“Gary,” Robin said, “I am over here wilting.”
“Robin’s eyes are watering,” Howard said. “Come on, Gary, take a hint.”
“No one in my life has ever told me I have bad breath,” I said.
“Oh please, face it, man, you need a mouth transplant,” Howard replied.
“I just can’t believe you guys are having fun with this. I just can’t believe it.”
“Seriously, it’s pretty damn bad when your mouth is your smelliest orifice,” Howard said. Then the studio erupted with laughs and catcalls.
“Oh no, he’s starting to cry,” Howard said. “Listen, I’m going to make a dental appointment for you. But your bad breath is famous. I’m going to make it under a fake name. I don’t want the dentist to know you are coming. Really, I’ve smelled tuches better than that. Gary’s proctologist put his finger in Gary’s mouth. He said ‘Open up. Oh my God you have teeth in there. The man talks through his tuches.’ ”
“I just want the listeners to know I do not have bad breath,” I said.
“Oh Gary, wake up and smell your breath,” Howard said. “Look at Gary, he’s getting all upset. Well, I’m going to get you an appointment with my gal Judy for your birthday,” Howard said. “And you know her motto: When you see Judy, you don’t smell like doody. I swear homosexuals smell Gary’s breath and they go into heat. He thinks they are flirting with them, he is sending out a scent. Let’s take a break.”
I was moderately irritated during the commercial. But I told myself the same thing I always did: Deal with it, they’re just busting your balls, move on. We have other stuff to do on the show.
“If you’re just joining us we’ve been giving Gary a hard time about his breath,” Howard said when he came back on the air. “So here is what we are going to do: We are going to bring people in and ask them to smell his breath.”
“You know what,” I said. “This is not a good morning for it. I’ve been smoking a lot of cigarettes and I drank that Nutri-system shake and it coats your mouth. I’ll lose.”
“Get some of the workmen in the hallway. Bring them in here. Hi, how are you, sir? Are you a carpenter?”
“No, I am a painter,” said a man with a thick Italian accent.
“We don’t know you, right? Are you a fan of the show?” Howard asked.
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
“I want you to do me a favor. See that guy in the blue shirt? Gary Dell’Abate is his name.”
“Oh that is my paesano,” he said.
“I want you to smell his breath.”
“Oh my God.”
“He’s a good guy, but his mouth to me is smellier than his tuches.”
“Well, we put a little shellac in the mouth and polish it up.”
“I don’t think that will help. Now do you mind if he breathes in your face.”
I did it. There was no reaction.
“Gary,” Howard said. “Do me a favor, say, ‘Hello, Boss.’ ”
“Hello, Boss.” I knew the painter was going to say something mean. He had to. He was on the radio and wanted to be funny.
“Ooh he needs some mouthwash,” the painter said.
“How bad is it one to ten, ten being the worst?” Howard asked.
“I go near the eight. But if he goes in the shower today he’s a new man.”
We took another break and I thought that would be the end of it. I was wrong. The next caller on the line was Howard’s mom.
“I think Howard that you are really hitting the bottom of the barrel to do a show about Gary’s breath. I think you have hit a new low. Gary is so devoted and sweet and wonderful. I have been near him and never smelled anything like what you are talking about. It’s very unfair of you.”
“Let me tell you something, Ma. We work with the guy every day.”
“I know you do, and he is wonderful. And this is the way you show your love? If anyone did this to you, Howard, you would hit the ceiling.”
“Mommy, they took a poll and four out of five dentists said he doesn’t own a toothbrush. It’s the worst-smelling orifice on his body, and if I don’t tell him, who is going to tell him? Gary, don’t you appreciate this?”
“No, I really don’t, Boss, because I don’t believe it.”
“How could you do this to Gary?” Howard’s mom said. “He is so devoted to you.”
“I am doing this out of love.”
“How do you think his mother is going to feel?”
We’d soon find out. Because when I got home later that day Howard called. I was watching Jeopardy!, which I watched every day. I am a trivia genius, after all.
“How you doing?” he said to me.
