by Bill Zehme
He cherished his 4-F status, thought it quite funny, showed off the doctor’s letter to the guys. “I remember it pretty well because it was hilarious,” said Gil Gevins. “Everybody wanted to get out of the Vietnam War with a 4-F, which was a permanent deferment, and Andy was so proud to have gotten his. The letter stated something to the effect of the standard thing, ‘paranoid schizophrenic with psychotic tendencies.’ Then it went on to describe how every teacher from the first grade on had noticed that Andy was kind of strange and detached from the situation. And that he had scored zero on every reality test ever given him, that he lived in a complete fantasy world. And all of this was basically true. That was the funny thing about the letter. That was Andy. He did live in a fantasy world, but at the same time he knew what was going on! He really was out of his mind, but was always exactly aware of it. He was aware that it was all this kind of game that he played. He knew what he was doing—not all the time, but a lot of the time. He just encouraged people to believe what they wanted.”
“Vait! Vait-vait-vait!
I would like to tell you de story of de three people who was carrying the beegest cannon in the world to Spain! Eet was, eh, two boys and one girl. And they had thees beeeg cannon. You know, eet was feefty feet long! And they carried eet over the mountains and under the valleys. And one day they get to the top of de highest mountain in Spain. So the first boy, he point this cannon toward this castle—you know, to shoot! You know, because he was the boss. You know, so he want to point it. And he turned to the second boy and he say, ‘All right! Hand me the cannonball!’ And, you know, but de second boy, he say—‘Duh, I thought YOU had them!’ So, vait-vait-vait, so, listen, vait! So they both—eh—they both turned to de girl, and she say—‘Don’t look at me!’ You know, because, eh, they forgot to bring the cannonball. You know? They have the cannon, but they have no cannonball! They could not shoot! Do you understand? Tenk you veddy much!”
Lost year began in waiting. He wait-wait-waited. He waited to know what to do but could do nothing much—about dreams, future success, certain fame—without proper ammunition. How to begin? The Troop dispersed to colleges and universities and hospitals—returned home only for occasional weekends and holidays—so he was mostly on his own. Further learning did not intrigue him, what school would have him? He applied to no college at all, despite entreaties of his father. He needed to wait and think and drift, basing himself mostly in the Grassfield basement. Elvis kept him company. He spent more time with Elvis than ever before. “I would stay home most of the time and just play his records and imitate him—I adopted him as a character, combed my hair like him, dressed like him, made believe that I was him. For most of the day, every day, for that one year, I worked on my imitation.” It was something to do. And then there was the foreigner person he liked who had no name, who spoke in funny timid blinking loops—he had introduced him to kids at school, then to kids at birthday parties, then to strangers on the streets of New York when he wanted to not be himself and beg for handouts. Eee-bi-da? Eee-bi-da! (“That’s a language I made up myself to confuse other people, and make them feel I’m really speaking a dialect.”) Being foreign never felt foreign since he sort of was foreign—he knew—but then, too, certain television people he liked often became foreign, like Sid Caesar, and the man on the Steve Allen program, Bill Dana, who became this other foreign man, José Jimenez, who was Spanish or something. His own foreign man, whom he would call Foreign Man, really belonged to no place, kind of like himself. Eee-bi-da.
Lost year required money, so he worked. Previously, he had bussed tables at Chop Meat Charlie’s in the middle of town, jerked soda at Frederick’s. Now he worked for Jones Taxi of Great Neck, driving businessmen to and from the train station; would sit outside the station waiting each night, big-eyed white boy talking to all of the black cabbies, sharing their bags of hooch, absorbing their sad beautiful tales, listening to their jive jokes and jive music. He drove delivery vans for another black man named Grady Corley—the small black population of Great Neck came to know and like Andy very much—carting groceries and butchered meats around town, making drops at homes of illustrious residents such as talk show oddity Professor Irwin Corey (“The World’s Foremost Authority”) and comedian Alan King, who lived most luxuriously (like a show business sultan) bayside on the Sound at King’s Point. He had become friendly with the comedian’s son, Bobby King, a point which Alan King would later not see as coincidental. “To this day, I think Andy Kaufman became friends with my son just so he could get to me. Every once in a while, this crazy kid would come up to deliver meat—and do five minutes. He would insist on seeing me and I’d come down to the kitchen in my underwear. Then he’d start doing takeoffs on movies he had seen on television for me! Very nice kid, but crazy as a loon, you know? Finally, I called the butcher and said, ‘Get this kid out of my house!’ I mean, it’s very difficult to be amused by someone delivering meat.”
