My Incredibly Wonderful, Miserable Life

by Adam Nimoy

  “Hello, son.”

  “Mom, do you know who Katherine Harris is?”

  “Do I know who Katherine Harris is? Yes, I know who she is; she’s that bitch who just handed Bush the election.”

  “But do you remember Katherine Harris?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Do you happen to remember the little Southern girl I brought to New York when Dad was in Equus, that little petite brunette you thought was so cute?”

  “Ohhhhhh, nooooooooo!”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Well, you sure as hell didn’t teach her a damn thing about politics!”

  FLOWER POWER PRIESTESS

  IN THE MID ’60s, my mother glommed on to the aesthetics, if not the lifestyle, of “The Flower Child.” There were flowers all the time in our house on Comstock. Mostly dead, dried flowers of all colors and yellow paper flowers and flower stickers on the refrigerator. My mom wore cool clothes and a “fall,” which was a long-haired wig, and she wore glasses with cool frames. She was transitioning out of playing a ’50s housewife into her new role as ’60s Flower Power Priestess and Wife of Spock. And she was doing a pretty good job of it. She even bought a Cream album. My mom, Sandi Nimoy, went out and bought Disraeli Gears, which was always lying around, though I didn’t listen to it very often, and when I did, I didn’t really understand it. I much preferred the Fab Four, whose hit singles were far easier for a ten-year-old to comprehend.

  In the fall of 1968, when Star Trek was in its third season, we moved into our big beautiful house in Westwood. I was twelve. We were living the good life. Shortly after the move, my mom announced we would all be going to The Forum to see Cream’s Farewell Tour. Our seats were quite good—we were on the floor very close to the stage. The ushers at The Forum wore red and gold Romanesque dresses over their street clothes, which I guess were supposed to resemble togas or something. They were totally lame. The warm-up band was Deep Purple. They were good. Then Cream came on. I still wasn’t really familiar with their music, but they knocked my socks off. Jack Bruce belted it out and Ginger Baker banged away like a madman at all those drumheads and cymbals. But what really amazed me was Eric Clapton. His hair was long and straight then, and I was surprised at how much he reminded me of George Harrison. And when he played, he closed his eyes. I couldn’t understand how he could play all those notes without looking. It was as if he were playing from pure emotion and seemed to be feeling his way through every song. I was new to the concert experience and had never seen that before.

  Near the end of the show, as we were standing and Cream was finishing their set, the crowd got a little rowdy and people started standing on their seats and stepping over the backs of the chairs in front of them to get closer to the stage. It was a trick I would imitate six years later when George Harrison played The Forum and I ended up standing in the front row, jumping up and down, my hands swaying and clapping in all my Krishna glory, while George sang “My Sweet Lord.” Anyway, some of the hippies at the Cream show fell on us and it freaked out my parents. But because the hippies just wanted to have a good time, it didn’t really bother me. Not like the fans who would come up to us while we were dining out, interrupting our family time for an autograph or to have their picture taken with Dad. For those people, I grew to have very little patience.

  FROM HELL TO ETERNITY

  MADDY FINALLY SLEPT over at my apartment one night with her friend Zoe. It was nice to have them here but it would be the first and last time. Jonah comes to stay with me on weekends with three or four of his friends, basically because I’m the only parent stupid enough to get up at five-thirty in the morning to take them surfing. But during the week, he stays at the house. And although I still find myself longing for them, I’m starting to get used to the separation and it’s making me nervous. So I overcompensate.

