by Lenny Bruce
A. I must say it would.
Similarly, Mr. Wollenberg cross-examined Dr. Don Geiger, associate professor and chairman of the department of speech at the University of California in Berkeley; also author of a few books, including Sound, Sense and Performance of Literature, as well as several scholarly articles in professional journals.
Q. . . . And what does the expression “I won’t appear there because it’s overrun with cocksuckers” infer to you?
A. “I won’t go there because it’s filled with homosexuals.”
Q. I see. And does the word “cocksucker” denote any beauty as distinguished from the word homosexual?
A. I couldn’t possibly answer that, I think. That is, you would have to provide a context for it, and then one could answer that. I would say this about it . . . that “homosexual” is a kind of neutral, scientific term which might in a given context itself have a freight of significance or beauty or artistic merit. But it’s less likely to than the word “cocksucker,” which is closer to colloquial, idiomatic expression.
Later, Kenneth Brown, a high school English teacher, testified as to his reaction to the “to come” part of my performance:
THE WITNESS: The impression is, he was trying to get over a point about society, the inability to love, the inability to perform sexual love in a creative way. The routine then would enter a dialog between a man and a woman and they were having their sexual difficulties at orgasm in bed; at least, one of them was. And one said, “Why can’t you come?” And, “Is it because you don’t love me? Is it because you can’t love me?” And the other one said, “Why, you know me, this is where I’m hung up. I have problems here.” And that was enough to give me the impression that—with the other things in context that were going on before and after—that he was talking, dissecting our problems of relating to each other, man and woman. . . . Great comics throughout literature have always disguised by comedy, through laughter, through jokes, an underlying theme which is very serious, and perhaps needs laughter because it is also painful . . .
MR. BENDICH: May I ask you this question, Mr. Brown: On the basis of your professional training and experience, do you think that the work of Mr. Bruce as you know it, and in particular the content of Mr. Bruce’s performance on the night of October fourth, for which he was arrested, for which he is presently here in this courtroom on trial, bears a relation to the themes and the fashion in which those themes are in the works which we have listed here [Lysistrata by Aristophanes; Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais; Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift]?
A. I see a definite relationship, certainly.
Q. Would you state, please, what relationship you see and how you see it?
MR. WOLLENBERG: I think he hasn’t qualified as an expert on this, your Honor.
THE COURT: Well, he may state what the relationship is that he sees.
THE WITNESS: These works use often repulsive techniques and vocabulary to make—to insist—that people will look at the whole of things and not just one side. These artists wish not to divide the world in half and say one is good and one is bad and avoid the bad and accept the good, but you must, to be a real and whole person, you must see all of life and see it in a balanced, honest way. I would include Mr. Bruce, certainly, in his intent, and he has success in doing this, as did Rabelais and Swift.
At one point during the trial, a couple of 19-year-old college students were admonished by the judge; they had been distributing the following leaflet outside the courtroom:
WELCOME TO THE FARCE!
Lenny Bruce, one of America’s foremost comedians and social critics, is at this moment playing an unwilling part as a straight man in a social comedy put on by the City and County of San Francisco.
Incongruously, in our urbane city, this is a poor provincial farce, insensitively played by some of the city’s most shallow actors.
Bruce may be imaginative, but the dull-witted, prudish lines of the police department are not, neither are the old-maidish lyrics of section 311.6 of the California Penal Code, which in genteel, puritan prose condemns the users of – – – – – – – and – – – – – – – and other common expressions to play a part in the dreary melodrama of “San Francisco Law Enforcement.”
Really, we are grown up now. With overpopulation, human misery and the threat of war increasing, we need rather more adult performances from society.
You know, and I know, all about the hero’s impure thoughts. We’ve probably had them ourselves. Making such a fuss isn’t convincing at all—it lacks psychological realism—as do most attempts to find a scapegoat for sexual guilt feelings.
Forgive Lenny’s language. Most of us use it at times; most of us even use the things and perform the acts considered unprintable and unspeakable by the authors of (Section 311.6 of the Penal Code of the State of California), though most of us are not nearly frank enough to say so.
Lenny has better things to do than play in this farce; the taxpayers have better uses for their money; and the little old ladies of both sexes who produce it should have better amusements.
With a nostalgic sigh, let’s pull down the curtain on People vs. Bruce and its genre; and present a far more interesting and fruitful play called Freedom of Speech. It would do our jaded ears good.
The writer and distributor of the leaflet were properly chastised by the judge.
And so the trial continued.
One of the witnesses for the defense was Clarence Knight, who had been an assistant district attorney for a couple of years in Tulare County, California, and was deputy district attorney for four years in San Mateo, where he evaluated all pornography cases that were referred to the district attorney’s office. He had passed on “probably between 200 and 250 separate items of material in regard to the pornographic or nonpornographic content thereof.”
As with the others, his prurient interests were not aroused by my performance at the Jazz Workshop. In fact, he said, while being cross-examined about the “cocksucker” reference: “In my opinion, Mr. Wollenberg, it was the funniest thing Mr. Bruce said that night.”
Chapter Twenty
Finally, I was called as a witness in my own behalf. I took the stand, and Mr. Bendich examined me.
