Still Foolin’ ’Em Page 7

  It was a risky scene, having Jodie dress up like this, but the plans for Jodie were to make him more of a subtle character, a compelling guy who just happened to be gay. I agreed to do the show because of that meeting. Susan Harris was a genius writer, and Paul Witt and Tony Thomas were really smart producers. It felt like we had the chance to do something special and important. Also, now that my stand-up career was taking off, I would be able to go out and be myself on talk shows and personal appearances, so I wouldn’t be trapped in the character.

  We shot the pilot and were put on the fall schedule for 1977. The show became the talk of the industry. Religious groups condemned it without even seeing it. It was on the cover of Time magazine before it was broadcast. Society’s mores were a lot different then. The lead character, Jessica Tate, who was played by the brilliant Katherine Helmond, was having an affair with a younger man, Robert Urich; women didn’t do that on television. Diana Canova’s character tried to seduce a priest in church (women didn’t do that, either), and then, of course, there was this young gay commercial director who liked to wear his mother’s clothes and was secretly dating an NFL quarterback. Sponsors were picketed, gay groups were initially unhappy, fearing that Jodie was a stereotype, and with all that working against us, we still were a ratings success, finishing in the top ten shows. Suddenly I was in the national spotlight.

  That first season, ABC executives were putting me on any show they could, sort of the Billy’s Married (but His Character Can’t Until 2013) Tour. Dinah Shore had a wonderful program that I had been on several times already; I loved doing it because she was so natural and easy to be with. Her producer called me to say that Mickey Mantle was going to be a guest and wouldn’t I like to be on with him? I was so nervous I didn’t know what to do. Then I came up with an idea.

  Jodie and his stepfather, Burt (Richard Mulligan).

  (© American Broadcast Companies, Inc.)

  My dad had shot some great home movies of Mickey, and I still had them. I would intercut those with footage of my brother Rip’s Bar Mitzvah and not tell Mickey anything before we watched it together. I also brought the program he had signed in 1956. My heart was pounding when Dinah introduced me. There was Mickey, looking great and smiling at me as I shook his hand. I took out the program and told the story of how he had signed it but said I had never seen him do it, so could he verify that it was his signature? He laughed and said yes indeed he did sign like that back then, but he agreed to re-sign it. So, twenty-one years later, Mickey Mantle re-signed my program. I then showed him and the audience the home movies. I set it up that these were treasured memories of my hero. Mickey was totally sucked in. We rolled the film; it started with him throwing on the sidelines of the great old park, and suddenly it cut to my relatives doing the bunny hop and eating chopped liver. Mickey and the audience went wild, and after I described all the strange faces of my relatives in the flickering film, it cut back to Mickey, who promptly struck out. He loved it. That was it. We became friends right then and there. And that friendship would lead us to many unlikely encounters.

  Playing a gay man in front of a live audience was difficult. My boyfriend on the show was played by Bob Seagren, a former Olympic pole vaulter. We had scenes where we said we loved each other, and the audience would laugh nervously. That was new information for people in 1977, and it made them and me uncomfortable. The lines were difficult to deliver, and hearing that nervous laughter made me angry. I felt they were laughing at Jodie, not with him. Sometimes I wanted to stop the scene and yell at the audience, “What are you laughing at?” But as time went on, and the character developed, viewers at home cared about Jodie, even wanting him to get sole custody of a child he had fathered. In a great cast of insane characters, Jodie, along with Benson, became one of the more sane ones. We continued to build the character, and I will always be proud of the role, but it sure was hard in the beginning. To compound the confusion, I had done a movie called Rabbit Test, directed by Joan Rivers. I played the first pregnant man. It wasn’t just that the movie didn’t work; it came out at the same time Soap did, so now the gay guy was also the pregnant guy? I try not to look back and think about mistakes, but that was a big one. We should have been more patient and waited for the right movie to come along.

