by Lou Cove
“It makes me sick,” Howie says when I show him, and he is visibly disturbed. “This is the message coming all over again to watch out for one another. Love one another. Because you never know when it’s going to slam shut. And you get whacked.”
“I guess I was the better campaign manager?” I muster, despite the dark news.
“I think that’s what they call damning with faint praise, hombre. But yes. The best I could ask for.”
The drive to San Francisco International is cold and foggy, not how I imagined summer in California. Howie and Carly recharged some of what was lost in me, but there is, I am realizing, no way to retrieve the way things used to be. Their space is too small, and their lives are no longer as free. Dorothy dying is the capper—driving home the point, more than my fractured family seems ever to have done, that what we dream of and strive for is not necessarily what it seems.
But there’s a plane waiting and a ticket in my pocket.
“Did you know about my dad?” I ask Howie, staring through the window at the fog hugging Yerba Buena.
“What about him?”
“About Danielle?”
“I knew that.” He doesn’t offer more.
I press. “When did you find out? Did you know it was happening before they got divorced?
“Does it matter what I know?”
I bristle at the question he uses to answer my question.
“Come on. You always say live life honestly. Be honest now,” I stammer. “Why protect me? Nobody cared before. If I smoked pot. If I disappeared for two days. If I saw you all naked or snorting coke or telling secrets you shouldn’t be telling in front of kids. I saw Carly giving you a blowjob in a slideshow just after I turned twelve. You showed me that! You showed me everything!”
I can’t hold the rage. I need to open the car door and fling myself out—to be run over by an eighteen-wheeler before I come to a stop. My cheeks already feel bloody with road rash.
As if he senses my desperation, Howie stops the Camaro hard on the shoulder of the 101, pointing at my door.
“Get out.”
He meets me around the passenger side, grabs my shoulders, and forces me down toward the ground. I won’t cry this time.
“Listen. I’ll always be honest with you, OK? That’s my rule and I’m not gonna be the one to break it. But before I am, I want to tell you something. Can you listen to me?”
I look away, the blazing, heavy metal traffic so close.
“Can you listen to me?” he asks again above the roar.
I look away.
“Listen to me!” Howie yells, his voice so sharp it cuts the fog I’m trapped in. He’s never yelled at me before. But I hear him now.
“There’s something I want to share with you.”
I nod again, unable to answer.
“When I was twenty-three or twenty-four my parents came out here to California. They heard that I moved out to a commune and that meant Charlie Manson to them. So they wanted to see what was going on and make sure I was OK. And while they were here I was getting Rolfed and doing all this counterculture kind of crap. I said to my dad when we got left alone, ‘You know, I don’t know anything about you. I want to know your story. I want to be friends. I want to know about your life.’”
“I don’t want to be friends with my dad,” I interrupt. “Ever.”
“Hey, shut up for a second. Just listen.” He holds my shoulders with his strong hands, trying to hold me back from the road. “I told my dad I wanted to know his story, OK? I wanted to be a man and know the man. So he obliged. He started telling me what I thought I wanted to know. And it’s all about this hooker he was seeing on the side.”
I am back with him at this unexpected turn. The metal-rubber-asphalt din hushes. He feels me come back and his hands loosen. “And it got to the point where his lips were moving and he was talking but I wasn’t hearing him anymore, because inside I had become my mother. And the voices inside my head were going You fucking son of a bitch. How dare you … Does mother know you’re fucking a whore?! And the truth was he was actually going to see this hooker with my mother’s brother. The two of them would go and see her together. I mean, I went blind thinking about it. But I finally came out of that trance and said ‘Dad! Dad! Dad! Stop! I was wrong. I can’t do this. Let’s just go back. You be my dad, I’ll be your son, and I…’ Ugh. It was awful.” He shakes his head. “So I learned a life lesson there. And later I heard about a line in the Bible: ‘Thou shalt not gaze upon thy father’s nakedness.’ Because if you pull down your dad’s pants, if you stare at your dad’s dick, it’s going to make you crazy.”
