Take Your Shirt Off and Cry: A Memoir of Near-Fame Experiences (13 page)

You don’t want to miss that boat.

“I’ll jump aboard,” I told myself, “then fling myself over the rails—flannel bondage nightie and all—if it all goes asunder.”

In the end, though, it turned out not to matter what narrative I repeated to get myself going, because Ned couldn’t get going
at all: once given the green light, Ned couldn’t get it up.

Well. Naturally, according to him, this was, without question,
my
fault; had I not been so difficult to lay all these years, he wouldn’t have had any problems. All that prelude—not to mention
the buildup—wasn’t exactly fortifying to his masculinity. No guy, Ned insisted, would have been able to perform under such
withering circumstances. Vowing repeatedly that this had never, ever happened to him before he was subjected to my humiliations
and brazen withholding, he lay on the bed after the offending incident, prostrate with bewilderment, for several long minutes,
unable to move, visions of the Interruptus loop de looping in his head. As I sprawled next to him, staring at the whirling
ceiling fan, it occurred to me that I had finally arrived at the point in my life wherein the meta phorical had become the
actual: I had literally broken a man’s balls.

“I don’t understand it,” Ned remarked finally. “Binky and I used to fuck like rabbits, and it was always,
always
great.”

That I continued to hang out with Ned—and he with me—after the various indictments spawned by our failed coitus attempt only
proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that misery loves company, frigid hussies and flaccid cocks notwithstanding. The disappointment
of this episode, however, must have caused a kind of short circuit in Ned’s psyche, because the Binky banter continued unabated
for weeks.

“Binky loved ravioli,” Ned recalled wistfully when I ordered some one eve ning at Pane e Vino.

“Binky loved lanterns,” I heard as we perused antiques in Topanga.

“Binky loved tennis,” he announced, apropos of nothing.

Wherever we went, what ever we did, the specter of Binky hovered poignantly, like Gene Tierney in
Laura
, her absence only serving to make her more present.

“Any way we could get a moratorium on all the Binky talk?” I asked as we wandered around Pasadena one afternoon. “I’m getting
a bit sick to shit of it.”

“Am I talking about Binky?” Ned asked, seriously dumbfounded. “I had no idea. Yes, of course. I’m so sorry about that . .
. geez . . .”

After five minutes or so of Binky-less conversation, Ned asked, “Did I ever tell you about the time Binky and I went to Joshua
Tree?”

Finally, Ned left to shoot his movie. I started to spend time with Mary and Jimmie from upstairs and their adorable daughters.
I learned that Jimmie was gravely ill, his condition worsening by the day. The change from when I first met him was remarkable.
The big, strapping, gorgeous guy was now, only a few weeks later, a stooped-over, scary-skinny old man who hack-coughed incessantly.
And he had that look in his eyes. The sunken, unmistakably dull look in his once bright, shiny eyes that I knew meant he was
between two worlds. Though Jimmie spent his days writing scripts, he was also a theater director and had the most brilliant,
imaginative mind. I could listen to him talk for hours. While Mary was at work and the girls were at school, I spent any lunchtime
I could just sitting with him on his bed talking about plays. I would go to Erewhon, the health food store, in the mornings
and get a salad for myself and Essiac tea—a blend of herbs with healing properties said to cure the most dire cancer cases—for
Jimmie. Sometimes Jimmie would coach me for my auditions; sometimes he would be too weak to even talk, and we would just sit
together in his darkened room, silently listening to the deluge.

“You know what I want?” Jimmie asked me one day as he looked into a bowl of veggie–bee pollen slop he had sitting in the fridge.

“No, what?”

“In-N-Out,” he wheezed.

“You mean . . . a burger?”

“Yeah. I gave up eating meat ’cause I didn’t want to swallow all that fear, you know?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. Sure I knew.

“But now I’m like, fuck it. I really want a Double-Double.”

So off we went. And just like that, we both became carnivores again.

The rain continued, and with it came the threat of mud slides. I was terrified that our decaying abode would float off the
hill at any moment, but when some L.A. County official came out to inspect the premises, we were informed that our house was
fine and that the only concern was that the house
above us
was liable to careen down its slope on top of us, pummeling us to smithereens.

