Still Foolin' 'Em (4 page)

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I’ve written and talked about my hometown a great deal, but for new readers I must once again say that Long Beach was the perfect place to grow up, with its pristine white sand beaches and the pounding Atlantic on one side and the serene Reynolds Channel on the other. We took our bikes everywhere, and the two miles of boardwalk offered a paradise of games of chance like skee-ball and automated poker, a Ferris wheel, a batting cage, and miniature golf. There was an abandoned three-story concrete lookout tower that had been used in World War II to search the sea for enemy submarines. As teenagers, we’d sneak in and smoke a cigarette, grab a stolen kiss, or make water balloons out of condoms and drop them on unsuspecting passersby.

The Laurel Theater was an old-fashioned movie palace with red velvet seats and a balcony where petting was permitted. On Saturdays I’d go to the matinee and watch the Three Stooges and Green Hornet shorts that preceded the main attraction. Besides the ball fields, this was my escape. Walking into that darkened theater was akin to walking into Yankee Stadium—which I did for the first time on May 30, 1956. Dad took Joel, Rip, and me to our first game. Louis Armstrong had given Dad his box for the game and even arranged for us to get our program signed by the greatest star in baseball, Mickey Mantle. Mantle hit the most spectacular home run in Yankee history that afternoon, coming within inches of being the first ball hit completely out of the park. From that day on, all I really wanted to be was a Yankee. A Yankee who was also a comedian. Someday both dreams would come true.

Our house at 549 East Park was small, with two bedrooms and a den. It was a two-family dwelling, with another family living in the apartment above us. The main drag of town, Park Avenue, had a mall running down the center, with traffic on each side heading east and west. We played football and baseball on that bumpy, uneven grass strip; we figured that if you could field a ground ball on it, you could play anywhere. The Crystal boys were always out there. Often I organized tackle football games with my junior high friends, and cars would pull over to watch us. When they installed streetlights, we were able to hold night games. I loved when it snowed heavily; once the flurries began to fall, the phone calls started: “The mall, eight o’clock.” Soon we had a dozen kids playing football under the lights, reflected by the beautiful falling snow. Mom would heat up a big pot of milk on the stove, and at halftime everyone came in for hot chocolate. The boiling milk lent its name to our games, Mutchkes. “Mutchkes” was what she called the gunky skin that rose to the top of the boiling milk. When Mom would skim it off and throw it in the sink, we’d all yell, “MUTCHKES!” After a while, when a snowstorm started, all we’d have to do was call one another, say “Mutchkes,” and hang up. Then we’d all meet on the mall at eight.

Our house was around the corner from my elementary school, known simply as East School. Chuck Polin, the head of physical education, took my crazy energy and channeled it into tumbling. He taught me that form was crucial. Even as a fourth or fifth grader, I understood how my body should move, and I worked hard to be graceful. He would open the gym before and after school, and Rip and I started to excel in athletics. Mr. Polin would also hold “gym nights” and invite parents to watch the kids do the floor exercise routines he’d taught us. From a running start, I was able to dive over five or six kids lying on their backs shoulder to shoulder on a mat. Each time a new kid would take his place, the audience would cheer and someone—usually my mom—would yell, “Go get ’em!” It was exciting and, frankly, I loved performing in front of the crowd.
Performing.
The key word of my life.

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I was also a band geek. I played clarinet in the band and the marching band. I’d wanted to play trumpet or drums, but Rip had said, “Pick the clarinet and we can play duets together.” I looked up to him so much that I agreed, stupidly thinking that you had to have two of the same instruments to play a duet. The cool musicians who would stop by our house taught us some Dixieland licks. Pee Wee Russell, a gentle, slight man, played clarinet with a haunting, breathy tone; he is still considered one of the great soloists. He advised me to always “tease it out,” saying that young players tend to blow too hard. When I was ten, I actually got to sit in on “When the Saints Go Marching In” with a group of Dixieland stars. I loved it, and for a time I acted like I was a jazz man. I wore a beret and sunglasses and borrowed money from my father.

1959, my first tuxedo.