Bobby King, meanwhile, was dating an Irish-Catholic girl named Gina Acre, whose sister Gloria had been two classes behind Andy at Great Neck North. Gloria Acre was dark, mystical, stylish, well-read, spiritual, sweet, wise; she had a knack for dispensing advice and insights among disillusioned constituents—“Like Lucy in the Peanuts comics with the five-cent psychiatric counseling booth,” she liked to say. Andy had once gone to her home, at the urging of a mutual friend named Almus P. Salcius, who told her, “I really think he needs to talk to somebody.” Gloria recalled her new patient “sitting on my couch in an Andy way, sort of slouched, his hands on his lap, and not really having much to say except ‘Do you want to go to a movie?’ That was the beginning.”
Lost year was not so bad, really, now with her, void was filled. He bought himself a black limousine sedan with flip seats in the back from the Grace Shipping estate (four hundred dollars) and got a livery cap and drove her everywhere unless he borrowed one of Grady’s Econoline vans and drove her everywhere, usually with her sister Gina and Bobby King along for the rides. (Stanley remembered donning the livery cap himself for fun and chauffeuring his son around Great Neck, son imperiously waving through rear tinted windows at gawking pedestrians. Said father, “Once we mended, we were mended. More or less.”) He became Elvis for Gloria—“He sang ‘Love Me Tender’ to me all the time. We couldn’t go anywhere if there was an Elvis Presley movie on television”—and played role of boyfriend with greater conviction. They did not say they loved each other—how did people ever do that?—but they did. “It was very intense. It was very all-consuming.” Den couch kissing moved down hall to full intimacy behind bedroom door, parents upstairs looking the other way. (“Again, it was almost like the Peanuts cartoons—you heard the parents, but you never saw them.” She overheard just one screaming match between Andy and Stanley—surprised by the vituperative passion exchanged—whereupon Andy took her and stormed out of the house.) They smoked much pot, drank whatever could be found—Grady sometimes came over with bottles of Champale malt liquor and passed the bounty.
Gina Acre called him Crazy Andy—a sobriquet he had heard quite plentifully by now—and he led all concerned on addled adventures. On Halloween, deeply stoned, they infiltrated the small cemetery behind All Saints Church and attempted to raise the dead. Gloria accidentally moved a granite slab and unearthed two urns of cremated ash—remains of some eternal couple—and instigated a séance. “We lit candles and held hands in a circle and I began, ‘I am a bridge into the unknown. Come to us, Spirits!’” Whereupon a gang of local greasers pounced and scared them into apoplexy, which was exciting. They once ended up in Professor Corey’s kitchen—after some civil rights fundraiser—smoking dope with the wild-haired Professor, his wife, and their son Richard Corey, a rare fellow Elvis enthusiast. “I think it was the Professor’s pot,” said Gloria. “It was the first time we ever got stoned with actual adults.” Said Gina: “Andy worshiped the ground the Professor walked on. Gloria would complain to me, ‘Oh, we have to go to the Corey house again!’” He took her to the ci
ty—often earning fast cash by chauffeuring in impatient rail commuters—and playacted various street scenes of romantic intrigue. (“He would storm up behind me and say, ‘You! I told you I never wanted to see you again! Why are you following me!’ And I’d go right into, ‘I’m sorry! I can’t stay away! It’s impossible! Don’t do this to me!’ And people would be turning around, looking.”) Gil Gevins had gotten a rattrap apartment on the Lower East Side, near his New York University classes—Andy and others contributed rent toward stay-over privileges—and they would call to order impromptu F Troop meetings, which inevitably involved new assaults on Central Park and its unsuspecting populace.
