They Call Me Baba Booey

by Gary Dell'Abate

  In fact, that may have been the reason I liked him at first. I had had bad experiences with nuns. When I was preparing for First Communion the class was held in the basement of the church—girls on one side, boys on the other. The nuns told us to come up one at a time through the aisle, pick out a carnation and a pin, and fasten it to the lapels of our blue suits. I did as I was told and, when I got back to my seat and was about to sit down, John Hackett, who was sitting behind me and was a real troublemaker, stuck his pin under my ass. I jumped up and yelled, “Whoa!” Without asking what happened a nun named Sister Barbara (we called her Sister Boogie because her finger was always knuckle deep in her nose) pointed at me and told me to come to the front of the room. When I did, she grabbed me close by the lapels and then hit me on the side of the head with her open palms ten times over both ears. My ears were literally ringing. Then we had to go to the Communion service.

  I was crying so hard my mom thought it was an emotional experience for me, as though I had found God and my calling. Not so. I was just sad. And angry.

  So I could appreciate Frank’s disdain for organized religion.

  Vinny and Frank hung out a lot. Then Vinny brought in me and Paul. Then I brought in Steve. Except for Steve, we were all Italian. And, unlike the guys at Uniondale Park, they wanted to do things and go places. I felt a real bond with them.

  People were actually afraid of Frank when he first came to school. It might have been because he knocked the wind out of a nun. Or because he was so big he just commanded respect. But as people got to know him they realized that he wasn’t aggressive at all. He had his own car, a beige Pontiac Bonneville that looked like a tank and had a backseat the size of a queen-size bed. At parties people asked him for the keys to his car so they could hook up in the backseat.

  Vinny was like me: He was short and built and really Italian looking. He had an older brother and was really into music. Since Frank didn’t care about music at all, Vinny and I used to trade off sitting in the front seat of the Bonneville screwing with the radio and popping eight-tracks in the deck. Vinny would borrow some freaky jazz fusion from his brother that we liked to listen to.

  Steve was like our Tom Hagan, from The Godfather. He was blond and Irish and had come from Catholic school, too. Only he left the right way, not like Frank. He was quiet and, really, he was the good-looking one in the bunch. His house was completely different than mine in that no one talked back to adults and no one yelled at another in front of guests. Years later, Steve was always my plus-1 whenever I went to Cleveland or Buffalo for an appearance at a mattress store opening or a strip club.

  Paul was the baby of the group. He was the youngest of all of us—last to drive, last to drink. And his family was full of overachievers. His brother was a lacrosse star, his sister was super popular, and his mom was president of the school board.

  That summer between ninth and tenth grade was when it all came together. We really grew tight. Vinny’s family owned a cabin in upstate New York and one day he said, “Let’s just go.” It took a week of phone calls between all of our parents to let a group of teenagers go up there alone for a couple of days. But all the moms got along really well. And, mostly, they loved Frank, just like the rest of us. Even they knew how trustworthy he was. If he was going, I could go. So the three of us—me, Vinny, and Frank—headed upstate.

  The name of the town was Halcott Corners. It had two main streets and a blinking red light at the four corners. We went up right after the school year ended. On the front window of the hardware store there was a sign that read, CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GRADUATING CLASS OF HALCOTT CORNERS. And there were twenty-two pictures in the window. That was it, the entire senior class. My senior class was the smallest in the history of Uniondale High School and it had more than six hundred kids.

  Our first night we decided to go out, and Vinny, who was always the instigator of stupid shit, saw a supermarket on one of the corners. There was a watermelon stand by the front door and Vinny decided it would be fun to steal one. Then he decided to steal another. So now we had two watermelons in the back of Frank’s tank and we were driving back to Vinny’s parents’ cabin. We saw a bunch of locals hanging out on the side of the road, about our age and drinking. It was like a scene from the movie Slackers. Bright Idea Vinny said to Frank, “Speed up.”

  Frank did and, as we passed them, Vinny threw a watermelon out the window. It splattered at the feet of all these kids. We were laughing so hard Vinny told Frank, “Turn around.”

  Frank did and, as we passed them again, Vinny hit them with the second watermelon. Bad idea. This time everyone got in their car and started chasing us. We were speeding down a one-lane road, careening side to side because the kids behind us were throwing beer bottles that exploded against the Bonneville. There were more of them than us, and they were pissed. If they caught us they’d beat the crap out of us.

  Frank was a really good driver but, as big as he is, he was panicking. So he pulled off the road onto a tiny dirt trail that led into the woods. Then he turned off the lights. Now we were driving blind. We couldn’t see shit. After driving for several minutes I looked back and was sure no one was following us. Or the other cars were driving with their lights off, too. In which case they were just as stupid as we were. We stopped the car and it was eerily silent, except for the sound of our heavy breathing.

  One of us said, “Oh my God, how dumb are we?” No one answered. We were just trying to figure out how to get out of there. We snaked our way through the woods on this dirt road until we found another highway. It was on the other side of the mountain from where the house was and it took us more than an hour to get back home. We were the three biggest dumb-asses ever.

  Of course, if I had been with the guys from the park they would have said, “Let’s turn around and get them.” So our response was actually an improvement. Instead we spent the rest of the weekend drinking beer and shooting at the bottles with a .22-caliber rifle. A couple of times we just shot at the fins on the Bonneville. Left a lot of holes. Those were real Stand by Me moments. There weren’t any girls wrecking everything yet. We were just three guys being assholes who knew we could count on each other forever.

  1984–88

  Her name was Nancy. I met her at a club in Long Beach, Long Island, called Malibu—a New Wave dance place—in 1984. I had just started working for the Stern show at that point, but was still living at home in Uniondale. Vinny and I went out on a Saturday night and I saw her standing at the bar. She was cute, a brunette with big brown eyes and a big smile. She could have been on the cover of Seventeen magazine. It was late enough—probably close to three in the morning—that I had my courage poured in, so I walked up to her and before I could even say hello she stopped me with, “Oh look. It’s John Oates.” I had a mustache and long, black hair thick as steel wool. He and I were practically twins.

  I brushed it off and we started talking. Then the nightclub closed and we moved it outside. I was still chatting Nancy up by my car when I looked across the hood and saw Vinny making out with her friend, so Nancy and I started making out, too. That was all we did. The sun was sneaking up on us and as it did she told me she had to work the next day. She was a salesgirl in housewares at Gimbels in the Roosevelt Field mall, and that Sunday was Mother’s Day. I took her number, said I would call her, and chalked it up to a good night. I was pretty drunk.

  Of course, when I got up at some point on Sunday I realized I hadn’t bought my mom a Mother’s Day present yet. Since I was so out of it the night before I decided to go to Gimbels, try to catch a glimpse of Nancy to see if she was still cute when I was sober, and pick up a gift for my mom. If I did it right, I’d be able to sneak in and out of the store without Nancy knowing I was checking her out.

  I didn’t do it right.

  As I was riding down the escalator she happened to be standing at the bottom. There was no way out. The good news was that she was cute even without the beer goggles. We laughed and talked and decided to go out
later that week. I forgot to buy my mom a gift.

  That first date was fantastic. Nancy was laid-back, sarcastic, and loved music the way I did. At the end of the night we hit a local bar that I knew had a great jukebox. I took the first turn picking out songs and when I sat down she told me, “I love the jukebox here.” Nice, I thought. She continued: “They have an obscure song that I’ll play when your round is over.”

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “ ‘Can We Still Be Friends’ by Todd Rundgren.”

  “I already picked it!” I said.

  You know how when you’re young and first start seeing someone and have some odd thing in common, you immediately think you’re the only two people in the world? Those are magical moments. So we started dating.

  We listened to music together all the time. She bought me a Bob Dylan box set. I used my access to impress her as much as possible. We went to see Peter Gabriel at the Garden and stood on the mixing deck. When he played “In Your Eyes” she couldn’t stop hitting me on the arm with excitement, telling me how much she loved that song.

