Teen Angst? Naaah ... (14 page)

Not good. I was supposed to be at the
View
studios at 10:00, and this wasn't some appointment I could miss. This was
TV
. I punched Hector and Ike to get their attention, and we ran out of the subway toward the studio. As we passed a Barnes & Noble, I lost track of Hector. Turning around, I saw him conversing with some guy sitting on the sidewalk. “Hector!” I screamed. “Hurry!”

“Hold on, Ned! I'm talking to
Rocco!
”

“You're—you're
talking to Rocco?!
” This was too much. These people were ruining my chance for world fame. “Who the hell is
Rocco?!
”

Hector walked up to me. “Look,” he whispered, “Rocco's my friend, okay? I know he looks homeless, but he's not. He just dropped out of school a few months ago—”

“Oh that's great.”

“—and he doesn't really have anything to do today, y'know? So I was wondering if maybe he could have the extra ticket, y'know? The extra ticket to the show? So he can come, too? How's that sound?” Hector smiled.

I looked at Rocco. He bore a striking resemblance to Hector. He waved at me. And I figured, what the hell, we were already a motley crew. Might as well go all out.

“Okay, man,” I sighed. “He can have the extra ticket.”

“Really? You da man, Ned.” Hector hugged me and brought Rocco over for introductions. We shook hands.

“Nice to … meet you, Ned.” Rocco spoke slowly and openly, like he'd been shell-shocked or lobotomized, both of which seemed possible. He had rat-black hair, jeans ripped at the knee, and a decrepit backpack, which I guess he was living out of. “Where are we headed?”

“To
The View
. We're late.” With Rocco in tow, we ran the next two blocks to the studio.

We entered the glass doors of ABC around 10:20. The place was packed with middle-aged women, waiting in line for their seats. Televisions were everywhere, playing the
View
-like talk show that preceded
The View
.

I approached the reception desk. “Hi, I'm Ned Vizzini. I'm here as a guest of Ronnie.” I pulled out Ronnie's business card. Ike, Hector, and Rocco seemed impressed.

“Oh, Ned, we've been expecting you. Could you wait just a few minutes?”

“Sure,” I turned back to my friends. “We have to wait a few minutes.”

Hector was suspicious. “What happened to waiting in the
executive lounge?
”

“Yeah,” Ike said. “Aren't we vee-eye-pees?”

“Uh, I guess not. Just calm down.”

We stood there for fifteen minutes, talking; I got to know Rocco a little better. At some point, I noticed that Ike, who'd been very quiet, was standing in a
pool
of sweat. His entire face was dripping with it.

“Ike, are you okay?”

“Heh, heh,” he smiled at me. “Forgot to take my medication this morning.” He smiled again.

“You forgot your
pills?
” I never knew exactly what Ike's pills did. I just knew that the last time he hadn't taken them, we got in a fight and he locked me in his bathroom.

“Yeah,” he said, wiping himself with an already sweaty hand. “It'll be fine.” Hector and Rocco were talking about trends in contemporary alternative metal music.

Just then, Ronnie appeared, a young glasses-wearing guy with great hair. He strode from behind the reception desk and greeted me, the doofy white boy. I introduced him to Ike, the sweaty Mayan, and Hector and Rocco, the squatters. Ronnie grimaced but put on a game face and shook everyone's hand.

“Ike, Rocco, Hector, nice to meet you. Come this way.” Ronnie motioned us to follow him to the line of audience members. Then—this was my best power trip in months—he sidestepped the line and led us down the corridor like kings. The women stared and mumbled, “Who are
they?
” There was even a velvet rope between us and the common
View
viewers.

“Wow, we're da man,” Ike said.

Ronnie showed us to our front-row seats. The studio looked like heaven's living room: overstuffed couches, shiny coffee tables, and a fake New York City skyline under museum-bright lighting. The crew scurried around, putting this and that in position. But it was the audience that blew me away.

All around, filling the VIP seats next to ours, were seventy- and eighty-year-old women with pastel leisurewear (went well with the lighting) and magically immobile hair. They wore oversized earrings and parked huge purses on their laps. I listened to them chitter at each other. They had come from Maryland, North Carolina, and Florida; they couldn't
wait to get back and tell their friends about the show. Some of them seemed to be in groups, like a
View
tour—all with matching shirts.

I glanced over my shoulder and saw the younger women—the ones we had passed in line before—in the back rows. It was a hierarchy: the older you were, the closer you could sit to the stage. We'd broken all the rules by being young and male; the women eyed us with total contempt.

“Okay,” I told Hector, Ike, and Rocco, as a female comedian came out to warm up the crowd. “You guys behave.”

“Sure, sure,” they nodded. Ike was sweating. Hector and Rocco were talking about drugs. I was such an idiot for not sitting
between
my friends; from left to right, it was Rocco, Hector, Ike, me. I had no control. The show started.

The stage manager had instructed the audience to get on its feet when the theme music began, so there we were clapping as the
View
stars came out: Meredith Vieira, Star Jones, Joy Behar, and Debbie Matenopoulos, The Goddess.
^*
My mouth dropped as she entered, a young blonde in a tight striped shirt and stretch pants.

We sat down; the hosts sat down. My friends were
awestruck. They kept muttering about Debbie: how her shirt was too small, how they'd run up on stage and touch her if I dared them. I spent most of the next ten minutes leaning across my seat, shutting them up. Meanwhile, I tried to check out the show.

For what it was—a female romp—
The View
was decent. The women knew their parts: Meredith delivered the news, Star dismissed it, Joy joked about it, and Debbie commiserated with it. The show was well orchestrated.

