by Sam Harris
I wondered if I’d physically changed. Slightly doughy and pasty pale, but with muscular legs, broad shoulders, a strong jawline, and fantastic hair, currently bed-headed, but typically parted in the middle and feathered on the sides, I wasn’t horrible. But that was just the outside. Inside it was scary. As I stared at my reflection, I wondered if the pounding of my heart and the fear in my soul was visible.
Then I ran back to my room and dressed in cutoffs and a Mickey Mouse T-shirt.
I had flag girl practice and I didn’t want to be late.
• • •
Deana was the sinewy-muscled, tree-climbing leader of the girls’ gang on our street and she hated me. I wanted the neighborhood kids to play “town,” in which we each had a pretend business and we rode around on our bikes to the “bank” and the “restaurant” and the “nightclub,” which was my establishment of choice, where I served Kool-Aid and performed my act. Deana wanted to play football or skin-a-squirrel or track-a-possum, I don’t remember. She actually had a wild skunk as a pet, trained for battle.
Deana sent a message to me through one of her eleven-year-old lackeys that I had better stop encouraging this “stupid queer town game.” My father saw this as an opportunity for me to step up my manhood, and convinced me to send back a message for her to meet me in my front yard to settle this. “Settle this,” to me, meant talk it out—find a compromise. I was much more articulate and would have the upper hand. To Deana, “settle this” meant blood would be spilled.
Deana arrived, skidding to a stop on her rusty, sun-faded blue Huffy. The girl’s bar had been removed so that her balls wouldn’t get injured. Her long, ever-tanned arms and legs flexed in a tank top and cutoffs, which only made me look pastier and puffier in comparison. All of the kids surrounded us to see who would win the neighborhood crown.
Then Deana proceeded to beat the shit out of me.
She punched and kicked and spat and scratched. I didn’t have time to play out the convincing speech about neighborly fraternity I had rehearsed only minutes before. I was terrified. This was uncivilized. We weren’t little kids anymore. I had hair growing under my arms for Christ’s sake. But Deana had more.
She grabbed me firmly by my moppy hair and swung me around so hard I was lifted off the ground in a circle like in a Popeye cartoon. Which would give way first, Deana’s super-human powers or my hair? Finally, she let go and I missiled into a crumpled pile of exhausted flesh under a thorny bush. I pulled myself up from the dirt, dizzy and discombobulated. The crowd cheered and jeered. Deana kicked me in the stomach and I was down again, for the last time.
I looked up and saw my parents watching through the window: my mother’s face registered panic and it was clear that my father had probably tied her to a chair to prevent her from rescuing me. His eyes pleaded for me to get up and try again. Did he really want me to hit a girl ? Even if I could? Was he too humiliated to stop the fisticuffs and rescue his sissy son? One way or another, he was going to let me fight my own fight. Even if I might not live to see morning.
That night I soaked in a hot tub while Deana was off somewhere, I was sure, ripping open a live rabbit with her teeth and smearing the blood all over her body in some kind of victory ritual. My muscles were tender and bruised. My hair hurt. But I knew that I was lucky it was the beginning of summer and I had three months for this to be forgotten before the gossip of the school year began. Deana was clearly the champion, but I took refuge in the thought that she would probably get fat, be a grandmother in her thirties, and sell army surplus. And I would be a star.
• • •
Jerry was a massive, lumbering, redheaded, freckled bully whose head was vastly disproportionately larger than the rest of his body. Like one of those effigies people burn at political rallies. In eighth-grade English class, when we were discussing electives for next term, our teacher asked what we’d be taking, and Jerry muttered, “Drugs.” Everyone in earshot snickered except me. I thought he was an idiot and I was sure he knew it from the eye roll I couldn’t stifle. He hated me.
At the end of class, he cornered me at the door and told me to meet him after school at 3:30 because he was going to beat me up. Why anyone would make an appointment to get the shit knocked out of him was beyond me. I should have told him I had a previous engagement, a rehearsal, a late luncheon. Instead, I reported that 3:30 worked for my schedule and I agreed to meet outside by the basketball court. I didn’t tell anyone about my appointment for assault and I was hoping Jerry didn’t either. If I was going to get beaten up, I preferred that it be a private pummeling.
