Lost in the Funhouse (6 page)

Ohh!

Right away, he liked this song very very much. It would, in fact, never ever leave his life. It rarely even left his head for very long.

In this friendly friendly world …

He heard it as a gentle anthem of kindness …

With each day so full of joyyyyyy …

And understanding …

Why should any heart be lonelyyyy …

And not making fun of people who were different …

The world is such a won-der-ful place to wander throuuugh …

Like reallyreally different …

When you’ve got someone you love to wander along with youuu …

Slow haunting corny rhythm put him in the mind of people—all kinds of people—locking arms and swaying back and forth and being very very, well,
friendly
with one another. It was probably the quietest,
most earnest song Fabian would ever sing (so strange), a saccharine message song he had sung in the movie
Hound Dog Man
(not about Elvis), and it went all the way to number twelve on the radio charts just a few weeks before Christmas 1959. Andy learned the words instantly, played it over and over again, sang along and beat along, very gently, on the twin bongo drums he had asked his father to buy him. (Actually, he wanted a big set of congas, but was encouraged to start small, to which he grudgingly agreed.) He would beat along to most every song he played on his phonograph, which his mother made him move all the way downstairs to the small den, so as to not disturb the house or little Carol’s afternoon naps, especially now with all the drumming. He could not stop the drumming. It didn’t matter which of his records was on the turntable: “I’m Sorry” by Brenda Lee (#15), “That’s Why (I Love You So)” by Jackie Wilson (#20), “Muskrat Ramble” by Freddy Cannon (#26), “The Twist” by Chubby Checker (#31), “Alley Oop” by Dante and the Evergreens (#33), “Theme from
A Summer Place”
by Percy Faith & Orchestra (#39), “Sink the Bismarck” by Homer and Jethro (#41), “The Chipmunk Song” by David Seville and the Chipmunks (#50). He kept drumming and drumming and then he found Olatunji’s
Drums of Passion
long-playing album and the drumming got wilder and more fun and he had to get his own conga drum now and his father finally relented (they got it in Greenwich Village) and he would stand in front of the large narrow drum on its three-legged pedestal and pretend he was Olatunji, very tall, very black, a West African possessed of mad new/old rhythms, and he beat along until he knew exactly when to thump hard (palm of hand) and when to thump softly (fingertips) and he would close his eyes while he beat and there was nothing else in the world and he imagined how his thumps could transform people and make them deliriously uninhibited and forgetful of all worries and problems and he just got very very extremely lost.

He banged on the Wamagadoon and as he did it made him feel happier and happier. The instrument contained some magical quality
which made tones, tunes, and sounds that moved through one’s soul with such a joyous carefree quality that one just felt more and more waves of bliss going through his or her body and soul, no matter how young or old, no matter how smart or ignorant. These waves were felt especially by the person perpetrating them; that is, playing the instrument, which in this case was Huey…. He was too shy to sing at first, so he just played, and the children, feeling these unavoidable waves of happiness, got up and danced. After a while, the intensity of the feeling in the room became so high and Huey felt so good that he actually did start singing. “Come on, we’re playing the Wamagadoon,” he said with a carefree air. “Yes, yes, everyone play with me, the Wamagadoon.” … It all worked like a charm and everyone clapped along and loved him, as the adults watched from the doorway and commented, “He’s so good with the children.
”

“… With a C,

And an O,

And an N,

And an F,

And an I,

And a D,

And an ENCE!

Put ’em all together and what have you got?”

