Me Talk Pretty One Day (3 page)

“Is she stacked?”

I’d never noticed my cousin’s breasts and had lately realized that I’d never noticed anyone’s breasts, not unless, like our housekeeper’s, they were large enough to appear freakish. “Stacked? Well, sure,” I said. “She’s pretty stacked.” I was afraid he’d ask me for a more detailed description and was relieved when he crossed the room and removed Beth from her case. He told me that a guitar student needed plenty of discipline. Talent was great, but time had taught him that talent was also extremely rare. “I’ve got it,” he said. “But then again, I was born with it. It’s a gift from God, and those of us who have it are very special people.”

He seemed to know that I was nothing special, just a type, yet another boy whose father had his head in the clouds.

“Do you have a feel for the guitar? Do you have any idea what this little baby is capable of?” Without waiting for an answer, he climbed up into his chair and began playing “Light My Fire,” adding, “This one is for Joan.”

“You know that I would be untrue,” he sang. “You know that I would be a liar.” The current hit version of the song was performed by José Feliciano, a blind man whose plaintive voice served the lyrics much better than did Jim Morrison, who sang it in what I considered a bossy and conceited tone of voice. There was José Feliciano, there was Jim Morrison, and then there was Mister Mancini, who played beautifully but sang “Light My Fire” as if he were a Webelo Scout demanding a match. He finished his opening number, nodded his head in acknowledgment of my applause, and moved on, offering up his own unique and unsettling versions of “The Girl from Ipanema” and “Little Green Apples” while I sat trapped in my seat, my false smile stretched so tight that I lost all feeling in the lower half of my face.

My fingernails had grown a good three inches by the time he struck his final note and called me close to point out a few simple chords. Before I left, he handed me half a dozen purple mimeographed handouts, which we both knew were useless.

Back at the house my mother had my dinner warming in the oven. From the living room came the aimless whisper of Lisa’s flute. It sounded not unlike the wind whipping through an empty Pepsi can. Down in the basement either Gretchen was practicing her piano or the cat was chasing a moth across the keys. My mother responded by turning up the volume on the kitchen TV while my father pushed back my plate, set Joan in my lap, and instructed me to play.

“Listen to this,” he crowed. “A house full of music! Man, this is beautiful.”

You certainly couldn’t accuse him of being unsupportive. His enthusiasm bordered on mania, yet still it failed to inspire us. During practice sessions my sisters and I would eat potato chips, scowling at our hated instruments and speculating on the lives of our music teachers. They were all peculiar in one way or another, but with a midget, I’d definitely won the my-teacher-is-stranger-than-yours competition. I wondered where Mister Mancini lived and who he might call in case of an emergency. Did he stand on a chair in order to shave, or was his home customized to meet his needs? I’d look at the laundry hamper or beer cooler, thinking that if it came down to it, Mister Mancini could hide just about anywhere.

Though I thought of him constantly, I grabbed any excuse to avoid my guitar.

“I’ve been doing just what you told me to do,” I’d say at the beginning of each lesson, “but I just can’t get the hang of it. Maybe my fingers are too shor -… I mean litt -… I mean, maybe I’m just not coordinated enough.” He’d arrange Joan in my lap, pick up Beth, and tell me to follow along. “You need to believe you’re playing an actual woman,” he’d say. “Just grab her by the neck and make her holler.”

Mr. Mancini had a singular talent for making me uncomfortable. He forced me to consider things I’d rather not think about - the sex of my guitar, for instance. If I honestly wanted to put my hands on a woman, would that automatically mean I could play? Gretchen’s teacher never told her to think of her piano as a boy. Neither did Lisa’s flute teacher, though in that case the analogy was fairly obvious. On the off chance that sexual desire was all it took, I steered clear of Lisa’s instrument, fearing I might be labeled a prodigy. The best solution was to become a singer and leave the instruments to other people. A song stylist - that was what I wanted to be.

