Rich and Famous (10 page)

Riding down to New York on the train I thought
about it. Why was everybody so against me being rich and famous? It just didn't seem fair. Especially when it probably wasn't going to work out anyway. I mean, what difference did it make to Pop if I went down to New York and fooled around Camelot Records, instead of sitting up in Uncle Ned's barn watching Sinclair solder wires onto his computer? Or why should it matter to Uncle Ned what I did? He wasn't my father, and besides he had a perfect son. He should have been satisfied with that instead of meddling around with me. There wasn't any way he could make me perfect, no matter what he did. It wasn't any use for him to try.

But there wasn't much point in trying to figure out why he was against me being rich and famous; because I knew perfectly well that as soon as he found out what was going on. he'd capture me away from Camelot Records and keep me locked up in Sinclair State Pen until Pop got home. And that wouldn't be any help, either, because as soon as Pop found out that I'd been sneaking off to New York to be rich and famous he'd hit the ceiling, ground me for four or five years, and cut off my allowance for the rest of my life, too. I didn't know how long it would take for Uncle Ned to get the idea. I was positive he'd written Pop, and the only question was how long it would be before his letter would come back marked “No Such Hotel” or however the French would say it.

But there wasn't anything I could do about that but pray, so I turned my attention to another trouble, which was the big conference I was going to that morning with Mr. Fenderbase, the close friend of God's. I wondered what he was like. Even Superman was scared of him, and Superman was a pretty scary guy. I mean having been in jail and all.

The way Woody made it sound, this conference was the biggest event of the year, bigger than the World Series or the President's State of the Union address. Naturally, Superman would be there and Woody and a couple of guys from the publicity department and the music director and most important of all, Mr. Fenderbase, the President of Camelot Records. “This is it, baby,” Woody had told me. “They'll decide whether it's go or no go. You got to be sharp. When
Superman
says to bop a little, bop.”

When I got up to the Camelot offices, the receptionist told me to go down to the conference room. There was a long table in the middle of it. Everybody's place was set with a pencil, a pad of paper, a glass of water, and an ashtray, as if we were about to sit down to some kind of dinner. Woody was already there when I got there, pacing around the room and nervously smoking. “Where've you been, baby?” he asked.

“What?” I said. “I'm five minutes early.”

“Well, let's be on time next time,” he said.

He was too nervous to realize what he was saying, and I admit I was getting pretty nervous myself. I wanted to sit down, but I didn't know where my place was. I began to pace around at the other end of the room from where Woody was pacing, and then the door opened and a man came in and said, “Georgie, darling, it's marvelous to see you.”

It took me by surprise. He was a guy named Damon Damon whom I'd known from the music business before. Damon Damon was a musical director. In the music business they like to have one guy out of every twenty or thirty who knows something about music, and Damon Damon was it. He really did know about music—chords and notes and how to breathe when you're singing and stuff like that. He was sort of nutty, but everybody liked him because he knew what he was talking about and wasn't full of crap like everybody else. People used to call him Damon Damon the Button King because he always had extra buttons on the cuffs of his jacket. Also he wore these amazing vests that had fancy buttons on them, too.

“What are you doing here, Damon?” I said.

“Didn't anyone tell you, darling? I'm musical director of Camelot. I'm going to be in charge of your career if they decide you're going to have one.” He unbuttoned his jacket and held it open to show me his vest, which was red with big yellow flowers on it. “What do you think of my waistcoat, sweetie? Absolutely delicious, isn't it?”

I must say I was glad to see Damon Damon. He was somebody I could trust, even if he was nuts. He didn't worry about where he was supposed to sit, but plopped into a chair and then patted the one next to it. “Here, Georgie, come sit by me and tell me how much you admire my waistcoat.”

