Read Online How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? by Barry Graham - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Barry Graham
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did you find out?”
“Laurie called. She heard something on the news.”
I went to the bathroom and pissed. The piss was colored orange by the vitamins I took every day. Then I sat down and took a shit. Afterwards I wiped my ass, then washed my hands in the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. I wasn’t old. At thirty-four, I sometimes felt younger than I’d felt ten years earlier. But I’d lost two friends in the space of eight months. More than a young man should. In my life I’d seen so many friends killed. I didn’t know how many and I was afraid to count.
I called the cops and asked them about Tim. They wouldn’t tell me shit. So I called Spike.
Spike was a journalistic legend, up there beside Woodward and Bernstein. Not that he’d ever brought down a government. His fame wasn’t based on one scoop, but on the countless major ones he’d pulled during fifty years in the business. An Englishman, he was already a respected investigative reporter in his own country when he emigrated to the US in his late twenties. He picked up a succession of awards, including a Pulitzer, and worked for newspapers and magazines on both coasts. He wrote feature articles as easily as he cranked out hard news copy, and was as likely to be assigned to interview a musician or actor as he was to be sent to a war zone.
Part of his legend involved Marilyn Monroe. He was one of a bunch of journalists who’d arranged to interview her at a hotel in LA. When his turn came, there were about a half-dozen others awaiting theirs. Spike went into her suite and didn’t come back out. After the scheduled twenty minutes, Monroe’s press agent went in to find out what was going on. He found Monroe and Spike talking and laughing. She said everything was okay and told her agent not to interrupt again. Spike stayed with her for seven hours. The agent and the journalists could hear them talking. Then there was just silence. But the press party was far from silent. Was Spike fucking her or something? When Spike eventually emerged, he just apologized to them for keeping her so long, then left. The press agent went into the suite, then came out a few minutes later to announce that Monroe wouldn’t be doing any more interviews that day.
Spike never told anyone what had happened. When his interview was published, it turned out to be a standard celebrity profile that gave no hint of anything personal between interviewer and subject.
Forty years later, he told me what had happened. Or hadn’t happened. He’d really hit it off with Monroe, and, when he’d finished the interview, they just drank and talked. Eventually she fell asleep in her chair. And for a long time he just sat and watched her sleep, just watched her and wished he could help her be happy. Then he stood up quietly and left.
I never met the man of the legends. By the time I met Spike, it was all over for him. In his seventies, he had arthritis, so he’d moved to Arizona for the climate. His marriage had collapsed and he had an alcohol problem so severe that he sometimes became delusional.
In spite of the mess he was in, the Arizona Republic hired him. Even if he was of no practical use to them, just having him on their staff gave them the kind of kudos that’s rarely the province of papers outside of New York, LA, Chicago or DC. They didn’t put him on any major stories—he mostly wrote political commentary or movie and theater reviews.
The reason for his nickname reflected the fact that he was an anachronism. In the Dark Ages of journalism, before the arrival of computers, they’d used a device called a spike to save articles that weren’t going in the next edition of the paper but might be used later. It was a short metal pole on a solid base. Journalists would keep it on their desks, and if a story was to be “spiked” they’d impale the typewritten pages on it.
Spike never learned to use a computer. He still used a manual typewriter. And he
“Laurie called. She heard something on the news.”
I went to the bathroom and pissed. The piss was colored orange by the vitamins I took every day. Then I sat down and took a shit. Afterwards I wiped my ass, then washed my hands in the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. I wasn’t old. At thirty-four, I sometimes felt younger than I’d felt ten years earlier. But I’d lost two friends in the space of eight months. More than a young man should. In my life I’d seen so many friends killed. I didn’t know how many and I was afraid to count.
I called the cops and asked them about Tim. They wouldn’t tell me shit. So I called Spike.
Spike was a journalistic legend, up there beside Woodward and Bernstein. Not that he’d ever brought down a government. His fame wasn’t based on one scoop, but on the countless major ones he’d pulled during fifty years in the business. An Englishman, he was already a respected investigative reporter in his own country when he emigrated to the US in his late twenties. He picked up a succession of awards, including a Pulitzer, and worked for newspapers and magazines on both coasts. He wrote feature articles as easily as he cranked out hard news copy, and was as likely to be assigned to interview a musician or actor as he was to be sent to a war zone.
Part of his legend involved Marilyn Monroe. He was one of a bunch of journalists who’d arranged to interview her at a hotel in LA. When his turn came, there were about a half-dozen others awaiting theirs. Spike went into her suite and didn’t come back out. After the scheduled twenty minutes, Monroe’s press agent went in to find out what was going on. He found Monroe and Spike talking and laughing. She said everything was okay and told her agent not to interrupt again. Spike stayed with her for seven hours. The agent and the journalists could hear them talking. Then there was just silence. But the press party was far from silent. Was Spike fucking her or something? When Spike eventually emerged, he just apologized to them for keeping her so long, then left. The press agent went into the suite, then came out a few minutes later to announce that Monroe wouldn’t be doing any more interviews that day.
Spike never told anyone what had happened. When his interview was published, it turned out to be a standard celebrity profile that gave no hint of anything personal between interviewer and subject.
Forty years later, he told me what had happened. Or hadn’t happened. He’d really hit it off with Monroe, and, when he’d finished the interview, they just drank and talked. Eventually she fell asleep in her chair. And for a long time he just sat and watched her sleep, just watched her and wished he could help her be happy. Then he stood up quietly and left.
I never met the man of the legends. By the time I met Spike, it was all over for him. In his seventies, he had arthritis, so he’d moved to Arizona for the climate. His marriage had collapsed and he had an alcohol problem so severe that he sometimes became delusional.
In spite of the mess he was in, the Arizona Republic hired him. Even if he was of no practical use to them, just having him on their staff gave them the kind of kudos that’s rarely the province of papers outside of New York, LA, Chicago or DC. They didn’t put him on any major stories—he mostly wrote political commentary or movie and theater reviews.
The reason for his nickname reflected the fact that he was an anachronism. In the Dark Ages of journalism, before the arrival of computers, they’d used a device called a spike to save articles that weren’t going in the next edition of the paper but might be used later. It was a short metal pole on a solid base. Journalists would keep it on their desks, and if a story was to be “spiked” they’d impale the typewritten pages on it.
Spike never learned to use a computer. He still used a manual typewriter. And he
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