Rubber Balls and Liquor (8 page)

So I went to the library instead, and pursued my own independent course of study. I read a lot, back then. Books, magazines … whatever grabbed my interest. Usually it was books about monsters and magazines about monsters. Newspapers, I tended to avoid. Who had the time? Usually, there wouldn't be any stories about monsters, so I didn't see the point. Plus, as soon as you got through one edition, there was another to take its place and tell you everything it had gotten wrong the first time.

To this day, I avoid newspapers. There's quite a lot to read, and very often the ink comes off on your hands, especially when they run one of those big banner headlines on the front page. The bigger the news event, the bigger the mess. Like, when man first pretended to walk on the moon, on that soundstage in Houston. I was just a kid, so I didn't know enough to be jaded or above it all when it came to interpreting world events. I only knew that the front page of the newspaper was more dramatic-looking on some days than on others, so when I saw this big banner headline splashed across the front page of the
New York Post
I picked it up to see what all the fuss was about. Big mistake, it turned out. There was enough newsprint on that headline to make it look like my fingers had been dipped in coal. Then, a short while later, the newsprint rubbed off my own fingers and onto my dick, leaving Little Gilbert looking like something you might have found in Gary Coleman's pants—although, as far as I know, Gary Coleman hadn't even been born yet, so it would have been awkward for me to have been caught rummaging through his pants drawer like that. Probably, it would have been so awkward it would have made the news—with a big headline, which would have only led to more newsprint, more fingers looking like they had been dipped in coal, more postadolescent Jewish penises looking like they had been painted in blackface.

And so you see why I developed an aversion to newspapers. You read the paper, you get newsprint on your hands, the newsprint finds its way onto your dick, you fumble for ways to explain yourself in polite social company, you end up making the news yourself.

That kind of vicious cycle, I don't particularly need.

The reason I say I went to the greatest film school in the world is because we had a television, and I took full advantage. Now, you might read this and mumble to yourself, “Gilbert, what the hell are you talking about? Television in those days was nothing like television today. There were just a few channels. The reception was lousy. You're an idiot.”

All of this was certainly true—but then, I'm not the idiot on the other side of the page, mumbling to myself as I flip through a minor work of nonfiction, so I must have learned
something
from watching all that television. At the very least, I learned not to talk back to a book. (Do this out in public—on a park bench, say—and people tend to move away from you, or start pointing.) But even more than that, I learned that sooner or later everything I needed to know about life and show business would filter through the rabbit ears on the black-and-white television set in our living room. It was like having a front-row seat to the whole wide world. And the best part: it came with catering. Most of the time, my mother would bring out a little tray of something for me to snack on as I watched and took notes. Other times, I could usually find enough crumbs in the cushions of the couch to keep from going hungry.

Back then, they'd always show these great old movies. They'd be edited for television, and sometimes there'd be huge chunks missing—like, the entire second act—but you'd get the idea. Boris Karloff, Danny Kaye, Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton … all these great stars, splashed across the small screen in our living room. Afternoons, I'd watch game shows, or
The 4:30 Movie
on Channel 7, the local ABC affiliate. Evenings, which we now know as “prime time” but was then known merely as “time,” I watched variety shows and dramas and situation comedies. Sometimes, the only way I could tell the dramas from the situation comedies was because there were people laughing in the background on one type of program and not on the other. That was my cue—and despite the misgivings of my high school guidance counselor I was frequently able to make the distinction. Late at night, it was
The Tonight Show,
or some classic or not-so-classic horror film on
Chiller Theater
or
Creature Features
. All weekend long, it was one movie after another, sometimes grouped by theme. You could catch a Martin and Lewis marathon, or a Charlie Chan double bill, or a bunch of beach-blanket Gidget romps or Bowery Boys features. In fact, from the time of JFK's funeral to the time of RFK's funeral, I don't think we turned off the television set—except once or twice I might have pulled out the plug by accident, and another once or twice I might have warmed a cup of cocoa on top of the set and accidentally spilled some of it as I lifted the cup for a sip and had to shut it off while all those tubes dried out.

