The young man said, “What corruption?”
“You know. The financial thing. The misappropriation of funds.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that. Who reported it?”
“It was in the New York Times. I think.” I felt myself breaking out in flop sweat. I could no longer sustain the ruse. I broke down and said, “I have no idea what I’m talking about. Don’t listen to me. Vote for whomever you want.” About fifteen minutes later the campaign manager for Harold Column came over and took my sign away from me. My work as a low-level political operative had ended.
After that I taught drama at the synagogue down the street. I put together a talent show for the dozen ten-year-olds in my class. I gave each child a little monologue. It was cute. But then came something that blindsided me: the Attack of the Mothers. No one warned me. They ragged me up one side and down the next. Their child was not doing enough. Their child could also sing. Their child did impressions. Rather than being the voice of reason, I just added acts to the show. The performance expanded from an already uncomfortable ninety minutes to over four hours of unrelenting performances by untalented children. They did Richard Nixon impressions, lip-synched to Sonny and Cher songs; they did oral interpretations from The Diary of Anne Frank. There were only two positives from that evening: One, I left early. And two, the parents had to stay. It was an Instant Karma moment. The next week I was fired. Another Instant Karma moment.
After that I got a job reading to a blind woman two hours a day, three times a week. She was in her eighties. She was one of the richest women in Dallas. We read Nobel Prize–winning authors from Winston Churchill to John Steinbeck. It was a great experience. About three months into it, she wanted a change of pace from The Grapes of Wrath and Siddhartha. She pulled out a rough draft of a book she was writing. It was an autobiography of sorts. I opened the typed manuscript to page one. I was shaking by the end of the first paragraph. It was the dirtiest book I had ever read. There are not enough Xs in Hollywood’s rating system to do this book justice. It was filled with so much graphic sex and violence, it could have been written by Jean Genet’s evil twin. The whippings, the electrocutions, the group sex—and that was in the first ten pages. The “book” was over one hundred and eighty pages long.
I kept plugging away at it. She sat there demurely and then would ask what I thought of it. I would say, “Pretty scary. Pretty scary stuff.” And it was. But on the bright side, it made me see God’s point of view as to why he wanted to destroy mankind.
I felt like none of these jobs were moving closer to any real goal, except maybe alcoholism. I needed to focus on acting jobs. That’s what I wanted to do, and I should hold out until I got a shot. I didn’t have to wait long. I was offered a job. It wasn’t to be in a play or a commercial. It was to be a member of a sketch comedy group and perform at the Hyatt House in Dallas. It all sounded good until we learned we would be paid in food.
It’s tough when an employer offers to pay you in food or beer. You always feel like you have to be a glutton to get your money’s worth. They brought in Chinese food at the beginning of rehearsal. I would eat two heaping plates of whatever was in the cartons. I had no idea. It’s one of the definitional problems with Chinese food. There is a certain lack of clarity about what you’re eating.
The comedy troupe worked on a series of skits written by our director, Don, and his wife, Judith. They included a bit about a conference where advertising icons are real people—so the Marlboro Man puts the moves on Virginia Slim. The Michelin Man wants to eat more doughnuts. There was another hilarious bit of fluff on how a rich man goes to the bathroom. None of it would qualify as “A” material, even at the Grand Ole Opry.
When we moved the show to the Hyatt, I witnessed something incredible. Because of the fast turnaround in the scenes, all of the actors would have to do what they call “underdress.” This is kind of a stage magic trick where you wear the costume for a future scene under the costume you are currently wearing. In a fast change, you just strip off the outer garments and reveal the next costume. It works great as long as you aren’t wearing anything unusual.
One of our actors was Jack, a former linebacker for the Chicago Bears. He played all of our businessmen and presidents and/or rich men going to the bathroom. He played the president of a company right before he played the Marlboro Man, so they wanted him to underdress. Underneath his blue wool business suit and wool turtleneck, he wore blue jeans with real leather chaps, a red cowboy shirt, a leather vest with fringe, and a bandana.