How the act came together: He learned to play the guitar from a friend named Charlie—the simplest chords, really, so as to be able to strum with minor proficiency—and this helped greatly. Also, Mommy had forced piano lessons on both him and Michael and they drove their teacher crazy, actually once made the poor guy cry, which was fun, but he did pick up the basics of the keyboard. So he would sit at the piano in the living room where Mommy always played and sang her music and he plink-plunked until he came up with a little melody of his own and made it a song about animals and
the noises they made, which he could maybe have the young children sing along with him.
(“Say! I’ve got an idea! Let’s all sing the song together!”)
He could play it on the guitar, too, in case there wasn’t a piano in somebody’s house.
Ohhhhhhhh
—it began—
hhhhhhhhh, the cow goes moo and the dog goes woof and the cat goes meow and the bird goes tweet and the pig goes oink and the lion goes roarrrrr and that’s the way it goes!
The idea was to get the kids to make the noises
(“This time I’ll sing the name of the animal and you sing what the animal says, okay? Okay? Every time I say okay, everybody say okay, okay?”),
since everybody liked doing that with “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” which he had practiced on the phonograph in the den, using the big orange record with the Humpty Dumpty label that Grandpa Paul had given him long ago. It was a funny old version of the song sung by the ensemble of Billy Williams and his Cowboy Rangers, in which a bunch of western galoots took turns doing the animal sounds as directed by Mr. Billy, who did the chickchick part himself and then Little Tex did the quackquacks and Joe did the gobblegobbles and Eddy did the oinkoinks and Gabe finished off with the moomoos. He practiced all the different parts, which he knew well anyway, then decided that he would be Mr. Billy (moving his lips in perfect synchronization with the record) and have children at parties come up and play the other cowboys while he comically pulled them back and forth as they pantomimed their parts. He nervously tried it out at one party in the neighborhood and it all worked like a charm and everyone clapped along and loved him—and laughed at how silly the whole exercise looked. (The production became even funnier once he began wearing a straw farmer’s hat.) He showed the Little Rascals film
(Hide and Shriek)
and old cartoons
(Thomas Jefferski,
about racial tolerance, was a favorite) and scary bits
of The Creature from the Black Lagoon
for good measure and then got the musical chairs going and pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey, too, and did some magic with intentional ineptitude (the Ball Cup and the Mummy Case were always good for bad close-up) so the children could gigglingly try to foil him and deduce his (fumbling) sleight of hand, which was the best part of any trick
anyway. Sometimes, for added novelty, he brought along a big reel-to-reel tape recorder (Grandpa Paul got it) on which he would record every kid’s voice, then play it back and make them all happily cringe. He always left his drum at home, however, because the drumming was kind of a private thing that sort of helped him to feel brave and not so shy, which was essential if he was going to be performing in front of people, even such small people.

The business began—once he had really decided that it was, in fact, a business—by word of mouth. It was a very occasional enterprise at first, starting really in his tenth year. But he was adamant about his own professionalism and showed uncommon poise when he took control of a party, summoning depths of adrenaline to combat all shyness. (Still, he preferred that the adults leave when he began the act.) “At eleven years old, he was a businessman,” his father remembered. “Nobody had ever been doing this. Parents who had birthdays for their five-year-olds just dreaded throwing these parties. When Andy started taking over, they were absolutely thrilled. They actually left their homes with him in charge. And the children idolized him. We got accolades.” The commitment to show business, as such, was fortified so much so that, by age fourteen (Andy’s memory; others claim earlier), he drew up an advertisement for his services and, unbeknownst to his family, paid ten dollars to place it in the
Great Neck Penny Saver
newspaper—and, suddenly, the calls started coming with impressive regularity. “He began by charging five dollars for two hours of entertainment and worked his way up to twenty-five dollars for one hour,” said Stanley. “Eventually, he was working parties as far as twenty miles from our home. Since I delivered him by car to his jobs, I had to lug the movie projector, which felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Several years later, I had a hernia repair—and all I could think of was that goddamned projector.”

These performances would now become the most important part of his life and he worked and worked to think of new things to do. “I was very successful and I kept doing this through junior high and high school and for a year after, when everyone else went to college,”
he recalled, ever proud of his initiative. His parents were also proud, if amazed and baffled by what was happening here. They had been raising an unusual boy, they knew, and now they realized that they might have to try harder to respect his eccentricities, which grew exponentially. It was, oftentimes, a most difficult challenge. The clamor from the den below—the thumpings and the rock and roll and the voices and the strange yelpings—took on a certain fevered intensity, bigger, broader, louder. Thank God he could close the door to the room, which he did, always with a solemn sense of purpose. No one dared to enter without invitation. His father would state, “When he closed the door in the den, he closed the door. That was that. It was his inner sanctum.”

4

He made himself a freak, which was fine, because everything was always fine; whenever asked how he was, he was fine—
um, fine
—was how he always was, no more, no less. He was visibly unflappable in his freakishness, unruffled by accompanying torment: ostracism, fine; humiliation, fine; you’re-such-a-freakin’-freak, fine,
um,
thank you. But he was not meant for peer approval, not until he had peers who were also freakish. That would happen soon enough—the American sixties, psychedelia, peacelove, whatever-turns-you-on, friendly friendlier world—but first, he was made to thoroughly understand his lowly place in the local adolescent firmament. One recollection, for instance: “I have never been an athlete in my life. I was always the worst. As a matter of fact, in gym, when we were kids, like if all the classes got together and played coed sportings events—all the girls and all the boys together—they wouldn’t choose me till last, after all the boys and all the girls were chosen. It was very embarrassing.” It was also very fine; he didn’t dislike it that way; he just accepted it; plus, he always embellished these tales for greater obfuscation of
truth; no, really. Nonetheless, he didn’t mind that he threw like a girl. He wasn’t suited for ball sports or team sports, anyway. It never occurred to him to adapt or to change or to be better or to dedicate himself to any popular endeavor that disinterested him. His nonconformity was not meant as a statement, although it would be taken as such. If it was rebellion, it was causeless rebellion, which was, um … fine.