I was punctual as usual, and after waiting ten terrifying minutes for Jerry to arrive and rip me to shreds, I decided that if he couldn’t be on time, it was his loss. I started around the corner of the adjacent brick building and there he was. Alone. His head seemed even bigger and bloatier than it had earlier in the day, teetering on his shoulders. His cheeks were red with freckly rage.
“Going somewhere, Sissy Boy?” he scoffed, with a curled lip and a cruel smile.
He clenched his fists and stepped toward me and my breath fluttered quick and shallow in a race with the speed of my thoughts. I had no idea what to do. I certainly wasn’t going to fight him. I prepared for my fate and hoped he wouldn’t disfigure my face, because I was going to be in show business and I was not really a character type. As he took another step closer, I blurted out, “I thought your joke about taking drugs next term was hysterical.”
My comment literally jolted him off balance as his giant head rolled to one side and his dilated pupils registered confusion. I had thrown the first punch, albeit verbally, and it had landed—Pow!
Round one—Sissy Boy!
Before he could recover, I said, “You should be in the talent show. Everyone thinks you’re so funny.”
I thought his head was actually going to roll off his body. Muhammad Ali could not have stung more effectively.
Round two—Sissy Boy takes it again!
“You could be a professional comedian,” I continued with growing confidence.
Finally, he spoke. “Are you serious?”
“Dead,” I replied. “You’re like George Carlin.”
A lost, inquisitive blankness came over him.
“I mean Cheechen Chong,” I added, hoping to score.
“Which one?”
I realized that Cheech and Chong must be two separate people.
“Both!” I said. “That’s how funny you are!”
And he lit up like a Christmas tree—with only half its bulbs working.
Knockout! Ding ding. Fight over!
Jerry invited me to come over to his house and hang out. We ate Hostess Ding Dongs and talked about school. He was thinking of dropping out. I said I thought that was a good idea and encouraged him to pursue comedy. He smoked weed and nodded a lot. He warned me that at school, or anywhere in public, he could never acknowledge me, but he knew we had a secret bond.
I knew, of course, that we had nothing in common other than the fact that we were both carbon-based life-forms sucking the same humid Oklahoma air.
It suddenly occurred to me that if there had been a public fight, things would be very different. I would already be dead. Jerry would have had no choice but to kill me, it was that simple. So I would be happy to keep our “bond” under wraps and play along with an occasional covert smile. Because I was alive and it was Jerry who was already dead.
• • •
Michelle dyed her hair a distinguishing shade of Julie Andrews cantaloupe, which framed her enormous, penetrating blue eyes, further accentuated by eyelashes that were so long they looked false. Michelle was outgoing and funny-funny, dry and sardonic, and possessed a wicked laugh that revealed a soul beyond her years. Finally, I’d found a kindred spirit. The closest thing to another me. Another who rode the social teeter-totter, managing to placate the popular and embrace the disenfranchised—but not really a part of either.
Michelle was an extraordinarily gifted ac
tress who had created an entertaining, if not completely believable, fantasy life. She’d claimed her father was a famous radio announcer and often quoted her clever and doting mother. They supposedly vacationed abroad and were the closest of friends with all the society mavens of Tulsa, who constantly lavished gifts upon her.
As Michelle and I spent more and more time together, her masquerade slowly melted away and I gained scarce entry to the truth. Michelle’s family was poor. Not the kind of poor that insisted on simplicity but didn’t compromise pride. This was the poor of resentment and delusion. There was not a blade of grass behind the rusty, lopsided chain-link fence overgrown with suffocating morning glories that separated her house from other impoverished neighbors, where snot-crusted toddlers meandered in soiled cloth diapers, barefoot and unsupervised, sipping mixtures of beer and milk to keep them quiet.
