Stories I Only Tell My Friends: An Autobiography (4 page)

“Good luck. Maybe I’ll see you in Hollywood.” She smiles and winks at Jack Haley Jr.

“Yeah, kid, see you in Hollywood,” he says. As I say good-bye, there is no way of knowing that, in fact, I will see them both again in Hollywood.

The effect famous people can have on other people’s lives is not to be underestimated. They can inspire us with their talent; make us feel like kings with their kindness, with a hello, a handshake, or an autograph. They seem like creatures from another race with supernatural abilities.

And the true stars understand that. Liza Minnelli certainly did. When you are around them, the ones at the top of their game, there is always the possibility that some of their magic could rub off on you.

*   *   *

One day I hear that Telly Savalas from
Kojak
is coming to Dayton.
Kojak
is the biggest thing on TV, although truth be told, I prefer
The Partridge Family
and reruns of
Lost in Space
. That said, if Telly Savalas is going to be in Dayton, I want to meet him.

It is a brutal, gray, dark winter day and the wind whips through my CPO jacket as I walk to the bus stop for the journey downtown to Rike’s department store. I take the bus everywhere these days, sometimes transferring between a number of different routes. It never occurs to me that I’m often the only kid traveling alone. I love the freedom and the sense of adventure.

It’s Christmastime, so Rike’s is busy as I screw around riding the escalators backward for a while before following the signs that say,
TV
’
S KOJAK TELLY SAVALAS LIVE
, 4
TH FLOOR
,
TODAY!
I have no idea why Telly Savalas is in Dayton on the fourth floor of Rike’s and I really don’t care; I’m just thrilled to see this well-known actor in the flesh.

The line for Telly Savalas wraps around the men’s clothing department and into women’s handbags. I take my place and begin to wait, thinking of what I want to ask him. How did he get his start? Is acting fun? What’s Hollywood like? I know that on his TV show, he is famous for always having a lollipop in his mouth, so I’ve brought him one of my favorites, a Charms Blow Pop, as a gift. As I move forward in the line, I can see him sitting behind a sort of card table, signing an eight-by-ten photo for each person who steps forward. It’s almost my turn now and although I’ve been in the line for over an hour, my excitement hasn’t waned.

An aide leans in to whisper something to Telly Savalas, who looks up and smiles at the man, relief clearly visible on his face. The man moves to the front of the line and cuts it off with a red velvet rope. “That’s it, folks, thanks for coming.” Savalas bolts like a rocket. He is gone, out of sight somewhere between the kitchenware and women’s handbags. There is a murmur of upset from the remaining crowd in the line. I’m third from the front and deeply disappointed, but I understand how busy Mr. Savalas must be; I’m sure he has to get back to Hollywood and to
Kojak
.

“Excuse me, sir,” I say to the aide. “I have a gift for Mr. Savalas.” I fumble in my pocket and offer up my Charms Blow Pop to the man. “Would you please give this to him? I know he likes lollipops.” The man looks at me and smiles. “Sure, kid,” he says. I hand him the lollipop and turn to go. I figure that even though I didn’t meet Telly Savalas, I saw a great actor in the flesh and witnessed what it’s like to be adored by fans, and the excitement that ripples around a star’s appearance.

I turn around for one last look. I see the aide to Mr. Savalas throw my lollipop in a trash can.

*   *   *

Around this time, my mom and Bill begin to fight almost nightly. Chad is too young to know the slippery slope that this can lead us down. With the day in the lumberyard seared in my memory, I am anxious and scared each night as they scream below my bedroom. I develop a way to mask the yelling and pounding noises so I can sleep. I discover that if I shake my leg in a certain way it vibrates my bed frame and creates a metallic shaking noise that drowns out any other sound. Soon I can’t fall asleep without my shaking-leg trick and it becomes a tic that will stay with me for many years.

As their marriage deteriorates, so does my mother’s health. She is in bed a lot, and yet I’m never told exactly what is wrong. She can be her normal interested, interesting, supportive self one day and mysteriously incapacitated the next, adding to the volatility in the house and to my ever-present sense that something bad can happen at any minute.