Nevertheless: Another shrink, when he was in sixth grade, he said. “I saw another psychologist when I was in the sixth grade.” If so, it would be forgotten by all else and examinations would have been brief and cursory and not illuminating. (Attention deficiency/imagination, of course.) Janice saw same shrink this time, he said. “My mother did, too.” If so, she wanted to know what was really happening down in that den and how it related to the very poor schoolwork. Gradewise, he flatlined always, a D-minus dunce with a million better notions of what he wanted to learn. Pattern came to be that teachers uniformly gave him 65s on everything, so as not to flunk him, which he often deserved, so as not to get him back the following year, which they felt they did not deserve. Stanley signed his report cards with heavy heart, also with disgust, and would give the boy unholy hell. That he demonstrated an industrious bent in the birthday business did not make up for lack of academic luster. Goddamned door of den sealed off too goddamned much reality (only little Carol or the family dog, a small Yorkshire terrier named Snoopy, were occasionally privy to fantastic obstreperousness within; Michael somewhat, too). Stanley was never home, except for dinner/weekends, gave up on son, refused to give up on son, looked the other way, could not ignore it, bore down upon him when energy permitted, goddamned jewelry business sucked him dry, and this kid with his lousy grades and off-center ideas—well, he tried and tried to impart paternal wisdom, new approaches, to jar the kid into living in the same world all else inhabited. H
OUR
M
AGAZINE:
What type of work was your dad involved in? Was it a normal childhood? One of you must know. C
AROL
: Oh, yeah, it was real normal. M
ICHAEL
: Oh, yeah, it was
wonderful. A
NDY
: Every night he would come home for dinner, and he’d sit down—we’d all sit down at the table and eat. C
AROL
: And he’d ask us, “What’d you learn today? Let’s review current events.” A
NDY
: And if we didn’t know, then we couldn’t watch television. You know, he wouldn’t let me watch Soupy Sales if I didn’t know the answers.

Stanley proudly read
The New York Times
each day he rode the Long Island Rail Road to work. “When I came home at night and we all sat at the table for dinner, I would try to find out what my children knew about the world and the current events of the day. So I would ask questions—about world politics, national politics, crime, sports, it depended. And the kids did very, very well with their answers. If they didn’t, it was nothing. I would just tell them what was going on. I was the big shot who read
The New York Times.

“But one time—I don’t exactly remember what it was—I had apparently asked a question which required an answer that was correct. No other answer would be satisfactory. And Andy answered this particular question and I said, ‘No, Andy, that’s wrong,’ and he said, ‘No, Dad, it’s right,’ and we started getting into a very heated debate. Maybe I’m known for being stubborn, dogmatic, whatever—but if I know something is right,
it’s right!
Goddamn it! You don’t disagree with me! We got into a real tussle. Then I made the analogy, ‘Goddamn it, isn’t two and two four?’ And he looks me in the eye and he says, ‘Not necessarily.’ So I just threw my hands up and said, ‘I can’t go any further! That’s it!’ He’s a kid, for crying out loud—eleven, twelve! Later on in life I learned that two and two maybe in Eskimo language doesn’t make four. Two and two can be something else entirely. This was what he was getting at. He had a perception of life that was always questioning everything.”

Still, punishments were levied for bad grades and slack attitudes. The requisite rumpwhacks or, far far worse, television deprivation—which cut to the bone and severed the lifeline—were enforced by Janice when Stanley worked, which felt like conspiracy, which he ostensibly took just fine, although he simmered and stewed and plotted revenge within. His anger, he learned, was best dealt with on paper,
with pen or pencil, which was nicer than his father’s methods of release. He made sure, however, to let them read or to recite for them exactly what scorn he was feeling.

