The 44-Year-Old Boy Disc Jockey

From the moment Tad peeled back his lids and popped the contact lenses down onto his eyeballs, I knew that something deep and strange was happening within him. He used his black plastic spectacles, plus the toupee and a fresh General Electric suntan, for the usual vocalist visiting his Saturday afternoon disc show. The kids in the studio audience liked his fresh, unlined, 44-year-old juvenile face, even in the glasses, which made it look maybe 28 instead of his usual 23. "Glad you could fall up to my pad, Dad," he would chant to a high school electric guitarist. "Why so sad?"

Tad's unkind friends, song pluggers, rival jocks, ex-wives, used to claim that his youth was preserved by alcohol. Now, however, he was on the wagon and tended by Dr. Drennick, who had been analyzed by a man who had been trained by a man who had studied with the Master, instead of keeping himself happy with booze, benny, and icebags. Tad's youthfulness was a quality of spirit, not spirits: the honest old boyish hope and longing, preserved into middle age as it often is with drinkers and other mama-bereaved types.

"Deep, man," he said to me, the tears streaming down his cheeks. "Look at that chick. Sincere. She's on the wall."

I made a brushing gesture of my hand against my shoulder. "Orleen will flake you off," I said. "Don't you know female artists yet? She doesn't want love, she wants a hit tune. She doesn't want sex, she wants promotion. She doesn't want to know the meaning of life, she wants to have her record dates scheduled six months in advance. Listen, Tad, she has love and affection for nothing but Orleen Phipps, but nothing."

"Orleen," he breathed. "Oh, they do itch." This was true love again. He was a 44-year-old bald kid, and he was probably the biggest jock in town, if not the whole midwest territory, with so many commercials he sometimes forgot to spin records, and he was now crazy for this pretty little openmouthed creature. We were looking at a publicity photo: in shorts and striped sweater, Orleen was sitting on a high stool, Orleen's head half-turned to us, Orleen's one eye winking and the other languoring, Orleen's shoulders thrown back, her pair of rascals standing up to salute. It was Tad's eyes that itched from the contact lenses.

"No," I stated positively, "this sweet little beastie is not for you."

"What?"

"For the reasons I already told you, man."

"Orleen," he sighed, "Orleen Phipps."

There was one little detail I had left out in my analysis of her cool, absent, difficult charms. I cleared my throat to interrupt his dreaming. "La Phipps has a steady boyfriend," I said. "Sometimes he even travels with her, and when he's a very nice boy, she lets him hang up her nighties. Weighs two hundred and twenty pounds, the boy does, with his cleats. Former Georgia Tech left guard, now in pro football and insurance. His coach told him to beware of the facts of life, but he's knocked a couple guys out for peeking when his girlfriend-baby bent over in a cocktail gown. Are you listening? Very stubborn, devoted type. Clean-cut cauliflower ears. Three folds on the back of his neck."

"Yes, yes, I want to know all about her, her hopes, her dreams. I bet she's unhappy. I bet her potential for love needs to be unlocked, just like me ----"

"Tad, haven't you heard me yet? I been telling you for years how some people don't need to be happy. They don't want loving. They don't want heart-to-heart chats and long dreamy decorator-color evenings before a fireplace. They want to figure out how to make themselves into a capital gain, that's what they want -- am I talking to you or me? Personally, I already know my sad story."

"Play on, boy."

But I saw that he was far away in a restaurant with red-checkered tablecloth and champagne and probably a gypsy violinist, ladling out his childhood in great soupy puddles to a well-stacked girl who would want only to Understand and Be Together. Orleen, Orleen, he was thinking over noodles, just as he had so often thought before: Nancy, Nancy; Peggy, Peggy; Sharon, Sharon; and so on back to the first greedy doll who had let him put his hand on her knee back in high school. "No use," I said. "Did you remember the drops in your eyes?"

