The Time of My Life (3 page)

Doc Savage was a particular hero of mine because he was not only physically daring and brave, he was also a Renaissance man. He could do anything—he was an explorer, a scientist,
an inventor, a martial arts expert, and a master of disguise. I wanted to be like Doc Savage, to be able to do absolutely everything. When I wasn’t flying around, jumping off buildings and racing through the woods, I was up in our tree house with my chemistry set, trying to invent the perfect rocket.

The space race with the Russians was in full swing, and model rocketry was the latest and greatest hobby for boys in the sixties. I’d built and launched a few model rockets, but then decided to take it a step further and make my own fuel, too. I got my hands on some zinc dust and sulfur, and began mixing it up like a mad scientist. Unfortunately, I was about as careful as a thirteen-year-old boy knows how to be, which isn’t nearly careful enough. I knocked my Bunsen burner right onto that mound of zinc and sulfur, and in about the time it took my eyes to get as big as saucers, I knew I had to get out of that tree house.

It took a few seconds for the mix to ignite, just enough time for me to fly out of the tree house door and tuck and roll to safety. The explosion was deafening, and as the tree house went up in flames I looked back at the smoke billowing out and thought,
Well, I’ll just have to build another one.
I had no concept of the danger I’d put myself in, that I could have been hurt or even killed. Like most teenage boys, I felt invincible— a feeling that would continue well beyond my teenage years.

At the same time as I was being the wild man in the woods, I was continuing to study dance, gymnastics, and violin, and performing in musicals. I spent hours at Mom’s studio, studying, sweating, and pushing to become the best male dancer Houston had ever seen. I loved the grace and strength of dance, and the sheer physical demands of it.

My mother saw that I had talent, and although she let me
mess around in the woods and hurl myself around with abandon, she did set some other rules to try to keep me safe. The one I hated most was that she wouldn’t let me have a motorcycle. She’d had two uncles in the police force who both died in motorcycle accidents. So she was scared to death that I’d wreck it and kill myself—either that, or I’d ride off and do some drugs, drink some liquor, or get laid, like so many teenage boys in Texas.

“If I ever see you on a motorcycle,” she’d tell me, “I’ll chop it up with an axe.” My mother was strong and had a quick Irish temper, and I’d felt the blow of her hand more than once. So I knew she was capable of doing it.

But I wanted a motorcycle more than anything, so I decided if she wouldn’t let me have one, I’d make one myself. First, I took an old bicycle frame, welded a plate on the bottom, and put some fat tires on it. Next, I stole the engine off my dad’s lawn edger and mounted it on the bike frame. Once I got the engine hooked up to the sprocket, I had myself a homemade motorbike. It didn’t go all that fast, which is maybe just as well since the only brakes it had were my two boots pushing on the front tire.

I’d tear around on that motorbike while Mom and Dad were away, riding all over the neighborhood. As long as I got the edger engine off and reassembled by the time they got home, I was fine—but of course, one afternoon my mother came home early, and I got caught. Just as she’d said, she went after that motorbike with an axe, destroying not only the bike frame but Dad’s edger engine as well—putting me up shit creek with both my parents, though I suspected Dad secretly admired the ingenuity I’d shown. But that was the last motorcycle I had for a while.

• • •

All through junior high and high school, I continued to pursue all the things I loved doing: sports, music, dance, gymnastics, martial arts, sailing, skating, and diving. I also was a proud Boy Scout, rising to the rank of Eagle Scout while earning patches in everything I could get my hands on. Donny and I had gotten into throwing knives during our Tarzan phase, which started my lifelong fascination with nongunpowder weapons. In my determination to become Doc Savage, I wanted to try out—and master—every skill I possibly could.

I ran track, swam, and roller-skated competitively, and took up diving, which I did well in thanks to my gymnastics training. But the place where I could really earn the jocks’ respect was on Waltrip’s football team, where my speed and agility helped me excel in every aspect of the game—I played on offense, defense, and special teams, and was even named All-City Halfback. I didn’t particularly like the locker-room culture of football, but I did love showing people what I could do on the field.