Upon the eve of his thirteenth birthday, scratched in longhand, composed in seventeen minutes, presented immediately to assemblage on Grassfield Road—this:

Boy had no fear of death, saw it as kind of romantic, really. Nothing much scared him back then. And the things that actually did scare him he liked because being scared was fun and fun never scared him. Things grotesque generally pleased him—also, physical, mental, behavioral ugliness; the reviled, the aberrant. Certainly, as with most boys, he loved monsters. But he loved real ones as well as unreal ones. Per the latter, he never missed the classic black-and-white horror films shown late every Saturday night on local New York television—specifically
Shock Theater
as hosted by the comical pasty-faced ghoul Zacherle (pronounced, with ominous emphasis, Zacker-LEEE!), who emerged from a coffin each week to introduce the movies. Stanley and Janice would often socialize on these nights with another Great Neck couple whose son was roughly Andy’s age, and so Jimmy Krieger, a rather straight-arrow kid, quick and self-assured, became Andy’s regular partner in various macabre and offbeat predilections.

“We did this almost every Saturday night between the ages of ten and fourteen,” Krieger would recall. “Our parents would put us together, either at their house or at ours, and we’d stay up way past midnight watching these movies. We were both fascinated by them. We used to act out
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man
—that was the biggie. Andy was absolutely frightened stiff of Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolf Man, the only monster that really bothered him. So I would be the Wolf Man and wear the fangs and stand behind a door to scare him. His parents hated that. He wasn’t thrilled, either. It’s ironic to think that Andy would later be thought of as the Boy Who Cried Wolf—and he was petrified over the Wolf Man. We also saw
The Mummy
maybe a thousand times on his sixteen-millimeter projector. Andy used to wrap himself in toilet paper and did that shuffling Mummy walk with the dangling hand. Sometimes it would be the Wolf Man versus the Mummy and we’d argue technically over who would win.”

By sheer force, it was usually Jimmy Krieger who won—a dynamic
that had marked their relationship since early childhood. Stanley used to seethe whenever he caught Jimmy happily pouncing on and clobbering his impassive son: “Andy wouldn’t fight back. I got so mad once, I said, ‘Goddamn it, Andy, why don’t you hit him back?’” Krieger would remember the horseplay more lightheartedly: “Even though I was a year older than Andy, he was bigger than me. And he was a wimp, so what did that make me? Although I did beat up on him, it was all theatrical—nothing to really hurt him—just playing out what we saw on TV. A parent wouldn’t necessarily see it that way, though, I suppose.”

Still, the boys collaborated in hatching many superb schemes: “Our greatest accomplishment happened when Zacherle very creepily started asking viewers what ever became of Alan Freed, the disc jockey who coined the term
rock and roll.
[Freed was famously fired for accepting record company payola in 1959, after which he seemed to just disappear.] Andy and I wrote in to Zacherle in the guise of a pseudo-Alan Freed Fan Club and sent along what we claimed were Alan Freed’s gruesome remains—just a bunch of iodine-dyed twine which we said was his nervous system. Zacherle read the letter and showed the guts on the air. It was a major triumph.”

Before this and throughout their youthful companionship, there was always TV wrestling—of course, the wrestling! the fights! the matches! oh!—Saturday night grappling cards broadcast from Sunnyside Gardens and beyond, thunderfleshed hulks snarling and bellowing, slamming sweat-slicked torsos against ropes and onto canvas, hair-pulling face-biting blood-spurting throat-stomping eye-gouging jeer-spewing thespianic guys with remarkable coifs and dumb names. And it was—had to be, couldn’t be anything else—a big lie, a phony deal, fabulous fakery probably kind of all-made-up. They were only fooling—in fun—probably. Anyway, this was stuff very very extremely thrilling to behold—loud, bellicose, prancing, giant assholes in heaving combat! It was the only sport that remotely held any appeal for him, so he clung to it proudly and defiantly: “Wrestling is the finest and oldest sport known to man,” he declared many years later. “It’s been around since the caveman, before the ball
and the wheel were invented!” Stanley, on son: “He went bananas for wrestling as a kid.” As kid grew, he remained bananas for such. Jimmy Krieger: “We loved to watch Killer Kowalski and Haystack Calhoun—they were the two biggies for a while. Kowalski was just vicious; he once ripped a guy’s ear off, according to legend. [Truth! He stepped on it and off it tore. Kowalski demurred, ‘It was so cauliflowered, it would have fallen off by itself if it had a chance to.’] Haystack Calhoun was the only guy who could beat him, because he was so big and fat that he would just fall on The Killer.” (Haystack, weighing in at six hundred pounds, would happily exult from every ring he trod, “There are going to be a lot
of human pancakes
around here before I get finished!”) “The meaner they were, the more Andy liked ’em,” said Krieger.