They Call Me Baba Booey (15 page)

“You lost her. Oh he’s crying. Who are you, Patrick Swayze? How come you never told me about this?”

“I’m not going to tell you everything.”

“Well, someone better get to the bottom of this story. I’ll take this up tomorrow on the air.”

“I haven’t seen you this happy in weeks,” I said.

“Because you are an idiot. I told you to stay with her. Are you kicking yourself in the head?”

“Can we just end the show?”

“Really, are you that bad about it?”

“Come on, let it ride, Boss.”

“You were in love with her.”

“Cut me a break.”

After that he mercifully signed off. But it’s the one time in my life on the air that I was genuinely upset. Before I left for the day I was in the bathroom, washing my hands, when Howard walked in. I asked him, “Hey man, can you lay off about this one a little bit?”

He looked at me and said, “Are you kidding? Grow up.”

MY MOM WAS ALWAYS OVERLY PROTECTIVE
. When it came to her three boys she was a tigress. That’s why she ran to the park—and left me at home—to find out what happened when I got the concussion. And that’s how she ended up calling Howard’s mom to complain about his bullying me on air. You can’t fault her for that.

I like to think that’s why she sniffed my head every time I came home. I know that’s why she jumped out of the closet when Anthony came back from the Doors concert. She worried about us obsessively in a way that couldn’t have been good for someone who was battling so many demons.

When Anthony had his prom, my mom helped him pick out his suit. Before most proms, a bunch of couples get together at someone’s house for pictures with their dates, and all the parents come, too.

But after he got dressed, Anthony decided he didn’t want
my mom to follow him to his date’s house for pictures. So when he left the house my mom recruited a neighbor and they followed him in the neighbor’s car. Then she hid behind a tree across from Anthony’s date’s house and watched him take his prom pictures. I don’t see that as her stalking him. It’s just a mom who is proud of her boy, no matter how much he tries to push her away.

And I’m sure my mom isn’t the only mother who did this: We had two telephones in our house. When it rang I’d often pick it up first and then hear my mom pick up the other phone after. If it was for me I’d say, “Mom, hang up please.” But there’d be silence. She didn’t answer and she didn’t hang up. But I knew she was still on the phone. I’d say it again. Nothing: My mom wouldn’t speak or hang up. Then I’d quickly sneak into her room and catch her putting down the phone just as I walked in. Moms are nosy. They want to know who their kids are talking to.

Except that my mom didn’t take anything at face value. She saw conspiracies everywhere, even in the most mundane things. There were no accidents. Part of this was her illness finding its way to the surface even during her balanced moments. But I also think it was a function of her being Italian. A wrong number wasn’t just a wrong number. It was a plot. I always knew when it happened, just by listening to my mom’s side of the conversation.

“Hello,” she’d say. Then, “Umm, Bob who? … How do you know Bob? … What’s your business with Bob?” Then finally, “There’s no Bob here, sorry.”

Long before we ever had Jim Florentine on the show terrorizing telemarketers, I heard my mom doing the same thing to unsuspecting salespeople who called our house. They would be begging to get off the phone after she grilled them about what they were selling and why. I knew these calls could be mined
for comedy just by sitting in my kitchen and listening to my mom destroy people on Long Island.

By the time I was in tenth grade, for the first time in my life I felt stable. I was out of the house so often—at Frank’s, or Vinny’s, or at practice for one team or another—that I was around my mom’s mood swings less and less. Mostly I saw her act out during the holidays, when she was having family over.

She’d start shopping and cooking days in advance and always insisted on cooking large. Half the stuff, like stuffed artichokes and stuffed mushrooms, never made it to the dining room table. It was relegated to a folding table set up especially for the holidays where appetizers sat and were ignored. It was like the kids’ table for food. On Thanksgiving the menu was always the same: manicotti with sauce and meatballs, followed by turkey, sweet potatoes with marshmallow sauce, and green beans with bread crumb topping. And, of course, stuffing. Years later, when it was just me, my parents, and Mary, we’d ask her if she wanted to go out to dinner, which to an Italian is an insult, and she’d still cook for eighteen people.