The house was gray, inside and out. The tattered furniture was gray. The soiled carpet was gray. The light was gray. Michelle’s father was, indeed, a radio announcer, with a euphonious voice and a masterful economy of language that betrayed his station. And he was crazy as a bag of hammers. He was a drug addict and a pathologically adroit liar who could talk anyone into anything, including giving him a position as an unqualified, uneducated psychotherapist at a home for troubled boys. He also considered himself psychic and read tarot cards for extra money, but didn’t require cash to drop into a trance at any given moment.
Michelle’s mother was short and round and ruddy and wore cat’s-eye glasses and the tight, black polyester knit pants and mannish white button-down shirt required of all employees who worked at Bowden’s Quick Stop Gas Station, where she managed the night shift. At home, she slept until midafternoon and spent her waking hours curled up on an unsheeted mattress—dragged daily to the middle of the tiny living room floor—on which she read paperback romance novels with erotically illustrated covers and ate fried SPAM sandwiches while she smoked Newports in swift succession.
I practically lived at Michelle’s house, slipping into their grayness as if to claim it as my own, and we happily took charge of everything: We laundered and cleaned and helped her brother and sister with homework. We dragged the mattress and fried the SPAM sandwiches. We cooked dinner every night—mock chicken fried steak and mock apple pie made with Ritz crackers. We played mock house. We mock made out. And we genuinely laughed all the time.
As a little girl, Michelle had found a way to alter her reality and create a world in which she could survive—better than the circumstances, better than the truth. I joined her, and it helped me survive too. We acted as if, and so it was.
She was my mock girlfriend and I loved her.
• • •
Joe Allen Restaurant was Danny’s and my hangout in New York. It was everybody’s hangout in New York. At least the everybodys we hung out with. On any given night, at least a dozen familiar Broadway-ites and enough tourists to garnish an actor’s ego could be found hobnobbing there. It was more like a speakeasy than an eatery. The club room for the club.
When I first moved to New York, I’d called to make a reservation under “Harris,” and the maître d’ had glibly asked, “Julie, Rosemary, or Sam?” I already belonged and it was safe.
I had recently ended my stint in The Life on Broadway to complete my latest album, and on the day of its release, Danny and I were ready to celebrate at our favorite home away from home. We were welcomed at the door and shouted bubbly hellos to friends as we made our way down the brick-walled, bar-flanked corridor to our regular table in the back corner. The waiter brought my minipitcher of white wine without my asking and had already placed my order for the La Scala Salad and Danny’s cheeseburger. There was comfort in our predictability.
We toasted to the CD’s success. It was the end of a long, drama-laden undertaking, which had centered on a producer who’d answer his door in a pair of dingy, pee-stained boxer shorts and a tattered wifebeater, and who had attempted to destroy the actual recording tapes until Liza’s man Friday, an ex-bodyguard to some Saudi king, went to the studio in a perfectly pressed suit and tie and politely threatened to kill him. Still the record had turned out well. Some of my best singing ever. We had a lot to celebrate.
Five men sat at the next table an elbow away. They were loud and happy and drunk. Really loud and really happy and really drunk. They took turns commenting on the Broadway shows currently on the boards, assassinating this one and lacerating that one. Stars of the shows, some of whom were in the restaurant and in earshot, were not spared.
Our waiter brought our food and apologetically rolled his eyes. He asked if we wanted to move to another table. We declined. This was my table and surely these guys would leave or pass out sooner than later.
The hit men continued their witty massacre and finally, annoyed to my limit, I turned in their direction and testily shushed them. Their table quieted for a brief moment. Then the apparent leader of the pack said, for all to hear, “Ooooohh. I’ve been shushed by a pathetic Star Search winner!”
At Joe Allen. My club.
In a single second I was back in the halls of Charles Page High School, someone had just called me “faggot,” and I was an outsider. The man was facing away from me, so, thankfully, there was no direct visual confrontation. I played deaf and buried my red face in a hunk of buttered bread and stuffed it into my mouth, followed by an ample swash of wine. I attempted to resume lighthearted conversation with Danny but he wasn’t listening.