When it was working properly, and plugged in, there was an endless parade of news and entertainment coming through our television screen, in all shapes and sizes, and I took it all in. I wasn't exactly a discriminating viewer. If you put it on, and it was somewhat more interesting than what was showing on the other few channels, I'd sit back and watch. If I could jerk off to it, so much the better.

Oh, have I mentioned that I jerked off a lot? Do you even know whose book you're reading right now? When I was a kid, I would have jerked off to anything. When you're thirteen years old, you're just walking around with a twenty-four-hour hard-on. There's no such thing as
getting
a hard-on, and
maintaining
one isn't such an accomplishment, either. It's more like a constant state of being than a state of arousal. Some people might call it an affliction—and I was certainly well afflicted. I can still remember watching Bette Davis on
The Tonight Show,
when she was old and withered and paralyzed on one side of her face, but she was wearing a miniskirt and I could see a flash of skin. That was enough to get me going, and on a good night I could rub one out by the next commercial break.

Like the time I was staying up late to watch Claude Rains in
The Phantom of the Opera
on the small black-and-white television we had in our living room. My mother kept telling me to go to sleep, but I was determined to stay up and watch this movie on
The Late, Late, Late Show,
or whatever they called it at the time. Finally, my mother relented and brought me out a plate of crackers and butter and a glass of milk, which she placed on a folding TV table in front of me. Admittedly, I can no longer be sure after all these years that the night my mother brought me crackers and butter and a glass of milk coincided exactly with this late-night showing of
The Phantom of the Opera,
but it certainly happened from time to time. With or without the crackers and butter, it looked like a sweet, wholesome scene, until my mother went to bed and I turned on the television and they were still showing the last few minutes of the late local news. The final story on the news that night was about a girl who'd been attacked by a killer whale. It always surprises these people, a story like that. It's such a shocker. Who would have thought that something called a killer whale could actually kill people? And here, in black-and-white, was a grainy image of a girl just a few years older than me who had been riding on the back of the whale, wearing a bikini.

(Keep in mind, it was the girl wearing a bikini, not the whale, who probably didn't have the first idea where to shop for a bikini that didn't pinch him at the waist.)

I don't know how they captured this footage, back in the prehistoric, predigital camcorder era of my youth, but there was this pleasant-enough-looking girl, an employee at some warm-weather resort or marine park where they kept killer whales in swimming pools so tourists could climb on their backs and take home movies. And then for some inexplicable reason this particular whale went a little bit crazy and started chomping on this poor girl's leg. At least I think it was her leg. In any case, it was horrible.

There was a lot of commotion and the camerawork was lousy, but I could make out a couple guys jumping into the pool, trying to pull their co-worker from the whale's mouth. The girl finally got loose and someone other than the killer whale carried her to the side of the pool.

Now came the good part. Another couple guys started pulling this girl from the pool by her arms, and I could see that her bikini bottom had fallen to her knees in the struggle. That is, if she still had knees, at this point in the struggle. In any case, the bikini bottom was gone from the picture. Maybe the whale made off with it, thinking he might try it on later to see if it pinched at the waist. Or maybe he just realized he was a killer whale and he could pretty much do as he pleased. Nothing was left to my adolescent imagination. Nothing was pixilated or obscured in any way. Really, there was absolutely nothing to keep me from the crack of this girl's glorious ass, there for all of the New York metropolitan area to see.

It didn't matter to me just then that this girl's leg might have been missing, or that she was probably gushing blood. It didn't even occur to me to check for signs of life. It wouldn't have even registered if her head had been chomped off. All I could see was her killer body—and, once again, this was plenty. Still, I wanted more. (Just a little bit.) For a brief moment, I sat there hoping against hope that the rescue personnel would turn the girl around to face the camera, so I could see her pussy. I don't know if you've ever tried hoping against hope, but it's not an easy task, believe me. Hope itself is a mighty force, and when you push one mighty force against another, there's a good deal of resistance. If you're not careful, you might hurt yourself, and here I finally had to give up on the idea.