The first night in front of the audience was also the first night we had all of the costume pieces. Jack looked like a slice of beef Wellington. Under the weight of the eight layers of clothing, he began to sweat during the boardroom skit. First his forehead. Then his face. Within five minutes he looked like Charles Barkley in the fourth quarter at the free throw line. Sweat poured off his nose. I could tell it was affecting his mind. His eyes rolled around in his head and then they would dart around the room. Sweat puddled on the table in front of him. He snapped. He stood up from the table and roared, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!” And he started ripping off his clothes.
The audience had no idea what was happening. They gasped as he fumbled for his belt buckle and started to unzip his pants. They were confused when he pulled down his suit pants revealing another pair of pants and leather chaps underneath.
He started undoing the cowboy pants. Now the audience thought it was so horrible it had to be part of the show. They laughed. Jack yelled at them, “Motherfucker. I’m dyin’ up here!” They laughed harder. He pulled his cowboy pants down revealing his boxers. He kicked his legs furiously to get the cowboy pants off but they were tucked into his boots. He started raging around the stage throwing his shirt and vest off. He yelled, “Go ahead and laugh! In case you haven’t noticed I’M A BIG MAN! I HAPPEN TO SWEAT A LOT!” The audience roared. I stood on the side of the stage transfixed by the disaster. Jack ended up bare-chested in boxers still wearing the leather chaps. The cowboy pants were dragging on his ankles caught in his cowboy boots. The audience began applauding as he shuffled around the stage looking for an exit.
The performance of our “revue” ended here. There was no coming back from this. We took a curtain call and counted ourselves lucky that Jack didn’t hurt anyone. That was the end of our free Chinese food.
I sympathized with Jack. I felt the same about my life in Dallas. The fit was too tight. Many currents pulled at me at the time: life after college, life with my girlfriend, Beth, decreasing options on the horizon. After the failed nightclub act, I decided to pick up my many different costumes I had scattered on the ground and pack my bags. I had to leave my hometown. I didn’t know where I would go or what awaited me. In Dallas, I had done all I could do to define the bottom. And that’s not such a bad thing. The bottom is always a good place to start.
MY MOTHER PICKED out my first apartment in Los Angeles. I’ve said it was a single room with a Murphy bed that pulled out of the wall. It had several things going for it. It was in Los Angeles. It looked clean. It was furnished. And it was cheap. The rent was $165 a month. I repeat, $165 a month! Cheap was good. I didn’t have a job or any prospects for jobs and needed my meager savings to last.
I only stayed in this apartment six weeks. I would have stayed longer if my room wasn’t invaded by a gigantic swarm of ants about a yard wide and marching steadily under the painted-open crack of my kitchen window.
I talked to my landlady. She said she would talk to the “bug man.” Los Angeles has lots of people that handle vermin who are known as “man”: bug man, rat man, mold man. They are low-level superheroes. She reported back that the bug man told her he had just sprayed the area. It probably caused some “displacement” of the colony. Apparently, into my apartment.
The next day, the ants were gone. But the following morning they returned. Millions of them. I figured they just went back to pack. They told their friends that they found a cheap place with a poo
l. Some even made it to my bed. I was starting to feel like Charlton Heston in The Naked Jungle. I could only imagine the phone call the landlady would have to make to Mom and Dad: they broke into my apartment and found a skeleton holding a beer in front of the TV set. They’re awaiting results of the tests, but they fear the worst.
I had to move.
I found another apartment about three blocks away. It was bigger and more expensive. It was $220 a month, unfurnished. “Unfurnished” is the word that separates man from the beasts. But I was desperate. I could sleep on the floor. I took it. I looked at ads in the neighborhood newspaper and bought a kitchen table and chairs for ten dollars. A sofa for twenty-five dollars. Within two hours, I was furnished.
