It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (16 page)

I had been visiting friends in the valley and was on my way home through Laurel Canyon when out of nowhere a duck fell out of the sky and landed on my windshield. It was a Mallard and bounced nicely. I have to be clear about this. I didn't hit this duck; it effing fell out of the sky onto my car. My initial thought... a duck comes down, I must have said the secret word. (OK that's a reference that is so old it's on Medicare. Ask your parents.)

I look in my rear view mirror and I see the duck shaking its head by the side of the road. It's not doing well. It's walking around in circles. I couldn't leave it there and I pull over and walk back to it. It lets me approach it, "This must be someone's pet" I think "Why else would it let me approach it. In retrospect the answer is BECAUSE IT WAS IN A EFFING COMA YOU ASSHOLE. I go to pick up the duck and it throws up. Have you ever seen duck vomit? Sort of like Pâté you definitely do not want to eat. I think, "I can't touch this thing. Who knows where it's been." So I find a newspaper on the side of the road, lay it on the ground next to the duck and then sort of roll the duck over onto the newspaper with my foot.  I'm a real woodsman. When the duck is on the paper, I pick it up by the edges and have created a duck sling, which I am now carrying back to my car.

I lay the duck on the front seat. It's looks dizzy. The eyes are rolling back in its head and it's making this sort of duck moaning sound that I never heard before or since. I decide to take it  back to my apartment. What am I going to do with it when I get it there, give it mouth to bill?  I can't leave it in the street. Suddenly I'm Steve Austin, Bushman of Laurel Canyon.

I'm driving through the canyon and I look at the duck. It’s worse. How good would
you
be doing wrapped in newspaper? So now I'm rushing to get it home. I'm doing 50 MPH in a 35 MPH zone.... And naturally I heard the telltale sound of a siren and see red flashing lights in my rear view mirror. I pull over and a motorcycle cop walks up to me like it's High Noon. "License" is all he says. "Officer. I know I was speeding but I have a prize duck here and it's going into labor. I am rushing it to the vet."  The cop looks in my car and the duck vomits on cue. The cop looks at me and then back to the duck. "Do you need an escort?" "That would be nice." So now I'm racing down Laurel Canyon with a spewing duck and a Police Escort. He never gives me a ticket!

I get the duck home.  I run upstairs, with the duck in its' newspaper gurney. I have to sneak it into my apartment because the manager doesn't allow pets. And this bitch can smell an animal at 50 paces. I get the duck into my house and it start quacking to beat the band, but I need to shut it up because "no pets allowed". The effing thing isn't there ten minutes when my phone rings...it's her... the bitch from Wild Kingdom. "Do you have a duck in your apartment?" "Who me?" "I have reports of a duck in your apartment."  REPORTS? What did she do put out an APB on me? So I do some fast taking and convince her it was the TV because "Who would be stupid enough to bring a duck home". Hello, you're talking to him.

I get off the phone and the duck is failing. The noise it created was not a sign of renewed vigor; it was a desperate cry for help. It faints. OK, so I panic... "MY DUCK IS FAINTING... MY DUCK IS FAINTING." I run into the bathroom and splash water into its face. Nothing. And then I look down and see the standing water in my toilet. Ah! Duck. Water. Perfect. I put the duck in the toilet. Nothing. It rests its head on the porcelain rim. I think maybe it needs stimulation. I flush. Nothing. I think maybe it's hungry. I rush to my kitchen and open the cupboards... nothing. A box of matzo. I take the matzo and crumple it up; I run back to the bathroom and try to feed the duck by tossing matzo crumbs at it like we were at the lake. At one point I stop as I see myself in the mirror. "Do you realize you're throwing matzo crumbs at a duck in your toilet?" If anyone walked in I would have been taken away.

Ok, so what happens next is the God's honest truth... I SWEAR TO GOD.  The phone rings, it's my agent. I need to get over to Universal "right away".... But I can't leave the duck running around the apartment. I don't know what to... so... I close the lid.

