Being Frank (14 page)

Post-show optional recreation tended to be scanty in the hinterlands, but Frank didn't seem to mind, because a relatively early evening meant he could catch up on his sleep. Sometimes, victimized by caffeine, he'd read for awhile, lying there with his arm around me and his book propped up on his chest. (Out of a strange reluctance to appear intellectual, he pretended that he never read anything he didn't absolutely have to read, but one of the first long conversations we had on the tour was about Franz Kafka; Frank seemed to be thoroughly familiar with everything Kafka had ever written, even obscure things like “A Country Doctor".) If I happened to be restless, he'd ignore my flailing about as long as he could and then finally look at me sideways and inquire, “Are you in torment? Well, we certainly can't have that, now can we?” It was a running gag — him always making it seem like it was
my
idea.

One night neither of us could sleep. Nothing helped, not even the old reliable. After thrashing around for awhile we finally gave up and lay there in the dark. Gradually a conversation of sorts evolved, ramblingly and desultorily, lit by the tip of his burning cigarette. I had always wanted to know what his high school days had really been like, and he replied unhesitatingly that adolescence had been the most miserable period of his life. He admitted that when he was 14 or 15 he would have given anything for someone to come along, male or female, who really understood him. “Of course that would have been impossible — I didn't even understand myself,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh.

Since he seemed to be in an uncharacteristically self-revelatory mood, and since I'd always been curious, I asked him about the circumstances surrounding his loss of virginity. A tone came into his voice that I had never heard before; even though he was talking in his usual precise, slightly derisive manner of speech, all of a sudden it was like listening to a muted cello playing in a minor key. He had been in high school in Lancaster in the Mojave Desert, a gangly kid with a scraggly mustache, the school outcast. His only friend then was Don Van Vliet (later known as Captain Beefheart), even more of an outcast and weirdo than Frank was. The two of them would listen to blues records all night, and when they got really bored, they'd cruise around Lancaster in Van Vliet's Oldsmobile, looking for girls (this said with a contemptuous little snort, as if it was a deranged notion to think two rejects like
them
would ever find female companionship by cruising the streets of Lancaster in the 1950s). Still, evidently, Frank finally had some luck. “It was at her house when her parents weren't home; at my house either my mother or my brothers and my sister were always around. It was really putrid — neither of us had the vaguest notion what
to do, of course. I never saw her afterward — for some reason she never wanted to talk to me again.” The outflow of clipped speech stopped suddenly as he laughed, with intense bitterness. I was surprised at the self hatred that laugh revealed. I began to comprehend why he'd been able to understand me so quickly at our first meeting.

He quickly started asking me questions, turning the tables and trying to regain control. In my high school days, had I ever had sex with a bunch of guys at the same time? How about in public? Had I ever had any mutant lusts — attractions for, say, animals, vegetables, or household appliances? I couldn't bring myself to admit that I'd practically been a virgin until recently. Besides, nothing I could say was as revelatory as what he'd lust confessed to me.

I sensed that his childhood and adolescence had been pinched and dreary. He had spent his early childhood in government housing in Maryland; his father was, among other things, a weapons tester for the government arsenal in Edgewood, and had often brought home noxious substances for human testing on his family because the tests meant extra pay, a sorely needed commodity with all those kids to feed. For a long time, said Frank, there had actually been
a big bag of DDT stashed in the hall closet
. “They said you could
eat it
if you wanted to — it was only supposed to kill bugs, and, ostensibly, alien armies.”

The next day Frank wouldn't look me in the eye, and when he spoke to me at all, it was in icy monosyllables. I don't think he was ever free of self-consciousness, and by letting his guard down and allowing me a glimpse, however fleeting, of his life in the period when he'd been at the mercy of other people's perceptions of him, he evidently felt he'd lost control — something that was unthinkable to him, because he equated control with freedom. But I suspect he'd been just plain embarrassed, too, and that embarrassed him even more, hence his savagery toward himself for coming out and admitting that shit in the first place. Although he had a great deal of self-respect, there was some part of himself that he hated. He was, hands down, harder on himself than anyone I've ever met.

Meanwhile, strange scenes were awaiting, me when the tour reached New York. I had never been on the East Coast before, and I found the pressure-cooker atmosphere of Manhattan to be overwhelming. Frank had roots in New York; he had spent some of his most fruitful days in Greenwich Village (his spiritual home in some ways, as it had also been the headquarters for his idol, composer Edgard Varèse), and he had many friends who dated back to the Mothers' long run at the Garrick Theater during the'60s. It was a milieu in which I had no place whatsoever.