Howard didn’t ever call to ask me how I was doing. I said, “Okay.”
“Were you okay with today?”
“Yeah.” Actually, I hadn’t given it any thought. He had been making fun of me for years and never apologized.
“I’m sorry if I was too hard on you this morning.”
“Howard, what is all this about?”
“Your mother called my mother. She was very upset. Then my mother called me and said I better call you and apologize. So I’m sorry.”
I was mortified. Whose mother calls their boss’s mother to complain about their son’s treatment? All I wanted to do was get off the phone with him so I could call my mom and ask her what the fuck she was doing. Howard didn’t know anything about how I grew up or my mom’s tendency for outbursts and her history with depression. Suddenly I was ten years old again and remembering how anxious I got when she and I were out in public—would she lose it? Would someone be asking me the next day if she was crazy? Was Gary’s crazy mom going to be a recurring bit on the show, just like she was in Uniondale Park? And then I realized there was something worse: my mom calling the office every day to yell at someone, like she used to do to my dad’s secretary, co-workers, and boss. I decided I needed to show her I was a big boy, that I didn’t need coddling. And, in a way, I wanted her to hear that calling my boss’s mom made things worse for me, not better. So I said to Howard, “Listen, tomorrow I want you to hammer me as hard as you ever have.”
He had no problem with that. After we hung up I called my mom. “Mom, you gotta be kidding me! You can’t do that. I’m a grown-up, I have my own apartment! I live in Manhattan!”
“I know,” she said. “But you sounded so upset.”
“That is the show!” I was still yelling. “Why wouldn’t you call me, not her?”
I was really angry, not just because of what she did, but because I wanted to be clear that she was never to call my office or anyone I worked with ever again. Maybe it was a singular moment of clarity for her, because I never once heard about her interfering again. But I still spent many months after that being wary whenever I got ripped on the show. I was never out of the woods. It reminded me of something my father always said about my mom: She does the right thing in the wrong way, and the way she does it pisses everyone off.
In junior high I first started exploring the idea of dating girls. There was one girl in particular I liked to flirt with and we began passing each other notes in class. I don’t think we had ever been alone together or held hands, let alone kissed. But we joked about a lot of stuff. At the end of one of the notes she sent me she added, “PS, I’m pregnant and you did it and now you are going to pay.”
If you were thirteen and read that note in context, you’d know it was a joke and think it was hilarious. I tucked it in my wallet and forgot about it.
The next day I accidentally left my wallet and my lunch money at home. I called my mom and asked her to bring it to school. Uh-oh. You had to be three steps ahead of her, and already I was a step behind. I hadn’t remembered what was in my wallet until after I’d asked her to bring it to me. Okay, she won’t read it, I thought, and then almost immediately realized, of course she would. I told myself, If she reads that last line, she’ll get that it was a joke. Then I immediately thought to myself, Of course she
won’t know it was a joke.
I was sitting in English class when I got called to the office. When I walked in I found my mom, crying hysterically. “Mom, you read the note didn’t you?”
She couldn’t even speak; she just nodded her head yes. How could I have known she probably had visions of the night Steven came home and announced he had knocked up his girlfriend?
“It was a joke, Mom!”
Didn’t matter. I should have known better. I should have run through the scenarios before I called her. In that way, it’s no different than producing a radio show—it’s all about being able to anticipate.
“Please leave now, Mom,” I said, while she sat in the office sobbing. “You are making a scene. Go home.”
That night, as soon as my father got home, I watched the two of them walk into their bedroom and close the door. A few minutes later my dad came back out, alone. “You shouldn’t joke about stuff like that,” he told me.
“Okay,” I said.
To this day, I think what my dad really meant was, You shouldn’t joke about stuff like that—because then I have to deal with your mother.
