The Love Song of Jonny Valentine (35 page)

We arrived at the late show in the afternoon for the 5:30 taping. The fans were already lined up, and a few held signs for me, but most were for Tyler, which wasn’t a positive audience predictor if he was supposed to be there supporting me in a secondary role. He even had some guy fans, and they were all older than mine, some in their twenties and thirties. His manager had done a really savvy job broadening his base through his music and image maintenance. I bet if Tyler got busted for drinking, he’d find a way to spin it into a positive.

Walter and the show’s security escorted me into the star/talent entrance. Tyler wasn’t arriving till later, so the show coordinator had me rehearse on my own with the house band and do a mock-interview with
her. Since it was a special performance of two singers, we’d get three songs, then our joint interview. First I’d sing “RSVP (To My Heart),” Tyler would sing “Beats Me,” then he’d sing backup on “Guys vs. Girls.” I was worried that we wouldn’t get a chance to rehearse it together, but she said, “Don’t worry, Tyler’s a total pro, just do your usual thing.”

After I’d finished my rehearsal, Tyler came into the dressing room by himself. I wondered where his bodyguard was. He was smaller than I expected him to be, and his tight leather jacket and jeans made him seem even smaller, but with his head so big, it almost looked like his body hadn’t fully grown. He was good-looking, but nothing special, like someone had picked out enough decent features and zero ugly ones and mashed them together.

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.”

“It’s been a lot of work and a lot of concerts, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to get to play in front of so many fans,” I said.

“Uh, I meant more what’s been happening
after
the concerts,” he said. More hostile laughter. I knew Jane was watching on a monitor, getting ready to bitch someone out for letting him ask about this and going off-script from the mock-interview.

“People like to talk about me,” I said. “I don’t listen to them. I just try to stay positive.”

“I stay positive, too,” Tyler said.

“Oh, yeah?” the host said, smiling, like he was passing him the ball for an easy assist.

“Yeah, I’m positive I’m miserable,” Tyler said. Even with a joke I’d heard in fourth grade and knew was coming, the audience lapped it up.

The host got serious. “But why is that? Why are people so utterly fascinated with you?”

This was different from, “What’s your best feature?” I didn’t have an answer besides that the creative department of my label had
made
people get fascinated with me. If there was another kid who was cute enough and sang good enough, they’d be fascinated with him. You can’t say that stuff, though, since people get pissed when they realize they don’t choose most things in life they think they’re choosing, that it’s all picked for them by someone who controls the purse strings.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m only a kid.”

“But an
utterly fascinating
kid,” Tyler said, and the audience whooped. He was trying to help out and change the subject, but the host wouldn’t let it go.

“That’s just it,” he said. “You’re a kid, yet everyone wants to know what’s happening in your life. And you’re, what, all of four feet tall?”

The sheep laughed again. But they’re the ones who waited in line three hours to see me when they had nothing better to do with their stupid vacations from the Midwest. Except they probably really came to see Tyler.

“People like to think about celebrities,” I said. “Sometimes they’re a little happier from watching us sing or act or play sports, because we take them away from everything.”

This was the standard line I’d seen other celebrities give, and pretty close to an answer I’d given a few times before. I was going to stop, but the host said, “Hey, he learned to talk!” and the crowd laughed
again,
and something flipped inside me and I started saying stuff I hadn’t said before, or maybe even thought before.

“But when things go bad for us, it really makes them happier about their own lives,” I said. “And when they make fun of my mother, it makes them feel better about how they raise their own normal kids. So even when they think they love you for not being like a normal person, underneath it they actually hate you, because that’s the part that hates themselves for not being special, and for knowing they couldn’t handle the pressure of being famous anyway.”

This shut the crowd up, and even the host. I was afraid to say anything else. It was tense until Tyler said, “I paid him to say that.” Everyone cheered, and he took his wallet out and handed me a twenty-dollar bill and stuffed it into my track sweater pocket, which made them cheer even louder. I don’t even
own
a wallet. Tyler wasn’t only a better performer, he was a triple-threat entertainer: singing, dancing, and personality, which meant he could act. And I got the sense he didn’t even
care
about it all that much, but he could turn it on at any moment and think fast and always win over the audience, and he knew it. Me, I needed dialogue coaching and an allied interviewer and a receptive crowd, and even if I won them over the last twenty times in a row, I wasn’t sure I could do it on the twenty-first.

The host thanked us both and plugged my concert again, and the show was over. The band kicked in, and he pretended to be talking to us, but he was mouthing words, and when the producer said we were clear, he walked offstage without saying good-bye. It was only a job to him, too, and it ended the second his show was over. It must be nice not to have to kiss anyone’s ass.

Someone led me and Tyler backstage, and Jane was waiting right there. She congratulated both of us and waited till he walked down the hall and around the corner to his private greenroom.

“That was a
really
bad answer,” she said. “But it’s not your fault. They explicitly promised me there’d be nothing like that. I’m going to
yell at someone.” The shadow of a body was on the wall by the corner Tyler had walked around. I got all hot, even though the studio was like fifty-five degrees, thinking about him listening to Jane criticize me post-performance. His manager wouldn’t do that.

She told me to eat in the greenroom and she’d be over soon. The guests who were on earlier had already left the greenroom, so it was only me in there with the whole buffet to myself. I wondered if Jane had even fully heard what I’d said on the show. She probably agreed with me, too, but didn’t want to admit it, since she used to be one of those regular people who worshiped celebrities, and even though she
is
one now herself, she still does, at least the ones who are more famous than her.