I had a high-pitched voice until I was ten and my tonsils were removed—suddenly I was Pavarotti. It took two weeks for my throat to heal, and during my time away from school, my class was taught the basics of algebra. When I came back I was lost. Everyone was so far ahead, and I just didn’t grasp the concepts. I never really recovered from that. To this day, the only math I can do is figuring out someone’s batting average. Especially if they are 0 for 300.

I do remember puberty, though I’m not sure I actually went through it. I didn’t get awkward, I didn’t get a mustache, not many pimples, no hair on my chest or legs, which led me to believe I was part Navajo. I stayed small until I was twelve, and right before my Bar Mitzvah planning started, we went to Dr. Griboff, the family physician (and also Don Rickles’s cousin, which is not why we chose him). With Rip and Joel having already reached “normal” size and beyond, my mom worried that I was not growing properly. So Griboff X-rayed my growth plates and we waited nervously in his office for the results. When he sat down behind his desk, he said the words that sealed my Yankee fate: “Maybe five-eight.”

How the hell did this happen? Joel was over six feet, Rip five-ten, and the only thing keeping me from being a lab mouse was pink eyes. I was devastated. “We need to stimulate your growth hormones,” the doctor said. So he gave me these pills that were supposed to make me hungry, the theory being “eat more, grow more.” Well, I ate more, didn’t grow more. I just got fat, bursting through the series of Robert Hall suits that were to be my Bar Mitzvah ensemble. I gained nineteen pounds in two months and grew one inch. I was in real danger of going from the quick little second baseman to the chubby kid catcher. I ate everything on everyone’s plates. “What’s yours is mine” was my motto. Rip nicknamed me “Are you gonna finish that?” I just couldn’t stop eating, and they had to take me off the pills because I’d turned into a little white shark. So when the big day of the Bar Mitzvah rolled around, so did I.

My synagogue was a Reform temple, which means the service was half in Hebrew and half in Latin. Not only was I the last one in my family to get Bar Mitzvahed, I was the last one in my Hebrew school class, which means I had seen at least twenty services and knew what was coming. The Bar Mitzvah boy is basically the rabbi for the day. He conducts the service, leads the congregation in prayer, and finally he gets the chance to read from the Torah itself, which is the most dramatic moment in the show—I mean service.

After that reading, there is a moment in every service that is truly emotional. In our temple, the lights dimmed, heavenly organ music played, the ark containing the Torah was closed, and then the rabbi called the Bar Mitzvah boy over. As the music reached a crescendo, the rabbi, the most learned and trusted man in the Jewish community, would lean over, whisper some sacred, poignant, and holy words to the chosen one, and then seconds later the thirteen-year-old “man” would burst into tears. As the music swelled, he would leave the rabbi, come off the stage and into the audience, and hug his mother and grandparents; then he’d bound back onstage, like a Tony Award winner (which I am—wait, did that slip?), hug his father (women weren’t allowed on the stage), and return to his seat, wiping the tears from his cheeks. It was the dramatic conclusion to the service, and soon we would all be eating stuffed cabbage and greeting relatives, who would spit Swedish meatballs on the boy’s mohair suit as they handed him a Jewish War Bond that cost eighteen dollars.

After my friends’ Bar Mitzvahs, I would ask them what the rabbi had said, to try to find out what magical insight from 5,721 years of suffering had been given to them on that day, but no one would divulge a word. They would either say, “We can’t tell you” or “You’ll find out when it’s your turn.” Even Joel and Rip, my very own brothers, refused to tell me.

Finally, March 25, 1961, arrived. My moment. I had never been better. Even though I was standing on an apple crate so I could be seen—a very sturdy apple crate, as I was still wider than I was tall. I did a tight twenty to open, had the crowd standing, sitting, reading responsively, nodding, smiling; I led them in silent prayer, did my blessings, even chanted a few, gave a really strong speech that advocated a ban on fossil fuels and equality in marriage. Then I was called to the ark, read from the ancient Torah, and the big stuff was done. After the Torah was dressed and put back in the ark, the rabbi motioned me over. The music started, and my heart began pounding:
This is it!
I was about to drink from the cup of knowledge. Wearing his home uniform of a black cloth robe and a puffy satin yarmulke, he put his learned, aging hands on my shoulders, leaned in close, and with that herring-and-pickle breath of his, whispered the words I was sure had come from God’s lips to my ears:

“Count to ten, go into the audience, kiss your mother and grandparents, and come back onstage.”