1988
My mom had taken the antibiotic tetracycline when she was pregnant with me. Turns out, doctors later learned, that a common side effect for pregnant women who take the drug is that it can permanently stain their kids’ teeth. No joke. My entire life, I had teeth that were stained in a strange, asymmetrical pattern. Kids made fun of me for it. They were merciless. Most of what I remember about fifth grade is being picked on for having a mouthful of yellow teeth. I asked a girl out once—who even knew what that meant at that age—and she turned me down because of my banana-colored chompers. I was crushed and told my mom about it, which you might think was a stupid move, but in moments like that my mom was at her best. She was absolutely convinced the girl was an idiot.
“You are the most handsome boy in that school,” she told me. “That is her problem, not yours.” I was thinking, Ma, I’ve got a mirror, I know that’s not true. But if your mom isn’t your biggest fan then you are kind of fucked.
Anyway, it didn’t help matters that I was deathly afraid of the dentist. Sometimes I outright refused to go. If anyone put their hands in my mouth I would gag. But my freshman year in college, as I was gaining more confidence in school and working at the radio station and thinking about the life I might have once I escaped Long Island, I decided it was time to get my yellow teeth capped.
The experience was brutal. I thrashed and gagged and struggled. And that was just when they put the bib on me. When the dentist finally came in and saw what was happening he exhibited exactly the kind of empathy I’d become used to all my life: He told me to calm down and grow up. I was so shocked, I did.
After that dreadful, scary, painful experience, I swore off going to the dentist again. I couldn’t do it. I was just too scared. A year went by, then two, and three. I might have gone once or twice before graduating from college, but when I started working I never bothered. It didn’t matter how much Howard made fun of my teeth or my breath or any combination of how they worked together. I wasn’t going. And it turned into an issue. My gums became badly infected and my teeth were in really bad shape. Underneath the caps my teeth were literally rotting, like something out of eighteenth-century England.
My teeth, how big they were, how bright they were, how much they resembled a horse’s, became a constant topic of conversation on the show, along with my deathly fear of dentists. By the time I had been working with Howard for a couple of years, it had been close to six years since I had sat in a dentist’s chair. My mouth was killing me, but I could not bring myself to make an appointment.
One afternoon in 1987, I went to a graduation party for one of our interns at her parents’ house. One of the intern’s uncles walked up to me and introduced himself. He said his name was Charles Randolph and that he was a big fan of the show. He also happened to be a dentist. “I know what you’ve said on the air about dentists,” he said. “But you’ve got to see someone. Come by my office. I promise I will make you comfortable.”
Of course that phrase—“I promise I’ll make you comfortable”—sounds creepy now, but I immediately liked and trusted him. And even I knew caps didn’t last forever, especially if you never bother going to the dentist. So I resolved to see Dr. Randolph and have them replaced.
But it wasn’t that easy. After years of neglect, my gums were so bad I needed several appointments and treatments to clean them up. Naturally, when it was finally time to take care of the caps, it couldn’t be a private moment between me and Dr. Randolph. It was a part of the show. Only this time, it was going to be videotaped.
It was the winter of 1988 and Howard had decided to do our first pay-per-view special, called Howard Stern’s Negligee and Underpants Party. It was the early days of pay-per-view on cable. There were still plenty of places around the country that weren’t wired for cable. People were getting excited and ordering the special. The numbers coming in were astounding. We started hearing about fans who had plans to drive for miles just to get to a town that was wired, so they could book motel rooms for viewing parties. It became one of the highest-grossing premium specials of the time.
We did a Lesbian Dial-a-Date segment and had Dweezil and Moon Unit Zappa on as guests. Vinnie Mazzeo lit his underwear on fire and then cooked an egg. And they filmed me at the dentist getting my teeth capped. Unfortunately, the show ran long, so most of Vinnie’s bit and all of mine got cut from the special. That’s when Howard had a brilliant idea: Let’s sell a videotape of the show and include the stuff that was cut out, including my dental visit. Only instead of just slapping the segment onto the end of the show, Howard and I added a running play-by-play of my procedure. Basically it was the equivalent of the bonus commentary on a DVD, a decade before anyone was doing that.
Honestly, it’s pretty gross to watch. I’m not sure how either of us made it through the analysis. In fact, while I’m sitting in the chair, I look into the camera and say, “You have no idea how disgusting this is going to get.”