I was at the mall with my mother one afternoon when I spotted Mister Mancini ordering a hamburger at Scotty’s Chuck Wagon, a fast-food restaurant located a few doors down from the music shop. He sometimes mentioned having lunch with a salesgirl from Jolly’s Jewelers, “a real looker,” but on this day he was alone. Mister Mancini had to stand on his tiptoes to ask for his hamburger, and even then his head failed to reach the counter. The passing adults politely looked away, but their children were decidedly more vocal. A toddler ambled up on his chubby bowed legs, attempting to embrace my teacher with ketchup-smeared fingers, while a party of elementary-school students openly stared in wonder. Even worse was the group of adolescents, boys my own age, who sat gathered around a large table. “Go back to Oz, munchkin,” one of them said, and his friends shook with laughter. Tray in hand, Mister Mancini took a seat and pretended not to notice. The boys weren’t yelling, but anyone could tell that they were making fun of him. “Honestly, Mother,” I said, “do they have to be such monsters?” Beneath my moral outrage was a strong sense of possessiveness, a fury that other people were sinking their hooks into my own personal midget. What did they know about this man? I was the one who lit his cigarettes and listened as he denounced the careers of so-called pretty boys such as Glen Campbell and Bobby Goldsboro. It was I who had suffered through six weeks’ worth of lessons and was still struggling to master “Yellow Bird.” If anyone was going to give him a hard time, I figured that I should be first in line.

I’d always thought of Mister Mancini as a blowhard, a pocket playboy, but watching him dip his hamburger into a sad puddle of mayonnaise, I broadened my view and came to see him as a wee outsider, a misfit whose take-it-or-leave-it attitude had left him all alone. This was a persona I’d been tinkering with myself: the outcast, the rebel. It occurred to me that, with the exception of the guitar, he and I actually had quite a bit in common. We were each a man trapped inside a boy’s body. Each of us was talented in his own way, and we both hated twelve-year-old males, a demographic group second to none in terms of cruelty. All things considered, there was no reason I shouldn’t address him not as a teacher but as an artistic brother. Maybe then we could drop the pretense of Joan and get down to work. If things worked out the way I hoped, I’d someday mention in interviews that my accompanist was both my best friend and a midget.

I wore a tie to my next lesson and this time when asked if I’d practiced, I told the truth, saying in a matter-of-fact tone of voice that no, I hadn’t laid a finger on my guitar since our last get-together. I told him that Joan was my cousin’s name and that I had no idea how stacked she was.

“That’s okay,” Mister Mancini said. “You can call your guitar whatever you want, just as long as you practice.”

My voice shaking, I told him that I had absolutely no interest in mastering the guitar. What I really wanted was to sing in the voice of Billie Holiday. “Mainly commercials, but not for any banks or car dealerships, because those are usually choral arrangements.”

The color ebbed from my teacher’s face.

I told him I’d been working up an act and could use a little accompaniment. Did he know the jingle for the new Sara Lee campaign?

“You want me to do what?” He wasn’t angry, just confused.

I felt certain he was lying when he denied knowing the tune. Doublemint gum, Ritz crackers, the theme songs for Alka-Seltzer and Kenmore appliances: he claimed ignorance on all counts. I knew that it was queer to sing in front of someone, but greater than my discomfort was the hope that he might recognize what I thought of as my great talent, the one musical trick I was able to pull off. I started in on an a cappella version of the latest Oscar Mayer commercial, hoping he might join in once the spirit moved him. It looked bad, I knew, but in order to sustain the proper mood, I needed to disregard his company and sing the way I did at home alone in my bedroom, my eyes shut tight and my hands dangling like pointless, empty gloves.

I sang that my bologna had a first name.

I added that my bologna had a second name.

And concluded: Oh, I love to eat it every day

And if you ask me why, I’ll say

Thaaaat Os-carrr May-errr has a way, with B-Oooo-L-Oooo-G-N-A

I reached the end of my tune thinking he might take this as an opportunity to applaud or maybe even apologize for underestimating me. Mild amusement would have been an acceptable response. But instead, he held up his hands, as if to stop an advancing car. “Hey, guy,” he said. “You can hold it right there. I’m not into that scene.”

A scene? What scene? I thought I was being original.

“There were plenty of screwballs like you back in Atlanta, but me, I don’t swing that way - you got it? This might be your ‘thing’ or whatever, but you can definitely count me out.” He reached for his conch shell and stubbed out his cigarette. “I mean, come on now. For God’s sake, kid, pull yourself together.”

I knew then why I’d never before sung in front of anyone, and why I shouldn’t have done it in front of Mister Mancini. He’d used the word screwball, but I knew what he really meant. He meant I should have named my guitar Doug or Brian, or better yet, taken up the flute. He meant that if we’re defined by our desires, I was in for a lifetime of trouble.