But with all that said, the number-one priority in our family was always the stage. Dancing, choreography, and teaching performance were my mother’s life’s work—and I was her golden boy, the son who would carry through on her dreams. Throughout my childhood, junior high, and high school years, I performed in summer stock musicals—
The Sound of Music, Gypsy, The Music Man
—always honing my ability to sing, dance, and act onstage. I pushed hard to be that perfect golden boy. And she always pushed back, urging me to try harder, do more, be better.

All the hard work paid off in my early teens, when I received
scholarship offers to study with the Joffrey Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre in New York City. But I turned them down, deciding instead to continue to study with my mother and dance with the Houston Jazz Ballet Company, which she founded, and making myself available for the sports training that fell during the summer. At that point, I wasn’t sure I wanted a life as a professional dancer. In fact, I was having real trouble figuring out what I wanted to do, with so many options to choose from. Gymnastics? Dancing? Sports? How could I possibly decide among them?

But then came that fateful Halloween night, and the injury that threatened to derail all those dreams. Lying in bed with a hip-to-toe cast after surgery on my knee, all I could think was,
Can I come back from this? Will I be able to do everything I could before?

It wasn’t long before I decided on the answer: Yes, I could, and I would—because I had to. Failure was simply not an option, so from that point on, I just refused to even let that thought enter my head. It didn’t matter how hard I’d have to push, or how much pain I’d have to endure. I would will myself through it. This was the first time, but far from the last, that I would push myself through an impossible situation by force of will.

As soon as the cast came off, I began working out my leg again—lifting weights, stretching, running, balancing, anything I could do to get it back into shape. By now I was in my last semester of high school, and my next step depended on being back in fighting form. I had received a gymnastics scholarship to San Jacinto Junior College, about an hour’s drive from Houston, and I was determined not to have to give it up.

I rehabbed my knee all spring and summer, and by September
I was working out daily with the San Jacinto gymnastics team. It still hurt, and it swelled up quickly whenever I gave it a good workout, but soon I was back to doing everything I’d done before the injury. My goal was to compete in the Olympics, and my coach, Pat Yeager, told me I had a shot at it. He had coached the U.S. Women’s Gymnastics Team and was a member of the Men’s Olympic Gymnastics Committee, so he knew something about world-class gymnastics.

I couldn’t have known it then, but the best thing about having gotten my knee back into shape wasn’t going be the Olympics—or anything having to do with gymnastics, for that matter. It was the fact that once I’d gotten back into dancing shape, I could continue rehearsing and performing at my mom’s studio, which had merged with the Houston Music Theater. So I was there when a particular fifteen-year-old girl with long blond hair started showing up.

I noticed Lisa Haapaniemi right away, with her lithe dancer’s build, her long blond hair, and the look of indifference she had whenever she passed me by. Unlike the other girls, she usually acted like I wasn’t even in the room and never looked me in the eye. So one day, when she walked by close enough, I decided it was time to get her attention. I reached down, pinched her rear end, and said, “Hey there, cutie!” She turned and glared at me like I’d just farted in church.

Now, in my defense, I’d grown up at the studio, and I’d been pinching and flirting with girls there ever since I was about three feet tall. But Lisa wasn’t like the other girls. She knew who I was, and she’d been told I was something of a Casanova. She’d also heard that when I walked into a room, you had to raise the roof to let my head in, it was so big.

The truth was, I’d had a couple of girlfriends and liked to go out, but mostly I was just a flirt. I had never fallen in love, though I’d had my heart broken in that melodramatic way teenage boys do—most notably by an “older woman” named Dixie whom I’d seen kissing another guy when I was thirteen.
I had cried my eyes out then, vowing I’d never love another, when I had yet to learn the first thing about love.

Lisa was right that I was a showoff, but it all stemmed from an insecurity I didn’t yet know I had. All I knew how to do was talk about things I accomplished. I was trying out for the junior Olympics gymnastics team! I was a stage star in Houston! I could run faster and punch harder than any guy in town! I never believed that people could like me for myself; I always felt I had to win them.

