Read Online Judy & Liza & Robert & Freddie & David & Sue & Me... by Stevie Phillips - Free Book Online Page B

call you out onstage to sing it with me.” It was a teasing moment she was relishing, and so was I. It was always good to see her in a good mood.
    â€œI dare you.” I told her. “Daring me is treading on very dangerous ground,” she warned. I had no doubt that was true. The Judy Garland I’d come to know was willing to try anything—twice—to avoid a rush to judgment. She made it easy to believe that trying kinky things was fun for her. There were always sly sexual intimations about relationships with women that were titillating and bore further investigation, but that was really treading on dangerous ground, and after the touching incident in the limo, I didn’t want to go there. But the stage was not dangerous ground, it was sacred ground, and that was different. Performance was something she didn’t share except with superstars. Judy was the single and complete owner of whatever concert stage she walked out onto. I could count on her not wanting to share her moment with me—not even as a joke.
    â€œYou better be prepared,” she warned. “I’m gonna do it.” Not bloody likely, I continued to think. The only nonsuperstar she ever got out on the concert stage with her was Liza, which fell into another category entirely. Occasionally she would call Liza up from the audience to spell her for five minutes. It gave Judy an opportunity to catch her breath, mop her wet head, and gulp down some water. She would sit with her legs hanging over the apron—mugging and stealing the scene—while an earnest thirteen-year-old Liza kicked up her heels to her own choreographed rendition of “Swanee,” and I, up in the booth, intoned a prayer that Li’s unwashed underwear—peeking out from under her short skirt—couldn’t be seen by the audience.
    *   *   *
    So there I was, wearing the chicken soup and standing next to her on center stage while she’s prattling on about how she couldn’t have done a thing on the tour without me, and I’m staring out into the audience without any grace of word or movement. I am this big soup-stained, exhausted-looking creature frozen in the glare of the spotlights, nothing delicately deerlike about me. To complete this “deer-in-the-headlights” clich é , the car she’s driving is about to roll on over me and kill me. I see it coming, and I can do nothing to stop it. I will die there in front of thousands about to enjoy this joke at my expense. Judy turned to Mort Lindsey, her conductor, nodded, and I heard, or thought I heard, the intro for “Just in Time.” Then came the downbeat along with a poke in my ribs, and there I stood, stupidly singing.
    As it turned out, I got through the first key change without falling apart and moved right on to the second. I know I was smiling—and not because my childhood tap-dance teacher, Charles Lowe, taught me always to smile at recitals—because I’d managed not to mess up the song for her—yet. I can remember that I was even starting to enjoy myself just a little. Can you be scared to death and enjoy yourself at the same time? I know the answer. Yes!
    But wait a minute. What happened to the music? I’m suddenly aware that I’m standing there singing alone. No Judy. No accompaniment. And now I’m being pushed off the stage. I see the wings coming up in front of me like big, flat, black maws about to swallow me, and I hear her mimicking the vaudevillian who coined the phrase “Give the little lady a big hand.” Hey, hold on there! What did I do wrong? I got it right. That’s what. I had held on and sung, made three correct key changes. The joke didn’t work.
    She saw I wasn’t going to become an object of derision. She wouldn’t be able to make fun at my expense. She didn’t need a straight man, she needed a foil, and I was going to be flat-out square, dull, and boring. The