It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (37 page)

After everyone left the room I was getting my stuff together when there was a knock on my door. I opened it and  Donna Summer was standing there. "Can I come in?" "Sure" I said with glee. She took both my hands and said, "I just wanted to tell you how happy we are that you are on the show with us."  And in that space and time my dreams had come true. This was a star of the hugest magnitude telling ME, Mr. I Don't Belong, that she was happy she was working with me. It is 25 years later and I can still feel the love that she shared with me that night. She wasn't a star, she was a kid from Roxbury, Mass. telling a kid from Chelsea, Mass.  "Hey, we made it."  And I thanked her with all my heart. It's many years later, I still thank her.

Donna's group and I grew tight. Her sister was a back up singer and we would have lunch together or sit by the pool. It was the dream gig of a lifetime.  And then I got a call from my manager. "Donna is canceling the rest of her gig. She's pregnant."  So my 10 day gig was cut to about four days.  Donna saw me in the hall that night and apologized. I didn't know what to say. It was hard to hide my disappointment. This cut the momentum of my career short and put a pall over any forward movement. However, the hotel was very interested in me and there was talk of a long-term contract so some good was going to come of it.

The last show that night will remain with me forever. It was Donna's "Hot Love" Medley, truly the high point of the show. Every night the audience jumped to their feet and danced in the aisle. I was in the back of the room watching. It was like Donna was pulling out all the stops for this last show.  It's a fever pitch, the last note is sung and held.  The crowd goes wild and the huge apron curtain starts to come down. At that very instant a mother sitting on the ring picks up her eight year old daughter and pushes her on the stage toward Donna...and right in the path of the falling curtain.  Donna who is now singing her encore refrain walks over to the child, takes her hand and pulls the child close to her as the curtain slams to the ground missing them both by three feet. The crowd explodes and I remember thinking I had just seen the ultimate professional. A woman who could keep her cool and still hold a high note. No one really knows how profoundly special Donna Summer is!

The next day, our names came off the marquee, were gone from the lobby, became missing from the coffee shop. It's like we never played there. Welcome to show biz!  I fly back to LA and am living in the glow of  my four days of excellence.

Must have been about three months later when my friend Irwin Shamah came out to visit from New York. I was still in the town house I had rented when I was married. Irwin was in the guest room when he shouted to me... "Hey, Steve, turn on the TV."  I turned it on in my room and my jaw dropped as I saw pictures of smoke billowing out of the entrance of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Irwin ran down to my room and found me in bed frozen, my eyes transfixed on the television. "What's the matter?"  And I turned to him in the calmest most distant voice I could muster and said, "We're watching my career go up in flames." In actuality it wasn't just my career that was lost that day. I know that. The loss of life was far more important.  But, I was right. The long-term effect was devastating. The contract with the hotel never materialized and I was forced to go on the road working shitty little Comedy Clubs for the next fifteen years.

I spoke to my comedian friends trying to find some solace in their condolences. That's like asking the fox to feel sorry he ate the chicken. If I fail, they succeed. That is, everyone but Tom Dreesen who told me that everything happens for a reason. And maybe the timing was wrong, maybe if I had too much success now I wouldn't be able to handle it. I listened to those words and tried to rationalize the destruction of what I had built in Vegas but it was very hard. I had just lost my wife, my child, my money, my agent Gary (who had passed away suddenly) and now I was losing my career.  Little did I know it would get a lot worse before it got better. And it did... and I went through it alone.

September 1, 2006 –
LINDA

It was a cold brisk winter day in Boston when I was walking home from school with a group of friends. I guess I was in the 10th grade. I remember this like it happened yesterday. MK was walking with me and ahead of us, about fifteen feet, was a girl walking alone. She was overweight and carried her head slung low.  "Who is that?" I said with curious mock. "Oh, that's Linda." And MK got very serious. "She has had the worst life that anyone could ever imagine." She's got my attention.  "Her mother died when she was six and her father remarried a bitch who has a son. She hates Linda and only loves her son. The step-mother beats Linda and neglects her and..." I didn't need to hear another word.  I knew that I would have to be Linda's friend.

A few days later I was at the community center and there was Linda at a table with two other people another Steve B and another Linda. This was my chance to meet her... I knew the Steve B and so I sat down pointing to the four of us said... "Hey look...Steve, Steve, Linda, Linda ." And without a beat my Linda said, "Yah, we are Berman-Blue-Pop-Ney" (taking a portion of each of our last names and making it one) And Berman-Blue-Pop-Ney we became. From that moment on whenever we would see one another we chanted "Hello Berman-Blue-Pop-Ney." It made us laugh and it connected us. It’s what teenagers do.

This was the first time I had ever really met Linda and I found her to be funny and smart and warm and loving. I could relate to her. I could relate to her pain. And although she was two years older than me, I adopted her.  Linda and I did everything together, we went to the beach, we hung out in Bellingham Square, we drove to Marblehead and we did all the things kids do in the summer in Boston. I remember one day Linda and I were in Nahant and we had to walk to Punks Corner in Revere (A hang out by the beach). It was quite a distance but Linda and I began walking and talking. We talked about everything; family, friends, life, our future. But one thing we talked about will mean nothing to anyone but Linda and me. I won't even try to explain it. I'll just say it, "Peanuts, Popcorn, Cracker Jacks and beer, in Coke cans."  It's one of those silly things you say as kids, which has meaning at the moment but loses something in the translation. Just trust me, it's important to us.  Linda and I shared a bond and on that day the bond was sealed for life. That walk joined two souls as one and we both knew it.

