SCHELL: Is she lonely?

BERNARD: I think so, I think we all get lonely somet-…

SCHELL (interrupting): …But I mean is she a lonely person?

BERNARD (after pausing to think): Yes.

At least she had a manservant around! You know what I’ve got? Sweet F.A. is what I’ve got. So I’m that much lonelier now than Marlene, my idol when I was a late teenager.

Come to think of it, I was lonely then too.

That’s why I walked down the Avenue Montaigne in Paris in 1991, a year before she died, looking up at the windows, wondering if she could be looking back down at me.

That’s why I left a rose on her gravestone in Berlin in 1995 when I went there. Can’t believe that was 15 years ago now. Time flies when you’re feeling sorry for yourself.

I came home from work to the house I shared with my younger brother. He owned the house. It was basically unfurnished, with plain white stucco walls and stained beige carpeting, as befits a double-bachelor pad.

On the trash-picked dining room table sat the hand-me-down phone and answering machine. My brother looked up from his newspaper and said to me: “There’s a really weird message on there for you.”

“Oh, is it Kitten?” I asked, and pressed Play before he could answer.

The voice from the answering machine dragged out every other word, like the ladies did on those 1-900 number commercials back in the ’90s. “Oh, hiiiii, Scott! It’s meeee, Kitten.”

In an exaggerated apologetic tone, she continued: “Oh, geez. I really blew it this time, I think. I missed our phone date!”

My brother interrupted from the other room: “Phone date!?”

She cooed on: “See, my landlord stopped by this morning and wanted to take me for a riiiide!” She inhaled briskly then purred, “In his new car!” With a bad-girl giggle she continued, “But ooooh-oh! You know what? We went too faaaar!” She sighed deeply, and in the most rueful voice imaginable finished with: “Can you ever forgive me, Scott? I hope you can. Call me?”

Then quickly, in a serious, businesslike tone, she repeated, “It’s Kitten.” Click.

My brother was gawking at me with a bewildered look that told me he had comprehended the message even less the second time hearing it.

“Who the hell is that?” He asked in that fed-up-with-your-annoying-roommate tone.

I said, “Okay, remember last month when I went to Quaker Gathering in Illinois?” He nodded. “Well, I met this woman there named Reeny. Her nametag gave her hometown as ‘Hollywood’. So naturally I spent the whole session just talking to her, since I figured we would have a lot in common…”

My brother rolled his eyes. “See, right there! That is something the rest of our family would never say.” He was right. Being back home with them since my Crisis had really dramatized the difference between me and them. They just want to live their lives quietly, I want to be the star of a new show every day.

As I told him the rest of my story — about how after finding out I was a fan, my fellow Hollywood Quaker Reeny had put me in touch with her neighbor Kitten Natividad, long-time common-law wife/muse of cult softcore adult film director Russ Meyer — my brother seemed to tune out and returned his attention to the newspaper.

Kitten and I rescheduled our phone date, and I interviewed her for UsedWigs. (Roger Ebert, her old buddy, tweeted about the interview.) What a pair we made, I in my mincey, milquetoasted Dick Cavett-like voice and Kitten in her full-bodied 900-sexline voice.

While we were talking on the phone, she misinterpreted something I said at one point and lashed out defensively with a frantic, hurt anger that surprised me. I patched it over quickly with her, though. We ended the call as friends. She later sent me (at my request, and gratis!) several autographed pictures, including the one you see here (front and back). I used to get email updates from her periodically, but I haven’t talked to her since that day on the cordless phone in the un-air-conditioned back bedroom at my brother’s house.

In the interview Kitten is revealing, funny, and heartily open. But there were a few things she said that I chose not to include. Because there’s a code among us people who put ourselves out there. Even someone like Kitten — who after the Meyer films entered a substance-abuse hell that caused her to have to do harder-core porn like Thanks for the Mammaries, and is now in recovery – you know what? Especially someone like Kitten deserves privacy, and maybe needs someone to watch over her a little. I’m glad she has Friend Reeny, who is a kind soul. And I’m glad I have my brother, who helped me through that rough time in my life with patience and generosity.

Their thoughts go something like this: I am going to be doing lots of fun things with people who like and/or love me this weekend!!! I also have plenty of hobbies and too many things I want to do to even list, so when I’m not relaxing by a friend’s pool eating perfectly grilled chicken, I will go for a gorgeous run in the bamboo forest down the hill from my casually elegant redwood home, where I do not live alone. Might sneak in some book reading, until I am summoned to the NEXT pool party! I’m so glad I have a group of tight-knit friends that is like a safety net for plans-making. I always have plans when I want to! Friday nights are fantastic, they are not full of dread at all!

