How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

by Lenny Bruce

  He was an invited delegate to the White House Conference on Narcotic Drug Use. In connection with his appearance before Congress with regard to narcotic addiction, the Chairman of the Subcommittee stated in the Congressional Record that his was the most outstanding testimony presented on narcotics before the committee.

  His articles on narcotic addiction have appeared in a number of publications, including the California Law Review. Over the years, he has worked with, diagnosed, treated and administered to narcotic or would-be narcotic addicts numbering in the thousands. He serves on the Advisory Committee of the California Narcotics Rehabilitation Center Program.

  So much for his credits.

  Dr. Fort testified: “I would say that [Lenny Bruce] is not a narcotic addict . . . It is absolutely impossible.”

  Q. . . . Is there such a thing as a psychological or psychic drug addict?

  A. I have never heard that term used by an experienced person.

  Q. . . . Would Lenny Bruce, would this man here who you have examined, benefit by being sent to the State Narcotic Rehabilitation Center if he were sent there today by the Court?

  A. I do not think that he would. I think that he would be harmed by being sent there.

  Q. Would the community benefit, Doctor, in your opinion?

  A. I feel that the community would be harmed also.

  Nevertheless, the judge decided that I am a narcotic addict and would be committed to ten years of rehabilitation.

  On June 26, 1963, my attorney moved for a stay of the commitment, pending a final disposition of the appeal. The notice of the appeal automatically stayed the proceedings.

  The matter is still pending. My hands tremble as I write this. Soon it will be dark and my veins will begin to palpitate and I must have the stuff. Judge Munnell’s use of power has let a drug addict loose upon the citizenry of Los Angeles—a crazed man who will surely steal in order to have his next fix. The blood of pleading storekeepers will be upon the judge’s hands . . .

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Between the time I was acquitted of obscenity charges for the second time in Los Angeles and the start of my New York obscenity trial, some 80-odd prominent figures—including many nonfans—signed a public protest on my behalf.

  The signators included theologian Reinhold Neibuhr; psychoanalyst Theodor Reik; Arnold Beichman, chairman of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom; entertainers Woody Allen, Theodore Bikel, Richard Burton, Godfrey Cambridge, Bob Dylan, Herb Gardner, Ben Gazzara, Dick Gregory, Tommy Leonetti, Paul Newman, Elizabeth Taylor, Rip Torn, Rudy Vallee; novelists and playwrights Nelson Algren, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Kay Boyle, Jack Gelber, Joseph Heller, Lillian Helman, James Jones, Norman Mailer, Arthur Miller, Henry Miller, John Rechy, Jack Richardson, Susan Sontag, Terry Southern, William Styron, John Updike, Gore Vidal, Arnold Weinstein; artists Jules Feiffer, Walt Kelly and Ben Shahn; poets Gregory Corso, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones, Peter Orlovsky, Louis Untermeyer; critics Eric Bentley, Robert Brustein, Malcom Cowley, Les Crane, Harry Golden, Michael Harrington, Nat Hentoff, Granville Hicks, Alfred Kazin, Alexander King, Max Lerner, Dwight Macdonald, Jonathan Miller, Philip Rahv, Mark Schorer, Harvey Swados, Jerry Tallmer, Lionel Trilling, Dan Wakefield, Richard Gilman; editors and publishers Ira Gitler (Down Beat), Robert Gottlieb (Simon & Schuster), Irving Howe (Dissent), Peter Israel (Putnam’s), William Phillips (Partisan Review), George Plimpton (Paris Review), Norman Podhoretz (Commentary), Barney Rossett (Grove Press).

  The petition reads as follows:

  We the undersigned are agreed that the recent arrests of night-club entertainer Lenny Bruce by the New York police department on charges of indecent performance constitutes a violation of civil liberties as guaranteed by the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution.

  Lenny Bruce is a popular and controversial performer in the field of social satire in the tradition of Swift, Rabelais, and Twain. Although Bruce makes use of the vernacular in his night-club performances, he does so within the context of his satirical intent and not to arouse the prurient interests of his listeners. It is up to the audience to determine what is offensive to them; it is not a function of the police department of New York or any other city to decide what adult private citizens may or may not hear.

