Still Foolin' 'Em (11 page)

Then there was
The Book of Mor
 …
Death of a Sale
 … and
Mary Pop
 …

If I had seen my own show, I would have only made it to 100 Sundays.

What makes it worse when I nod off is that I’m recognizable. People will look to see if I’m laughing and instead they’ll see me fighting to stay awake, with head bobs, lionlike yawns, and then sometimes my head will swing violently backward, into the top of the seat. I must look like one of those crash-test dummies when they hit a wall in slow motion. At least I am not alone in this. Sometimes I glance across the row I’m sitting in and most of the men look like they’re heroin addicts on a field trip.

The only solution is to get Broadway to adjust to us. All shows should be half an hour long, with two intermissions.

Once the lights go down and the curtain rises—the moment when we’re supposed to relax and give ourselves over to the magic of the theater—it’s on. I dig my fingernails into my arm or give myself an Indian burn, hoping the pain will keep me awake. I cross my legs, I keep my legs apart, and I try tapping my foot. I even bury my head in the program like I’m going to read in the dark. Then, depending on how good or bad the play is, sometimes I make a decision to just embrace it and go down for the count for a while.

Finally I came up with what I thought was the perfect solution. I decided that the next play I went to, I would make sure to sit right up front, so that the intensity of the performance and the closeness of the stage movements would keep me alert.

The play was
Fences,
starring the great James Earl Jones. Mr. Jones is a legend, a towering presence on the live stage. He’s so much more than Darth Vader and the voice of CNN. We walk into the theater, the usher shows us to our prime seats, and we’re the only two people up front. There is no one else. I can’t understand this at all.

This is crazy—our tickets are in the third row, and there’s no one in the first two rows. The lights go down, and the play begins. Jones makes his entrance. He’s mesmerizing. He’s playing a loud, dynamic former baseball player and, as always, his diction is flawless; he pronounces every inch of every letter, his booming voice resonating throughout the theater. I am watching a master at work. Then it happens. My eyes get heavy—NO! They start to close—DAMN IT!! I force them open; they want none of that—they flutter to half-mast. Just as they close, it happens: THE ELBOW! If Janice were a boxer, she’d be the greatest body puncher since Joe Frazier.

“I’m okay,” I lie.

“It’s embarrassing—we’re supposed to have dinner with him afterward,” whispers Janice. I hold on for a few minutes, but then my head flops back, and suddenly I’m Jack Nicholson with the lobotomy at the end of
Cuckoo’s Nest.
I’m out. Then
blam!
Something wet hits my neck. Then it hits me again. It’s a saliva storm. I look at Janice, and she’s holding her program in a defensive-shield position. I’m now awake, and I realize why no one is in the first two rows. Perfect diction and booming voice and pronouncing every syllable means a spit bath from James Earl Jones. Seriously, if this were Guantánamo, it would be considered waterboarding.

On the plus side, I stayed awake for the rest of the play.

*   *   *

I’ve also been on the other side. I’ve been onstage when I
wanted
to spit on people because they weren’t watching. When I was doing
700 Sundays,
I’d be pouring my heart out and then I would see someone out cold. I wanted to jump off the stage and shake them: “Hey, fuckface, is my life that boring?”

The problem is, as a performer I’m annoyed and upset; as an AARP member, I get it. We just can’t help it. When the darkness of the theater combines with the coolness of the air-conditioning, it’s toxic. But it doesn’t help if they raise the temperature: warm theater plus big meal before the show and it’s the narcolepsy express.

My worst time being on the other side of the “nodders” was when I did
700 Sundays
in West Palm Beach. It was the Kravis Center, a beautiful place, and we sold out our five-show run in a very short time. On opening night, I was really excited because I knew that a lot of New Yorkers, including family and friends, were down in Florida and would be in the crowd. So as I made my entrance onstage at eight o’clock, I was really looking forward to a great reception.

Nothing. Crickets. A modest round of applause. It threw me. Audiences had been wonderful to me during my season on Broadway and on our tours, so I was used to a loud and cheering crowd when I walked out to begin the play. I looked out, and there was an ocean of seniors. From the stage, their hair colors looked like Vermont in the fall. There was every shade of brown and orange and yellow, plus a bluish color that can best be described as “old.”

