Still Foolin’ ’Em Read online

  2013

  HIM: Wow, you’re so wet down there.

  HER: Oh sorry—I coughed before.

  1973

  HER: What do you want to fuck to?

  HIM: Marvin Gaye.

  2013

  HER: Move a little bit to the right and turn up the sound on the TV.

  HIM: I can’t hear you, the TV is on.… Oops, I’m done.

  1973

  HIM: Look at you, you’re so beautiful.

  HER: Awwwww.

  2013

  HIM: I can’t believe these tits.

  HER: Stop looking in the mirror and come to bed.

  1973

  HIM: God, I’m hard.

  HER: God, you’re hard.

  2013

  HER: Did you take your Viagra?

  HIM: What?

  HER: God, you’re hard of hearing.

  HIM: You lost an earring?

  1973

  HIM: Why are your eyes open?

  HER: Because I love to watch you make love to me.

  2013

  HIM: What are you looking at?

  HER: The drapes don’t match the paint.

  1973

  HER: Let’s stay home and make love.

  HIM: I love rainy days.

  2013

  HER: Let’s make love …

  HIM: My hip hurts, it’s going to rain.

  1973

  HER: Wow, that must be eight inches.

  HIM: Wait until I get excited.

  2013

  HER: Wow, that’s so hard …

  HIM: The doctor said it’s benign.

  1973

  HER: I love to feel your heartbeat through your shirt.

  HIM: Every beat is for you.

  2013

  HER: Maybe it’s your pacemaker.

  HIM: Call 911, I’m having palpitations.

  1973

  HIM: Now, now!

  HER: I’m there, I’m there!

  2013

  HER: Now, now!

  HIM: Be patient—Larry at the barbershop says it takes thirty minutes to work because first the blood has to accumulate in the shaft.

  1973

  HIM (whispering): Tell me what you want me to do.

  HER (sotto voce): Put your finger in there.

  HIM: Wow, I’ve never done that.

  HER: It’s wonderful.

  2013

  HIM: Tell me what you want me to do.

  HER: Get me my vibrator and go for a walk.

  1973

  HIM: Wear something sexy to bed.

  HER: How about just a smile?

  2013

  HIM: Have you seen my sweatpants?

  HER: They’re in the drawer. And wear some socks, your toenails cut my leg.

  1973

  HIM: Let’s do something we’ve never done before.

  HER: Turn me over, baby.

  2013

  HIM: Can we try something new?

  HER: Oy.

  * * *

  Oy. A universal word that sums up how you feel when you hit sixty-five. Many people have said “Oy.” I think it was Custer’s last word when he saw all those Sioux Indians on the hill. Oy: it was what King Kong mumbled when he saw those planes buzzing him on the Empire State Building—until the studio cut it out because they thought it made him sound too Jewish. Oy: it was what Osama bin Laden said when he saw the Navy SEAL at the bottom of the stairs. Oy: it is what life is like at sixty-five … and as I approached my sixty-fifth birthday, I couldn’t help but think, How the hell did I get here?

  Growing Up Crystal

  “You know how angry kids will sometimes say, ‘I didn’t ask to be born’? Well, you did,” my mother used to tell me. “Your brothers took hours to arrive—not you. Thirty minutes, tops. Around my eighth month you started kicking a lot and I thought I could hear you saying, ‘Let’s go, I’m breaking your water.’”

  On March 14, 1948, at 7:36 A.M., I arrived at Doctors Hospital in Manhattan, overlooking Gracie Mansion and the East River. I am the youngest of Jack and Helen’s three boys. My brother Richard, known as Rip, is two years older than I, and Joel, my big brother—literally: he’s six foot two—is six years older. We lived on Davidson Avenue in the Bronx until the lure of the suburbs seduced my parents, who had a dream to own a house with a lawn the size of a toupee. My folks followed my grandparents, who were perpetually not well and whose doctor had advised that the salty sea air of Long Beach, Long Island, a lovely, quaint beach town, would do wonders for them. Not true: they were always sick, and anything metal they owned, including my grandfather’s hip, rusted quickly.

  Long Beach, 1953.

