A Conversation with the Mann (13 page)

Your mama must've been a bee … ? Oh, that's good. I wouldn't even talk to myself after hearing that. How about I really get
her to think I'm a joker? How about: Your daddy must've been a camel 'cause I love your humps.

The door opened.

She walked out.

Her good looks got multiplied at short range. She was younger looking, too. A lot. Eighteen if a day.

I started to say hello to her. She looked in my direction and I got caught up in those doe eyes. All my lines got aborted
down to “Hi.”

“Hello,” she said. One word riding that soft, high voice of hers. One word. In an instant I heard it over and over a thousand
sweet times. After that I was no good for anything but standing where I was and watching the girl hail a cab, get in, and
be gone from my life.

Gradually Fran's voice started to reach me—a light working its way through the all-encompassing shroud of Thomasina.

“You didn't do anything,” Fran said.

“What do you mean I didn't—”

“You didn't do anything, that's what I mean. Except for standing there and looking goofy, you did nothing.”

“I said hello.”

“You said hi, and soft as you did I'd have figured you were trying to keep it a secret.” A big, bright smile. Frances was
having the time of her life.

“I'm moving slow.” I tried to make it seem me letting Thomasina disappear into the city was all part of some genius plan.
“I'm not trying to scare the girl off, you know? Let her get familiar with me first. Take things gradual.”

“You take things any more gradually, you'll get in your first date around nineteen seventy-five.”

“That's not funny.”

“I just hope you're still young enough to give her a show, and I'm not talking about your comedy act.”

Sarcastic: “You're a good friend, Fran. Really. You really are.”

She took me by the arm. “C'mon, Sidney,” pulling me toward one of the endless number of Village coffeehouses, “let's go float
your hopes in some Joe.”

As we walked I looked back up the avenue and made a promise to the vanished taxicab: One day I would be with her. One day
I would be famous and successful, and I would be with Thomasina.

“Y
OU'VE GOT PERSONALITY,
you know how to tell a joke … You've got talent.”

S
ID WASN'T A SHORT MAN,
but being five foot six didn't qualify him as tall. He was hunched slightly, lacking a good amount of hair, had glasses that
didn't seem to help his vision, and he didn't look his age—which is to say you couldn't figure if he was older or younger
than he appeared. What Sid Kindler also didn't look like was the guy who'd help yank me out of the Fourteenth Street Theater
and set me on the road to becoming one of the most popular young black comedians—one of the most popular comics, period—at
the close of the 1950s.

First time I met Sid he was hanging around backstage at the theater. Saw him. Didn't give him much thought. There were always
people hanging around backstage—other acts, friends of other acts, friends of the house who got snuck in so they could get
a better look at the strippers as they came bouncing offstage. I was sitting on a stool in a corner, slightly turned toward
the wall—back to the circus of people around me so I could run through my set. Regulars in the theater knew when an act was
rehearsing; they faced a wall or a mirror, body gestures got exaggerated, and their lips moved but in silence. And when an
act was trying to get themselves together, you left them alone. Everyone left me alone. Sid was the exception. He circled
around me, swimming a bit closer with each sweep, giving me a good looking-over same as you'd give a museum piece you dug
but didn't quite get. Finally he stopped and stood and stared. Not knowing who he was, not feeling like talking, I let him
have his gawk. He took it. Going on a couple of minutes, he took it until, a fly doing a slow crawl over my flesh, he became
unignorable.

“Is there something you wanted?” I asked but not too harshly. He was working on my last good nerve, but he was a white man
working on my last good nerve. My black self had been conditioned to offer white people, in all circumstance, every nicety.

“You talk too fast.”

I started again, slower: “Is there something—”

Shaking his head: “Onstage. You've gotten in this habit of talking fast, racing through your routine to get to the next joke
'cause you're not getting a laugh. Half the reason you're not getting a laugh is 'cause you're talking too fast for the schmucks
out there to hear what you're saying.”

