Show business memoir – Page 10

Who you callin’ crazy?

19th century British mental asylum residents — **Times Square residents in the 1970s**

In the late 1960s, the mentally ill of America were caught in a political pincer movement. The tightwad Right wanted to close public insane asylums to save money. The moronic Left decided that the insane were the only sanepeople on the planet and had to be liberated from “captivity.” Yippie fuckwits scaled asylum walls and attempted to “free” the petrified inmates. The result of this Left/Right détente was that many of the mentally ill were pumped full of drugs and dumped onto America’s streets. 42^ndStreet being one. Aunt Rosa being one. (Ya ask me, insane people should be locked up and kept warm, safe and fed but as far away from sane people as possible. This “care in the community” and “mainstreaming” crap doesn’t work. All it does is create jobs for parasitic social workers while exposing the sane and insane to attacks from each other.)

Thorazine suppositories — **How’d ya like the job of inserting these?**

My family did what we could to help Aunt Rosa but it was impossible to help her. She was crazy. She wouldn’t take her medicine. If we gave her money she gave it away or flushed it away. If we had taken her into our homes she would have burned them down. She needed asylum. As in “insane asylum.” There was no asylum in Times Square for anyone. It was insane to inflict Times Square on the insane and vice versa. Correction. It was criminally insane. The Left and Right should have been given hot-lead enemas for using helpless lunatics as pawns in their political game.

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Come and meet those dancing feet!

Peep Show performers in the 1970s on 42nd Street, Times Square, NY — **Our neighbors on 42nd Street**

That’s why in 1974 New York and with hopeful hearts,my acting group dared to move into a rat’s nest flanked by porn shops. The customers of those shops received blowjobs for five bucks in the alley behind our theater. Those blowjobs were administered by Black trannies who resembled New York Giants linebackers dressed in hot pants and halter-tops. Our actresses had it extra-tough getting to and from our new home. They had to maneuver through pickpockets, pill-poppers and pimps while enduring wolf-whistles from Elvis Presley look-a-like diesel-dikes. If the actresses skirted the well-lit but obnoxious 42^nd Street, they were easy prey on the dark and un-policed 41^stand 43^rdStreets.

Black-trannie prostitute in NYC — **All yours for $5**

When we compared travel-tips, we discovered that we had independently stumbled onto the same survival strategy. To avoid being maimed, mugged or murdered, we acted nuts. The primal animal in us instinctively knew that predators didn’t eat sick prey. So, we acted sick. We walked down 42^ndstreet talking to ourselves and to Jesus. We laughed hysterically at everything and at nothing. We cried out to the Mayor and the Martians. We limped. We played retarded. Under serious threat, we had cerebral palsy.

It worked.

Carrie was a year dead by the time we discovered this survival ruse. It might have saved her life.

My night with Jack Wrangler and Harry Reems

One greasy night, I find myself at a porn-industry party at Eddie and Jett’s. The guest list is a veritable “Who’s Who” of degeneracy – gay and straight. (“Hey, isn’t that Harry Reems talking to Jack Wrangler?”) And, the badinage is scintillating. (“Even her crabs have herpes!”) But, I take a break from the shop talk to catch some cable in the bedroom. That’s where Jett corners me –

“Whatcha watchin’? Hey, you’re a good-lookin’ guy.”

Uh oh! Where have I heard that before?

“Ya know, the adult film producers wanna use you hippie-type guys. Ya wanna try making a porn movie?”

“Oh Jeez, I dunno…”

“I caught you lookin’ at Sandy. Ya wanna do a movie with her?”

“I dunno know if I could do it. I mean, I never…”

“You’d get paid to fuck all the girls at this party. How ’bout it?”

“Jeez, Eddie’s sister would kill me.”

“You could fuck me and neither of ’em would know. I gotta friend downstairs. We could make a quickie-loop right now to see if you like it.”

Peep show theater in Times Square, NY — **Site of my proposed porn debut**

Donut Porn

Dripping glazed donut — **I know what you’re thinking and you’re going to hell.**

On my way to meet Shmuel, I decide to cast my fate to the winds and become a total voluptuary. I will splurge my last dollar on a donut and coffee in a pigsty way East on 14^th Street. I’ve always hated 14^th Street and Columbus Circle and that pedestrian-tunnel that runs under 42nd Street and Shepherd’s Bush in London and all of Los Angeles. Certain places give me nausea and make me break out in intense psychic hives. 14^th Street is the worst of the worst. But, I’m there and I’m hungry so I plunk down my buck, pour flyspecked sugar into my plastic cup and dunk my stale donut into the greasy brown fluid that passes for coffee. This is when the young woman sitting next to me asks if I’d like to fuck her on film. I’m tellin’ ya, in ’70s Manhattan, an actor on his uppers can’t even enjoy a cup o’ Joe with a sinker without being offered porn stardom.

The gal in question is kinda chubby but kinda cute with an impressive full head of brunette ringlets. She speaks in a heavily slurred Greek accent – heavily slurred because she is heavily stoned and falling off her stool.

Original movie poster for Deep Throat — **The birth of “porn chic”**

Paging Dr. Quackenstein

Quack psychiatric device — **Prototype of a thera-hat**

Dr. Quackenstein’s most ingenious “varying modality” was a therapy he developed himself. In his “thera-room,” there was a sunken “thera-pit” very much like the “conversation-pits” found in 1970s living rooms, though to the best of my knowledge those were never called “conversa-pits.” The “thera-pit” was thickly lined with “thera-padding” and filled with “thera-pillows.” Seated on the pillows were a variety of “thera-dolls” – Daddy Doll, Mommy Doll, Anger Doll, Authority Doll and Me Doll.