  Whether we regard Bruce as a moral spokesman or simply as an entertainer, we believe he should be allowed to perform free from censorship or harassment.

  Harassment is a leprous label that draws bully taunts: “Oh, are they picking on you, little boy? They’re always picking on you. It’s funny, that doesn’t happen to your brother.”

  People ask, why don’t they leave you alone?

  I say there’s nobody picking on me. Except the ones that don’t piss in the sink. But we all do! That’s the one common denominator to seize upon. Every man reading this has at one time pissed in the sink. I have, and I am part every guy in the world. We’re all included. I know you’ve pissed in the sink. You may have pretended to be washing your hands, but you were definitely pissing in the sink.

  Recently there was a news item about a cat burglar who broke into the fourth floor of the Hotel America in New York at 12:05 A.M.

  I used to stay at the Hotel America when I was in New York. A suite there was available for $36 a month, and was rented by the year by the Wallace Brothers Circus in case a trained bear was pregnant—you know, if an animal gets knocked up while working Madison Square Garden, the Hotel America is the only one that will take a pregnant bear, because the maid only goes in once a year.

  Now, my theory is that it wasn’t a cat burglar, it was actually a tenant. Somebody in the Flanders Hotel across the street had spotted the prowler. “I was looking at the stars through my binoculars,” said R. Lendowski, Grand Central Station maintenance porter. “I just happened to be looking and I saw this guy.”

  When questioned, the suspect said that there was no toilet in his room, that he had recent surgery done on his little toe and so walking to the bathroom in the hall was terribly painful, and that his roommate caught him pissing in the sink. Actually, he wasn’t caught by his roommate, he was just about to start, and he got out of it by saying that he was taking a sponge bath and had to continue bathing from the waist up, while his roommate kept interjecting: “For a minute I thought that you were trying to piss in the sink . . . I once caught a guy doing that at Paris Island . . . Can you imagine someone pissing in the sink? . . . The same type of dirty guy that pisses in the ocean . . .”

  So he waited until his friend fell asleep, still mumbling about those guys sneak-pissing in the sink.

  Then he decided to piss out the window, but he felt guilty about it in case some guy that might be an even bigger nut on ocean-pissers who happened to be passing by. What if you pissed on a guy like that?

  Then the police arrived.

  “Don’t move—I see which window that spray is coming from. You! With your hand on the sill, shaking it on the screen—stop in the name of the law! Okay, we’ve got you surrounded! Don’t drop anything!”

  Later, at police headquarters, the suspect is confessing:

  “. . . So I searched out all the possibilities, and I went out on the ledge to make sure I wouldn’t get it on anyone. It was 12:05 A.M., and I saw a whole bunch of binoculars from different windows watching me. Before I knew it, this priest was on the ledge with me. He said, ‘Son, is this the only way?’

  “I said, ‘It’s either this or pissing in the sink, Father. The fire engines are here now and I have a choice of confessing as a cat burglar or a Peeping Tom, but to tell the truth, my roommate won’t let me piss in the sink . . .’”

  It’s virtually unanimous that we’ve all pissed in the sink, including President Johnson and myself, and Mickey Cohen and Billy Graham. Of course, I’ve also done a few things in my life that I am so ashamed of I would never tell anybody, ever. I’ll take those secrets to my grave. Naturally I won’t tell them to you, but I will reveal a minor skeleton hanging arou
nd in my confessional booth.

  A friend of mine, who shall remain nameless, was an m.c. in a night club that had strippers. He came over to my pad about five o’clock one morning, woke me up and showed me a big diamond ring. He said that there was this drunk he had helped out to a cab. While shaking hands and saying “Good night, sir,” he had managed to slip the ring off the drunk’s finger.

  Now my friend wanted to know how much I thought it was worth.

  I said, “Leave it with me, I know a bartender who’s also a jeweler, and I’ll be seeing him later today.”

