Still Foolin' 'Em (7 page)

In June 1970, Janice and I were married. After a large, beautiful wedding, we left for a five-day honeymoon disaster in Puerto Rico. By “disaster” I mean that Janice got terribly sunburned (“Don’t touch me, it hurts”) and I caught on fire in a restaurant. The waiter was showing me the flaming lobster dish I’d ordered, and without my knowledge, the flaming sauce dribbled onto my suit sleeve. I’m telling the waiter how great the lobster looks and he’s suddenly throwing water on my left arm and ripping off my burning jacket. If that wasn’t bad enough, the shirt I had on was too big for me, so we’d shortened the sleeves with safety pins and rubber bands. With my jacket scorched, I ended up sitting there looking like a little boy wearing his father’s shirt, next to my lollipop-red bride, who was in constant pain. (“It hurts to sit down.”) Now, that’s romantic.

June 4, 1970. I did.

We spent most of our honeymoon running lines for the play
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,
which I was opening in shortly after we returned. I played Rosencrantz, and Janice played everyone else. Over the course of our marriage, she has played, among others, Sally (before Meg Ryan did), Curly from
City Slickers
, and even Hamlet. Though she’s not an actress, she gave Ken Branagh (who played Hamlet in the 1996 movie; I was the gravedigger) a run for the money. Seeing the mother of my kids, in a nightgown, say, “Alas, poor Yorik, I knew him well” is something I’ll never forget.

As Janice and I settled into our married life, the comedy trio continued to perform, but we couldn’t break through. I loved Dave and Al, but inside I knew I was really a stand-up comedian. I started to think about how to go out on my own, which seemed very daunting. The group finally caught a big break when we were signed by David Frost to make an appearance on a network special called
That Was the Year That Was.

It was hosted by Jack Burns and Avery Schreiber, a popular comedy team at the time. Our sketch documented the making of the first marijuana commercial. (It was our best piece.) I played a stiff Ted Baxter kind of actor who gets progressively smashed as he does take after take, smoking “the product.” We taped the show, and the audience loved it. We knew that appearing on a network program could really help get us going, so on the night of the broadcast we had a party to celebrate our television debut. What we didn’t know was that the network wouldn’t air the sketch because it was about pot. Our agent couldn’t reach us, so there we were, first all excited, then freaked out as the show went on and on and no 3’s Company. Finally, Jack and Avery said good night, the credits rolled, and there we were, waving and smiling, standing next to the hosts. They were able to cut us out of everything but the closing credits. The phone started to ring. It was the relatives: “Very good waving,” “You looked good, Billy, I like the way you wave.”

Things continued in this vein, the three of us always taking chances that never panned out. After a while, it gets lonely at the middle. My anxiety got worse and worse. Then Janice got pregnant. I have to admit, I was kind of shocked when she told me. It happened so fast. The Crescent should be this fertile. We weren’t set up financially for a child. Janice had a good job, which she would have to stop at some point, and the substitute teaching brought a cool forty-five bucks a day into my Swiss bank account. The most money I had ever made with the group in one year was $4,200. After a few years like this, we were audited because I had well over $12,000 in travel expenses. Janice did our taxes at the time, and when the auditor sternly asked her, “Why is he in this business?” Janice simply said, “It’s in his blood.”

Now I was to become a father, before I could legitimately call myself a comedian. The responsibility of adding a new person to the world—not to mention our tiny apartment—was overwhelming. Still, I felt sure it was coming time for me to leave the group and go out on my own.

As the pregnancy progressed, we took Lamaze classes and, being the suburban hippies we were, decided to try natural childbirth. The relaxation exercises and the breathing techniques worked great in the class, and once Janice started having contractions … “THIS FUCKING HURTS! GIVE ME THE FUCKING SHOT!” I’m still not sure why I screamed like that; Janice was the one in labor. Actually, there were no drugs used of any kind … by Janice. I, on the other hand, was totally smashed.

Being the youngest of three brothers, and the uncle of a one-year-old nephew, I was sure we were going to have a boy. When the doctor, who had grown fond of us during the pregnancy, came out of the delivery room (in those days husbands weren’t allowed in), he turned to me and asked, “What do you think it is?”

“Boy,” I said with full confidence.

“No, schmuck, it’s a girl.” It hit me right between the eyes. Not the schmuck part, the girl part. How do you do girls? When I held beautiful eight-pound, four-ounce Jennifer Amie for the first time, she looked so calm and peaceful and safe, and my first thought was “I’ll have to pay for the whole wedding.” Then came fear. I was afraid that I couldn’t be everything I would need to be. Would I be patient, would I be smart enough, was I emotionally prepared to handle a child? How would I make a living? I was barely able to handle myself, but a baby?

Babies are the toughest take-home exam of your life. I got off to a bad start when my gag mechanism freaked out at the first whiff of baby poop. When I put Jenny on the changing table for the first time and removed the diaper, I was staring at a few ounces of Dinty Moore beef stew. Instantly I started choking, my eyes watering.

“Oh, this is gonna be great,” Janice laughed from bed as I hovered over the changing table, gagging.

Over the next few months, I learned how to relax, and once I could dispose of the scuba gear, I came to understand what it’s like to love someone more than yourself. At the six-month mark, Janice went back to work, and I became a “motherfather.” It was a difficult decision for Janice to be apart from Jenny, but she and I were a team and something significant had happened. The group had been seen by Buddy Morra, who was Robert Klein’s manager and worked with the best managerial group in show business. Jack Rollins and Charlie Joffe were the aristocracy of comedy managers. They handled Woody Allen and Dick Cavett, among others, and also produced Woody’s films.