First there was a shot of Dr. Randolph sticking a needle several inches long into my gums, right above my two front teeth. Then he took a drill and sliced open my caps, a straight line down the middle. “There goes twelve hundred dollars’ worth of caps,” I said on the tape.
“Oh man, oh man!” Howard was screaming.
It was actually an excruciating experience all around. There was a camera inches from my mouth as Dr. Randolph took a pair of dental pliers and started tugging and pulling on my caps, jimmying them back and forth as if each one was a wedding ring that was on too tight. First you see the cap, which is split in two, moving my gum line and then all of a sudden, crack, it comes loose. What’s beneath it is a yellow tooth that looks as small as a baby’s because it had been shaved the very first time I had caps put in.
“Hey look,” Howard said in the voice-over. “It’s Eddie Munster.”
After that, Randolph took a tiny drill the size of a pin and started creating a space at my gumline so the new cap could slide in easily. Blood was squirting out, making my already yellow, shaved teeth look even more discolored and grotesque.
“Look how green your teeth are there,” Howard said.
“That’s how bad they used to be,” I said.
“You look like Linda Blair in The Exorcist.”
Then there was a shot of the nurse, grimacing. Even she couldn’t believe it.
Pretty soon all four of my caps were off, revealing a bleeding, oozing mess of a mouth. Between my jagged, misshapen teeth were spaces as wide as Alfred E. Neuman’s.
“Ugh, I can’t believe we are asking people to pay $24.95 for this,” Howard exclaimed.
“I look like Michael Spinks,” I said.
Toward the end of the procedure Howard said into the camera, “Okay, give them the money shot.”
I smiled wide and showed off my brand-new teeth. They were better than ever. It had been worth the pain, physica
l and otherwise.
I RODE MY BIKE all over town when I was growing up. To Uniondale Park, to a friend’s house. I had an itch to just hop on and go somewhere all the time. It used to drive me nuts sitting on that park bench, talking about what we were going to do all day. We’d start at ten in the morning and twelve hours later, we’d smoked, gotten yelled at, annoyed each other, and hit each other, but we hadn’t actually gone anywhere. Even worse, I couldn’t really drink or smoke as much as the other kids because my mom was like the Gestapo.
Whenever I came home—from anywhere—she’d grab me by both sides of my face and tilt my head down so she could give me a big kiss on the top of my head. While she was telling me how happy she was to see me and how much she’d missed me, because it had been nearly a whole day since I’d seen her, she’d take a big whiff to see if she could smell smoke or alcohol. I hated that. But she did it with all of her kids. I blame Anthony.
Once he went to the Felt Forum, the theater next to Madison Square Garden, to see the Doors. He smoked a lot of pot that night and came home at around two in the morning. Everyone was asleep, but he was still seeing things. So he popped open his bedroom window and lit up another joint. Suddenly my mom jumped out of the closet and yelled, “Aha! I caught you!” Sadly, Anthony realized he wasn’t tripping. He was slammed back into real life with our mom.
I would get antsy hanging around the park every day, not drinking that much, barely smoking, not going anywhere. Around this age I started to develop the wanderlust my brothers had. Once I was old enough to know better, being at home was the last place I wanted to be. One day, months before I entered middle school, I hopped on my bike and rode over to the junior high. I was curious to see what the school was really like.
I arrived after the final bell had rung. School was out, but the doors were open, so I walked in to get a drink and have a look around. That’s when I had a World According to Garp moment. I heard a commotion down one of the hallways, turned a corner, and in front of me was the lunchroom. The double doors were wide open. The benches and tables were pushed against the walls, there were wrestling mats on the floor, and there was lots of yelling. The coach spotted me and yelled at me to get the hell out of there, but I stood transfixed. That was it for me. All I knew was pro wrestling and turnbuckles, but this just looked so cool. It looked hard. It looked like you had to be strong and very macho. I was none of these things, so that may have been the appeal.
They Call Me Baba Booey Page 8