When Orleen happened, he was in the middle of his commercial for NonSkid Chockies, The Chocolate That Melts in Your Mouth But Not In Your Hand. I should mention here that I'm Tad's engineer -- sound control, handle the records, take over the mike when he used to be too drunk to talk, listen to his lovelife; that's the part they never told me about in Signal Corps school. Well, so it was Chockie time: "Now, kids, it's all right to have those delicious chocolate vitamins and minerals, sure, but you don't want your fresh clean hands to be soiled, now do you? Well, the friendly Non-Skid Chockie people, they got to wondering how it is that celery doesn't smear up the clothes or skin. Well, they figured it was some special secret ingredient, and so they got their white-coated research scientists to work on the problem. Well, sure enough, to make a long story short -- they only bought two minutes of air time, heh-heh -- this here combination of the best qualities of fine milk chocolate and brain-building celery ----"

Orleen entered the studio sideways, the way she liked to enter. Tad saw her, made a vacant sucking noise, abandoned Non-Skid Chockies, sat hung up by emotion -- he was Tad from Gawkville. Orleen stood there pointingly waiting for us to greet her. Tad's Adam's apple jumped like a fish. I spun a record.

Orleen had full possession of Orleen. She also had that knack of looking naked under her clothes, licentious under her inhibitions, gay and kind under her ambition and cruelty -- of looking, that is, like all the pneumatic young things of whom poor Tad dreamed. She looked breasty, too, and that she really was: I have learned to tell the difference between the flimsy lurch of foam rubber or air-in-the-bra and the sincere jiggle of honest flesh. Much as I am troubled about the thousands of gimmicked-up females who make the Tads of this earth grind their teeth, I have to admit that Orleen has something special which you don't see in the publicity photographs. "I'm Orleen," she says throatily, but that isn't it. They all say that, only they use their own names. She loves, honors and obeys herself.

"And I'm Tad Comet," Tad choked and croaked, mawked and gawked, his eyes streaming.

Orleen's skin -- perfect, pink and rosy, thin and delicate -- is the sort that makes faint wrinkles around the eyes when she smiles and gives that nice effect of amorous effort and fatigue. Even personally, I would like to wake up with my own tousled head on the pillow next to a girl's whose skin crinkles like that.

"Why are you crying, Tadkins?" she asked. First names come easy in the business.

"Emotion, deep feeling, the world situation," I answered for him.

"Contact lenses," said Tad.

Orleen put her hand lightly on his shoulder and looked into his clear plastic. "You do?" she purred. "What honesty! What frankness! You're no flake, Taddie. I can wear mine for 12 hours with no trouble at all, me, except for a little blinding headache." She grabbed her eyes, pulled them off, and put them in her purse. "Like us girls call it migraine, we."

Tad too. He meant to put his eyes in his own pocket, but blindly groped for her purse. This was confusion raw and sublime.

They gazed profoundly into each other. I felt their myopia bearing down hard on me and got out of their way. Naturally they could see nothing, and this, I believe, is called true love.

• • •

I decided that this girl must be really deep, strange and sincere about Tad. They seemed to mean it about each other. They were seen everywhere together, at Nick's, Fred's and Tommy's, at the station and at the theatre, at the beach and at the Club. They even did the Chicken at a high school prom where Tad had to put in a hand-wave and a big sincere hello to the kids. She prolonged her engagement at the Skybar. Their love had lasted so long already that it was practically historical -- going on seven days, if you count the afternoon they met.

But toward the end of the week Tad began to look his usual unhappy, misunderstood, mussed, poetic, sophomore self. The hair in his toupee came unstitched. He kept touching his belly and groaning between commercials.

"Now tell me I suppose this deep romance is giving you a bellyache," I said. "Love is supposed to cure all. I heard it on one of Orleen's songs. Did you try a Bromo?"

"Oh, I don't know, it's my hernia."

"That first fine careless rupture?"

"You went to college, Ferd, you can do better. But listen, I didn't wear my supporter when we did the Chicken. I was afraid it might disillusion her before she gets to understand me down deep. But she doesn't really know me yet."

"You mean," I interpreted, speaking his gauzy deep-feeling, are-you-happy lingo, once again astonished by Tad, "you mean you don't know her yet for real, for true, for scoring?"

