Blackbird (3 page)

1. I’m going to dispense with the convention of literary criticism that insists the critic keep the subject at bay by referring to him or her by last name only even if in actuality they’re best friends. Larry and I were not best friends, but when we both lived in Los Angeles we were friendly colleagues, and though I have not seen him in many years, I have an abiding affection for him.

Blackbird

Chapter One

I dreamed I was dancing the waltz with Sal Mineo.

He was young, about the age when he did
Crime in the Streets
, which is about my age now. He was very beautiful, and about two inches shorter than me, and he smelled of Old Spice.

I remember feeling awkward, my feet unsure of which way to go. I kept saying, “But I don’t know how to waltz.”

And Sal Mineo said, “Don’t worry; just follow me.”

I woke up suddenly, as if awakened by a loud noise. My underpants were wet and sticky. And it was time to get up for school.

“Talent is beauty,” Efrem was saying, just as Todd Waterson shouldered his way through the choir room’s double doors. Which would have made a nice little cinematic segue, since Todd was not what I would call a major talent in any art form, but could have written the book on being beautiful. I thought of the juxtaposition of Efrem’s remark and Todd’s entrance in terms of film, both because I love movies and because last year, when Efrem signed my yearbook, he wrote, “May your life be a movie in which you are Orson Welles: Write it – direct it – star in it.”

I suppose I’ve almost always thought of my life as a movie, but since Efrem wrote that to me, even more so.

It was about fifteen minutes before first period, and Efrem and I were hanging around the choir room, something we did quite a bit. Lots of people do, since the choir room is one of the nicer rooms in the entire school, and since Mr. Elmgreen doesn’t seem to mind if half the student body uses it as sort of a combination clubhouse and union hall before and after school and during lunch. Efrem wasn’t even in choir, but many of the people who like to frequent the choir room aren’t. We were straddling a couple of chairs up on the top tier of the room, up against the cupboards where Mr. Elmgreen stores the sheet music and percussion instruments and such. Just killing some time. Efrem was reading
Valley of the Dolls
for maybe the thirtieth time – it’s his all-time favorite novel. The Foley twins were crouching in opposite corners of the room, plucking out a passable version of “Dueling Banjos” on guitars. There were maybe twenty or so other kids sitting around the room, reading or talking or strumming their guitars and singing softly to themselves.

I watched Todd clump-clump his way up the first tier, then the second, headed toward the back of the room; I must admit I was only half listening to what Efrem was saying. Todd was wearing his favorite pair of hand-tooled Tony Lama lizard-skin cowboy boots, with toes so pointy you could knit booties with them. And a pair of faded old Levi’s hanging so low on his hips that his hip-bones were visible between the top of his pants and the bottom of his bright yellow
HERE TODAY
–
GONE TO MAUI
t-shirt. He looked hotter than a wood-pit barbeque. Todd was long-legged and bow-legged; and the way he walked in those boots and those Levi’s, boys and girls, you best believe that was quite an eyeful. I have on more than one occasion followed Todd Waterson around school, ending up at a class I didn’t have, just watching him walk. I hate to use an expression as hackneyed as “poetry in motion,” but that’s exactly the expression that came to my mind every time I saw Todd walk.

(My own walk is, I fear, much more functional than decorative. Marshall Two-Hawks MacNeill once described it as “somewhere between Bette Davis and Groucho Marx. Long, quick strides, face forward, eyes straight ahead, looking like somebody with someplace to
go
, by golly.” But that was later.)

“After all,” Efrem was saying, “time and gravity will sooner or later take its toll on even the most beautiful face and body, but talent – ”

I’d heard this one before. It’s one of Efrem’s favorite subjects, probably because Efrem is under the mistaken impression that he’s not very good-looking. Which he is. Besides, Efrem likes to use me as sort of a warm-up audience; he’s perfecting his spiels in preparation for when he gets famous, so he repeats himself quite a bit. I fully expect someday to pick up the
New York Times Book Review
and read: “Efrem Zimbalist Johnson – Talent Is Beauty.”