The sucker… er, I mean, the patient descended into the “thera-pit” to do battle with whichever doll represented the dragon they needed to slay. Ponder, if you will, how potent and healing this metaphoric ritual was – descending into the pit of their psyche, to confront their dragon, the patient wielded not Excalibur but Dr. Quackenstein’s most brilliant invention – the “thera-bat.” (Picture my Rocky Colavito model Louisville Slugger wrapped in foam padding because that’s what it was. And, Quackenstein got it patented!) The patient held said “thera-bat” and beat the bejesus out of whichever doll was their tormentor, or all of the dolls if the patient was having an especially tough day.

Mr Clean

Pimp in his pimp finery. — **Nobel laureate in training**

When not exchanging pleasantries with prostitutes, I cleaned the apartments of their pimps, namely one Demetrius Jones. It may not surprise you to learn that Mr. Jones was a Negro gentleman whose teef… er, I mean teeth were jewel-encrusted. Every surface in his pad was glass or chrome – the better to facilitate coke sniffing by Mr. Jones and his bitches. (He frequently had female houseguests.) Many’s the time I would look up from mopping his kitchen floor to see a naked wench drinking orange juice straight from the carton. (I ask you!) She would then paddle to the toilet and use it without closing the door. (Some people!) She would then paddle back to the bed of Demetrius Jones yawning and sniffing all the way. (I just mopped there!) Did I imagine it or was she cruelly humming the tune to Cinderella? (Bitch!)

Hookers in Heat

New York street prostitutes — **Little Sisters of the Poor collecting for charity**

The New York summer of 1973, the summer of Carrie’s murder, simmered like every other New York summer – over-heated cabs, over-heated buses, over-heated subways, over-heated apartments, over-heated offices, over-heated people. Olga, the least talented of the untalented avant-garde actresses in our building, got very over-heated about a White hooker and her Black pimp who lived across the street. They looked like a super-hero team that had fallen on threadbare times. He squeezed his fat ass into gold-lamé hand-me-downs from Superfly while she favored silver-latex unitards. Unfortunately, the unitards did not favor her full-figured frame. This girl had been around the block several times. And, I don’t mean St. Mark’s Place. (I wouldn’t fuck her with your dick!) But, why/how this dumpy duo got on Olga’s untalented tits escaped me.

The Roach Motel

American, Oriental, German and Brown-banded ockroaches — **My roommates**

“Safety” is an over-heated, fifth-floor walk-up with hot-and-cold running cockroaches. They are everywhere. When I turn on the lights, the entire room moves. I often can’t face the scurrying brown multitude and leave the room in darkness. Then in a demonstration of the Darwinian principle of adaptation, the brown multitude mutates to albino making it easier for the roaches to conceal themselves on the white porcelain of our sink and tub. Their white camouflage is most effective in the bristles of our toothbrushes. The only give away is the barely detectable movement of the tiny, black, roach eyes. I want to believe that I always spot these albino interlopers before sticking my toothbrush into my mouth. I desperately want to believe that.

Psychedelic Slum

Hippies on St. Mark's Place in the Lower East Side of Manhattan — **“Hippie-central” aka St. Mark’s Place**

In the late 1960s, the Lower East Side and especially St. Mark’s Place is the epicenter of New York’s hippie-yippie-trippieworld. It is Haight-Ashbury East. It is lined with head shops, record-shops, bookshops, poster-shops and vintage-clothes shops. The sidewalk is packed with freaks, frauds and fools. It’s fun. But, by the early 1970s, when Rob and I move in, St. Mark’s is lined with strung-out hippie-junkies and emaciated speed-freaks – the kids who forgot to get off the train before it hit the wall. They are gawked-at by tardy tourists in from Omaha and Osaka. (“Is this where the hippies live?”) In 1968, I see a Black hippie digging for food in a macrobiotic restaurant’s garbage can. Fifty years later, I see him doing the very same and he looks remarkably healthy. I’m astounded that the macrobiotic manure hasn’t killed him.

Strung out hippie shooting heroin. — **“Damn, that vein was here a second ago.”**

In the early ’70s, now that their patchouli-oil bubble has burst in an explosion of exceptionally sour disappointment, the hippie-junkies and emaciated speed-freaks feel it is their right to “liberate” money from others – “This is a stick-up… er, I mean, this is a revolution, man.” Young actors are easy prey. So, when returning home late at night, Rob and I avoid the sidewalk and practice our broken-field running down the middle of the street. We figure this gives us more chance of evading any muggers or bullets headed our way.

Make it nice!

The Carnegie Delicatessen in New York City — **New York Jewish Deli Heaven**

When I am flush with cash, i.e. I have two bucks-a-day to splurge on food, I eat in a hole-in-the-wall Jewish deli on Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place. I am moving up in the culinary world as I move west across the Isle of Manhattan. Here I catch abuse from the ferocious Jewish waiters. They treat everyone with utter disdain but their barley soup and challah French toast are worth it. When they have decided you are a regular, they make one tiny concession toward recognizing your existence by growling your breakfast order thusly – “Gimme an omelet, make it nice!”

Jewish deli omelette — **They made it NICE**

The first time I hear my omelet ordered this way, I feel that I have won the Congressional Medal of Honor. The Key to The City. The Oscar. I stop strangers in the street and kvell, “Hey, I ordered an omelet and the waiter said, make it nice!” The strangers offer hearty congratulations but are envious, even dismayed – “Damn, they never said make it nice about my omelet.”