I always loved comedy. I would get my mom to buy me comedy albums: Redd Foxx, Bill Cosby, the Smothers Brothers, Phyllis Diller, Bob Newhart, et cetera. I don’t think any other kids I knew listened to comedy records. It never dawned on me that I might one day have a career in comedy. I just liked comedy, and the weirder the better.
N: My dad is uncanny in his ability to name actors, up to about 1975. He could see any movies from the 1950s on and identify all the actors. He also knew a lot of singers. My family would watch M*A*S*H and Taxi, the great shows, and my dad and I would bond over characters like Jim Ignatowski on Taxi, or Jackie Gleason. We loved character actors. There was a guy named Jack Elam who was in a lot of great Westerns. There was a sensibility—my dad had a hand in showing me the good stuff.
M: It’s interesting, because even though there’s this age difference between Nick and me, it’s never made a difference in terms of cultural references. I, too, watched Taxi and Jackie Gleason. I wouldn’t think that Nick would know about Jackie Gleason, but he does. We like the same music, the same movies. I guess your friends in college exposed you to bands that you’d—
N: TOTALLY. That I’d missed. I flipped out on Pink Floyd only in my late twenties, when I lived with Pat Roberts. (Awed voice) “Holy shit! This band is fucking amazing!”
Also, in the early ’90s, I was turned on to a band called the Beatles. It’s a British band . . .
M: (Laughs)
N: I thought, “Oh my god!” It’s hilarious.
But I want to say, in contrast to this “take your daughter to New York” sensibility . . . One thing I will say for my parents is that they did an amazing job . . . We had a Suburban, and my parents would pack all six of us in the Suburban, and we’d drive thirteen hours north every summer to go fishing in Minnesota. The whole thing was very low-rent, but it was just the funnest family time together. We also took trips to the Black Hills, the Badlands, and Yellowstone. Just driving. And those were incredible.
One of the reasons the Little House on the Prairie books moved me so much is because of the many moments that remind me of my parents symbolically. For example, the kids always get gifts that they need—mother would get a half pound of sugar for Christmas, and the kids would always get, say, a sewing needle and three fishhooks. I hadn’t thought about this for a long time, but my mother used to do the most intense treasure hunts for our birthdays. You’d come down to breakfast, and you’d get a note that was a clue that you had to figure out. She was so good at it—it would be a riddle you’d have to figure out.
Both my mom and dad used to write poems for special occasions. I remember for my grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary, there was a big to-do at the American Legion Auxiliary in town. We put on a show that reenacted their life story together. My parents made a two-dimensional Model T Ford, and we all played our grandma and grandpa at different ages. My parents wrote the script—it was hilarious, and it rhymed! This is where I get my love for the simple A/B rhyme—really heartfelt with a few jokes.
M: My father was very funny, although very dark. And my mom is really funny. She continues—from the hospital bed in her living room, where she has twenty-four-hour care from some pretty extraordinary women—to lay us out from time to time. But my father was funny in a more outrageous, darker way.
Occasionally we had family vacations. Once, when I was about eight, we went to Santa Fe. Back then it was tiny—really just the town square and a few streets off the square. A couple of hotels and restaurants. You’d drive out on dirt roads and there were cool little adobe houses. My parents had rented a house from some friends, and one day my father wanted to buy a piece of art, so we drove out to this art gallery. They left me in the car, which sounds really weird now that I’m saying it, but in the short time that my parents were inside the gallery, I met a boy named Pedro in the dirt parking lot and we fell deeply in love. We sat on the back of the car together and communed with each other’s inner natures, mainly because I didn’t speak Spanish and he didn’t speak English. But we completely fell in love, to the point where we needed to be tearfully separated. I guess he was the son of the gallery owner? I don’t know. But I do know that the love was such that he ran barefoot down the dirt road after our car for as long as he could, until we were out of sight. I had my tiny little hand pressed against the rear window of the car, tears streaming down my face, his little figure receding into the distance, never to be seen again.
N: (Quietly) You seem really wistful.
M: He was the one. (Laughs) My life could have been so different.
But I just want to tell you a story about Nick’s family. Nick’s mom was a labor-and-delivery nurse, and I thought, “That seems like a cute job, where she wraps babies up in little blankies and puts them in their little beddies.”
She was getting ready to retire—this was recently—and Nick and I decided to drop in and see her at the hospital. And his mom, who is very quiet and self-effacing, comes out like freaking Rambo. There was nothing about his mom that heretofore would have led us to believe this was going to happen. But she comes tearing out in full . . . What’s it called?
N: Scrubs.
M: With her hands up in the air, with gloves on, and she’s like a whole other person, saying, “I don’t have long to talk, I’m going in—there’s a breech birth.” So she goes in there, and delivers a baby by C-section. And that was my favorite, seeing Cathy in action. It was incredible.
And Nick’s dad is very sweet. Even though I’m, like, two years younger than them, Nick’s dad always puts his arm around me, says, (Ric voice) “You’re getting pretty skinny there, kid! Better eat a potato.” He treats me like a nineteen-year-old who he needs to make sure is eating.
