Being Frank Read Online Free PDF Page B

civilization, the only sustenance was in the form of frozen Belgianwaffles and moldy wieners. “They kept those weenies in this big tank full of water and you could see that the tips of ’em sticking out of the water were green .”
    I had never had such a good time talking to anyone before. Zappa was a marvelous storyteller, but he was also a good listener. When I or my boyfriend said something, he listened gravely, as if what we had to say was important. He never mentioned himself or his work unless we asked him a specific question — he seemed to prefer listening to us talk about ourselves.
    It came as a shock and a letdown when he finally looked out of the window — the towering neon Mutual of Omaha sign was just blinking on behind him like an ornament on top of his green feathered hat — and, clearing his throat, gently let us know that he had other things to get to. More than two hours had passed in what seemed like ten minutes. As we stood up he gave me one last steady look and said, “When your stuff is ready, you’ll be able to sell it anywhere, not just here.” Seeing my glum expression, he added quickly, “But I’d like to hear it again when it’s finished.” He gravely picked up my tape box from the desk and handed it back to me. Then he reached down with his thumb and forefinger and gently twiddled the tip of my nose, where it turned up. Now his eyes were twinkling with wry affection. In a flustered blur, I stretched a couple of inches and kissed him on the cheek.
    As I descended to the lobby in the elevator, it seemed as if every floor down was one step closer to mundane ‘reality’ — whatever that was. I felt as if I’d been struck broadside by an entire galaxy hurtling directly at me. Certainly nothing on the Miracle Mile was as intense and vivid as Frank Zappa and his strange universe in which we had been immersed for two hours, or maybe two million light years.

    I had every intention of going back to work on the tape and resubmitting it to Zappa. I also restrung my guitar, bought some advanced chord and arpeggio studies, and vowed to spend every waking hour learning to play “honestly”, if I could figure out what that was. But before I had a chance to start putting off all this work, other things intervened. The sporadic troubles I had always had with the authorities at Our Lady of Guacamole became chronic, then acute.
    The campus dress code was rigid — when they made you kneel on the ground, the hem of your skirt had to reach all the way to the black-top,or you were sent home to change into “more appropriate attire”. Evidently the chiefly Catholic administration was convinced that miniskirts were the Devil’s workshop. I thought the whole concept was absurd, and after ransacking the Goodwill store for a 1950s-vintage Catholic-schoolgirl plaid pleated skirt, I wore it to school with a pair of lug-soled Cub Scout hiking boots outgrown by my boyfriend’s younger brother. For a blouse, I hunted up an old army-surplus fatigue shirt and stenciled my student ID number over the pocket. Result: American Icon Hash . At first I thought, much to my disappointment, that this attire was attracting no particular notice from the authorities. I hastened to add my boyfriend’s Oshkosh B’Gosh overalls underneath the skirt, just in case my fashion statement was too subtle. That very day, as I was serenely puffing on a Camel non-filter behind the girls’ gym, Miss Rissé happened to stalk by on a patrol. Like Anton Webern, who was shot to death by American Occupation soldiers when he went out on his porch after curfew one night to sneak a smoke, my career also ended brutally. I was duly apprehended and marched to the principal’s office, where my father was called at work and I was summarily executed. And this wasn’t Occupied Austria at the end of World War II, but Manhattan Beach, California in the good