The Truth is Bad Enough: What Became of the Happy Hustler? (2 page)

Back at the hotel, the Happy Hustler ordered dinner—and three vodka martinis—from room service. Waiting for
The Tomorrow Show
to air, he randomly flipped through the Manhattan phone book but couldn’t find anyone to call. He ordered three more vodka martinis, telling the room service operator that he’d “accidentally knocked over the first three” and made it sound believable.

He was bleary-eyed by the time Snyder appeared on the hotel’s television screen, saying, “Mr. Kearns began in the hustling business when he was fifteen.” He did not recognize the glamorous young man inhabiting the television screen, or maybe he did and simply could not bear to watch him, because he had begun dressing up to go out on the town even before the Snyder show was over.

His costume: the obligatory plaid shirt, a virtual duplicate of the one he wore on the cover of
The Happy Hustler
, weathered 501s and cowboy boots (which he drunkenly had a hard time putting on). And because he forgot to take his underpants off, the Happy Hustler had to remove the boots and put them back on again.

Snyder and the Happy Hustler were still on the small screen when he stumbled out of the room, on his way to The Stud, a sex-charged hotspot in the West Village. No underwear. A few of the bar’s patrons recognized him (but there was never enough attention) before he sniffed his way into the back room, where he fucked, sucked, got fucked, got sucked—in no particular or memorable order; a hole is a hole is a hole; a role is a role is a role. He was relieved to be anonymous in the steamy pitch-black room, where everyone looked pretty much the same in their de rigueur wardrobe, the majority of them with their pants pulled down around their ankles.

The next thing the Happy Hustler remembers is the phone ringing in his hotel room; ringing, ringing, ringing. He is sprawled on the floor and his 501s reek of stale piss or stale beer or both; there is a vile taste in his mouth; the television has remained flickering all night. When he finally, finally picks up the phone, the voice on the other end of the receiver chirps, “Mr. Kearns, the limo is here to take you to the airport.”

“Fuck,” the Happy Hustler snaps and then manages to switch on his trademark charm. “I’m sorry,” he coos. “I must have overslept. I’ll be down in less than fifteen minutes.”

The hoax goes on. It’s showtime.

ACT ONE: ACTOR
               

CHAPTER 1
               

I was six years old when we moved to a modest house on Monroe Street in Hanley Hills, a suburb of St. Louis. Our backyard served as the location of my earliest role-playing. Like the back lot of a movie studio, where actors create characters in scenes exploding with heightened emotion, that location is forever embedded in my memory. Fenced in, that area provided a sacred space for me to discover myself and like a movie that you can’t forget even if you try, a series of episodes that would foreshadow the rest of my life continue to play over and over in my head.

We were still a family, albeit on shaky ground, when we moved to the predominately white, middle-class neighborhood. We were unlike other conventional families of the Fifties, however: my father didn’t go to work and my mom juggled two jobs to compensate. The move must have been an attempt to resuscitate a lifeless marriage and a flawed family dynamic. Their teaming could not be sustained with his mental illness trouncing our household. Usually lying on the couch, wrapped in a ratty white terry-cloth bathrobe, Daddy suffered from a mysterious, unnamed illness that was emotional, “not physical,” according to Mom.

I attended the first grade at St. Rita’s Catholic School, where I was overshadowed by my brother Joey’s bad-boy image, which I attempted to counter by being the good boy. This theme would continue for most of our lives, even though we were more alike than the facades that we tried to portray.

Several things jeopardized my good-boy persona; for one thing, I was a sissy.

I also obsessively sucked my thumb. I could not stop. My human pacifier was bright pink and chaffed from excessive sucking. In an attempt to curb my habit, my mother invented a kind of thumb condom, made out of a glove. It was designed to remind me not to stuff my thumb in my mouth.

Neurotic boy, yes. Good boy? I tried to give that impression, even though I was hampered by the fact that I wasn’t particularly good at anything.

Perhaps my inability to focus on anything other than my thumb was the result of a domestic life that was a battlefield exploding with one confrontation after another. If my parents weren’t fighting with each other, my brother was the target of their misplaced rage. Only occasionally was I drawn into the fray. Daddy’s dinner conversation, often characterized by dire warnings, sometimes included me.