The second time I met Lisa, I tried to do just that—but it didn’t have quite the effect I was looking for. I was auditioning for a musical we were doing at the Houston Music Theater, and when I noticed that Lisa was watching with a few other girls, I decided to ramp it up a notch. I sang the song with all the gusto I could, then ended with a spontaneous backflip. Lisa and the other girls just rolled their eyes.

Lisa was the opposite of me—quiet, introverted, and mysterious—and I’d never met anyone like her. In Houston in the seventies, you were either a surfer, a doper, or a goat roper—a cowboy. Lisa had a reputation for being a doper, and although she did occasionally smoke pot, her reputation stemmed partly from the fact that people didn’t know what to make of her. Most girls in Houston weren’t quiet and self-contained—they had big hair and personalities to match. Lisa came from a Finnish family, a cool, blond, self-confident bunch that included five brothers, none of whom would be thrilled if the “Casanova” Buddy Swayze tried to move in on their little sister.

In the fall of 1971 I started San Jacinto Junior College on my gymnastics scholarship, but was still living at home, driving the
thirty or so miles to campus each day. When I wasn’t in classes or practicing with the gymnastics team, I was either at my mom’s studio or managing the ice rink at the Houston Galleria. I had grown up roller-skating competitively and loved honing my ice skating skills, and I even started working on a pairs routine with my skating partner, Caroline. But there was another reason I liked working at the ice rink: I’d sometimes catch sight of Lisa hanging out at the mall.

I’d see her coming and going with her friends, occasionally going off with some guy to smoke in the parking lot or jump into his car and drive around. Although she was as blond and pretty as a cheerleader, she had the air of a “bad girl” about her, mostly because she seemed so hard to get to know.

But when Lisa started her freshman year at the High School for Performing and Visual Arts, she discovered dancing. At first, she wasn’t as interested in dancing as she was in theater— she signed up for classes only because she had to declare a secondary course of study at HSPVA. But to her surprise, she fell in love with it, and by the spring of her freshman year, she’d made up her mind to become a professional dancer. She took a job at the Parfumery, located at the opposite end of the ice rink, to raise money to move to New York—so instead of seeing her hanging around smoking, now I’d see her going to and from work, a new sense of purpose on her face. And occasionally I’d “casually” wander down to talk to her and just check out what was going on.

I still had my dream, too—of making the Olympic gymnastics team—and I trained long hours at San Jacinto to make it happen. But that dream came to a crashing halt during my freshman year, when all the sweat, tears, and effort of getting my knee into shape after the football injury came undone in a single moment.

It happened at a competition, as I was warming up on the rings. This was my strongest event, all the more so because I didn’t have to worry about my knee on anything but the dismount—success on the rings depended almost entirely on the strength of my arms and torso.

During competitions, some of the other guys warmed up extensively, doing practically their whole routines in preparation. But I liked to gain a little psychological edge by simply strolling up to the rings, executing a single move perfectly, and then strolling confidently off the mat. This was my usual warm-up, and I loved that moment of knowing my competitors were watching me walk off, not a care in the world, after nailing one perfect move.

I walked up to the lower rings and pulled myself into an inverted position, my body rigid and toes pointed. Concentrating on having perfect poise, I forgot for a split second that I was on the lower rings, not the higher ones, which hung a few feet higher in the air. So after showing off this one move, when I began my dismount I thought there was more room than there actually was between me and the floor. I executed a perfect dismount for the high rings, spinning into a somersault—but then I crashed hard to the mat, jamming both legs into the ground.

Blinding pain shot through my body, and I knew I’d injured the same knee again. It was agony to lie on the mat, knowing I’d hurt myself—and knowing it was because of a stupid mistake.

For the second time in two years, I was faced with surgery, a cast, and rehab. Some days I was so frustrated the tears just took over. I couldn’t stand to be unable to run, to jump, to dance. And I couldn’t stand the uncertainty about whether I’d
be able to do so again. So, as I’d done the first time, I just made up my mind again that no matter what and no matter how hard it would be, I would get myself back into dance shape.