The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (30 page)

I couldn’t say the final words. She stopped and pulled her head back a few inches. “Yeah?”

“You like being my fan?”

“I told you, I only like that one cover of your song. I just want to give you the best blow job of your life.”

That
did get me sort of hard for a second, hearing the words
blow job,
or maybe it was
blowjob,
one word. My computer dictionary wouldn’t have it, and I couldn’t ask Nadine. Maybe Walter would know. It was right in time, because she unzipped my jeans and stuck her hand down my pants as my half-boner was going up. A half-erection would be an
Eric
. She grabbed it and wrenched her hand around it a few times like she was unscrewing a stuck jar. It didn’t feel too good. Like, except for the fact that a girl was touching my penis, it would’ve been better to do it myself or not have anything happen at all. If I asked if she had moisturizer, or checked if they had butter or olive oil in the fridge, she might have thought it was weird.

It hurt so much, actually, that my Eric turned into a no-ber, and though my eyes were closed, I could tell it was shrinking a lot. The more I concentrated on getting it hard, the softer and tinier it got. Pretty soon it was going to become like negative size and turn into a vagina. She moved her hand faster, which only hurt worse and made me more nervous that she could tell how small and soft it was.

She stopped. “Are you even old enough to
get
a hard-on?”

“Yep,” I said. “It’s just that I already had a bunch today.”

“Oh.” She went back to trying to jerk me off.

I wished Zack could somehow see me doing this. Not like a video or being in the room, but knowing I was getting a hand job now, even if it wasn’t working and was mostly painful.

Suddenly I got hard again, and she pulled my pants down to my ankles and tried to do the same to my boxers. But I didn’t want her to see that I only had one pube, so I stopped her from doing that and instead poked my penis through the fly.

She put her mouth over it, which felt a ton better than the hand job, and if all hand jobs were the same as that one, then I was fine never getting another in my life. The blow job was the opposite. It was like melting inside the heat of her mouth, and I didn’t feel anything else on my body, except when her teeth hit it a couple times. I’d be okay getting some more of these in my life. I bet real sex is like your body completely disappearing inside the girl’s body.

After a minute she took a break. “I’m Dana, by the way.”

“I’m Jonny.”

“No duh,” she said.

She went back to the blow job, but I could tell there was no way it was going to happen. I wasn’t even getting as close as I got when I masturbated by myself. Finally she asked, “Are you gonna come soon?”

“Probably not,” I said. “I already comed a couple times today.”

She stopped and I stuck my erection back inside my boxers and pulled up my jeans and was careful not to zip up my penis. She sat down on the beanbag chair to my side, but there wasn’t enough space for us both to lie down, so I sat up on it, too.

“Have you done that before?” She smiled like she had a little secret. “I feel like I totally corrupted you.”

“No, I do it all the time.”

Her smile went away. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

I could have told her she was the first girl I’d even kissed except for Alyssa Hernandez in a game of Spin the Bottle in fourth grade. But I’ve heard that you never want to tell girls you like them too much. When you
sing
about how much you like them, it’s okay, because you’re not singing to one girl, you’re singing to all of them, so they’re all competing with the others. It’s like Jane giving access to the glossies, just enough but not everything, and they all want to nab an exclusive.

Still, maybe the right thing to do now was to kiss her again or squeeze her breasts or something. It would’ve been good to have Zack around for advice on things like this. I wasn’t sure what would be best, so I put my hand behind her head to give her a little neck rub. She flinched, but
then she saw what I was doing and let me. Her muscles stayed pretty tight while I rubbed, though.

“How’d you get here tonight?” I asked. “Did your parents drop you off?”

I thought back to my father carrying me in his arms back to Jane at the riverfront concert. That was maybe my only real memory of them being in the same place together besides in our apartment.

“Yeah, right,” Dana said. “They don’t drive me
anywhere
. I can’t wait till I get my license. I took the bus.”