I was grateful for the time I spent upstairs with Jimmie, Mary, and the girls, which, with Ned gone and my somber moods continuing,
seemed to be happening more and more. I would sometimes watch the clock all morning, willing it to speed up so I could run
out in my car to pick the girls up from their school in the canyon. Nights would be spent curled up on their sofa watching
TV for hours. Jimmie’s condition worsened, and various healers would show up to weigh in on what he should do and how he should
focus his energy. One day, I was coming in from an audition and found him in his pajamas sitting beneath a tree, barefoot,
his feet covered with mud.

“A healer was here,” he said quietly. “She told me I am not grounded enough. If I want to stay in this world, I have to embrace
the earth.”

I sat down next to him and scooped more mud onto his feet, then took my shoes off and scooped some onto mine. We stayed there
until dinner, talking about Stephen Sondheim and Jean Cocteau and how great it would be to drive around Rome in an open jeep
with Anna Magnani.

Not long after, I got a call from Mary in the middle of the night: could I stay with the girls, she wanted to know. An ambulance
was coming; Jimmie needed to be rushed to the hospital. It was touch and go for a few days, but finally they brought him home,
and for the next week, all sorts of visitors trekked up the hill to see him. People who were dear friends and even people
he hadn’t talked to in years because of some terrible falling-out. Everyone, it seemed, was coming to say good-bye. Around
this time, after weeks of storms, the rain miraculously stopped. Spring had arrived. The mud dried up, and jasmine once again
filled the air. Jimmie, in the eleventh hour, started a new experimental drug, and his condition began to stabilize.

I spoke with my apartment swapper, who wanted to come back early; she needed to see Jimmie and be there for Mary and the girls.
My father called; since my apartment swapper was leaving, would I, he wanted to know, be coming back? If not, my brother would
like to take my apartment. I had only been in L.A. for six months, and while I wasn’t ready to fully commit to it, I wasn’t
ready to leave either. I had thus far been living by my wits, pulling down the lever on the slot machine and scoring. Why
not do it again?

I couldn’t know then that my luck had essentially run out, and that for the next seven years I would struggle to stay sane,
waylaid in a town I would end up loathing. It was all very visceral: I felt the sun; I smelled the jasmine; I looked down
the hill through the palms and birds-of-paradise at the Hollywood Holiday Inn and knew exactly what people like Mary Pickford
and Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B. DeMille saw when they all trooped out from New Jersey to start Hollywood: how marvelous
it was when it was clear! You could, as the song goes, see forever. I didn’t know that I would only rarely have days of such
clarity and boundless optimism. Most days would be opaque, murky, dusty, and pointless. Most days would be spent sitting in
a seedy, sweltering Fairfax apartment with cottage cheese ceilings, sinking deeper and deeper into the depression that would
engulf me. Most days in that kiln of an apartment, I would be visited by a spectral David Mamet, who would upbraid me for
going down the rabbit hole, leaving me to wonder which was actually more stifling, the heat or the expectations. But right
then, I could only think about how, like Jimmie, I wanted to stay in this world, embrace the earth. Hey—I had put my feet
in the mud too. So, sitting on the Stevie Nicks couch, I called my father back. Yes, I told him, my brother could take the
apartment. It was time to leave the hill and find a new home.

“I need to find a new place too,” Ned told me when I picked him up at LAX later that week. “My lease is up, and I wanna buy
a house. Maybe we could even shack up?”

“I’m not living with you,” I told him. “But I’ll help you look if you help me.” He agreed, and we drove around the flats of
Hollywood looking for “big, wide streets,” as Ned referred to them, while he blathered on about “Binky this” and “Binky that.”

“Go back to Binky, Ned. Seriously.”

“I can’t. She cheated on me, and I can’t forgive that.”

“I think you can and you really should. You never shut up about her; you’re in love with her. Work it out somehow. Do yourself
a favor, will ya?”

Ned did go back to Binky, and I signed a lease on the tiny apartment around the corner from Canter’s deli that would be my
home for the next three and a half years. Ned and I stayed friends for a while, but as these things generally go, we gradually
fell out of touch once he and Binky married. But once, shortly before their wedding, Ned and I met at the Mandarette for old
times’ sake.

“It’s so strange,” Ned told me as we dined on our usual kung pao chicken and ginger string beans. “Now that I’m engaged, it
seems like women are just falling out of trees!”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning suddenly they’re everywhere, and I get hit on constantly! It’s like they can smell it, that I’m taken. Women are
very competitive.”

“So I’ve heard.” I sat back in my chair and looked at him. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore, and I thought back to
the first day I ever saw him, at the interview for his acting class when I was all of nineteen. He seemed so serious, so grown-up,
back then.

