Me Talk Pretty One Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

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