But as we pulled up to the Mexican restaurant we noticed that the once empty parking lot was packed. We walked through the front door, heads hung low, to find what I can honestly describe as the hardest raging party we had seen since our days at FSU. Chicks were dancing on the bar, dudes pumping their fists, a python hanging from the rafters (not really, but it felt like that), all while music throbbed out of the sound system.
The party stopped on a dime at our arrival. Then, as if out of a movie, a Seth Green–looking guy approached, opened the Rolling Stone I was profiled in, looked at the pictures, looked at me, looked back at the pictures, and then yelled into the crowd, “It’s really him!” Again, as if out of a movie, the crowd began to jump, shout, and cheer. I looked at Eddie, who looked back at me in disbelief as we were pushed to the bar where shots were lined up. The crowd was already chanting “Drink” as we approached.
There, we found our hostess smiling. “I called all my friends and told them we had to show you guys how hard we party. I also bought the Tyson fight. Everyone is here for you guys and the drinks are free, so have a good time.”
Like any great night of drinking, we were pulled in a hundred different directions, barely hearing anyone, taking lots of shots with strangers, and wondering if anyone would let us put fingers in them. I remember being told how great the Poconos were, how they knew how to party. I remember telling people about Rolling Stone and Oliver Stone. And I remember getting into an intense discussion with a guy about how dogs could fuck through a fence and, somehow, how that related to glass blowing.
At the end of the night our hostess gave us a wink as she yelled last call. She pulled us aside and told us to hang back as the bar cleared out, last call didn’t apply to us. A moment later I looked over to see a smiling Eddie in front of a table of fifteen girls, at the head of which was our bartender.
Eddie grabbed my arm. “She said they were for us.”
This is when things get hazy (also, coincidentally, when the first joint was lit). I remember that the bar was ours to do with as we pleased, and we did. We tried spitting fire. We did belly-button body shots. I set my sights on a tall blonde, who must have told me one hundred times that she “wasn’t wearing no panties.” We played “I never,” and laughed as we walked our way through town and back to our hostess’s house, smoking yet another joint.
As we stumbled in, the blonde and I found ourselves on a couch, away from everyone. We kissed the kind of kiss that you can only have with a stranger, the kind of kiss that suggests there is much more to come. I was so high that I literally imagined my hands were Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, exploring recently acquired, unknown territories. They were met with such frenzied excitement to the north that the next logical step for the pair seemed to be to travel south. But as they headed south, they were stopped by Indians. They tried to push forward, but once again, the Indians held their ground. This confused the explorers, considering they had heard so much about the spoils of the land down south.
If you aren’t into analogies: I felt her up but she wouldn’t let me finger her. I tried one last time so she wouldn’t tell her friends I was a quitter when she stopped kissing me and whispered, “Look, I’m just doing enough to get in the book.”
So out of it, and sooo wasted, I looked back at her in confusion. “What book?”
“Uh, your book. American Transit?”
Right! I did my best to get out of what was now an awkward situation. “Of course, my book, oh you are totally in it.”
We went back to kissing, my hands now turning into Frederick Cook and his crew, who explored the terrain of the North Pole. Meanwhile, my South Pole begged for attention.
As this was happening, Eddie, always the gracious guest, figured he owed it to the chick who had set up the entire evening—the bartender whose house we were at—to repay her kindness. He took her back to her room and fucked her.
We left the next morning, thankfully with no fanfare, and caught a bus at the station, sleeping the entire way. That night we recounted the adventure to my cousin and his friends before the concert. And the next day I got a call from John Beimer, who with a heavy heart told me that he was moving home to Florida. If I wanted, I could take his place in New York. So I did. Eddie went back to L.A. to “tie up some loose ends” before moving to New York, and the next month I sublet an apartment on East Eleventh and Third Avenue for the two of us. But Eddie knew from day one that New York wasn’t really for him. He lasted half of one month and one Atkins Diet before an opportunity to run some coffee field in San Salvador opened up and he tapped out.
* * *
I neither remember the town we stayed in that night, nor do I remember the name of our hostess. I remember the simple layout of the town, that Mike Tyson fought his first fight since getting out of prison that night, and that whatever town that was, they partied harder than most places I’ve ever been. I sometimes wonder if they remember us, that night, and the stories we told. Who can say?
But I can say this much. Dear tall blonde who wasn’t wearing no panties: I don’t know what you’re doing these days—whether or not you’re married and have kids like me, or where you live. I’m genuinely sorry I don’t remember your name. But I am a man of my word: You definitely made it into the book.
7.
The Flesh Prince of Bel Air
Now, this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down, and I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there, I’ll tell you about the time I met the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was June of 1998 and I had been doing stand-up for roughly six months. My version of stand-up at the time was basically just throwing a party on stage—all crowd work, very little material, even less clothing. This is when Time Out New York wrote an article about me, telling the masses that I was their connection to college kids when it came to comedy.
There was some truth to that, but not as much as you’d think. I was younger than most comics working the clubs, having just graduated college a year before, but at twenty-six, I was also well older than the college kids I was apparently connecting with. At the time, I had been working the front door, barking for the Boston Comedy Club in New York City. “Barking” meant that I stood in front of the club and tried to pull any living, breathing person into the club. I basically harassed anyone who dared to walk down West Third Street between Thompson and Sullivan. If I brought in more than twenty people over the course of a night, I got stage time. So, taking into consideration that the club was one block away from NYU, I decided to let any college kid that looked 21-ish into the club for free, often explaining that our drinking-age policy was somewhat lenient. What college kid wasn’t going to appreciate the performance of the guy who got him in to see the likes of Dave Chappelle, Dave Attell, Jim Breuer, Jim Norton, Greg Giraldo, Tracy Morgan, Dane Cook, and Jay Mohr for free, and who, with a wink, told him it was a “mandatory” two-drink minimum? In short, I killed in that room.
That, coupled with my reputation as “The Number One Party Animal in the Country” and the piece in Time Out, got the eye of a few casting directors—but most importantly it got me noticed by Barry Katz, a talent manager and owner of the Boston Comedy Club. Barry is notorious for two alleged things, rigging Last Comic Standing and stealing money from his clients, neither of which happened to me. He read the article and immediately set up a showcase to see me perform. One of the best things about Barry was that he could make magic happen when it came to a young comic’s career, mostly because he owned the club you were going to perform at, so he could stack the lineup. Knowing this was my big shot, I filled the room with college kids, ending my set with the story of the time I took acid and went to Disneyland.
Barry liked me and one Friday, he set up another showcase for me to perform in front of David Tochterman, the head of the television department at Overbrook Entertainment, Will Smith’s production company. David, Barry told me, had the golden eye when it came to comedy development. He had worked at Carsey-Werner during its heyday
and had discovered the majority of their talent: Tim Allen, Brett Butler, Roseanne Barr.
I didn’t really have a “tight ten” at the time, so I just improv’d my set. I couldn’t tell you what I talked about other than Puerto Ricans and black people; all I know is it was of the moment, and it killed. David approached me after and asked if I would be interested in a development deal. I just melted. Every comic wanted the coveted development deal, the greatest gift you can get from Hollywood, other than a blow job from Scarlett Johansson or seed from Steven Spielberg. A development deal is when a comedian gets paid a ridiculous amount of money not to work for a year—absolutely ridiculous, right?—in order to develop a sitcom for the person paying you. Most of the time they fizzle into nothing, but sometimes they turn into hugely successful TV shows. It was like one attempt at a half-court shot for a million dollars. I had heard about development deals from other comics, but never thought in a million years that I would get one. But there I was, six months into comedy, still working the door at the Boston Comedy Club, with a six-figure development deal hanging over my head.
David and I walked down the street to a wine bar and he explained two things. One, for this deal to go through, Will Smith had to take a liking to me, which was no problem in my opinion since I had been following him since seventh grade. And two, that shaking hands with black men was complicated. After walking me through a parade of handshakes that more mimicked getting tape unstuck from your hand than an actual handshake, he told me that he would set up a meeting with Will for the upcoming weekend and warned me not to fuck up the handshake. I told him I got it.
* * *
That Saturday, I was in a taxi with my new manager, Barry, who had staked his claim on my career like a codependent pimp, heading to the recording studio that Will was basically living out of while recording his new album, Willennium. As we waited in the lobby, I asked Barry to hold my camera and take a picture of us after the meeting. I remember the look on Barry’s face when I asked. It was as if I had just told him I’d like him to jerk me off with his feet.
“Papa”—Barry always called me Papa—“you want to be working with this man for the next year, he needs to see you as an equal, and an equal doesn’t go into a meeting with an autograph book and a camera. I don’t think you should take the picture.”
I felt foolish but also thought to myself, What’s the fun of working with celebrities if you don’t get a picture to put in your apartment, so when you bring a random chick home from a bar, she gets to look at you in amazement and say, “You know Will Smith? What else do I not know about you? I’m starting to regret my hasty decision not to suck your dick. I think I need to reconsider.… Glarg, Glarg.” But I ignored my feelings and agreed, just as the receptionist called me in. We both stood up and she said, “Just him.”
Pimp move right out the gate, I thought, as she escorted me down a hallway and into a large dance studio, where two steel folding chairs faced each other in the center.
“Mr. Kreischer, Mr. Smith will be here in a couple minutes. Take a seat.”
Mr. Kreischer? I was Bert.
She left me in the middle of the large dance studio surrounded by mirrors. The silence, however, was shortly broken by a hurricane of personality. It was Will Smith, by himself, larger than life, and in fantastic shape looking like Muhammad Ali. Although he had to walk nearly fifty feet to get to me, it seemed as if he made it in three steps. He leaned in and gave me the largest and longest embrace, like we were long-lost brothers.
“One love,” he said as we pulled apart. We talked for what felt like a minute but was probably more than an hour, as I babbled on about everything from Tupac, Biggie, Philly, my love of black people, how he was black, how his wife was black, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, how “A Nightmare on My Street” defined him to me. He smiled, laughed, and treated me like an equal, so his request at the end of our conversation didn’t seem out of the ordinary to me.
“What are you doing tonight?”
“Nothing.”
“You wanna go to the movies?”
“Sure.”
“Cool, cool, cool. Meet me at Planet Hollywood at seven.”
“Great.” I was stoked.
“Fantastic. Hey man, this was a great meeting. I can’t wait to see you tonight.”
“Me, too,” I said. He left the room and I headed back out to the lobby to meet my manager, Barry, and told him about our plans for that night.
“Did he invite me?” asked Barry.
“No, just me.”
“Wow, that is intimate. Just you and him watching a movie. He must really like you. I didn’t even know they had a movie theater at Planet Hollywood.”
I hopped in a cab and immediately called my dad, still reeling from my meeting.
“You’re going to see a fucking movie at Planet fucking Hollywood?”
“Yeah.”
“A celebrity wants you to go to Planet fucking Hollywood with him?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“To see a fucking movie?”
“Yeah. Why does that sound so weird to you?”
“It doesn’t sound weird to you?”
I took a moment to think about the proposition.
“Buddy, I think he wants to queer you.”
“What?”
“Sounds to me like Will Smith is a Mo-Dicker and he is inviting you to a place so he can get in your pants.”
“Seriously, Dad, I think you are way off. I just spent the last hour in a dance studio with him and I didn’t get that vibe at all.”
“A dance studio?”
“Yeah, but it’s not how it sounds.”
“It sounds like it sounds. Here is what you need to know: most celebrities are closeted homosexuals, that is how they become celebrities, and they find young boys like yourself and ‘turn them out.’ They call it the casting couch.”
“Dad, I think the odds of Will Smith being gay are slim.”
“Really? You tell me what is more likely: The fact that you’re so talented that six months into being a comedian, the biggest movie star in the world wants to develop a sitcom for you and pay you a ridiculous amount of money and take you out to the movies at Planet Hollywood. Or that Will Smith is gay and wants to fuck you.”
He made a convincing argument.
“Oh shit. What do I do?”
“Don’t go. Or go, and fuck Will Smith. Here is the deal, buddy: I could be wrong and we’ll laugh at this one day, or I could be right. Either way you are never going to know unless you go. I just want to prepare you for the possibility. You know what they say, ‘Eat shit, cash checks.’”
* * *
As the cab pulled up to my apartment, I saw my roommates walking out of the front door, excited to catch me before they had to go. I hung up with my dad and got out of the cab. I explained how great the meeting was, how everything was beginning to work out for me. But I also started to suspect that I sounded like a Texas prom queen telling her parents how much the Sultan of Brunei was paying her to live at his palace and attend parties.
“That’s great!” said my roommates. “What movie theater are you going to?”
“Planet Hollywood.”
“They have a movie theater there?”
“I guess.”
“Well, you gotta let us know how it goes. Call us the second the movie is out.”
I’ll call you before that, I thought to myself.
I walked upstairs, starting to debate whether this was a good idea after all. The odds that Will Smith was gay were obviously slim to none, I thought. Since moving to New York, I had developed great gaydar, and he didn’t register with me at all. He seemed to me like a run-of-the-mill straight dude. And even though I’d been doing pull-ups every morning, the odds that a regular dude like him was attracted to a guy like me, gay or not, were beyond marginal. He saw “something” in me, it was that simple.
But what if it was that he wanted to see something in me instead? That very thought ignites a fear so
primal in the average straight man that I shuddered. He was a big man, six feet plus, and in great shape, training to be Muhammad Ali. Could I fight off the champ? The facts were simple: If he wanted to see something in me, he would see something in me.
I considered simply calling him and telling him I couldn’t make it, but I was concerned about how that would sound to him—a lot like I didn’t want to make a sitcom, if it was my talent he was interested in. At 6 P.M., after much debate, I threw on an unflattering outfit and got in a cab toward midtown. If Will Smith was gay, I was going to find out the hard way.
Planet Hollywood was packed. Jam-packed with white people. I took a cursory look around and saw no black people, which gave me pause. As I walked up to the hostess, I realized just how ridiculous the question I was about to ask was.
“Is Will Smith here?”
“Yeah, I think he is in the back corner.”
Suddenly, I relaxed. Here I was, thinking he was gay and wanted to fuck the shit out of me, and in reality he was suffering fans while he waited for me at a table for two. I felt overwhelming embarrassment as I walked to the back of the restaurant, but when I got there I saw no one.
I walked back up to the front and told the girl I couldn’t find him.
“You mean like the mannequin?” she replied, assuming that I was the most die-hard Will Smith fan—someone who would only eat there if he could have a table close enough to his replica.
“No, the person.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Is Will Smith the person here?”
“Is the actual movie star, Will Smith, here at Planet Hollywood? Having dinner? No, he is not.”
“Do you have a reservation for Will Smith, for two … in a movie theater?” I tried.
“In a movie theater? Sir, we are an establishment dedicated to Hollywood, with mannequins of movie stars and memorabilia. The actual movie stars themselves do not hang out here, and we do not have a movie theater.”
Life of the Party: Stories of a Perpetual Man-Child Page 9