“Are you stoned?” I asked him.

“A little,” he smiled. “I smoked half a joint before I took a run around Lake Hollywood. Boy, the air quality looked pretty
bad. Shit’s gotta be bad for your lungs.” He took my hand.

“Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“I’d still like to take you to Joshua Tree, you know. There’s nothing like sleeping in the desert . . .”

“
Plus ça change
,” I thought. We got up, and Ned walked me to my car. I had to get to a party in Santa Monica, so I couldn’t linger.

“See ya, Ned. Mazel tov on the engagement,” I said, hugging him. “I’m real happy for you.”

“Hey, thanks,” he said, holding me tight. “Think about the desert. You’d really love it. Nothing like it: all those stars,
the beautiful air. The whole world is there, just peaceful and right.

It’s really something else . . .”

“I bet it is.”

I got in my car, waved, and drove toward the sun.

7. Friendly Fire

I met Jane
rehearsing bit parts for
Saturday Night Live
. I was just out of NYU; she was just out of high school. We bonded in that way you do when you’re marooned in a dressing
room for a week, waiting to be called onto the set: both wearing head-to-toe thrift-store black, sharing smokes, and looking
forward to our first “big break” airing
live
all across the country. An assistant talent coordinator told us, twenty minutes to airtime, that our sketch had been cut.
I got so upset I almost threw up, but Jane was all business:

“Can we still come to the party?” she asked.

“Uh . . . no.” The minion’s tone was flat and crushing.

We repaired to a crappy bar for a round of kamikazes and a good cry. For several hours, we swam in a pool of sad stories from
our childhoods. Jane lived on the Upper West Side with her mom, a fretful, Shelley-Winters-in-
Lolita
type who’d never recovered from being left for a younger woman by Jane’s dad. She told me she missed her dad terribly and
rarely got to see him since he lived in California with his new wife. She told me she hated having a big nose and a fat ass,
both of which she blamed on her dad’s side of the family. I told her I lived in the Village with my cat, Max; that I wanted
to be a great lady of the stage like Eva Le Gallienne; and that I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about: she was
beautiful. Jane smiled, a preternaturally rueful smile, and said that no matter how pretty she was or could ever be, there
would always be someone prettier. She said I should remember that too, as it would be “one of the suckiest things in life.”
We exchanged numbers. Within weeks, we were inseparable. We freelanced with the same agents. Sometimes, we went on the same
auditions.

One day, Jane picked me up for a casting call. When I opened the door, her eyes bugged out, and she stuck out her tongue.

“Oh my god! You can’t go like that! You can’t, like, go in there with frizzy hair and no makeup and expect them to ‘
get
it
’! You really have to at least
try
to look pretty, you know? Here, let me fix you . . .”

She rewet my hair, blew it out flat as a pancake with her Mason Pearson brush, and did a quick makeup job.

“You may wanna stuff, too . . .”

“What?”

“Your boobs. It’d be better to stuff.”

Why did it matter what my boobs looked like, I wanted to know. We were trying out for chorus parts in an experimental version
of
Antigone
—for no pay.

“I’m not about that. I’m an
artist
. My job is to analyze the text and live truthfully under the imaginary circumstances of the play,” I declaimed, giving Jane
the whole Mamet spiel while she stuffed a pair of Nike tennis socks into my bra.

“Wrong,” she said, adjusting me for symmetry. “Your
job
is to look fuckable. Anyway, this isn’t working. The socks look lumpy. You really need those ‘chicken cutlet’ thingies . .
.”

We didn’t get the parts. They said we looked too “clean.”

A few months later, in early December, Jane landed a tiny part in a play about yuppies at the Public Theater. I went to Florida
for Christmas with my family, and since Jane was rehearsing her play downtown, she stayed in my apartment and fed my cat.
A week later, I came home and found Jane in tears as she packed.

“I don’t want to go home, Nancy,” she told me through choked sobs. “I really, really don’t. But I have nowhere else to go
. . .”

Apparently, things had become intolerable living with her mother. They argued constantly about Jane’s weight, her dad, and
money. She wanted to move out, to get a place of her own, but didn’t have the means.

“Crash with me,” I told her. “Until you get on your feet.”

Why not? The closeness we had as allies in such a crazy game—sharing our woes and boosting each other’s morale—meant the world
to me. Besides, I was making great money cocktail waitressing at the new “it” nightclub, my success stemming in large part
from Jane’s ingenious beauty tricks. I started blowing my normally wild and wavy hair stick straight and became resolutely
“bangs obsessed.” I started using foundation to contour the nose Jane pronounced “cute, but just a tad wide.”

