How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

by Lenny Bruce

  (1) Thomas Gore was constantly engaged, during the majority of the time he presided as superintendent, in disputes with the personnel of the Davidson County Hospital, as well as with employees and members of the County Court, and members of the Board of Hospital Commissioners.

  (2) In complete violation of the law of the State of Tennessee, which law does not provide for such procedures, Thomas Gore castrated a patient from Joelton, Tennessee, which surgery was performed by Thomas Gore without consent of the patient, the guardian of said patient, or the Board of Hospital Commissioners. Upon being informed of such illicit activity, as Chief of Staff and a member of the Board, I personally investigated this matter and determined beyond all doubt this operation to have been performed by Gore. This activity on the part of Gore caused the County considerable trouble, and while, at the time, there was some discussion on the part of the parents of this patient upon whom Gore had performed an illegal operation, relative [to] pursuing their legal remedies, no further action was ever taken by the parents. Under the Law of the State of Tennessee, castration of this patient was, of course, definitely illegal.

  (3) For reasons undetermined, and at tremendous expense to the County, Thomas Gore caused to be excavated on County property, adjacent [to] the dairy of the Davidson County Hospital, a huge hole, which excavation was never utilized, and which was then in my opinion, a matter of extremely poor judgment. My opinion on that matter to the present day has remained unchanged.

  (4) In complete violation of the law, Gore purchased a herd of cattle at public auction, again without County consent, and again without the consent or knowledge of the Board.

  (5) Thomas Gore caused to be built during his administration a corn crib, and which under his direction was constructed so as to be airtight, thereby destroying any value for which it may have been constructed.

  (6) On one occasion during his administration, Thomas Gore informed me that while a member of the Armed Forces, he was a money lender. Subsequent to his discharge from the Army and while the Superintendent of the Davidson County Hospital, he attempted to borrow money from me to lend to Army personnel. I refused to become involved and in turn refused to lend Gore monies for such purposes.

  (7) During Gore’s administration, grates were removed from the first floor windows and, as a result, a number of patients were lost from the institution causing the County great anxiety and expense in returning them to said institution. Following Gore’s release, I was then appointed temporary Superintendent and immediately rectified the situation, replacing the grating, whereby the number of escapees were reduced immensely. Again, at the time of the removal of the grating in this mental institution, I considered Gore’s judgment faulty.

  In conclusion, your deponent says that Thomas Lee Gore’s administration was totally and completely unsatisfactory. He was released for his inability to manage employees and for mismanagement in general. Gore was completely unsuited for and totally unfitted for the job of Superintendent, and after our experience with Thomas Gore, the Board decided that we never again would have a retired service man as head of the institution. The Board knew and realized they had made a mistake in engaging Gore. He was arrogant and bullheaded and unable to get along with civilian personnel. In my opinion the man was indeed paranoiac, and I consider him a very sick man. I do not consider Gore’s judgment was trustworthy, and I cannot nor would not give full faith and credit to any oath of his in a court of justice.

  Incidentally, back in June 1955, Dr. Gore the castrator wrote an article in Federal Probation entitled “The Antidote for Delinquency: God-Inspired Love.”

  I have really become possessed with winning—vindicating myself rather than being vindictive—and my room is always cluttered with reels of tape and photostats of transcripts.

  Recently, when I pretended to doubt the word of my eight-year-old daughter, Kitty, she said: “Daddy, you’d believe me if it was on tape.”

  Recently I was offered a writing gig on a TV series for $3500 a week. And I really was happy about that. But after two days, negotiations went right into the can. The company’s legal department had killed it.

  Because of the morality clause.

  When Rod Amateau had come backstage and offered me the writing assignment, I had just given my last two possessions—my record player and my camera—to a secretary in lieu of payment.

  Moral turpitude.

  They said the decision related to my arrests for obscenity and narcotics, and the sponsor. The thing I really felt bad about was that Rod Amateau had worked so hard to get me the gig, and I’m sure he felt ashamed. He shouldn’t have been subjected to that.