So Buddy and his partner, Larry Brezner, took us on and got us a few jobs. After a while, though, Buddy and Larry pulled me aside and said they didn’t think the group was going to bust through, but if I wanted to go it alone as a stand-up, they would be there for me. That was all I needed to hear. My anxiety had progressed to “eleven” when I got a call from a friend who needed a comedian for a ZBT fraternity party at NYU—did I know anyone? I lied to him, saying that I had been working on my own, and for twenty-five dollars, he hired me. I hung up the phone, thinking,
What did I just do
? Then I threw together a few ideas and rehearsed in front of Jenny, who, even at eighteen months old, was a tough critic. A few days later, when I nervously walked into the fraternity house, there were Buddy and Larry and Jack Rollins himself! I was supposed to do twenty minutes (which I didn’t have), and I ended up doing an hour or so. I just exploded. I don’t remember much of what I did to this day, but Buddy and Larry were thrilled. I was euphoric, and also guilt-ridden. I felt like I had cheated on my pals. Finally, I broke it to Dave and Al, and I went out on my own and never looked back.

*   *   *

I threw myself into my stand-up. Everything was new; anything was possible. I had an amazing wife, a beautiful little girl, and finally now a real goal. Balancing my beginning career as a comedian and tending to the constant care of Jenny until Janice came home from work, around five
P.M.
, was exhausting. We did that for two years and change. It was the most important part of my life, and it forever bonded me with this incredible pooping tax deduction. I was the only man in the play group; I was the only father at the playground. I was the only father with a baby in the shopping cart at the supermarket.

The Mr. Mom job became even more difficult after I broke away from the group. Creating an act from scratch is very hard, and I faced particular challenges. I wasn’t a strong one-liner joke writer; my pieces were more like conceptual ideas that I developed, for the most part, by improvising while onstage. They needed fleshing out and honing in front of an audience, not a child in a high chair. We lived an hour outside Manhattan and its comedy clubs. I would leave around nine at night in the hopes of getting on at Rick Newman’s Catch a Rising Star by one
A.M
or so; then I’d drive back to Long Beach. I’d arrive home around three and be up with Jenny around six-thirty
A.M.
I’d try to keep her entertained all day while also dealing with the household chores, and then Janice would come home and I’d hand Jenny off and get ready for my set that night. Sometimes, I would write; other times, a quick nap was the best preparation, though that was difficult.

*   *   *

In the middle of this hectic time, my brother Rip was about to move to California. He was at a crossroads in his life and career. He had been acting and singing in touring musicals and had decided that L.A. was where he needed to be. I hated to see him go. He was the more adventurous of the two of us, and a few nights before he was to leave, he asked me if I’d like to do organic mescaline with him. This doesn’t mean he bought it at Whole Foods. This was the real deal, so to speak. He had done this hallucinogen a few times and enjoyed it, and he thought we could have a good time together. At the time I was just an occasional pot smoker, but I thought,
Hey, it’s my big brother, I love him and I don’t know when I’ll see him again.
Plus,
If he says it’s cool, it’s cool.
We “dropped” just before sunset on a beautiful night in Long Beach. Nothing happened for a half hour or so, and then we just started giggling a lot for no reason. Long, laughing jags where nobody said anything. Rip suggested we play Frisbee on the mall in front of the house. “We won’t be able to see it,” I said, since it was getting dark out.

“Oh yes you will,” Rip countered with a sly wink.

The DayGlo Frisbee looked like a flying saucer as it sailed through the night sky. We shrieked “WOW!” and “OOOOOH!” like inmates at an asylum when there’s pudding for dessert. We then retreated to my tiny apartment upstairs in the house we grew up in. My hair was enormous back then (picture Gene Shalit’s on steroids), and for some reason I just started brushing it and combing it into different shapes, each “do” looking more absurd than the one before. I can’t describe our laughter other than to say if Bigfoot laughs, it probably sounds like we did. Sometimes we got intensely quiet while I pushed the comb through my thick curls as if I was performing a delicate surgery. The finished product would elicit a whispered “Amazing” out of my stoned brother. Then I took my wool sweater and turned off the lights and started to shake it. Sparks flew out of it. “DID YOU SEE THAT?” Rip screamed. “IT’S LIKE FIREWORKS. THIS IS IMPORTANT! WE CAN MAKE A FORTUNE!”

“Rip,” I reasoned, “it’s static electricity.”

“THAT’S THE PERFECT NAME FOR IT!” he screamed. After a few more minutes of celebrating this scientific breakthrough, we ate everything in the refrigerator, including Jenny’s baby food. Then, with a look in his eyes not seen since
Reefer Madness
, Rip slowly whispered, “Let’s go look at the baby.” The baby, of course, was six-month-old Jenny sleeping soundly in our bedroom. The door to the room was maybe eight feet or so from us, but somehow it took us twenty minutes to get there. We tiptoed carefully because we were afraid we could fall off the edge of the floor. When the giggling idiots got to the bedroom, Janice opened the door and, clearly pissed off, closed it behind her. She looked different to me.

Actually, I thought she was one of the rottweilers from
The Omen
talking to us in a demonic Darth Vader–like voice.

“Get away from the child! Do not go in there. Look at you two idiots. Billy, what did you do to your hair? Get away! Get away!” She went back into the bedroom and Rip and I tried to calm down, but now we were bummed. We were at that point when you want to come down but you can’t. We sat quietly for a while, and the next day we were still sitting there. Rip took this picture.