Private Parts (26 page)

Thanksgiving and Gary got stuck in the office until four. He left and went to rent a car to go to his Thanksgiving dinner the next day and he drove back home and he had to circle the block about ninety times before he could find a spot. So it was six now and he was really bumming. He walked in the door and the phone rang. It was Jessica, ranting and raving. "You fucking people are supposed to be my friends!" Blah, blah, blah.

Gary lost it. "You're a fucking nut! Fuck you!" he screamed.

"No, fuck you!" Jessica yelled.

They told each other to fuck off for ten minutes. Finally, she hung up. Seconds later, Gary called me at home, hyperventilating.

"Boss, I can't take this anymore," he said.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Gary got the phone company out and they installed a second line and he's never had to pick up his phone for Jessica again. She drove him to a second line.

But I'm proud to report that I never did have a physical relationship with Jessica, although, to be brutally honest, I could have nailed her any time I wanted. It was especially hard resisting her temptations since Jessica began to make it a habit of undressing in front of us. It began when we were all out in Los Angeles during Grammy coverage. Jessica was so homesick that the minute we came to town she rushed over to our hotel. We were hanging out in Baba Booey's room and Jessica flipped out over Gary's K-Rock T-shirt. Gary had brought a bunch of them with him, so he told her to take one. She grabbed the T-shirt off the top; it turned out that Gary had cut the sleeves off it. Jessica was so excited, she rushed into the bathroom to put on her new gift. She came out wearing the T-shirt. "What do you think, guys?" she said and put her arms out, like Jesus on the cross.
Boom!
Both her tits flopped out on both sides. We went crazy.

With each succeeding Jessica appearance for us she's worn less and less clothing. It culminated finally when we were shooting our last video,
Butt Bongo Fiesta.
I came into her dressing room and she had like nine hundred outfits laid out.

"What do you want me to wear?" Jessica asked me.

"Why don't you get something really sexy?" I said.

"Well, I have this," she said and held up a piece of silk that was smaller than a G-string. My heart dropped. This was gonna be the world's greatest videotape!

"Put it on. Let me see if it's sexy," I said, trying not to froth.

Jessica asked me to turn my back while she put it on even though

I'd already seen her naked about nine hundred times. So I turned, and when I turned around again I saw she was like completely nude through this thing. I couldn't believe she wanted to go on the video totally nude like this.

"That's pretty good," I said.

"Do you think it's too revealing?" she worried.

"No," I lied.

I left her dressing room and ran downstairs.

"Don't make a big deal when Jessica comes down," I lectured everyone. "If we make a big deal, she'll get nervous, and if she gets nervous, she won't do it."

With each ratings victory, Jessica's outfits got skimpier and skimpier.

So she came down and nobody reacted because she was wearing a robe.We started to roll and she took off her robe and she was standing there almost totally naked and everybody went nuts!

But a few months later, we would get an even better view of her physical attributes. We were out in L.A. again, this time for the

funeral of those two idiot djs, Mark and Brian, whom I had just usurped as the number one show in town. Jackie, Gary, Fred and I were hanging out at the bar of our hotel. It was a Saturday night at about ten and I told Gary to give Jessica a call and get her over to our hotel to give us a fashion show. He left a message on her machine and ten minutes later he got paged by the bartender. It was Jessica. She was throwing some things into her bag and she was coming right over.

We went up to my room. By now, besides us, we had Stuttering John, some guys from Fox, my L.A. program director, Andy Bloom, and half the L.A. Police Department in the room. Jessica and I went into the bathroom to prepare for the show. I dragged Gary in there, too, in case she tried to rape me. Instantly, she was completely nude and doing the whole grooming ritual. She was shaven down and she was putting baby powder all over. I swear, she even pulled a piece of lint out of her love canal. Gary and I were cracking up whenever she turned her back to us.