  But this was a strange time in my life. I was working on the show, getting some notoriety, and, as Chris Rock says, I wanted to check my options. Basically I was a dick. Nancy clearly liked me a lot and told me so. But I was the asshole who believed he was doing the right thing by telling her he wasn’t ready to commit. We went on like this for months—seeing each other regularly but never saying we were exclusive.

  After we had been dating about a year I moved into the city. I was on the radio. Meeting chicks was easy, and Nancy lived out on Long Island. I was twenty-five and, well, I have a million reasons why I acted the way I did. I cared about her—everyone on the show got to know her and loved her—but I had other opportunities, too. There was an opening for a bar or a premiere to go to every night. Nancy and I would see each other one night on the weekend and then on the other night I could go out and party with my friends. I didn’t know if she knew what I was doing when we weren’t together. But I always knew that the one thing that could sink me for sure was Howard. If he ever saw me out with another girl, it would be fodder for the show the next morning. Fortunately, Howard never went out. Well, almost never.

  We had Mickey Mantle on the show one day and he invited everyone on staff to the grand opening of his new restaurant that Friday night. Jackie was there. Fred was there. And I showed up with a girl who wasn’t Nancy. I felt pretty confident that Howard wouldn’t be there. David Letterman was having a party that night, too, and Howard and his wife were going to that. No way he would hit two parties in one night.

  Fred and Jackie and I were sitting in a booth. My date was next to me and our backs were to the door. We were all having a good time when Jackie called out, “Hey, there’s Howard!” I swear to God I almost pushed the girl’s head under the table. Howard stopped by for two minutes to talk. I didn’t even introduce my date; I was hoping he wouldn’t notice we were together. When he left I thought maybe I had dodged a bullet.

  Then came Monday morning. We got on the air and Howard’s first question for me was “Who was that girl you were with?”

  “She was just a friend,” I answered.

  That was it. He didn’t take it anywhere else. Wasn’t interesting enough. It’s one of the few times during my tenure on the show where I was able to avoid playing out a personal drama on the air. Too bad it happened to be the exact two minutes that Nancy was listening. After this exchange she called me and, without even saying hello, said, “Who was she?”

  “She was just a friend.” I parroted myself. But she wasn’t convinced. After that we broke up. And then got back together. And then broke up again. It was a cycle that went on for months. Until the night we broke up for good.

  Fred, his wife Allison, Nancy, and I had gone to see Springsteen at the Nassau Coliseum. I was feeling pretty good. The four of us went out after the show and then when Fred and Allison left, Nancy and I went to a local bar. But something was off. Nancy wasn’t so into the music. We weren’t talking the way we always had. Finally she said to me, “I don’t think we should be together if you aren’t into it.”

  It was odd phrasing. Like she wanted me to say, “No, I’m into it.” But I didn’t say anything.

  “But if you are into it, we don’t have to break up.”

  The truth was, I wasn’t into it. At least I thought I wasn’t into it. I was still running around, checking my options. Only I was too much of a coward to completely break it off with her. I didn’t want to hurt her, for one. And I liked having something steady. In that bar, at that moment, after seeing my favorite act of all time, I decided to be the asshole who makes the girl break up with you so you don’t have to break up with her. Honestly, I was thinking she would always be there for me, so I wasn’t too worried about it.

  I should have been. Because Nancy wasn’t just breaking up with me to sample the single life. While we were dating she had gone to school to become a medical technologist and began working at a hospital. She had started seeing someone she met there. If I was going to be a schmuck, she wasn’t going to bother with me while someone who treated her well waited on the sidelines.

