Ham (5 page)

My disappointment was not discussed at home, but after a few days, I heard my name called with a tone that I knew meant my dad had been inspired to offer fatherly, sage advice, which would fit perfectly into a commercial break from a game.

“Turn down the TV,” he said. I knew this must be really important. When the room was silent, he pulled back the handle on his recliner, rocketing him to an upright position.

“Son . . .”

He leaned forward and paused to shuffle a cigarette up from the pack, grip it in the corner of his mouth, and light it with a Zippo.

“Life . . .”

He snapped the lighter shut with an emphatic clink and took a long draw, letting the smoke fill every cell of his lungs, then finally exhaled, slowly, deliberately, until the last foggy fume was purged.

“. . . is a bowl-a shit.”

He took another puff and tilted his head, squinting for emphasis. Then through the exhale: “And we just stir it up.”

He let the words hang in the air alongside the smoke. Then:

“Turn the TV back up.”

I did, and the baseball game resumed as he jutted himself back in his recliner and I went back to practicing my autograph. Hoping what he said wasn't true.

•  •  •

My mother also had a motto: “Don't expect anything and you won't be disappointed when it doesn't happen.”

She was a full-time mom/housewife who, I suspect, would have pursued the arts had she not fallen prey to the confines of the small-town women's mentality of her era. Her overly regulated and expertly organized household, PTA meetings, and Mothers' Club were a cloak for an often desperately misunderstood and suffocated soul which erupted in dramatic weight fluctuations, bouts of anxiety and depression, and, years later, her late-blooming alcoholism. The family doctor prescribed the popular weight-loss one-two punch: amphetamines and sheep urine injections. It was like Dr. Feelgood meets Dr. Doolittle.

It was not uncommon for her to raid my bedroom at three o'clock in the morning and tear through my toys and books, forcing me to reorganize them. My homework was meticulously checked, not only for errors but for evidence of
corrected
errors. If there was an eraser smudge, it was shredded and I had to redo it, so that the illusion of perfection was intact.

Given that her veins were coursing with speed and sheep pee, I think I got off easy.

Beneath it all, my mother and I had a covenant, and one Easter we unknowingly began a tradition. While unpacking groceries, she stopped to remove the cellophane wrapping from a package of those marshmallow peeps. Suddenly, violently, she ripped the head off one of the little chicks. Gummy innards stretched like a rubber band and then snapped. There was a moment of silence as she waited for my reaction. I took the box from her and ripped another head off. Then she. Then I. We began laughing hysterically, uncontrollably, all of our pent-up angst of perfection melting away with each sugary, sticky headless chick. The perpetual thin ice on which we circled my father was the silent glue of our alliance.

In these many years, the ice has thickened, my father has grown into a sentimental pussycat, and my mother has decades of sober recovery behind her, but the ritual of ripping the heads off innocent chicks remains. We don't necessarily celebrate the resurrection, but come Easter, my mother and I exchange a box of marshmallow peeps, knowing their numbers are up.

I believe my young parents found themselves in the middle of a cultural crossroads, when their 1940s–50s upbringing and postwar nationalism were being challenged left and right—mostly left. But race riots, Kent State, and the multiple political assassinations of the day were somewhere far, far away, and squirrelly little Sam was right in their own backyard, singing “Stormy Weather” at the top of his lungs.

And meaning it.

Though my mother had learned not to have expectations for herself, she had a great deal for me. She recognized me, not for what she could never have, like some stage mothers, but for what she knew I already had.

When I was seven, she enrolled me in a children's acting workshop at Tulsa University—a six-week program that culminated in a single performance of a fifteen-minute play:
Stone Soup.
I starred as the Traveling Stranger who convinces the selfish starving townspeople to collectively make a stew by contributing bits and pieces of food to his pot of water with a stone in it, so that everyone would eat better. It was kind of like
The Music Man
meets
The Galloping Gourmet.

