Waiting on the Moon, page 6
During my lunch break, I headed over to the hot dog wagon that was always parked alongside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. As I waited in line, paperboys farther up the block began shouting, “Kennedy shot, Kennedy shot!” People were clamoring for news, gathering in clusters, looking for any information, craning their necks over the shoulders of those reading newspapers, desperate to know what had happened. I stood in the midst of the pandemonium of Fifth Avenue, unable to digest this terrible news, having no sense of where to go or what to do. I walked to 42nd Street and took the subway shuttle to the West Side, where I walked onto the entrance ramp of the Lincoln Tunnel, stuck out my thumb, and, without rhyme or reason, headed west.
On every ride I caught, the drivers were glued to the radio. At rest stops, people gathered in front of radios and televisions in somber silence. The journey seemed to pass in slow motion as I made my way to the University of Wisconsin, where my sister, Nancy, was enrolled. When I finally arrived, I saw students gathered around the television in the main campus lounge—and we all witnessed Jack Ruby suddenly shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. After a few days, I headed back home. I felt an imperceptible change within me, as if the ground had slightly shifted and somehow I needed to find more stable footing to keep from feeling further adrift.
I returned home, painting with more fervor than ever before. After a year, I made the same trip, but this time with an agenda. I visited a number of colleges and universities, pretending to be enrolled as an art student. I sought out old high school friends who attended the colleges, slept on their dorm-room floors, ate in the student cafeterias, and, most important, attended the art classes and gained access to the schools’ art supplies.
Some institutions were easier to penetrate than others. Three that proved to be tremendous windfalls were the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin, and the real bonanza, Brandeis University, in Massachusetts. Brandeis had recently built a new art center, and I showed up so frequently—far more than any other art student—that the visiting instructor put me in charge of the keys to the painting studios and the fully stocked supply cabinets. I didn’t feel like an impostor because I was in search of knowledge, not credentials.
Masquerading as an art student and sleeping in the Brandeis student lounge, I couldn’t always avoid the campus security. They caught me several times. It was uncomfortable, but the campus police, fortunately, preferred to handle their problems internally, without involving the city police.
It was during one of my later visits to Brandeis, after a long day of painting in its studios, that I lay stretched out on the campus lawn, drinking a bottle of Tango—a mix of vodka and orange juice—when I heard the sound of Chuck Berry guitar riffs coming from a nearby dorm. My curiosity piqued, I got up to investigate. As I entered the dormitory building, I saw three students playing on the lounge steps. The lead guitarist was the most enthusiastic of the bunch, and I complimented him on his playing. “Hey there, King, you sure can play that guitar of yours.” He seemed to like my Elvis reference and introduced himself as Jon. I told him I was an art student on campus and asked if he and his band were playing anywhere. He mentioned he was signed up to play an acoustic set the next evening at a hootenanny in the campus coffeehouse. I told him I played harmonica and suggested we play a duet. The following night we sat together at the rear of the small club. I was really looking forward to playing, but when Jon’s name was called, he turned to me as he took his guitar from his case and said, “You know, I think I’m going to play alone tonight.” I guess that was Jon Landau’s first managerial decision. We remained friends, and years later, he went from being a rock critic for Rolling Stone to managing Bruce Springsteen during the making of Born to Run.
The University of Chicago was a wellspring for my artistic needs. I loved the city. It was cheap, easy to get around, and had a fine art museum, grand architecture, and, of course, excellent music. The first high school acquaintance I contacted at the university wasn’t exactly a friend at the time: Leon Botstein. He was probably one of the smartest and most accomplished students who graduated from my high school. He was class president, editor of the student newspaper, head of the debate club, and first violinist in the student orchestra. His father was a prominent oncologist.
There had been a party for Leon at his family’s stately home in the posh Riverdale section of the Bronx. My girlfriend, Edie, was invited, and I tagged along as her date. I felt very out of place and wished I hadn’t come. After knocking back several cups of refreshment from a large punch bowl on the dining room table, I decided to pick up the whole bowl and drink it down. Leon’s brother, mortified by my behavior, pulled me away from the table. Punches were thrown, and we ended up rolling down a flight of stairs. Edie also indulged in too much drink and threw up into the shrubbery. She and I were both driven home by Leon’s father, who seemed amused by our behavior.