A million wheels return to focus, along with a sound like a squadron of TIE fighters, bearing down for attack. Howie’s grip tightens again.
“I share that with you because there are things you really don’t want to know about your dad. And you’ve crossed that line more than most because of the divorce. Because somehow in living through this, you’ve been given permission to see your parents as people, not parents. That’s different. You have a Dad. A capital-D Dad. And you know Peter. Peter has a sex life. I didn’t want to know that stuff about my dad. I couldn’t handle it.
“Just sit on this for today. Think about what I said on the plane going home. When you get home, go to sleep. And when you wake up in the morning, if you still want to talk about it, call me and I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
*
I cry when the plane takes off and I cry when I walk in the door of Mama’s new apartment, but I don’t let her see. Amanda and David are asleep.
“Did you have a good time?”
“I love California.”
“I do, too. And I love Howie and Carly. How are they? We should call them and tell them you’re back safely.”
“You can,” I say.
She wants to stay up and talk but I tell her I’m too tired and I go to bed, even though it’s just seven in the evening by my circadian clock.
I don’t call Howie the next day, or the day after that. I consider what he said—how ironic it is that the guy whose dick I have stared at more times than I can count is telling me not to stare at my father’s dick. I want to maintain the anger I felt in the car on the way to the airport. I want to be angry at him now, and maybe deflect the anger I am feeling for Papa. But anger is hard for me to sustain. For better or worse, this is me—hungry enough to keep searching for the edible side of the rotten apple.
When Mama takes me to buy new clothes I don’t complain. When she shows me how to find the right T line on the map that will get me to my new school, I listen attentively. When she asks me to babysit for Amanda and David so she can go out to the single parent group meeting at Runkle School, I say no problem.
“I’m so glad you’re finally here,” she says.
“I am, too,” I assure her.
She hugs me. “I need a man around the house!” I nod silently. “I was reading a mystery novel last night and it spooked me.” I nod again. “But now you’re here.”
I take Amanda and David to the Star Market on the T and buy all the fixings for tacos, then I make them like Carly does, crumbling the beef in a cast-iron skillet and sprinkling chopped onion and tomato on top. I heat a Table Talk pie in the oven. I get cherry, even though I really want apple. Amanda and David like cherry.
Papa calls after dinner. “Danielle and I want you to know: you can come live with us as soon as you’re ready. We’ll help you get back on your feet.”
“I’m OK,” I tell him.
“You could use some adult supervision,” he says, and when I don’t reply: “Danielle says she wants to get back to the guitar lessons.”
“Maybe,” I tell him.
“How was California?” he changes tack.
“I love it.”
“What’s not to love? And Howie?”
“Making movies. Being Howie.”
“He can’t be anyone else, that’s for sure.”
I wish you could. Reme
mber sitting on the stoop? Swimming in the lake? Hugging me on the dock on my birthday like no one around us mattered. I never wanted to be so far away from you.
“I love you, Lou,” he says.
“I love you, too,” I tell him. And I do. Gazing upon it all, I still do.
*
The next morning I wake up and spend a good part of the morning in Mama’s bathroom, sick to my stomach. My ass has started to peel from the nude beach burn: the long strips of skin a last memento of California wildness. There’s a copy of Bostonia magazine next to the toilet and when I’m feeling less queasy I take the psych questionnaire inside, then write the results in my journal: “Says that I am under too much stress and that I need professional medical help. Cosmic bummer.”
Howie’s bent and frayed Scarlet Letter has been added to the books Mama picked to put on a small shelf in my room. I splay on the bed and flip through it back to front. The word “Salem” jumps out instantly from the appendix:
The novel was immediately popular, allowing Hawthorne to move away from Salem with this good riddance: “I detest this town so much that I hate to go into the streets or to have the people see me. Anywhere else, I shall at once be entirely another man.”