The remainder of the hour was spent awkwardly watching the clock as we silently pretended to tune our guitars.

My father was disappointed when I told him I wouldn’t be returning for any more lessons. “He told me not to come back,” I said. “He told me I have the wrong kind of fingers.”

Seeing that it had worked for me, my sisters invented similar stories, and together we announced that the Sedaris Trio had officially disbanded. Our father offered to find us better teachers, adding that if we were unhappy with our instruments, we could trade them in for something more suitable. “The trumpet or the saxophone, or hey, how about the vibes?” He reached for a Lionel Hampton album, saying, “I want you to sit down and give this a good listen. Just get a load of this cat and tell me he’s not an inspiration.”

There was a time when I could listen to such a record and imagine myself as the headline act at some magnificent New York nightclub, but that’s what fantasies are for: they allow you to skip the degradation and head straight to the top. I’d done my solo and would now move on to pursue other equally unsuccessful ways of getting attention. I’d try every art form there was, and with each disappointment I’d picture Mister Mancini holding his conch shell and saying, “For God’s sake, kid, pull yourself together.”

We told our father, no, don’t bother playing us any more of your records, but still he persisted. “I’m telling you that this album is going to change your lives, and if it doesn’t, I’ll give each one of you a five-dollar bill. What do you think of that?”

It was a tough call - five dollars for listening to a Lionel Hampton record. The offer was tempting, but even on the off chance he’d actually come through with the money, there would certainly be strings attached. We looked at one another, my sisters and I, and then we left the room, ignoring his cry of “Hey, where do you think you’re going? Get back in here and listen.”

We joined our mother at the TV and never looked back. A life in music was his great passion, not ours, and our lessons had taught us that without the passion, the best one could hope for was an occasional engagement at some hippie wedding where, if we were lucky, the guests would be too stoned to realize just how bad we really were. That night, as was his habit, our father fell asleep in front of the stereo, the record making its pointless, silent rounds as he lay back against the sofa cushions, dreaming.

Genetic Engineering

MY FATHER ALWAYS STRUCK ME as the sort of man who, under the right circumstances, might have invented the microwave oven or the transistor radio. You wouldn’t seek him out for advice on a personal problem, but he’d be the first one you’d call when the dishwasher broke or someone flushed a hairpiece down your toilet. As children, we placed a great deal of faith in his ability but learned to steer clear while he was working. The experience of watching was ruined, time and time again, by an interminable explanation of how things were put together. Faced with an exciting question, science tended to provide the dullest possible answer. Ions might charge the air, but they fell flat when it came to charging the imagination - my imagination, anyway. To this day, I prefer to believe that inside every television there lives a community of versatile, thumb-size actors trained to portray everything from a thoughtful newscaster to the wife of a millionaire stranded on a desert island. Fickle gnomes control the weather, and an air conditioner is powered by a team of squirrels, their cheeks packed with ice cubes.

Once, while rifling through the toolshed, I came across a poster advertising an IBM computer the size of a refrigerator. Sitting at the control board was my dad the engineer, years younger, examining a printout no larger than a grocery receipt. When I asked about it, he explained that he had worked with a team devising a memory chip capable of storing up to fifteen pages’ worth of information. Out came the notepad and pencil, and I was trapped for hours as he answered every question except the one I had asked: “Were you allowed to wear makeup and run through a variety of different poses, or did they get the picture on the first take?”

To me, the greatest mystery of science continues to be that a man could father six children who shared absolutely none of his interests. We certainly expressed enthusiasm for our mother’s hobbies, from smoking and napping to the writings of Sidney Sheldon. (Ask my mother how the radio worked and her answer was simple: “Turn it on and pull out the goddamn antenna.”) I once visited my father’s office, and walked away comforted to find that at least there he had a few people he could talk to. We’d gone, my sister Amy and I, to settle a bet. She thought that my father’s secretary had a sharp, protruding chin and long blond hair, while I imagined that the woman might more closely resemble a tortoise - chinless, with a beaky nose and a loose, sagging neck. The correct answer was somewhere in between. I was right about the nose and the neck, but Amy won on the chin and the hair color. The bet had been the sole reason for our visit, and the resulting insufferable tour of Buildings A through D taught us never again to express an interest in our father’s workplace.