  On weekdays, I pick Maddy up from the house at exactly 7 AM to get her to school by 7:20. On Monday afternoon, I make sure she gets to her science tutor. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, I take her to her math tutor. On Friday, I take her cello bow in to be restrung, and on Saturday, she’s having a broomball party at the local skating rink and I’m the chaperone. The party starts at 12:15 AM and ends at 1:30. At 2 AM, I’m still driving kids home. The following Friday, at 5:40 AM, I pick Jonah up to get him to Surf Club on time. Of course his gear isn’t ready and I have to yell at him, but we pull it together and by 6:30 he’s in the water with his surf buddies. At 7:15 AM, I wave him out, rinse him off under the beach showers, get him dressed in the parking lot, and run him up to Santa Monica High. Even though he’s still in middle school, he’s the featured solo guitarist on “Stairway to Heaven” backed by the Santa Monica High School orchestra, including Maddy on cello. He’s got to be at rehearsal by 7:30. At 8:15 I run him over to Donut King for breakfast, then over to John Adams Middle School. I drop his surfboard and his guitar off at the house then race through Sepulveda Pass to Burbank to get to my class at the school by 9:30.

  * * *

  It’s now Sunday and the kids and I are at a benefit concert to raise money for school music programs in Santa Monica and Malibu. The concert is being held at the Santa Monica High Greek Theater and the featured artist is Jackson Browne. It’s a picture-perfect California afternoon with sun and blue skies and a cool ocean breeze that blows against the white canopy covering the outdoor stage. Jonah and I are down on the lawn in the second row. Maddy and her friend Sarah are sitting with Nancy two rows behind us. Nancy and I are getting along again after that showdown over the Therapy Police, mostly because she doesn’t seem to remember what happened and because I choose to let it go, knowing what really matters is that I keep things moving along the happy road to our divorce. Even though some members of my family haven’t a clue as to why I still socialize with Nancy, I really don’t mind these little family get-togethers. Because in this instance, we both love music. And because I know the kids really appreciate the fact that we can still do things together.

  During the intermission, just before Jackson comes on, a blond bombshell sits down next to me. There’s been no one sitting next to me during the first two acts and now this looker in her thirties arrives with a guy who is clearly much older than her . . . and much uglier than me. He walks off to get drinks and I have trouble keeping my peripheral vision to myself. She seems to be having the same problem. And so, to be polite, I turn to her and say hello. She says hi back and then immediately starts up this conversation about Jackson. I comment on her accent and she tells me she’s from the UK. She’s in town making a record, her name is Cynthia Evans, she already has a CD out in the States. And she’s charming and interesting, and while I keep up with the conversation, I’m thinking to myself, This is good. This is very good. I’m talking to an attractive woman and my children are close by and it’s been a year and a half since I split up with Nancy. And everybody knows Nancy’s been seeing someone new. Maybe this is a good way to get the kids used to the idea that someday Dad is going to be with someone new too.

  And that’s when the trouble starts.

  Maddy suddenly appears and she’s standing over us and before I can make introductions, she starts in.

  “Dad you need to move your seat.” And now I have a situation on my hands. It’s called “sabotage.” As taught to me by my father, I tell all my classes at the film school to try to find a label for each scene they’re either acting in or directing so that they can figure out what the scene is really about. This is the sabotage scene.

  I counter by introducing Cynthia to Maddy and Jonah and she seems very happy to meet them and the kids say hi and I’m hoping this will be the icebreaker that’ll put an end to any unpleasantness.

  “Dad, you need to move your seat right now.”

  “Maddy, relax, we’re just talking.”

  “No, Dad, you and Jonah need to come sit with Sarah and me right now.”

  “I don’t think so, honey.”

  But she just stands there, determined, with the sunlight si
lhouetting her against an incredibly blue sky. Then Jonah weighs in by whispering in my ear.

  “Dad, your talking to that girl is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen.”

  I can feel the sea breeze blowing in off the Pacific and I take it in just so I can breathe. To breathe and “just sit there.” Because the old me wouldn’t be breathing and just sitting there, the old me would have lost it immediately by standing up and dragging the two of them off to the side and giving them hell and making a scene right in front of the crowd. The old me would have become totally embarrassed and lost my cool and threatened to take them out of there. The old me would have beaten myself up about the fact that it was a picture-perfect experience until those little brats ruined it. Then again, the old me would have made some excuse to get away from Jonah and run off before the show to take a hit somewhere, then brushed my teeth, chewed on a breath mint, hid my eyes behind my sunglasses and then made it back to my seat, acting as if nothing had happened while my mind was totally fried.