I should probably be talking to a counselor or therapist about this, but even now at age [REDACTED], I might as well still be the friendless weirdo from high school, when it comes to weekend nights. Today’s weekends are the descendants of those long-ago Fridays, and the family resemblance is queasy-making.

Never mind that the self-satisfied straw jackass whose thoughts I invented above is in a small minority. I know this cognitively because people tell me so. They tell me they, too, get bored and lonely a lot. Things are tougher all over than I think, in my endless solitude filled with wine-time TV, the occasional bleh social outing (but never on Friday or Saturday! that is too-valuable real estate to invite Scott onto), and the hard, boring, lonely work of writing.

A friend of a friend, let’s call him Person C, had a friend, who I will call Person D. C and D were good friends in college. The way friendships are in those years; you’re coming of age for real, not in the rudimentary pubescent sense of high school: You have free will now. You can get as drunk as you want now with impunity. And stay up all night talking to your friends, bonding. C and D became friends in that context. Then graduation came.

Nobody knows what to do, socially, when college ends. Everyone must disperse, and it’s hard. C still hung out with D after graduation, though. They both lived in New York City. Before and during college D had done some acting, and had small parts in some films. Now he had actually just finished shooting in a lead role on a film. One that unbeknownst to anyone would soon catapult him to cult star status, and then eventually to star star status.

C told us how he would get calls on Friday nights from D during that season post-college, before real fame took hold for D. The voicemails went something like this: “Hey, C, it’s D. Just seeing what you’re up to tonight. Let me know if you want to hang out or something. Cool, call me. Thanks. Bye.” C had plans usually, and D usually didn’t, and C started to consider the phone calls almost a nuisance, and kind of pathetic. He didn’t always want to hang out with D! D had kind of an air of the sad sack about him, with his puppy eyes and slow, melancholy voice.

Obviously: The calls stopped soon after D became a movie star. And now every time I see D on a magazine cover I think of this story. It makes me feel better about my empty Friday nights. The difference between D and me, of course — besides the obvious one — is that at least D tried to reach out to people to make plans. I have never really tried that. And I’m too old to start now.

Diego knows what I’m talking about. He is the “barber to the famous” here in D.C. I’ve been to his shop just off Dupont Circle a few times. The walls are covered in personalized autographs from U.S. presidents, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, people whose headshots I don’t recognize, and all of the Popes from the last 50 years. Yeah, it’s the kind of place where the owner writes away to get Papal autographs.

That’s where Diego and I diverge (nowadays). He likes a good icon, I’m oclastic toward them. Diego is proud that he was the exclusive barber to Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court William Rehnquist the whole time the latter lived in D.C. And, assumedly through a personal recommendation, Chief Justice John Roberts is now a regular customer.

Mirroring the down-home half of this city, Diego gives the same treatment (though not the same hairstyle) to me as he gives to Justice Roberts — yet those framed glossy photos on the wall demonstrate that he is also dazzled by famousness, reflecting the caste-based “Do you know who I am?” half of the city.

In the hundreds of times I’d walked by, I had never seen Chief Justice Roberts sitting in Diego’s chair. Until yesterday, which was a coincidence because I had just read a news story that mentioned how Roberts writes everything long-hand rather than types, and how he asked recently, in open court, for someone to explain to him the difference between email and pagers…

I strode across Q Street, opened the glass door and was greeted by a nice middle-aged Latina who asked if I wanted a haircut. No, I said, gesturing toward her boss and his client, I just want to say hi. She smiled serenely and turned back to the hair she was cutting.

I appreciate that homey, neighborhoody side to D.C., how you can just drop in and talk to whomever. We’re all equal.

“Hi, Diego!” He waved his comb and started to mouth a greeting. Before he could, though, I turned 20 degrees to the left and bent over slightly to acknowledge the customer in the chair.

“Hi, shit for brains!” I said to the Chief Justice.

Diego started snickering, and when Mr. Roberts saw that I was just joshing, we all shared a laugh. I high-fived the barber lady. Then we all said Nice to See You to each other and I strode back out.

I cringed along with the rest of you during the holidays when Tareq and Michaele Salahi got busted for crashing a state dinner President Obama held for the prime minister of India.