My visit to Leon in Chicago would be our first encounter since that evening. I walked into his dorm room smiling, a cheerful look on my face, and exclaimed, “Leon, what a wonderful surprise!” I was the last person Leon wanted to see, and knowing that, I had to be quick and to the point. “Leon, I was staying at the University of Wisconsin, working as an apprentice for the art classes. Now, with my duties fulfilled, I’m heading east and thought I could perhaps stay here for a bit. I assure you I’ll keep out of your way, and you won’t even notice I’m here.” Leon wanted none of it, but another student, as luck would have it, was in his room and offered me a place to stay. My new friend’s name was Rainier, from Iowa. He was studying philosophy and religion. He was not very tall, and he had closely cropped brown hair and a round face framed by a neatly trimmed beard. During one of our many late-night discussions, he revealed that his father was a high-ranking officer in the Luftwaffe during World War II. For reasons unexplained to Rainier, his father had been brought to this country in secrecy.
Rainier, an ascetic, believed in having as few material comforts as possible. He felt his true calling would be in the ministry. He gave me his bed and slept on the floor. He also gave me some of his food tickets, since he believed in having only one meal a day. If he passed by someone in need, he would always try to give that person something. Rainier enjoyed theological arguments, and between us, they were never in short supply.
Leon, eager to get rid of me, suggested that I join him and some other students for a long weekend visiting friends at Harvard. Like someone trying to shoo away a stray dog, he encouraged me to have a look at the city’s art schools. He was offering me a free ride there and back. I wasn’t so sure about the reliability of a return trip, but Boston, with its abundance of universities and colleges, interested me. I threw some paintings in the trunk of his car, and once there, followed Leon’s advice and, just for the hell of it, applied to the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts. I borrowed the $18 application fee, lied and said I was a high school graduate, and traveled to Providence and looked around Brown and RISD. I missed the return ride, but I hitched back to Chicago, much to Leon’s disappointment.
Chicago soon began to feel a little constricted after the East Coast. Rainier was then in the middle of a hunger strike, protesting the Vatican’s refusal to speak out against the escalating war in Vietnam. During one of my weekly calls home, my mother said a letter had arrived from a Boston museum school. I asked her to open it.
“Peter! Are you sitting down? It says your application was approved, along with a grant if you choose to accept.”
With news of this unbelievable good fortune, I gathered my meager belongings. As a final act of gratitude for my host, I managed to persuade Rainier to eat before I headed back to New York. When I told Leon I was finally leaving, he was unable to hide his joy.
I arrived in Boston the day before classes were to begin. I had enough money to stay just one night at the nearby YMCA, a short distance from the school. In those days, the Y was only a step or two up from a flophouse. The small, thinly walled gray rooms had frayed yellow window shades and beds so worn that the mattresses almost touched the floor. Throughout the night, you could hear endless hacking coughs coming from the other rooms. With almost no money left, I spent the next day trying to find a place to sleep for free. I went to Harvard, hoping I might stay for a night or two at an old high school friend’s dorm, but he was not keen on the idea. I had no choice but to spend my second night sleeping alongside the Charles River next to the Larz Anderson Bridge, where Quentin Compson, the main character in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, commits suicide. (There once was a brass plaque on the bridge marking the exact spot.) But the weather for another night by the river was not in my favor, so I was determined to find a halfway decent indoor option.
The school had a long wall next to the front entrance where students posted notices. “Can’t keep my cat”; “Selling chairs and a hot plate”; “Roommate wanted to share loft—no heat”; “Need an easel?” As I anxiously browsed the wall, I heard a male voice behind me.
“Are you looking for a roommate?”
I turned to see a pleasant-looking student with thick light-brown hair. He was dressed in a sport jacket over a neatly pressed shirt and tie. “As a matter of fact, I am,” I quickly replied, wondering if he were miraculously sent from heaven.
“Gee, that’s good. I have an apartment, and I’ve been looking for a roommate, too. My name is David.”
We discussed the financial details, and I went to give his place a look, even though I was prepared to take him up on his offer no matter what.
The apartment was a third-floor walk-up a short ten minutes from the school on a street that was mostly inhabited by students at various colleges. It was a freshly painted, cramped two-room space with a tiny kitchenette. The small bedroom had a bunk bed, and the living room walls were covered with his paintings. David was very accommodating, and we both seemed glad to have satisfied our mutual need. Although both of us were young men with a headstrong artistic temperament, as roommates we were an odd couple. I would compare our differences to those of Gauguin and Van Gogh, but ours were of a more mundane nature.
There is an internal and external part to everyone. David seemed to come from a world of fraternities, proms, and double dates. Being the buttoned-up, neat, and tidy guy he was, he appeared to be in his natural milieu. I, however, was a mess. I rarely showered and hardly changed my work shirt and jeans. We both smoked cigarettes—he Marlboros and I almost three packs of pungent Gauloises a day—so we always had to keep a window slightly open. The girls David dated were a particular type, some with virgin pins primly placed at the necks of their fluffy cashmere cardigans. We were also in different orbits regarding painting: I loved Soutine, Beckmann, and the German expressionists, but he leaned toward abstraction.