Meanwhile, in the second row, maybe ten feet from me, a guy with binoculars was staring at me like he was bird-watching. I had to keep telling myself,
Don’t look at him or you’ll laugh.
The first act was a struggle. I worked much harder for my laughs than I’d ever had to. At intermission, I asked the stage manager what was going on: Why had there been so little applause when I’d walked out? He said, “Billy, you woke them up—they were stunned. The show starts at eight; they got here at six so they could get first crack at the hearing devices. We open the house at six because they can’t stand around for too long, and they come into the theater and fall asleep. You got the best reception any show has gotten here!”

Another night I was onstage, and in the opening minutes of the first act, I saw a red light blinking in the back of the orchestra seats.
Damn it!
I thought.
Someone’s videotaping my show!
So at intermission I told the stage manager where I’d seen the camera light so we could stop this jerk from pirating the performance.

The stage manager went into the audience with a security guard and returned shortly.

“Did you get him?” I asked.

“Billy, that blinking red light is part of his life-support system in his wheelchair. That’s how his nurse knows he’s breathing.”

“Can they put some black tape over the light?” I asked. “It’s distracting.”

“No, if the nurse doesn’t see the blinking light, she’ll think he’s dead.”

The nurse had also said that the blinking light keeps her from nodding off in the theater; apparently, staying awake is also a problem for her.

So maybe that’s it. Maybe nodding off is just a precursor to what lies ahead. We nod off a little more each day, and soon the nodding offs blend together, until eventually it’s one long permanent sleep. Which is why I’ve made some changes in my living will. If the end is near, I don’t want to be hooked up to a machine; I don’t want extraordinary measures or the elbow. Just wheel my hospital bed to a theater showing a movie with Danny Aiello, give me a kiss good-bye, a small popcorn, and a medium Diet Coke for fourteen dollars, and tiptoe away until the blinking light goes off.

Take Care of Your Teeth

I shouldn’t complain so much. Life at sixty-five is good. I have had one house, one wife, my real nose, my real name, and most of my teeth. And the last part is a major reason why life is pretty good. Because when you hit your mid-sixties, you have to take care of your teeth. It’s a generational thing—I learned it from my eighty-six-year-old grandmother.

Susie Gabler had perfect teeth. White beauties with no cavities. She took great care of them—always kept them by her bedside in a glass of water. The first time I saw them come out of her mouth she was in bed, and I was sitting next to her. In the middle of saying how proud she was of me, she suddenly reached into her mouth and pulled out her entire set of uppers and lowers. Splash, into the glass of water they went, and suddenly my beloved grandma looked like an eighty-six-year-old hockey player, or a woman with a horizontal vagina for a mouth.

“Take care of your teeth, Billy. Take care of your teeth.” I think that is what she said, because with her lips flapping in the breeze, she could have said, “Pass me the marble cake.” I was shocked, and slightly nauseous. It was a terrible thing for a grandson to see, even though I was thirty-two years old.

She lost her teeth because she never went to the dentist. Mainly because the Cossacks had killed him. None of my grandparents had good teeth. Sometimes when he was eating the Thanksgiving brisket, my grandfather’s dentures would be hurting so much he’d remove them at the table, keep them in his hand, and manually chew the rubbery meat until it was ground down enough to swallow. While we all watched in horror, he’d take the “chewed” meat, dip it in horseradish, put it in his mouth, and swallow it with a great sigh of satisfaction. He’d then say something inaudible, and Grandma would reply, “Don’t talk with your hand full, I don’t know what the hell you’re saying.”

Take care of your teeth! It’s why we baby boomers should floss, it’s why we should brush, and it’s why we should go to the dentist, because we know dentists are important people, even though they weren’t smart enough to get into medical school. It’s sad … dentists don’t get the respect they deserve. You never hear, “Is there a dentist in the house?” That lack of respect started back in elementary school, when we were frightened of the dentist. Not wanting to scare us even more, they made dental hygiene cute. It was always “Watch out for Mr. Tooth Decay” and then a cartoon of some unhappy-looking animated guy. We don’t treat any other malady like that, except maybe for those cartoon yellow devils that live under my toenails. Which really exist, by the way. Come to think of it, if other serious maladies were treated in a fun way, they wouldn’t seem so scary. Don’t worry about erectile dysfunction, it’s Mr. Softie. Instead of incontinence, you get a visit from Mr. Pudding Pants. And good-bye, schizophrenia, say hello to Mr. and Mr. Bipolar.