"No," he said miserably. "We talk, we confide, we take long drives in the country. We are really close, man, we are deep and sincere to each other, we really mean a lot----"

"But?"

"We sit in my MG and look out over the skyline of the city and we talk about how wonderful and strange it all is that we met----"

"Her strange and wonderful agent set it up."

He sighed and dropped another slab (continued on page 64) Disc Jockey (continued from page 48) without doing the Chockie commercial. "She's a beautiful, sweet, honest girl down under it all, she's very deep, man, she's sincere----"

"So?"

"She won't put out, Ferd."

My ears nearly shook off the headset. "No! Say it isn't so!"

"I used to think it was like there wasn't enough room in the MG. Shyness, gearshift, engineering problems -- you know. But remember that night I borrowed your Chevvy?" He wagged his head morosely. "With all that seat room going to waste, we just talked about the meaning of life. Like she thinks dancing cheek-to-cheek is swell."

I had to agree that this was serious.

"And now," he went on, "her regular boyfriend is flying into town for the second week of her run. What should I do?"

"Do Safeway Stores." The studio clock advised me that Tad had just 18 minutes left in which to crowd five commercials. "Be self-sacrificing and generous," I told him. "Give her up with a smile and a jaunty wave of the hand. Be Maurice Chevalier. Be Joe DiMaggio. Into each man's life a little tragedy must fall. Then do Paris Laundry, please, boy."

Water was seeping around the edges of his contact lenses. If he had noticed the tears, he would have begun to cry. He went into Paris Laundry, all the dirty linen you can stuff into a bag, and then said: "Maybe you're right, Ferd. Suffering. After all, I'm kind of like an artist myself. It makes a man think."

"Or," I added, "you could get her stinking tonight and see if that helps."

Tad protested with hurt feelings at my crudeness. "Oh no," he said, "that would be dishonest, insincere, that would be like a cad. I've already tried it."

"What's the trouble?"

"The kid doesn't drink. Enlarges the pores."

"I could be more sympathetic, Tad, but I can't find that Gold Bell Gift Stamp spot."

"There it is on the other turntable. I'm miserable. I wish I were back home in high school again. Do you think maybe I should read poetry to her, or just try putting a 100 dollar bill in her hankie? What would you do if this were the great love of your life, dads?"

• • •

The sad part of the story I condense mostly from Tad's ether about it. You could sell it for a ballad -- hot, bothered and classic. He tried right up until the arrival of Orleen's Georgia Tech veteran, an upright square in beige cashmere coat, nose with three bumps, and a pretty good record in pro football. The lad had very little hair on his head, a thick red mat on his chest, and chewed gum most of the time. During the off season he sold insurance.

No dividends for Tad. "I don't see what poetry she finds in him," he said. "He can't even wear a wig over that bald spot. I consider women's feelings. Paid a hundred and a half for each one." He had three toupees, which he rotated, one crewcut, one grown in, and one needing a trim. "Course," Tad admitted, "that boy's got 20-20 vision, I'll say that for him. Maybe stomach muscles, too, but I'm sure he has no soul. I'm practically positive."

"You're on," I said, pointing my finger at the disc. "Go, man. Pour on the soul."

"Folks," Tad chanted to the mike as I switched him in, "folks, I suppose you've all been wondering how Daedalus Non-Scheduled Airlines can give you such rapid, economical service to New York, Chicago, Miami and Los Angeles. Well, the Daedalus people use propellers, pilots, wings, just like any other airline, but they ask you to buy your chiclets before going aloft, and with the money they save, well, they pass those savings on to you, the loyal American passenger. Also, since they don't publish their schedules, you just go out to the airport and wait until there happens to be a plane going your way. You can see how much money that saves, friends, and many folks like to spend a quiet vacation in our handsome, air-conditioned lounges. We give you magazines to read, just like other airlines, only of course they're second-hand. We got beautiful charming stewardesses, a little tired, that's all. We got----"

If those weren't the exact words, that was the melody. We were both thinking about Orleen and how to make Tad a happy disc jockey once again. If you're not happy, your voice doesn't vibrate with those deep sincere tones that sell cake-mix, laundry service, TVs, non-skid chocolate and non-sked air travel.