What struck me out of all that, beside the immediate sense that he, whoever he was, was right, I had been rushing my act,
was something he'd thrown into the mix but thrown in casually. He'd said I'd gotten in the habit. He'd said it like he'd caught
my act before. Not once or twice, but a bunch of times. He said it like he'd been studying me.

He said: “And you change up your routine when it's not working, throw out one of your closers. But then you got nowhere to
go, no jokes to top it with. That's why it's called a closer; you close with it. Changing up might buy you a quick chuckle,
but it won't help much in the long run.”

“Anything else?” I was sarcastic with that.

He missed it. “A couple of new bits wouldn't kill you. A couple of new bits that aren't somebody else's. That thing about
going shopping with your girl, holding her purse while she's looking around—heard that on Steve Allen three weeks ago.”

“I know. I wasn't … I borrow jokes sometimes. It's only … when the act is a little slow.”

“It's a crutch is what it is, okay for when you're first starting out. How long you been doing stand-up?”

“A year. A little more.”

“Too long to be doing other comics' bits. You've got to have your own jokes, your own voice. You do if you ever want to get
out of here.” To that he added humbly: “Hope you don't mind …”

“No.” A lie. His comments were needles no matter they were on the mark. Maybe more so because of it. The fact that I was still
at the Fourteenth Street Theater told me loud and clear my act had problems. I didn't need to hear it from some Charlie off
the street. But he wasn't poking me to poke me. He was laying things out to be helpful, not harsh—your favorite uncle giving
you tips with your Little League swing. You couldn't hardly get hot about that.

He stuck out his hand. “Sid Kindler.”

“Jackie Mann,” though I was pretty sure he knew exactly who I was. We shook. Forget how he looked, Sid had just about the
most solid grip I'd felt since I was at that logging camp.

Without at all working his way into things: “You have any representation?”

“Representation? You mean like an agent?”

“Agent. Manager.”

“There was a guy once I paid twenty bucks up front to rep me.”

“Did he get you anything?”

“He got my twenty bucks.”

A bit of a smile, then: “I'd only take ten percent, and that's after I start getting you work.”

“Thought there was so much wrong with my act.”

“You've got minuses, but you've got pluses. You're a good-looking kid, comfortable onstage … sorta.”

“I'm well spoken,” I said with a beam of a smile. My one honed skill. I was excited to offer it up as a sales pitch.

Sid shrugged, about as impressed by that as if I'd said I'd mastered the art of making ice cubes. Getting back to what he'd
seen of my act: “You've got personality, you know how to tell a joke … You've got talent.”

In all the times I'd been trying to get laughs, from when I was a kid in school until my Fourteenth Street days, no one had
ever once told me that: You have talent. Somebody might've said I was funny, or good with bits, but so's the office drunk
at the company Christmas party. I'd always thought I was talented. Told myself I was. But when you're the only one saying
so—especially when you're the only person saying so after you've just finished a set for six bodies at the crack of dawn—you
have a way of sounding like Charlie Denial trying to make yourself believe the not-true. For the first time it wasn't just
me trying to convince myself of things. With those couple of words, “you have talent,” I wasn't alone in my belief anymore.
At the very least, I wasn't alone in my delusion.

“Listen, Jackie, I handle some acts, nobody too big. Nobody big at all to be honest. But I think … I can do something with
you. Definitely get you some road work, get you time on some real stages. And when you're ready, I've got a few favors I could
call in, a couple of city rooms that'll give you a look. When you're ready,” Sid stressed. “You don't have to say anything
now, but give it some th—”

“Yes!” What was there to think about? Go with Sid, or go with another of the hundreds of agents who never came my way? “Yes,
sir. I'd be honored to work with you.”

“Honored's a little thick, but I'll take the yes.”

From his pocket a business card got produced and handed over. Nothing special about the card. Nothing fancy. Flat black lettering
giving Sid's name and office address. Just a card. To this day, yellowed, worn, I still have that card.