“We should play up your mouth,” she told me, brushing gloss onto my lips. “It’ll offset your nose.”

When Jane suggested I wear tight, tiny T-shirts with no bra because it made my nipples look “so awesome!,” I figured what
the hell and did that too. Soon, I was taking home fistfuls of tips.

After Jane’s play finished its run, she went back to waitress-ing at a burger joint. When we weren’t working, we hung out
all the time. We shopped together, dieted together, took aerobics classes, went to bowling parties with other actors . . .
On Wednesdays, we played poker with lesbians.

When Jane’s twentieth birthday came along, I threw her a party and got her a cake in the shape of a movie marquee with her
name “in lights.” Jane was so broke, she couldn’t afford to get her cowboy boots reheeled at the cobbler near my apartment,
but she still scraped enough money together to buy me an amazing pair of earrings from Putumayo as a thank-you, and also my
very first thong underwear (“for tight jeans!”).

In addition to the sartorial suggestions and canny beauty tips, Jane offered advice on how I could give my attitude a bit
of a makeover too. One of my best friends, Michael, had recently died of AIDS at the age of twenty-two. I was totally bereft.
One afternoon, I was ranting about it to Jane while she sat on the couch, languidly snipping her split ends with a pair of
tiny nail scissors.

“You seem really . . . angry,” Jane said, her eyes focused like lasers at the offending strands.

“Yeah, I am,” I said. “Ten seconds ago, we were at Carnegie Hall watching Liza Minnelli right after she got out of rehab,
and now he’s dead. I can’t believe I have to live out the rest of my life without him.”

“But you seem like an angry person in general. I think you give off a very angry vibe, and you should, like, think about that.
If you wanna be on TV, you have to be likable.”

“I thought you said I had to be fuckable.”

“Both. You have to be both. But you can’t be fuckable if you’re pissed-off seeming. Look at Justine Bateman: She seems really
happy and super cute. And her career’s going
great
. Something you should think about . . .”

Jane was absolutely right. I
was
angry about a lot of things: About Michael; about my lack of progress as an actor; about the fact that suddenly no one seemed
to care what I thought or said, that all that mattered in the “real world” was how I looked. I was angry that Jane so blithely
participated in what I viewed as the soul-crushing compulsion to be pretty and keep quiet, and that none of it seemed to faze
her. I was angry that being angry wasn’t OK, and I was even angry at Jane for calling me angry. But the thing was . . . her
candor stopped me cold. Her tone was harsh—yes—but on some level I understood that her words were not intended as a judgment;
they were meant as a caveat. She was explaining, in simple terms, what was
required
of me
if I wanted to succeed. Jane’s admonishments pissed me off, but in a funny way I also felt cared for—as though she was looking
out for me.

Meanwhile, my home seemed to provide a safe haven for Jane, away from her mother’s constant nagging and criticisms. Though
she talked tough with me, Jane eased up on herself. She ate an extra helping of pasta here, a bit of chocolate cake for dessert
there, and one day, her clothes stopped fitting. Stepping on the scale, she discovered to her horror that she had gained five
pounds. She became terribly depressed and vowed to correct the situation immediately. But when her old dieting tricks (subsisting
on diet cream soda and Merits) didn’t work anymore, she eventually just gave up and started shoving Wonder Bread slathered
with Hellmann’s mayonnaise into her mouth in a benumbed stupor. Soon she could only wear her turquoise spandex workout pants
and baggy sweaters. I listened with deteriorating patience to her complain about her nose, her weight, her ass.

“You are still a beautiful girl,” I told her over and over, “I promise, you don’t need to fix a thing.” But it was to no avail.
Jane would only stare at me, helpless and utterly despondent. Sometime in May, after having stayed with me for five months,
she moved out and into her dad’s house in Los Angeles. As much as I loved and cared for her, I felt relieved when she left
and hoped the change would be good for both of us.

Two months later, Jane called with big news.

“I did it! I got a nose job! My dad bought it for me. I went to the same guy who did his nose, so they gave him a deal!”

She raved about the special diet she had gone on (prepackaged burgers and pancakes) and proudly reported losing fifteen pounds
in only a few weeks. Her agent was sending her out on sitcom auditions and getting all kinds of amazing “feedback” from casting
directors. Scripts were being messengered to her dad’s house. A gig was imminent.