Every time one of us moved, the beanbag popped and snapped at a million decibels. I didn’t know what to say to girls offstage or when I wasn’t signing autographs or posing for pictures, and I
really
didn’t know what to say after something like this. “What bands are you into?” she said.

I could tell if I said MJ, she’d think it was gay. She might not even know what MJ stood for. And I couldn’t say Tyler Beats, who I bet she thought also sang shitty pop songs. There’s no way all the members of the 99 Percent Dilution combined had the talent that either of them had in their toenails. If no one’s heard of you, there’s a reason for it.

“The Clash is a major influence for me,” I said.

Right after I said that, the song “Stay” by Maurice Williams came on the playlist, which made what I said about the Clash sound like a lie. That was when Rog was teaching me how to sing falsetto. I don’t like doing it other than for MJ songs, because I sound like a girl, so it’s only on “You Hurt Me.” “Stay” is very short, about a minute and a half. That’s part of what makes it such a strong song, right as you’re getting into it, it ends and leaves you wanting more. It makes you feel what Maurice Williams is singing about, which is what any good song does, but usually not with track length.

“They’re cool,” she said. “I’m more into the Pistols. But I mostly listen to Cincinnati bands. You know the Upper-Middle Classmen? I’ve seen like nine of their shows this winter.”

“No. You know the Latchkeys?”

“Ugh. They suck. They’re like corporate indie rock for the masses. The Urban Outfitters of bands.”

I stopped rubbing her neck. “What do you mean?”

“They’re the type of music you can tell was cooked up in some laboratory by a group of record executives to sound exactly like it
wasn’t
.”

“No, they met in college. And they sound like the Stones meets the early Strokes.”

“Whatever,” she said. “They’re still rich white boys pretending to be something they’re not. Their front man, Nick something?”

“Zack. Zack Ford.”

“More like Zack Fake. I saw an interview with him? He was trying so hard to be clever. Only rich white boys try to be clever. I was like, ‘
Really?
’ ”

“He
is
clever. He can make up funny songs on the spot. And he’s not rich. He’s working-class from New Jersey.”

“He’s rich now,” she said. “All that matters is what you are now.”

That wasn’t true, because you always knew who you were before and you kept thinking of yourself like that even if no one else did, but once she said that, I knew Zack wouldn’t even care if he knew about me getting a blow job. He probably wasn’t thinking about me at all except for being pissed that he took me along to the nightclub even though I’m the one who got them in because no one in Memphis gives a fuck who the Latchkeys are, which was why they were lucky to be asked on my tour in the first place with my Walmart fans.

“You want any food?” I said. “You looked super-hungry before.”

“No,” she said. “If I’m not back by ten I’ll be in deep shit.” I’d wanted her to leave before that, but once she said
she
wanted to leave, I kind of hoped she’d stick around.

She opened the door. Walter was right outside on a chair. I asked him to get the car service for her. “You gonna remember me?” she said.

Dana probably gave blow jobs to everyone in the Upper-Middle Classmen, whoever they were, and to all the other Cincinnati bands, but she wasn’t hot enough to get backstage for any bands with national profiles, so I was the most famous person she’d ever give a blow job to, which was the only reason she’d remember me, and down the road she’d
probably change what happened in her memory so she could feel proud of that one time she made Jonny Valentine come.

“Totally,” I said. “What’s your last name?”

“Hollister.”

“Like the clothing company. They send me stuff sometimes.”

In my head so I wouldn’t forget I repeated to myself, Dana Hollister, Dana Hollister, Dana Hollister.

“Diana Hollister,” I said out loud.

“Dana,”
she said. “
Dana
Hollister.”

“Right. Dana.”

Walter escorted her out, and after I closed the door, “Stay” finished and the playlist ended and it was quiet. I played Zenon while I waited for Walter. I had my game saved right before the level’s minion who kept killing me, but this time, instead of running into the room and attacking him, I realized I could run in, attack him once, and run out before he could counterattack. It took a lot longer, but eventually I wore him down and advanced to the next level. Sometimes in Zenon you just have to take your time and not be in a rush to attack.