We started out showing the natural progression of her nakedness. I went out and introduced Jessica to the crowd in the room. "This is the outfit that Jessica made famous at the Philadelphia Zoo funeral." Then I told her she had to show more, and she came out with the miniskirt and heels, but she'd lost the top. The guys were whooping it up and they started chanting, "Take off your dress! Take off your dress!" So she took off her dress and she wasn't wearing underpants. She acted as if she was embarrassed and she went back to the bathroom. We followed her in.

"Why don't you just come out naked in high heels?" I suggested.

"I don't know." She acted coy.

"It's just Jackie and Fred and the guys!" we begged.

She agreed and she came out totally naked! She was naked but demure; she was holding her breasts.

"Turn around!" the guys started yelling.

"I don't know if my ass looks good," Jessica worried as she turned around. Two minutes later, she was running around the room, totally nude and totally unself-conscious.

But it was Jessica's total obsessiveness about her personal hygiene and grooming habits that made for one of her most memorable appearances on the show. I knew that if I pointed out the slightest imperfection on her body, she'd go into a total snit. So one

day Jessica was in the studio and, out of the blue, I stuck my finger in her belly button.

"Let me smell your belly button," I demanded. "Whoa." I started coughing. "Hey, Fred, come over here and smell this. My finger stinks."

"You probably stuck it in somebody else's!" Jessica screamed.

Fred picked up on this. "It smells like she was picking her toenails."

"It does not!" Jessica protested. "I put baby powder on it. I use Nivea. It's not true." She actually began to cry.

Robin wondered if it was Jessica's time of the month. That got her going even more.

"Just because I detect a little belly button odor, you're freaking out," I said. I tried it again. "Hey, there's something living in there!" Jessica was beside herself. She said she used half a bottle of Nivea skin creme a day.

Four months later, Jessica was in the studio again, so naturally, I brought up her belly button odor. She went into this whole rap about how she'd consulted a doctor and now she goes through elaborate belly button rituals.

"I haven't been the same since. I've done so much to my poor belly button that I probably can't have kids now," Jessica said. "You ruined my life, Howard."

RICHARD SIMMONS

Dietmeister Richard is one of the greatest all-time nuts I've ever encountered. He's a warm and generous person and I love him. And that lovable TV guy has a lot of pent-up anger and hostility that surfaces every once in a while. Actually, we're a lot alike.

The first time I had him out to my house, he was totally manic. It was summertime and we were sitting outside by the pool and we brought him a tray of cucumber dip and he said, "This is wonderful," and started throwing the food into the pool.

"Asshole, what are you doing?" I yelled at him.

He started giggling like a maniac. I told him to calm down and relax. We went into the house and there were two big grapefruits sitting on the counter, so Richard picked them up and started juggling

Then he started running through the house singing Streisand songs. All of a sudden, he grabbed our housekeeper and gave her a bear hug and picked her up. Then he ran up to Alison and did the same to her. I swear to God, Alison thought her ribs were cracked. She was moaning in pain. Then he went after my kids, grabbing them. He was like a terrorist. It wasn't really funny. It was frightening. My daughters' ribs hurt for two days.

Besides his general nuttiness, I was always fascinated with Richard's sexuality. I never got a straight answer out of him on the subject, but he's one of the most effeminate men on the planet.

In fact, one time Richard showed up in my studio with a beautiful woman and he told us they had just gotten married. He even showed us the ring. He said he had hit forty and it was time to have kids.

"How long has she been a woman?" I asked. "Is today April first?" We broke for a commercial.

"Hold it, I just got some calls. The flags are flying at half mast on Key West and Fire Island," I said when we came back on the air. "In

San Francisco, the whole town is in mourning."

Richard dressed up as a real man for my

TV show and later went so far as to make

out with Sandra Bernhard.