Best of all, they reaped the material benefits of thickness with Bobby King, whose father’s splendiferous Gatsby-like estate—with pool and cabana overlooking the rippling Sound—became their crash oasis, especially when the famous comedian was out on the road. They frolicked in the pool—Andy, naked, frequently—and lounged about. Peter Wassyng would remember Andy walking obliviously through the screen door of the King cabana—oh!—“Just spaced out, as usual.” Once they left the pool heater on overnight and Alan King, who was to host a party the next day, had to ship in ice blocks to chill the hot-soup chlorinade. They helped themselves to libations from the cabana, drawing endless draughts of beer from bottomless kegs, using always the frosted mugs that were ever cooling. The mugs, more than anything, inspired Andy to achieve something similar in life. “Frosted beer mugs!” he kept crowing and would always remember doing so. Gloria heard him vow repeatedly, “Oh, when I get rich and famous, this is what I will have! Frosted beer mugs and a keg for my own self!” On at least two occasions, they rode with Bobby’s father in Bobby’s father’s Rolls-Royce into the city to watch him perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. Andy was enthralled with the live broadcast hubbub, the red-lit cameras, the stage directions, the people scurrying, the havoc under the bright lights. It was time for him to do something about it. He heard about a school in Boston—not too picky about high school grade point averages—that specialized in teaching television production. Plus, he liked Boston, had thoroughly explored its oddest corners when he ran away from home. He waited until August 1968 to have his transcripts sent to this television school, this Grahm Junior College—only a two-year program!—and arrived there a few weeks later to start getting famous. Gloria would come visit and they would make a baby.
6
Actually, if one imagines a story called “The Funhouse,” or “Lost in the Funhouse” … the beginning should recount the events between Ambrose’s first sight of the funhouse early in the afternoon and his entering it … in the evening. The middle would narrate all relevant events from the time he goes in to the time he loses his way…. Then the ending would tell what Ambrose does while he’s lost, how he finally finds his way out, and what everybody makes of the experience.
—John Barth,
Lost in the Funhouse
Very famous, after a fashion, living deep but humbly in the Hollywood Hills, he continued all the fictionalizing, after a fashion. Datetimeplace: November 29, 1980, 1:55 P.M. Greenvalley Road. The first book of the epic saga (with three books more to come, at least!), now reached handwritten pages 397-398, which would conclude this portion of the young entertainer’s life:
“Come on. All aboard!” called the conductor.
Huey turned and boarded the train. He kept looking back, down at his family, who kept waving at him until he was out of sight. Then he turned forward, remembering with a clear picture the sight of his father and mother with their arms around each other while they had been waving. He wiped a tear from his eyes, and his mouth hung open as he looked around at the scenery that passed and thought about all the past: the family, the amusement park, school, Tiny and the gang, his grandpa, Grandma, the adventures, the loveliness, the trucks, the cabs, and all that he had been through in his life so far. Then he thought about his dream girl and his goals, and all that might lie ahead of him.
He looked upward and sat up straight. Then he closed his mouth and smiled.
Tears did come first, they really did. Now he would start all over again, not knowing anyone really, which was very disconcerting since he had gone from abject loneliness to popular renegade crazy person to abject loneliness all over again. He would be homesick, spectacularly homesick, would feel like Elvis when Elvis went into the Army. He walked around for months, longer even, with the Elvis song “I Feel So Bad” caroming around in his head. He lived on campus and campus was hemmed into Kenmore Square, where he resided in the men’s dormitory, Leavitt Hall, 645 Beacon Street, room 629—a few blocks from Fenway Park, where some other men played baseball. So he had no choice but to find new bushes in a nearby park, wedged between college buildings, enclosed by a wrought iron fence, where he could keep himself company. “I would occasionally see Andy after eleven o’clock at night alone in the park and we would speak briefly,” recalled fellow Leavitt resident Jonathan Kleiner. “Several times, rather than return a greeting, he would speak in a high-pitched tone, with words that did not seem to be words at all, and certainly not English words. And at times he would not use words at all, but just a collection of sounds, as if he could convey his thoughts or expressions without putting voice to them.” Um, eee-bi-da? Sebella gussh! Sebenye metitemya yaderni nidee terma. Kleiner, who worked the Leavitt Hall switchboard graveyard shift, would come to withstand strategic advances of same foreign fellow, no longer foreign, latelate at night before switchboard closing—“Andy would be returning to the dorm and would ask me to watch him try out things. He would want the lounge area around the switchboard cubicle darkened, and at one point asked me to look at his pants. He was wearing what appeared to be lime green satin pants with a strip of tape running down the outer seam of both legs. He then proceeded to set up an old phonograph, put on an Elvis Presley record—‘Hound Dog,’ if I remember correctly—and launch into an impression of Elvis, which included removing the tape to show a dark black stripe down the outer seam of the pants, similar to what would be on a tuxedo. The impression was not very good at first, although he obviously kept working on it.”