  My grandmother Susie Gabler was a large woman of Russian heritage, weighing in at over two hundred pounds, and my grandpa Julius was a diminutive, cranky Austrian who had twin albino brothers. Tiny little pink Jewish elves we called the lab rats. Very rare, they would fetch a grand sum on eBay today. They usually wore woolly three-piece suits, and when they stood together they looked like salt and pepper shakers. Grandma, who loved to laugh, was the dominant force in the family and actually is credited on Wikipedia with inventing guilt. For instance, once she asked my mom to take her to a doctor’s appointment, and when Mom said she couldn’t, Grandma responded, “I bought your house for you.” She also put the fear of God in me, literally. If any of us did something she felt was wrong, she’d tell us, “God will punish you.” One time when I was about six, she told me not to skip. I did anyhow and fell, and she said, “See, God punished you.” Terrifying. Grandpa was slowed by arthritis and crankitis. He and I understood each other. He was in pain a lot, and I was pissed that I was short. Yes, I had a case of little guy’s disease for a while. It ended about a week ago, when I finally understood that my big “spurt” had already happened.

  Nonetheless, Growing Up Crystal was a great time. My dad was the manager of a popular record store in New York City, called the Commodore Music Shop, which was owned by Grandpa Julius and his sons Milt and Danny. Milt had transformed the place from a hardware store into the center of jazz in Manhattan when he got rid of the light bulbs and whisk brooms Grandpa was peddling and created Commodore Records, the first independent jazz label of its time, and sold hot jazz records that he produced himself. When Milt left to become an executive at Decca Records, my dad took over as manager and became the go-to guy for jazz enthusiasts. He also produced jazz concerts on the weekends at a place called the Central Plaza, on Second Avenue in Manhattan. Dad turned all of us on to jazz, and its great stars were family friends. It was also Dad who saw how much I loved being funny and would let me stay up on school nights to watch the great comedians of the fifties on television. It was Dad who brought home comedy albums from the store so I could listen and learn. And it was my mom and dad whom I most loved to make laugh.

  Sixth grade at East School. On to junior high.

  My mom was our rock. Dad worked six days a week at two jobs, so much of our time was spent with her. She was a funny and graceful woman who could sing and tap-dance and was always the life of the party. In her twenties, she worked at Macy’s, where she was in the store’s theater group, and she was often the voice of Minnie Mouse in the Thanksgiving Day Parade.

  Uncle Milt was the celebrity of the family. A force in the music industry, he produced more than thirty records that sold over a million copies each, including “Rock Around the Clock.” He worked with stars such as Sammy Davis Jr., Bing Crosby, and Nat King Cole. But it was my uncle Berns, my dad’s brother, who was the actual “star” to us. A large, unself-conscious Saint Bernard of a man, he just loved to be funny and was always the center of attention. He also would get us to perform with him—and we loved to perform. My brothers and I would do skits for our extended family, usually memorizing a bit we’d seen on Steve Allen’s show or Ernie Kovacs’s brilliant program. Joel was fast and razor sharp; Rip was the singer, was all personality; and I was simply nuts: the Jerry Lewis of the three of us. I couldn’t wait for the living room to fill u
p with relatives so I could get up on the coffee table and imitate them. When we’d go to a relative’s home for a holiday visit, my mom would make sure to pack our props and anything else my brothers and I needed for our “act.” She was our test audience, our out-of-town tryout before we brought it into the big room.

  During school shows, I drove my classmates crazy, wandering off the script and improvising if a funny thought occurred to me. I wasn’t the loudmouth, class-clown type of guy. I was never one of those kids who was always “on,” but I loved attention. I guess when you’re the little brother with two charismatic older brothers, it’s a natural craving. I also had other cravings. It was in the wings of a third-grade play that I not only kissed a girl for the first time but had my first erection. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, which probably made it more exciting. I was scared and confused about what was happening in my pants. Then I thought, Oh no! Is God punishing me by stiffening me? I made a mental note that in the future when I get an erection, not to think about my grandma. At my twentieth high school reunion I saw the recipient of that first exchange of fluids, and she introduced me to Lois, her mannish and unsmiling “partner.” I took my first aside and asked, “Was the kiss that bad?”