That wasn't the only joke Richard tried to play on us. A few months later, Robin was in the middle of her newscast when a nurse walked into her room. "Uh, excuse me, ma'am, you can't come in here," Robin said. Then she realized it was Richard. He was in full nurse regalia, with fake nails, earrings, a beehive hairdo, the works. Then he spent the rest of the show denying he was dressed like that. He did the same thing a few months later when he showed up on Ash Wednesday dressed as a nun! Even though he was

showing up in full drag, we still didn't really poke fun at his sexual orientation on the air until Richard himself gave us the go-ahead in an indirect way. One time he came to town to promote one of his charity events and he was going to make appearances on a number of different radio stations. The night before he did our show, Scott Shannon's producer at Z-100 called Richard and told him that if he did our show, he shouldn't bother coming to their show. Richard explained it was a charity event and he was trying to promote it in as many places as he could. They still wouldn't budge so Richard told them to screw off and he came on our show. About a year later, the Zoo morons realized they had fucked up, so they called him the night before he was supposed to do our show.

We were in a commercial break and Richard was recounting the conversation.

"C'mon, come back on," Scott Shannon's female producer said. "Don't hold a grudge."

"You tell Scott Shannon I would rather eat pussy than do that show. And I think you know how much I like doing that."

We were all silent, we didn't know how to react. Then Richard went into his little cackle of a laugh. Little did he know it, but Richard had just unleashed the floodgates.

The next time he came up, Richard entered the studio singing. He was dressed normally for him, which meant he was wearing shorts that were cut up to his navel.

"Could those shorts be any shorter? Do you design each pair of shorts so your sack'll hang out?" I asked. "I can see your meat. You know what this outfit is? He's trolling for Cub Scouts this morning."

Another time Richard called in and I invited him out to my house for dinner.

"So Richard, what do you like to eat?" I asked. "You like hot dogs? Sausage? Carrots? Zucchinis? Bratwurst? How about a giant cucumber for dinner?"

"You get so ugly and it isn't even seven o'clock yet," Richard hissed.

"Hey, for dessert, how would you like three Cub Scouts?" I said. Richard hung up.

"I guess I'll be dining alone," I said. I didn't want Richard to leave with a sour taste in his mouth, so I called him back.

"Hey, my newsboy asked me if he could meet you," I told him.
Click.
He hung up again.

"Why doesn't he calm down and take a Valium enema?" I wondered. "And I was planning on serving cream-of-anything soup, too. Good thing I didn't tell him I was going to cook the lamb in KY mint jelly." We got him on the phone again.

"Hey, do you think the Zodiac killer is attractive?" I asked him. Again he hung up.

But he did make it out to my house for dinner. My parents were there and Alison had made a really great spread. Chicken, fish, the works. There was even a tray stocked with the most incredible desserts, all sorts of cakes and chocolates. But Richard wasn't doing too well with the eating. He was just picking at the food. Then I got a phone call and I left the table. Richard was sitting there and Alison came running in.

"Richard, Howard had to take a private phone call!" she screamed. With that, Richard grabbed the dessert tray from the center of the table and he started shoveling the food into his mouth. My mother told me it was the most incredible thing she'd ever seen.

We always used to give Richard a hard time about his diet program and those fatsos he was constantly dragging around with him. In fact, I booked Richard and his human balloons for my third TV show. Richard came out with two assistants who put baskets of fruits, flowers, and balloons all over the set. The highlight was a poodle made out of mums. I told you this guy was nuts. After we calmed him down, I told him that we were going to play some clips from his exercise and diet tapes.

"Howard, what have you done to my tapes!" he yelled. He guessed right. We started out showing Richard leading a bevy of fatsos in sweating to the oldies. However, off to the side of Richard we had superimposed Fred in a full leather S and M outfit, including a hooded mask.

"Stop teasing me," Fred was saying on the tape. "Let's go upstairs and play house. Why are you ignoring me, Richard?"

I stopped the tape. "All right, all right, we're just kidding. Let's show the real sweating to the oldies now," I said. We ran the tape. There was a line of blimps on either side of the screen. Then one fatso who had lost a few pounds would run up toward the camera, the way football players do when they're introduced. We let a few legitimate ones go, and then a fat woman we had superimposed on the tape ran right up to the camera. She looked straight at the camera and then barfed her guts out and fell down. Richard was flipping out.

"All right, you know I love you," I told him. "Let's bring out the two fatties he's got with him. Hey, Richard, your wallet weighs more than your porky friends."