I leave the apartment and go to the interview. I come home about two hours later. I run to the bathroom and my wife is out cold on the bathroom floor. I grab her up and shake her. Her eyes open a crack. "Honey are you OK, what happened?"  And she says, "I had to go to the bathroom. I sat down on the toilet and something quacked." At that point I see the humor and start laughing. This pisses her off. She thinks she's just  shit a duck. We have a huge fight and right in the middle of it, the duck drops dead. "Are you happy now!" I scream at her. "You've killed my duck." And I pick it up and leave the room. We don't talk for five days.

Here's a P.S. to that story.

I'm opening for Donna Summer at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Buddy Hackett is down the street at the Sands. His son, Sandy, is a good friend and comes to my show. After the show he takes me back to Buddy's dressing room. Sandy says, "Steve, tell Dad the duck story. He loves duck stories."  I start telling the story to Buddy and he starts laughing. He's laughing so hard that at one point he rolls off the sofa. He's crying he's laughing so hard. I finish the story and Buddy Hackett says to me, "That's the funniest effing story I have ever heard." And I'm beaming from ear to ear. I just made Buddy Hackett laugh.

Here's a P.P.S.

Ten years later when I start my writing career, I call Sandy because I have a play that I think would be great for him and his father. Sandy calls his father while I'm there. "Dad, remember the guy with the duck story?" And he does. He agrees to read my play. He loves it but  didn't want to do it so he sent it to Charles Durning who did.  And that was the start of my career as a playwright.

I LOVE THAT DUCK!

JUNE 9, 2006 -
MARY TRAVERS

In the car today another story came to me. It's the first in a series of New York City Stories I'm going to tell.  Here's the first.

After graduating from College I fled from Boston and my family. At graduation I threw my cap in the air, by the time it landed I was on a bus to New York. I landed a job at United Artists in the international film division. I have visions of myself flying to Brussels to the latest work of some unknown director. Instead, I pushed papers...lots and lots of papers. I hated the job and it hated me but it allowed me to earn enough money to rent a one room flat on 58th Street. This place was small; when the toilet seat was down, you couldn't close the bathroom door. There were six tiles on the kitchen floor. It had one closet! I paid 156 dollars a month and struggled every month to eat and pay the rent.  But... it was on 58th Street, midtown Manhattan; I was two blocks from Sutton Place.

Walking to get pizza one night I noticed Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary walking by my flat. It was the first of several sightings. I thought,  "She must live in the neighborhood."  Finally, one night, I saw her enter a brownstone just 3 doors up from my building. It was a magical time for me, on my own and living in New York City next to a legend.  I would walk by her town house and you could see the gold records hung in the front room. My God, Peter, Paul and Mary.  I wish I could be her friend!

FLASH CUT - 15 years later

I'm flying to Denver to open for ... Mary Travers. It was during the period when Peter, Paul and Mary were not working together and she was doing a solo act. I had no idea what to expect, who she would be or how she would accept my act. Turns out she is one of the most down to earth, honest, sincere, wonderful, loving, kind, generous people I have ever had the honor of working with.

We opened and after the first show she came into my dressing room. " You are one funny mother fucker." "Me?" "Yah, you, we're going out for coffee after the show, wanna come with us?" Mary Travers and I went out for coffee every night after the show with her band, we laughed, we joked, she told stories of famous people I could only hope to know and I felt genuinely accepted.

One night after the show someone had pot and we all sat around Mary's room smoking. The laughter was uncontrolled, we were stoned and soon we were hungry. Mary says, "Let's go to the coffee shop." And we all pile out of her room to get ice cream and cake.  This hotel was connected to a Howard Johnson's and there was a long enclosed walkway from the hotel to the restaurant. Mary throws on her full-length mink coat and we proceed down the corridor. We are screaming with laughter and suddenly Mary stops and puts out her hands. "WAIT!!!  We have to compose ourselves. After all, those people think of me as Puff's Mother." And I wet myself laughing.  But the truth of the matter is, I WAS with Puff's mother. Try that thought some night on acid.