The T clangs by outside on Beacon Street as I lie there, Chestnut Street still alive in my mind. No. This is where Hawthorne was wrong. I hated Salem, but then I latched on to it. And I held on because that was the only anchor I was offered. Wishing the eighth home to be the final, the stable one. But my obsession with place has turned out to be a red herring. New York. Salem. California. They were only as nourishing as the people who shared the space and time. Howie is right: if we’re all going to get whacked, what matters is who is standing beside you when the universe speaks your name. And it matters that you stand with them.
Howie calls. It’s been a week since we said good-bye.
“What’s the word, compadre?” he asks, three thousand miles removed.
“What’s up with you?”
“Starting a new film tomorrow. The Dong Show. I play Chuck Bare-Ass.”
“I’m starting a new school tomorrow.”
“I know. You ready?”
“Yup.” An abbreviation for a universe of information. I can’t find the words to explain to him just how ready I am. How ready he has made me. And how scared I am.
“Hey. You know, you never called me back.”
“Yeah, well, you were right.”
“It’s not about right or wrong, little brother. It’s about how deep you want to swim. You don’t have to go all the way.”
“I’m not going to. I’m going my way.”
“That’s the way you were meant to go,” he says softly.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “I think I got it.”
“OK, then. I love you. You know that? We love you. You’re the man.”
Author’s Note
The Family Endures
How lucky I am to love, and be loved by, this amazing cast of characters I call family.
Amanda lives in Western Massachusetts with her husband, Matt, and her son, Zachary. She is a woman of rare sensitivity and compassion who has devoted her career to helping children in crisis.
David is a DJ living in Los Angeles with his wife, Jen. He spins records around the world, regularly mixing the retro sounds we grew up to with twenty-first century beats. He has little memory of the events that occur in this book, but he does remember Bunny Yabba fondly.
My father and Danielle married in 1984. They took me in when things were at their worst, helped me finish high school, and taught me, by example, the skills I would need to have a career of impact and meaning. They also gave me two beautiful sisters, Antonia and Dirrane, and cofounded a welfare-to-work company together which they continue to run. In 2009 they were featured in a Discovery Channel series called The Science of Sex Appeal in which their longstanding relationship was put to hormonal and neurological tests. They passed.
My mother nearly died in 1993 from a sudden liver infection. Her then-boyfriend Rich, a loving and curmudgeonly anti-Papa, stayed faithfully by her side through the transplant and recovery and they were married in 1996. She recently took on a consulting assignment to develop banking software. The woman who wielded a sledgehammer with grace has smashed more than her share of walls post–Chestnut Street.
Carly continues to help others as a therapist in California, providing support to adolescent women and their families, couples seeking help with sexual issues or the psychological aspects of infertility, and people struggling with health care providers. Her ability to express and inspire joy is an enduring gift to this world.
Howie retired from porn in the mid-’80s when HIV/AIDS swept in, after appearing in more than a hundred X-rated films and videos. He won the porn industry’s equivalent of an Oscar at the first ever AVN awards in 1984, taking home not one but two trophies for best actor and best supporting actor in the same year. He still keeps journals and, in 2013, published Hindsight: True Love & Mischief in the Golden Age of Porn, a memoir about his storied career. His iconoclasm, artistry, and honesty continue to influence my understanding of what it means to be a good human being, and a good man.
Howie and Carly are still married. They have three kids and two grandkids. Aside from Uncle Rick and Aunt Leslie, they are the only couple we know to have survived the Great Divorce Wave of the 1980s. If you’re a romantic, you may think it’s some kind of miracle. If you’re a cynic, a case of make-believe. But it’s just them: honest and in love.
I met and fell in love with my wife, Dana, on a cold November night in a Northampton ice cream shop in 1993. She was one week from moving out of town and I don’t like ice cream. But certain things are meant to be. Dana’s direct and honest way was instantly familiar, and an instant relief. We married in 1998 and Sam and Sylvie joined us shortly thereafter.