I went to the store and loaded up on more cereal, milk, bologna, and pickles. Paper towels and toilet paper—and an apple pie. The larder was full. I felt empowered. That night I watched the late movie on my sofa, eating pie. I felt like a hero in Greek mythology who had slayed his first monster. It was almost midnight. I looked out of my living room window and imagined myself a lord of all I surveyed. For the first time in my life, I had a view.
That’s when I found out my new apartment came with a naked man. He was about two hundred feet away across the street in another apartment building. I didn’t see all of the naked man, just enough to know he was naked—and that he was a man. His kitchen faced my living room. It was always dark in his apartment but whenever he opened his refrigerator, the light illuminated him from nipples to knees.
Over the next few weeks he became a permanent character in the little movie I called What I See Out My Window at Night. The light would come on across the way—there was Naked Man. I tried to think of names for him but nothing suited him better than Naked Man. Friends would come over and ask if Naked Man had been in the kitchen yet. We would often sit around pretending to watch the late movie, waiting for Naked Man to open the fridge and grab some yogurt.
For weeks all I knew about Naked Man was that he snacked at night. Then one morning at dawn I heard Naked Man having sex in his apartment. It was unmistakable. I heard him. I heard her. Then in the middle of sexual huffing and puffing, I heard a dog start barking in their bedroom. It sounded like a Lab. Naked Man yelled, “Get outta here. Go away. Git!” The dog continued barking. Naked Man yelled, “Shut up! Shut up! Bad dog! Bad dog!” The woman was polite and continued to groan through it all. But when the dog kept barking she yelled, “Shut up! Get him outta here!” And they say romance is dead. In a Zen way, I think the dog brought the two of them closer together.
The pressure of the higher rent was working on my mind. It even robbed me of the pleasure of enjoying The Life and Times of Naked Man. On television they had a segment on 60 Minutes on “The Price of Nothing.” This is the index of how much it costs just to breathe in a certain city and use nothing. If you got an apartment and turned on the utilities but never used them, you would still have to pay the “price of nothing.” In Los Angeles, “nothing” costs more than in almost any city in the United States. My dream of being an actor was on a very short leash.
Then, as if in answer to a prayer, I was reading one of the actor newsletters and there was an audition for an Equity job. Equity is the actors’ union, so it meant a real job—a paying job. It was for a children’s theater group called Twelfth Night Repertory Company. I thought, “Great. I worked with children in Dallas. I liked the play Twelfth Night. Let’s do it.” The requirements for being in the company were high. You had to play two musical instruments, which I did. I played the piano and guitar.
Twelfth Night required that you had to be expert at improvisation. Hey, I furnished my apartment for thirty-five dollars in two hours. Improvisation doesn’t get any better than that. You also had to speak a foreign language—I took German for two years because Claire Richards, a girl I had a crush on since the second grade, took German. I had even committed two German phrases to memory. Man kann ihn immer an seiner Stimme erkennen. Ich müss mir eine neue Jacke kaufen. Which means “One can always recognize him by his voice” and “I must buy a new jacket.” I learned these phrases not because I thought I would ever need them in a real-world situation, but because when you say them together fast it sounds like you can speak German—which was exactly what I would need to do for the people at Twelfth Night Repertory Company.
The auditions were held at an address in the San Fernando Valley. They told me to come prepared to play instruments, sing, dance, and improvise. Wow.
Driving through a residential area, I realized the audition would take place at someone’s home, in someone’s garage. Walking up to the garage, I had clarity. I wanted this job more than I had ever wanted anything in my entire life.
A youngish man and woman sat at a table in the driveway and looked at my résumé. He raised his eyebrows:
“You speak German?”
I hit him with, “Man kann ihn immer an seiner Stimme erkennen ich müss mir eine neue Jacke kaufen.”
He nodded. “Good. Good.”
She asked, “At what level do you play guitar and piano?”
“On the piano I play Beethoven and Mozart, mainly classical, a little rock and roll. Guitar—just rock chords. I was a backup guitarist.”
The man asked, “Do you play any jazz?”
“No, not really. But I can learn.”
He smiled at that answer. Lesson one: never underestimate the power of your willingness to learn.
