The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz (3 page)

chapter 1

PORTRAIT OF A HEDGEHOG AS A YOUNG MAN

There are two stories
involving my birth that may very well tell you everything you need to know about me.

I was born on March 12, 1953, in Bayside, Queens. As my father remembers it, my mother didn’t experience much in the way of contraction pains. She just woke him up in the middle of the night, calmly announced that it was time, and had him drive her to the hospital. After the doctors wheeled her into the delivery room, I plopped out less than a half hour later. It was as simple as that. No epidural was necessary. My mother didn’t even need to push. I did most of the work. I knew that it was time, and I just…came out.

“Oh,” she apparently said. “That was it?”

I like to think that I just wanted to cause my mom as little physical discomfort as possible, but my dad has a different theory. “You were in a hurry to get out,” he’s told me. “You knew you had things to do, and you didn’t want to stick around in the womb any longer than was necessary.”

The other story took place later that morning, just a few hours after my shotgun delivery. My mother was taken to a private room to rest and recover. Though it was an altogether effortless birth, she was still feeling a little groggy; the doctors had injected her with too much anesthesia, having anticipated a birth at least slightly longer than a sneeze. But she was conscious enough to overhear a pair of nurses talking in the next room, where they were bathing me and getting a first glance at my unusual physical gifts.

“Good Lord,” one of them muttered. “Would you look at that kid’s penis?”

“It’s pretty big,” the other said. “And on a baby, no less.”

The nurses giggled nervously. If they had any idea that my mother was listening, they certainly didn’t let on.

“Well, he’s a very lucky boy,” one of them concluded.

And that, as the dramatists like to say, is what you call foreshadowing. Even as an infant, I was an impatient little fucker. And I had a bigger schmeckel than most guys my age and older.

If there’s a better indication of the man I was to become, I don’t know what it is.

D
oing a cartwheel out of my mom’s womb was just the beginning. Most of my infancy was spent trying to escape the boring inactivity of babyhood. I just couldn’t sit still for it. During the first few months of my life, my parents would put me in a crib and quietly leave the room after I’d fallen asleep. But within a matter of minutes, they’d hear loud thumping sounds, and they’d come in to find me banging my head against the crib, like an irate prison inmate desperate for freedom. On some nights, they’d catch me crawling the crib’s walls, literally balancing on the edges, teetering dangerously close to falling off.

At one month, I was already crawling. From what I understand, that’s not just unusual, it’s a little bit freaky. Most children don’t start crawling until between seven and ten months. Me, I couldn’t wait that long. My parents were obviously thrilled that I was such a quick learner, but they also couldn’t help but wonder, Just where the hell does he think he’s going, anyway? No sooner did they place me on the floor than I started scampering toward the door, as if I thought I was already late for some long overdue appointment.

My youth was almost unreasonably happy. I had parents who loved and supported me, siblings whom I adored and who never failed to be my closest allies, and a neighborhood that was like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. In Bayside, most of us lived in semidetached, private homes no more than a few feet apart. You could look out of your living room window to see the family next door having dinner. It was like the entire neighborhood lived in the same apartment complex. It may sound like hell if you have a thing for privacy, but for me, it was pure bliss.

My memories of growing up often involve lazy afternoons at the Alley Pond Park, playing stickball and basketball in the street; family trips to Manhattan to visit the museums and zoos; and bike trips over to Springfield Boulevard to have a slice and a Coke for 25 cents at Joe’s Pizza. I could roam free without my parents worrying, and enjoy the kind of freedom that most kids today can scarcely imagine. I still look back on it as some of the best days of my life.

But despite my idyllic upbringing, I didn’t exactly take life at a leisurely pace. If anything, I was a lightning bolt of energy. I was constantly telling jokes or putting on impromptu shows for the neighbors. I’d dress up in my father’s clothing and parade in front of anyone who so much as set foot in our house. I needed to be the center of attention at all times, and I’d do just about anything to ensure that it’d happen.

