Electroboy (10 page)

My one-year anniversary of trying to produce an independent film is coming up, and the fantasy is ending. Thank God. It’s a big flop. I haven’t come up with the money. Not even close. And what I have raised, I’ve spent on junk that I can’t even account for. I don’t know if I’m depressed or relieved that I’m throwing in the towel. I owe my investors a small fortune, about $50,000.

My sister Nancy has a public relations firm that represents several doctors. She is twenty-four years old, beautiful, smart, and driven. And she has real chutzpah. She is the only person I know who can walk into Yves Saint-Laurent on Madison Avenue in the middle of the winter and ask if they have a pair of shorts in the stock room that she can try on. She had worked for a small PR firm for a year, quickly picking up the tricks of the trade and fine-tuning her schmoozing skills. She was unhappy and unappreciated at the agency, so one of her clients there, Dr. Stuart Berger, offered to set her up in her own business, which she now runs from her apartment on the East Side. She attacks the promotion of his book,
Dr. Berger’s Immune Power Diet
, with everything she has, booking him for print interviews and on television and radio shows. Although he is a diet doctor to the stars—singer Roberta Flack and ballerina Leslie Browne were patients—Dr. Berger is a hulking six-foot-five, 365-pound man who sweats profusely, is known to ingest huge amounts of cocaine and alcohol, and has a horrible Percodan
habit, not to mention his addiction to brisket, corned beef, and pastrami sandwiches. He doesn’t look like the healthiest guy in the world. But ultimately Nancy is able to convince a producer at
Donahue
to do an entire show on his weight-loss program, and within days she has created an instant number-one best-seller.

I have always maintained that Nancy has the most finely developed schmoozing skills, no doubt one of the reasons for her success in public relations. She gets a call from Dr. Robert Giller, a well-known nutritionist and holistic practitioner with celebrity friends like Halston, Bianca Jagger, and Liza Minnelli, who wants to discuss the possibility of hiring her to promote his book,
Medical Makeover
. She meets the young doctor, who is as well known for his art collection as for his B
₁₂
shots, in his Park Avenue office. In his meticulous study, he is sitting behind a contemporary desk, wearing a white coat, waiting to hear her pitch. He doesn’t appear to have much time, but Nancy’s not quite ready to begin. She engages him in conversation about her success with Dr. Berger’s first book and retells the story of booking him on
Donahue
. Giller seems impressed. She promises that she can deliver even more national exposure than Berger received and that his book can become a number-one best-seller in less than two months. “I know the producers of two of the biggest shows, and they’ll use you for the full hour,” she tells him. He just stares at her. “How do you know you can do it?” he asks. “Trust me,” she says. Then she outlines a ten-city national book tour. “We’ll hit all the best shows with the highest ratings,” she says. Giller is liking this PR woman. “Is this going to stretch far into the summer?” he asks, beginning to worry about all of this interfering with his summer plans in the Hamptons. “That should be your biggest problem,” she says. She warns him that his office will be flooded with new patients, and he seems to get nervous. “You’d better expect it, your phones will be ringing off the hook,” she tells him. “You’re a young, good-looking guy who’s going to be great on television.” She makes him feel good and gives him hope for a best-seller that he didn’t have fifteen minutes ago. She tells him she wants to set him up
with a media coach and have him meet with a few close friends who are magazine editors for a drink to start talking up the book. Who is this superwoman? Giller hires her.