  He left it with me. I stayed up till 8:30 and then drove downtown. The ring had a three-carat stone in it and a baguette on each side. I took it to a jeweler and asked for an appraisal. He said it was worth about $1500 or $2000. I then went three stores down and asked how much it would cost to have a zircon made that would match this diamond centerstone exactly.

  “About twenty dollars.”

  “Do it.”

  He did it while I waited.

  And I split. Two hours later it dawned on my friend: “What the hell am I leaving that ring with him for—he might steal it.” An hour later he came by. “I just thought of it,” he said, “my cousin’s got a friend who’s a jeweler and I’m going by there later.” So I gave the ring back to him.

  Again he asked me, “What do you think it’s worth?”

  “I don’t know, probably a couple of thousand dollars.”

  That was the last I heard of the ring for six months. Then he started talking of going into the dry-cleaning business with his father.

  “Where you gonna get the bread?”

  “I’m going to dig up the ring,” he said. “I’ve had it buried in the back yard.” And for the next three months, he spent that buried ring fifty times. “I’m not gonna dig it up till I’m sure, because then I’ll just piss the money away.”

  A miniature golf course, that would be it. He even had the real-estate guy draw up the papers. He asked me to drive him downtown. We were going to sell the ring. Oh, God. As we walked into the first pawnshop, I waited for the cruncher.

  “How much will you give me for this diamond?”

  “C’mon, it’s too hot today for jokes.”

  “I’m not kidding, I wanna sell it.”

  “It’s a coke bottle. Take it back and get three cents deposit on it. It’s glass.”

  “Why don’t you put that thing up to your eye?”

  But before the pawnshop owner could answer, my friend grabbed the ring back in desperation. We hit three We-Buy-Old-Gold jewelry stores and got the same answer.

  Finally, a less jaded merchant, who hadn’t sold a graduation watch for 50 cents down all day, said: “Son, the platinum is worth about twelve dollars, and the little chips on each side about six dollars apiece, and the zircon in the middle, five dollars, including labor. I’ll give you three dollars for it.”

  “How do you like that phony bastard, wearing a three-dollar ring, and I had it buried in the back yard.”

  About a year later—I still had the stone—I was very busted, and a successful comedian, a good friend of mine, gave me $700 for it because he wanted to help me. He wrote out the check for “Special Material.” A few months later, I was making some money, and since the back-yard diamond planter was a very good friend I couldn’t resist telling him how it came about that he buried that piece of glass. And then I gave him half the bread.

  There’s another minor skeleton in my confessional booth. It would be my undoing if I were ever to run for public office. “Mr. Bruce,” my opponent would sneer, “is it not the truth that when you were twelve years old, you jerked off a dog? In fact, you’ve jerked off several dogs. And isn’t it true that when a certain cocker spaniel used to come to your house, he would push his hind end toward his front paws?”

  “I didn’t know what I was doing. I was crazy with fear. They bite. He was vicious. Friends of mine had told me, ‘Jerk him off and he won’t bite you.’”

  “Ladies and gentlemen, is that the kind of man you want for United States Senator? No! We’re looking for a religious man—one who’d see to it that anyone that had sinned would be made to suffer forever . . .”

  Someone goes to jail, and after 15 years of incarceration, you make sure you get him back in as soon as you can by shaming anyone who would forgive him, accept him, give him employment; by shaming them on television—“The unions knowingly hired ex-convicts.” Driving in New Jersey once, I would occasionally pass signs stating: CRIMINALS MUST REGISTER.

  Does this mean that in the middle of the hold-up, you have to go to the County Courthouse and register? Or does it mean that you must register if you once committed a criminal act?

  Do you know there are guys in jail for doing it to chickens?

  Bestiality.

  Hey, lady, wouldn’t you get bugged if your husband balled a chicken?

  “I was the last one to know!”

  “But she was only sitting on my lap. I was feeding her.”

  “Oh, sure, you were feeding her. Everybody told me what you were doing to her. And on our bed!”

  “It wasn’t on the bed, it was over there———”

  “What’s happened to your chicken? Have you seen your chicken lately? Tell your chicken to fix dinner . . .”