Efrem is a writer. I’m a singer. Anyway, I’m going to be.

Efrem Zimbalist Johnson is the closest thing to a real live Best Friend I’ve had since Martin Kirkland in the fourth grade. I feel a certain kinship toward Efrem, not the least reason being that we were both named after somebody famous. I was named after Johnnie Ray, the singer, whose biggest hit was “The Little White Cloud That Cried,” back in 1951. Efrem was named, not after the granite-faced television actor most famous for his portrayal of Inspector What’s-His-Name in “The F.B.I.,” but after
that
Efrem Zimbalist’s father, the great concert violinist. It was Efrem’s father (from whom Efrem inherited his particular brand of pale-skinned brunet looks) who named him.

“I was expected to be,” Efrem explained to me on more than one occasion, “the greatest American-born concert violinist this nation had ever seen. That was my father’s dream for me. I hope,” he would say, “I will not disappoint him too badly for becoming … the things I have become.”

This was, of course, before what was later to become known (all too euphemistically, I’m afraid) as “the accident.” It was after the accident, after his wounds had scabbed over (the visible ones, anyway), after much of his seemingly unflappable self-assurance and basic deep-down belief in his own superiority over most other mortals had returned to him that Efrem scrawled in the inside cover of my senior yearbook (in his inimitable ass-backwards southpaw writing):

To a Black Star (Young, Gifted, and Black – and That’s a Fact!)
Love and kisses, Efrem.
A.K.A., the Divine Mr. J.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself again.

So Efrem is going full steam into his Talent-Is-Beauty sermonette, and Todd Waterson is toting his Ovation round-back acoustic guitar up the tiers. Todd wasn’t in choir, either – he just liked to stow his guitar up on top of the back cupboards while he was in class, and he’d come in during lunch period and park in a corner and strum. Anyway, he’s got the guitar in his right hand and his basic blue everybody’s-got-one-just-like-it backpack full of books in his left, and (I immediately notice) – he’s not wearing any underwear. And his dick is quite discernible indeed plastered up against one side of the crotch of those jeans, and his balls are sort of bunched up on the other side; and I suppose I should have looked away immediately or at least tried to tune back into what Efrem was saying, but of course I didn’t. And next thing you know I’m starting to get hard.

Which is not what you’d call a rare occurrence for me. Erection seems to be my middle name lately. I’ll pop a class-A boner while reading anything remotely sexual in a book (Efrem likes to read the juicier parts of
Valley of the Dolls
aloud, just to watch me get all hot and bothered); during just about any love scene in any movie; at the sight of a men’s underwear ad (except ones like J.C. Penney’s, where the models’ crotches have been airbrushed away); at the very thought of Skipper Harris, or (more recently) Marshall – but that comes later, as I said. And, as often as not, I’ll get hard for no real reason at all, as if my dick just wants to let me know it’s still there. And the sight of Todd Waterson’s faded denim crotch (which, as he reached the upper tier of the room where Efrem and I sat, hovered dangerously at eye level) had me well on my way to a full-on throbber within mere fractions of a second. After attempting with some difficulty to cross my legs, I retrieved my three-ring binder from the floor beside my chair and plopped it onto my lap.

“How’s it goin’, Johnnie Ray?” Todd flipped his hair back as he reached us. Todd’s hair was very blond and very straight and quite long in the front, so that an average of six thousand times a day his hair fell across one eye in an effect more than slightly reminiscent of Veronica Lake, and he would flip it back with a quick little backward neck motion. I generally dislike that particular habit, but on Todd it was quite sexy.

“How’s it goin’, Todd?” I had only recently come to realize that the question
How’s it goin’
is entirely rhetorical. Time was when I would go into fifteen minutes on just how it really
was
going, causing more than one person to regard me as if I had taken leave of my senses.

“How’s it goin’, Efrem?” Todd made a modified hook-shot with his Ovation, landing it onto the top of the cupboard nearest Efrem.