Howie and Carly returned to New England for a visit last autumn. They only stayed for a few days this time around, and it wasn’t nearly enough. A little older and slower than in 1978, they are no less capable of inspiring delight and imagination in every generation of the Cove family.
Howie and me, back in Berkeley, California, 2014
Acknowledging Memoir, Memory, and the Many Supporters of Man of the Year
The risk in taking a snapshot of a brief, dramatic period is that it will be seen as representative of an entire life, and that the people who populate the story—the way they behaved, their blunders, heroism, bad decisions, honest mistakes—will be frozen in time. The moments I recall in this book were defining ones for me, but they constitute just one chapter in a lifelong tale. This chapter begins with the last, best year in the life of my nuclear family, as well as the events that led to its painful implosion. By the end, everyone was struggling to do the right thing.
Conversations here are remembered, transcribed from my earliest journals, and informed by interviews I conducted over a two-year period with all the major players (and some of the minor ones, too). Events are sometimes conflated to provide a more efficient narrative, or because they have converged over time in the fickle glue of gray matter. With few exceptions, I have changed the names and obscured certain details of people who appear in these pages to protect their privacy.
The most important thing for the reader to know is this: there wouldn’t be a story to tell—and I certainly wouldn’t be capable of telling it—if my family hadn’t found a way through the challenging times. The support of my parents, my siblings, and Howie and Carly Gordon during the writing of this book and all the years leading up to it is what has given me the strength to be disciplined, to remain true to myself, and to my desire to write this story.
Family and creativity are the two most precious gems in my life, even though they occasionally threaten to collide. Holding the whole of this life is never easy, but loving one another deeply and listening closely to the other gives us all a fighting chance. I hope that I have shown you all the same grace and understanding that you have shown
me throughout my life.
For everyone else who helped along the way, portraying you in this book is simple.
This book became a reality over dinner in Los Angeles, after a stop in Berkeley to visit with my old friends. The brilliant and inquisitive Jessica Elbaum asked me what I was writing these days. Although I had not yet begun, this was the story I told her. Her enthusiasm and encouragement have persisted, and if you like this book you have Jess to thank.
I received substantial creative support from Sarah Larson, Mary Cronin, Tammy Greenwood, and Jane Cavolina—literary lights, all.
Women and men of the year include Lisa Nelson, Catherine Newman, Sarah Hedrick, Naomi Shulman, Matthew Glassman, Tom Timmins, Jeb Brody, Courtney Kivowitz, Dana Adam Shapiro, Joshuah Bearman, Steve Bodow, Shoshana Berger, Ben Gundersheimer, Scott Goodstein, Damon Lindelof, Aaron Lansky, Brooke Berman, AJ Jacobs, Jill Soloway, Larry Smith, Christopher Noxon, Davy Rothbart, Lauren Redniss, Ira Silverberg, Emily Spivack, Susan McPherson, Ross Martin, Betsy Amster, Ina Stern, Jane Friedman, Tina Pohlman, Alex Grossman, and Colby Smith. Thank you for seeing something worthwhile here, and thank you for supporting me.
I want to extend a special thanks to Joshua Foer, Man of the Year enthusiast and true believer.
When we first spoke, I told Alex Jacobs that I had devoted my career to championing the creative work of others and now I was looking for someone to champion mine. He promised that I would get more than someone in this process, I would get the support of the entire team at Elyse Cheney Literary Associates.
I can happily report that they are the champions.
Alex: no one could wish for a better campaign manager. Happily, I also found a friend.
What’s more, I have had the good fortune to be adopted by the Flatiron Books family: Colin Dickerman, Bob Miller, Marlena Bittner, and James Melia. From the moment we met, I’ve asked myself just one thing: Where have you been all my life? It doesn’t get better.
Above all, Dana. I often reference Emerson’s claim that “The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.” But you are my true other half, and my expression loses its meaning without you. You made the time and space for this work, but all along I have understood that my time and space is empty without you, Sam, and Sylvie. Thank you.
