It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (51 page)

You have all shown me with your emails and reminders that I have filled my life with wonderful people who truly love me... and yet, it's never enough. Why? I was never told I was enough and so I needed all of you to tell me. But 702 of you, 7002 of you, 70,002 of you can never make me whole because I never felt whole as a child.  Question. How do you feel whole? We've all shared so much. I've really grown a lot by writing it, and yet, the answers still avoid me.

My friend Sandy who had a similar upbringing to myself sent me this long wonderful email about self. One of the things she said was, "Does anyone in your family have 20 pages devoted to them on Google? Do any of them have your accomplishments?" And so I started to Google my cousins to see. Some have not a page, some have two or three pages... but not one of them has 20 pages. And here's what I did with that information. "Oh my pages aren't as important as theirs." And then I stopped myself. Yes, your pages are as important as theirs.

This past year I have had to let go of so many "comfort zones", zones that may be destructive to me but have been a part of my personality. Giving up these pieces of my identity has been difficult... trying not to want my mother to call, trying not to think about what others in my family are doing, trying not to compare myself to David Letterman or Jay Leno or Gandhi or even Hitler but trying to be Steve, the only person I've been all my life.

Next month I'll be gone for a few weeks and many of my friends have birthdays during that period. Today I set up e-cards so they'd be sure to get a card from me on their birthday even if I wasn't here.  That's a very nice thing to do. Did I give myself credit for that? NO! What I said was, "I know I'll feel horrible on my birthday because no one will remember, why should my friends feel badly too?"  But even in kindness I will not give myself a break. 

I've got about 20 years left on this earth. Those 20 years will fly by faster than the last 20. When am I going to give myself a break? When will I allow myself to feel good? I think the answer is, starting today.

I am filled with anxiety about this entry. This is the deepest I've gone. The hardest I've had to pull to change. The most open I've ever been. It feels strange, like I'm doing something wrong... and that tells me I'm doing something right. After my breakdown and my divorce, as I lay in the hospital, I said to myself, "Everything you have done in your life has brought you to this point. IF you get out of this bed and do it exactly the same way you're an idiot."  And so when I got out of the hospital, I tried life differently and if that didn't work, I tried something else and if that didn't work and so on and so on. I've reached that point again in my life at sixty. Everything I've done in my life so far has brought me to the point where I still feel useless, unloved and a failure. If I continue to go on this way I'm an idiot.  And so I'm going to try something different. I'm going to try not to care about what the world thinks of me, try not to compare myself to others, try not to be who I was in the past.  It's not going to be easy, I'm comfortable in my discomfort but if I don't at least try... I'm an idiot.

See what I've done? I've just spent three pages telling you what Mary Willard told me in two words. "Fuck 'em".  Ya know what, she just might have something there.

DECEMBER 8, 2006 -
SINGING WAITER

Do you guys believe in fate? Do you believe that things happen for a reason or that someone or something makes them happen? I do.  Here's why.

The depression is back and it's back with a vengeance. I was supposed to go out to dinner with friends; I couldn't go. I was supposed to take a shower; I could take it. I was supposed to go to a cocktail party; I just couldn't. Instead I sat on the sofa in a coma. Knowing that I have to fight this, I went into my office to clean up my desk. Organization always makes me feel better... gives me a center... I have some control. I took my brand new Dramatist Guild card and put it into a file where I keep that kind of stuff. The file slipped out of my hand and dropped to the floor. The papers scattered everywhere and I let out a scream of frustration. As I gathered up the papers a Canadian two-dollar bill rose to the top of the pile. I looked at it with curious interest. I had no idea why it was in there... and then, like a bolt out of the blue, it hit me. Two wonderful, elderly, Jewish couples gave this two-dollar bill to me in 1968. It was a tip. I was their singing waiter on Cape Cod and this two-dollar bill was their love note to me.

Oh yes, just when you thought you knew everything about me, there is yet another chapter to open, another can of worms to go through, another river to cross. In my youth I had been known to carry a tune. Susan, remember Susan from Van Johnson, the B'hai, Seals and Crofts... remember her? She and I had gotten a job in college as singing waiters in a shit hole of a restaurant. It paid the bills and provided me with a meager income, as I struck out on my own.

After graduation I heard about a place in East Dennis, Mass. on Cape Cod that was hiring singing waiters. It was called the Golden Anchor. I contacted them and was hired. It was my very first job in show business and my very first time on Cape Cod, despite the fact that I had been raised in Massachusetts.

We did 21 shows a week. Three shows a night, seven nights a week for two months straight with no nights off. Not only did we have to do the shows but also we had to serve the meals and bus the tables. If I tried to do that today they would have to take me home on a stretcher. But I was young and making really good money, money that was going to take me to New York and help me find my first apartment.

There aren't a lot of details I remember about that place. I remember that we did a lot of drinking there and a lot of the group was pot smoking.  I was very much against pot at the time. And there was one more peculiar memory.  I remember one of the girls kept a wish list. A list of things she wanted to buy. I thought it was the most insane thing I had ever heard of... and then, like twenty years later, it suddenly came to me that I should write a wish list of things I wanted. As I got each item I would check them off and suddenly I understood what a good thing a wish list is. For me, it puts down on paper my needs and as long as my subconscious thinks my needs are being addressed, all is good.  But that's all I remember about that summer.

