Teddy Wayne - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

He spotted me in one of the star chairs. “Hey,” he said, and did a military salute.

“Hi,” I said.

Jane shook his hand. “Very nice to meet you, Tyler.”

“Likewise,” he said. “Uh… can I ask your name?”

“Of course,” Jane said, like it was no big deal, but she hates when people think she’s just my mother and not also my manager. “I’m Jane Valentine, Jonny’s mother and manager.”

“Right.” We all knew he was thinking back on the headlines the last couple weeks. “I’m sorry about that. Jet lag.”

Jane pasted on a huge smile. “Is your manager here?” He said he was outside, and Jane excused herself to talk to him.

Tyler sat down in the other star chair a few feet away from mine. He sized himself up in the mirror and stood and leaned in closer. He squeezed his left nostril between two fingers. A bunch of white lines popped out of his skin like flowers sprouting out of the ground in fast-forward. Then he popped a pimple on his chin. Some white stuff came out of that, too, but so did some blood. “Fuck me,” he said as he tried wiping it off. “Who’s on makeup here?”

“She did me awhile ago,” I said.

“You mind calling to your mom? I can’t go out like this.”

I said no problem, and I opened the door and saw Jane talking to what must have been Tyler’s manager, who was this guy in his early thirties in a nice suit and glasses with thick black frames. Now, he definitely wasn’t good-looking, but something about the suit and the glasses and his neat haircut made it seem like this guy never messed up and got whatever he wanted. “Jane, Tyler needs makeup,” I said.

“Hundred-to-one he’s popping his zits again,” the manager said. “These are the pitfalls of managing a seventeen-year-old. Jane, when the time comes, go with Accutane, it’ll save you tons of grief.”

“I’ve already been talking about that with his dermatologist,” Jane said, which she hadn’t told me.

The manager found the show’s makeup woman and she came into the tent and cleaned up Tyler’s popped zit and caked on concealer and a new coat of foundation. It’s always like that when you see celebrities up close. They have all the same zits and blackheads and scars normal people do, only they’ve got better products and experts to cover them up.

We had some time to kill before we went on, so I asked if he wanted to do a dry run of “Guys vs. Girls” real quick, and he said he was cool, he knew it as well as one of his own songs, and that was maybe the biggest compliment I could ever get from another singer unless MJ came back to life and told me he’d gotten into my music after he departed the realm. If I invited him to play Zenon, he might think that was unprofessional to do preshow. It didn’t matter, though, since he said he was going to stretch and do warm-ups in the greenroom. He walked out the door to the right. “The greenroom’s the other way,” I said.

“Oh, they give me my own here,” he said. “From being on the show so much. I’m sure you’ll get one next time you come back.” That was cool of him to say. But they might not bring me back. Maybe they were only having me on now because I was bundled with Tyler.

So I played Zenon till the show coordinator told me to get ready, and I met Tyler backstage and we got miked up. After a commercial break, the host said they had two of the brightest young stars in music performing one of their own songs each and a duet. “First up is Jonny Valentine,” he said, and the audience cheered. “And then we have Tyler Beats,” he finished, and you almost couldn’t hear him through the applause. I didn’t have to vomit, but I also didn’t feel great. Late-night TV audiences are less friendly than morning-show crowds. I guess people who go to sleep late are more hostile than people who get up early in the morning. They’re waiting to laugh at you if you mess up. Tyler didn’t seem nervous at all.

The house guitarist played the G chord to “RSVP (To My Heart),” which was my cue to go onstage. The rest of the house band was tight. When we rehearsed preshow, they looked like regular guys who joke around with each other, like the Latchkeys, except they’re not young and famous even though they’re on TV every night. It’s only a job to them. They come into work, do their thing, and go home.

My performance was an A and the audience was into it and gave me a warm ovation when it was done and I went into the holding area backstage. Then the opening bass line for “Beats Me” kicked in, and the crowd was like, This is what we really came for, and the monitors were showing everyone dancing in the seats even before Tyler sang his first line. I’d like to make music like that someday, not just diarrhea pop for little girls to cry to, but something that hits everyone and moves them.

They went wild when he finished, and it was so loud the band had to wait before they could begin “Guys vs. Girls” and I could come back onstage. Finally they started up, and the crowd came alive every time Tyler sang backup, which was way better than my real backups.

I got so distracted over how Tyler was outshining me that when the third verse came along, I couldn’t remember the first line. I froze up on something I’d sung ten thousand times. I let a whole sixteen beats go by and did some trademark spin moves to pretend like I was doing a dance break, but I still couldn’t remember it, and at one point I made eye contact with Tyler, and he must have seen in my face that my memory was like, Fuck you, Jonny, this is what you get for popping all that zolpidem. So he sang the verse himself:

Saw a lady walking down the street

Looking so good with her golden curls

Yellin’ and screamin’ at some loser dude

Just another case of guys versus girls

It was like the crowd had an Eric for me but comed for him. Tyler was the better singer. Even the lay listener could hear that. He had more range, more texture, more charisma, more vocal control. Jane was lying, or wrong, when she kept saying I was more talented than Tyler. I was a talented freak, but he was a freak even compared to other freaks. The only way I could ever beat him was to work twice as hard. And Jane said he had the best work ethic already. I’m not even sure I could beat him if I did work that hard.

We sang the last verse together, I think because Tyler was afraid I’d forget the words again:

Pay attention, fellas, I got something to say

Listen up, ladies, all around the world

We’ll never get nowhere if we keep this silly war up

You know what it is: guys versus girls

We did our bows at the same time, which I was happy about, because the cheers would’ve been way louder for him than for me. They arranged it so I sat closer to the desk on the couch, but I wished Tyler had taken the seat. The host asked me about my concert on Valentine’s Day, and I said all the things Jane had coached me on, like how I was super-excited to perform for the first time in front of my fans in New York and for the whole world on the Internet for just $19.95.

“For just $19.95?” he said. “If they act now, do you throw in a set of steak knives?”

I didn’t get the joke but I knew he was making fun of me. I fake-laughed along with the audience, though. Laugh all the way to glossy coverage, Jane says whenever a comedian makes fun of me. “And Tyler, what are you plugging?” he asked.

“I’ve got absolutely nothing going on,” Tyler said. “It’s a sad, empty existence. Thank you for letting me come here and be around other human beings.” The crowd loved it. He gave good interview.

The host turned back to me. “Now, you’ve had quite an eventful last few weeks.”