My father had an upcoming out-of-state band competition, which was also to double as a rare family vacation. The destination was Canyon City, Colorado, home of “The Royal Gorge—Colorado's Grandest Canyon,” featuring soaring granite cliffs that towered a thousand feet above the rushing Arkansas River. We'd collected brochures and pictures and I had looked forward to visiting the awe-inspiring natural wonder for months. There were no awe-inspiring natural wonders in or around Sand Springs, though people did travel upstate to the Tall Grass Prairie to see tall grass.

As for heights, in nearby Tulsa, there was the semi-awe-inspiring
un
natural wonder of the Prayer Tower at Oral Roberts University—a sort of Jetsons-meets-Jesus edifice that more resembled a ride at the county fair than a place of reflection.

The Royal Gorge was going to be a once-in-a-lifetime adventure, and I secretly planned to paint my name on a rock and, when the aerial tram was suspended high above the gorge, throw it over the side so that a part of me would be there forever.

Coincidentally, my single performance of
Stone Soup
fell right in the middle of the band trip. My parents were still only in their twenties, but they somehow found the wisdom and respect to give me the choice: I could go with them or stay and do my fifteen-minute play, miss the vacation, and be separated from my family for a week for the first time.

I chose to stay and do the play, under the care of Memo.

Getting to make that decision forced me to attach a value to my love of performing. At seven years old, I knew what I wanted to do.

•  •  •

I could not get enough of music and theater and movies. I spent much of my days escaping over a turntable, listening to a peculiar amalgam of blues and R&B (Billie Holiday, Jackie Wilson, Aretha Franklin) and musical theater (
Mame, Oklahoma!, Funny Girl, Gypsy, Carousel
); and many weekends watching MGM musicals on television (especially anything with Judy Garland, Gene Kelly, or Fred Astaire).

Unfortunately, my immediate area didn't provide much for the young thespian. The closest thing Sand Springs had to community theater was the living nativity scene that took place each Christmas in the “Triangle,” a grassy median across the street from the library and catty-corner to Taco Town. I had to think outside the triangle.

I began putting together neighborhood extravaganzas, mostly revue in style, which featured the Broadway and pop hits of the day. These were performed in our unfinished basement—with a cement floor, wood-framed ceilings, and two weight-bearing metal poles in the middle of the room, which proved perfect for hanging a backdrop and provided a backstage, quick-change area. The cinder block walls made for excellent acoustics.

I thought the shows were wonderful, and after I'd mounted a few of them, I decided they needed to be seen by more people than no one, which had been the sum total of our audience thus far. But I was concerned that the entertainment palate of my fellow Oklahoman neighbors wasn't sophisticated enough for the type of fare I was serving, so I knew I had to come up with a marketing scheme to snag them. Something they could relate to. After careful thought, I had an idea.

I spent the afternoon handwriting flyers on construction paper and distributed them in a three-block radius, inviting one and all to an “Evening of Music . . . and Bowling!!” I set up two two-by-fours on the concrete floor for lanes and used my toy plastic ball and pins. And the people came! It was a tremendous success—the applause of nine or ten adults bouncing off the cinder block walls sounded like my idea of Carnegie Hall.

My appetite had been whetted and the neighborhood kids on my block were too small in number for the kinds of spectacles I was envisioning. I wanted more! But how?

The answer came one day in second grade. A classmate, Jennifer, was—well, she was fat. Undeniably and inarguably fat by anyone's standards, though today she would be considered merely plump. She preferred plaid tunic dresses with wide pilgrim collars and plastic belts to accentuate her waistline, and wore egg-shaped glasses to accentuate her egg-shaped face and egg-shaped body. Our classmates, being seven years old and therefore cruel or honest or some combination of the two, ridiculed poor Jennifer without pause.

One day, when we were learning how a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, our teacher, Mrs. Maule, who knew that Jennifer was an exceptionally gifted artist, asked her to illustrate the process on the blackboard, handing her a box of colored chalks that had been purchased for this very occasion.

