by Rob Sedgwick
I am six and in the makeshift outdoor log cabin/boys’ changing room at Camp Mill Run. The camp song ends with: “Camp Mill, rah, rah, rah!” Nikko, all of four years old, always adds, “Cha, cha, cha!” I like his salsa addendum and tack it on sotto voce every time we sing it, along with a slight sway of my hips.
There is no swaying or singing now. Taking off my clothes in front other kids for the first time, my whole body goes damp. I’m petrified. It’s soggy and buggy and the air sweats with other boys’ naked bodies. I want to melt into the earth. In the midst of taking off my shorts, my eyes fall on a kid who’s obviously far more comfortable with this situation.
“Yo! You lookin’ at my peanut?”
If he means penis, I guess I did by mistake, but it’s nothing personal.
“No,” I chirp. “I’m not.”
“Bullshit.”
God, I wish I knew how to swear and be tough and intimidating. But I am six and fairly helpless. The Peanut boy is far too big and muscular for me to mount any sort of retaliation. He pushes me, Greco-Roman style, out of the changing area, bending my wrists backward. I try to dig my heels in, but I keep going backward into a tiny stream.
He walks away laughing.
Now I’m a chump, easily conquered and mocked. My new pro Keds are soaked; everything is ruined. I sit, ass on a slope and Keds in the water, the pulse behind my ears hot and throbbing with a faint high-pitched pinging sound. Why had I looked at his peanut?! I sit there desolate, conquered, steaming over the unfairness of life. I rest my elbows on my knees like I’m on the can.
26
Finally, a soap opera.
The producer of One Life to Live had always wanted me on the show, but I never wanted to do one again. One of the actors who had been on One Life for twenty years said to me, “I tried to go California, I tried to hustle, but I couldn’t do it. I can’t hustle. So I came back here, signed a contract a mile long, and once you do that, your career’s in the shitter.”
I had to audition—I wanted the part so badly, I even wore the one suit I had from my high school graduation—but the casting person later told me it was just a formality.
I never believed I would be so happy to land one, but I was. Ecstatic. It was a recurring gig, which meant I didn’t have to sign a contract. If I went to jail, I wouldn’t be in breach of contract.
Still, I was sad because this was the lowest job in the acting food chain. I’d appeared in many of the ads for my two studio movies and casting offices were calling. My agent didn’t understand why I couldn’t audition.
“But, Rob, you’re getting called in for some great stuff here. Are you crazy?”
“I know, Kenny, but my legal situation prevents me…”
“So what your ‘legal situation?’ You’re the first actor to deal drugs?”
“I know, but this was a lot.”
“Who gives a fuck? You’re an artist. Artists express their emotions. They’re impulsive. You didn’t kill anyone, for Christ’s sake. You should publicize the shit out of this, you’d never stop working.”
“Actually, Details and some other magazines called about my ‘predicament,’ but I denied it.”
“Denied it? Are you mashugana? People would kill for that kind of press.”
“I didn’t want to bring attention to my sister and brother-in-law…”
“Rob, they have attention—you don’t. You need all the attention you can get. I love you, but you’re a schmuck.”
I briefly considered the “schmuck” comment and how more and more that word was becoming the best way to describe me. It was unfortunate that such a word encapsulated my essence, that the world relegated me to that label, but at least I was a surviving schmuck. A schmuck who could live to fight another day. And schmuck or no schmuck, I was putting family first, so at least I was a loyal schmuck. Soap or no soap, TV sure beat bartending. My lawyers were happy because it was a job in my field. I was happy because it was a grand a day, and the soap opera workday was so long—twelve and sometimes fourteen-hour days—that it would keep my mind off my impending doom.
I was to play a badass, the strong-arm in a drug ring.
My lawyers were laughing hyenas. Ben Heller found it comical.
“Don’t do anything interesting!” my mother commanded. “You’ve got to keep this job.”
I’d gotten fired in the past due to my penchant for letting my spirit take me on riffs, so I took my mother’s advice to heart, vowing to play it safe.
My first day on the job, they gave me my own gun. I had mixed feelings. I needed the gun because I was a badass who had to protect his boss in the show, but my memory of having one of those suckers pointed at me for real made my sphincter crawl.
Alone in my dressing room, I could point the gun in all sorts of cool ways characteristic of a badass like myself, a strong-arm working for the mob. So I lunged, spun, pounced, taunted. I was a rough customer. No one to mess with, buddy! However, the gun was only made of plastic. And because it was a daytime drama, you weren’t allowed to point at people’s heads, only their chests—the Bogie method. I had to leave my obviously much better ideas in the dressing room.
The first taping was fucking terrifying. It was a one-shot deal, not like movies where you could do take after take. God, movies are easy. My whole MO was to not fuck up. I heard my mother’s frantic “Don’t do anything interesting!”
The stage manager counted down “5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” waving his hand urgently.
I was supposed to act. Now!
This was certainly not the relaxed, cozy, encouraging atmosphere that artists such as myself preferred in order to be their best. I couldn’t breathe. My bad-guy suit was sopping wet. My lines wouldn’t come. The tendons on my face were about to pop.
