It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (20 page)

We got on the road and the interrogation began. "Is she seeing anyone" "How much money is she making?" "Does your grandmother give her money?" My parents were to child psychology what dynamite is to glass. They fought their divorce through me. "Tell your mother I want..."  "Tell your father he needs to...." And it went on for years until a shrink finally told me   "Tell them to fight their own battles and leave you out of it."  And I did. But on this day the interrogation was going long and hard. I was nine.  I remember wanting to crawl out the window to escape with my life. But it didn't end there. When the interrogation was over it was followed by the tirade. "Do you know what your mother did to me?" This went on for hours.  He complained to me about her and her family like I could do something about it.  It was, for a child, an absolute nightmare. I had no rest, I came home and she was downing him. I went out with him and he was downing her. If you think about it maybe that's why I have no self-esteem.  If I came from such bad parents then how could I be of any worth?

I made it through the first day. We stopped along the way to eat. My father was addicted to food... to the smells, the textures, and the colors. To me it was a way to fill my stomach; to him it was an experience. I made it through the first day and when he quieted down with his tirades and inquisitions, the trip was quite wonderful. The hills of New Hampshire were green with maple trees and pines. The air was fresher than in the city and certainly better for me. I saw deer. I saw cows. I saw things I only had heard about. We'd stop at a roadside stand to buy fruit or pull off the road so I could swim in a lake. This was, after all, my very first road trip and he wanted me to see it all. 

On day two we were heading to see the man on the mountain. He was talking about, I don't know what and I was gazing out the window as trees and rock formations whizzed by. At one point I saw a grey Pontiac pulled off to the side of the road. A man had his hand on his front bumper. He was bent over and was retching out a steady stream of white liquid. We must have been doing 60 mph at this point and the scene passed in an instant. A little bit later I said, "Did you see the guy throwing up by the side of the road?" And my father immediately looked in his rear view mirror. "No, I didn't see anyone."  He was slowing the car down to make a U-turn as he talked. Soon we were heading back in the direction we had just come from.   I pointed out the car to him. The man was still there. My father pulled up next to them. "My son says someone is sick here." And he says, "Yah, got a little car sick." My father turns off the motor and opens our trunk. "Here. Try this." He hands him a bottle of soda water. "This will settle your stomach". The man takes the soda, shakes his hand and my father was back in the car in two minutes.

I never gave that incident another thought but years later, in therapy it came up. The shrink said, "Do you realize the kind of kindness that took? The kind of empathy your father must have had? He could have continued on his journey with his son but he chose to go back. Steve, he couldn't have been the monster you remember. And if he was a monster, what made him one?"  It started me thinking, maybe the shrink was right maybe my father wasn't so bad and if he wasn't so bad maybe I wasn't so bad.

But here's the twist in this story. Later that day we made it to the man in the mountain. I remember standing at the observation point and looking at that profile, so strong, so mighty. It was a good day, a day in which there had been no fighting, no drilling, no idle mother bashing. We were just a father and son out on the road.  Later we went to a ski lift and I got to ride up the side of the mountain with him. Our feet dangled from the lift seats , his arms were tightly around me.  From the top of that mountain I saw vistas I have never seen before, hills and valleys, peaks and magnificent cloud formations.  We could see for miles. I was only a child and danger wasn't an option; I started to run down the side of the  mountain on my own. He reached over and scooped me up! "No."  Is all he said. He was laughing at my absence of fear but at last I felt protected.

The next day we were headed to Maine to see the coast with its famous lighthouses.  We stopped at a motel. I can see that room like it was yesterday with its knotty pine walls and single bed and red bedspread. The room was dark and dank and had lampshades that gave it an amber glow. It was right out of a Stephen King novel.  I think being alone with him in that single room triggered some childhood fear. The fear mushroomed into a full-blown illness and soon I was so sick I couldn't move. He just stood over me not knowing what to do. I wasn't faking; I had a migraine. I threw up.  He just stood there, frozen. He was not good at childhood emergencies. 

Early the next morning I wanted to go home and he was so scared that he had done something to make me sick he agreed. We ended our trip without seeing Maine.  My mother wasn't home when we returned we learned she was playing cards with Eddy and Emmy at The Pines.  They were in the back yard around a card table as I walked in. My mother was surprised... and began to cry. "Why are you crying?"  "I'm so glad to see you."  And I shrugged my shoulders and wondered why she was acting this way. You see, in private she screamed at me and told me what a piece of shit I was but in public she showed these buckets of tears. How could I believe her? How could I believe anything she said to or about me? She ran hot and cold like a faucet.

The memory of my father's kindness to that stranger remained with me for years. And when I was looking for a shred of evidence that would make him a viable human being, I kept going back to the side of the road and him handing a stranger our last soda. It was a memory of an act of kindness that changed my life. He wasn't a monster. And if he wasn't a monster then I wasn't the son of a monster. I was the son of a kind man... and if I was just like my father, as my mother would scream at me daily, then maybe, just maybe, being like him wasn't a bad thing.   Forgetting that lesson was  the bad thing. And for that, I guess I am bad.

POST SCRIPT

After hundreds of years the rock formation that formed The Old Man in the Mountain gave way and the profile was obliterated forever. For me it was like a death in the family. This formation was so much a part of my history , so much a part of my childhood and now it was gone. The lesson of "life equals change" is being taught to me daily.  I'm really glad my father took me on that trip, I would have never seen that profile nor would I have had my other happy memory.  Thanks, readers, for asking me to try to dig deep.