N: He likes to make people a sandwich.
M: He’s really sweet.
N: Sigh.
M: Is that it? Have we covered it, for crying out loud?
N: I think we’ve covered it.
(They Laugh)
M: High five!
N: High five! Peace out.
Part One
Before I ever sang in public, I sang a lot not in public. Alone in the house, I sang like a mofo. That was from the time I was very little onward. I guess by the time I was old enough to be left alone in the house without a babysitter, that was when all bets were off, and shit would go down the second my parents were gone.
Like I’ve said, my parents somewhat mysteriously had a ton of Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland records. I would put on a record, and I would pick a song that I liked, and I would sing that song over and over again until I could sing it exactly like the record.
I had been singing just by myself, but then in about eleventh grade I joined the choir at my school, a fancy private school called Casady. The musical theater directors were a married couple named Mr. and Mrs. Fleming, and one day they said, “Hey, you seem like you have a pretty good voice.” They had some classical music that they wanted me to sing. They sent me to a voice teacher. She told me I was a coloratura soprano, which is hilarious. I guess I could probably do that with my voice, but my personality is about as far away from a coloratura soprano as it is from a person who could think of the perfect analogy to finish this sentence.
Eventually the Flemings had me get up in front of a few students and sing this classical piece, “Voi Che Sapete.” I was absolutely beside myself with embarrassment and did a pretty horrible job.
The Flemings immediately dropped the coloratura soprano tack after that. I told them I really liked to sing musicals, that I liked to sing loud, big, belty show tunes. I don’t know exactly how it went down, but I somehow ended up singing some show tunes for them. And they were like, “What?! You’re going to do this in chapel in front of the entire school.”
And I said, *faints*.
And they said, “Get up.”
We had chapel every morning at my school. Every day at eight in the morni
ng, you had to show up in chapel for thirty minutes. It wasn’t religious. I don’t really know what it was. It was kind of like a pep rally or something. We did sing a hymn or two, but I don’t remember much religion being brought into it. I do remember when I was in lower school they read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to us. So I don’t know what chapel was, exactly. But we had to go there every morning. I do know that.
So this one morning, February of my senior year, was the day of my performance. I was so nervous I didn’t sleep for two nights before. I was a complete basket case. Because to get up in front of grades nine through twelve, every single person in those grades, and all of a sudden belt out three show tunes was insane.
Here was the set list: I thought I would start with something light, so “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from Funny Girl, literally a cliché of the hardest possible song imaginable to sing. Second: “People,” also from Funny Girl, and just the main song that had made people think that Barbra Streisand was the greatest singer who ever lived. And thirdly, for the big finish, fully choreographed by me in the style of Bob Fosse: “Razzle Dazzle” from Chicago.
So I got out there in front of everyone. Visual aid: I was wearing black pants with a black vest and a white turtleneck. That was the outfit. Very mime-esque, mime-era fashion. Mr. Fleming was my accompanist. We launched into “Don’t Rain on My Parade”—again, a completely ridiculous song to pick for your first time singing in public in front of your entire school. I sang it, and held the long note at the end, and then it was over. There was a split second when I thought, “And suicide it is.” And then everybody started screaming and cheering and stood up. They started throwing their knit hats and gloves up in the air. Everything was flying, and people were screaming, and I thought, “OMG.”
I did “People” and got a similar reaction. And then I did “Razzle Dazzle.” I had choreographed a point in the song where I literally went over and sat down on the principal’s lap. This was pre–lap dancing, but I’m pretty sure I lap danced the principal. We were up in the altar area, in front of an Episcopal altar. The principal and vice principal were seated on either side in fancy carved booths. In spite of the religion-lite daily content, this was a full chapel with stained glass windows and choir stalls, and I went over and sat on the principal’s lap while I was singing and did sexy moves.
So that was my first time singing in public. Afterward, everybody was way nicer to me than normal. Everybody thought I was hot shit for a while, even though I was still the same boring dude.
Part Two
As I may have mentioned, my father had a dark sense of humor, among other dark characteristics. He could be very funny, but most of his humor was very eccentric. He was early meta.
One of the things he loved to do, from the time I was quite young, say, first grade on, was to pretend he was having a massive heart attack and then “die” at the dinner table with his face in a plate of food. He couldn’t be revived until it just got too hard to breathe in the spaghetti or whatever. The first few times it happened, my mother and I were like, “Wait . . . is he dead?” And after that, it was more like, *forced laugh*.
Another thing that he did—and I know for a fact that he was doing this when I was in third grade, because that was the only year I took the bus—I got off the bus one day and opened the front door. He was at the top of the stairs. I hated being alone with him because I was scared of him, so I said, “Where’s Mommy?” And he said with this very grandiose vocal affectation he liked to use, “My darling, I’m sorry to tell you that your mother is dead.” I was nine. At this point, I already pretty much knew that he was fucking with me, but for maybe five seconds, my heart shot out of my chest. Then I realized. “Wait. Where is she really, though?” And he said, “She’s dead, my precious, I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do. You’ll just have to live the rest of your life without a mother.” And I said, “WHERE IS SHE?” And he said, “The grocery store.”