Oh wait. I do remember something. As the used pats of butter came back from the tables, the owner would melt them down and use them as dipping sauce for the lobster dinners. To this day I will not eat melted butter in a restaurant.  And I remember one of my customers asking to take his steak dinner home for his dog. I brought it back to the kitchen and had to run out to do a musical number. When I returned one of the other waiters had eaten the steak... so I went through the trash and got a steak and gave it to my customer. (I haven't thought about that in 38 years. Lord I hope that guy really had a dog).

Suffice it to say it was a very hard job, long hours and very little rewards. But it was great experience and it was at the Golden Anchor that I did my very first stand up routine. It was there that I learned I could make a room full of people laugh. I had always been the funny one in high school and college but that was only for small groups in private. At the Golden Anchor I got to make a hundred people laugh at once. I remember the feeling "I can do this." And the germ of a career was planted.

We had regular customers, they came in nightly to see the shows.... or maybe it was the food. My ego wants to believe it was the shows that brought them back, not the lobsters. We were sort of local celebrities. I even had this older woman who wanted to get me into bed so badly that she would take me for long rides and park her car by the ocean. There were just a couple of things wrong: A. she was married. B. She had two kids and C. her husband was in the Mafia.  No matter how badly I wanted to get laid, there was no way I was going to die for it.

The summer went on with its usual customers and 21 shows a week and waiting tables. And then one-night two couples came in. They sat at my table and I began to take their order. They were really nice people, warm, sweet, sincere, caring. They were Canadians.   I took their order and just being myself I made them laugh. They left me a very nice tip and came back night after night always asking to be sat at my station. In a couple of weeks we were friends, I knew them as Phyllis and Maurice, Gert and Hank. They knew me as the funny waiter, Steve.

One night after the show we sat having drinks and Phyllis asked me what I wanted to do after the summer was over. I told her I had dreams of working nightclubs and that some day I wanted to work the Copa. (I never did) The two couples came in a few more times and then they came in to say goodbye. They were going back to Canada. I had grown very fond of these four people and was sad to see them go. I grow attached to people very easily. There's that need again. 

I did my show and when I got off the stage they were gone. But on the tip tray was a two-dollar Canadian bill.  On the bill they had written their names and addresses and phone numbers. And, across the top, in large letters, "SEE YOU AT THE COPA." I knew when I saw it it was something special. It was an expression of love that I had never seen before and I folded it up carefully and put it in a safe place. I carried that two-dollar bill from Massachusetts to New York and from New York to Los Angeles. It's been 38 years and I still have it, in the same condition it was in the night it was given to me.

The way I hold on to things is indicative of how I crave love. Back then I thought that note was a sweet thing to do, but 38 years later I can truly see what a powerful gift it was. They had faith in me. They knew I could make it. I didn't know I could make it. I still don't... but they did. They did something that no one else had ever done, they told me.

Sometime in the 70's when I was getting really hot I called them in Canada. Maurice had died but the rest were still alive. I suspect they are all gone now... but not from my heart. But it's not about their death, it's about their lives and how they affected me and how some way, somehow things are meant to be.  You see I had no idea what to write about today. I had a note "singing waiter" but there were no memories there. That is, not until I dropped the file and their two-dollar bill fell out from where it's been for maybe 30 odd years. Suddenly memories came flooding back to me and I remembered them and their sincere love of my talent. It reminded me that I had people in my life that cared; I just couldn't feel their love. And it reminded me that the ones who have passed over are watching over me as well... protecting me from mudslides, inspiring me to write books, pushing dollar bills out of folders. We are not alone people. Our loved ones are all around us.

DECEMBER 9, 2006 -
NYC DRUGS

When I sat down to write another NY Story the word "drugs" came popping up time and time again. I didn't want to write about that period. I've been sober for 25 years but I did do a lot of drugs in New York... it was my first time living on my own, away from the mother from hell and I went out of my ever loving mind with freedom. Since I'm telling all, I might as well tell you guys about my drug years.  These stories aren't an endorsement of drugs; it's a recollection of a very confused period in my life.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Walter K. . It all began with Walter K. . Walter was a friend from high school. To me Walter was always one of the hip ones. He was in the right crowd. He joined the right club. He had the right friends. He just had it all.  I always felt I didn't fit in with him and his crowd but I peddled as fast as I could to appear to be one of his gang. When I heard Water lived in the city, I contacted him. One night he came over to my one room apartment; we were going to a club or something. He starts the evening with a little announcement, "I brought a little something."  He produces a joint.  I was 22 years old and had never smoked grass before. I was petrified but I was impressed. Walter K.  smokes dope. Now you have to remember I went through college and never smoked. I was in the theater department at Emerson College and never smoked. I worked as a singing waiter on Cape Cod and never smoked. And now my high school role model was standing in my very own apartment offering me the evil weed.  Walter asks, "Do you want some?" And I DID want some... badly. I wanted to be a bad boy... but I was scared. "I don't know, Walter, what if I get addicted?" He laughed and took out his lighter. "NO!" I wouldn't let him smoke in my apartment. "What if the neighbor's smell it?" I insisted we go outside. Walter was living in Queens or Brooklyn, I think, and still had his car. He said. "I'll take you somewhere where we can smoke. No one will know. I'll protect you." Protect me? No one had ever offered to do that.   And so we drove to lower Manhattan to the meatpacking district.

OK, visualize this scene. Cobblestone streets, old brick buildings with filthy loading docks, each dock with a metal roof covering huge wooden doors that had seen decades of wear. Through the doors was an opening allowing a track with hooks to pass through. (This is where sides of beef would be hung.) Rats ran Helter Skelter... AND... it was raining. I remember thinking. "I'm a junky."