When I was growing up, one by one—my dad, my brothers, me—would go into the kitchen and ask if we could help and she’d just yell at us, “Get out of my kitchen!” We knew what was coming next. You could set your watch by her blowups. Soon she’d be screaming, “No one helps me!” Then she’d go into the bedroom and sulk for half an hour before coming out to finish cooking. No one dared ask what time we were eating.

But who doesn’t get stressed during the holidays?

Meanwhile, my dad’s work was steady. Anthony, impetuous and rebellious, married a local girl he met in Eisenhower Park when he was twenty. He’s still married to the same girl. They lived nearby. If things got tense I could sneak off to their apartment
and thumb through his massive record collection. Steven lived in the city and let me visit any weekend I wanted. And me and the guys were attached at the hip, spending most of our free time at one another’s houses. Now Frank, Vinny, Paul, and Steve were my brothers. Especially Frank. At his house I didn’t even bother asking for food anymore. I just walked in the back door, opened the fridge, and took what I wanted.

Here’s how good Frank was to me: When I was a junior in high school I quit the wrestling team. The coach, who also happened to be my offensive line coach on the football team, had taken all the fun out of it. He was nothing like the guy I loved when I first started wrestling in junior high. Instead I joined the bowling team. No joke. Bowling was something my dad and Steven did well together. They played in a league on Sunday mornings and sometimes I went with them. I was pretty good. I once heard my biology teacher, who was also the bowling coach, talking about the team. I liked him, so I decided to join. From then on, whenever my wrestling coach saw me in the hallway, he mocked me by walking behind me and pretending to roll a bowling ball. Honestly, I was a little embarrassed. I left my ball in the trunk of Frank’s Bonneville so I didn’t have to carry it around school on days we had tournaments. Frank, who never said no to anyone who needed a ride, would drop me off at the bus that was taking us to the meet. I’d jump out of the front seat, scramble to the back, pull my bag out, and get onto the bus as fast as I could. I didn’t want anyone to see me getting on that bus. I always felt like it was one of those things you have to defend, but you know what? Fuck it. I enjoyed it. And I had Frank and his car to keep me from looking like an idiot.

Years later, on the show, Howard asked me, “You come home one day and there’s a dead body on the floor of your apartment. Who’s the first guy you call?”

“It’s Frank,” I said. “It’s a no-brainer.”

“What would Frank say?” Howard asked.

“Every solution for Frank always starts with ‘I’ll be over in the van in five minutes.’ ”

That’s how I’ll always think of him.

My buddies and I prided ourselves on being able to hang with any other group of kids, avoiding the petty rivalries that come with different cliques. I got us in with the Park Boys. Then there were the black leather boys, who all wore black leather jackets; and the guys on Maple Street. I know, it sounds like something out of
West Side Story
, but it was the 1970s. Everyone knew us as the guys who drove around in Frank’s tank.

The one thing we always needed—especially to fill up Frank’s gas guzzler—was cash. None of us was rich. Our parents gave us the basics; everything extra was on us. One night Frank pulled up to my house holding a stack of fifty New York Nets tickets. This was the old ABA team starring Julius Erving that played at the Nassau Coliseum, right by our house. I asked him, “How did you get those tickets?”

“A friend of my brother’s took them out of the back of a neighbor’s convertible,” he said. “Let’s go scalp them.”

“Great,” I answered.

That night we went to the Coliseum and hustled like never before. Every time I sold some tickets I’d run around the arena looking for Frank. I’d give him the money; he’d give me more tickets. When we were sold out we hopped in his car and went to a secluded place, where we laid out all the money and divvied it up.

We made forty dollars each. Not a bad score. But I always needed more. Records were an expensive habit.