Frank's left purple suede shoe, A popular performance routine featured me engaging in simulated erotic acts with it: it later became the ‘thong rind' in the song ‘'Andy”

This was brought very forcibly to my attention when I learned that, for the first time since I'd been with Frank, I had to cope with competition. The minute we had checked into the Holiday Inn on West 57th Street, the phone rang. Frank was in the living room setting up the stereo he'd rented, so I answered it. There was a pronounced click as the caller hung up. A few minutes later it rang again, and again I answered it. A throaty voice, tinged with laughter, asked to speak to Frank. “Who is this, please?” I asked icily. Right then Frank waltzed in, glared at me, and snatched the phone out of my hand. Not too long afterward, a redheaded avant-garde filmmaker in her mid-20s appeared on the doorstep. She was excruciatingly sophisticated and confident, and Frank was plainly crazy about her. I wasn't; I moped sullenly about until Frank got fed up and called down to the front desk to inquire if they had another room for me. They didn't. I had to sleep on the sofa in the living room; there were two beds in the bedroom, but I couldn't stand being in there, and besides, I hadn't been invited.

I think Frank actually felt a little guilty about the situation, but he was also annoyed that I was cramping his New York lifestyle. What bothered me the most was Miss Moviola's relaxed, comfortable way of dealing with Frank. Watching her made me feel and act a million times klutzier around him. I knew that this universe had existed before me, and I had the feeling it would be continuing long after I was only a few odd magnetic
particles on Frank's master tape. As it turned out, I didn't see that much of Frank anyway — he was busy 36 hours a day, introducing the media to
200 Motels
, and engaging in vast quantities of glad-handing, premiere-hosting, interview-giving, and assorted publicity stunts. There was a great deal of interest in the movie because it was the first feature-length film to be shot on video for budgetary reasons and then bumped up to film for general release. Frank made a big point of dragging me to the premiere; he may have just been ensuring that I wouldn't feel left out, but I think he also wanted me to see the film because of its subject — life on the road. Although I didn't feel like going, I dutifully attended the screening, but I was in such a scattered state mentally that the movie failed to leave much of an impression on me.

Back in L.A. a few months later, I saw
200 Motels
again, by myself, in a regular movie theater, with a box of Milk Duds. Although it was easier to concentrate knowing that the writer-composer-director wasn't sitting next to me in the dark, reading my mind, I still found the opus disjointed and formless, and wondered if that was because the whole thing was just over my head conceptually. In actuality, the original script had been much more linear, but the usual cinematic bugaboo, budgetary limitations, had made it impossible to film some crucial sections; the whole thing had been shot on a sound stage in London in a matter of weeks.

Frank was obsessed with the idea of film, but if
200 Motels
was any indication, it appeared that his vision was difficult to translate to the cinematic medium. Maybe to be an effective filmmaker he needed more than sociological archetypes, musical contrasts, and documentation. At any rate, the juxtapositions that worked so well on record and in live performance seemed flat and labored, even a little boring, up on the screen. Luckily, I wasn't a film critic, nor even a film buff, and I never would have expressed my reservations to the
auteur
. I figured it was safer to stick to music and leave the Fellini bit to Frank's Greenwich Village
cineaste
chums. Frank may have envisioned himself as another Bunuel or Eisenstein, but when it came right down to it, in his heart he was still right there with Guitar Slim, and I was there with both of them, eternally prepared to bend some strings. Whatever charms Miss Moviola and her esthetic may have possessed for him, she still couldn't jam all night on the blues with him like I could.

To promote
200 Motels
, Frank arranged a big bash for the band, the media, and a lot of his cronies at Sardi's, the famed show biz watering
hole. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go, but I went, and, I'm sorry to say, spent the evening trying to make Frank jealous by flirting shamelessly with the unfortunate band member who had the hots for me. Everybody, meanwhile, was engaging in pretty serious drinking. In my romantic affliction, I too yearned mightily for a slug from the cup that cheers, but I didn't dare order any alcohol. I'd already been “carded” a couple of times during the tour while attempting to obtain a drink in some Podunk Holiday Inn cocktail lounge, and I was concerned that, if I got nailed again, here, in front of all these jaded sophisticates (not to mention
her
), I'd die of mortification. Little did I know that the legal drinking age in New York state was 18, not 21 the way it had been in California.

The next day Frank kept erupting into grumpy little explosions whenever I got within a few feet of him; my cheap ruse the night before had evidently been effective. That night was the second of two sold-out shows at Carnegie Hall, and I had been looking forward to it, if only because I'd be able to tell people I'd appeared at Carnegie Hall (I wasn't planning to mention that my climactic moment was having shaving cream sprayed down the inside of my jeans during an especially rowdy number).

My rival had finally trundled off to her groovy Greenwich abode, and Frank and I had spent the morning consuming room-service bagels and grapefruit juice and listening to a record of an avant-garde work for solo harpsichord by Anthony Newman. Frank thought it was great, while I loudly opined that it was just so much florid
poot
. This apostasy sent him into a fit of harrumphing and fulminating about my youth,
cowboy damage
, and general lack of musical savvy. As he sat on the sofa (with that half sardonic, half pedantic expression and his wild black hair sticking out all over the place, he looked like a prisoner in some 16th-century Florentine dungeon, stuck in there for insisting that the moon orbited the sun), I could see that his feelings were hurt, and I didn't know whether to laugh or to feel sorry for him. I sat down next to him and gave him a hug. He kept on harrumphing, but he also started to stick his hand in my shirt. Then the phone rang again.