I escape by bus to the theater and throw myself into any play I can find, like
Oklahoma!
,
The Time of Your Life
, and
Stop the World—I Want to Get Off
(what an apropos title for me!). My dad, always the one looking to have fun and making sure we did the same, arranges for me to appear on a local cable-access kids’ show,
Clubhouse 22
. I’d watched it for years and loved the host, a hip guy named Malcolm and his sidekick, Duffy the Dog. Walking into the television studio, I feel an electric charge I still get sometimes today. The bright lights, the smell of paint and freshly cut wood, and the thrilling disconnect between fantasy and reality that you feel when you behold a TV or movie set and its unique mixture of beautiful fakery and practical, unexpected reality.

On the air, I help Malcolm and Duffy the Dog pick a prizewinner from the mailbag and am shocked when Duffy later removes his giant dog head to reveal a very beautiful blonde woman. (Years later, when I discover that my dad had been secretly banging Duffy the Dog, I don’t think I was ever more proud. If that’s the connection that got me onto my first set, so much the better.)

I’d also finally found a gang of neighborhood kids to hang out with, building forts, throwing mudballs, and playing tackle football. Although they thought I was a “freak” for my “acting,” we bonded over our love of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Pete Rose, and the Big Red Machine, and ignored our differences, like their proclivity for petty theft and the killing and eating of neighborhood squirrels. (I often found skinned, bloody squirrel bodies in my friend’s kitchen sink. His family was from Appalachia—“briar” is the local pejorative for them—and squirrel meat was a traditional food source. It was all very
Deliverance
.)

Soon Mom was pregnant again, and in keeping with my tradition of harsh judgments on such matters, I thought, Pregnant? You’re so old!

She was thirty-three. Micah was born that summer and I hoped it would make our house less volatile. It didn’t. My mom and Bill repainted their bedroom walls black-brown. Even an eleven-year-old knows that this can’t be a good sign. The thing was, I had a good relationship with my stepfather, and I wanted their marriage to last. Bill and I listened to talk radio, cheered Senator Ervin at the Watergate hearings, did door-to-door campaigning for everyone from George McGovern to Senator Howard Metzenbaum.

When Micah was a couple years old, my mother began to retreat to her bedroom for hours a day, every day. She wrote short stories and poems and kept a daily journal (which she would do for the rest of her life). But her mysterious illness was gaining a grip on her. She began to feel that Chad was also suffering from what she thought were “allergies.” And so she checked Chad and herself into the country’s leading hospital for universal allergics, Henrotin Hospital in downtown Chicago. There they were to fast, having nothing but water for two weeks, and then eat nothing but blueberries. The doctors would see how they reacted. Another fast would follow and another single food would be introduced, each more exotic than the next, culminating in caribou meat. Chad, seven years old and feeling perfectly fine, was terrified, but off he went, the first passenger on the first of my mother’s grand expeditions into the rising dawn of self-fulfillment, self-help, and self-obsession.

Upon their release from the universal allergy hospital, both my mom and Chad seemed exactly the same. What had changed was our refrigerator. It was now stocked with buffalo and caribou meats, and we were regimented to drinking special water. We consumed handfuls of vitamins that made me want to vomit. Chad and I looked forward to the weekends when we got to be with our dad and gorge on hamburgers, milkshakes, and pizza. Not surprisingly, on those carefree weekends, Chad felt great.

*   *   *

I’m playing Nerf football with my friends in the mud and slush of a mild winter day. It’s tackle, as usual, and we light into each other without fear of injury, absolutely hammering each other. This is a daily ritual for our gang of friends, football in the cold, kick-the-can when it’s warm; huge games with kids everywhere. I’ve got my uniform: a “breakaway” Steelers jersey over a sweatshirt and Levi Toughskins. I see my mom on the porch waving me in. “Gotta go, guys!”

“Come on, Lowe! Just a few more plays! You pussy!” they yell good-naturedly, and I am happy that in spite of our different backgrounds, we’ve become such good friends. I lope down the block to my house.

I cannot remember the specifics of what happens next. I have spent hours, days, and years trying. It is like the Rosemary Woods twenty-minute gap in the Watergate tapes of my childhood. I’ve come to realize that the first divorce and subsequent move was painful enough to block the second one out of my long-term memory. But the facts are clear enough: Mom and Bill are over, my mom will make us forsake Ohio and its gray “unhealthy” winters for a move to California. She has friends there that she met while in the allergy hospital. Unlike the conversation in the lumberyard, I have only vignetted memories of this entire chapter of my life. Clearly, I had learned my lesson well: I would black out, avoid, disassociate anything and everything beyond my comfort level. Saying good-bye to my home, my friends, my dad, Bill, and my grandparents, to leave for a place I had never been or seen, was just too tough for me to process properly. Years later, I would learn the filmmaking phrase for my random, isolated memories; it is called a “montage.”

