IN THE KEY OF DALE (Book Review)

By Benjamin Lefebvre

 

(Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022)

 

At sixteen, Dale Cardigan is his own guy. He goes it alone much of the time, an old soul who senses adolescence is but a time to endure. He knows it gets better. He’ll find his place when he’s an adult.

 

Oh, how I feel for Dale. It’s not so dire that he’s crossing off days on a calendar as a countdown to when life will really begin, but he doesn’t make the waiting period easy on himself. Dale attends an all-boys private school after having a tough time in a previous school. The switch doesn’t seem to be so much on account of parental concern about bullying as for the fact the family moved. Dale’s father died in a car accident seven years prior and his mother has remarried, settling in a new Southern Ontario town. 

 

It's high school, but it’s an unusual experience because he’s with the same group of boys for all his classes. That can feel unbearable if you’re the odd one out and Dale seems to go out of his way to make himself that person. He doesn’t speak in class. Ever. Not to the teachers, not to his classmates. Somehow everyone goes along with this. Dale’s convinced people that he has to rest his vocal cords since he’s a singer with various choir gigs, solos and all. 

 

Music is Dale’s world. He’s an accomplished pianist, far beyond his years, paid to play organ at a church. Whether singing or playing, he reads and picks up the arrangements quickly. He connects with adults in his musical sphere. A lesbian couple at the church are about to get married and have requested that Dale play and sing at both the wedding and the reception.

 

It’s at the wedding that Dale runs into Rusty, a furry, red-headed classmate, who also knows the couple. Always startling to see someone in a different context. They’re seated at the same table for the reception. Dale winds up talking to Rusty. A friendship begins even though they don’t have much in common. The boys talk and text outside of school, but Rusty seems to respect Dale’s established cone of silence in class. Due to Dale’s own devices, this creates more than the usual on-off social dynamics. It adds more confusion to typical adolescent angst. What is this relationship? Is it just friendship or could it be something more?

 

One of the refreshing—and, for me, remarkable—things about reading current gay young adult novels is that there is so much queerness in the teens’ world. Dale has the lesbian couple, plus his married gay uncles. He’s not out to his family even though it’s a worst kept secret. It’s not that he’s afraid he’ll face rejection; rather, he can’t be bothered with it and all of the pronouncements of love and acceptance. 

 

Times have changed!

 

Here’s an early conversation between Dale and the husband of his mom’s best friend after the man asks Dale if he has a girlfriend:

He winked at me as he asked the question, like this was some kind of male bonding…

So I just said…“I don’t have a girlfriend. I don’t even—I don’t date girls.”

“Oh.” And then all these wrinkles snuck onto his forehead, and his eyebrows started to skew at an angle I’d never seen on anyone outside of a cartoon before. “What do you do with them?”

I involuntarily snickered but tried to make it sound like a cough. “Nothing. I’m not dating anyone. But just for the record, it’s not girls that I’m not dating—it’s boys. If that makes any sense.”

“What?”

I didn’t know how to make it any clearer than that, so I looked at him, raised an eyebrow, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

“Oh. You mean you’re—”

“Gay. Queer. Sure. But I’m still single.”

“Huh.”

 

It’s a typical Dale exchange. Most of the rest of the world is clueless, tolerated at best. Maybe he’s more of a typical teenager than he purports to be.

 

This is an epistolary novel, almost all of it told in letters to Dale’s dead father who seems to be the best listener Dale’s got. (There are a few passages Dale writes as more of a journal entry. These are spicier bits or thoughts written when Dale doesn’t feel like communicating with his dad.) I don’t mind stories, including this one, told through letters but they’re tricky. While I don’t wholly agree with the common writerly piece of advice, “show, don’t tell,” the epistolary structure lends itself to going overboard on the telling bits. This muddies up the pacing of the story. Sometimes the reader wants quick passages of dialogue and/or action without having things set up with, as in this case, “Dear Pa.” Still, there’s a novelty to the format and it make sense as a private means of expression for a teenager, especially someone like Dale who keeps people at bay. I wonder how many times the author, Benjamin Lefebvre, a witty talent, found the format constricting. How many times did he want to break away and, dammit, just tell the story?