So I sat down next to him; and just then some other people arrived and plopped down, and then finally Superman came in on his aluminum crutches with another guy, who turned out
to
be Mr. Fenderbase, the relative of God's who was President of Camelot. He had a lot of distinguished gray hair and a distinguished fake suntan he'd got at his health club and he was wearing a distinguished gray suit that went well with his fake suntan. He gave me a firm handshake and looked me straight in the eye, the way people in the music business do when they're trying to give you the impression that they're sincere. In the music business you can always tell a liar by his firm handshake and the way he looks you straight in the eye.

So everybody milled around for a few minutes and then Mr. Fenderbase said, “All right, Superman, where do we stand?” His voice was soft and distinguished like his gray hair and his suntan.

“Got a good clean concept here, Mr. Fenderbase. George Stable, The Boy Next Door. A kid who's no musical genius, just a red-cheeked, barefoot down-home kid of the kind every American mother wishes she had for a son instead of the slump-shouldered yahoo she's got. Woody, tell George to stand up so Mr. Fenderbase can get a look at him.”

“Stand up, George, so Mr. Fenderbase can get a look at you.”

I stood up and stared at Mr. Fenderbase in a sincere way so he'd know I was as big a liar as he was, and then Mr. Fenderbase waved his hand and Superman said, “Woody, tell the kid he can sit down.”

“You can sit down, George,” Woody said, and I sat down.

Mr. Fenderbase put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. “Why are we selling records to America's mothers, Superman?”

“Acceptance in the home, Mr. Fenderbase. That's the big concept today. You take your average fourteen-year-old girl, anything Mom likes, forget it. She's rebellious, she doesn't want to
know
from Mom. But now your ten-year-old, she's still involved with Mom, she'll go along with Mom's ideas. And Mom is going to think that George Stable, The Boy Next Door, is a doll. She's going to say to herself, „That's the kind of cute little sucker I want my Mary to go around with when she's older.' He's a good kid, he's that polite newsboy who brings the paper to the door instead of heaving it into the hedge. He's the kid at the supermarket who carries your bag out to the car just to be nice. He's the boy Mom wants for her daughter instead of a weirdo like that friend of her son's she keeps turning up under the newspapers when she vacuums the television room. Who needs him, with his scraggly beard and his dirty jeans? All she has to do is just
think
about that one laying a finger on her little Mary and she has to push home half a box of
librium
to stop shuddering. What we've got for her is George Stable, The Boy Next Door. And once we sell Mom, she'll sell little Mary and we're golden.”

Mr. Fenderbase went on staring at the ceiling. “Why are we selling records to ten-year-old girls, Superman?” he said in his soft, distinguished voice.

“The name of the game is moola, Mr. Fenderbase. M-o-o-l-a. The big dollar. There's a honey of a buck in this and nobody's got his fingers into the hive yet. According to market surveys, the average American ten-year-old girl has discretionary income of over one hundred dollars a year—allowance, baby-sitting money, the birthday fiver she gets because granny is too lazy to buy a present. It all adds up. There's five million girls out there in that nine-to-eleven group, with half a billion dollars to spend every year. And they're going to blow it all on dairy freezes and training bras if we don't get to them first.”

Mr. Fenderbase went on staring at the ceiling, and everybody sat there waiting for him to give out his next pronouncement. Finally, in that low distinguished voice, he said, “What about the boys?”

“Right on target, Mr. Fenderbase,” Superman said. “They've got lawn-mowing jobs and they're throwing away even more money on dairy freezes than the girls. They'll sit there in front of the TV watching George Stable, The Boy Next Door do his number and they'll be drooling all over their Boy Next Door T-shirts wishing it was them up there. Oh, we're not going to get them all, of course. Some of them are going to be jealous of The Boy Next Door and go around telling everybody that George Stable is a custard-face, but the hell with those little soreheads, who needs them? In our concept, the male audience is a bonus.”

Superman stopped talking. Everybody looked at Mr. Fenderbase again, who was still sitting with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. We all sat there waiting, and finally he got his head down from the ceiling, looked around the room, and said, “I like the concept.” Everybody breathed a sigh of relief. “But do we have the right boy?”