Cue the music, Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” as I kiss my grandparents and hop into the packed car. Bill is not there, he has gone, unable to watch, saying his good-byes and hugging us boys in the middle of the night.

My football gang is there, too, the kids of great hardscrabble North Dayton families: the Freemans, the Scarpellis, the Eiferts. They run alongside the car as we pull away. I want to jump out, tell my mom, don’t do this; don’t make us go, I’m scared. I want to stay
here
with my friends. But I say nothing, I’m frozen inside. My brothers and I watch as our friends begin to stop running, falling by the wayside, unable to keep up, as our car speeds off into the distance.

CHAPTER
4

I have never seen so many cars in my life. Our Volvo station wagon is stopped dead in the middle of the biggest, busiest freeway I have ever seen. It’s eighty degrees in the middle of winter and the sky is the color of a baseball mitt. To my left, eight guys in a pickup truck are blasting accordion music, like what you might hear at a circus. To my right is a trailer hauling cars. One of them is the Batmobile. Welcome to Los Angeles, kid.

My mom navigates the traffic jam as best she can with little Micah crawling like an ape around the car, trying to remove the oxygen mask she’s taken to wearing. Her new hero, Dr. Wilson, of the allergy hospital, has prescribed the mask and a number of other remedies, as a way to prevent allergy flare-ups. The horrific brown L.A. air suggests that the oxygen mask might be a sound idea, but I have no clue why she is also wearing thick, white gardening gloves. (Later I learn that they supposedly protect her hands from the toxins “out-gassing” from the plastic steering wheel.) Now, out my window I can see the Pacific Ocean. It is rugged, crashing, and huge. A sign says, “Welcome to Malibu, 22 miles of scenic beauty.” I’m feeling a queasy mixture of homesickness and gurgling excitement, beholding this stunning, alien world.

Point Dume sits at the westernmost edge of Malibu. A breathtaking, palisaded promontory, it looks like a sawed-off volcano, jutting its jagged cliffs into the crashing surf below. Named after the Spanish missionary Father Dumez, who cowed the local Chumash Indians into Christianity, it is rumored to be haunted, and stories of ancient burial grounds and lost underwater villages are legend. At the moment I’m unaware of this unsettling history, although within months I will see the signs everywhere. But as we turn into a cul-de-sac of modest ranch-style houses, I only know that my mom has chosen Point Dume because it has the best air quality in Southern California.

Our new house is a rented, single-story ranch house, very plain, with three bedrooms, one bath, and a yard strewn with what look to be small moon rocks. Chad and I will come to despise this yard, as we will have to weed it of intruding crabgrass every weekend before we can go out to play. But the real showstopper is the tiny horse corral, which Mom tells Chad and me was constructed with the leftover wood from the set of
Planet of the Apes
. I can almost look down the gully behind it to see the beach where Charlton Heston discovered the remains of the Statue of Liberty in one of filmmaking’s most iconic scenes. There’s also an unsubstantiated rumor that the Captain and Tennille may have lived in our house. I am quickly sensing that, in Point Dume, there is adventure as well as Hollywood history at every turn.

An entire book could (and should) be written about Malibu in 1976. In the bicentennial sunlight of that year, it was a place of rural beauty where people still rode to the local market on horseback and tied up to a hitching post in the parking lot. Long before every agent and studio president knocked down the beach shacks to build their megamansions, Malibu was populated by a wonderful mix of normal working-class families, hippies, asshole surfers, drugged-out reclusive rock stars, and the odd actor or two. The town was extremely spartan. Its lone movie theater only got films months after they had played everywhere else. Its one record shop wouldn’t have the latest record for weeks and weeks after you could find it all over Los Angeles. There was a taco stand, a donut shop, a biker bar, and one or two restaurants in all of its twenty-two miles. Although Hollywood was only a forty-five-minute drive away, at that time it might as well have been forty-five light-years. It’s almost impossible now to imagine a Malibu without Wolfgang Puck, Nobu sushi, Starbucks, and paparazzi documenting every B-list celebrity who walks out the door with a latte, but it did exist, once upon a time.