 

Another refreshing part of the novel is—and, here, I suppose I’m giving away an aspect of the plot—its frankness about sex. We’ve had that since Judy Blume, to be sure, but it’s still deemed risky for some publishers, especially when it’s queer sex which seems to get book banners more aroused than the targeted reader. It’s not graphic as in many adult novels, but Lefebvre fits in the word jism a few times. 

 

I recommend the book even if I have a few quibbles. It’s always hard to give supporting characters their due—probably a snag in every novel; maybe it’s flattering when we want to know more about them—but the problem could have been lessened if Lefebvre merged the two adult gay couples. I wonder if there was an intentional decision to include a broader gay spectrum by having both a gay and a lesbian couple. Nice idea, but it was hard to distinguish each couple’s role which seemed to come down to being supportive, enthusiastic and available…even if Dale never seeks them out. He’s a solitary guy. It’s telling that the only adult he looks to is dead silent. Personally, I’d nix the gay uncles and turn the church couple into lesbian aunts. It’s also hard to make anything of Dale’s stepbrother whose name I forget, not surprisingly. This guy is the same age, lives in the same house halftime since his dad is Dale’s stepfather. They’re also in the same class, all day, every day. He has a teensy, yet important moment and that’s it. There’s an argument that adults in YA are supposed to take a back seat so the teen protagonist has to solve the primary conflict(s), but this stepbrother, who is everywhere in Dale’s life, should have a greater presence in the story. The stepdad? Almost invisible. Even Dale’s music mentors don’t get much of a mention either.

 

Most problematic of all is Dale’s mother. Not only is she underdeveloped, she doesn’t make sense. There’s a doting nature to her, but somehow she’s clueless about both Dale’s musical talent and his cone of silence at school. Surely, music teachers would have commented many times over the years about his potential. Also, I have no doubt that teachers—and Dale’s stepbrother—would have mentioned his lack of participation and social engagement. Perhaps it’s dramatic for her to suddenly learn about it late in the book, but it’s not believable. The shock was mine since I’d assumed she knew all along. 

 

Quibbles aside, Dale’s an interesting character and a strong introvert at that. (Yay, positive portrayals of introverts!) There are parallels to the popular Netflix series “Heartstopper” and Alice Oseman’s graphic novels. Dale and Rusty are in similar stages of their queer identity as Charlie and Nick. This isn't a love story per se. Dale's too grounded to be irrationally smitten. The future of Dale and Rusty is open. Dale's realistic enough to know he'll be heading off to college in a year and they don't have a lot in common. His relative levelheadedness is another refreshing aspect of the story. Lefebvre infuses humor throughout the story and gives Dale a unique voice. Leave it to a teenager to describe a pond as being “this beautiful Windex colour.” 

 

Lastly, I’d like to give a shout-out to Arsenal Pulp Press, based here in Vancouver. It’s not solely a queer publisher, but they’ve got plenty of LGBTQ titles in their catalog, including books I’ve previously blogged like Everything Is Awful and You’re a Terrible Person and Jonny Appleseed as well as works by Ivan Coyote, Amber Dawn and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. Check out their catalog here.    

 

 

 

BOXING DAY AT THE ART GALLERY

"Boxers Under Lights"

Shorter post today. A picture is, after all, a thousand words. This acrylic painting is by eighty-year-old Katherine Bradford, a New York artist who identifies as lesbian. I stumbled upon an exhibit of hers at The Frye Art Museum in Seattle which I’d gone to because there was an exhibition of paintings by Marsden Hartley, a gay American artist whom I want to learn more about. It turned out that the museum only had a handful of Hartley’s landscape paintings, all confined to a single room, creating a cozy viewing experience. While Hartley is the better-known artist, his work was overshadowed by Katherine Bradford’s large, colorful, simplified works, not all of which resonated with me, but those that did, excited me and drew me in. 

 

I’ll give you the snotty, highfalutin assessment of Bradford, the artist, as per the kaufmann repetto art gallery. This is the highest level of art criticism, as evidenced by the lack of capital letters. (Perhaps it’s merely a case of a broken shift key.)   

vast expanses of color divide her canvases 

into distinct horizontal planes while the 

variations in saturation and tone evoke 

an elusive yet almost palpable atmo-

sphere. lighter and darker hues are

interchangeable and used without 

functional or hierarchical distinction, 

introducing spatial elements such as the 

sea and the sky, beaches and poolsides. 

these monochromatic backgrounds are

occupied by human figures, often 

swimmers and bathers, whose androgynous, 

featureless bodies are roughly sketched.