  * * *

  I’ve written and talked about my hometown a great deal, but for new readers I must once again say that Long Beach was the perfect place to grow up, with its pristine white sand beaches and the pounding Atlantic on one side and the serene Reynolds Channel on the other. We took our bikes everywhere, and the two miles of boardwalk offered a paradise of games of chance like skee-ball and automated poker, a Ferris wheel, a batting cage, and miniature golf. There was an abandoned three-story concrete lookout tower that had been used in World War II to search the sea for enemy submarines. As teenagers, we’d sneak in and smoke a cigarette, grab a stolen kiss, or make water balloons out of condoms and drop them on unsuspecting passersby.

  The Laurel Theater was an old-fashioned movie palace with red velvet seats and a balcony where petting was permitted. On Saturdays I’d go to the matinee and watch the Three Stooges and Green Hornet shorts that preceded the main attraction. Besides the ball fields, this was my escape. Walking into that darkened theater was akin to walking into Yankee Stadium—which I did for the first time on May 30, 1956. Dad took Joel, Rip, and me to our first game. Louis Armstrong had given Dad his box for the game and even arranged for us to get our program signed by the greatest star in baseball, Mickey Mantle. Mantle hit the most spectacular home run in Yankee history that afternoon, coming within inches of being the first ball hit completely out of the park. From that day on, all I really wanted to be was a Yankee. A Yankee who was also a comedian. Someday both dreams would come true.

  Our house at 549 East Park was small, with two bedrooms and a den. It was a two-family dwelling, with another family living in the apartment above us. The main drag of town, Park Avenue, had a mall running down the center, with traffic on each side heading east and west. We played football and baseball on that bumpy, uneven grass strip; we figured that if you could field a ground ball on it, you could play anywhere. The Crystal boys were always out there. Often I organized tackle football games with my junior high friends, and cars would pull over to watch us. When they installed streetlights, we were able to hold night games. I loved when it snowed heavily; once the flurries began to fall, the phone calls started: “The mall, eight o’clock.” Soon we had a dozen kids playing football under the lights, reflected by the beautiful falling snow. Mom would heat up a big pot of milk on the stove, and at halftime everyone came in for hot chocolate. The boiling milk lent its name to our games, Mutchkes. “Mutchkes” was what she called the gunky skin that rose to the top of the boiling milk. When Mom would skim it off and throw it in the sink, we’d all yell, “MUTCHKES!” After a while, when a snowstorm started, all we’d have to do was call one another, say “Mutchkes,” and hang up. Then we’d all meet on the mall at eight.

  Our house was around the corner from my elementary school, known simply as East School. Chuck Polin, the head of physical education, took my crazy energy and channeled it into tumbling. He taught me that form was crucial. Even as a fourth or fifth grader, I understood how my body should move, and I worked hard to be graceful. He would open the gym before and after school, and Rip and I started to excel in athletics. Mr. Polin would also hold “gym nights” and invite parents to watch the kids do the floor exercise routines he’d taught us. From a running start, I was able to dive over five or six kids lying on their backs shoulder to shoulder on a mat. Each time a new kid would take his place, the audience would cheer and someone—usually my mom—would yell, “Go get ’em!” It was exciting and, frankly, I loved performing in front of the crowd. Performing. The key word of my life.

  * * *

  I was also a band geek. I played clarinet in the band and the marching band. I’d wanted to play trumpet or drums, but Rip had said, “Pick the clarinet and we can play duets together.” I looked up to him so much that I agreed, stupidly thinking that you had to have two of the same instruments to play a duet. The cool musicians who would stop by our house taught us some Dixieland licks. Pee Wee Russell, a gentle, slight man, played clarinet with a haunting, breathy tone; he is still considered one of the great soloists. He advised me to always “tease it out,” saying that young players tend to blow too hard. When I was ten, I actually got to sit in on “When the Saints Go Marching In” with a group of Dixieland stars. I loved it, and for a time I acted like I was a jazz man. I wore a beret and sunglasses and borrowed money from my father.

  1959, my first tuxedo.

  I had a high-pitched voice until I was ten and my tonsils were removed—suddenly I was Pavarotti. It took two weeks for my throat to heal, and during my time away from school, my class was taught the basics of algebra. When I came back I was lost. Everyone was so far ahead, and I just didn’t grasp the concepts. I never really recovered from that. To this day, the only math I can do is figuring out someone’s batting average. Especially if they are 0 for 300.