As I’m settling into my new bedroom, which I will share with Chad, my mom tells me she has a surprise in the other room. Chad is convinced it’s a puppy. He and I run into the living room, excited to see what she has in store for us.

It isn’t a puppy.

From behind a stack of boxes emerges a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with a black beard. (Think one of the guys on the box of Smith Brothers cough drops.) Chad gasps. “Dr.… Dr. Wilson?”

“Hey, Chad-o!” he says, smiling. I look around the room. Dr. Wilson? The allergy hospital guy? What’s he doing here?

“How do you like the surprise?” Mom asks cheerily, as if she’s just presented us with a new jungle gym or, indeed, a puppy.

“Hey, Rob-o!” he adds warmly.

“Steve is going to be living with us!” Mom announces.

I look at her. She is beaming. Happy. After taking a moment to digest the announcement, Chad seems to be down with the program as well. And in a testament to the simplicity and resilience of twelve-year-olds, I take a minute and process this instant addition to our family and conclude … sounds okay to me, can I have the bed by the window?

Later that night as I sleep in my new room, I think about what’s become of our family. I’m desperately homesick for my dad and grandparents. I wonder if my friends are playing football without me. I consider my mother. She must be a brave person to leave an unhappy marriage when so many people of her background stick it out. I figure she is to be admired for following her heart and doing what she thought was right for both herself and us boys. As the beautifully pungent aroma of the night-blooming jasmine wafts through my window, I begin to see my mother in a new way. A rebel. An artist. A dreamer. A searcher. I am sad for her too, worried because I have no idea what she is searching for and fear that neither does she.

Dr. Wilson, or Steve as we now call him, is an intellectual, awkward, kooky, but nice guy. He and my mom have a deep connection; they spend hours reading Carl Jung (Steve is now working in L.A. County’s Mental Health Department as a shrink), listening to Phoebe Snow, eating hummus, and rubbing each other’s feet. He treats Chad and Micah and me well, and I’m relieved to see my mom happy and out of her pajamas for long stretches of time.

As our first day of school approaches, Chad and I haven’t seen many other kids. There are no pickup football games, no kids riding bikes in the street, no sounds of yelling, rough-housing, and mischievous camaraderie between the houses. Chad and I wander aimlessly, looking for people our own ages. Eventually I will learn that this is very different from the Midwest, where kids connect with each other via big communal activities like kick the can and street hockey. Malibu kids are isolated, solitary by nature, and when among their peers they form small, extremely tight cliques. The surfers. The burn-outs. The brains. The nerds. There are also those who seem like ghosts, not belonging to anyone or any clique. The Lost Boys of Malibu. And indeed, their tragic narrative of freak accidents and death will play itself out throughout my teen years on Point Dume, lending credence to the stories of its haunted past.

*   *   *

My first day of seventh grade at Malibu Park Junior High begins with me getting on the bus and sitting next to a kid I think I might be able to befriend. But then he gives me a look that makes me feel like an idiot for not sitting in an empty seat behind or in front of him. I make a mental note of the Malibu bus protocol. Never again will I sit next to someone unless every other seat is taken.

Things don’t get any better upon arrival at school. Kids snicker at my clothes; I’ve worn my favorite Levi Toughskins, not knowing that
no one
wears long pants to school, ever. Under any circumstances. In the classroom I’m eager and interested, which is also frowned upon. The cool kids sit in the back of the class in their shorts and flip-flops and talk about surfing until the teacher tells them to shut up. I begin to watch the clock, hoping that P.E. will be different, but I get no break there either. I am hoping for flag football or baseball or kickball, but get volleyball instead. Not a lot of volleyball in Ohio. I suck and everyone notices.

At lunch a group of girls ask me what I’m “into.” I tell them I want to be an actor. They stare at me. If I thought being forty-five minutes outside of Hollywood would make that concept acceptable, I was wrong. “Are you a fag?” one of the girls asks me. The others laugh as my face turns bright red.

A shaggy-haired blond surfer grabs the cute girl by the ass. “Who’s a fag? This guy?!” he asks, looking at me and pulling her in for a kiss. The other kids ooh and aah at this overt show of sexuality, and I use the distraction to make my escape, back to my locker. Finally school is over. I board the bus home and find an empty seat away from anyone else.