Q. Mr. Bruce, Mr. Wollenberg yesterday said (to Dr. Gottlieb) specifically that you had said, “Eat it.” Did you say that?
A. No, I never said that.
Q. What did you say, Mr. Bruce?
A. What did I say when?
Q. On the night of October fourth.
MR. WOLLENBERG: There’s no testimony that Mr. Wollenberg said that Mr. Bruce said, “Eat it,” the night of October fourth, if your Honor please.
THE COURT: The question is: What did he say?
THE WITNESS: I don’t mean to be facetious. Mr. Wollenberg said, “Eat it.” I said, “Kiss it.”
MR. BENDICH: Do you apprehend there is a significant difference between the two phrases, Mr. Bruce?
A. “Kissing it” and “eating it,” yes, sir. Kissing my mother goodbye and eating my mother goodbye, there is a quantity of difference.
Q. Mr. Wollenberg also quoted you as saying, “I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m coming.” Did you say that?
A. I never said that.
MR. BENDICH: . . . Mr. Bruce, do you recall using the term “cock-sucker”?
A. Yes.
Q. Can you recall accurately now how you used that term?
A. You mean accuracy right on the head—total recall?
Q. Yes, Mr. Bruce.
A. If a “the” and an “an” are changed around, no. I don’t have that exact, on-the-head recall. That’s impossible; it’s impossible. I defy anyone to do it. That’s impossible.
Q. Mr. Bruce, if a “the” and an “an” were turned around, as you have put it, would that imply a significant difference in the characterization of what was said that evening?
A. Yes, yes.
Q. Are you saying, Mr. Bruce, that unless your words can be given in exa
ct, accurate, verbatim reproduction, that your meaning cannot be made clear?
THE WITNESS: Yes, that is true. I would like to explain that. The “I am coming, I am coming” reference, which I never said—if we change———
THE COURT: Wait a minute, wait a minute. If you never said it, there’s nothing to explain.
THE WITNESS: Whether that is a coming in the Second Coming or a different coming———
THE COURT: Well, you wait until your counsel’s next question, now.
MR. BENDICH: Mr. Bruce, in giving your performance on the night of October fourth in the Jazz Workshop, as a consequence of which you suffered an arrest and as a result of which you are presently on trial on the charge of obscenity, did you intend to arouse anybody’s prurient interest?
A. No.
There had been a tape recording made of that particular show. I listened to it, and when I came to the first word that San Francisco felt was taboo or a derogatory phrase, I stopped; then I went back about ten minutes before I even started to relate to that word, letting it resolve itself; I did this with the three specific things I was charged with, put them together and the resulting tape was played in court . . . this tape I made to question a father’s concept of God who made the child’s body but qualified the creativity by stopping it above the kneecaps and resuming it above the Adam’s apple, thereby giving lewd connotations to mother’s breast that fed us and father’s groin that bred us.
Before the tape was played, Mr. Bendich pointed out to the judge that “there are portions of this tape which are going to evoke laughter in the audience.”
THE COURT: I anticipated you; I was going to give that admonition.
MR. BENDICH: Well, what I was going to ask, your Honor, is whether the audience might not be allowed to respond naturally, given the circumstances that this is an accurate reproduction of a performance which is given at a night club; it’s going to evoke comic response, and I believe that it would be asking more than is humanly possible of the persons in this courtroom not to respond humanly, which is to say, by way of laughter.
THE COURT: Well, as I previously remarked, this is not a theater and it is not a show, and I am not going to allow any such thing. I anticipated you this morning, and I was going to and I am now going to admonish the spectators that you are not to treat this as a performance. This is not for your entertainment. There’s a very serious question involved here, the right of the People and the right of the defendant. And I admonish you that you are to control yourselves with regard to any emotions that you may feel during the hearing this morning or by the taping and reproduction of this tape. All right, you may proceed.
And the tape was played:
. . . The hungry i. The hungry i has a Grayline Tour and American Legion convention. They took all the bricks out and put in Saran Wrap. That’s it. And Ferlinghetti is going to the Fairmont.
You know, this was a little snobby for me to work. I just wanted to go back to Ann’s. You don’t know about that, do you? Do you share that recall with me? It’s the first gig I ever worked up here, a place called Ann’s 440, which was across the street. And I got a call, and I was working a burlesque gig with Paul Moore in the Valley. That’s the cat on the piano here, which is really strange, seeing him after all these years, and working together.
And the guy says, “There’s a place in San Francisco but they’ve changed the policy.”
“Well, what’s the policy?”
“Well, I’m not there anymore, that’s the main thing.”
“Well, what kind of a show is it, man?”
“A bunch of cocksuckers, that’s all. A damned fag show.”
“Oh. Well, that is a pretty bizarre show. I don’t know what I can do in that kind of a show.”
“Well, no. It’s—we want you to change all that.”
“Well—I don’t—that’s a big gig. I can’t just tell them to stop doing it.”