One day went by. Two days. It looked like the end of Tad Comet, All-American 44-Year-Old Boy Disc Jockey. He was miserable. He was dead. He was wearing his glasses again. He even forgot his appointment for the massage and sun lamp treatment.

Then, on the third day, I found Tad's eyes red and weak once more, tortured by his contact lenses. A sure sign of bliss. Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wert, that from Heaven, or near it, hearest from his skirt, et cetera, as that top lyricist Shelley has it. They're trying to get Nat Cole to do the side. Well, anyway, Tad's legs were loose and limber and he was on the wall. "Ferd, Ferd, she wants to see me tonight at her hotel! She asked me up! Promise not to tell?"

"Nobody," I swore, putting my hand on the mike, "not even the Alumni News of Georgia Tech." I furrowed my forehead like Edward R. Murrow. "This is a strange and complex turn of events, Tad. What's the sentiment across the nation?"

He was pinching his cheeks to make them healthy. "She's just a kid," he said, "she needed to make up her mind. I should have known. Like you can't rush a girl like her. She must have been all confused, poor kid, but then she sees that gridiron jerk and compares him to me ..."

He went on in that lyrical vein for the length of an Eddie Fisher, a lanolin spot and a station break. How can a cashmere coat stand up against Scotch tweed with a fur collar? How can a Thunderbird compete with a souped-up MG? How can conventional cross-blocking in the T-formation compare with the passionate life-force of a young chap whose vibrato is devoted to selling wholesome products for the American way of life and conversing about true, unsponsored meanings?

What can Stan offer her? Nothing but a seat on the 50-yard line.

But Tad can plug her records and help to make her a big star.

In other words, Orleen had telephoned him, cheeping in her little-girl voice, the little-girl-putting-out voice, "I want you to see my little place at the Statler, Tadpole. Like it's so homey. Whyncha fall up here tonight after my show?"

"It's the first time she's called me Tadpole," Tad explained with a catch in his throat, the same catch he uses for plugging books by Norman Vincent Peale or Mrs. Roy Rogers. He was on his way and far gone.

• • •

He rose through the elevator shaft to her room overlooking the flats of Cleveland. From the way he told me the story, I believe that he did not need the elevator; he floated upward, curled like a babe's spirit, filled with hot air, clutching a fistful of roses.

"Oh, gee," she said, taking the flowers, "thankee, Tads, but I prefer candy. You know, like mints, things like that. Crunchy. Oh well."

"You look ravishing, Orleen."

"Do you really care for me in my pink silk negligee with a touch of that perfume you gave me and I'm so sorry I didn't have time, I just got out of the shower, like that's why I'm not wearing anything underneath? You do? And do you promise not to get fresh until I tell you? And do you just love me with my (continued overleaf) Disc Jockey (continued from page 64) bare feet in those furry little, cute little mules?" She kicked up her toes in a two-step, showing a pink, recently bathed leg as the folds of gauze briefly parted.

"Orleen, you're so beautiful."

Thoughtfully she held a finger to a nostril. "Shush. I better put out that lamp. It's so bright you can probably see right through my clothes." She went to stand for a full five minutes by the bulb before she found the switch. She stretched and yawned there, too. "Stop fidgeting," she cried. "You got the athlete's foot?"

"Orleen," he cried, swimming across the room toward her.

"Unh-unh," she said, "no, no. I just want to ask you something, Tadpoles." She moved close to him, looking up into his face with her eyelashes signaling and her fine pink-and-pale skin finely wrinkled in the smiling lineaments of gratified desire. "For now," she murmured. "Do you want some mood music first? You're a far out character. Mantovani, anybody?"

"Wh-what," -- bending -- "do you," -- Tad bending and bending -- "want to ask me, Orleen?" -- kiss-kissing tenderly. And he peeked at her, eyes itching furiously behind his contact lenses. He took the act of love piously, as if it were the price one had to pay for romance.

