It was a bravura performance. It got me a quick discharge and a return trip to L.A. and my passions: booze, dope, reading crime novels and breaking into houses to sniff women’s undergarments.
Nobody ever called me a coward or a draft dodger–the Vietnam War was reviled from close to the get-go, and extricating yourself from its clutches was held laudable.
I _calculated_ my way out–and of course my fears remained unacknowledged. And I wasn’t a golden young man sky high on momentum and ripe for a public hanging.
I’ve led a colorful and media-exploitable life; my take on it has been picaresque–a stratagem that keeps my search for deeper meaning channelled solely into my books, which keeps my momentum building, which keeps my wolves of nothingness locked out of sight. Dick Contino didn’t utilize my methods: he was a man of music, not of words, and he embraced his fears from the start. And he _continued_: the musicianship on his post-draft dodger beef albums dwarfs the sides he cut pre-’51. He continued, and so far as I could tell, the only thing that diminished was his audience.
I called Contino and told him I wanted to write about him. We had an affable conversation; he said, “Come to Vegas.”
* * *
Contino met me at the airport. He looked great: lean and fit at sixty-three. His _Daddy-O_ grin remained intact; he confirmed that his _Daddy-O_ biceps came from humping his accordion.
We went to a restaurant and shot the shit. Our conversation was full of jump cuts–Dick’s recollections triggered frequent digressions and circuitous returns to his original anecdotal points. We discussed Las Vegas, the Mob, serving jail time, lounge acts, Howard Hughes, Korea, Vietnam, _Daddy-O_, L.A. in the ’50s, fear and what you do when the audience dwindles.
I told him that the best novels were often not the best selling novels; that complex styles and ambiguous stories perplexed many readers. I said that while my own books sold quite well, they were considered too dark, densely plotted and relentlessly violent to be chart toppers.
Dick asked me if I would change the type of book I write to achieve greater sales–I said, “No.” He asked me if I’d change the type of book I write if I knew that I’d taken a given style or theme as far as it could go–I said, “Yes.” He asked me if the real-life characters in my books ever surprise me–I said, “No, because my relationship to them is exploitative.”
I asked him if he consciously changed musical directions after his career got diverted post-Korea. He said, yes and no–he kept trying to cash in on trends until he realized that at best he’d be performing music that he didn’t love, and at worst he’d be playing to an audience he didn’t respect.
I said, “The work is the thing.” He said, yes, but you can’t cop an attitude behind some self-limiting vision of your own integrity. You can’t cut the audience out of its essential enjoyment–you have to give them some schmaltz to hold on to.
I asked Dick how he arrived at that. He said his old fears taught him to like people more. He said fear thrives on isolation, and when you cut down the wall between you and the audience, your whole vision goes wide.
I checked in at my hotel and shadow-boxed with the day’s revelations. It felt like my world had tilted toward a new understanding of my past. I kept picturing myself in front of an expanding audience, armed with new literary ammunition: the knowledge that Dick Contino would be the hero of the sequel to the book I’m writing now.
_Dick Contino’s Blues_ was blasting its way into my consciousness. It seemed to be coming from somewhere far outside my volition.
Dick and I met for dinner the next night. It was my forty-fifth birthday; I felt like I was standing at the bedrock center of my life.
Dick played me a be-bop “Happy Birthday” on his accordion. The old chops were still there–he zipped on and off the main theme rapidamente.
We split for the restaurant. I asked Dick if he would consent to appear as the hero of a novella and my next novel.