Me Talk Pretty One Day Read Online Free Page B

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