“It’s almost as though I actually act better with my new nose—know what I mean?”

Jane and I kept in touch over the phone, and she told me all about her self-improvements: another nose job (“The first one
didn’t take!”), a hairline revamping (“so I don’t have to have bangs!”), and a whopping thirty-five-pound weight loss. I never
liked her other noses as much as I liked the original one, but she was deliriously happy, and for that I was happy too. Soon
she booked a supporting role on a sitcom and got a new boyfriend. I, meanwhile, played one of the leads in an
After School Special
, did several off-off-Broadway plays, and fell in love with the Jazz Musician. Whenever Jane was in town, we would meet up
in the garden of Café La Fortuna for skim milk café au laits.

When I decided to move to L.A., Jane had just landed her first leading role on a hot new sitcom. We arranged to have lunch
at Revival Café on Beverly. Jane ordered for both of us: scrambled egg whites cooked in “low oil” and bagels scooped of all
their bread, so all that remained was a bagel shell. I had recently guest-starred on
Seinfeld
, and Jane was incredulous.

“You’ve only been here, like, what? Two months? How awesome!”

Though buoyed by the guest spot, I was still broke and feeling anxious about the move to L.A. And logistically, I only had
another month to house-sit for a friend. I needed a place to stay, even briefly. I told Jane my dilemma.

“I don’t know what to do,” I said. “I don’t have anywhere to go . . .”

She furrowed her brow, fired up a Merit, and thought for a minute. Finally, it dawned on her.

“Of course! You should stay at the Oakwood! Have you heard of it? It’s temporary housing just off Laurel Canyon!”

We finished up our egg whites and bagel shells, and I walked her to her Range Rover.

“You seem really great, Jane. Really, just so great,” I said, hugging her. She smiled warmly and scrunched up her new nose
at me.

“It’s ’cause I’m not desperate anymore,” she said and looked at me meaningfully, as though I were an errant child who needed
gentle reminders of boundaries.

“Desperation freaks people out, especially out here. This was so fun. Let’s do it again real soon . . .”

Jane’s show became the breakout hit of the season, a sensation. She had done it: Jane was a star. I called her several times,
leaving messages of congratulations. She didn’t return my calls. One day, I got her on the phone.

“I’m SO SORRY!” she cried, hearing my voice. “EVERYONE is pissed at me! All my friends. I never call anyone back. I’m just
so busy! But I’d love to see you—can we do next Thursday?”

But on Thursday, something came up, and Jane said we’d have to reschedule.

A month later, I coincidentally had a meeting with the casting director for Jane’s show.

“There’s a great part we’re casting for the last episode of the season. You’d be perfect. Can you stick around here, take
a look at the script, and meet the producers at two?”

I went in for the audition, and a few hours later I received the Call: I was hired. I was told to report to the studio the
next day at nine A.M. to begin a week of work. I was being paid more money than I’d ever made in my career. I called Jane
and got her machine. I left a message saying I’d booked the job, I was thrilled, and I’d see her the next day. A few hours
later, the casting director called me.

“Nancy . . . I’m so sorry, there’s been a . . . a change. They’ve cut your part. You’ll still be paid, for the full week.
Everyone feels so bad. I’m sorry.”

The casting director went on to say that the producers had assured her they would cast me in another episode the following
season. I tried to console myself with the promise of a future role.

Later that week, I went out to dinner with my old friend Gabe, who had become a successful TV producer. After I told him the
story, he shook his head.

“That doesn’t make sense. Why’d they pay you so much when they didn’t use you, especially when they said they’d bring you
on next year?”

Gabe knew the producers of Jane’s show; he said he’d see what he could find out. A few days later, he took me to lunch.

“She had you fired,” he said.

“Who?” I asked.

“Jane. She told them that she wouldn’t work with you.”

“What? Why? And, they’ll just do what she says? Aren’t they her bosses?”

“She’s one of the stars of the show. Believe me, she gets what ever she wants. She wants someone fired, boom, they’re gone.
But I don’t get it. Why? I thought you guys were close. Didn’t she live with you? Did you have some kind of falling-out?”

“You mean there was no ‘script change’?” I asked, struggling to make sense of it.

Gabe shook his head. “Nah. They just . . . they had to recast.”

“So . . . then . . . there’ll be no next season either?”

Gabe shook his head.

I started to cry. I was devastated.

“It sucks, I know,” he said, taking my hand. “I’m real sorry. This business is, you know . . . whaddaya gonna do . . .”