“A Star Search winner has spoken!” the man further proclaimed to the room. “Ssshhhh! We should all be quiet!”
Danny slowly rose from our table and steadily walked the two feet between us and the culprit. “May I see you outside?” he said, with threatening diplomacy.
“I don’t think so!” the man slurred. “I’m eating my dinner!”
And then Danny grabbed the little brute around the throat in a headlock, hoisted him from his chair, and dragged him down the corridor past frozen faces at crowded tables. Roscoe Lee Browne sat perched in his regular spot at the end of the teeming bar. I loved Roscoe. He was an African-American classical actor and a master of cerebral eloquence who, in response to criticism that he sounded too white, had famously responded, “I’m sorry. I once had a white maid.” As Danny passed him with the kicking man in tow, Roscoe’s rich, sable voice interrupted the stupefied silence: “New dancing partner, Danny?” And they were out the door.
Waiters swarmed to my table in celebration.
“That was amazing!”
“I can’t believe he did that!”
“Someone finally put Michael Riedel in his place!”
MICHAEL RIEDEL?! The New York Post theater reporter and critic who, often single-handedly, decided which Broadway shows made it and which didn’t? The guy who had enough pen power to make or break a Tony? THAT MICHAEL RIEDEL?
I was so fucked.
Danny had defended my honor. It was the kindest, most loving and heroic thing anyone had ever done for me. The only thing missing was a white horse. But now we would have to move from New York to the Midwest, where I would direct community theater productions of Pippin.
The police came but no arrests were made, though both Danny and Riedel were guilty of assault. Danny remained outside to smoke and cool off, but Riedel returned and shuffled directly toward me, pulling up a chair and plopping down with his elbows on the table and his head in his hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a casual impishness. “I’m with my friends. We’re all journalists. And we were just having fun. Now, I know you and Patti LuPone are friends and I heard . . .”
I couldn’t believe my ears. He’d been dragged by force from the Broadway bistro of all Broadway bistros and had returned looking for a scoop. No one could say he wasn’t dedicated. I politely declined to provide the dish he sought and he left the restaurant with his friends, none of whom had so much as batted an eye during the entire ordeal.
When Danny reentered the place, he was greeted with applause.
Our meal was comped and we were told we wouldn’t have to pay for anything for a long time. Danny was a hero. My hero.
When we got back to our apartment, the answering machine message light flickered furiously and a touch of the play button was followed by “You have thirty-six new messages.” In the last hour, friends from both coasts had heard about the incident and were calling to offer their enthusiasm and condolences. My publicist, Judy Jacksina, was among them. “Darling!! It’s everywhere,” she shrieked in her thick Long Island–ese. “Everyone knows. It’s going to be in the Post tomorrow. This is not good. I’m dehydrated from the news and I had to put on another coat of moisturizer. This is not good.”
The next morning I threw on a pair of shorts, walked the two blocks to the corner bodega, and leafed through the Post to Page Six. I scanned the bold-faced names in the gossip column and found nothing, breathing a sigh of relief. And then I saw it. The skirmish had merited its own separate feature:
B’WAY FIGHT NIGHT AT JOE ALLEN!
The story recounted the conflict, pointing out that Riedel was overtaken by “Harris’s burly companion.”
Danny is five-eight and 165 pounds. Burly.
The story ended with:
“I’m sure lots of people on Broadway have wanted to punch me in the nose, and I have to admire those people who actually try it,” says Riedel, who has nothing against Harris and has written favorably of him over the years. “Besides,” he says, “Harris’s pal was clearly defending his honor against an insult. There are no hard feelings.”
If Danny had gone to school with me, things might have been a lot different. I might have had a boyfriend and a protector. On the other hand, if Michael Riedel had gone to school with me, we probably would have been best friends. He’d been thirteen once and most likely had his own version of the spider dream.
We were both misfits, besotted with Broadway, and we were just trying to fit.
15. As Good as It Gets