What? Five thousand years of anguish and suffering and having the tip of my penis cut off in my grandmother’s living room and all I get to guide me through life is “Count to ten and kiss your relatives”?

I started to cry. “That’s it?” I whispered.

“Yes, and I expect you to be in confirmation class Monday and don’t discuss this with anyone,” he replied, with a look in his eye that said,
Tell anyone, and I’ll cut the
rest
of your penis off.

Given how I felt about my penis, I haven’t said a word to anybody. Until now.

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Junior high was a disaster. The four elementary schools in Long Beach all emptied into the junior high. My class had more than five hundred students in it. I was out of my comfort zone. Plus, Rip was such a star that a lot of his teachers put pressure on me to be as good as he was, and I didn’t think that was possible.

I’m still not sure what happened. I was a smart kid, good grades, test scores, the whole bit, but I let things distract me. By “things,” I mean the two things on the front of girls. I went on a small rampage. This girl, that girl, on the phone, meeting them at the Laurel Theater, my first make-out sessions, copping my first feels—all of that stopped me from keeping my eye on the ball. Actually, my eyes were always on my balls, as that became a hobby as well. Once I knew God wasn’t stiffening me, I was home. So as my erections went up, my grades went down, my self-esteem went down, and I floundered. If they gave grades for masturbating you’d be reading a book by another Einstein. I settled into life as a C+, B− student. As I started high school I couldn’t stop thinking about two things: baseball and performing. Oh, right, and tits, so three things. Maybe that was puberty after all.

Performing stand-up in the high school variety revue called
The Swing Show
that spring was a turning point. My first big crowd had almost a thousand people in the audience. I rewrote a routine from a Jonathan Winters album. He was my favorite at the time. It was a takeoff on the Frankenstein movie, with the scientist building this giant monster, and at the end of the routine he calls UCLA and tells the coach his basketball player is ready. In my version, I was the scientist and turned the monster into a basketball player for my high school. I was a fourteen-year-old sophomore, and I didn’t think it was stealing. I just did it word for word in front of an audience. I executed it perfectly, and it just killed. Well, of course it did—it was Jonathan’s material. Dad was there, and taking a bow and seeing him smile up at me from his seat is something I will never forget, because I only got to see that once. He died suddenly the next fall, and my childhood came to a screeching halt. I never felt young again.

The night he died, we argued. My first girlfriend had dumped me, and I was moping around. He was frustrated with me, I got fresh, and that was the last time we spoke. I thought I had something to do with his death, which was a huge burden. I drifted through my junior year of high school. With Joel and Rip away at college, it was just my grieving mom and me alone in the house. I never felt I could have a weak moment in front of her, which, frankly, was exhausting, and I held in a lot more pain than I was able to bear. Making the high school basketball team gave me a place to go after school, and though I didn’t play much, I loved and needed the camaraderie of my teammates. I had a good varsity baseball season, hitting just over .300, and did another strong performance in
The Swing Show,
but I was missing my dad and dealing with my mom.

I felt a little stronger during my senior year of high school, though the haze of sadness still blurred my vision. Mom had pulled herself together somewhat and had gotten a job, which, at the age of fifty, was a major accomplishment; she was determined to make sure we all graduated from college. I got the lead in the school show and won the intramural wrestling championship and, along with it, my nickname. I was all of 122 pounds. The title match in front of a raucous crowd in our packed gym was scoreless into the third and final period, when my opponent deliberately gouged me in the eye. Furious, I reversed him for a point, then got my shoulder into his stomach and drove him off the mat and threw him into the scoreboard—a portable blackboard, which fell over and shattered. My great friend David Sherman stood up and yelled, “You brute!” The crowd started chanting, “Brute! Brute! Brute!” From then on, Brute was my nickname. When I checked into a basketball game and got out on the floor, the fans chanted, “Brute! Brute! Brute!” At five foot seven with a buzz cut, I was hardly typecast for that moniker, and you have to wonder what my opponents were thinking.