By the time I started attending Nathaniel Hawthorne Junior High, I was already pegged as the class clown. This delighted my schoolmates, but for the poor saps who were unfortunate enough to be my teachers, it proved endlessly frustrating. It was bad enough that I had the attention span of a gnat, but given my determination to be the most entertaining person in the room, I was the living incarnation of every teacher’s worst nightmare.

It should come as no surprise that I was sent to the principal’s office on an almost weekly basis. I was there so often that I was soon on a first-name basis with the school secretaries. I was scolded, threatened with detentions, and told that I was putting my scholastic future in jeopardy. But this only added fuel to the fire, and my class disruptions continued.

Before long, the principal began asking my mother to join us, where the three of us would sit in the office for hours and discuss the “Ron Problem.”

“I don’t understand,” my mom would say. “His grades don’t seem to be slipping.”

“Oh, they’re not,” the principal replied. “Ronnie’s a very bright boy. It’s just…he has a tendency to crack jokes.”

“And?” My mom said, shooting me an approving look. “What’s wrong with that?”

“He’s distracting the other students. They can’t focus on their schoolwork. We’re at a point where the other children in his class are failing.”

My mom tried to suppress a grin. “Well,” she finally said, “maybe
they’re
the ones you should be worrying about.”

When we were alone, my mom told me to ease up on the classroom antics. But rather than punish me for my lack of interest in school—bless their hearts, my parents were never ones for discipline—they opted instead to encourage my tendencies toward acting out. If I was so eager to be the center of attention, they reasoned, there was no point in fighting it. At my dad’s urging, I made my acting debut at a junior high school talent show, where I performed a song-and-dance skit as the Statue of Liberty.

Give me your tired, your poor, your homeless

I’ll take a deep breath

And blow them right back to you

Ya little bastard

We don’t want them.

We’re crowded enough.

Needless to say, not everybody was amused by my satirically unpatriotic sentiments. But the majority of the crowd screamed with laughter. It was the first time that I had the undivided attention of a room full of strangers, and I was hooked.

By the time I enrolled in Benjamin Cardozo High School,
*
the acting bug had wiggled its way deep into my chest and wasn’t budging. I took every drama class the school offered, hung out with the theater crowd, and starred in productions like
The Devil and Daniel Webster
and
Oklahoma
. When I wasn’t cast in
The King and I
, I managed to persuade Mr. Segal, the director, to let me play piano as the musical accompaniment.
**

Though music and theater were my first loves back then, my second love was making money. I was barely in my teens before I decided that I needed a disposable income. By fifteen, with proper working papers, I was gainfully employed as an ice-cream vendor in Cunningham Park. The ice cream was supplied by a local hot-dog stand, and I would walk around the park for hours with my little cart, peddling ice cream to the tourists and making a staggering $1.60 an hour for my efforts. I can still remember the thrill of receiving a check every week. It wasn’t much, but to me it was a fortune. And best of all, I had earned it.

B
ut you want to know about the girls, don’t you? I’m getting to that.

It all started, innocently enough, with a kiss.

Her name was Stephanie, and she lived in the court just down the block from me. I think she may have been a member of my family’s temple, though I wasn’t exactly a practicing Jew at that point. I was smitten by her the moment I laid eyes on her. Not that I ever let on, of course. I was maybe eleven or twelve at the time, and like any self-respecting boy my age, I couldn’t possibly fathom that I might actually be attracted to a girl. Still, whenever I had the chance, I would gaze longingly at her and wonder what it might be like to wrap her up in my arms and steal her away.

After months of successfully ignoring her, I stumbled across Stephanie while returning from a street stickball game. It was a perfect opportunity to introduce myself and finally break the ice with this neighborhood hottie, but I was far too shy for that. She beamed at me and said hello, but, big pussy that I was, I just nodded and quickened my pace. The moment I passed her, however, I noticed a group of older kids heading in our direction. They looked tough, like the kind of local bullies who might corner a defenseless kid like me and pelt him with rocks—although this hardly ever happened, except during Halloween trick-or-treating.