I’m spending the weekend in the Hamptons at Nancy’s summer share. Even though I’m the loser brother, for some reason I’m feeling a little high anyway. This weekend is supposed to cheer me up, give my pale complexion some color, help me to relax and give me a chance to think about plans for the fall. Allison and I sit around Nancy’s pool one late afternoon drinking Amstel Lights and eating guacamole and chips with her friends. Nancy starts talking about the success of her business and brings up the issue of my coming to work for her full-time. Embarrassing. She loves to bring up the ridiculous. Is she serious? Sometimes I can’t tell. I mean, I can’t imagine anything crazier than my sister and me working together—we’re siblings and we’re much too competitive. And I couldn’t think of any job worse than working
for
my sister. Part-time or freelance work would be fine—I need the income—but taking a full-time job with her would be beneath me. I can’t bear the thought of her being my employer. I’d feel like a small child again, and she would be the rebellious teenager. I could just start my own PR business or launch another type of business or go back to Armani if I was desperate. But after a few more Amstel Lights, Nancy insists that we’ll make a great brother-sister team and it’s such a great opportunity and what else am I going to do? She has a point. She makes it sound great. She tells me she’s already got three clients on retainer and several interested in meeting with her. She wants me to take care of all of the writing and proposals, work my old contacts, and structure the business. And it’s a guaranteed weekly paycheck. It seems like she’s acting genuinely. And she’s always tried to protect me.

We have a barbecue, and somehow before we go to bed we’re not only working together but we’ve become equal partners in a
new venture called Behrman Communications. Monday I show up at her apartment at 9:00
A.M.
, and by the end of the day we have a brand-new bright red logo that uses the same type as my Smash logo. We’re in business.

In the early fall, Nancy and I are referred to our first “celebrity” client—at least we think she is a celebrity—socialite Cornelia Guest, the “Debutante of the Decade” and the daughter of C. Z. and Winston Guest. Cornelia has developed quite a reputation as the youngest of the Studio 54 gang. Her business manager from the company that handles her trust fund calls us in, ostensibly to promote her new humor book,
The Debutante’s Guide to Life
. But what we really do is keep her life calm and under control. We involve her in some charity work and get her some good press and try to keep her name out of the club scene. She lives high up in Olympic Tower, overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park, with her little West Highland terrier, Lyle, in a lavishly over-decorated one-bedroom apartment. As you walk into the apartment, an imposing square Warhol portrait of her stares out from the wall. It is an impressive home for a twenty-three-year-old, and Nancy and I simply pretend that we are just as successful and wealthy. We dress and act the part, the way we have always been taught by our parents. Nancy handles more of the day-to-day activities of the “Cornelia account,” which she both enjoys and despises, while my relationship with Cornelia is more ironic. Neither of us takes any of this too seriously. She has unbelievable delivery and a fantastic, racy sense of humor. I ask her if she is interested in working on a project for a group involved in ending homelessness. “I’ll do anything to end homelessness—anything,” she says, Lyle curled up on her lap.

We continue to represent Dr. Berger, who drives around Manhattan from gala events to pseudoglamorous openings in the backseat of his navy blue Silver Cloud Rolls-Royce, snorting cocaine and drinking vodka. By this time, Allison is working for him as an assistant, so I am privy to all the inside stories about what is really going on in the office, wild stories of throwing away blood
tests, charging patients for tests not done, and his alcohol and drug abuse on the job—doing lines of coke and drinking a mixture of milk and vodka at his desk.

I approach an energetic producer I know at
ABC World News Tonight
to pitch him a story idea on the dark side of Dr. Berger. This is not your usual pitch. I believe Dr. Berger has taken advantage of patients and also of my sister and me, financially. We are furious at him, but don’t turn away his checks. The producer has heard some other gossip about Dr. Berger and thinks it’s a great story. At around the same time, Dr. Berger makes an arbitrary decision to clean house, and he fires Nancy and me and several people on his staff, including Allison and a few of our friends. I quickly organize a group of ex-employees to go on camera and speak in disguise about his quackery. Of course, Dr. Berger is shocked when the piece airs, and it is the beginning of more investigations into his practice.

