by John Ridley
So, let me tell you: It began with the stripper ending her act, taking a couple of well-milked bows waiting for crumpled dollar bills from the audience that would never get tossed her way. The boys were drunk, but not so drunk they would pay a cent more than cover to peep what the girls were shaking. This one finally got to bundling her clothes and heading offstage with hot and not particularly well-hidden grumbles for the boys and their cheap, cheap ways.
The emcee took the stage, his stroll arrogant in its laziness. Never mind he was bringing on acts at a burlesque house past two in the morning, he was above his station. “Ooookay,” he said slow and soft and dead tired, his too-good-for-this manner infecting his speech as well. “This next guy is a comic. How about some applause for Johnny Mann.”
Close enough.
I hit the stage and I hit it fast. I hit it with all the energy the emcee lacked and enough left over to juice Staten Island. Applause. A very little. Then it was gone. And there was that void again, the same emptiness between the claps and my first joke that was waiting for me when I'd performed back at the logging camp. I raced to fill it with my borrowed bits. Bits about the crazy people in “my” neighborhood, about the mother-in-law I didn't even have. Bits on my dad the drunk that I hadn't written but still rang fairly true. Bit after bit after bit. Nothing. No laughter. No grins. No matter my daydreams, at some point you dig the reality of things: You're doing time at two in the morning for a handful of drunks who want to see naked women. A stand-up show doesn't figure into any of that. There wasn't a laugh to be bought in the house. But the worst of it, beyond the no-laughing, the people didn't so much as notice me. They didn't laugh, but they didn't boo. They didn't clap, but they didn't heckle. They didn't care. I was onstage trying to live a dream, trying to accelerate my life, and no one gave a damn. Drinks got ordered, conversation got passed around. I got ignored.
Confidence went away. Shakes and flop sweat took over.
After a lifetime-long three minutes onstage—two shorter than they had given me—I limped off.
The emcee brought on a stripper.
Her the boys gave attention to.
The exit. I couldn't move myself for it fast enough. I crossed past Ray, the house manager, not saying anything to him, figuring nothing needed be said. But as I rushed for the street, he said something to me.
“What?” I asked, hearing him but not believing what I was hearing.
“Mondays,” he said again. “You can start going up on Monday nights.”
For a second I got some positivity back, thinking maybe I'd been funnier than I figured.
“I was good, huh?” I asked.
Ray shrugged at me. “Gotta put something on between the whores.”
GRACE KELLY WAS GETTING HITCHED to a prince, and that was perfect. The 1950s were the American dream; they were the American way of life lived as a dream. The U.S. was the all-powerful nation top to bottom. The president was the guy who beat Hitler, and the company man was the former G.I. who'd hit the beaches at Normandy. That we'd only been able to stalemate the North Koreans was a side issue. We were aces. We were prosperous and we were powerful. Madison Avenue told us so in the way it pitched us Ply-mouths and Geritol and Betty Furnessed us into buying Westing-house. At home every man wanted to be king of his prefabricated castle, and every woman wanted to be a queen at least for a day. And as if the wish of the people willed the dream real, one of Hollywood's most glamorous starlets was turning herself into honest-to-God royalty. She wore a wedding dress and he turned out in some princely looking getup; chest full with spaghetti, shiny star-shaped medals dripping from a rainbow of ribbons. Made you wonder how he could've fought in enough wars to have won them all. But then, you gave it some thought and realized he hadn't fought any wars. He was a prince. Princes don't fight in wars. Princes send other guys to do their fighting for them. And he was a prince of a tiny country you could barely find on a map without trying three times real hard. Tiny countries don't get into wars. Tiny countries are liable to get themselves overrun. So all that spaghetti, the gold trim on his uniform, the sash slung beauty queen-style diagonally across him was, like Sergeant Kolawole and his freedom fighters, all make-believe. Except, he really was a prince. Prince enough he got to marry Grace Kelly. Many, many years later, she would die tragically the way lots of beautiful and famous people did, which would make you suspect there was a price to be paid for being beautiful and famous. But that would be many, many years later. At the moment, televised around the world, Grace Kelly was marrying Prince Somebody from a small country, and as I watched with the rest of the planet, all I thought was it must be so marvelous to be beautiful and famous: Here was a woman, who had everything in the world, getting the rest of it.
She had all that. What I had was a moving job that filled my days and something like a home life with my father to return to at night. But my life became the Fourteenth Street Theater. Whatever else it wasn't, the theater would always be where I first broke into show business. It's where I first met people who, same as me, had a blinding desire to be on television or to be in pictures—a known face and a household name. They wanted to be something more than what they were. Some had talent, some were just shining themselves. Time would tell which I was.
Performing on Monday nights was what Ray started me with. In truth, it was Tuesday mornings before I took stage. Same as when I'd auditioned, the Monday crowd didn't amount to more than a bunch of man-aged boys who'd come for the clothesless women and used the acts in between as an opportunity to refill their glasses.
Didn't matter.
By the time I went on, it was usually me cracking bits to the cleaning crew.
Didn't mind.