Me and Walter didn’t talk about it on the ride back except when he said, “Don’t expect that to become a regular service, brother. When you’re older you can do it all you want.” I guess I couldn’t ask him how to spell
blow job
now. And I didn’t tell him I didn’t want to do it again for a while anyway. Unless maybe I got a skinnier girl next time.

O
n the morning of Jane’s birthday, Nadine gave me my first set of final exams on the bus and in the hotel before she went back to L.A. in two days for winter break. The next day was going to be history plus language/reading, which meant an essay on slavery. I think I did okay overall, because it was vocab (superb), math (middling), and science (subpar), but I wasted a few minutes at the start imagining taking them in a real classroom, with all the other students getting nervous before and comparing the answers after. It wasn’t exactly like having teammates, because you were basically competing against them, but it sounded sort of fun.

When I finished, Jane said she’d reserved a nice lunch for us. She didn’t look so hot. All these tiny blue veins I’d never noticed before popped out under her eyes like the roots of a plant, and she was really skinny, skinnier than when the tour started, but not in a good way. She still had chub in some areas, like her stomach and hips, but was too skinny in others, like her forearms and face. Rog is always stressing the importance of a balanced dancer’s body to prevent injury. Jane’s is
im
balanced.

Walter escorted me and Jane out the hotel through the lobby to the car service, since Cleveland doesn’t have anything set up for celebrities.
Right after the revolving doors, this guy was standing there in a cheap suit, holding a big white envelope. “Jane Valentine?” he asked.

“No autographs or interviews, sorry,” she said, and Walter started to move between them while keeping an eye on me.

He quickly pushed the envelope on her before Walter could provide buffer. “You’ve been served,” he said, and walked away. She watched him for a few seconds and folded the envelope up and stuffed it in her bag.

“Why’d he say that?” I said.

“It’s nothing,” she said. “Walter, get the door, please.”

I slid into the car. “What’s in the envelope?”

“Just some papers I needed,” she said.

“What kind of papers?”

“Boring business stuff.”

“But why did he dis you?”

“What?”

“He said, ‘You’ve been served,’ like what people say when they dis someone or block their shot in basketball. Only they usually say, ‘You got served.’ ”

“It’s to let you know he’s from the delivery service.” Her body seemed smaller and her face was tighter than usual, like she’d shrunk into a Jane Valentine doll. Walter looked like he didn’t know what just happened, either. “Can we have quiet time until we get to the restaurant? I need to email a few people back.”

The restaurant was an Italian hot spot for Cleveland, the type of place where there’d be write-ups of us locally and they’d get syndicated out to the nationals. Maybe that was why Jane chose it, to show me and her went out to eat in restaurants like a normal mother and son. But when it’s a third-tier city, their trendy places always feel desperate, like they’re trying to be a cool place in L.A. or New York but not coming close. Jane always puts down pop acts that imitate someone else, because they’ll never do it too good and it looks worse when they fail. She says you have to make your own brand, no one wants a knock-off. I’m like, But you’re always trying to make me into the next Tyler Beats. She says we’re imitating his
career trajectory,
not his
music.
She’s always
on the label about getting songwriters and producers who understand that distinction, except I’m not sure she can hear the difference herself in the music.

Jane ordered a mimosa when the waiter seated us and went to the restroom and had another waiter stand by me since Walter had stayed outside. When she came back, the white envelope was poking out of the unzipped part of her bag and was opened. Without making it obvious, I peeked at the writing in the corner. It said “Meacham Weiss & White,” and it had a New York City address. So it was another legal letter, and not from her L.A. lawyers. I don’t think she had lawyers in New York. It could have been something about business, or about me and her drinking, or about my father. No way she’d tell me, though.

She kept watching the room like there were paparazzi everywhere, and slurped down her mimosa by the time the waiter came back for our food order. When she asked for a third in the middle of her Caprese salad, I said maybe she should switch to water. “It’s my birthday, Jonathan,” she said. “I’m entitled to a couple drinks.”