The Idol Worshipper


Giebelstadt, Germany, 1983


	



  


The Baby family was an fine example of American power at the peak of empire: they were naive, well-meaning, and very soft and pink.  Frederick Baby's father had made a career out of the army without ever having to fire a shot in anger: he refueled things.  He had received a medal for an excellent incident of refueling during the Vietnam War, but he had not held a gun since basic training.
Staff Sgt. Baby constantly uprooted his family, bringing them from base to base as he circled the world in defense of democracy.  By the time he was 13, Frederic Baby spoke four languages, and said nothing to anybody in any of them.   Other military kids, including his vivacious sister, learned to make new friends easily, but not Frederic.  He had only imaginary friends.  They were portable, and came with him wherever he went. 
When he was a small child, he liked ships, and worked out an entire crew of imaginary people for one of his models.  He started out as captain of the ship, but then decided it would be hard to be friends with everybody if he were captain, so he made himself an ordinary sailor instead. 
 







	

	 
 


As soon as he could read, Frederic began to involve celebrities in his fantasy life.  They were portable too, easy to stay in touch with through the American magazines sold at the PX.   
His first great idol was an Alabama-born baseball player, a man with great talent traded frequently because of discipline problems that were never explained.   Eventually, the man fell so far that he had to leave the major leagues entirely and play in Japan, at a time when the Baby family was stationed in Okinawa. 
Frederic was thrilled.  He pleaded for months before Sgt. Baby took him to see his idol play at the Tokyo Dome. When it was over, they waited in a rainstorm with dozens of Japanese kids and fathers with a glove for the man to sign.  The player finally brushed past them on his way to his car, tossing a cigarette butt, which the boys dived for.  Sgt. Baby though that was a bit much, but he didn't say anything, and Frederic didn't seem too disappointed.

  





	





  


Frederic, in fact, was happy to live almost entirely in his fantasy world until he discovered girls.  
He discovered them suddenly, when the covers of rock albums began to affect him.  One particular singer, Tereso "Roxy" Fernandez, had the very best covers: they showed women pouring chocolate over their upturned breasts, or honey between their naked legs.   Frederic was much less interested in the real girls at his latest school, near the Giebelstadt base in Germany.  They were flat and disappointingly overdressed compared to Roxy's women. 
American rock and roll magazines became the light of his life.  He liked Hit Parader and Circus, and went to the PX repeatedly to see if the new issues were in.  Issues with articles on Tereso "Roxy" Fernandez particularly thrilled him.   Roxy had a life worth aspiring to:  long hair, guitars, and so many women they overwhelmed him.  
"I got more than I can handle," Roxy told Circus.   "The roadies and my friends get the extras."  Frederic was very interested in being his friend and getting the extras. 

  


 




	

	 
 



  
Over the next year, his fascination with Roxy grew.  Real life was hard: at thirteen, Frederic was still small and sweet-looking, and the bigger boys at Giebelstadt roughed him up.  But Armed Forces Television had started to broadcast short concerts from the States, and if he stayed up late enough he could often see Roxy.
In black leather and studs, Roxy sang songs about emptiness and pain and isolation.  His long hair was almost Biblical.  During slow numbers, the crowd took out cigarette lighters to show they felt it too.  Roxy needed a friend, too, Frederic was sure of it, and he felt their eyes meet through the television. 
When Roxy announced a European concert tour, one making a stop in Frankfurt, Frederic was ecstatic.  The tickets were fifty marks, but they were all he wanted for his fourteenth birthday.
His parents said no, so he tried to be especially helpful around the house. Then he asked if he could buy a ticket with his own savings.  When the answer was still no, he cried.  This made his mother cry, too, and finally even his sweet-tempered sister cried because of the general unhappiness in the household.  
His father would only promise that Frederic could go to see Roxy on his next tour, which wouldn't happen for two years at least and possibly never.   So Frederic ran away. 
  