Not at first. At first I was happy just to be able to perform regular, work my act in front of bodies instead of a mirror and for a cut of the door on top of that, though most times my take didn't cover round-trip fare on the subway.
Didn't care.
I was in show business. I was an entertainer.
I spent more time at the theater than just the Monday nights/Tuesday mornings I went up. Every night I could I'd go down, hang out. Mostly I was hoping one of the scheduled acts would do a no-show and I could grab their spot. On average there were fifteen other guys sniffing around with the same bright idea. But I'd also watch the other acts, the ones I liked and the ones I didn't. If I liked them, I wanted to mimic their style and presence. I wanted to parasite anything I could from them to make me a little sharper. And the acts I didn't dig, I wanted to know for sure what I didn't like about them—what made them tired and unfunny, what it was that kept them at the theater long after they should'e moved up and on, or gotten out.
The goal of my observing was to get me from Mondays to a spot on the weekend, Friday or Saturday night. Those were the prime gigs: The house was decent, a cut of the door added up to something more than pocket change, and, most important, it was a whole lot easier to get agents and managers and talent scouts to come around then than at past two A.M. on a weekday morning. And those were the people you had to have in your life—the ten-percenters, guys who opened doors, cut deals, and made noise. They were the ones who, real easy, could jump an act from clubs to television and from television to fame.
Over time, some of the acts at the theater who couldn't take not going anywhere quit coming around altogether. Because of them falling out, me getting a little better, slow and steady I made my way from Monday nights to Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Wednesday mornings. Not much after that I actually was getting stage time at night instead of the crack of dawn. I was making progress. I was feeling good, and I was feeling proud. I felt that way for the first few months. For the next few I felt content. After eight or nine months I felt nothing but worry. At some point I realized I'd stalled. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't moving any closer to Thursday nights, and for sure no closer to a weekend spot.
Worse, I wasn't getting on at any other clubs. The Fourteenth Street Theater wasn't any kind of a battering ram w
hen it came to knocking open other doors. At some places having the theater as my only credit hurt me more than helped. And not having an agent or manager to do my hard selling for me only made me come off all the more desperate. I was going nowhere, the fact of it proven to me by the new faces around the theater; the fresh acts trying to break in. Wasn't very much earlier I'd been fresh. Wasn't very much earlier I'd been snickering at acts who'd been hanging around too long, had bottomed out, thinking: Why the hell don't they just toss it in? Maybe apprehension had me reading things that weren't there, but it seemed a lot of the smirks on the lips of the new faces were saying the same about me.
ANYWHERE, were there any couple of people who could be any more not alike? Poor, black, from Harlem. White, Jewish, from Williamsburg. I wanted to be a comic and she wanted to sing. I had no family to speak of and little education. She had manners, and a mother and father who actually cared their daughter was up late trying to make a life in show business. The only ways me and Frances Kligman were similar were in the desire to succeed and the belief—not counting the fact we seemed to have a permanent gig showcasing the least desirable joint in town—that we would.
The clearest memory I have of Fran, the first thing I think of when I recall her, she always smelled like food. Not that she stank of it. She carried the aroma of someone who lingered in a kitchen over shared stories as she prepared meals. The smell reminded me of Mae. That odd cocktail of things—the scent she carried, our differences, and our shared desire—was foundation enough for me and Fran to form a fast friendship.
We'd hang together at the theater, we'd talk, and at some point we voluntarily took up the chore of looking out for each other. Palling around with me would keep other guys from so steadily pressing up on Fran, trying to get the girl to give them the time of day. Fran was nothing if she wasn't a looker. Sandy-haired, maybe a little plump, but God-gifted in all the right spots. The wolves were constantly circling, eager to get a little play. I didn't blame them; I just kept them back. For her part, Fran kept me honest as far as the strippers were concerned. It was hard to pay them much attention when Fran was staring at me big-sister-style. Good thing for it. What the girls lacked in looks they made up for with jigs. Real easy they could Venus's-flytrap a young man from a good bit of what little pay he earned. A very good bit.
So, us two had a nice little groove. We would get to the theater early, catch the other acts, joke to each other about the ones we thought corny, give a just about honest critique of each other's sets, maybe grab some late food, sit and talk, sometimes for hours. It was very much as if, minus the sex, Fran and I were having a relationship. Not as odd as it comes off. We were different from each other, and mostly unknown to each other, but at the same time unsuitable for almost everyone else we met. Sometimes, when you're friendless, the next best thing is a stranger who knows you well. Frances came to know me very well. She was probably the only person I could be myself with, open and honest. Even at that, we both did everything we could to avoid one truth: Neither of us was making it in show business. The reality of things was plain, but like two people sharing a sin, we didn't talk about it. Most times we didn't. But one time, one night after a string of go-nowhere nights—bad audiences, bad pay—when I was walking with Fran after a show, we couldn't help but talk about it.
I was counting my cut of the door. It didn't take but an instant.
“What'd you get?” Fran asked.