“How’s
what
goin’, Todd?” Efrem rolled his eyes in that way he has when addressing someone he considers far beneath him – which is one long list, believe me. Efrem didn’t like Todd very much. He said it was because Todd possessed the intellect of a staph infection, but I also think Efrem was more than a little bit jealous of Todd’s looks. As I say, Efrem doesn’t have the highest regard for his own looks, and Todd was practically a shoo-in for Best-Looking of our graduating class. Who wouldn’t be a little jealous? I was.

“You gonna audition today?” Todd asked me. Todd wasn’t in Drama either, but he hung around the Drama room, too. Even though he wasn’t particularly creative, I think he just liked to be around those of us who are. Or think we are.

“Uh-huh.”

“You’ll get a part,” he said. “No sweat.”

“Thanks. Wish I was as sure as you are.”

“Yeah.”

Yeah. Well, I never said Efrem didn’t have a point – Todd wasn’t exactly Mensa material. Efrem said he was only getting through high school on his pretty face, which may well have been true. Still, Todd Waterson was one extremely decorative dude. And, frankly, I’ve always been a sucker for good old skin-deep physical beauty. I mean, if I want scintillating conversation, I can watch
All About Eve
. Or, heaven knows, talk to Efrem.

“Well, good luck, anyhow,” Todd said, making as if to leave.

“So how’s Leslie?” I asked him, just to keep the conversation going for a moment longer while I enjoyed the view. Todd had been going steady with Leslie Crandall, the only daughter of our pastor over at the Baptist church, since roughly the dawn of time.

“She’s fine,” he said, just a little too quickly. I didn’t quite know where it came from, but something told me Leslie wasn’t exactly fine. Not fine at all. I wasn’t sure if it was something in Todd’s face, or his posture, or his voice, or the way he started fiddling with his pinky ring, turning it this way and that on his finger. Or what. It was just there, somehow.

That same something also told me now was not the time to pursue the matter. So I simply said, “I hope you’re futzing around with that ring because you’re about to give it to me.” It got a smile. That ring never left Todd’s finger, that I knew of. Leslie gave it to him. It’s a beautiful piece, sterling silver with a big, shiny black opal, and I coveted it so openly that it had become sort of a running gag between Todd and me.

“I’ll leave it to ya in my will,” Todd said. Then he treated us to yet another vigorous hair-flip, and said, “Later, guys.”

“Later, Todd,” I said. Efrem kind of snorted. I watched Todd walk down to the doors, taking that incredible blue-denim behind with him. I’m telling you, talent or no talent, that walk was an art form unto itself.

“Well, I, for one, fail to fathom why you would even deign to speak to such as that,” Efrem said in his very Katharine Hepburn attitude he likes to use when he’s feeling particularly snotty.

“He’s a nice guy,” I said. I briefly considered adding something to the effect of, “Besides, it is my fervent desire to relieve Todd Waterson of his trousers” – but I didn’t. About thirteen times a day I’d be that close to coming right out and saying something like that to Efrem. I was almost sure he knew, anyway; most days, I would have bet dollars to doorknobs that Efrem felt the same way about guys as I did. But for some reason, I always stopped just short of turning to Efrem and spilling the beans once and for all. I don’t always make the wisest choices in life.

“He’s a
mon
goloid.”

“He’s a nice guy, Efrem, and not everybody can be the celebrated wit you are.”

“Too true,” Efrem said. “Too true.” I swear, sometimes Efrem could be the most amazing snot. After a moment, he said, “Nervous about the auditions?”

“I dunno. A little nervous, I guess.” I
was
a little nervous. God knows why. It wasn’t as if I really gave a damn about the play. And I harbored no illusions about my chances of getting cast. It was just the sort of thing that made me nervous. Auditions, midterms and finals, interviews with my guidance counsellor. Any situation where there’s any kind of pressure on, and I get this rapid little tremor right in the center of my chest, along with an uncomfortable overfull feeling, like gas. I had it right then. And I knew I’d continue to have it all day, right through the auditions. I was definitely a little nervous.