  When I had been a writer for 20th Century-Fox several years prior to this, I lost the job for a reason that I could relate to perhaps more objectively than the morality clause.

  My boss there was a producer. He had a stable of writers, made a lot of money and went out with a pretty starlet. He had his own private dining room at the studio that looked like a ship. He’d say: “Stay in your office, write twenty pages a day, and if you get bored, look out my office window at the green lawn with the hard-working gardeners, and be happy you can write.”

  One day I looked out the window, only to see him dying of a heart attack that had started in his dining room and lasted all the way down Darryl F. Zanuck’s stairs.

  He died on the lawn.

  And I knew that I was finished there because I didn’t get invited to the funeral.

  Actually, everybody he’d hired got fired upon his death.

  He had introduced me to a big star who became even bigger by playing Las Vegas in a peekaboo dress, and she asked me to write a piece of special material for her for $500. I did, and she sent me a wire from her show, thrilled—“The material was great.” She was never home after that, though, and I wanted to get my money. Her mother gave me the brush: “Look, you—we found out you work in burlesque, and if you bother us once more, we’re going to black-list you with the Writers’ Guild.”

  Since all the moralists and purists support Las Vegas as the entertainment capital of the world, one would assume that the attraction at The Star Dust is The Passion Play or a Monet exhibit or the New York City Ballet with Eugene Ormandy conducting. But, no; what is the big attraction?

  “Tits and ass.”

  I beg your pardon?

  “Tits and ass, that’s what the attraction is.”

  Just tits and ass?

  “No, an apache team in between for rationalization.”

  Well, that must be just one hotel—what’s the second bit attraction?

  “More tits and ass.”

  And the third?

  “That’s it, tits and ass, and more tits and ass.”

  Do you mean to tell me that Life magazine would devote three full pages to tits and ass?

  “Yes, right next to the articles by Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale.”

  Well, that may be the truth, but you just can’t put “Tits and Ass” up on a marquee.

  “Why not?”

  Because it’s dirty and vulgar, that’s why.

  “Titties are dirty and vulgar?”

  No, you’re not gonna bait me, it’s not the titties, it’s the words, it’s the way you relate them. You can’t have those words where kids can see them.

  “Didn’t your kid ever see a titty?”

  I’m telling you, it’s the words.

  “I don’t believe you. I believe, to you, it’s the titty that’s dirty, because I’ll change the words to ‘Tuchuses and Nay-nays Nightly!’”

  That’s a little better.

  “Well, that’s interesting. You’re not anti-Semitic idiomatic, you’re anti-Anglo-Saxon idiomatic. Then why don’t we get really austere? Latin: ‘Gluteus maximus and Pectorales majores Nightly!’”

  Now, that’s clean.

  “To you, schmuck—but it’s dirty to the Latins!”

  Well, you just can’t put tits and ass up there, that’s all.

  “La Parisiene—T
he Follies—class with ass—French tits and ass—that’s art! And if we don’t make any more money with that you can have a Japanese nude show that absolves us both politically and spiritually, because who but a dirty Jap would show their kiester? And we’ll get the Norman Luboff choir to sing Remember Pearl Harbor. And then, if we don’t make any more money with that, we’ll combine the contemporary and the patriotic: American tits and ass. Grandma Moses’ tits and Norman Rockwell’s ass . . .”

  (Draw my ass. If you can draw my ass, you can draw. My ass, you can draw.)

  Soon they will have just a big nipple up on the marquee, and maybe that’s why you want to have FOR ADULTS ONLY, because you’re ashamed to tell your kids that you’re selling and exploiting and making an erotic thing out of your mother’s breast that gave you life.

  The morality clause.

  And I had really wanted that job, because I got really busted out financially as the number of arrests had begun to mount up, and my income was more and more cut off. For the first time in my life I had checks bouncing, and I ruined an eight-year credit rating. Right down the drain.

  I’ve played Detroit for almost eight years, and was due to open at The Alamo in March 1964, but when the Detroit Board of Censors learned of this, they wouldn’t permit my appearance—depriving me of my rights without even so much as a judicial proceeding.

  I have been calling up night-club owners all over the country, but they’re all afraid to book me.

  Variety, the Bible of Show Business, refuses to accept an ad from me that simply states I’m available.

  And I can’t get into England.

  Fighting my “persecution” seems as futile as asking Barry Goldwater to speak at a memorial to send the Rosenberg kids to college, or asking attorney James Donavan, “On your way back from trading the prisoners in Cuba, stop off and see if you can get just one more pardon for Morton Sobell.”

  I mean, when I think of all the crap that’s been happening to me, the thing that keeps me from getting really outraged or hostile at the people involved is—and I’m sure that Caryl Chessman, or perhaps his next-cell murderer who sits waiting to be murdered, felt this, too—that in the end, the injustice anyone is subjected to is really quite an in matter.

  Sure, other people do care, but how long does it ever last . . .

  The police visit me occasionally.

  One night recently I was in the bathroom shaving when four peace officers showed up on my property. I knew two of them; one, in fact, had testified in court against me—the Trojan that Horse built—the others were loud and out of line. I asked them to leave if they didn’t have a search warrant, whereupon one of them took out his gun, saying: “Here’s my search warrant.”

  If I am paranoid, then I have reached the acute point of stress in my life. It’s this bad:

  Recently, while walking to work at the Off-Broadway, a night club in San Francisco (Variety deemed it newsworthy enough to report that I wasn’t arrested during that engagement), I observed a young couple in front of me. They were walking several feet ahead of me. They turned the corner that I was going to turn. And just before I got to the club, they turned into a hotel and went up the stairs.

  My fear: I was afraid that they were afraid that I was following them.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I don’t get involved with politics as much as Mort Sahl does, because I know that to be a correct politician and a successful one, you must be what all politicians have always been: chameleonlike.

  I voted in the 1960 Presidential election, but I didn’t get too emotionally involved and vehement with the attitude that “My man is the best man”—because I didn’t know the man I voted for. I think the cliché is that you don’t know a man till you live with him, and since I never slept with Nixon or Kennedy I can only tell you if they were good in retrospect.

  I voted for Kennedy because I thought I’d be able to see the reflection of a human being with dimension. I’ve seen a child born in the White House. Up till now, Presidents have never seemed like real people to me.

  I could never visualize Eisenhower even kissing his wife. Not on the mouth, anyway. He didn’t even go to the toilet either, he just stood there. He didn’t even go to bed, he just sat up all night with his clothes on, worrying.

  And even Nixon—well, he kissed his wife, but on the forehead, and only on Thanksgiving, in front of his in-laws.

  One particular facet of the election—the Great Debate—convinced me more than ever that my “ear of the beholder” philosophy is correct; that the listener hears only what he wants to hear. I would be with a bunch of Kennedy fans watching the debate and their comment would be, “He’s really slaughtering Nixon.” Then we would all go to another apartment, and the Nixon fans would say, “How do you like the shellacking he gave Kennedy?”

  And then I realized that each group loved their candidate so that a guy would have to be this blatant—he would have to look into the camera and say: “I am a thief, a crook, do you hear me, I am the worst choice you could ever make for the Presidency!”

  And even then his following would say, “Now there’s an honest man for you. It takes a big guy to admit that. There’s the kind of guy we need for President.”

  And now Lyndon Johnson is President.

  We forgave the Japanese once, the Germans twice, but the White Southerner we’ve kicked in the ass since Fort Sumter. We pour millions into propagandizing Europe, but never a penny for Radio Free South. Lyndon Johnson could cut Schopenhauer mind-wise but his sound chills it for him. The White Southerner gets kicked in the ass every time for his sound.

  “Folks, Ah think nuclear fission———”

  “Get outa here, schmuck, you don’t think nothin’.”

  The bomb, the bomb—oh, thank God for the bomb. The final threat is: “I’ll get my brother—the bomb.” Out of all the teaching and bullshitting, that’s the only answer we have.

  Well, it’s a little embarrassing. You see, 17,000 students marched on the White House and Lyndon Johnson was left holding the bag.

  “Mr. Johnson, we’re 17,000 students who have marched from Annapolis, and we demand to see the bomb.”

  “Ah’d like to see if mahself, son.”

  “Aw, c’mon, now, let’s see the bomb, we’re not gonna hurt anybody, we just wanna take a few pictures, then we’ll protest, and that’s it.”

  “Son, you gonna think this is a lot of horseshit, but there never was a bomb. Them Hebe Hollywood writers made up the idea and they spread it around, and everybody got afraid of this damn bomb story. But there is no bomb. Just something we keep in the White House garage. We spent three million dollars on it, and once we got it started, it just made a lot of noise and smelled up the whole house, so we haven’t fooled with it since.”

  “Now, wait a minute. You see, I led the March, and I’ve got 17,000 students that are protesting the bomb. So don’t tell me there’s no bomb.”

  “Son, Ah’d like to help you if Ah could. If Ah had a bomb———”

  “But what am I gonna tell all those poor kids out there? That there’s no bomb?”

  “The only thing that did work out was the button.”

  “What button?”

  “The button that the madmen are always gonna push.”

  “That’s what the bomb is—a button?”

  “Yes—it’s a button.”

  “Well, goddamnit, give me the button, then.”

  “Cain’t do that, son. It’s on a boy scout’s fly. And sometime, somewhere, a fag scoutmaster is gonna blow up the world.”

  If the bomb is going to go off, I can’t stop it because I’m not in charge yet. Maybe I’ll be working again that night—a New Year’s Eve show. It’ll be around 11:30 and everybody’s waiting with their hats and their horns. I’ve got my scene and they’ve got theirs.

  Now it’s about three minutes to go, and I’m the only one who knows about the bomb.

  “Ha, ha, a lot of you people didn’t get noisemakers, but I’ve
got a beaut coming up, and it’s really going to gas everybody. The people who haven’t had the two-drink minimum, you don’t have to have it, all right? And listen, you guys in the band, why don’t you go back to the dressing room and lay on the floor for a while? Don’t ask questions, just do it. Folks, you know, a lot of you have seen me work before, but I’ve got a new bit, we’re really going to bring in the new year right”—and then, Boooooom!

  One guy will probably be heckling me on his way out through the roof. And I can just see the owner. “Look, don’t do that bit anymore, we’re getting a lot of complaints. Put back Religions, Inc., if you have to, and Christ visiting earth—the whole bit . . .”

  If the Messiah were indeed to return and wipe out all diseases, physical and mental, and do away with all man’s inhumanity to man, then, I, Lenny Bruce—a comedian who has thrived both economically and egotistically upon the corruption and cruelty he condemns with humor, who spouted impassioned pleas to spare the life of Caryl Chessman and Adolf Eichmann alike, who professed the desire to propagate assimilation and thereby evolve integration—would in truth know that I had been a parasite whose whole structure of success depended on despair: like J. Edgar Hoover and Jonas Salk; like the trustees, wardens, death-house maintenance men, millions of policemen, uniform makers, court recorders, criminal-court judges, probation officers and district attorneys whose children joyously unwrap Christmas presents under the tree bought with money earned by keeping other men from seeing their child’s face beam at a cotton angel, who would have been without jobs if no one in the world had ever violated the law; like the Owl-Rexall-Thrifty Drugstores, crutch makers, neurological surgeons and Parke-Lilly employees on the roof of the Squibb pharmaceutical house, ready to jump because the blind can see, the deaf can hear, the lame can walk; like the ban-the-bomb people who find out there really is no bomb to ban and they don’t know what to do with their pamphlets. The dust would gather on all the people who hold that superior moral position of serving humanity, for they will have become aware that their very existence, creative ability and symbolic status had depended wholly upon intellectual dishonesty. For there is no anonymous giver, except perhaps the guy who knocks up your daughter.