The actress opposite me was horrified. I was stuck. Don’t get fired!
There’s no time for “cut” in a soap opera.
Everyone looked at me, shaking their heads. Deflation and disappointment. I was close to the chopping block. I could feel it. Doing a second “take” on your first day was not cool. This made me even more clenched, desperate.
“We go again in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.”
My heart was a speed bag bobada bobada bobada-ing against my chest.
COOL IT!
I saw the lines in my head. I tried to say them, make it to the end. I pushed the lines out as if I were trying to hold up a ceiling. Blessedly, I was able to crawl unspectacularly to the end of the scene.
My facial muscles relaxed. I must have looked freakish. I felt as if I were about to be sentenced for what I was actually going to be sentenced for eight months from now.
Pause.
“Moving on,” said the stage manager automatically.
The producer came down to congratulate me. They bought it. How was that possible? When I watched the episode the next week, I was dreadful.
How sad. I thought I was actually a good—possibly great—actor. But there I was, stiff, immovable, rock-like. Maybe the greatness I expected of me would not come. Maybe this was it.
But for now, I had to be practical. I would keep my mouth shut and not do anything interesting.
Off to Mr. Durst for more urine samples. By now, he didn’t watch me closely, waiting by the bathroom door for me to finish.
We were almost chummy.
“A soap opera? That’s great,” he said. “Which one?”
“One Life to Live.”
“What are you playing?”
“A strong-arm in a drug ring.”
“You kidding me? Congrats. See you in two.”
Off to Brad Fine for more narcing.
I met Warren downstairs. “I heard,” he said. “Fantastic! A strong-arm in a drug ring? Couldn’t have made that up.”
When I told Andy Barton and Ralph Scott, they could barely contain their amusement. I
even got a slight, lip-compressed smirk from Brad Fine.
They seemed almost fond of me.
I answered some questions for them about Jordan, Seth, Barry Lombardi, was bid a hearty adieu, then walked almost jauntily to my next engagement at Montano and Primo.
Ron congratulated me. “My wife loves the show. She saw your first episode the other day and thought you were terrific.”
Oh, c’mon.
“Now we have to choose a judge for your sentencing. They literally put names in a tumbler, crank it, and then pull out a name. Frankly, this is going to be the most crucial part of sentencing. What I’m going to try to do is get two shots. We’re going to ride on Jordan’s coattails for the first go-round, and if we like the judge he picks, we stick. If we don’t, I’m going to see if it’s possible to get a second shot.”
“You see, Rob, it all depends on the judge,” said Warren. “If we get a tough sonofabitch like Edelstein, we might as well just prepare your surrender papers. But if you get Judge Ashberry, or some of the other more lenient ones, you might not go away at all.”
I shuffled out of their office, the jauntiness gone from my step. In minutes I’d gone from high-flying, lowest-tier celebrity to a guy who could really be going to jail for a while.
—
Back on the show, I was still trying to toe the line as best I could, to not be at all interesting. I must have been succeeding, because I hadn’t been fired. I still froze when the stage manager waved at me to start acting! But for the most part, I got the words out and made it through the scenes in one take, though I felt stiff and wooden, like Lurch in The Addams Family.
After I had been there about three weeks, before taping, when I was being smeared in the makeup room, I noticed all the principal contract players mincing about in all their soap opera finery.
“Why is everyone so dressed up?” I asked the makeup artist.
“For the Emmys.”
“The what?”
“The daytime Emmys.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know how they have nighttime Emmys for shows like Mary Tyler Moore or The Odd Couple? It’s the same for soap operas, only they’re called the daytime Emmys.”
“You mean they actually give awards for this shit?” I hollered.
Later that day, my brother-in-law Kevin came to the soap to work with me on an audition. He often called me “La Boca Grande,” which roughly translated means “The Big Mouth.”
Some of the actors on the show took their roles very seriously and tried to live them, as if they were studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. For them, art and life blended into one. Sylvia was such an actress. She was stunning. She’d posed for Playboy and came on nice in that toothy, actressy way—lots of happy, seemingly empathic smiles with no substance or care behind them for anyone other than herself. She hailed from Southern California and was a lithe, athletic, bronzed figure “wrapped in an enigma.” She truly believed that my boss on the show, the sinister Johnny Dee, was after her, aiming to do her harm.
That he was stalking her.
That she was the sexual equivalent of Sophia Loren.
That Johnny was plotting to have her, possess her, conquer her.
By force if need be.
HA HA HA HA!
During a taping, she wound up and slapped him as hard as she could, rupturing corpuscles. Anthony, the actor playing evil mob boss Johnny Dee—a prince of a guy—turned and walked away to blow off steam, his inept badass cohort—me—prancing behind him to make sure he was okay. Sylvia, too committed to her role to break character with tape still rolling, watched Anthony leave the studio, her jaw locked, her gaze steely.
Later that week, Kevin and I had lunch. He’d seen several episodes of the soap. “Robbie, can I say something? And you can tell me to fuck off and die and kick me down the stairs if you don’t like it.”
“Shoot.”