JULY 11, 2006 -
JENNY JONES

I'm booked at Spellbinders in Houston. This is a club I've worked quite a few times. It's well run and I like the owner, Lynn, a lot. My agent calls with the airline stuff and I ask him who is my opening act. "Some blonde" is all he could come up with.  So I know I'm working with either Marilyn Monroe or Lassie.

As I've told you in the past, the "comedy condo" is usually a shit hole. In Houston it's a little nicer. It has glass in the windows. The driver picks me up at the airport and dumps me at the condo. Literally dumps me, doesn't come in, doesn't say goodbye...just leaves me on the curb with the keys. I let myself in and that is where I meet my opening act... some blonde... Jenny Jones.  She's lying on the sofa and says as I walk in... "I can't get up I've pulled out my back." And for the entire week we are together she's bent like a pretzel. (Side note: as I write this I'm filled with muscle relaxers and wearing a back brace.)

I unpack and go out to meet and greet "the blonde" who I did not know and who had never been in TV at this point. I'm a horrible person when it comes to meeting new people. I like or dislike you in exactly three minutes. I liked Jenny in exactly two seconds. She's just a warm, sincere, sweet, quiet person. She had worked in Vegas as a showgirl or a magician's assistant, I just can't remember. But what I do remember is someone who was a real person, who didn't have the comedian's ego and who was fun to be with.  To her each comedy job was an adventure. By this time I was so tired of working these clubs that any freshness was viewed, by me, as insanity. But I couldn't take away her winning personality, it just bubbled out of her.

Jenny was eating dried papaya on the day we met. I had never seen it before. She had it in the fridge and offered me some.   It's like someone introduced me to heroin... a snack food that's sweet like candy but without the raw sugar.  I went insane for it. It's twenty-two years and it's still my favorite snack treat, thanks to Jenny.

Jenny and I get dressed to do the show. The club gives us a car... car, HA, a wreck with wheels. I think the Clampettes drove this junker down the street under the credits of The Beverly Hillbillies.  Understand the club is not being nice, they give the comedians a car so they don't have to pick us up every night. To club owners, comedians are sort of less important than the beer they sell.

So anyway, this night I'm driving and we find our way to the club.  We do the shows. I don't watch Jenny, I never watch the act in front of me but I can tell from the audience's mood when I get on stage she had done well.  I do my show, we hang out at the club for about an hour and Jenny and I get into the car to go back to the condo and her dried papaya. Now for this  booking the Condo is new and we had never stayed in it before. I get behind the wheel and start driving from memory only I'm driving to the old condo. Jenny says, "Where are you going?" "To the condo." "It's not in this direction, we didn't pass that gas station on the way here" And she was right. I was headed in the wrong direction. I turn the car around and say, "What's the address of the new condo?"  And she says, "I don't know." "What do you mean you don't know."  "I don't know. They dropped me off and left me there." OK, no problem, we'll go back to the club and they'll give us the address. We get to the club. It's closed. This was before cell phones , there was no way to call from the car. We find a pay phone ; I call my agent. He's not home. I call the office. I get the service. I call the travel agent. No answer. It's two in the morning and we are in a strange city with no way to find out where we're staying.

Jenny is laughing. I'm in full panic mode, which means I'm furious. The madder I get the harder Jenny is laughing. There is no way to figure out where the condo is but to drive up and down the streets of Houston until we find it. And that is exactly what we did; in the middle of the night, pitch black, in a strange city. We saw a lot of Houston that night... a lot.  We knew the general area the condo was in so we just drove up one street and down the next, up one street and down the next, up one street and down the next. Have you ever done that? When you're lost all the houses look the same. I felt like Hansel and Gretel.  I would stop and run out and try the key here or a key there. No luck and no trail of bread crumbs. We're in a crappy car going 10 miles an hour trying to get into a condo...any condo.  I'm surprised the police didn’t stop us.

After about two hours Jenny screams... "There it is!!!" And she was right, the crappy little condo on the corner revealed itself. I ran up to it like a long lost friend and hugged it.  I ran inside, "Honey, I'm home." Jenny and I were exhausted but we both knew we had stories to tell on stage the next night. The rest of my week with Jenny was uneventful. The shows were great and I loved being in the Condo with her... cause she remembered where it was. We had fun... usually it's a living hell with the opening act but this week, it was a joy.

Years go by and Jenny and I bump into each other from time to time. Then, I read about her all women nightclub show... no men allowed and I think, "brilliant". You see, in this business it's all about marketing yourself and she found a niche.   I never felt there was anything to market in myself and so I'm not a star besides my head is much too small .  In reality, I just sort of trod along making a living and never felt I deserved more success than what I had at that moment. WHAT AN ASSHOLE I WAS.  In any case, there is nothing I can do about that now. 

When Jenny got her TV show I felt it was a natural extension of the work she had done in the clubs. It's always good to see one of the nice ones cross over into the big time. It's when the jerks make it that you want to slit your wrists.  I never watched Jenny's show. It wasn't what I watch, but I knew she was doing well and then... a guest on her show killed another guest.  My heart broke for the stupidity of the act but more so for Jenny. I knew they were going to throw her to the wolves.

When a show is produced, many times, the star gets the script at the very last minute. In a show like Jenny's there are so many levels, so many hands the guests have to go through that it's understandable that Jenny would not know what was going on at the bottom of the ladder. She was way at the top. And while some of you may say "She should have known", I say, unless you've seen first hand how one of those money machine show works, you just don't understand. It's ratings above everything and the lower echelon in these situations are cut throat. Why? They are pushing their way up the ladder and trying to impress...whomever.  When I saw Jenny on the witness stand I knew she was telling the truth. I had spent a week with her and I knew the woman. Nuff said.  But it saddened me to know how hard she had worked only to be brought down by someone else's stupidity.