Funny place, this Grahm Junior College, which had been the Cambridge School of Business—a small secretarial school, really—before an eccentric businessman named Milton Grahm took command in 1950 and slowly began adding broadcast curricula and buying the finest broadcast equipment (Bell and Howell everything) and building extraordinarily professional broadcast studios (two studios for black-and-white transmission, one for color, and one fully operational twenty-four hour stereo radio facility), which beamed closed-circuit signals throughout a stately red-bricked colonial campus that kept growing, as Grahm Junior College, as it was renamed that very year, 1968, advertised its straightforward-hands-on-get-to-work-then-get-out-and-get-a-job-already policies in various trade publications. “Learn by Doing” was the Grahm motto, emblazoned on all seals and stamps, carved into granite and bronze abounding. A steadfast student body of approximately one thousand aspirants weaned on/enthralled by the cultural birth of television itself, with Howdy Doody as their logical progenitor, were not required to be previous academic marvels of any sort as long as each could fork over a most stiff annual tuition of nearly five thousand dollars across two extremely focused years of Learning-by-Doing. Grahm was thus awash in grown children of some privilege, all eager to transmit themselves via frequency and cathode ray into American homes as quickly as humanly possible.
So Andrew G. arrived that autumn to apply himself as never before and would soon shock loved ones and self by making the dean’s list, while struggling to keep from missing his den and those who had dwelt and buffeted him there. He was known to skulk about forlornly—unless opportunity arose to display familiar oddball hubris. Often, he wandered in late for classes and reprised his penchant for removing layer after layer of clothing, not ever to be funny, and enjoyed the chuckles this would incite, pretending to look hurt by the chuckling, sometimes conjuring wetness in his tear ducts, which
was a matter of adroit practice and concentration. “Andy was extremely shy, didn’t talk much, was kind of a loner,” said instructor Don Erickson, who saw certain sparkle as it was intermittently dispensed. “He only blossomed in the performance courses. In the production courses, on the other hand, he blossomed when he had to be responsible for what he did both in front of and behind the camera. He was always better when it was about him.”
Gloria Acre, now of the twelfth grade at Great Neck North, came to see her college man in Boston for a long weekend that October. He got a nice hotel room so as to be worldly, kind of. They romped, consumed wine, some dope, each other, having much sex; hereabouts, she later calculated, sperm found egg. Happily reconnected, quite unaware of what was to be, they took cabs around town, creating larks—at his instruction, for driver’s benefit, she became his cold, heartless mistress, said she would not leave her abusive husband for him; he petted her and sobbed and groveled. “You’re not worth my time,” she told him. Cabbie scolded her for this, said, “Lady, you don’t know how good you have it. Obviously, this guy really cares about you.” Cabbie told him, “Buddy, I understand. I’ve seen these kind of women before.” Andy was ecstatic, they laughed; he sputtered with his dreams and fears and she listened and believed. “He wanted to make a name for himself. He just knew he was destined for some sort of fame. He knew what he didn’t want to be and that was to end up in the gutter like a street person. That was a constant fear.” She went home, they stayed in touch, not urgently, not dependently, just nicely.