“I know you’re trying to not get fired for your sentencing and all, but you’ve been on the soap a couple of weeks now, so I’d say you’re probably in the clear.”
“Yeah.”
“So can I give you an acting note?”
“Okay.”
“Why don’t you just start acting the way you normally do and drop the Lurch thing?”
A month later, I was offered a contract to be a regular on the show. I couldn’t sign.
But then there was some good news: Jordan drew Judge Ashberry, one of the most liberal federal judges in the southern district.
“Great news,” my lawyers said. “You’ll be looking at a year, tops. Not exactly a cakewalk, but it’s a lot better than some of the other possibilities.”
“He’s not a ‘let ’em loose Bruce,’” Ron said, referring to a judge with a notorious reputation for leniency and sometimes acquittal, “but Judge Ashberry is known as liberal, fair, and is an opponent of the five-year mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines. Your cooperation releases him from the guidelines, which means he’s free to impose whatever sentence he sees fit.”
In several weeks, I’d meet him formally, in court, to plead guilty.
In the meantime, I met Jordan in the park. He looked awful.
“So you drew a great judge,” I said, an eager beaver.
“Good for you too, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Am I right?”
“Yep. So how’s it going?”
“Not too great. I’m running out of cash. After the DEA got everything, I still had about thirty thousand at home for fun, but that’s kind of all she wrote. And they wanna cut a deal with me too.”
Jordan was looking desperate. Everything about him, his nutty cadence, his spastic gestures, his undulating forehead, were all screaming, “How do I get out of this?”
“You going to do it? I mean, if you can’t tell me, don’t.”
“No way. I mean I get that you had to do what you had to do, but I can’t do that. How’s your TV show?”
“Oh, it’s stupid. It’s money. And it looks good for sentencing.”
“How much you makin’?”
“Grand a day.”
“Oof. Beats your usual zippo theatrical salary. Can you front me some?”
“Sure, how much?”
“Two, three, whatever you can. Seeing as how it’s your brother who got me into this mess.”
“No. You got you into this mess,” I said. “You had nothing in place if this broke bad, and it broke bad. So I don’t see how you could blame Nikko.”
“I know, not exactly the Corleone approach. It’s just his whole demeanor,
his whole—”
“I’ll bring the money to the bar this week.”
The loyal schmuck.
“Right. Thanks. I’m nuts about you.” Again, Jordan unzipped his fly, only this time the package was squeezed together and looked like an under-ripe kumquat.
27
“I met a guy in school named Jordan,” Nikko tells me one day. “He’s from Austria, speaks all these languages, his father is a survivor, and he looks like that guy from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
New York’s (now-defunct) Walden School is even more anything-goes than Dwight, and much groovier. When kids do coke on the science tables, the teacher asks if they’ve brought enough for everyone. Pot is routinely puffed in stairwells. At least at Dwight we had to pretend to be clandestine.
Nikko’s new friend Jordan comes over for dinner at 127 East Seventy-Fifth Street, the townhouse that’s twice as big as any other townhouse.
By now, at seventeen, I’m used to these family dinners at the big medieval table surrounded by cloudily elegant Pompeian frescoes. I’m slightly liquored up, just enough to tune out anxiety and the formality of sitting in that fucking dining room with the special lighting so bright its sets off a loud, high-pitc
hed squeal that distracts you from your veal and makes you feel like you’re being interrogated by a totalitarian regime.
Jordan is in a nice button-down shirt, sweating, doing his utmost to be polite and submissive. Stoned, Nikko sits next to him in his resplendent sixties hippie garb, replete with ponytail, patchwork army pants, and possibly even tassels and thumb cymbals.
As usual, Ben is lecturing, enjoying the brilliance of his own insights and clever wordplay. His pregnant pauses that reflect the solemnity of his entire being and the fact that his is the only voice being heard.
In the middle of one of his monologues, because it’s always a monologue, Ben always stops and asks some poor unsuspecting schmuck a question about what he’s talking about. You’re always caught off guard at first, and then you desperately try to rally, but you end up frying in the spotlight.
My mother usually just keeps her mouth shut and drinks too much, hoping to be invisible. But Mom’s lucky, because tonight the schmuck in question is Jordan.
“Will the non-speaking member of this table please pass the bread?” Ben says.
Almost gagging on his veal, Jordan shits himself, or at least rises a good three inches off his seat as if he has. “Yes, sir, I’m sorry, sir. Here.”
“So, Jordan, what do you think?”
“About what, sir?”
“About what I was saying.”
“Um, saying, sir? You mean the, um—”
“Is there an echo in here?”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
“Make up your mind and don’t waffle. Which is it?”
“Sir?”
“I asked a simple yes or no question, and I’d like an answer.”
“Answer?”
“To my question. Jesus fucking Christ, son of a bitch. Pat, who is this person?”
“I don’t know, dear, he’s a friend of Nikko’s, from Walden. I think you should—”
“What?!”
“I’m sorry?” Mom is confused, terrified. Ben’s abrupt shift of tone is always shocking, even though she’s heard it thousands of times. It is a shrill, skull-slapping, plate-shifting eruption that would frighten a rock.