O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
Of course, “Reading Your Lips, Baby” was a terrible record. It
wasn’t that Hopkins sang particularly off-key. He would never be so
audacious to attempt singing actual notes, but if one has a mouth,
one can warble. And as far as warbling went, Deaf Lemon had some
talent. It didn’t bother him that as an art form, the warble had its
limitations. Still, the way he figured it, music was equal parts melody,
harmony, and
whore
money
, so the world better pay up because at
that moment he was a jiggy gigolo gigging at the top of his game.
If there was one thing that was still getting him down, however,
it was that his shameful yet universal fantasy—to have his name
chanted mindlessly by crowds of people smitten with adoration—had
finally come true, yet he was unable to hear any of it.
After the radio gig, he sat patiently through interviews with various
journalists, who all fired the same questions at him:
how do you
explain your runaway success, are you going to tour, can you
understand what I’m saying or do you need an interpreter, where’d
you get that great blazer, can you hear yourself sing, are you going
to make a video with subtitles
, and on and on. The question that
most intrigued, as well as dismayed him was
when are you going to
release your next album?
Truth was, he had no real desire to do
anything but enjoy his success for a while and then buy a house in the
Caribbean somewhere. Down deep, way behind his shattered
eardrums he knew that his accomplishment was just some colossal
cosmic error, and that his luck couldn’t last. He knew that the masses
that now revered him would very soon reject him. He didn’t want to
be lolling around looking like a chump when it happened.
Let a few
more bucks roll in and then roll on, boy, he thought to himself.
Before you get rolled over. Maybe you could even stage your own
death like Jim Morrison was said to have done. Go down in history
as some sort of mysterious legend. A deaf John Henry, with an axe
instead of a hammer.
Finally the interviews were over, and a striking young female
journalist strolled over to him and smiled. He smiled back. She had a
dark tan, a mass of hair sprayed so high and wide it was surely a fire
hazard, lips full as a holiday turkey, and flesh arranged so neatly on
her long frame one could practically see the hand of God, or at least
his scalpel. All this bounty was draped in less material one might find
on an average Christmas present.
She placed a hand that was strictly business on his shoulder
9
 |
 |
 |
 |