Oh, I like you, and if sometimes I take poetic license with you and you are offended—now this is just with semantics, dirty words. Believe me, I’m not profound, this is something that I assume someone must have laid on me, because I do not have an original thought. I am screwed—I speak English—that’s it. I was not born in a vacuum. Every thought I have belongs to somebody else. Then I must just take—ding-ding-ding—somewhere.
So I am not placating you by making the following statement. I want to help you if you have a dirty-word problem. There are none, and I’ll spell it out logically to you.
Here is a toilet. Specifically—that’s all we’re concerned with, specifics—if I can tell you a dirty toilet joke, we must have a dirty toilet. That’s what we’re talking about, a toilet. If we take this toilet and boil it and it’s clean, I can never tell you specifically a dirty toilet joke about this toilet. I can tell you a dirty toilet joke in the Milner Hotel, or something like that, but this toilet is a clean toilet now. Obscenity is a human manifestation. This toilet has no central nervous system, no level of consciousness. It is not aware; it is a dumb toilet; it cannot be obscene; it’s impossible. If it could be obscene, it could be cranky, it could be a Communist toilet, a traitorous toilet. It can do none of these things. This is a dirty toilet here.
Nobody can offend you by telling you a dirty toilet story. They can offend you because it’s trite; you have heard it many, many times.
Now, all of us have had a bad early toilet training—that’s why we are hung up with it. All of us at the same time got two zingers—one for the police department and one for the toilet.
“All right, he made a kahkah, call a policeman. All right, OK, all right. Are you going to do that anymore? OK, tell the policeman he doesn’t have to come up now.”
All right, now we all got “Policeman, policeman, policeman,” and we had a few psychotic parents who took it and rubbed it in our face, and those people for the most, if you search it out, are censors. Oh, true, they hate toilets with a passion, man. Do you realize if you got that wrapped around with a toilet, you’d hate it, and anyone who refers to it? It is dirty and uncomfortable to you.
Now, if the bedroom is dirty to you, then you are a true atheist, because if you have any of the mores, superstitions, if anyone in this audience believes that God made his body, and your body is dirty, the fault lies with the manufacturer. It’s that cold, Jim, yeah.
You can do anything with the body that God made, and then you want to get definitive and tell me of the parts He made; I don’t see that anywhere in any reference to any Bible. Yeah. He made it all; it’s all clean or all dirty.
But the ambivalence comes from the religious leaders, who are celibates. The religious leaders are “what should be.” They say they do not involve themselves with the physical. If we are good, we will be like our rabbi, or our nun, or our priests, and absolve, and finally put down the carnal and stop the race.
Now, dig, this is stranger. Everybody today in the hotel was bugged with Knight and Nixon. Let me tell you the truth. The truth is “what is.” If “what is” is, you have to sleep eight, ten hours a day, that is the truth. A he will be: People need no sleep at all. Truth is “what is.” If every politician from the beginning is crooked, there is no crooked. But if you are concerned with a lie, “what should be”—and “what should be” is a fantasy, a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago: This is what should be—and no one ever saw what should be, that you don’t need any sleep and you can go seven years without sleep, so that all the people were made to measure up to that dirty lie. You know there’s no crooked politicians. There’s never a lie because there is never a truth.
I sent this agency a letter—they are bonded and you know what that means: anybody who is bonded never steals from you, nor could Earl Long. Ha! If the governor can, then the bond is really—yeah, that’s some bond.
Very good. Write the letter. Blah, blah, blah, “I want this,” blah, blah, blah, “ticket taker.”
Get a letter back, get an answer back, Macon, Georgia:
Dean R. Moxie . . . Dean R. Moxie . . . Moxie, buddy. Dean R. Moxie, from the Florida criminal correctional institution for the criminally insane, and beat up a spade-fed junkie before he was thrown off the police force, and then was arrested for schtupping his stepdaughter. Dean R. Moxie. Hmmm.
All right, now, because I have a sense of the ludicrous, I sent him back an answer, Mr. Moxie. Dig, because I mean this is some of the really goodies I had in the letter, you know. He wants to know details.
“Dear Mr. Moxie: It would be useless to go into the definitive, a breakdown of what the duties will be, unless I can be sure that the incidents that have happened in the past will not be reiterated, such as ticket takers I have hired, who claimed they were harassed by customers who wanted their money back, such as the fop in San Jose who is suing me for being stabbed. Claims he was stabbed by an irate customer, and it was a lie—it was just a manicure scissors, and you couldn’t see it because it was below the eyebrow, and when his eye was open, you couldn’t see it anyway. (So I tell him a lot of problems like that.) And—oh yes, oh yeah—my father . . . has been in three mental institutions, and detests the fact that I am in the industry, and really abhors the fact that I have been successful economically and has harassed some ticket sellers, like in Sacramento he stood in line posing as a customer and, lightning flash, grabbed a handful of human feces and crammed it in the ticket taker’s face. And once in Detroit he posed as a customer and he leaned against the booth so the ticket seller could not see him, and he was exposing himself, and had a sign hanging from it, saying: WHEN WE HIT $1500, THE GUY INSIDE THE BOOTH IS GOING TO KISS IT.”
Now, you’d assume Dean R. Moxie, reading the letter, would just reject that and have enough validity to grab it in again.