Without thinking, I grabbed Stephanie’s hand and led her to a nearby shack, a shared space that was used by the local kids to store their bicycles. We tunneled toward the back and hid behind the bikes, waiting for the teens to leave. We weren’t really in danger. I was just pretending, and she kind of went along with it.

I didn’t like being in such close proximity to a girl, but it was nothing compared to the terror of being stoned by a hotheaded juvie. Given my choices, it seemed like the more reasonable alternative. Stephanie and I huddled together, deep inside our little rickety shelter, and prayed that our (exaggerated) would-be attackers would eventually pass us by.

I tried to focus on the impending doom outside, but all I could think about was the cool breeze of Stephanie’s breath on my neck, and her tiny prepubescent body pressed firmly against my skinny chest. She tightened her grip and pulled me closer. When I finally opened my eyes, she was staring directly at me, a big grin on her face.

“Do you wanna?” she asked.

“What?”

“Do you wanna?” she asked again.

I just stared back at her, completely dumbfounded. “Do I wanna
what
?”

She paused for a minute, as if flabbergasted that I was actually making her come out and ask.

“Kiss,” she said at last.

“Uh, okay.”

And we did.

It was like I’d found religion. We didn’t use our tongues—I didn’t know that such a thing was possible yet—but both of our mouths were open. It was everything I’d been hoping for and more. It was wet and noisy and rapacious and sloppy and, oh God, I could’ve done it all day.

But then the bullies went away. And so did Stephanie.

A
fter my initiation into the world of the opposite sex, you might expect that I became an overnight horndog. Now that I had tasted the forbidden fruit, I wouldn’t very well be able to keep my hands off of girls ever again.

Well, you would be wrong.

Remember, I was still a virgin, and still naïve enough to think that kissing was as good as it got. Which isn’t to say that I was completely opposed to the idea of dating. There were one or two girls whom I’d see regularly, and I’d take them out to Digi’s or Joe’s Pizza for a slice and a soda. With the money I made from my ice-cream business, I could easily afford the 40 cents for a night out on the town. If their tastes were more expensive, I would take them bowling or to the movies or, if I really liked them, out on my yacht.

Well, it wasn’t a yacht per se. One of my first major purchases was a tiny lifeboat that I bought for $40. You’d blow it up with a pump, and it would become a two-man raft. It had plastic paddles, and I would take it out in the bay in Little Neck. I even tried it out in the ocean a few times, but the waves made it a little too rocky for my purposes. The boat became a standard part of my dating routine. I’d take girls out into the bay with a little wine and cheese. We’d take turns paddling, find a secluded spot, and have a picnic, which invariably ended with a makeout session.

Though I enjoyed dating (especially the kissing part), I never became too emotionally attached to any of the girls in my neighborhood. I liked Stephanie a lot, and she was always a blast to hang out with, but that was as far as it went. It never occurred to me that I might actually fall in love with her or anybody else.

Until I met Mandy.

I
’ve had sex with more than four thousand women in my life, but I’ve been in love with only five of them. I suppose that, given the math, it was bound to happen sooner or later.

Mandy was the first. She was the first to cause me sleepless nights, the first to make me lose my appetite, the first to make me seriously consider monogamy, the first to break my heart, the first to be the one by which all other girls are judged.

And, of course, she was the girl who broke my cherry.

Well, kinda.

Hold on, we’ll get to that.

In many ways, Mandy was the polar opposite of what one might expect from a future porn star’s soul mate. She wasn’t a bleach-blonde, big-titty bimbo. Well, her boobies were nothing to sneeze at. But unlike some of the women I’ve dated over the years, her breasts didn’t inhabit their own area code. She was a diminutive redhead—undeniably hot, but not the kind of girl to whom most guys would’ve given a second glance. But at least to my eyes, she was absolutely breathtaking.