“I’m going to kill him first,” he told my mother, pointing to my brother. “Then him,” he continued, nodding in my direction, “because he’s your favorite. Then you and then I’ll kill myself.”

Pass the potatoes, please.

When my mother related this plot to my father’s psychiatrist, he told her, “The only part of the story that isn’t true is that he won’t kill himself.” Why she didn’t pack up and leave upon hearing the shrink’s verdict can probably be attributed to her belief that Catholics didn’t divorce and her determination to maintain a semblance of religion-based normalcy.

Finding no comfort at school or at home, I retreated to the backyard, where I determinedly embarked on a journey of self-discovery. Forced to find a safe place outside the strictures of the Catholic school and out from under the roof of the war zone that was known as home, I began to accept my role as an outcast: not like other boys—but effeminate, uninterested in sports.

The backyard unleashed me, allowing me to embrace my emerging selves, many of which had marked me as being undesirably different in the real world. Within the parameters of my safety zone, I could be my creative self, my sexual self and my soft self. Rather than conform to what others wanted me to be, I chose to be who I was.

Memories mounted prior to our move to Hanley Hills are not as vivid. I do remember my father arriving home one snowy night in December with a tiny yelping puppy in his arms. “It was just like the song,” he said. It was our lone Hallmark moment.

He sang the words as my brother and I took turns holding the doggie and my mom rolled her eyes, knowing this addition to our family would be her responsibility.

“How much is that doggie in the window?” he sang. “The one with the waggly tail. How much is that doggie in the window? I do hope that doggie’s for sale.”

It is the sole memory I have of the four of us in close proximity, engaging in a moment that could be described as happy. And then it was over.

My father began spending more and more time sprawled out on the couch in a state of inertia. Descriptions of his condition varied, but the word “depressed” was almost always in the mix of reasons he could not go out of the house for days, weeks on end. “He’s depressed,” my mother would say. I didn’t want to know what it meant.

When he did leave, it was usually for a hospital stay. Initially, he was hospitalized on doctor’s orders, but he eventually checked himself in. When he was away, his brother John frequently visited. Unlike my father’s mysterious malaise, Uncle John’s illness had been specifically labeled: multiple sclerosis.

I would later learn that the disease attacked the central nervous system through the white blood cells. A subgroup of white blood cells, called helper T-cells, were considered the orchestrator of MS’s damage.

My father was one of five boys, each of whom had a specific persona. Louis, the businessman. Harold, the jokester. Robert, the military hunk. Joe, the nutcase. John, the gifted intellectual.

I snooped to chronicle my history. There was a picture of the Kearns brothers in the bottom drawer of my parents’ dresser, along with dozens of other snapshots and some professional studio photographs as well.

I spent hours studying the faces of my relatives, searching for clues that might help me understand where I came from and where I was going.

I studied pictures of myself that confirmed I was ugly and gawky. My limbs didn’t seem to belong to my body; my face was usually frozen in a grimace. My hair? Forget it. Most of the photographs were taken with me standing next to my brother, who was magnificently handsome; I was the ugly duckling to his swan.

I’d never met either of my grandfathers, so I spent a lot of time scrutinizing their images. Their photos smelled the oldest, especially the one of my father’s father, Lannes Kearns, who must have been less than a year old when one particular shot was taken.

Maybe it wasn’t the circumstances of the photo session that were reflected in his face as he looked directly into the camera, I thought; perhaps he was born unhappy, like my father must have been.

The photo of my mother’s father, Philip Padjen, told another story, enhanced by the narrative my mother had scrawled on the back: “Saloon at 3416 Olive Street, St. Louis, Missouri. Proud owner, bartender and patrons. Pauline practiced piano lessons on this piano. Note the potbelly stove in back. This saloon was in operation during Prohibition, also after.” He appeared to be in his late forties or early fifties.

Although it was hard to decipher his facial expression, my grandfather was front and center, wearing a spiffy tie and vest, looking full of himself and a bit dangerous.