Sid said: “Come around tomorrow and we'll talk about things. After ten and before five and not between noon and one. Thanks,
Jackie.”

He was thanking me?

Sid got going for the stage door.

As he started away I got a hinky feeling that shoved aside all my excitement as if Sid was the last lifeboat on a sinking
ship and he was about to sail off, leaving the unlucky to drown. A little bit of boldness crept into my stomach.

Boldness.

I barely knew what to do with the feeling other than make sure Sid didn't take another step.

“Mr. Kindler,” I called at him.

He stopped, turned back.

“Could you wait one second, sir?”

“Wait for—”

“Just one second. Please.”

A stripper came offstage, clothes bundled in her arms. The path she took to the dressing rooms swept her right past Sid. He
gave her no notice.

“All right.”

I juked my way around backstage, running an obstacle course of milling acts and half-naked women, my head jerking around looking
… looking … looking for … “Fran!” Like I'd been doing with my jokes, she was in a corner, singing quietly to herself. “C'mon.”

Panicked, afraid she'd missed her cue: “Am I on?”

“You've got to meet somebody.”

“Is this a fix-up? I don't have time for that. I need to go over my number.”

Forget it. My hand to Fran's wrist. I yanked her back the way I'd come. I'd explain things to her same time I explained things
to Sid.

“Mr. Kindler”—I started in before me and Fran had even finished covering the distance—“this is Frances Kligman. Frances, Mr.
Kindler.”

“Sid.”

“… It's good to meet you.” Fran was real noncommittal with that thinking—fearing—this was my idea of a date for her.

“Mr. Kindler's an agent.”

“Sid.”

“Ohhh …” Some smiling rode with that. No longer Sid-the-potential-boyfriend. Fran flashed ivory to Sid-the-potential-agent.

“Fran's a singer.”

Sid nodded to that. “Seen her. Heard her. Nice voice.”

“She's real talented.”

“She's veiy talented.”

“Think you could, you know, agent her, too?”

“I'm not looking for singers. I'm looking for comics. A comic. Nice to have met you, Miss Kligman.”

Sid started to turn away. I stopped him with: “But I can't leave her here.”

“Leave her?” Behind his glasses Sid's eyes did acrobatics, got narrow, scrunched together. It was a floor-show version of
trying to figure what I was talking about. “It's New York City, not Siberia.”

“It's a burlesque house, and you said I could spend the rest of my life here. Same thing could happen for Frances.”

“Nothing's going to happen but good things. She's a”—looking past me to Frances—“you're a very talented young lady.”

“You said I was talented. You said I was talented, and you said I could spend the rest of my life here.”

“What I meant was … What I was trying to …” Sid took a second, a breath, then got back to his point: “I don't need a singer
right now.”

“It's all right, Mr. Kindler.” Fran was being gracious but had to work to keep her smile going. “I understand. Thank you anyway.”

I went a little light-headed: blood pressure dropping. Anxiety rising. I said to Sid, to the man who was throwing me a lifeline:
“I can't work with you unless you work with Fran, too.”

Fifteen or twenty people backstage, maybe forty out in the house watching a harmonica act hack up the stage. They all got
drowned out by my heart grinding like a bad gearbox.

Fran broke up the ugly noise. “You don't have to do that for me.”

Have to? I didn't even want to. But Fran was my friend, and instinct told me friends were supposed to stand up for each other.
The words just came pounding out of my mouth riding bareback on emotion.

“So I don't take her on”—Sid laid things out, made sure he was understanding me—“you won't
let
me take you on?”

“I just thought you … I'm just saying …” My thinker was doing double time trying to conjure a way to make everybody happy—stand
firm but back down without looking to Fran like I was caving in. I came up idealess. There was a reason I was telling jokes
onstage instead of working at the U.N. I figured that was my career right there; not many percenters would let a late-night
comic tell them how to do business. My good luck, Sid wasn't one of them. He tossed his hands in the air—defeat meets frustration.
“All right, I'll take the singer, too.”