So that was the kind of thing he did on an everyday basis. But it was either that or he was screaming at us, throwing something, smashing his fists down on the dinner table, or throwing a rolled-up newspaper at our toy poodle, who ended up having brain damage and walking backward. My grandmother eventually took him and he lived to be twenty-one.
Getting off the bus another fateful day in third grade, there was a little bit of a windfall—someone had thrown a giant stack of 45s onto our front yard, apparently out of the window of a car. I collected all of them, and there were some really good ones in there. One was especially great. The A-side was “Ebb Tide” and the B-side was “The Stripper.” This started a whole stripping career for me, where I thought, “Well, I guess I’m going to be a stripper.” I thought I was amazing at it. I played that record over and over. I had a pink feather boa that my mom had bought me—not because of my stripping career, just because I was a little girl and it was a pink feather boa. I had one of those little mirrors you get at the drugstore and stand up against the wall. A lot of my world took place in front of that mirror, and a lot of my future was foretold in front of that mirror. Not the stripping part, just making up songs and dances, performing. Once I had perfected one of my musical creations, I would then show it to my mom. But not the strip numbers. Those I would work on privately.
When I was a little older, about sixth grade, I had this friend from my ballet class named Nelly Goeke who would spend the night occasionally. At this point, I had two feather boas, both hot pink. I still had that stripper record, and she and I unearthed it.
We were in full stripping mode one day, and my mom walked in. And that was the last time Nelly Goeke got to come over to my house. The end of a beautiful friendship, and the end of what could have been a fabulous stripping duo, famed the world over.
Epilogue: I also had a friend down the street named DeeDee Fox. She wanted to be a Playboy Bunny. I wanted to be a stripper, and she wanted to be a Playboy Bunny. Maybe it was the music-and-dance aspect that drew me to stripping, because I remember being a little judgmental of DeeDee. “Playboy Bunny?! That’s a lowly occupation. It’s no stripping, but I guess it pays the bills.” This aesthetic divide created a rift between us, and we eventually drifted apart—my first parting on grounds of creative differences.
Megan: (To Nick) When was it you realized that you were an artiste?
Nick: That’s a good question. Maybe it was when my friends in college opened my eyes to the fact that I could do something as a creative person that could reach people. Up to that point, I realized I had a penchant for performing and knew I wanted to be in plays. I definitely had the passion to DO it, but in the first steps of adulthood, the steps to maturity—I think I’ve achieved about seventeen of the fifty-one so far—I realized that I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to make a difference with the stuff that I made in my life.
What about you?
M: (Laughs) I was very quiet and shy as a child. I was really introverted, and I never said much of anything. But when I was three—this is one of my super vivid memories—I was at my grandparents’ house in Newport Beach. I was upstairs, and my grandparents, a couple of their friends, my uncle Taylor and aunt Jane, and my mother and father were in the living room. And I just remember thinking, “It’s time.” And then I thought, “But I can’t go down with my hair looking like this.” I was a big fan of Bozo the Clown at the time, although I was also deathly afraid of clowns, so I’m not sure what that means. There was a round banister on the stairs. I wrapped my hair around it to try to give it a curl. I held it for maybe ten seconds, thinking that would do the trick, and then let it go. It just flopped back down, and I thought, “This will have to do.”
I raced downstairs, stood in the middle of what I now realize was a proscenium arch separating the dining room from two or three shallow steps down to the living room. I flung my arms out and yelled, “Ladies and gentlemen, introducing the World’s Greatest Clown!” Then I proceeded to go into my act, whic
h I hadn’t planned out in any way, shape, or form, so it petered out pretty instantaneously.
N: It might be said that that was your act, in hindsight.
M: (Laughs) Right. I think the main event was that I was not only speaking, but doing something really uninhibited for the first time. But it wasn’t like, from then on, Pandora’s box had been opened. I went right back into my shell and didn’t say anything else until I was, like, twenty-five.
N: But between your mom and your dad—you were born in LA, your dad was an actor. They were aware of, and in touch with, the arts. Your mom encouraged your dancing, she took you to New York.
M: Well, compared to your upbringing, for sure. But I feel like I got most of my jazz from TV. From the television.
N: You mean figurative jazz? Because I would like to know what program had all this jazz.
M: I was so in love with Felix the Cat, which was this really old cartoon that was super rad.
N: Yeah, me, too.
M: It was on when I was, like, three or four years old. I don’t know if that would be enough to send me down the stairs to announce that I was the world’s greatest clown, though. I don’t know where I got that from, quite frankly. But I had it. Also, my first sentence was “Isn’t this splendid?” And I apparently spoke in Italian when I was a baby. So . . . (Laughs) . . . I’m probably suffering from some undiagnosed brain disorder.
N: My first sentence was “Is there beer?”
M: (Laughs)
N: That’s just a guess, though.
M: What was your second sentence? What was the response?
N: The response was in the affirmative, and my second sentence was “Yes, please. Just the one.”
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told Page 5