"Well," she began briskly, moving about the room for rapid conversation, straightening ash trays, explaining, "like I have this here great little song I want to sing just for you, kind of like a novelty-type love ballad, musicwise, see."

And she sang. It was about how they met at the bowling alley, and they didn't drive into the rough, and they crossed the plate for a home run, kicking a field goal as they went. It was a deep, sweet, sincere, upbeat number, with plenty of heartwarming mixed metaphors and only one difficulty: the tune was banal, tunewise. The words were silly, wordwise. It stank, odorwise.

Listening with solemn professionalism, Tad judged it with his customary insight and his moral stethoscope to the nation's heartbeat. "That little number is gonna be a great big hit," he announced. "You got top 10 there, nationwide, or my name isn't Tad Comet." (It happened to be Theodore P. Roosevelt -- he was afraid it might be confused with someone else in public life.) "Who wrote it, Orleen?"

She blushed. You could almost read the punctuation marks under her wrappings. "My boyfriend, Rambling Ray from Georgia Tech, the Detroit Lions, and the Hartford and New Haven Fire & Life," she confessed. "I bet you didn't know he had like a little talent for music. He's nuzzely, too."

Tad was crumbling.

"We thought maybe with me singing and you saying like you'll plug it big, well, we could get Columbia or Decca or one of the other real top labels to record----"

Tad was perishing.

"That way, like if we make 60 or 70 grand on it, Rambling Ray can set up like his own little agency and I won't have to sing on the road and be nice to those jerky disc jockeys, see, and ... Oh, Tad, why so green? Do you get carsick from looking out of high windows?"

She led him gently to the couch and laid him down. She untied his shoes. With the tender concern of the more feminine of the sexes, she loosened his shirt and began to stroke his chest. She undid his cufflinks and reached up his arm. With the ancestral wisdom of a former band soloist, she kissed him rat-a-tat-tat all over his cheeks and neck. With the profound innocence of a sweet young girl who wants one of the foremost disc jockeys in the country to plug her boyfriend's song, she let him unbutton her buttons and tug at her zipper. He needed poetry in his life. She wanted to bring him a little genuine sentiment, a swatch of eternal beauty and truth, saying, "Here, Tadpoles honey, old dad-dy-o, just let me help you with that fastener. What's the matter, like you don't know how to work a girl's belt? They go backwards from a man's."

"Orleen, I love you. I need you desperately. I've adored you ever since you opened at the Skybar way back there on the fifth of the month."

"No, it was the third. Me too," she sighed. "Hey, don't get so grabby so fast. And let's keep it quiet. You got to give a girl a chance."

"Orleen!"

"Shush, please."

"Orleen!"

"Do you suppose we could get Eddie Fisher to do it with me? Like don't yell so loud, will you, honey?"

"Orleen, let's discuss it later, OK?" He tasted the tender folds at her throat. "Darling!"

"OK," she said, hiding her gum on the underside of the couch where she would remember to pick it up later, "but I just thought I'd mention it. Let me know your answer when you got the time. You know, I and Rambling Ray could really like use your help in like getting the little number recorded, plug-wise, like."

He fumbled and mumbled, hot as a boy's summer afternoon fantasy, proclaiming to the wide world, "Orleen, you're really something."

And then, at the very moment, the bathroom door burst open and in rushed the wide world in the shape of Rambling Ray from Hartford Insurance (this was the off season). Ray looked at them, somewhat puzzled, scratching his head and shaking his shoulders. "Say, what's going on here?" he asked. And Tad made noises like a broken needle on a broken record. And Orleen tried to be a ventriloquist, soothing two sick dummies at once:

To Ray: Don't you see I was just like trying to help your song along? Our song, Ray honey.

To Tad: I told you to keep it quiet. He was sleeping in the adjoining room, through the bathroom. How did I know you'd roar like that and wake him up?

To Ray: Get lost, square. Don't spoil things now. We're going to have a hit.

