Cover Story: New Kid on the Block

"My mom said, 'Is it OK?' I said, 'Hello! I owe $5,000 on it. Of course it's OK."'

Then he was asked to tell the story of the first ten years of his life.

"Are you kidding me?" he said, laughing loudly. But a few moments later, he was off and telling what he had never publicly told before. "My mom and Vernon got separated when I was one. We kind of lived on the run — actually, not on the run so much as we moved back and forth to stay away from him. He was an alcoholic and violent and whatnot. We moved so he wouldn't know where I was." He went on to request that Vernon Grissom not be referred to as his father. His father, he said, was Ray Parker, his mother's second husband, who died last July: "He is the only dad I ever had." He said that he himself most often refers to Vernon Grissom either by his first name or simply as "my sperm donor."

A waiter arrived with his spaghetti. Aiken said grace, silently, and when he lifted his eyes, he asked to talk about Vernon later. Right now, he would just like to enjoy his food.

The thing about Clay Aiken is that he is genuinely nice, open and warm. In Raleigh, in the sunny areas surrounding the leafy middle-class neighborhood where he grew up, this is well-known and stated nearly ad nauseam by everyone who has ever come into contact with him. The encomiums flow freely from Mr. Murphy, his high school principal; from Mrs. Fitzpatrick, his high school attendance officer; from any number of other teachers; and from all of his childhood friends, both male and female, of which he has many. Clayton Aiken — everyone in Raleigh calls him Clayton — is and always has been enthusiastic, outgoing, funny, unique in spirit and dress (the only one in his school to wear yellow high-top sneakers), rarely a disciplinary problem, not a smoker, not a drinker, not a partyer, "sweet and thoughtful, a great catch for somebody," charismatic and "so nice you could never be mean to him." They do hold it against him that he likes to wear plaid shorts. And maybe all that Mrs. Fitzpatrick can say about his attendance record is that it was "good." And maybe when somebody uses the word "retarded" in a sentence, such as "That's so retarded," he does tend to come on a little strong with the lectures. In general, though, as Principal Murphy likes to point out, "He was absolutely a gift. A gift."

Gaping eaters aside, nothing much seems to bother him, either, his overall philosophy being "There's nothing so wrong that it can't be easily fixed or easily ignored. I just let things roll off."