  Once I was talking to a horse trainer and a jockey. I’m not hip to track people and their life, but this trainer told me how he really loved animals, and to have a horse that’s a winner, you’ve got to lock him up all the time. Just keep him a prisoner and boxcar him from town to town and never let them have any fun with lady horses. It’s the lowest. Just keep them so when that race comes, he’s a real nut! And then, whoosh . . .

  “You know, Lenny,” the jockey said, “sometimes in the morning when the light just starts to break through, some of those fillies are so beautiful, they look like pretty women. When they’ve got those fly-sheets on, it looks like negligees flying in the wind.”

  “Oh, yeah? Uh—did you ever———?”

  “No.”

  “Because that’s a very interesting transference you just had there. I can’t see any girlie thing in horses. Now tell me the truth—because I know I’d deny it too if I made it with a filly—but I mean, you know, did you ever?”

  He said no, he never did, but then he told me a story that really flipped me, about this horse called I Salute out of Isaacson Stables. This horse was a big winner—purse after purse—she really had it made, and the season was almost over.

  Then, five o’clock one morning, they caught a 50-year-old exercise man with the horse. Naturally, they busted him. The charge: sodomy. They arraigned him, convicted him, and he got a year in the joint.

  Now I started thinking . . . what a hell of a thing to do time for, you know?

  “Hey, what are you in for?”

  “Never mind.”

  The most ludicrous thing would be making the arrest, I assume. You’d be so embarrassed.

  “I, uh, you’re under arrest—uh, ahem, come out of there!”

  Or the judge. How could he really get serious with that? “All right, where’s the complaining witness?”

  Anyway, the exercise man went to prison, and the horse must have missed him a lot, because she just didn’t want to run anymore. And she never did race again.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After this autobiography had been serialized in PLAYBOY magazine, there were many letters to the editor. I think it would be pertinent at this point to quote two particular letters from that group.

  The first is from John E. Dolan, President of the Dolan-Whitney Detective Service:

  Having investigated numerous aspects of, and the peculiarities surrounding, Lenny Bruce’s Los Angeles arrest for the alleged “possession of narcotics” and the subsequent trials, I am conversant with numerous facts and other valid data concerning the case.

  You might be interested to know, for instance, that John L. White, the officer who arrested Lenny Bruce for “possession of
narcotics,” has himself since been arraigned in Federal Court. White is now serving a five-year sentence in Federal Prison after being found guilty of “illegal importation of narcotics.”

  The other letter to PLAYBOY was from Dr. Joel Fort:

  In addition to commending you for your publication of Lenny Bruce’s valuable and interesting social document, I would like to elaborate briefly on the section of his autobiography describing my testimony during his trial for narcotic addiction . . .

  I brought out in my testimony the criteria that should be used in making a diagnosis of drug addiction which would include both the detailed history of drug use by a particular individual and the physical signs of such use. Mr. Bruce at the time of my examination and during the weeks immediately prior to his trial, showed no such evidence of being an addict, and in fact had numerous negative tests for the presence of narcotics in his body.

  The doctors certifying him as an addict had had little experience with narcotic addiction and seemed to use as their main criterion the fact that he had been arrested for possession of heroin, which should not be a crucial factor in reaching a medical diagnosis. In these addiction proceedings, as in his numerous obscenity charges, Mr. Bruce was and is bearing the brunt of unjust and irrational reaction to his outspoken criticism of a society pervaded by hypocrisy and deceit.

  If such dissent is successfully shut off by various official and unofficial policing bodies, freedom of speech will have suffered a further crippling blow and robotization of our society will have moved one step closer.

  A private investigator I hired dug into the background of Dr. Thomas L. Gore, who was so anxious to give me ten years of help. And, on October 3, 1963, Dr. I. W. J. Core, Medical Examiner for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville, Davidson County, in Tennessee, signed an affidavit which stated:

  During the years 1947 and 1948, I was Chief of Staff at Davidson County Hospital, a mental institution situated in Nashville, Tennessee . . . for the entire fifteen (15) months of Thomas L. Gore’s administration as superintendent of the Davidson County Hospital . . . during which time the following incidents occurred . . . which eventually culminated and led to Thomas L. Gore’s dismissal: