Another little story about self-esteem and all its iterations—confidence, wherewithal, ingenuity and advancement:
HOW I LEARNED TO ACT
When I was a freshman at Emerson College several of my best buddies and I were told we had to wait in line for the best parts because the juniors and seniors needed to play leading roles before they graduated. Basically that meant not getting onstage on a regular basis in a meaningful role for at least two or three years. Being an understudy, standing in the wings, hoping wishing praying plotting dreaming that one of the stars might maybe perhaps if possible suffer a broken ankle or a pinched neck nerve or a bout of laryngitis or just a full-blown onset of basic-ass stage fright.
But instead of cursing the darkness we lit it up—using the advice of one Dr. James Randall we formed The Emerson Comedy Workshop. Dr. Randall forced the Student Government Association to recognize The Workshop as a legitimate theater group and fund it, thereby allowing us to write all of our own one-act plays, variety shows, mini-musical parodies—whatever came to mind. We even ended up getting credit for all the creative work as well as the set design, lighting design, tech work et al. We did three to four shows a year. We were almost always last on the list for available theater space, but we would take whatever we were given—lecture halls, raw square spaces, even—in my favorite turn of events—a former church—and have to outfit it with a stage, lights, backstage area and seating. Our limitations always became a plus. Our shows were funny, exciting and always on the cutting edge and what began as what some people thought of as an impossibility became the hardest ticket in town—we sold out every single production for every show three theater seasons a year for three seasons running. The Workshop still exists a full thirty-two years later. I’m not telling you this as a form of braggadocio—I’m informing you how our generation of kids refused to accept the status quo. We rebelled and it paid off—big-time.
That’s an example of the power of not taking no for an answer. As a matter of fact—taking no and turning it into a giant gleaming Yes. I learned everything I know about experimental original theater and comedy—from acting to writing to painting and building goddam sets—by not taking no for an answer.
Now—part two of the same story. Kind of:
HOW I BECAME A PUBLISHED POET
During the summer certain members of the workshop would travel and perform at other colleges and theaters in and around New England. In order to do so, we had to take jobs that kept us close to Emerson during the summer months. At the end of our junior year, a guy named Eagle—he was bald at age twenty, got hit with the nickname and nobody ever called him anything else but Eagle ever again—said he had a job as the assistant head janitor at the Atlantic Monthly Building. The Atlantic Monthly was and still is a well-respected magazine zoned in on intellectual discussions of cultural and political matters and its offices were located in several brownstones built side by side half a block from the Emerson campus. Eagle needed four guys to work the night shift as janitors during June, July and August. Adam Roth, Chris Phillips, Reagan Kennedy and I volunteered immediately. We’d never been janitors before but between the four of us there had been plenty of experience cleaning up odd puddles of beer, vomit, cheap vodka and just general leftover after-party ooze in the various hellholes we lived in—some of which Eagle had witnessed firsthand, which is to say we were well qualified. So Eagle hired us on the spot.
The pay was good but the best part was yet to come: our first night on the job, Sully The Head Janitor—classic Boston Irish guy, fifty-something, barrel-chested, redfaced with a nose that doubled as a Bushmill’s bottle—explained that we were to be on time every evening at five o’clock and we were supposed to clean all four buildings in the following eight hours. However, he said as he handed each of us our own official Atlantic Janitorial Staff short-sleeve button-down shirt (think basic bowling league red and blue), if we chose to work our balls off like slaves on cocaine, we could leave whenever the hell we got the work done.
After Sully split, Eagle said he guessed we could get through all four buildings in less than five hours if we worked like slaves on cocaine and didn’t take cigarette breaks. And that’s just what we did. Every night at five Sully would list off the areas where there may have been a large coffee spill or a water leak or an ink explosion and we would don our bowling shirts, grab our mops and buckets and run a full tornado sweep so swift and thorough it would have made Mr. Clean crap his tidy whitey pants. We were out on the town chasing tail and downing booze by ten-thirty almost every night. It was a dream gig.
After a few weeks we got so good we COULD take cigarette breaks—during which we started to take notice of all the office-type swag there was just piled up and lying around. It’s amazing what you can convince yourself you absolutely need to have in order to survive—especially when it’s stuff you have survived without up until that particular point in your life. Staplers, number two pencils, paperweights, letter openers, boxes of number two pencils, plastic coffee cups, paper clips, boxes of boxes of number two pencils, toner bottles, Sanka packets, Cremora jars, big boxes of boxes with boxes of number two pencils in them—you name it we took it. Hey—they were the big corporate giants and we were the struggling artists. We needed to write and draw and staple and sip Sanka with fake cream powder in it. At one point Reagan actually stole a rolling steel chair with some great swivel action in its legs. The rest of us decided that might be pushing the envelope a bit—although we had already pushed the envelope literally and figuratively by stealing thousands of envelopes over the course of our first month on the job.
One night during week five, Adam and I were in the editor in chief’s office when he noticed something on top of the big guy’s desk—a neat pile of typed pages.
Lookit this, he said.
What? I replied as I speed-polished a bookcase.
It’s a bunch a poems.
What kinda poems? I said, waxing a coffee table by wrapping two towels around my forearms, spraying a shitload of Lemon Pledge on the table and flailing back and forth like a wounded trout in an Igloo cooler.
John Ashbery, he said.
(Now let me take a second to explain who John Ashbery was and is—an incredibly celebrated American poet who has won every available award, including the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and, well—name one more important award and he probably has two of them. His work is dense with intellect and verbal dexterity. He will go down as one of the greatest poets in the history of the written word.)
He sucks, Adam said.
Yeah—I know, I agreed.
This must be some stuff this editor guy’s thinking of puttin’ in the magazine.
Yeah, I mumbled.
So.
So what?
We should get rid of this shit and put some of your stuff here instead, Adam said without even a hint of doubt.
Whaddaya nuts?
Listen ta me—this guy comes in tomorrow’n reads yer stuff—yer stuff is revolutionary, man—this editor guy’s gonna read it and he’s gonna flip out’n he’s gonna publish it’n yer gonna be famous’n we’re gonna be bangin’ chicks from Harvard’n shit.
(Now, as dumb as that plan sounds please remember—we were both nineteen years old. We WERE dumb. Young, dumb and full of come. And bad poetry. I had been writing it for only about a year and a half and at the time, of course, I thought it was Groundbreaking and Important and Needed To Be Heard. Needless to say—I took the bait.)
You know two or three of your poems by heart? Adam asked.
(Of course I did. I couldn’t remember the Our Father or The Latin Mass or any part of The Declaration of Independence or The Gettysburg Address
beyond their titles, we the people and four score and seven years ago—but my own poems and Rolling Stone lyrics and the starting lineup of every Boston Bruin or Boston Red Sox team since I was about five years old? Those were all on the tip of my tongue.)
Let’s go, I said assertively.
So Adam and I tore up John Ashbery’s poems and tossed them into the trash and sat down at the desk of the editor’s secretary and typed up two of my poems. This is what they were:
ONOMATOPOEM
Bang.
Bang bang.
Bang bang bang bang.
Boom.
Crack.
Bam.
Boom.
Shicka shicka shicka.
Poof.
FUCK
This.
Them.
That.
Us.
Is.
As.
Was.
Will.
Be.
And.
You.
We decided not to put my name on them—just to make the whole process an even bigger mystery. Then we tenderly stapled them together and placed them gingerly in the center of the editor’s desk. Stared down at them for a long, long beat—imagining the great fortune they were about to bring our way. We literally shook hands and smiled at each other. Then, as a fitting gesture of trust and solidarity—we left the stapler behind.
Returning to our tornado sweep cleaning, we finished by ten-fifteen, hit the bars at ten-thirty and chased tail and planned plans and laughed and smoked and dreamed and laughed and went to bed and got up to rehearse with The Workshop and eagerly returned to work the following afternoon at five p.m.
It was almost five past five when the editor in chief of The Atlantic Monthly pulled me aside as I was once again donning my bowling slash janitor shirt down in the working-class bowels of the building. He said Adam had pointed me out as the source of the poems left atop his desk. He then congratulated me on owning—and I quote—“the most original young raw voice in poetry I have come across in almost a decade.”
Wow.
Adam and I smiled beaming broad smiles as the editor and his posse of publishing elites led me upstairs where we shared flutes full of champagne and plans for my first book.
One month later “Onomatopoem” and “Fuck” made their debut in the magazine and three weeks after that I signed the deal to publish my first book of poetry with Harper Collins. It was called Slap and was nominated for Best New Book by The American Poetry Bank.
Which doesn’t exist.
Because I just made up that happy ending to this little story of how I became a published poet.
What really happened was:
As I tugged on my shirt the day after we planted my poems, Sully entered the locker room for our daily dose of spills, blotches, wet patches and stains to clean up. The first words out of his mouth were “Who’s the genius who left the crazy poems on the editor in chief’s desk?” He looked around for half a second before spotting my upraised arm, which had been eagerly in the air since he had uttered the word “genius.” I was more than ready for my moment in the spotlight. “Okay, asshole—turn in yer shirt. Yer officially shitcanned.” Then he immediately continued reading off various dirty locations that needed special attention from the rest of the crew that night.
The dream was over so quickly I didn’t even have a chance to ask a follow-up question. Sully headed out the back door and the guys all said how sucky my situation was and then they went off in search of dust and filth.
Within a few days I was working the switchboard of a swanky downtown hotel on the night shift and furiously spending the overnight hours writing more poetry. Why? So I could get better at it.
I was always one of those people who never took no for an answer. Whether it was girls or work or sports or acting, when someone told me I wasn’t good enough I found another way to prove them wrong.
About three months after Sully made me turn in my bowling shirt, two things happened—out of pure spite I’d become a much better poet and ended up getting two poems published in another, more cutting-edge poetry magazine called Ploughshares. I was the youngest writer in that particular issue and one of the youngest they ever featured.
The other thing that happened was Adam, Chris and Reagan got shitcanned after Sully caught them trying to smuggle a whole desk out a brownstone side door.
I never tried to get my poems published again after that—I’d proven I could pull it off. I still write them for my wife and most of the time just for my private files and I love doing so, but in my heart of hearts I know the only reason I can claim to be a published poet today is because of Sully With The Bushmill’s Bottle Nose. And the reason I became a successful comic is because of all the club owners who told me I was too edgy and the reason I became a working actor is due to all the acting teachers who said I didn’t do what they told me to do and all of the casting directors who wouldn’t cast me.
Every time I hear the word “no” I think “yes.”
Every time someone says it’s against the rules I wonder why the rules exist.
I don’t run home with my tail between my legs—I bang down the door to find out what’s on the other side.
And that comes from growing up with parents who made it clear that—within reason—you can be whatever you want to be in America but no one is just going to hand you anything, you have to go out and get it.
The harder you work, the luckier you get—that’s one of the things my dad taught me.
You learn more with your mouth shut and your ears open than you do the other way around—he said that too.
Most people who are older than you are also a helluva lot smarter. That was another one of his faves.
No one owes you anything and being born into a free society means you get to say whatever the hell you want but it doesn’t mean anyone has to listen.
Which is why I walk around now just wishing I could grab every other mouthy, misbehaved, spoiled and rotten little urchin I come across in airports and restaurants and just when I’m walking down the street—kids who are throwing snit fits in public as their disinterested or seemingly powerless parents stand off to the side and let the rest of us listen to the whining—I just once wanna grab them HARD by the flesh on their twiggy upper arms, that soft flesh that really really hurts—and I mean grab them bruise-inducing, five-finger-indentation-left-behind hard—and whisper Clint Eastwood-style right in their dirty little ear: Listen up and listen fast, punk, ’cause I’m only sayin’ this one goddam time: yer gonna shut the fuck up right now and start doing what yer dumbass mom and dad say from here on in or a special van is gonna pull up one day and just pluck you right off the goddam street and drop your ass on a plane to Iraq where you will be dropped out of the sky with nuthin’ but a parachute and a bag of white rice—no cash, no toys, no more SpongeBob SquareAss—ya follow?
I’d like to see how far their overinflated self-esteem plummets after that. Hopefully? Like a big rock in a backyard kiddie pool.
CHAPTER 7
FAMOUS DEAD KIDS
Parents need to take back the control. Now. Half-assed moms and self-centered fathers should stop blaming everyone else and head back into the house. I’m not talking about two-income families where existing without both parents holding down jobs is an impossibility. I’m talking about houses where both parents had kids because it was almost a fashion accessory and then once the kids arrived, it became a constant battle over who changed how many diapers and whose turn is it to get up with the baby. Here’s the bottom line: kids want their moms—almost all the time. You feel tired and unable to do anything else because the kids are a full-time job? Welcome to reality, asshole.
From caveman times to calendar date 2009—someone has to feed them and someone has to go get the food to feed them with. That’s it. We—as fat loud lazy Americans—wanna watch our TV shows and drive our new cars and play golf and watch Internet porn and e-mail our girlfriends and text our BFFs and blah blah blah but BIRDS are still building nests and digging up worms and flying them back to the nest and dropping them into the mouths of the baby birds.
THAT’S HOW FAR WE HAVE EVOLVED—not even two inches.
You only get one chance to raise your children right and it’s been said a million zil
lion trillion times but they grow up in less than a heartbeat and all the damage is done. We all get up in arms when another secretly planted webcam captures another Dominican or other illegal immigrant nanny suddenly up and slapping an innocent American baby but—quite frankly—what the fuck else did you expect? You want an underpaid stranger you’ve met maybe twice who barely speaks broken English to have never mind love but even an iota of empathy or a caring bone in her hand for a kid you don’t have the time or desire to take care of yourself? They don’t have nannies in the deepest dark areas of Africa—they have aunts and uncles and actual neighbors—the same thing I had growing up. That’s what families and friends are for. Your dog is more likely to take care of your kid than a Third World worker in an entry-level position is. But in America we expect everyone to do the dirty work we find ourselves to be so far above—including wiping the fat asses of our own fat kids.
Kids have become a stepping-stone—especially daughters. The trash cans of Hollywood are lined with the litter of ex-teenage stars whose mothers wanted their own failed dreams to be fulfilled by pimping out their progeny. Lindsay Lohan’s well-documented fall into drugs and drunk driving have proven one thing and one thing only to her party-hopping, publicity-mad mom: time for her and the other daughter Ali to get their own reality show! Dad just got out of jail so he has no say in the matter! Britney Spears melts down for over fifteen months on international TV and in wall-to-wall, seemingly moment-by-moment magazine coverage and what does her mom do? Write a book about being a great parent! Then her other daughter—who is sixteen—announces she’s pregnant. Time to cancel the book tour? Hell no—let’s make it happen right away because Britney’s in the nuthouse and the heat is on! The only book I wanna read that’s written by Britney Spears’s mom is the one titled “How To Get One Daughter’s Pussy Onto The Internet And The Other Daughter Loaded Up With Semen Before She’s Even Old Enough To Drive!” Foreword By Family Friend Dr. Phil!
Why We Suck Page 12