“Dollar thirty. Bad enough my career's dead, I'm not making enough to bury it good.” The city was never entirely still, but at that hour, very late, or very early, it was mostly quiet. Almost at rest. It was always incredible to me that a place with so many souls could become so nearly silent and empty. At those times, walking the streets was no different from walking through a Hollywood movie set, blocks of false fronts and empty structures built up to look like something. Just facades. It was the people that made the city.
I asked Fran: “What'd you get?”
“Same.”
Too much of a sweetheart, Fran was never much at lying. “C'mon. I can take it.”
A hesitation, not wanting to hurt my feelings. “Three.”
I was split in my reaction to that. Ray had given her a buck and change more than me, figuring, figuring wrongly, it might be good for a little play with Fran. It wasn't fair and the reasoning behind it was off, but even so, a buck and change? I knew that didn't even begin to compensate Fran's talent. And if she wasn't getting what she deserved from a guy who wanted to make time with her, what chance did I have of ever getting my due?
Fran, seeing my heart sinking, tossed out some cheer-up bits to keep me from drowning in my own misery. “It's only because I get that same handful of guys coming in to hear me. They come, they drink, so Ray swings me a little extra.”
We stopped walking for a second under the shine thrown down by a streetlamp.
“He does it 'cause he wants to swing you a little extra in the back of his Chrysler.”
“I'll be careful, Dad.” That came with a smile.
Warm as the smile was, it was no good for making me feel better. Of its own free will my mouth opened and heartache came spilling out. “Christ, Frances, I'm …”
“You're what?”
What was I? What word was there to describe the hurt of failure forming inside me? “Sick. I'm sick of my life, sick of spending my days moving furniture and my nights trying to get boozers to listen to jokes, and for what? For pocket change? For goddamn …”
My hands caught my falling head. I could have cried just then. Except that Fran was a girl, and, friend or not, I wasn't about to cry in front of a girl, except for that … So I did some dry crying. I wailed without tears. “I just want to make it, Fran. I want out of this life. I want—”
“What do you want?”
“I want to quit getting beat down.” I corkscrewed against the defeat tearing at me. “I want to quit taking punches. Long as I can remember I've had people pushing me around, treating me like dirt, treating me like a nothing. All my life I've been nothing. Worse than that. I've been a black nothing.”
“Don't say that.”
“You ask my pop, he'll tell you. You ask any white person on the street, they'll tell you what I am.”
“Including me, because I don't think that. I don't think of you as black, and I certainly don't think of you as nothing.”
I quit my pity for a tick, looked at Fran. I wanted to read her, wanted to know if she was saying things to say things or if she meant her words. Even in the streetlamp's bad light she was obvious. She was honesty.
I had to break off my stare; embarrassment juked my head away—her being so strong and me being so weak.
I asked Fran, I looked across the street, but I asked: “Why do you do this, hang out all night just to get in a song in front of drunks? You're not like me. You have a good home life.”
She laughed a little. “No. Yeah, I've got a real nice life. Nice parents, live in a nice neighborhood. I should meet a nice Jewish boy, have a nice wedding, move to a nice suburb and just …” Fran laughed again, this time pained. It was like the hurt I'd been feeling had infected her. “You know something? As much as you don't want your life, I don't want that: a house on Long Island with a couple of kids and a dog, and a Buick in the drive. I don't want any of that the worst way I know how.
“What I want is to be onstage, in front of people, performing. I want to sing. I … I need to. And if that means it's at the Fourteenth Street Theater at twenty past two, better that than trying to figure out what flowers to plant in the garden and what towels go with the bathroom tile. I know that's got to sound … I've got a thousand other choices, but I can't help it; I can't help the way I feel. I feel—”
“You feel like you were born different.”
Fran shot me a look, slightly hot, as though I'd just announced her secret shame to the world. But after a beat her stare softened. She said: “Sometimes I feel that way.”
Fran went quiet. The sound
of her voice was replaced by the dull hum of life: the few cars that rode the avenues, the sound of them echoing through the skyscraper canyons. A siren went off somewhere we couldn't see. A guy at a newsstand talking to another guy who was waiting for the early edition to get thudded down from the cruising Post, News, Herald Trib, or Times trucks was going on about them, and about how he was sick of them, and how the president should do this or that about them before it's too late.
Fran said: “Let's go down to the Village tomorrow night.”
I shook my head to the idea. “I hate that.”
“Hate what?”
“Going to the clubs down there, seeing people doing better than me.”
“Come on. It'll be fun. We'll catch a couple of acts, get us both jazzed up again. Jackieeeeee”—dragging my name out—“don't make me go down there by myself.” Fran tossed me more of that smile of hers.
Fran was okeydoke, the kind of girl you thought of as one of the guys. Except when she smiled. When she smiled she was all woman.
“… Okay.”
“How did I know you were going to say that? I better run and catch my train. I'll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Wait up.” I held out a couple of bucks. “Here. Grab a cab.”
“Jackie …”
“You can't ride the subway this time of night.”
“And I'm not taking the little bit you hardly make.”
“You don't get home safe, we can't go to the Village.” I tossed back that smile she'd given me.