  A month after Soap went on the air, Lindsay was born. Despite the success of Soap, I kept watching Saturday Night Live and couldn’t help but dwell on what could have been. As I sit here playing connect the dots with the liver spots on my hands, I think that my twenties were the most tumultuous times of my life. In March, I turned thirty. Oy.

  The Elbow

  We’re at the movies and I felt it: a sharp jab from Janice, who in her prime could have taken out Metta World Peace on a fast break. I just got the elbow.

  “Ow! What was that for?”

  “You’re nodding off.”

  “No I’m not, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “Well, everyone’s looking at you—your head was back and you were drooling.”

  I glance down at my shirt and there’s a spreading circle of Red Vines juice. I nodded off for thirty seconds and it turned into a mob hit. Nodding off: a new thing to add to the Whitman’s Sampler of fun items I’m developing, like the forgetting of names. That’s always a great one. I try to handle it with the old “Hey, great to see you, long time no see, you know you have such an interesting and rare name, how do you spell it?”

  “B-O-B.”

  Then you have to fake it. “Bob, I don’t mean that—I mean your last name.”

  “S-M-I-T-H.”

  It’s better when I’m with Janice as I’m blanking out on whoever it is who can’t be more excited to see me. I can finesse the introduction. “You remember Janice,” I’ll say to the person who is hugging me, and then, of course, he introduces himself.

  “Hi, I’m Magic Johnson.” It works every time.

  * * *

  The forgetting of names started a few years ago. We were watching Do the Right Thing on television. It’s a great Spike … uh, what’s his last name … shit … Lee, whew, movie, and an actor I’ve known for years is on-screen, and I go blank. I mean totally blank. Janice also is dumbfounded at who this actor is, and it’s driving us crazy. This is before Google and all the other aids I now can use when there’s a cave-in in the main shaft. Who the fuck is that? We describe moments we’ve had with him, places we’ve been together, things he’s said to me … nothing. Finally, I call my daughter Lindsay and start to describe the movie, and in two seconds she says, “Danny Aiello.”

  “Danny Aiello, of course—man, that was so weird,” I say. Lindsay laughs, and before we get off, I say, “Thanks, Jenny.”

  It’s such a stunning moment when it happens, like hitting a brick wall. So now when I can’t remember an actor in a movie or who it is that’s hugging me hello, or what’s that thing I eat soup with, we call it a Danny Aiello. It’s not just me. I find comfort in the fact that most of my friends—whose names I can’t come up with right now—are having the same problem. My doctor says it’s par for the course and not a symptom of anything sinister. He suggests that I have a physical, and I tell him we did one two days ago, and he says, “Did we?”

  * * *

  This nodding off thing is just the latest annoying development in my life.

  If I’m at a play and the curtain goes up and I see a secretary alone in the boss’s office, silently looking for something on his desk, I’m gone.

  A stately manor with a maid dusting: I’m gone.

  If there’s a castle and an accent, see ya.

  I can’t help it; it’s just the way my body is now. It’s like I’m an addict and five minutes of public snoozing is my heroin.

  Movies and plays are an important part of my life, and now every time I go I’m fraught with terror that I’m going to nod off. On the drive over I start to worry: Will I stay up, or will Janice break another one of my ribs? She doesn’t mean to hit me so hard, but at my age, it qualifies as elder abuse.
/>   * * *

  Janice and I discuss what to do. “What do you want me to do if you start to nod?” she’ll ask. My answer will depend on how badly I wanted to see this particular movie or play, if my ribs are healed, and do we know anyone in the show? Usually it’s “You won’t have to, I feel good,” even though inside I’m actually looking forward to a quick nap: it was a tough day and I need a chance to catch up because, as usual, I’ve been up all night.

  We get to the movie theater, and as we’re buying the tickets, another thing happens that annoys the hell out of me. I ask the person in the box office for the senior discount and they go, “Really, you’re over sixty?” Vanity causes me to say, “Just kidding,” and now I’m mad that I’m out an extra couple of bucks. But on the plus side, maybe the adrenaline will keep me awake.