Over the next few weeks I begin to get the drill. Although my bus stop is first and the bus is always empty, I am NOT to sit in any of the back rows. If I were to attempt that, the ripped, blond leader of the cool set, a surfer named Peter, would have me forcibly removed. That area of the bus and other specific areas of the grass where we have lunch are the sole domain of the volleyball stars, surf champs, and their girlfriends. I eventually find my place in this Darwinian landscape where I probably, then rightfully, belong: with the nerds and the other “pleasures to have in class.”

One day as I’m killing time hanging out at the Mayfair Market parking lot, I see a bunch of kids running around in army outfits. They seem to be playing a sort of war game and are taking it very seriously. I ask the kid who looks to be the leader what’s going on. He is a chunky blond, with a runny nose that he doesn’t bother to wipe. He tells me that he is “filming” a Vietnam movie and he is using the market’s loading dock as a set. He shows me his 8 mm movie camera and introduces himself. “I’m Chris Penn. I’m the director.” Now this is exciting—kids shooting their own movie! I ask him who else is doing his movie, hoping he will ask me to be in it as well. “Well, I got my best friend, Charlie, my brother Sean, and maybe Charlie’s big brother, Emilio.”

“You mean you guys are actors, too?” I ask. I already know that none of these kids are in the cool crowd—they don’t surf.

“Nah, not really. We just like making movies. Charlie’s dad is an actor, though.”

“Holy shit! A
real
actor?” I ask.

“Yeah, he’s done a bunch of movies.”

“Can I meet him?”

Chris laughs. “Are you kidding? He’s been gone for almost two years working overseas on a film about war somewhere in the Philippines.”

Later I learn the movie’s called
Apocalypse Now
and his name is Martin Sheen. But at this moment, I think to myself, now that’s a guy I’d like to meet someday.

Chris tells me that when they make another movie, he’ll call me, but for now “we don’t have any parts for you.” I stick around and watch as they film each other getting shot in every conceivable fashion, slapping ketchup everywhere for fake blood. The Mayfair Market as Vietnam. The magic of Hollywood.

At home later, Chad has exciting news as well. His elementary school is going to be used the next day for the filming of a TV series. I can’t believe it. My intense loneliness and longing for my father and friends back in Dayton begins to fade into the background. This place isn’t so bad after all.

*   *   *

The previous week at my brother’s elementary school, Chad’s teacher hid a kid in his class in a closet so he would not be kidnapped in an ugly custody dispute. As the kid’s mom and a team of lawyers scoured the school, the sheriff was called to rescue the poor kid, who was ensconced, like Anne Frank, in a broom closet of the art room. The father arrived, as well, and the staff oohed and aahed, as he was a legendary rock icon, but the kids were more excited to see the sheriffs running around with their guns drawn. The incident was soon forgotten. If the same thing happened today, it would be on TV and in the tabloids for weeks.

I rush home from school to stand with Chad and watch a TV crew convert the principal’s office into a hospital emergency room with the help of giant lights and a caravan of equipment and trucks. People are crowding around to get a glimpse of the three actresses as they repeatedly enter and exit the “emergency room.” They shoot the scene over and over and to us it’s riveting each time. The three stars take a break and walk to their chairs. On the front are each of their names, Jaclyn Smith, Kate Jackson, and Farrah Fawcett, and on the back a cartoonlike logo of them holding guns and the title:
Charlie’s Angels
.

Unlike Liza Minnelli, these gals have flocks of people surrounding them. There’s no way to get close, but eventually I strike up a conversation with someone on the TV crew. He looks important to me; he is hauling a lot of cables and lights and listening to a walkie-talkie. I ask him a barrage of questions culminating with the classic “How do you think I can get into acting?” The man tells me I should write to the producer of
Charlie’s Angels
, Aaron Spelling; he’s the biggest producer in the history of television. “I’m sure he would like to hear from you,” the man says with a smile. I run home and compose a letter to Mr. Spelling. It takes some time to find an address for him but finally I do, care of the 20th Century Fox Studios. I drop it in the mailbox and wait for his reply.

*   *   *

As seventh grade came to an end, I couldn’t wait to spend my appointed time back in Ohio with my dad. I would see my old friends and tell them of my California adventures, and I’d get my spot back in Peanut Butter and Jelly. It would be good to be onstage again, as I hadn’t done any acting since I moved to California.