Meanwhile, Dr. Robert Giller is determined to have a number-one best-selling book and is willing to do whatever it takes to reach that spot. Nancy and I mastermind a publicity tour and handle it like a presidential political campaign. We are on the phones constantly, trying to get through to our contacts at the major national television shows. Once we finally make contact with the producer, we have to make a pitch in thirty seconds. We get only one shot. The pressure is enormous. We sell Dr. Giller’s book as the most modern approach to changing overall health through diet, vitamins, exercise, and nutrition and link him to his successful celebrity clients. In the first two months we book him on
The Sally Jessy Raphael Show
and
The Oprah Winfrey Show
, turning his book into a number-one
New York Times
best-seller. We talk to producers and editors in the fifteen largest television markets in the country, booking him on local shows, setting up radio and print interviews. I become particularly passionate about this book because I enjoy watching the sales grow weekly, in proportion to the work we are doing. The high that I experience from turning this commonsense book into a best-seller is phenomenal. Then my behavior becomes obsessive—I don’t want to see him fall from
the best-seller lists and start sending him to small markets for any type of exposure. I convince him traveling to Portland, Oregon, is worth the trip. As his practice becomes busier, Allison comes to work for him as an office assistant. Eventually, after a few months, the book falls off the list, and I am the only one who is crushed. Staying at the top is what makes me feel good—the money is secondary.

At home Allison and I are like two little kids playing house. The only things holding the relationship together are sex and spending money. Our communication is increasingly limited. Many nights I smoke a little pot before going to bed. One night I lie naked waiting for her to join me, and when she walks into the bedroom her entire body is glistening with oil. It’s the most erotic sight. We’re making love and for a while everything is fine with us again. But then, just as quickly as it started, it’s all over.

Allison and I make another move in 1986—an incredibly ridiculous one way above our heads, a $2,300 huge duplex on the second and third floors of the same building, overlooking the lobby. It has an enormous living room, one bedroom, two full bathrooms, a loft/den, and gloriously high ceilings. We hire a decorator and start working on it right away, even though Allison has stopped working for Dr. Giller and is spending her days playing housewife, taking care of our two cocker spaniels, and working out.

Soon I find myself just as addicted to the gym as Allison is. At the beginning of the new year, 1987, I start an intense exercise and diet regimen—cardiovascular workouts and lifting four times a week with Sean, my trainer, an actor in his midthirties who has no qualms about making me work hard, or about sharing the weekly dilemmas of his private life. I have an incredible amount of energy that isn’t absorbed by work, and I’ve fallen for the “no pain, no gain” motto. I make notes in my date book—no dairy, no meat, no bread, no pasta, no sugar. I’m not eating much except for protein
and vegetables, and I’ve lost weight and built muscle. I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since college, and I’m addicted to the two things in my life that I can control—diet and exercise. I have the strange desire for my body to become stronger than my mind.

It’s January, and we’re starting to have problems with our landlord because the apartment is freezing cold. We walk around bundled up in layers of clothes shivering, and our landlord does nothing. I decide to withhold rent, and we become involved in a bitter legal battle. Until he fixes the heat, I will not write another rent check. Defiant, I ignore all warnings from the court. We are finally evicted several months after we start withholding rent. This puts an incredible amount of stress on our relationship. Allison and I barely speak to each other, and she blames me for my poor handling of the situation, believing that I was too aggressive. Allison decides it’s best that we move to separate apartments. We’re both forced to quickly sign separate leases and start packing boxes of clothing and dividing up what we’ve accumulated together. This is Allison’s idea, and I am opposed to it from the beginning because it’s such a dramatic response, but I agree to continue the relationship with these living arrangements. We find a new home for our dogs with a family in Connecticut.

When we realize that the problems in the relationship are so serious that they might bring it to an end, we start seeing a therapist in New Jersey, Dr. Dworkin, whom we are referred to by Allison’s parents, who think we’re both a little bit crazy at this point. Our relationship has seemed headed toward marriage in the next few years, as our friends are getting married, and eventually we’d like to start a family, so we are extremely cautious in handling our problems. Yet neither one of us is in any particular rush to get married, and it’s not even an issue that’s discussed for a few years. Our parents are perfectly comfortable with our living arrangements and never question us about our plans. Allison seems somewhat jealous of my work and of Nancy and feels I don’t pay as much attention to her as I used to, and she’s angry that I am so work-obsessed. Seeing Dr. Dworkin is extremely inconvenient,
since it’s a half-hour bus ride each way, but we both like him and the fact that he can help us create some dialogue, and we have confidence that he can guide us through what we hope is a temporary crisis. We are learning to listen to each other, and that’s the first major step.