  Once we get inside, I decide to take preventative measures. I order a double espresso. The problem with that is (1) I’m going to miss the second half of the movie running to the men’s room every three minutes and (2) chemicals tend to have the opposite of their intended effect on me. Caffeine makes me sleepy. Aspirin gives me headaches. Pot used to make me energetic, and you don’t want to know what Viagra does.

  Broadway plays are worse than movies because they’re not that loud and there are actual human beings onstage, some of whom I know, who can see me going night-night. In the last few years, I’ve never made it through an entire show.

  I saw The Music Ma … I know there was trouble, I just don’t know where.

  Then there was The Book of Mor … Death of a Sale … and Mary Pop …

  If I had seen my own show, I would have only made it to 100 Sundays.

  What makes it worse when I nod off is that I’m recognizable. People will look to see if I’m laughing and instead they’ll see me fighting to stay awake, with head bobs, lionlike yawns, and then sometimes my head will swing violently backward, into the top of the seat. I must look like one of those crash-test dummies when they hit a wall in slow motion. At least I am not alone in this. Sometimes I glance across the row I’m sitting in and most of the men look like they’re heroin addicts on a field trip.

  The only solution is to get Broadway to adjust to us. All shows should be half an hour long, with two intermissions.

  Once the lights go down and the curtain rises—the moment when we’re supposed to relax and give ourselves over to the magic of the theater—it’s on. I dig my fingernails into my arm or give myself an Indian burn, hoping the pain will keep me awake. I cross my legs, I keep my legs apart, and I try tapping my foot. I even bury my head in the program like I’m going to read in the dark. Then, depending on how good or bad the play is, sometimes I make a decision to just embrace it and go down for the count for a while.

  Finally I came up with what I thought was the perfect solution. I decided that the next play I went to, I would make sure to sit right up front, so that the intensity of the performance and the closeness of the stage movements would keep me alert.

  The play was Fences, starring the great James Earl Jones. Mr. Jones is a legend, a towering presence on the live stage. He’s so much more than Darth Vader and the voice of CNN. We walk into the theater, the usher shows us to our prime seats, and we’re the only two people up front. There is no one else. I can’t understand this at all.

  This is crazy—our tickets are in the third row, and there’s no one in the first two rows. The lights go down, and the play begins. Jones makes his entrance. He’s mesmerizing. He’s playing a loud, dynamic former baseball player and, as always, his diction is flawless; he pronounces every inch of every letter, his booming voice resonating throughout the theater. I am watching a master at work. Then it happens. My eyes get heavy—NO! They start to close—DAMN IT!! I force them open; they want none of that—they flutter to half-mast. Just as they close, it happens: THE ELBOW! If Janice were a boxer, she’d be the greatest body puncher since Joe Frazier.

  “I’m okay,” I lie.

  “It’s embarrassing—we’re supposed to have dinner with him afterward,” whispers Janice. I hold on for a few minutes, but then my head flops back, and suddenly I’m Jack Nicholson with the lobotomy at the end of Cuckoo’s Nest. I’m out. Then blam! Something wet hits my neck. Then it hits me again. It’s a saliva storm. I look at Janice, and she’s holding her program in a defensive-shield position. I’m now awake, and I realize why no one is in the first two rows. Perfect diction and booming voice and pronouncing every syllable means a spit bath from James Earl Jones. Seriously, if this were Guantánamo, it would be considered waterboarding.

  On the plus side, I stayed awake for the rest of the play.

  * * *

  I’ve also been on the other side. I’ve been onstage when I wanted to spit on people because they weren’t watching. When I was doing 700 Sundays, I’d be pouring my heart out and then I would see someone out cold. I wanted to jump off the stage and shake them: “Hey, fuckface, is my life that boring?”