  I do remember puberty, though I’m not sure I actually went through it. I didn’t get awkward, I didn’t get a mustache, not many pimples, no hair on my chest or legs, which led me to believe I was part Navajo. I stayed small until I was twelve, and right before my Bar Mitzvah planning started, we went to Dr. Griboff, the family physician (and also Don Rickles’s cousin, which is not why we chose him). With Rip and Joel having already reached “normal” size and beyond, my mom worried that I was not growing properly. So Griboff X-rayed my growth plates and we waited nervously in his office for the results. When he sat down behind his desk, he said the words that sealed my Yankee fate: “Maybe five-eight.”

  How the hell did this happen? Joel was over six feet, Rip five-ten, and the only thing keeping me from being a lab mouse was pink eyes. I was devastated. “We need to stimulate your growth hormones,” the doctor said. So he gave me these pills that were supposed to make me hungry, the theory being “eat more, grow more.” Well, I ate more, didn’t grow more. I just got fat, bursting through the series of Robert Hall suits that were to be my Bar Mitzvah ensemble. I gained nineteen pounds in two months and grew one inch. I was in real danger of going from the quick little second baseman to the chubby kid catcher. I ate everything on everyone’s plates. “What’s yours is mine” was my motto. Rip nicknamed me “Are you gonna finish that?” I just couldn’t stop eating, and they had to take me off the pills because I’d turned into a little white shark. So when the big day of the Bar Mitzvah rolled around, so did I.

  My synagogue was a Reform temple, which means the service was half in Hebrew and half in Latin. Not only was I the last one in my family to get Bar Mitzvahed, I was the last one in my Hebrew school class, which means I had seen at least twenty services and knew what was coming. The Bar Mitzvah boy is basically the rabbi for the day. He conducts the service, leads the congregation in prayer, and finally he gets the chance to read from the Torah itself, which is the most dramatic mom
ent in the show—I mean service.

  After that reading, there is a moment in every service that is truly emotional. In our temple, the lights dimmed, heavenly organ music played, the ark containing the Torah was closed, and then the rabbi called the Bar Mitzvah boy over. As the music reached a crescendo, the rabbi, the most learned and trusted man in the Jewish community, would lean over, whisper some sacred, poignant, and holy words to the chosen one, and then seconds later the thirteen-year-old “man” would burst into tears. As the music swelled, he would leave the rabbi, come off the stage and into the audience, and hug his mother and grandparents; then he’d bound back onstage, like a Tony Award winner (which I am—wait, did that slip?), hug his father (women weren’t allowed on the stage), and return to his seat, wiping the tears from his cheeks. It was the dramatic conclusion to the service, and soon we would all be eating stuffed cabbage and greeting relatives, who would spit Swedish meatballs on the boy’s mohair suit as they handed him a Jewish War Bond that cost eighteen dollars.

  After my friends’ Bar Mitzvahs, I would ask them what the rabbi had said, to try to find out what magical insight from 5,721 years of suffering had been given to them on that day, but no one would divulge a word. They would either say, “We can’t tell you” or “You’ll find out when it’s your turn.” Even Joel and Rip, my very own brothers, refused to tell me.

  Finally, March 25, 1961, arrived. My moment. I had never been better. Even though I was standing on an apple crate so I could be seen—a very sturdy apple crate, as I was still wider than I was tall. I did a tight twenty to open, had the crowd standing, sitting, reading responsively, nodding, smiling; I led them in silent prayer, did my blessings, even chanted a few, gave a really strong speech that advocated a ban on fossil fuels and equality in marriage. Then I was called to the ark, read from the ancient Torah, and the big stuff was done. After the Torah was dressed and put back in the ark, the rabbi motioned me over. The music started, and my heart began pounding: This is it! I was about to drink from the cup of knowledge. Wearing his home uniform of a black cloth robe and a puffy satin yarmulke, he put his learned, aging hands on my shoulders, leaned in close, and with that herring-and-pickle breath of his, whispered the words I was sure had come from God’s lips to my ears: