slowly. She was drunk.

There weren’t any sounds for a few seconds as the door shut, and I didn’t want to lift my head. But then there were footsteps, and something bumped hard against one of the sides of the couch. A man’s voice, low and steady, said, “Don’t fucking move.” I couldn’t tell whose it was, but it sounded familiar.

“Yes, sir,” said Jane in this little-girl voice that was a million miles from what she used when she was bitching out the TV producer. I could tell she was putting it on, that she wasn’t actually in danger, but the guy sounded like he wasn’t pretending at all.

Then shoes hitting the ground one after another, high heels falling to the floor, a zipper unzipping, jeans being shaken off, keys and a belt and change jingling and clanging when they hit the ground, and the man saying, “Take off your clothes and stand there.” I still couldn’t place his voice.

I held my breath, since I was sure they could hear me breathing. Once you pay attention to the sound of your breathing or your heartbeat, it’s like the loudest sound in the world and you have a hard time doing it regularly. It’s the reason why you’re supposed to be aware of your breathing while you sing but you should never think about it, because you’ll screw it up.

The man said, “You like being my little slut, don’t you?” and Jane again said, “Yes, sir,” and I heard a loud slap and Jane moaned and the guy said, “Shut up,” and Jane said, “I’m sorry, sir,” and heat rose up in my body like it wanted me to jump over the couch and tackle him, even though I knew from her voice that Jane was playing along. But I’d get in major trouble.

My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and I peeked up a tiny bit to see if I could watch them without them catching me, since their eyes probably hadn’t adjusted yet and they were off to the side. Jane’s back was to me, and the guy was standing in front of her totally naked except for dark socks and his boner sticking straight up out of his pubes. A man looks weird with just long socks and a boner. I couldn’t see him too good, only that his arms were covered with tattoos.

Oh, man. The head crew guy. Bill.

Bill had joined us when we began assembling the crew for this tour and getting the stagecraft down, so the longest this could’ve been going on was a few months, but he’d never been at our place in L.A. He didn’t talk to me much.

“God, you’re so beneath me,” Bill said.

“I’m sorry,” Jane said in her little-girl voice.

“You don’t even deserve my cock tonight,” he said. “I’m just gonna jerk off on you.”

“Yes, sir,” she said again, and I heard him jerking off. After a minute he said, “I need moisturizer or something,” and she ran in and out of the bathroom and handed him something, and he took a few more minutes, and I closed my eyes and thought of me telling Lisa Pinto she was my little slut and her calling me sir, but the way Jane said it, and then Bill took a step toward her and made this sound like an animal growling.

He went to the bathroom and peed and used the sink while Jane pulled a bunch of tissues from a box and wiped herself off. Bill came back and Jane went to the bathroom, and he sat down on the couch. I peeked over again. His hands were behind his head like a pillow, and it looked like his eyes were closed. He was still naked. His penis was small now and hanging to one side. That looked even stranger than a boner, a grown man with a soft penis that wasn’t all that much bigger than mine.

When Jane came back, she sat down next to him and asked, “Want some?” Bill took a long gulp of water before giving it back.

“It’s my birthday on the sixth,” Jane said. Bill grunted, though it wasn’t like one of the grunts from before. “Maybe we could do something special that night.”

“Maybe,” Bill said. “Where are we gonna be?”

“Cleveland.”

“Beautiful,” he said. “You can really paint Cleveland red in early February.”

She was quiet until she said, “I had to go to the children’s hospital today. For photo ops.”

“Yeah?” he asked, but it was more just saying it than a question. “How was it?”

“I’m never going to a children’s hospital again.”

“It’s no worse than a regular hospital, when you get down to it.”

“It is, to me.”

“Right,” Bill said. “My sister lost a baby, too, you know.”

Too? I almost asked.

“You told me,” Jane said. “You said hers was stillborn. Mine lived two weeks.”