And where does that breath come from? Did someone just come and shit in your mouth?
I couldn’t stop drinking until the bartender would say, “We got no more liquor!”
I went for a job once, and the guy told me I couldn’t have it because I wasn’t dependable. I told him, “I got a $200-a-day habit. Tell me that ain’t dependable.”
I can remember when I was just off drugs. I noticed that my dick was a lot smaller than I thought.
I get scared when I’m out on stage sometimes. I want to run. If I had some drugs, I wouldn’t give a fuck. But then I come off stage, and I still wouldn’t give a fuck. Then, by the time you’re fifty, you’ve had a lot of don’t -give-a-fucks. You miss a big part of your life that way.
Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.
—Zen saying
Malachy McCourt
(writer, actor, entrepreneur)
* * *
POOR AS CHURCH MICE were the McCourts of Limerick. Starvation and death all around and sexual molestation by priests were the order of the day. Two brothers, Frank and Malachy, shipped out as soon as they could and struggled to make a better life in America. Malachy worked as a longshoreman and became an actor and saloonkeeper. He owned New York’s first singles bar, Malachy’s, a hangout frequented by the likes of Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole, Richard Burton, and Grace Kelly. As an actor, he played in a half-dozen movies including Reversal of Fortune, Bonfire of the Vanities, and She’s the One. He has also had many television roles, including that of a priest on HBO’s prison drama Oz. Frank told the story of his boyhood in a book, Angela’s Ashes, which became a hit movie. At sixty-six, Malachy became a published author with A Monk Swimming, an account of his adventures as a young immigrant in New York. This became a best seller and was followed by Singing My Him Song in 2002.
Transforming desperate straits and madcap adventures of their real lives into art has been the brothers’ stock-in-trade. In several productions of their autobiographical stage play, A Couple of Blaguards, Malachy even played himself.
Frank was more the literary brother, Malachy the happy-go-lucky one who lived it up. A regular in the Hamptons bacchanals that were wilder than F. Scott Fitzgerald’s by far, he was a gadfly of the sixties-seventies rich at play. Signs of political conscience began to surface, and today he is a political and environmental activist.
Meeting him at his cluttered apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, I was greeted by his warm and friendly wife, Diana, who explained that Malachy was off getting a haircut and should be home shortly. In the meantime, she told me all about the breakfast they had both just attended that morning to hear new presidential candidate John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards. The McCourts are heavily involved in politics and freely shared their liberal ideology with me.
Malachy arrived full of energy and spoke to me as if we were old friends, even though this was our first meeting. We began the interview in his cozy den, seated across from each other in two overstuffed chairs. His readily adapted to its occupant’s shape almost as if it does so automatically. Books and bookshelves fill three walls, the fourth allowing for a couple of windows that provide nice morning light. Malachy is dressed in a simple, white, long-sleeved shirt rolled up to just below the elbows, and a wrinkled pair of white linen trousers. Add the shock of uncombed white hair, which contrasts nicely with his bright red Irish complexion, and you have the basic picture.
As we begin the interview, I sense that even though Malachy has told his story countless times, he still enjoys retelling it for my benefit.
There was always an acceptance in Irish society of drinking alcohol and drinking to excess. Brendan Behan said, “To get enough to eat was an accomplishment, but to get drunk was a victory.” Getting food was grubbing, but getting alcohol, not just stout or port or beer, but getting whiskey … you made it! Under the cover then of drinking, all sorts of terrible things were done to people: assaults, violence, murder, assaults on women, and the most horrendous of all, abuse of children, both sexual and otherwise.
If you looked at any of the Irish newspapers, the defense lawyers, or solicitors as they are called, would say, “The way it is, Your Honor, my client had the drink taken.” … “Ah, was that the way it was? So the poor man must not have known what he did.” I remember one case, it struck me so forcibly, they’re having these traveling people in Ireland called tinkers, and they had animals that would wander grazing. They never fed them, so their horses and donkeys or mules were all over the place. I remember one of them; he got six months in jail for letting his horses roam. Another fellow had raped a young girl and he got off ’cause he had the drink taken and didn’t know what he was doing. So with that sort of a background, I looked on alcohol as something to aspire to. That you would grow up and be able to drink like the men.
And the men, of course, congregated in pubs, and the women had snugs, little areas in the pub that were walled off, like the Taliban does. Like little speakeasies with sliding doors. They looked like a confessional.
A lot of people didn’t drink and a lot of people drank moderately. They would have one or two pints and that was it, but the disease of alcoholism is always after people.
One day my friend and I, at the age of eleven, talked about getting drunk. He said, “Let’s do it,” and I said, “Fine, but where are we going to get the money?” And he said, “I know where my brother keeps some money, some savings.” So he stole it. We went to a pub and we ordered some cider first, and we got drunk. That was the first one. And I found it to be absolutely exhilarating. I had never felt like that. Coming out of poverty—there are a couple of things that accompany poverty just like those that accompany alcoholism. The sense of shame. You’re ashamed of being poor. As an alcoholic, you’re ashamed of what you did and what you are. So it was the business of escaping, always escaping what we are. Shame takes care of the past, and all fear is future based. Fear is always in the future. In our own heads we project what is going to happen, and it almost never does. It’s like coming attractions, but my God doesn’t make coming attractions. I do, because God is far too busy.
My friend Father Michael Judge, who was killed on 9/11, was a recovering man too. A decent, terrific man. I was moaning to him about what was going to happen to me. “My life was coming to an end,” I thought. I couldn’t make any money. My career was in the dumps and I was depressed and all of that. Things were not going well. And he said to me, not once but several times, “My God does not deal with the future, and I don’t think yours does either. You see, God is extremely busy dealing with today, and consequently he has not yet made tomorrow. That’s the future. Nor has he made next week, next year, or any time, really. As infinitely all-powerful and infallible as God is, as much as God knows, he has not yet made tomorrow. He does not know what’s going to happen, so who the fuck do you think you are?”
And when you think about it, it’s quite logical. So anyway, back to my drinking … I didn’t drink again as a youngster ’cause I took a pledge at my confirmation, and I didn’t drink again until I came to America at the age of twenty. People here said to me, “Oh, you must drink a lot. You’re Irish.” And I said, “Sure I do!” but I didn’t. What a people pleaser! So I started to drink.
I had no education, so I was always ashamed of that. I left school at thirteen, but I was always a good reader. I loved reading and still do, and that saved my arse. I faked my way about my education so I would speak knowledgably or eloquently. I could recite a list of poetry and they would think, “He’s educated,” but it was still bullshit.
Through a series of events I got myself hired as an actor, though I was only a dockworker and dishwasher. And then a friend of mine, Tom O’Malley, who died of this disease, Tom got me on The Tonight Show ’cause he booked the show. So I got famous for about fifteen minutes. Then somebody offered to back me in a bar, so we opened Malachy’s, and it became a very famous sing
les bar. I was just having the grandest time, drinking and carousing. There were lots of young, nubile women who were willing to share my bed, and I was not at all discriminating. Then I met this young woman who said, “We should get married,” and I said, “Oh yeah, we should do that.”
Then after three months, we discovered she was pregnant and we had a baby. Then a short time later, we had another baby. And I’m still drinking, and she’s getting annoyed because she can’t go out. She’s got to take care of the babies. So she dumped me, much to my astonishment. As I said before, everybody loves me. But she said, “I don’t!” That was it and it drove me nuts.
But I kept drinking, and I was still trying to win her back. Crazy, crazy drunkenness, belligerent and threatening. I never, ever hit her though. Never violent, just a threatening, nasty person. Here’s the thing. Here I was doing exactly as my father had done. My father had deserted us. Although I was here physically, I wasn’t here. I wasn’t a father to those children. I was this sort of lunatic whirlwind. I amused them a lot, but I was not a caring father. I always said I wasn’t like my father. My father took off. This is the alcoholic denial thing. What I don’t do. I’m not like … I don’t drink gin, I don’t mix my drinks, I don’t drink before five o’clock, and I never do this or that. And it’s all bullshit you see, which we are. Bullshitters. And that, of course, is the denial. I don’t do …
So here you have me, the Great Egyptian, living on denial!