I guess Superman figured he'd got over the worst of it, because he took out one of his big cigars, lit it, and began blowing smoke all over everybody except Mr. Fenderbase. “That's what we're here for today. Is George Stable The Boy Next Door? Let's find out. You're on, Woody.”

Damon Damon gave me a tiny wink and then Woody said, “I'll tell you one thing, folks, Boys Next Door don't grow on trees. A good clean-cut kid who projects wholesome freshness and still doesn't fall over his feet in front of a microphone is almost a freak these days. I've been
working
with this boy for three years now, and I can tell you he's for real, the genuine article. Straight as a die, honest as the day is long.”

“Frankly,” Mr. Fenderbase said in his soft, distinguished voice, “I prefer a boy with a little larceny in his soul. It's hard to cheat an honest Boy Next Door.”

That was supposed to be a joke, so everybody began roaring with laughter, slapping the table with their hands, and half passing out in their chairs. Woody roared right along with the rest of them. Finally, the uproar calmed down and Woody said, “But I don't want to give you the idea that this is some half-baked innocent who's going to have a hot flash every time somebody speaks to him. He's been in show business for six years already—in the chorus of the Westport Watch Hour when he was eight, one of the beavers on Captain Windy's Laughboat for two seasons until his voice broke, a couple of television specials—there aren't many kids around with that kind of background, folks.”

It was all lies, except for that one television special I was on once for six seconds. I hadn't any background in the music business, folks. I was just an ordinary kid who'd studied singing a little and guitar a little, who happened by luck to be on television for six seconds or whatever it was. As for not stumbling over my feet or getting hot flashes when I got in front of a microphone, why I was just as likely to stumble over my feet or get a hot flash as anybody else. Everything Woody had said was just plain lies, and it made me disgusted with him. But being my agent, he figured it was his job to tell lies. It seemed right to him. An agent was supposed to make his client look good and since the other agents were lying about their clients, Woody figured he had to lie about his, too.

But I didn't like it. It made me feel uncomfortable. In the first place I didn't like being talked about like a poodle in a dog show. They could at least admit that I could understand English and knew what they were saying. In the second place, suppose Mr. Fenderbase or Superman got to asking me a lot of questions about the Westport Watch Hour or the Laughboat? I wouldn't have the right answers and in about a minute they'd know it was all made up and either I'd have to tell them that Woody was a liar, which I wouldn't want to do, or take the blame myself, which I wouldn't want to do, either.

But what I didn't like about it most of all was being a phony. I'll admit, I'm not against lying on principle. I mean I guess I lie to Pop almost every day—you know, little stuff like did I finish my homework before I went over to Stanky's or did I sweep under my bed. That kind of
lying
isn't phony: it's just to keep your parents from running your life all the time. A kid who didn't lie to his parents sometimes wouldn't be normal.

But all this stuff—Woody's lies about my marvelous background and Superman's whole long thing about the mothers of America falling in love with me, and all those girls spending their baby-sitting money on my records—well, it was just plain phony, that's all there was to it.

And then the question was: Would I give up a chance to be rich and famous just to avoid being phony? Would anybody? Would that be stupid? I didn't know; but I didn't have any chance to decide right then, because all of a sudden Mr. Fenderbase said, “Superman, have the boy bop a little.” So Superman turned and said, “Woody, have George bop a little for Mr. Fenderbase.” And Woody said, “George, bop a little for Mr. Fenderbase.”

There they were treating me like a poodle again. I knew I was supposed to come on with something like, “Gee, Mr. Fenderbase, I'm just an ordinary kid and what a big thrill it must be for me to be in the same room with somebody who is a close relative of God's.” And I tried to say it. But try as I might, I just couldn't get the words out through my teeth. The right words were going around in my head; all I had to do was open my mouth and say them. But I just couldn't get my mouth open. I couldn't sit there staring around, though; I had to say something. So I blurted out, “I don't want to make a big deal out of it, Mr. Fenderbase, but since I'm right here in the room with you, why don't you ask
me
your questions instead of asking Woody or Superman or somebody else?”