The world was my oyster. Such was my gorgeousness that I
couldn’t walk through a bistro, heading toward or back from the men’s room,
without half a dozen beautiful women handing me their phone numbers, hurriedly
scribbled on paper napkins with eyebrow pencils as they saw me. I lived in a
penthouse apartment with a view of the Hollywood Hills and drove what was left
of my 1962 Porsche Speedster. (It was fashionable at the time to treat one’s
luxury items with disdain.) “I Hate Everything About You”, a song of mine
covered by Joey Amygdala & The Torsos, had been No. 1 in seven countries,
and my mailbox was stuffed with royalty cheques. My screenplay Swish McAllister, Gay But Unimpeachably Masculine Action Hero (“swish”
referred to his basketball skills), was in development, with a major director
attached, and Sylvester Stallone tabbed for the title role, though slightly
antsy, Stonewall having been only eight years before. Rolling Stone had just paid me more for my cover story about Foreigner,
the most boring band in the history of popular music, than for any other
profile they’d ever published, and were begging for more. Did I mention that I
had the world on a string, or did I use a different metaphor?
No matter. I was someone to whom others yearned to be introduced,
and one summer night when my orchestra was performing at the Whisky a Go Go on
the Sunset Strip, some sniffly record-biz type in a shiny tour jacket of the
sort radio program directors were being given closetfuls of at the time asked
if he could introduce me backstage to a shy little fellow with lank blond hair,
a hare’s visage, and the handshake of overcooked linguine. His name was Tom
Petty, and I had no way of knowing at the time that he was my destiny.
Fate’s fickle. It wasn’t so long after that inauspicious
first meeting, during which Tom didn’t make eye contact and murmured, “How you
doing?” so faintly that I had to read his very thin lips, that I was at the
bottom, and he at the top. I had thought the Joey Amygdala royalties would
never cease to clog my mailbox, and had squandered every nickel on blondes,
blow, and broads. I scrawled Will write
hit songs for food a little sign on a disreputable piece of cardboard with
a borrowed eyebrow pencil, and huddled wretchedly in front of a Bugatti
showroom on the very street on which I’d once been unable to walk for fear of
being waylaid by well-wishers and seduced by lingerie models.
Passing me one night with a Playmate of the Month on each
little arm, surrounded by a rang of bodyguards, Tom noticed me on his way into the
nightclub at which he was to “jam” with Bruce Springsteen. He dropped a $10
bill into my little Styrofoam cup and mumbled, “Don’t I know you from
somewhere?” He said he’d pay me $100 to hold his child-sized black motorcycle
jacket while he and Bruce did their thing. I recognized it as act of great
charity. One of the Playmates of the Month would surely have been happy to
perform this service, or maybe even both.
At evening’s end, I rode back to Malibu in the bodyguards
limousine — Tom and his Playmates and stylist and personal chef rode had their
own. I was shown to the servants’ wing of his hilltop mansion, the grounds of
which extended all the way down to the beach, and issued a uniform bearing
Tom’s logo. The next morning, I began a week-long crash course in servility
taught by Tom’s French majordomo, whose name I was unable to pronounce. How the
mighty had fallen, I thought — at least until the majordomo pointed out that
such thoughts were likely to negatively impact my performance. I no longer had
the world on a string, nor was it my oyster, but my belly was full and my cot
very much more comfortable than the scavenged sleeping bag and flattened
appliance carton I’d been sleeping on in front of the Bugatti showroom.
My first assignment was as a doorman. When his fellow stars
came up to visit Tom, it was my job to open the doors of their limos. I wore
white gloves, as no celebrity wants to see an ordinary person’s unmanicured
fingernails. No few of Tom’s guests were smokers, and would be finishing a
cigarette or cigar as they arrived. A boorish few simply flicked their butts
into the topiary, inspiring Tom’s squadron of groundskeepers to curse them in
Spanish and more exotic tongues. I was to encourage them to put their
cigarettes out in my palm. It hurt awfully, but usually for no more than a day
or two.
I won’t deny that I was iffy about greeting people I’d
interviewed. A few said, “Don’t I remember you from somewhere?” before putting
their cigarettes out in my hand, and at one point I considered cosmetic
surgery, but Tom wisely advised that I just let time work its magic. When
enough of it had passed, no one would remember me. In this, as in almost
everything, he was absolutely right.
Tom wasn’t only a brilliant songwriter and singer, but also
one the great wits of our times. He once marveled at one of the dinner parties
at which I was privileged to offer famous guests delicious canapes at no one
having understood that his song ‘I Won’t Back Down’ was tongue in cheek. “I’m
4-11, weight 88 pounds, and have the handshake of overcooked linguine, and I’m
not going to back down? Hello?” He was comparably amused by Rolling Stone having taken at face value
his tongue-in-eheek Tale of the Switchblade Knife. It seemed that his record
company had decided at one point capriciously to raise the price of Tom’s
records and cassettes. Tom, incensed on his fans’ behalf, demanded a meeting,
whereat he pointedly pulled a switchblade knife out of his boot to make the
evil greedheads more considerate of his fans. Recounting Rolling Stone’s eager gullibility, Tom laughed so hard that
champagne came out of his nose.
I’ve
never met a more generous person. When an especially resourceful or devious
Girl Scout made it past the security gate and offered him cookies, Tom, if he
wasn’t on tour, would buy her entire supply. It became my job, after I was
promoted from limousine door-opening, to award any fan who managed to elude
security and knock on Tom’s door or windows, a whole box of his or her choice
of Thin Mints, Caramel deLites®, Peanut Butter
Patties®, Girl Scout S'mores®,
or even Do-si-dos®. The Thin mints were by far the most popular.
In the ninth year of my being a member of his staff, Swish McAllister finally began shooting,
with Channing Tatum in the title role and Kevin Spacey as his accountant and
co-foiler of evildoers, domestic and foreign. The movie, now streamable on
Netflix, earned $781 million worldwide, and I became the in-demand screenwriter
I remain. My most recent sale is of the script for the forthcoming biopic I Won’t Back Down, with Macauley Culkin
playing Tom and Ryan Gosling the cocaine addict music-biz villain he
intimidates with a switchblade knife.
Both USA readers and UK readers can now read my latest short fiction collection!