They called out about eight other people who had come to audition. The man and woman told us to get at one end of the garage. We lined up. She said, “I want to see you move. You are going to go from one end of the garage to the other, but we will tell you how. First, you’re cats!” I had pet cats my whole life, so this was easy. I even stopped halfway across to cough up a fur ball. This went over big. We kept walking back and forth. They switched gears. “Now you’re five-year-olds!” “Now you’re walking through peanut butter.” “Now you’re on Jupiter!”
In college I was in an improv group where we did things like this all the time. We walked through peanut butter. We walked like we were five-year-olds. We never walked on Jupiter, but we did walk like we were on the bottom of the ocean, which I figured was a lot like walking on Jupiter.
We went inside the house to the piano. They asked me to play. I started with a little “Moonlight Sonata” and then shifted to the beginning of Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, then shifted to a French Chopinlike waltz. I lingered on the piano and puttered around with some rock and roll chords so there was no doubt I could play.
They explained to all of us that there were only two positions available. If we didn’t get in this time, we shouldn’t fret. There may be other opportunities in a few months.
A few months! No way. I was going to get one of the two slots. I knew it. Between the piano and coughing up the fur ball, I had sealed the deal. I went home confidently uncertain about my future with Twelfth Night Repertory Company.
Two days later I got the call. I recognized the woman’s voice. She told me I did great on the audition, but I didn’t get the job. I had a small stroke at that moment. I lost the power of speech. I just hummed and grunted that I understood and I was happy to have the chance to audition. She continued that everyone was impressed by what I did and if a spot opened up, she would call. I hung up the phone and stared into space.
The evening sun started to set. I couldn’t even get up to turn on a light. Eventually, I went to take a shower to wash off the stench of failure. I came out drying myself and walked into the living room. I turned on the set. The Channel 2 news burst forth, bathing me in the light of the TV. At that moment, I had that eerie feeling on the back of my neck. I whirled around and looked out the window and saw Naked Man standing by his open fridge looking toward my apartment! Distracted by despair, I had become Naked Man’s Naked Man! I dove onto the couch, afraid to get up for what seemed like hours.
I had failed. This was my best shot at a real job. I tried to mix things up the nex
t day to help me forget. I ate bologna for breakfast and cereal for lunch. I was watching cartoons on PBS when the phone rang. It was the woman from Twelfth Night again. She said, “Stephen, I told you I’d call back. I didn’t think it would be this soon. I wanted to see if this interested you. As you know, we have filled the spots on our English-speaking cast, but we are thinking of starting an all-Spanish-speaking company doing Mexican folk-tales in the schools. You would play the piano and guitar and play some parts in the show. Do you think you could do that? I know you said that your second language was German.”
“Yes. I took German in school, but I grew up hearing Spanish my whole life. I’m from Texas. We ate at El Fenix all the time. I’ve always wanted to learn Spanish. I could do it. I could learn the show phonetically and take Spanish at the same time.”
“Really?”
“Absolutely. It would be like learning Shakespeare. This is a job where you get paid, right?”
“Yes. You’ll start out at $216 a week. And possibly more depending on the number of shows you do.”
“I’ll do it. I’ll take it. When do we start?”
“Right away. You have four weeks before your first show. Do you want to think about it and call me in the morning?”
“No. Nothing to think about. This is exactly the kind of thing I do. I love children. I love to play music. Sign me up.”
“Well, I appreciate the enthusiasm. The job is yours.”
“Thank you. Thank you.”
I hung up the phone and almost passed out from joy. I had done it. I got a job! In acting! That paid money! Yes, it was in a foreign language but that would just be part of the challenge. I called Mom and Dad to share the good news.
“Well, honey, how long do you have to learn Spanish?” Mom asked.
“Couple of weeks.”
“Can you do that?”
“Well, that Dutch rock group Shocking Blue learned English phonetically and had a huge hit with ‘Venus.’ It can be done. I’m sure the words will be simple. The show is for children.”
The Dangerous Animals Club Page 9