To Tad: Oh dear, I hope he don't like hit you. You're so young, so frail. I only wanted to take care of you.

To Ray and Tad both: I'm afraid you two swell boys are going to misunderstand me. It's so hard for an unspoiled young song stylist in this commercial world. Agents, bookers, club owners, band leaders, jocks, football players -- they're all men. Most of the time.

She pouted and waited.

Ray looked at Tad and Tad looked at Ray. Ray began to pant and swell, his jowls turning purple, as if he'd been slugged in a pile-up. Tad's eyes itched and scratched. Orleen contemplated them thoughtfully and tried once again. "Rambling Ray," she said, "meet Tad Comet. I'm sure you two kids got a lot in common."

"I'll murder him," Ray said.

"I'll sue you if you spoil my face for television," Tad threatened him right back, edging away slowly. They circled the couch, studying each other, wary. Tad wished someone would open the door -- the census taker, a girl selling Girl Scout cookies, anyone.

Orleen shook her pert little head distractedly. Such crazy, mixed-up cats! She had never known that true love and the music business would be like this. She wished her agent were here to tell her what to do next. She'd have given him 10 per cent of Ray's song, plus half an hour alone with her. She was that worried, and worry is no good for the voice.

Tad's eyes rolled toward the window. Maybe it would be simplest just to jump out. Of course, it was 26 floors down, not counting the mezzanine, but there might be an awning to catch him, or a nice soft relaxing top of a convertible. He put a lamp between Rambling Ray and him. He had an idea. While his eyes burned, he remembered his childhood. Ray and he were both all-American-type boys. Masterful and triumphant, (concluded overleaf) Disc Jockey (continued from page 66) he reached into his pocket. It was there. He took out the case. He put on his thick black plastic spectacles over the contact lenses. Things were blurred, but what the hell. This was an emergency.

"Say listen, Ray," he said, "jeez, you can't hit a fella with glasses, can you? You're not that type fella, are you?"

Rambling Ray, that immortal left guard, who made the AP All-American his last six years in college, that distinguished insurance salesman, that sporting, well-mannered pro, that chap who brushed his teeth twice a day and rinsed his mouth after eating, that boy who wore the new low look in shoes and the new high-fashion look in weskits, that gifted composer and tail block expert, that Rambling Ray, he first burst into tears to see his moral code fall; then he gave Tad a sock in the snoot that sent him reeling.

Tad leaned. Tad sank. Tad fell, rubber-kneed, frowning. He put his hand to his nose and it came away red. The nose was still there, however.

"Rambling Ray, you just get out of here this minute!" Orleen cried, stamping her little foot. It made a nice clicking noise, because she had put on her high heels while the two fellas were circling each other. And she had been thinking. "That wasn't very nice of you, Rambling Ray," she said. She had come to a new realization of how (a) Tad could be of permanent inspiration to her career, and (b) even if not, he made a nice living anyway. "Cut out of here, Rambling Ray," she commanded, "for I never want to see you ever, not me. I perceive like the type of john you are. Square. Don't darken my hotel door again."

"Aw, Orleen," said Ray, a broken man.

"Out!" she cried. "I don't care how talented you may be musically, you're just a brute when a girl gets to know you."

"Orleen," Tad sobbed, "you care for me, you really do!" He snuffled and coughed. "Do you have a piece of Kleenex by any chance?"

She knelt by his side to comfort him. Poor Ray watched a moment, thinking that even a champion has to learn to be a good loser. Girls! They interfere with the calisthenics and clean-type living. Gallantly he strode out in his boxed-type shoulders beige cashmere coat. He didn't pay his bill, room, telephone calls, a couple of breakfasts, not much laundry, but Orleen and Tad could afford it.

They are still happy together, as much as I can judge, going on seven weeks now. Tad doesn't look a day over 22-1/2. And if finally it doesn't come true for eternal bliss and heart-warming discussions with Orleen, well, there is always this other little thing coming to Lindsay's next month, Hennerie Ford, the rock and roll artist, a deep, strange girl who might really understand the hungry soul of the greatest disc jockey in town.