But for me it was personal. As the pictures of the outlaw couple posing proudly for pictures at the White House flickered across CNN, I said to myself, “Oh, man. The jig is up.”

FOR THE REST OF MY CONFESSION, PLEASE CLICK HERE.

I loved the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series in 1st Grade, especially this one.

Amid all the signs that our world is ending, it’s reassuring to remember that the world has always been about to end for some people.

When I was about 7 years of age, I remember standing in the school library with a couple of other children and Mrs. Sorrentino, the librarian. She had just returned from a librarians’ convention out-of-state.

The only reason I remember the name Sorrentino is because of this anecdote. What happened next had a profound effect on me. I was never the same afterwards.

With a chummishness that was more suited for adult-to-adult conversation, and which struck even my 7-year-old self as inappropriate, she regaled us:

“I was so excited! I actually met Maurice Sendak. Yes, the Maurice Sendak, who does those wonderful picture books you kids love. I put my hand on my chest like this and was almost out of breath, because, well, he’s famous! This was on Tuesday evening, and he was giving a speech Wednesday at the conference, so I said, ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then, Mr. Sendak!’ And he replied in the strangest voice: ‘If there IS a tomorrow.’“

She issued a high-pitched giggle and looked around at her small audience of small first-graders, expecting us to appreciate this “humorous” story in the same way she did.

Instead my lips started quivering, the inside of my face got very hot and I said urgently, “What does that mean? What did he mean?”

“Oh, I suppose he was just trying to put me on. I didn’t think anything of it, except to think he’s a remarkably strange man! Ha, ha.”

My immediate reaction was acute. I wandered off into the “stacks” on the pretense of looking for a book, but really to be alone with my devastation. I felt like fainting, throwing up, crying and running away all at the same time.

That was the first time the notion of the end of the world was communicated to me.

Maurice Sendak, who unwittingly (?) took away my childhood innocence, reappeared 20 years later around the periphery of my life, through an association I had with the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia. That’s when I first found out he’s a gay, about 10 years before the rest of the world knew.

I remember being very surprised to hear that.

• miserable, humiliating failure onstage at the 1981 Michigan State Fair
• one lackluster turn on a national radio program
• written work that I want to keep editing ad infinitum, or my
• recent live storytelling pieces in the nation’s capital…

…The split-second I’m done, I want to try it again. I guess that’s what propels me forward to keep doing things. I’m hoping that it’s not just a case of wearisome perfectionism, but that it actually confirms that I am right to be doing what I do professionally.

The other night I realized: The performer who bombs and immediately goes home defeated and cries is just a dilettante. The person who bombs and insists, Lucy Ricardo-style, “Let me try again, Ricky!” shows she has the mettle to keep on. Whether she’s good or not.

STAGE FRIGHT

Anymore, I only get nervous after a performance. That’s when I start wondering how I did, if the producer/director/audience liked me, and so on. Much like how I’ve never written anything (besides my personal journal) that I wasn’t guaranteed was going to be published — until recently I had a crippling fear of rejection, so I’ve never “pitched” a story — I will only stand or sit in front of a mic if I’m sure the material is solid enough to carry me even if I drool or have an accident in my pants. Another reason I don’t get nervous beforehand anymore is that I truly don’t care what people think of me anymore. Or, put more truthfully: I don’t care about people I don’t know. And I barely care about people I do know. [Wish you could've seen how many times I just re-edited those last few sentences.]

It wasn’t always that way, though. For the Michigan State Fair of 1981, my guitar teacher had picked a few of his favorite pupils and arranged for us to do a recital. My song I picked to play was “Down in the Valley.”

Along the fence that contained the audience stood big blackened oil drums cut in half to form barbecue grills, filled with broiling ribs. My parents were standing over near the barbecue drums, waiting to applaud little Scottie.

But when I looked out into the crowd, which of course had warmly applauded us onto the stage, since we were just kids, I became terrified of them. I couldn’t even strum. I tried, but invisible hands gripped my arms to my sides. Presently the teacher came over and patted me on the shoulder and ushered me gently offstage. Another pupil played instead.

“I have to go back on, you have to let me!” I pleaded. My parents were watching from the barbecue pit but hadn’t been able to make their way across to me yet. The teacher relented. I went back on, and surprise, the same thing happened. I froze up.