But let’s get back to teeth. Think about what they mean to us! Women say the first thing they look at on a man is his smile. Men are slightly different; we figure we’ll get to the smile after we check out her tits. But in the end, we all do love a good smile. Face it, the
Mona Lisa
wouldn’t be the classic it is if she had a little gap between her front teeth. Then she’d say, “Ith’s a niceth thpainting, ithn’t it, I think it thaptureth my thmile.”

You would think that taking care of our teeth in 2013 would be easier than it was in 1963, but it’s not, and that’s because the whole dental experience has changed. Back then a dentist was a one-man show. He would clean your teeth, show you how to brush, do bridges, take X-rays, pull teeth, fill cavities, drill root canals, make appointments, validate parking, and rub your leg when he thought you were under anesthesia. The only specialist in 1963 was the orthodontist, who thought his job was to ruin your puberty. Now the whole dental experience is painless drilling, but everything else is a pain in the ass … and it’s all because of the specialists.

When I turned sixty-five, I decided to celebrate by making an appointment for my cleaning. I showed up on time and read the
Sports Illustrated
from 2010 until the maître d’ (it’s L.A., don’t ask) escorted me to my examining room. The dentist came in, asked if I’ve been flossing, and, like we all do, I lied. Then he pulled a chunk of lobster meat from between my molars. I’m not sure, but I think he muttered, “Schmuck” as the jazz trio played him off and he left the room.

Then the parade of specialists began.

First it was the cleaning expert—the hygienist. She came in looking like one of the riot police in South Korea. On some people, a large Plexiglas face mask isn’t flattering. You can’t imagine the noise the tool made as she chiseled that stuff off my bottom teeth. I don’t have tartar; I have a coral reef. That’s why dentists’ offices always have fish tanks. You could sculpt Michelangelo’s
David
out of my plaque. Some hygienists use a laser; mine uses jackhammers. I feel like I’m being tortured. If Dick Cheney knew about this, we never would have waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we would have sent him to my dentist.

Next came the X-ray technician, because God forbid the hygienist should have to do two things. The technician, Paolo (once again, it’s L.A., don’t ask), put a heavy lead blanket over my goodie basket and sprinted out of the room. That’s comforting. I figure with sixty-plus years of X-rays, my balls have been covered with more lead than a kid’s toy from China.

Then the dentist came back in, after looking at the X-rays, meaning that he would be charging me for a second visit. He said, “Billy, you need a root canal.”

“Now?”

“Oh, I don’t do them—you’ve got to see Dr. Jack Wu for that. He can fit you in, in about three weeks.” As soon as he’d said that I needed the root canal, my tooth started to hurt. Freud would have had a field day.

“Three weeks of this kind of pain?” I asked.

“No, not this kind of pain—tomorrow you’ll have a worse kind of pain,” he assured me. “I’ll give you these pills I got in Mexico. They may constipate you, and if they do, call Dr. Ari Weitzman.”

Great, another referral.

“How about my wisdom teeth?”

“Right now, they’re fine, but if you want them extracted, Dr. Abrams does uppers and Dr. Hunter does the lowers.”

“So what exactly do you do?” I asked.

“Oh, I do fillings and crowns and sit by the pool you paid for.”

I currently have six dental specialists. I’ve had more people in my mouth than a Colombian hooker during a presidential visit. My dentist farms out everything. I’m looking at the pictures on his desk and I say, “Are those your kids?”

He says, “Technically no, I didn’t handle that. I sent my wife to Dr. Feldman.”

But I’m lucky. I go to a very prominent dentist. My dentist is the fifth guy. You know when they say, “Four out of five dentists prefer” whatever it is they prefer? Mine’s the one who doesn’t. When people find out he’s the fifth guy, they go crazy. “He’s the fifth guy? What’s he like? You gotta get me an appointment!”

Once you find a great dentist, never leave them. I know guys who have been divorced three times but have the same dentist. And the main reason I go to my dentist: he gives a great shot. You don’t feel anything.