I had one saloon and then another and another. My fourth saloon was called Himself. Richard Harris, who was from Limerick, the same town as me, was always coming to see me when he was in town. One time we were drinking and Richard said, “I’m fed up with all this Hollywood shit, and I’d like to work for you.” And I said, “I already have a full staff.” He said, “You don’t have to pay me.” So anyway, he got behind the bar and started pouring drinks. He didn’t know a damn thing about bartending, but he would pour and pour. One day these two little old ladies came up to me and said, “You have the nicest bartender. He gave us a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and didn’t charge us. He’s so nice.” I said, “He sure is.” I couldn’t naysay anything Richard did because people were flocking in to see him. After a couple of weeks, Richard decided “bartending is not for me” and packed it in. He left and off he went. He was heading back to London, so I saw him off at the airport. I then went back to the bar, and my other barman says to me, “Here, Richard left this note for you.” So I open up the envelope and inside is a check to cover everything he had given away during those weeks.
After my wife and children left me, it was all downhill. It was like watching the whirlpools: slow at the top, then sucked into this hell of despair of hopelessness. As a retired Catholic, I recognize only one sin: the sin of despair. No hope and no forgiveness. That’s a thing about alcoholism, you see. “No one will forgive me.” The fact is, I continued to drink. I met Diana. She was a bright light that came into my life. And through this agony of this awful disease, I saw Diana’s face and the beauty of her soul, and I thank my God for that.
It didn’t stop me drinking though. For the next nineteen years or so, I was not the most faithful of husbands or partners. We got married. She had one child and I had two. Her little girl was retarded, and that got me very involved in the movement for the retarded. And that, for once, got me out of myself and out of my own selfishness and self-centeredness. I still drank but, at the same time, got involved in doing some kind of good, you see. For me, the good finally started encroaching on my soul; it sealed the evil within me. Evil goes when the light comes upon it. At the same time, my disease was being forced out into the light and I began to see what it was.
I traveled to Ireland with my brother Frank to do a show there. I was very angry at that place because of the horrible way we were treated as children. The humiliation my mother suffered over there. Being on welfare. The deaths of three children. The deaths of eleven classmates. Constant sickness and death. Fear and this rigid Catholic society. God was always threatening to beat the shit out of you. It was always sin, sin, sin. Never to talk about a loving God. You were told that if you were very good you’d get something at Christmas, so you assumed you were bad. There was never any credit for trying! No acknowledgment that you were essentially a good kid, a decent kind of a little fellow. So what you did was take refuge in booze.
When I came back from Ireland, I went to a doctor because I was feeling sick. Physically ill and mentally ill. He said, “You’re drinking too much, you’re smoking too much, and you’re eating too much.” So I asked this physician, who’s a friend of mine, would he give me some medicine for those conditions? He said, “I’ll give you medicine. I’ll give you a boot in the arse. Now get out of here ’cause you know what to do.” And I said, “Yes, I know what to do.” And I knew. I knew what to do. I knew about the Twelve Steps. God knows I had recommended them often to other people. I didn’t need them, but I knew people that did.
So here’s the odd and embarrassing thing about getting into recovery. I said to myself that drinking was no problem and smoking, well, I can’t stop smoking till I stop drinking, but the real problem is that if I stop smoking and drinking, I’ll start eating way too much. So the eating is the problem. Somebody said to me that there is a program for overeaters, and I said, “What do they do, give you diets?” And he said, “Why don’t you try it and find out?” So I did, thinking this would solve all my problems. I wound up listening to people talking about the toxic and fatal effects of chocolate chip ice cream and lemon meringue pie. While in the room, I started substituting the word “alcohol” for “food.” So I just figured that my God has a peculiar sense of humor. It wasn’t long before I said, “Fuck this, I’m an alcoholic. I’m also a food addict and a nicotine addict and I have other addictions: being judgmental and a finger-pointing asshole.” And I said, “Yeah, go to an alcohol recovery program, jerk-off.” And I did.
At first it was terrible. I was also a debtor, horrendously in debt. I had borrowed over $200,000, which I couldn’t possibly ever pay back. At this recovery meeting they said to me, “Keep coming back.” I told Diana that I would stop borrowing and try to get some kind of work that would keep us afloat. No matter what kind of work it was. But somebody offered me a large sum of money, a loan, and I took it and didn’t tell Diana. Then we split up for a while. I was living out in Queens here in New York, living on somebody’s floor. I couldn’t get any work, so I ended up on welfare. So here I am at the age of fifty-four going into welfare, like my mother used to do. Something I said I’d never do in my whole life. That’s where I learned the difference between humiliation and humility. I said, “I’m not being humiliated. I’m learning to acquire humility.” That’s what it was. I did it with my heart, mind, and brain. I had been a fairly successful actor and a fairly successful saloonkeeper, and I used to have quite a bit of money, and I was recognized by some people in the welfare office from being on a soap opera…. That caused a bit of a stir in the welfare office. Here I am signing for welfare and signing autographs. A most bizarre situation. They were so nice to me there. They were mostly black folks, and they kept saying, “You’ll be okay. We have seen people like you who have taken a hit, and we know you’ll be fine.” They were very sweet and nice. I thought they would stomp on my head and say, “Yeah, look at you, you big deal asshole.” But they didn’t at all.
So I kept in touch with Diana over that period and learned how to say, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said and for what I did, and will try not to do that again.” And I said to her, “Would you see me again?” And she said, “Yes, but I don’t sleep with men on the first date.” So we started seeing each other, and I was able to say that due to this recovering program I’m on a path, and hope to stay on it. A day at a time I don’t drink. A day at a time I go to a meeting. A day at a time I stretch out my hand to help another alcoholic. A day at a time I try to remember those I injured and make an amend. Making amends isn’t always about forgiveness.
Some people have told me, “What you did is unforgivable.” And I say to them, “If you don’t forgive me, I will be your burden. You think of me with anger, which means I have the power to make you angry. You shouldn’t give me that power.”
Sometimes my God pisses me off and I say, “What the fuck are you doing to me?” You know God always answers your prayers, and many times the answer is “No, asshole!” Then you find out it wouldn’t have been good for you anyway.
In recovery I have laughed and cried. I have buried friends, ’cause there’s no guarantee that they’re not going to die. I’ve suffered prostate cancer. I’ve suffered heart disease. I’ve suffered very, very deep depression, and I’ve seen some pretty horrible things, but a day at a time it is certainly better than it is bad. Because I don’t think of myself as bad anymore. I’m not too bad at all, as a matter of fact! So life gets better. I tell Diana every day that I love her, no matter where I am. I like using the word “love,” you see. Like when you use the word “hate.” People use the word “hate” all the time. I said to Diana one time—we were watching the first President Bush on television, and he said he hated broccoli—I said, “He won’t get re-elected.” And he didn’t, ’cause you can’t use that word. “Hate” and “hatred” are two words not in my lexicon. It’s amazing, you can use the words “kill” and “hate” on television, but you can’t say “fuck,” which could connote the sexual act of love. If you’re doing it right! But anyway, that’s another matter.
The change in my life has been remarkable. There’s been so much laughter. Not jokes either. It has to do with absurdity. The appreciation of words and observing. I used to think that all life took place in these shoeboxes we call saloons. I didn’t drink much at home, but wherever I did drink, I could not just stop. I never said, “I need a drink.” I always said, “I want a drink. I want it.” I didn’t need it. Nobody does.
The Harder They Fall Page 14