  But not today. Not today. “Same family, different day,” Shayna, our therapist, would say. Because today, I’m not the same guy. And I just feel too good and I don’t want to ruin it. And I’m getting better at doing what I now normally do when confronted with potentially explosive situations: I do nothing. I do absolutely nothing. Because the fact of the matter is, these guys are going to survive. Nancy and I take very good care of them and my children are going to survive quite well. They’re simply going to have to get used to the fact that sometimes, and I know this may come as a shocker to the kids, but sometimes, Dad has to take care of . . . Dad.

  Maddy’s still standing there. Dogged determination. I think that’s why she’s such a good student. And then, suddenly, I hear applause and the man of the hour walks onstage and I turn to Maddy.

  “Look, honey, it’s Jackson Browne. Please go sit down.”

  And she does.

  One of the songs Jackson opens up with is “Take It Easy,” the song he wrote for the Eagles. And now I’m thinking this guy’s singing to me. Because this alcoholic and addict can be very self-centered, I swear it feels like Jackson’s singing to me, he’s looking down at me in the second row and he’s telling me to Take It Easy.

  And the rest of the show is just perfect: Jackson’s playing all the hits and the stuff he used to play when I went to his concerts during my college years. Jonah’s getting into it, and I turn back to see Maddy, who gives me the thumbs-up. And Cynthia and I manage a little side commentary about the songs until her fat, ugly, gray-haired date shows up.

  He’s got a wedding ring on. He’s got his hand on her knee and she’s clearly not comfortable with it. And soon, she gets up and goes off with her VIP pass to watch the show from the side of the stage.

  After the show, Nancy and I talk about how great Jackson was. Then I comment on Maddy’s behavior.

  “Could you believe what Maddy tried to pull?”

  Nancy takes a breath, and in a very pregnant reply, like she’s happy as hell that Maddy gave me shit, she says, “I know!”

  Now I’m driving the kids back to the house. Nancy is meeting a girlfriend for dinner and I’m taking the kids home.

  “I mean, I know this is hard for you guys. I know it is. But Mom and I haven’t been together for a year and a half and I can’t believe you give me crap simply because I’m having a conversation. I know you know Mom has conversations with other guys and she’s entitled. And Maddy, I drive you to school every morning and get you there on time, I get you to your tutors, I chaperone your broomball party in the middle of the night, and then I’m driving all your friends home until two in the morning. And this is what I get?”

  “Dad, it just grosses us out.”

  “Yes, Jonah, I understand that, I really do, but I drag you and your surfboard back and forth from the beach, I get you to all your rehearsals, I drag your band equipment to all your gigs, and I really don’t deserve to be embarrassed in front of other people just because I’m having a conversation with a woman who happens to be sitting next to me.”

  I can see that they’re starting to feel bad. And frankly, for once, that feels good.

  SYNDICATE THIS

  WE DIDN’T HAVE a color TV when the series premiered in September ’66, and so we all went to a friend’s house to watch “The Man Trap,” the first aired episode. I like that episode because I had watched some of it being filmed and I remember seeing the salt-sucking monster dummy sitting around on the set, the salt sucker who assumed the human form of a woman named “Nancy.” Anyway, we used to watch the show on Thursday nights in my parents’ bedroom on their portable black-and-white TV.

  Although a TV junkie in the ’60s, I didn’t watch that much TV during my college years in the ’70s, so I wasn’t really aware of what was happening with the syndication of the show. I had already been through my Trekkie stage and it was over. One day, my roommate at Berkeley insisted we take a drive down to the Federation Trading Post on Telegraph Avenue. The Federation Trading Post. What a concept. We walked into the store and it was wall-to-wall Star Trek paraphernalia. Lots of photos—including the one of me wearing the ears standing on the bridge next to Dad, who’s in the captain’s chair.