It took a half an hour at least, which is like three days in kid time—but we watched as Jennifer painstakingly drew the caterpillar on a leaf, the caterpillar in a cocoon, and the beautiful butterfly emerging. Restless and bored at first, the class was slowly captivated by her skillful hand and careful eye as she shadowed and detailed, bringing the metamorphosis to life. I exchanged looks with Mrs. Maule, realizing what she had planned. Jennifer
was
the butterfly. A plaid, egg-shaped butterfly. She had a talent we didn't possess and, therefore, was special. She was still fat. But talented and fat was much better than just fat. We never looked at her the same way again.

Seeing this as an extraordinarily intuitive and caring act, and realizing that Mrs. Maule was dedicated to recognizing our individual gifts, I decided business was at hand. I asked her if I could use some class time and perhaps recess time and perhaps lunch time and perhaps before and after school time to direct a production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's
Cinderella.
She gave me the thumbs-up and told me she'd suspected something like this was coming when, a month before at show-and-tell, whereas most kids had brought a terrarium or their favorite toy truck, I had taken the words much more literally. For the “show” part, I performed the Act I finale quintet from
West Side Story.
For “tell,” I explained how all the songs fit together in counterpoint, leaving the characters conflicted at curtain.

My script, which I'd typed on our manual Smith Corona at home after memorizing the TV movie, was ready and I began auditions the next day.

I had no desire to be in the show. Prince Charming was a dull and thankless part and my plate was full, trying to figure out how to make the switch from Cinderella's peasant rags to her ball gown with the wave of a wand and no time for a costume change. I solved the problem by double casting Cinderella. Teri Mullins was my best friend and bore a striking resemblance to Benjamin Franklin, so she was cast as the plain one. Cheri Craddock was the pretty one, though less talented (a combination I found to be true more often than not later in my career). When the Fairy Godmother cast her spell, all I had to do was flick the classroom lights off and on to create a very slow but dazzling strobe effect, while plain Cinderella spun off as pretty Cinderella spun on. It was as if the Fairy Godmother had granted her a wardrobe upgrade
and
plastic surgery.

I cast Lance Cheney as Prince Charming. He was dashingly handsome and probably my first crush. More thrilling was the fact that he was one of the few kids in our class whose parents were really and truly divorced. It was exotic and dangerous. His mother was beautiful, independent, and strong-minded, and she was always fashionably outfitted in the way I imagined stewardesses dressed when not in uniform as they sipped olive-brimmed martinis and drew on Virginia Slims. On top of all that, she worked in politics, causing the housewives of Sand Springs to actually whisper in her presence. “You've Come a Long Way, Baby” could have been her theme song.

I was highly attracted to Lance's scandalous family history, his mother, and, well, him. Even at seven years old, he had a dry, witty quality and I could picture him in a smoking jacket with a satin lapel and really shiny shoes. He had a rebellious devil-may-care attitude, so he was the perfect person to understand my deep concern about morning prayer in school ending with “in Jesus' name.” He supported me when I complained to Mrs. Maule that the Jews and Muslims were not represented so I didn't feel comfortable joining the class in the ritual. After reminding me that there wasn't a Jew, Muslim, or anything other than Southern Baptist Christians in our little town and no one was being excluded, I think she must have admired my gumption, so she allowed me to sequester myself in the bathroom during the prayer. I took Lance in tow and we practiced tying our shoes until the reverent “Amen” was heard through the door.

•  •  •

More and more, my father was a stew of confusion. While I sensed that he was proud of my talent and that I questioned the status quo, he looked at the extremity of my obsession as something that made me different from the other kids, rather than simply unique. It's one thing for a seven-year-old to love the stage—it's another for him to spend hours a day perfecting an Anthony Newley impersonation and then performing it door to door for confused neighbors. When I was eight, my dad signed me up for Little League baseball and, wanting to please him, I dove in full force.

Our coach was Mr. Flynn. He was broad and tanned and manly. His wavy black hair fringed slightly over his ears and into jaw-length sideburns that framed his chiseled, pockmarked face. He dressed in an adult version of the Little League uniform, which I suspected he wore at home, where I imagined he also slept with his mitt under his pillow and ate all of his meals from an actual home plate. He
was
baseball.