  The problem is, as a performer I’m annoyed and upset; as an AARP member, I get it. We just can’t help it. When the darkness of the theater combines with the coolness of the air-conditioning, it’s toxic. But it doesn’t help if they raise the temperature: warm theater plus big meal before the show and it’s the narcolepsy express.

  My worst time being on the other side of the “nodders” was when I did 700 Sundays in West Palm Beach. It was the Kravis Center, a beautiful place, and we sold out our five-show run in a very short time. On opening night, I was really excited because I knew that a lot of New Yorkers, including family and friends, were down in Florida and would be in the crowd. So as I made my entrance onstage at eight o’clock, I was really looking forward to a great reception.

  Nothing. Crickets. A modest round of applause. It threw me. Audiences had been wonderful to me during my season on Broadway and on our tours, so I was used to a loud and cheering crowd when I walked out to begin the play. I looked out, and there was an ocean of seniors. From the stage, their hair colors looked like Vermont in the fall. There was every shade of brown and orange and yellow, plus a bluish color that can best be described as “old.”

  Meanwhile, in the second row, maybe ten feet from me, a guy with binoculars was staring at me like he was bird-watching. I had to keep telling myself, Don’t look at him or you’ll laugh. The first act was a struggle. I worked much harder for my laughs than I’d ever had to. At intermission, I asked the stage manager what was going on: Why had there been so little applause when I’d walked out? He said, “Billy, you woke them up—they were stunned. The show starts at eight; they got here at six so they could get first crack at the hearing devices. We open the house at six because they can’t stand around for too long, and they come into the theater and fall asleep. You got the best reception any show has gotten here!”

  Another night I was onstage, and in the opening minutes of the first act, I saw a red light blinking in the back of the orchestra seats. Damn it! I thought. Someone’s videotaping my show! So at intermission I told the stage manager where I’d seen the camera light so we could stop this jerk from pirating the performance.

  The stage manager went into the audience with a security guard and returned shortly.

  “Did you get him?” I asked.

  “Billy, that blinking red light is part of his life-support system in his wheelchair. That’s how his nurse knows he’s breathing.”

  “Can they put some black tape over the light?” I asked. “It’s distracting.”

  “No, if the nurse doesn’t see the blinking light, she’ll think he’s dead.”

  The nurse had also said that the blinking light keeps her from nodding off in the theater; apparently, staying awake is also a problem for her.

  So maybe that’s it. Maybe nodding off is just a precursor to what lies ahead. We nod off a little more each day, and soon the nodding offs blend together, until eventually it’s one long permanent sleep. Which is why I’ve made some changes in my living will. If the end is near, I don’t want to be ho
oked up to a machine; I don’t want extraordinary measures or the elbow. Just wheel my hospital bed to a theater showing a movie with Danny Aiello, give me a kiss good-bye, a small popcorn, and a medium Diet Coke for fourteen dollars, and tiptoe away until the blinking light goes off.

  Take Care of Your Teeth

  I shouldn’t complain so much. Life at sixty-five is good. I have had one house, one wife, my real nose, my real name, and most of my teeth. And the last part is a major reason why life is pretty good. Because when you hit your mid-sixties, you have to take care of your teeth. It’s a generational thing—I learned it from my eighty-six-year-old grandmother.

  Susie Gabler had perfect teeth. White beauties with no cavities. She took great care of them—always kept them by her bedside in a glass of water. The first time I saw them come out of her mouth she was in bed, and I was sitting next to her. In the middle of saying how proud she was of me, she suddenly reached into her mouth and pulled out her entire set of uppers and lowers. Splash, into the glass of water they went, and suddenly my beloved grandma looked like an eighty-six-year-old hockey player, or a woman with a horizontal vagina for a mouth.

  “Take care of your teeth, Billy. Take care of your teeth.” I think that is what she said, because with her lips flapping in the breeze, she could have said, “Pass me the marble cake.” I was shocked, and slightly nauseous. It was a terrible thing for a grandson to see, even though I was thirty-two years old.