 

I get it, on the artsy level, but my Sunday afternoon brain, still only half caffeinated, had a simpler take: “This is cool!” If they’d been so gauche as to have happy face and sad face buttons at the end of the exhibit, I’d have definitely pressed happy. I might have pressed it multiple times, hand sanitizer be damned, as people do with pedestrian crossing buttons. Can we all agree that excess happiness is far better than extreme impatience?

 

My favorites in the exhibit depicted swimmers and people gathered outside under the night sky. The scenes evoked a playfulness and portrayed activity instead of that sort of still life, uh…stillness. Blue was often the base—that “monochromatic background” which the esteemed lowercase gallery mentioned. It had the effect of drawing my eye into the figures and what they were doing. “Woman Flying” (1999), a painting of a loosely drawn superwoman, nude except for a red cape, suspended in the sky, greeted patrons at the entry. Bradford describes the work as a self-portrait and confesses that her style is “crude” because she struggles with anatomical accuracy. I love an artist who keeps it real.

 

“Boxers Under Lights” (2018) will likely stay with me the most. I’m not pugilist obsessive. I’ve never seen Brad Pitt in “Fight Club” and I barely glanced at the boxing pics this past month of Jake Gyllenhaal. (Okay, I glanced, but I didn’t click to read what that was all about. Sometimes context isn’t required.) I think boxing is barbaric, the human equivalent to cockfighting. Weirdly, a line from the pop song “The Girl Is Mine,” comes to mind, Michael Jackson telling Sir McCartney, “Paul, I think I told you, I’m a lover, not a fighter.” 

 

I suppose painting boxers in an embrace, kissing, makes the simple display of affection more striking, especially in the boxing ring, presuming there are spectators in the audience. All that testosterone and sweat, broken nose brushing against broken nose, fewer teeth to get in the way if things progress to Frenching. It’s like Rocky smooching with The Champ. No, not The Champ. Jon Voight’s gotten all weird. Make that Sly necking with Ryan O’Neal à la “The Main Event.” (Sorry, Barbra.) I prefer to imagine that instead of Mike Tyson biting someone’s ear off.

 

“What a match!” takes on a new connotation.  

 

If I were scoring this fight, I’d call it a draw or a split decision or whatever—I Googled “Can there be a tie in boxing?” but then didn’t really care to read the answers with various nuances.

 

They both won, didn’t they?

 

 

 

 

  

A STATE OF PHONELESSNESS

I’m surviving. No phone for twenty-four hours. Okay, twenty, but I’m rounding up. Allow me that.

 

It’s not like I lost it in the nether regions of my condo and couldn’t find it despite lifting sofa pillows repeatedly, as if the phone would suddenly appear on the tenth time, finally giving up on Hide and Seek after no one found it. (Forgive me. I’m still working through some childhood trauma.) I didn’t go to a bar and forget it along with my coat and all sensibilities, whereby I had to wait until the next evening for the bars to reopen. (I’m classy. I don’t frequent joints that open at seven in the morning.) 

 

I willingly surrendered my phone, not because I was texting while inexplicably walking the halls of a high school, nor because an usher accosted me while I was in the midst of live-streaming a touring production of “Hello, Dolly!” starring, neither Barbra nor Bette, but a lip-synching Paris Hilton. (Shudders.) I wasn’t misbehaving but my phone was.   

 

My screen cover cracked on the weekend. Again. Not from a pratfall this time on one of my jogs when I forget to call out “Left foot, right foot” in my head. I don’t even have a story to go with the damaged screen like when last time, an occasion which warrants its own side story.

 

Eldfell. So stunning!

I didn’t fix the phone for months after that incident because it reminded me, fondly, of Iceland and, not so fondly, of the ensuing credit card debt I was still paying off. The damage was done on the island of Heimaey, a short ferry ride from the southwest coast of the mainland. I’d already hiked around the crater of Eldfell, which had erupted in 1973, and, although there was no danger whatsoever, I was feeling emboldened—The Volcano Conqueror!—so I decided to climb Heimaklettur (Home Rock) to get an Instagram-worthy shot of the harbor and the town of Vestmannaeyjar. (As if randomly pointing my phone in any direction at any point in time in Iceland didn’t offer a breathtaking shot. Too much beauty can make a person greedy.) 

 

What's a little climb?

AllTrails listed it as a hike, just a tad over a mile, “out and back,” which should have been described as “up and down.” Somehow, I’d overlooked the classification of the hike climb as “hard” and the notation that it takes seventy-five minutes. I stopped several times as I ascended one rock face after another, sometimes with assists from chains, sometimes with seemingly well-secured ladders with most of the rungs still in place. The winds intensified with the elevation and I had to keep batting away the sudden onset of a previously undetectable fear of heights. 

Deceptive photo...makes it look doable!

 

It was humbling when I had to step aside on a tiny ridge to let a rugged man pass me by, the only other “hiker” I saw on this dubious jaunt. This guy was stern, seemingly irked he’d had to wait as I suppressed the urge to whimper as I made it up another ladder to get to the precarious ridge. I suppose I should have been grateful he’d shown restraint, suppressing his own urge to reach up and toss me off. (No investigation would have resulted after my body was eventually found. Tsk, tsk. Another hiker out of his element.)

 

Full disclosure: This man, who may have actually been part mountain goat, was seventy-something. Hardy stock in Iceland.

 

I tried to conjure up warmth in this man who came off as even harsher than the conditions. I imagined he had a pet—a golden retriever since they have the best temperament, something to offer balance. He’d tried to bring Fido along in the past, but the damn dog couldn’t navigate the ladders any better than me. No walk for you! 

 

Apologies. I may be stereotyping an Icelander with an East German stereotype. Plus, a smidgen of Soup Nazi. If I say some of my best friends are German, that makes it all okay, right?

 

Turns out you can Google the 
view from the top. It'll do.
(Dare I say that's me in the pic?)

Long story, barely shortened, my phone screen cracked on my descent, after the old man—hell, let’s say he was prematurely gray at twenty-two—shook my attempt to follow and I glanced downward—waaaaay downward—another time and was overwhelmed with all-out panic. Get. The. Fuck. Down. 

 

And don’t you dare glance down again until your feet are flat on the empty parking lot. 

 

(Yes, empty. That should’ve been a sign.)

 

With the wind whipping against my body, my jacket banged against a ladder and my phone inside a pocket didn’t take kindly to high altitude turbulence. I only learned this after I knelt to the ground—it may have been involuntary, shaky legs and all—and kissed that dang parking lot. I never got that Insta shot. The cracks were the Icelandic souvenir I didn’t actually want but better than a broken neck.

 

The story behind the damaged screen this time around is much shorter. I walked two blocks to grab a morning coffee, phone in my jean pocket. When I pulled it out as I waited for my oat milk latte, it was cracked, cause unknown. Static cling? Melee with lint? Being as it’s an iPhone 6, I suspect some IT staffer programmed it to self-destruct. Mission aborted? I shall not cave and buy a new phone. What are we at now anyway…iPhone 137? 

 

I dropped off my phone at a rogue repair shop that operates out of a closet with street access. It was refreshing to step in and not be swarmed by Apple employees trying to meet their sales quotas. (“May I recommend the iPhone 137+!?” For clarity, I should note that the exclamation mark is part of the name.) The guy didn’t even look up from behind the Plexiglass—not a COVID vestige, but a bulletproofing measure to deter Apple IT mobsters. I passed my phone through the slot. “Come back tomorrow,” the man said. At least, I think it was a man, going solely on the low register of the voice. The closet was dimly lit for obvious reasons.

 

I exited, phoneless. Without my device in either palm, my hands shook. Get it together, I told myself. First world problem. But is it? The homeless people I pass on Hastings Street have phones. I’ll bet Apple air-dropped phones on North Sentinel Island, described as the place where the “most isolated tribe in the world” lives. It’s part of Apple’s recycle/reuse program, a place to dump some of those iPhone 6’s that everyone but me has deemed passé.

  

I needed distraction. I went on a bike ride. Ninety minutes is standard but I couldn’t keep track of time to report because, you know, no phone. (Where did I put my grandfather’s pocket watch?) I’m going to say it was my fastest ride ever. Longest, too. Take my word for it. Thank you for the enthusiastic congratulations.

 

Deep Cove, my destination, was stunning, as always. I wanted to take a photo which I would delete three weeks later when I’d realize it looked exactly like the four dozen Deep Cove photos I’ve taken before but, sans phone, I just had to take in the beauty for myself. Nothing for Facebook. Boring, eh? At least I won’t have to waste ten seconds deleting pics when my phone runs out of storage. Again. I’ll throw in that I saw a pod of orcas and a stunning sunset as I pedalled over the Second Narrows Bridge while heading home. You’ll just have to trust me. I gloried in my newfound state of being in the moment.

 

As the repair shop’s opening neared, I found myself more than surviving. Thoughts of my phone still shaped my behavior. I’d pat my pockets, then glance on the kitchen counter. Yep, no phone. While walking to the shop, I stopped in front of an abstract alley mural, ready for a selfie moment only to laugh at my silliness. The mural clashed with my coat. I reached for my phone to get fifty cents off my latte with my coffee app. Shrug. The savings wouldn’t have made a dent in my Icelandic debt. I thought of texting a couple of friends to grab a coffee since the repair shop is in the area. Whatever. I’m really not that social. I couldn’t check the hourly weather. It’s currently sunny in Vancouver so, obviously, that wouldn’t last since it’s still March. I could always check the sky instead of my phone. A little neck strain, doing things old-fashioned, but nothing to send me to Emergency. I could wait until my next concussion from smashing my head on an open cupboard. That’s pretty common, isn’t it?

 

Thinking of this pigeon lady I saw

in a Manhattan park years ago.

These birds are handmade. 

Could become my new hobby if I

remained phoneless, but mine 

would be balls of gray felt. 

I'm not that crafty. 

Being sunny, I sat on a bench in a park and watched the pigeons. “Rats with wings,” a friend of mine used to say. They’re all right though. Were they mooching like a hopeful basset hound? A couple of the birds concerned me, their feet seemingly deformed as they favored one over the other. I’d post a pic on Twitter to get people to weigh in—a new plague, someone would likely say. That might evolve into all kinds of doom. Perhaps being phoneless, I’ve spared countless people from a sudden anxiety spike. To my three followers in Egypt which is apparently the world titleholder for Most Pigeons, you’re welcome. Live in peace.  

 

Think I’ll hit another café, fit in another writing session. I’m feeling uncharacteristically focused, phone-free, boosted by a natural surge of Vitamin D, better connected to nature and all. The shop is open till five. Turns out the phone can wait. 

“IDOL”-ING AWAY

It’s rare for “American Idol” to make news anymore. I used to watch it regularly, even after it stopped being a watercooler talking point and we no longer had office pools with everyone selecting a different contestant to back. (Did anyone ever bet on Sanjaya?) I’d probably tune in a little this season, background fodder as I clean the kitchen or work my way through the Sunday New York Times crossword, but my 55” flatscreen leapt off my living room hutch back in July and could not be resuscitated. Maybe it fretted I’d start watching some incarnation of “Real Housewives” or discover “Wings” in syndication. (I haven’t ogled Tim Daly in ages.) I can’t seem to watch American networks on my laptop and I feel no sense of urgency to get another TV. (I took my flatlined flatscreen to an electronics recycling depot, but I still shake my head over all the plastic and whatnot that goes into those monstrosities.) Has the television gone the way of the VCR and the answering machine?

 

“American Idol” gained some attention over a week ago when Katy Perry broke down and ranted about the insanity of school shootings in the U.S. after one country singer trying out mentioned living through a shooting in Santa Fe, Texas—May 18, 2018; ten dead. How many of us had forgotten. They blur together. Insanity, indeed. I’m sure her diatribe wasn’t welcome in the living rooms of country music fans who seem to have stuck with the show in disproportionate numbers, but all the better. As incalcitrant as so many Americans are about their beloved right to bear arms, there need to be new forums for trying to shake them up.

 

But I stumbled on another moment from that week’s show, thanks to a filler article on Yahoo. It related to another male country singer hoping for a gold ticket to Hollywood. His name: Jon Wayne Hatfield, to which “Idol” judge Luke Bryan responded, “There’s no doubt, you’re from the country.” He’d traveled from Goshen, Ohio (population 652), arriving with his guitar and his own sad story, both essential items to get TV time during tryouts. The singer stated he’d been raised by his grandparents and, after his grandmother died, his grandfather, who’d “lost his best friend of fifty years,” shut out the world, including his grandson for a year and a half. Being a man of an older generation, it seems he internalized his grief. 