I went off to college, Linda stayed in Boston. When I got my apartment with my two roommates from Emerson, Jon and Bob, Linda would come by and hang out. She was funny. She had this weird sense of humor that just made me howl and I wondered if her sense of humor came from the same pain as mine. One night she came over to our combat zone apartment with a group of friends from high school. It was very strange having my high school friends and college friends in the same room. It was fire and water. One group knew me as one person while the other group knew me as another. Both were struggling to fit me into a mold that I no long fit. Linda and her group left early and I didn't see much of her after that. I suspect she thought I changed. However, the next morning when I got up to go to class, I found a little gift Linda had left me. I opened my closet door and Linda had tied all my clothes in knots. My shirts were tied to my pants, my pants to my jackets... I screamed with laughter. I fell on the floor laughing. Jon ran in... he laughed. It was a great moment. It was Linda saying, "Don't get to big for your britches... we know who you are."

I graduated college and went to NY. Linda moved to LA where she got married. Three years later I moved to LA as well.  I called Linda almost the first day I arrived. She was living in Thousand Oaks about one hour outside LA. It might as well have been Phoenix. We never saw each other. She had married an older man and seemed happy. Until one night when I got a phone call from her. He had beaten her and she needed to come over. Linda told me her husband was an alcoholic and had beaten her regularly. All I could think was she was repeating a pattern of abuse she learned as a child. I told her to leave him, she could move in with me.   Soon after she got her divorce but stayed on her own.

Time passed and I got married and Linda was part of my extended LA Family. When the baby came, she was Aunty Linda and when I found out I was not the father of the baby, it was Linda who was the first person I called. She ran to my side. I can remember her holding me in her arms as I cried my heart out. And she stayed with me the entire night. After all we were now closer than soul mates, we were the best kind of family, the kind you can pick for yourself.

All through the divorce it was Linda who was by my side. When I had to travel to do comedy, it was Linda who came with me. She made sure I kept my sanity. And when I went to court, it was Linda whose name came up in an alienation of affection action. How effing ridiculous?

We got through my divorce and it appeared that it was one crisis after another. Linda was always chubby but was now extremely overweight. She was diabetic and was one of the first to have intestinal bypass. But, it had not been perfected and the complications were severe and many.  More than once I rushed her to the hospital at three a.m. because her potassium was low or her blood sugar was out of control.

I guess God thought she had not been through enough because soon after that she was diagnosed with cancer. I remember the phone call. Her voice was distant and resigned. She was going to die. I wouldn't hear of it but Linda was ready to do nothing. No radiation...no surgery...nothing. I screamed. "Linda you just can't give up!"  "Why?" was all she answered.

I was not letting her go that easily. I insisted she see a shrink and she did. And finally after months of counseling, she agreed to have the surgery and radiation. We just prayed it had not been too late. Thank God, it wasn't and one year later Linda was given a clean bill of health. But there was more to come.

The dates are all mixed up in my mind... maybe the cancer came before the bypass; maybe the divorce was sometime later. I simply can't remember... but I do remember that Linda had a complete  nervous  breakdown and I was sitting by her bed in a hospital, looking at this childhood friend who was lost in her own world.  I remember thinking, "I hope her father and step-mother rot in hell for what they have done to this girl." They are both dead now...and I STILL hope they are rotting in hell.

Like the Trojan warrior she is, Linda pulled through that episode and soon met someone and married again. Soon after that she was pregnant and over the moon with joy. However, her second husband was, shall we say, not a catch. He didn't work, he had no motivation, and he had low self-esteem. I COULDN'T EFFING STAND HIM.  They divorced soon after and Linda was a single mother with a child.  For some strange reason she planned to moved back to Boston but not before she came to my rescue one more time. I had just had a relationship break up. It wasn't so much the break up as the way it happened. After a fight I woke up the next morning to find my house empty. I had been wiped out again... and I fell apart. I called Linda and remember not being able to control my emotions. I was screaming and babbling and crying. And Linda said, "Honey, you're having a nervous breakdown. Go outside and count the cars driving by your house. I'll be right over." And that's what I did. I sat on the steps counting cars until Linda sat by my side and held me.  It wasn't lost on us that I had been there for her and now she was there for me. And as she sat there holding me she whispered in my ear. "Peanuts, popcorn, Cracker Jacks and beer, in Coke cans." And I knew I would be alright.

Sometime soon after she moved back to Boston and left me on my own. I think she wanted her son to have some sense of family. I think my words to her were..."Are you out of your mind? Your family is here with me." But I couldn't stop her and she moved back to where it snows in January.

At first Linda seemed to flourish back east.  When I heard her stepmother had dropped dead I sent her a card I made on my computer. On the outside it said, "At this sorrowful time of passing. I would just like to tell you how I feel about your loss." And on the inside it said in huge letters... "YIPPIE!!" (With confetti all around it.)  She called me laughing hysterically. "Thank you... best card I ever got."  And she seemed to be doing well back east, but then the health issues surfaced again. Her weight ballooned; her diabetes returned and she had one, two, three strokes. Her kidney's failed and she was moved into a nursing home.

I call her from time to time and this elderly woman answers with slurred speech and a weak voice. It's a shadow of the funny, warm girl I knew as a teenager and each time I hang up from our talks, I sit down and cry at what life has done to her. But like the little engine that could, Linda keeps chugging along. I get reports on her health and her progress, or lack thereof. But my love for her will never falter. We are connected deeply to each other by a bond that blood could never ever try to match. I love that woman more than any sister or cousin or Aunt could ever hope to be loved. And I would swim rivers, climb mountains and walk through fire to be next to my Linda. Because sometimes family is not about genes and blood... some times it's about heart and soul and friendship.  Linda, I love you!