Still, it was an eyeful, and more than enough to get me going. As I recall, I had to race to my bed, to finish what the killer whale had inadvertently started, but I was quick enough about it that all I missed were the opening credits of
The Phantom of the Opera.
It helped that my bed was in the dining room, so I didn't have too far to go, and I made such quick work of myself that the opening credits were still scrolling when I got back to the television.

(There's probably a joke here, with a punch line that refers to the feel-good killer whale movie
Free Willy,
but I'm not about to make it. That would just be wrong.)

Somewhere in the middle of all that jerking off and watching television I learned a thing or two. I was a ready and eager pupil—
ready
and
eager
being two of my more persistent qualities. I paid attention. In fact, returning for a moment to my previous observation about talking back to the printed page, I seem to recall a scene in
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
—the Hope Lange sitcom, not the Gene Tierney movie—where a character mumbled out loud to a book and was dismissed by the other characters as a nut, although I can't be certain. I never really paid attention to the show, so it's possible I was merely reading a little extra something into the scene. However, I didn't have be a fan or pay attention to find something to jerk off to in the sitcom
and
the movie, because Hope Lange and Gene Tierney were both pretty easy on the eyes, as we say in the self-love business—something else I learned from watching all that television.

Another thing I learned from
The Ghost & Mrs. Muir
: Charles Nelson Reilly actually had a
career
, before becoming a staple of afternoon game shows and dinner theater revivals of Rodgers & Hammerstein musicals that featured sexually ambiguous supporting characters. Of course, this was a time when flaming homosexuals in movies and on television were never looked upon as gay so much as eccentric. Now, when you watch Paul Lynde sing in
Bye Bye Birdie
about what's the matter with kids these days, you can't help but think,
Gee, I don't know, Paul. It takes more than one chocolate bar to get them into your van?

Soon, I came to the conclusion that I was destined for a career of my own in show business. Well, strike that. Maybe
destined
is too strong a word in this context, because it suggests something epic or biblical or otherwise significant, and far be it from me to confuse myself with anything epic or biblical or otherwise significant. And as long as I'm striking
destined
, I might as well do away with
career
as well, because it suggests something … well, a little more remarkable than the bookings and gigs I've managed to string together over the years. So as long as destiny wasn't part of the equation, and since a more traditional career path seemed out of the question, show business seemed like a good place to hide. In show business, at least, I could get away with being a little odd or idiosyncratic or ill-suited for polite social company. In the rest of the world, if you were stupid or neurotic or a fucked-up pain in the ass, people tended to notice, but these qualities were held up and admired in show business. Here's an example: Marlon Brando could be a complete screwball, in every possible way, and people would only talk about his genius. Some interviewer would ask him how he prepared for a part, and he'd say he thinks about a green bagel, and all over the country aspiring actors would start thinking about green bagels as if this was the key to success. Really, that man was the best thing to happen to the green bagel business since St. Patrick's Day happened to fall just after Passover.

A career in show business was like a free pass. It meant you could get away with anything—or, it was my fervent hope, without doing much of anything at all. So that was settled. I wouldn't bother going to school. I'd go to the library and watch a lot of television instead. In this way, I supposed, I'd stumble into show business. I'd find a side door and slip my way inside. All that was left was for me to figure out what the hell I would actually do to earn myself this free pass. I couldn't sing. I couldn't dance. I wasn't particularly good-looking. Like I said, I had no discernible talent or admirable qualities, although I did like to do voices. I don't think I was particularly good at doing voices, but I enjoyed myself just the same. Eventually, it got to where I could imitate people off of television and do a decent enough job of it that my two older sisters could figure out who I was imitating. To me, this was a great victory. I mean, that's the whole point, isn't it? You
do
Henny Youngman, the people on the receiving end of your performance should at least recognize that the person you're
doing
is supposed to be Henny Youngman.