By high school I’d given up my paper route and mowing lawns and moved up to more glamorous employment opportunities: Roy Rogers. Practically everyone I knew worked there,
at the franchise across the street from the Coliseum. That’s where Frank met his wife. It’s also where my buddy Tom (who’d become a member of our group) first met his eventual wife. Maybe there was something in the secret fried chicken recipe. Before I actually got the job I was always hanging out there because that’s where all my friends were. I had no one to go out with until their shifts were over. I still crave Roy Rogers fried chicken.

I got a job flipping burgers. The rush on the counter always came after events at the Coliseum ended. Grateful Dead fans were the worst. They wouldn’t order anything; they’d just come in and start picking the lettuce and tomato from the fixings bar. Eventually we wised up and stationed someone at the fixings bar whenever the Dead were in town and the shows let out. They also stole anything that wasn’t nailed down—toilet paper, paper towels, and sugar packets.

I’ve always been hyperproductive. And while I worked at Roy Rogers, I also juggled a few other jobs. During one summer in high school I worked from 7
A.M
. to 3:30
P.M
. as a custodian for the school district—thanks to Paul’s super-achieving mom, who worked on the school board. Then, on the days I didn’t work at Roy Rogers, I worked at Fortunoff near the Roosevelt Field mall. Vinny worked there, and so did my mom, so they put me in the stockroom. I still have dreams of being overrun by luggage. It came into the store all zipped one into the other, like Russian nesting dolls, and I had to take out each piece and set it up on the floor.

My poultry experience was parlayed into a job delivering Chicken Delicious on Friday and Saturday nights to parts of Long Island like Roosevelt, where Dr. J and Howard were from, and Hempstead, the slum where Anthony lived after he moved out. Dumbest job ever. I was a small white kid driving around the worst parts of town with bags of chicken and cash. At two in the morning. I’m lucky I was never mugged.

I even worked as a stock boy at a women’s clothing store called Ups and Downs. I was the token man. I had to run out to buy the ladies their lunch, carry stuff to their cars, walk them out to the parking lot at night, and even buy their tampons. Really, it was like being on the bottom wrung of some Hollywood agency, only without the scenery, the stars, or the weather. All I had was middle-aged women on Long Island. But it wasn’t the tampons that made me quit. One day the manager sent me to Woolworth’s to buy a paint scraper. When I got back she wanted me to scrape gum off the floor. I thought,
Fuck this. I know I haven’t done shit in life yet, but I ain’t doing this
.

Working in radio wasn’t even on my radar when I was in high school. To me, music was still a hobby. I checked the album charts in
Rolling Stone
. I still tuned in to Casey’s American Top 40. And, on the way to school, if Frank was giving me a ride, I’d make him listen to WPLJ, which catered to high school kids like us.

I thought that when I grew up I might own a kennel supply store. Really. When I was a junior in high school I got a job selling dog food, pet toys, and anything else people needed for furry friends at a store near my house. The place was owned by two brothers who really liked me. Those guys were making a lot of money. They always talked about opening a second store somewhere else on Long Island. One brother had two daughters who were never going to go into the business, so he said to me, “If you want to open our second store, I will stake you.” I always had that in the back of my mind.

My dream career choice, though, was to be a photographer. We had a subscription to
Life
magazine and I remember being moved by the pictures. I can still see those images of soldiers in Vietnam and of the fatal shooting of a protester at Kent State. My dad bought me an Instamatic camera with the flashbulbs
that attached to the top of it. I took pictures of all our vacations and I was sure I would be a photojournalist. I wanted to work for
Life
.

In fact, I was so committed to that idea I went to a vocational school. BOCES, which stands for the Board of Cooperative Educational Services, is a Long Island trade school. It had a rep as being the idiot school because it was mostly for people who weren’t headed to college. It was where you unloaded kids. I did well in high school and my guidance counselor begged me not to go there. Howard actually still makes fun of me on the show for going there. It offered refrigeration, HVAC, auto body, graphic arts, cosmetology, and photography courses. Most of the guys were in auto body and most of the girls were in cosmetology. In eleventh and twelfth grades I did a half day at my high school and, along with Steve, who also took photography, a half day at BOCES. I loved it.