I wondered if he was carrying the two photos of my grandma, tiny tinted photographs that my mother recovered from his wallet when he died, years after he and my grandma had divorced. They were part of the collection, proof of how dramatically one’s countenance can transform over the years.

Measuring one and a half inches square, the photographs of Grandma Mamie were obviously taken in succession. In one, she is not quite looking directly into the camera, almost flirting with it. In the second photo, she’s adjusted her face, making direct eye contact and smiling seductively. Her lips and cheeks had been painted a pinkish orange, accentuating her beauty. She played the camera like a seasoned screen siren, a skill I must have inherited.

The picture of Grandma Katie, my father’s mother, could not be more of a contrast. More handsome than pretty, she radiated pure goodness. Almost in profile, hers is the unadorned face of a strong-featured woman who didn’t feel the need to project anything to anyone.

In the photo of her five sons, my uncles, all five of them were wearing suits and ties, detailed in the black-and-white photo in myriad hues of gray and impeccably fitted. Uncle John was the most soulful—even though he is probably the least conventionally handsome. Only Uncle John’s shirt collar was slightly askew, perhaps because he possessed none of the Kearns’ narcissism, which seemed to be a genetic flaw. And his smile was the most genuine, the one that made you want to smile back. I was crazy about my Uncle John in spite of his worsening physical condition, he would let me sit on his lap even though it must have been painful. Then he’d endure a game of dress-up, in which I costumed him in various gender-bending articles of clothing from my mom’s closet—a fluffy scarf or one of her excessively feathered hats.

His intellect wasn’t something he used to impress, but there was something about the way that he spoke, not only the sound of his voice but his choice of words, that distinguished him from his brothers. The only Kearns brother I wanted to be like was Uncle John.

He was uncommonly gentle—everything about him, from his body language to the timbre of his voice. I envied his two kids. Even though death would take him from them prematurely, they had a good dad.

I was a source of embarrassment to most family members, especially on my mother’s side. Many of them were intent on changing me.

CHAPTER 2
               

Having navigated the psychiatric waters in an attempt to cure my father, my mother opted to take me to a psychiatrist. She had a very pressing question that begged consultation with someone other than unsophisticated family members.

I had asked Santa for a doll. What should she do?

She wanted to know if the psychiatrist thought that her son was destined to be a homo.

At the doctor’s office, I was placed in a room full of toys, where I was secretly observed by the psychiatrist through a two-way mirror.

Toys of every kind were scattered about: plastic guns, colorful balls, play tools. I was instantly drawn to an oversize dollhouse where an adorable blond baby doll was residing. Without hesitation, I had that little bundle of joy in my hands and contently played with her until the psychiatrist appeared.

The psychiatrist was fair-haired, with a glistening smile and a soothing voice. He took me to an outdoor area, where we cavorted on a swing, even though it was cold, while he asked me questions. Why wasn’t the doc my dad?

At one point, he said, “Be careful, you’re gonna fall on your butt.” The sound of a male voice saying the word “butt” shocked me, made me tingle; it was obviously an expression of concern, but it felt oddly titillating to me.

What were his conclusions? He told my mother that she should get me the doll. Was playing with dolls a sure sign I was destined to live the tragic life of a queer?

“He has a strong desire to parent,” was his straightforward answer.

It was all that my mother needed to commit to purchasing the doll that she defiantly presented to me at a family Christmas gathering. As I delicately unwrapped my gift, revealing a gorgeous yellow-haired doll with bright red lips and black-black eyelashes that realistically opened and closed, I heard audible gasps. As if choreographed, everyone in the room shifted position. Some of the men actually stormed out in a state of disgust, shaking their heads and glaring at my mother.

Next on the evening’s program was An Act of Physical Violence, perpetrated at the dinner table after the customary thanks to our Lord.

With her characteristic coarseness and on-target timing, Grandma Mamie, getting increasingly sloshed, seized the Kodak moment to reveal a family secret: “My husband can’t get it up.”

Grandpa Poppy backhanded her across the face, hard enough to send her flying out of the dining room chair, proving he obviously had more strength in his arm than in his dick.