The gig ended and, as happens in show business, you lose track of the people you worked with. Mary made sure she gave me her phone number and told me to call her the next time I was in NYC. Well, as luck would have it, I was in New York about a year later and I did call. "Steve, you must come to the apartment." The irony of all this wasn't lost on me. The icon that had lived two door down from me, was now inviting me over to visit. How had I done this?

She was now living in a huge apartment at like 57th and 7th. It was the biggest apartment I had ever seen in New York and it was filled with things from her career.  Her daughter was the spitting image of her mother and just as nice. I got the tour of the place and was made to feel at home. I did.

Mary and I talked and talked and talked and I told her about my feelings of failure (even back then) and she said, "Do you know what my greatest fear is... that someday I will be pushing a shopping cart down 7th Avenue." I couldn't' believe what I was hearing, I tried to comfort her. "Mary, how can YOU say that.... You have worked so much... records, movies, Carnegie Hall." " "Oh that's no big deal." "But to stand on the stage of Carnegie Hall!!"  "It's nothing." And she pulled my hand and said, "Come with me."  We ran down the street and soon were at the stage door of Carnegie Hall. The door was open and Mary walked in with me. The man at the stage door greeted her like she does this every day... maybe she does, but not with me.  We walked down a short hallway and Mary took my hand and pulled me out to the center of the stage. "You have just stood on the stage at Carnegie Hall. See, it's not so hard to do."  And I stood there looking at the rows and rows of seats as they soared to the roofline like some giant manta ray that was engulfing the building. I imagined the seats filled with people and me telling jokes. What it would be like?  It was honestly one of the most magical moments of my life and I had Puff's mother to thank for it.

Mary and I didn't see much of each other after that meeting. Maybe five years later we did a TV show together. When she saw me she gave me a hug and the phone number where she was staying. I called and she invited me over. However, this time it was not so magical. Did you ever come over to someone's house and you knew they were being polite and marking the time until you   leave. That's how it was. My magical time with Mary was over.

This is not an indictment of Mary Travers... it's just how my business is... better yet, that's just how life is.  You work with someone for a week, become very tight with him or her and then never see him or her again. I had more than that with Mary, I had Carnegie Hall and for that I will be grateful to her until the day I die. 

Wish I had a mother as hip as Puff's.

June 19, 2006 –
TODD

Right after graduating College I moved to NYC. Well actually I moved to Bayside, Queens. See if you can follow me on this because it’s complex. My college roommate was Jon Stierwalt;  his fiancé was Ronnie Adler. Jon was half a semester behind Ronnie and me. I wanted to live in New York. Ronnie wanted to stay in Boston. I lived in Boston; she lived in New York. So, I moved into Ronnie’s house with her mother and Ronnie moved into my house…with my mother. I got the better end of the deal. Trust me.  Years later Ronnie told me that she moved her wedding date up so she could get away from my mother. And when Ronnie told her mother how my mother was treating her, things changed for me. Suddenly I was asked to move out because, “We’re painting.”  Naturally I took it that there was something wrong with me, but the reality was Ronnie’s mother was treating me like her own son and my mother was treating Ronnie like an intrusion in her life. There was resentment and I took the full brunt of it.

So I moved to the sofa of a secretary at United Artists. I remember feeling lost, abandoned and hurt by my sudden lack of housing. I remember thinking it was entirely my fault… never realizing the wheels had been set  in motion by that little lady I called, “Mom”.  Anyway I found this one room apartment on 58
th
street and was happy to get it. How I was going to make the $136.00 a month rent was beyond me. But I took the place.

I wasn’t there a month when I bumped into Todd Kashden who had graduated Emerson College with me. Now Todd was special… very, very special. For the older readers you’ll remember Chatsworth Osborne Jr. on Dobbie Gillis. Todd was Chatsworth. He talked with the clenched jaw. He dressed in turtlenecks and double-breasted navy blue blazer. He WAS Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. . (Years later I would meet Steve Franklin, who played the character on TV, and tell him about Todd. He smiled)