	





It wasn't difficult.  He wasn't planning a long trip, so there were no suitcases to give him away.  He simply rode the school bus as usual and then, after morning roll call, walked to the train station and took the 10:47 to Frankfurt. 
At first, everything went according to plan.  He had set aside money for train fare, and for the bus fare to the concert location; he had brought along extra cash for lunch and dinner.
He hadn't counted, however, on the show being sold out, or on the scalpers outside the old arena wanting three times the face value of a ticket.
Frederic wandered, heartbroken, around the dusty parking lot.  Maybe he would find a ticket that had been thrown into the dirt.  Maybe Roxy, in a scene like one from a movie, would drive through the parking lot and ask him to join the group onstage, where the players were always leaning up against each other and laughing, and soon Frederic would be laughing too.  He bought a sausage and ate it against the roof of a car. 
Later that in the afternoon, he saw a crowd beginning to gather outside the stage door.  His spirits soared.  If he could just see Roxy, that would be enough.  Maybe he could even shake his hand.  There was a chance, then, that Roxy would recognize him as a friend. Then he would quit school and accompany Roxy on tour, where he would get all the extras.
  
   


 




	

	 
 



He waited for hours.  The sun went down, and he was hungry again, but he was afraid to leave.  The crowd of German teenagers were getting boisterous and he stood to the side, which was where a man in a satin jacket carrying an official-looking clipboard noticed him.   With his military crewcut down to his pink skull, there was little doubt he was an American soldier's son.
"You here for Roxy?" said the man, in English.
"Yes, sir," said Frederic.  "Will he be here soon?"
"He's already here," said the man.  
He examined Frederic carefully.  
"I'll bet he'd like to meet you," the man said. "Would you like to come backstage?"
Frederic nodded, speechless.  As the man in satin let him through the barriers, he looked back at the noisy German teenagers and felt a sudden pity for them.  He would have liked to have taken them all along.
He and the American man went down long concrete hallways together, hallways at first empty, and then full of people smoking cigarettes.  Frederic saw a girl, but she was wearing a sweatshirt and didn't look like any of the women on the album covers.
  
	  





	





The man showed him into something that looked like a dressing room.  It had mirrors and the sort of dank, overstuffed couch that seemed to be a national fixture in Germany, and Frederic sat on it restlessly, his blood hot with excitement.  He could hear the band tuning up, so Roxy must be nearby.   The man in the satin jacket closed the door.
"Let me see your underwear," he said.
Frederic sat back on the couch.
"I thought I was going to meet Roxy," he said.
"You will," the man said.  "I just need to make sure you have on clean underwear."
Frederic looked closely at the man with the satin jacket.  He was old, in his 40s, maybe, with a little vein coming out of his nose, and didn't seem the type to care so much about neatness.   But Frederic was a military kid, and used accepting inexplicable orders from adults.
"Okay," he said, feeling a little embarrassed.  
He unbuckled his belt, and the man sat on the floor and watched him.
"Do you know Roxy's song about being up at 3am?" Frederic said. "I was up at 3am once."
  


 




	

	 
 


The man didn't answer.  With a rush and a grab, he tried to put his mouth on Frederic's underwear.  Frederic blanched, a soundless scream caught in his throat.  He jumped off the couch.  His heart was pounding.
"Where's Roxy?" he cried.
"You'll see him in a minute," the man said.
When the man tried to grab him again, Frederic pulled up his pants and ran out of the room, ran out through the concrete halls, starting to cry.   He got lost a little in the maze of hallways, but he kept running until he was out the stage door.   All the German teenagers were gone.
He was shaking on the bus back to the train station, and shaking at the train station too, but it was on a bench there that he realized he had made the worst mistake of his life.  He should have gone to find Roxy.  Roxy would have protected him from that disgusting man, maybe have killed the man if he knew what had happened.  And Roxy could have explained things to Frederic's father, who was going to be very mad when he got home.   Roxy would have been his friend,  Frederic thought shivering on the train-station bench, and a friend was what he needed most of all.
   













Library of Congress Copyright TXu 875-975