  It’s such a cliché, but after Nancy dumped me I became interested again. I called her repeatedly. Sometimes she’d speak with me, but other times she’d cryptically say she had to go. I’d ask if her new boyfriend was there; she would say yeah, and then hang up. I was so bummed out I told Jackie. He got it right away. He said, “In your mind, when she says that, she is on the bed with the guy on top of her and she’s telling you to hold on while she tells him, ‘That’s it, just a little bit to the left, yep, that’s it. Oh, Gary, I have to go.’ ”

  I kept calling, and we’d talk every once in a while. But she rebuffed all my efforts to see her. This went on for seven months. And I never stopped thinking about her. By this time my buddy Frank was married. His wife, Maryanne, and Nancy were good friends, so I got updates on how she was doing pretty regularly. I looked for clues in the smallest details as to how she felt. Just because she broke up with me it didn’t mean she stopped loving me, right? That’s what I was thinking the day Frank told me that Nancy still had me in her speed dial. Okay, I thought, I have a chance.

  But then, one day, Frank drove me home from the city for the weekend. I was going to his house for a party later that night and planned on hanging there until it started. But when we pulled into his driveway, Nancy’s car was there. I had just been telling him how much I missed her so I was excited to see her. I started to open the door when he stopped me. “It’s better if you don’t go in,” he said.

  I let go of the door and slumped low in the front seat. It really was over. Done. I had lost her because I was a dick. I was pretty beat up about it and happened to tell someone at the office. Naturally it got back to Howard, who called me into the studio while we were on the air. It was May 12, 1988, toward the end of the broadcast. This is the kind of thing that never happens at IBM.

  “How you doing on the women front?” Howard asked.

  “Umm, okay.”

  “If you ask me you never should have broken up with that girlfriend.”

  “Oh no, here we go, you knew it was coming,” Robin, Fred, and Jackie chimed in.

  “You’re a loser,” Howard said. “You’re an imbecile. You finally meet a good-looking woman who is polite and knows how to deal with me and … She is probably dating someone else.”

  “Let’s just end the show,” I said.

  “You lost her. Oh he’s crying. Who are you, Patrick Swayze? How come you never told me about this?”

  “I’m not going to tell you everything.”

  “Well, someone better get to the bottom of this story. I’ll take this up tomorrow on the air.”

  “I haven’t seen you this happy in weeks,” I said.

  “Because you are an idiot. I told you to stay with her. Are you kicking yourself in the head?”

  “Can we just end the show?”

  �
�Really, are you that bad about it?”

  “Come on, let it ride, Boss.”

  “You were in love with her.”

  “Cut me a break.”

  After that he mercifully signed off. But it’s the one time in my life on the air that I was genuinely upset. Before I left for the day I was in the bathroom, washing my hands, when Howard walked in. I asked him, “Hey man, can you lay off about this one a little bit?”

  He looked at me and said, “Are you kidding? Grow up.”

  MY MOM WAS ALWAYS OVERLY PROTECTIVE. When it came to her three boys she was a tigress. That’s why she ran to the park—and left me at home—to find out what happened when I got the concussion. And that’s how she ended up calling Howard’s mom to complain about his bullying me on air. You can’t fault her for that.

  I like to think that’s why she sniffed my head every time I came home. I know that’s why she jumped out of the closet when Anthony came back from the Doors concert. She worried about us obsessively in a way that couldn’t have been good for someone who was battling so many demons.

  When Anthony had his prom, my mom helped him pick out his suit. Before most proms, a bunch of couples get together at someone’s house for pictures with their dates, and all the parents come, too.

  But after he got dressed, Anthony decided he didn’t want my mom to follow him to his date’s house for pictures. So when he left the house my mom recruited a neighbor and they followed him in the neighbor’s car. Then she hid behind a tree across from Anthony’s date’s house and watched him take his prom pictures. I don’t see that as her stalking him. It’s just a mom who is proud of her boy, no matter how much he tries to push her away.

  And I’m sure my mom isn’t the only mother who did this: We had two telephones in our house. When it rang I’d often pick it up first and then hear my mom pick up the other phone after. If it was for me I’d say, “Mom, hang up please.” But there’d be silence. She didn’t answer and she didn’t hang up. But I knew she was still on the phone. I’d say it again. Nothing: My mom wouldn’t speak or hang up. Then I’d quickly sneak into her room and catch her putting down the phone just as I walked in. Moms are nosy. They want to know who their kids are talking to.