After twenty minutes, my friends had settled down from the initial Debbie encounter and were behaving surprisingly well. They were quietly watching the interview with Valerie Harper—TV's “Rhoda”—and I began to think it hadn't been such a bad idea to bring them along. Then Joy announced, “Have you ever wondered what
really
turns your man on? After the commercial break, our lingerie models will demonstrate.”

“Omigod!”
Ike screamed. “Thank you, Ned!” Rocco's and Hector's faces lit up as if they'd seen the Holy Grail.

“Listen, guys!” I scolded during the commercial break, when the audience was allowed to make noise. “I am trying to get myself on this show, not get kicked out of the audience. Sit down and control yourselves and don't do anything stupid, okay? It's just—they're
just gonna bring out some models, they'll do their thing, they'll leave, all right?”

Hector saluted. I laughed in spite of myself.

“Three, two, and we're on!” the bald stage manager shouted.

“Welcome back,” Joy said. “Now, you may think …”

She kept talking, but I wasn't paying attention anymore. The models were emerging.

Except for the one who might have been a man, they were all totally stunning, with ridiculous pushup bras that made their breasts jiggle in the light. One seemed to be about fourteen; Ike, true to his vampire obsession, promised to go onstage and bite her.

The models were stone-faced as they walked the runway, but when they stopped at the end, they knew that only their torsos were being filmed, so they smiled and laughed at Joy's jokes. That was sweet; it reminded me that they were real people, not untouchable figures—that someday I might meet one and make her laugh. After they finished displaying themselves, they tightened up again, swished around, and walked back down the runway. In twenty seconds, they changed clothes behind a little curtain and repeated the process.

“Look at their backs!” Ike said. “How do they curve 'em like that?”

“Practice,” Rocco answered. “Lots … of practice.”

Near the end, the hottest model, a brunette, came out in a red satin nightie. The left side of it was offcenter, revealing a little nipple.

“Dude, dude,
dude!
” Hector whimpered, loud enough to be angrily shushed by a neighboring woman.

Eventually, the models left, though it seemed to take forever to get their distracting bodies offstage. My friends were gibbering the whole time.

“How old was she?”

“Nah … dude … those were definitely real.”

“Let's try to find 'em after the show. After the show, man! After the show!”

The next highlight was the musical segment. The band from
Smoky Joe's Café
, some Broadway play, performed the oldies song, “Stand By Me.”

“Stand By Me” has a distinctive beat: DUN DUN, da da, DUN DUN. Well, as soon as the band hit it, the audience started clapping, accenting the DUN DUNs. Hector and Rocco clapped, too, but they messed with the beat, clapping Queen's “We Will Rock You” instead (dun dun DA, dun dun DA). I stole a look at the other side of the studio. Ronnie was glaring at me.

Now I started thinking about
The View
. I didn't see much of a future with the show; in fact, upon close inspection, I had screwed up damn near everything.
I'd arrived late, brought a bunch of delinquents, and been very disruptive throughout the broadcast. I turned to Ike and choked, “Man, there's no way I'm getting on this show.”

“Oh, I thought that was clear from the beginning,” he said, speaking calmly as sweat dripped off him, reminding me why he's one of my best friends. “We never even got shown on TV. Every time they filmed the audience, they cut us out.”

“No kidding?” I glanced up at the cameras. “Well that's just great.”

Ike resumed clapping “We Will Rock You” with Hector and Rocco. I took one last look at Ronnie and clapped along. Dun dun DA. Dun dun DA.

O
ne Friday night in July, the summer between junior and senior year, James called and said he was making three hundred dollars a week doing indoor housepainting with a guy named Carlo. Did I want to help?

Now, I was looking for a computer grunt job, something I could put on my résumé and my college applications. But, as James said, Carlo was cool, he paid cash, he was in our neighborhood, and it was
painting
—how hard could
painting
be? I thought of the guys who had painted our apartment: they showed up, slopped stuff from a bucket to a wall, ate gyros for lunch, and left. So why not? I told James I'd show up for work the following Monday at 8:00
A.M
.

The 8:00
A.M
. thing should've been my first clue, the first tip-off that life in the paint industry was not for me. I can't be anywhere at 8:00
A.M
. I'm always a little late, like 8:03, 8:07. That was okay in school, where I could chat up teachers until they forgave me. It was not okay with my new boss, Carlo.

I arrived at his work site at 8:08. I could tell it was the right place—paint chips littered the stoop.
^*
It was a nice brownstone, like the one on
The Cosby Show
. I rang the bell and in
two seconds
—he must have been right inside, tapping his foot—Carlo appeared.

“You-a gonna come late all the time?” he said, nearly smacking me in the face as he threw open the door. “I'm-a gonna have dese
problems
with you?”

Carlo was five feet tall. I guess if you were kind, you could have pegged him at five one. But truly, he was five feet, nearly bald, with a scrunched, upturned face. His accent was deep Italian—not from Brooklyn, from Italy. If he appeared in a movie, he would be slammed as a racist stereotype. He wore a white collared shirt and white pressed pants, both covered with coats of paint drops; he held a metal implement
^**
in his hand as if he were going to smack me with it.

“Uh, sorry.”

“I know you sorry. Everybody is very, very sorry, always. But I don't have a-time for this-a
bull
crap.”

Carlo led me into the brownstone—canvas on the floors, furniture covered in plastic, and a ubiquitous gasoline-type odor.

“Now you and James, you-a gonna start work on the shcrape,” Carlo told me. “You gonna—”

“Actually, Carlo?” James interrupted, standing by the wall wearing a baseball cap. He'd been so quiet that I hadn't noticed him.