I was taken off again. This time my parents were there in full condolence mode, trying to convince me that it was alright, you tried, these things happen, let’s go home. I didn’t know yet back then that seeing me in pain was 1,000 times worse for them than the pain I was feeling. “No! I’m going back on! Please! Please! Please!”

Exasperation all over their faces, they finally had to get a little sharp with me to make me understand that we were going home now. Period. I was too agitated even to cry. I just disassociated and stared straight ahead during the ride home. “You should have let me go on again, I would’ve played the third time.” Silence.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T TRY TO BE FUNNY

I was asked to do a story for a public radio program that has national distribution. My friend who had been on this show before gave me some advice when I asked. He said: Don’t prepare anything, and most importantly, don’t “try” to be funny. That made sense to me. Trying to be funny can produce “flop perspiration,” the stinkiest kind of perspiration.

As I sat in front of the microphone, the host tried to warm me up with a little small talk. The radio show had recently branched out and was filming a TV version; I asked what that was like, and the host laughed and said that he was getting used to wearing makeup. I said, “Do you ever forget to take it off?” He said, “Yes.”

Then he said “we’re taping now.”

I had trouble reaching a steady conversational rhythm. I concentrated hard on not talking over him, even though I think they can fix that in post-production. I babbled a little sometimes, like in a job interview.

In a way it was like talking to cop or a police detective. They ask you the same question 40 different ways because they’re waiting for a certain answer, and yet they can’t force you to give it, they have to coax or even trick it out of you.

We talked for 45 minutes, in which I relaxed more and more. Just when I hit my stride, it was over. Although the host and the producer had chuckled several times, I hadn’t, and I just didn’t see how my story was going to make it on the air. I felt my friend had given me a bum steer: He had said don’t try to be funny, and guess what? I wasn’t.

[Telling this story to you reminds me of telling that story to them. When does it get funny?]

So I said to the host, “I think I get it now, how this works. Do you think we could start over?”

He said, “No, no, we’re done.”

“But… I wasn’t funny.”

“Listen. Our editors are so great,” he assured me, “when they get done with this you will sound so tight, so clever, you won’t recognize yourself.”

I grudgingly relented, because I had no choice, but all the way home from the studio I suffered from that visceral, creeping post-performance fear. Like in a reverse-Carrie, a shrill voice taunting me: “They’re all not going to laugh at you!”

I only listened to the piece once, the morning it first aired. I understand now why so many actors and singers say they never watch their own movies or listen to their own albums. It’s not that they’re uninterested in looking at or hearing themselves. Far from it. It’s that the futile desire to do it over is unbearable.

Now, just to torture myself, I’m publishing this as-is. I will not re-write it.

I’ll be outside if you need me.

THE SLIDESHOW I PERFORMED FOR MORTIFIED IN WASHINGTON, D.C..

Hi, I’m SM Shrake. Between the ages of 10 and 14, which was in the early ’80s, I was the world’s youngest male Barbra Streisand fan. And quite probably the only pre-teen boy in the world who collected Barbra Streisand memorabilia as his only hobby…

READ THE REST OF THE STORY AND SEE THE REST OF THE S(L)IDESHOW HERE

Up in my bedroom sitting on the floor playing an audiocassette I got for $2 called “Gospel” by Aretha Franklin. Very lo-fi recording of her when she was a teenager (like me!) singing at church, New Bethel Baptist in Detroit, and accompanying herself on piano. I am horrified by what I think I hear in the song “The Day Is Past and Gone.” DID ARETHA JUST CALL THE LORD A “BUTTHOLE”?

After rewinding several times, I determine she is singing “Lord, yow, but oh…”

Low-fidelity recordings often cause these kinds of misunderstandings.

1998

My friend and I slide into the pew at the Reverend Al Green‘s Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tennessee. We were in town for the World Barbecue Championship, so we stopped here and also down the street at Graceland.

As the service begins, the strains of an organ ring out in the small church, and I look to the front, remarking to myself about the organist, “Oh, Al Green’s son must be filling in for him while Al is on the road touring or something.” But then the organist starts singing a stirring spiritual and I realize that that is Al Green.

Black don’t crack.

I end up getting so emotional during the service that my friend, who is older, has to forcibly remove me from the pew and take me outside to calm me down. I love church.

2010

I swear to God I saw Saddam Hussein driving a gray Toyota down Massachusetts Avenue today. If you had seen it you would agree: IT WAS HIM! The car had Maryland plates… What should we do?

_____

READ MORE WRONGAGERY: PARTS 5, 6, 7 and 1