  Sure it was fun. They were laughing in the dark. Everyone was gathered around the camera because they knew what was coming, our little surprise for Dad. With all those stage lights pointed at us, after I came onto the bridge and gave Dad, or Spock, a kiss on his cheek, I looked out to the fourth wall and it was nothing but darkness. Darkness and laughter.

  The other thing I really liked about being on the set, besides hanging out with the cast and gazing at Bill Shatner’s hairpiece sitting on a mannequin’s head in the makeup department, was the smell. Immediately when you walked in it hit you because there was a little room on the stage where these guys made all the little different color knobs you see on the Enterprise control panels. They used resin molds to do it. I never sniffed glue to get high, as I was only nine when they started shooting the series, but I loved the smell of model glue as much as the next kid, and this room onstage was a glue sniffer’s paradise.

  The next inkling that something was going on in the 1970s happened when I was studying with Duncan, a friend of mine, in his dorm room in Cloyne Court, an aging co-op on the north side of the Berkeley campus. We were going through the Plato and Machiavelli and playing Grateful Dead songs on guitar when I stepped out to use the pay phone downstairs to check in with my girlfriend. When I came back, Duncan was gone. In fact, the entire second floor had an eerie silence to it.

  I made my way back downstairs. There was a TV room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar and there was a flickering light coming through. I pushed the door open. The room was packed with students. They were all watching a scene where Spock was doing his thing. Someone said to either get in or get out. I looked at Duncan. He gave me a knowing smile. I waved to him and left.

  I told Beatrice, my girlfriend, what happened. Beatrice was born in Switzerland. She was pretty and multilingual and knew cool swear words in four languages. She had never seen the show and was curious. And so every weekday at five o’clock, I went up to her house and we watched. And there were three things I rediscovered about that show: (1) some of those Star Trek episodes kick ass, (2) Spock rocks!, and (3) I can’t remember, probably because I was too stoned at the time, but everything comes in threes so there must have been something else.

  And speaking of Spock rocking, I got this call from Justin the other day. He plays bass in a ’70s revival band and it’s sort of a Spinal Tap thing: The guys in the band wear sunglasses and long wigs and big fake mustaches. They play all these classic rock songs and they’re a really tight band.

  “Dude, our lead singer can’t make the gig this Saturday. Do you think your dad would sit in if we offered him seventy-five bucks?”

  “Can you guys play ‘Proud Mary’?”

  “We can play that. We can play anything.”

  “Well, this might
be an interesting way to get his singing career back on track. I’ll call him and see what he says.”

  “Dude, just make sure he knows he has to wear the wig.”

  MY MOTHER’S FROM ALASKA

  MY MOTHER’S FATHER came from Lithuania and settled in Alaska, where he worked for a fishing cannery. Her mother came from Latvia and settled in Canada. On a trip to Vancouver, my grandparents met, were married, and Archie dragged Ann back to Alaska, where they settled in Cordova, a fishing village where my mom was born. My mom says that’s where my grandmother started to lose it—Ann Zoberblatt running around Cordova, looking for a kosher butcher or just another Jewish person for that matter. My mother’s name was Sonia, but by the time she came to L.A. and started working in the theater where she met my dad, her name was Sandi Zober. I recently found an old newspaper article about the difficulty census takers were having dealing with driveway gates. It showed a picture of my mom in her early twenties looking over a gate, and the caption read, “Census taker Sandi Sober (sic) trying to gather information.”

  Mom called me last week because she had some things on her mind.

  “Adam, do you ever mention me in your memoirs?”

  “What?”

  “Do you ever mention me in the memoirs you’re writing, because your father never mentioned me. Thirty-two years of marriage and he never bothered to mention me.”

  “Well, Mom, since you really didn’t play that much of a role in my life, I’m not really sure.”

  My mom starts making these catatonic noises like she’s going to have another heart attack over the phone. Sometimes she gets my sarcasm and sometimes she doesn’t. But I don’t want to make her suffer.

  “Mom, of course I mention you; you’re all over the memoirs. Every page is saturated with how I couldn’t have made it without you.”