 

I was unfazed. “American Idol” has done deceased grannies to death. But there was more. Presumably primed by producers, Katy Perry told Jon Wayne to bring his grandfather in for the audition and in walked a thin man with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, a tattoo showing on one hand, dressed smartly in jeans, a jean jacket and a simple gray fitted t-shirt.

 

The grandparents met when Ray was sixteen. He explains, cryptically enough to add television drama, “I told her about myself and she said, ‘I love you’ and that ‘It’s okay.’” Cue role reversal, with separate clips of grandfather and grandson: Ray comes out as gay; Jon says it doesn’t change a damn thing. Back to Ray: “It’s a big relief to stand here and be proud and and say I’m gay and there’s nothing wrong with it.”

 

As a cynic, which I often am, I might shrug and note how I’ve heard hundreds of coming out stories in my life. “Idol” aimed to draw viewers in, to get them to choke up. Mighty me, prone to crying over elephant documentaries and a certain version of a particular Joni Mitchell song—yes, cynics have an Achilles’ heel—did not tear up. Nontheless, I realized the moment was still important, for general viewers, especially those in red states where gays might be less inclined to make their presence known, for obvious reasons. Here, invading their living rooms, was a smiley, sweet soul, a man’s man who, like the odd cowboy, could get weepy…about his journey and about his love for his grandson. In spaces where the word gay is never spoken unless as with disparaging, mocking twist, a bit of sympathetic queer content got through the barricades, the word broadcast not once but twice in the segment. (Here's the full "Idol" clip.)

 

I suppose a Republican-run state legislature that’s already checked off banning drag queen story times and gender-ambiguous restrooms will take the lead in drafting something to strengthen television content warnings. “The following program makes gays seem all right or contains woke crap. Viewer discretion is advised.” Perhaps a dude stormed out of the family den or grabbed the remote—presumably he’s the commander-in-chief of that contraption—and switched stations to basketball highlights which is, sadly, all there is in the low season when there isn’t any baseball or football. Figure skating and “sports” with ski jackets don’t count. “American Idol” may have lost a viewing family, for the week or forever, but the kids still saw and heard a gay grandfather and heard a straight grandson say it’s all okay. Well done, ABC!

 

Let me pause to repeat Ray’s words again: “I’m gay and there’s nothing wrong with it.” High fives, fingers snaps, back slaps and all that. By gosh, I’d almost forgotten that Katy Perry’s breakthrough song was “I Kissed a Girl.”

 

I can’t help but brush my cynicism aside and feel for Ray. The man is still adjusting. His speech is as much for himself as for anyone else. He’s building himself up after a lifetime of hearing people disparage gays. 

 

For the record, I'm partial to
Steven #1 (left).

Just like every person who has had to come out as something on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum, I clearly recall the pain, self-hate and angst within me while I kept a major part of my identity secret, fearing rejection and revulsion from people who mattered to me. For the most part, that dark chapter ended in my twenties as dramatic reveals became, if not old hat, safer as I’d by then connected with gay and lesbian friends and found varying levels of support from straight people who, if they didn’t suddenly share Bronski Beat mix tapes and ask me which actor I thought was the better Steven Carrington on “Dynasty,” still seemed content to join me for dinner at Chili’s or to play tennis. Gay was okay, even if it didn’t come up much in conversation. 

 

Breathe now, Ray. The man delayed this coming out process for half a century. I’m not going to speculate about his marriage or gay dalliances—isn’t that a lovely word?—but there’s no doubt being some degree of closeted weighed on him. There’s a degree of guardedness that comes when you’re not out. Letting people in risks having them intuit what you’re working so hard to deny, cover or ignore. Going on national television, his story used by producers in an attempt to get people to talk about a show regarded as passé, is quite a way to finally come out, once and for all. 

 

It’s done now, Ray. No more secrets. 

 

May this man now lead a fuller life. He can’t make up for lost time—those decades are gone—but let him live out his years feeling free, no longer worried about what a relative or neighbor might think.  

 

If it matters, which to me it really doesn’t, Jon Wayne Hatfield, done grandpa proud. He sang and strummed proficiently to a tune he penned himself, “Tell Me, Ray.” Good enough for a ticket to Hollywood. 

 

Tell it all, Ray. Only maybe just to your grandson and people who care about you. Your moment as a public service announcement is behind you.