Early one evening, along with some other students, we were chatting about being underage and not allowed to buy beer, because the drinking age was twenty-one. I came up with the bright idea that if we drove to New York, a trip that took four hours, we would arrive around 10:00 p.m., and since the drinking age there was eighteen and the bars didn’t close until 4:00 a.m., we could surely quench our thirst in that period of time. We climbed into a friend’s truck and headed down to Katz’s Delicatessen, on Houston Street, where the beers were only fifteen cents. We drank until the joint closed. It wasn’t until we began the long drive back to Boston that we realized how wasted and tired we were. Thankfully, we crashed at my parents’ apartment, in the Bronx, rather than into the East River.
David’s staid demeanor never altered except for one night, when I was half asleep in the upper bunk bed and I heard him give a bloodcurdling scream from the bathroom. He was brushing his teeth, and as he was putting more toothpaste onto the brush, he realized that part of a cockroach was caught in the bristles. The remainder was surely in his mouth. I like to imagine that this helped inspire the surrealist aspects of many of his defining films.
I was constantly late paying my share of the rent, and David was understandably becoming more and more agitated with me. I started asking around, hoping to find a cheaper place to live, and finally I did. I came back to collect my belongings, including my beloved records, and to my surprise, I discovered that David had changed the lock. His patience, after chasing me down for the rent so many times, had finally run out.
I thought I would outsmart him by having Peter Laffin, a sculptor and my new roommate, drive me over to David’s place in his orange ex–highway maintenance truck. There was a narrow alley in the back of the building where the fire escapes were located, allowing me to climb to the third-floor apartment window that we always left open. Peter, in order not to block the alley, planned to wait for me on an adjacent street. I would pack up my things, then Peter would drive around and help me load up the stuff, and we’d be off on our merry way in victory, like brave Odysseus sacking the city of Troy.
As I was making my final descent and my foot was just about to touch the ground, however, I heard several loud clicks, and a blinding light erased the darkness of the alley. A spotlight, along with several flashlights, made an approach toward me with the loud command “FREEZE! Hands up. Lie slowly on the ground, facedown, with your hands and legs spread far apart!” I did as they ordered.
“That him?” a cop holding a flashlight asked.
“Naw. Some punk doing a B and E,” a plainclothes-man answered.
“Shit, after all that waiting,” said another.
“So Hoppy, what you up to?”
“Nothing, Officer. I’m moving stuff from my apartment. I live here and just forgot my key.”
“Yeah, and I’m Ted Williams,” said the cop.
“Officer, these are my records and my paintings. My name is on them.”
“Got any ID, kid?”
“Yes, sir, in my back pocket.”
An officer took it from my pocket, then shone a flashlight on my records and paintings.
“Those your paintings?” one of them asked.
“You call that painting? My fuckin’ goldfish can paint better than that,” contributed another.
“Leave him alone. Call headquarters and tell him he ain’t the Strangler.”
“Strangler?” I asked, bewildered. “The Boston Strangler?”
“Yeah, and be glad we didn’t shoot first. Now get this shit outta here.”
After that, whenever I would see David walking through the halls at school, we always politely acknowledged each other. He grew a beard and began to look scruffy, but he still always had his shirt collar buttoned. Eventually he left Boston to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, in Philadelphia, where he formally began his film career.
Decades later, I was filming a music video for the title song from my album Come As You Are. My grandmother had always gone to the movies on Tuesdays, no matter what was playing, and I often tagged along. I vividly recalled the MGM musical Small Town Girl, which has long been forgotten. It contained a choreographed scene that completely mesmerized me from the moment I saw it, when I was eight years old. A character joyfully jumps through the streets of a small town, never stopping once, greeting every passerby he encounters, continually jumping, his amazing endurance never letting up.
I thought it would be a great idea to re-create this energetic scene for my video. I chose the director Edd Griles, who was known for Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” video. He agreed once he saw the archival footage and discovered that the set where the original movie was filmed still miraculously existed on the Universal Studios Lot. After green-lighting the idea with my record company, we started the arduous job of preproduction. I knew the stamina needed for continually jumping was going to take some preparation, but I never fully grasped the physical commitment required. I hired a personal trainer a little too late. He tried hard to get me in shape, but after around ten minutes on the treadmill each day, I was too damn bored and out of breath to continue. The day before shooting, Edd and I did a walk-through of the set. Edd asked me to start jumping on the sidewalk, and after two minutes I was exhausted. “Pete, you trained for this, right?” he asked as I was struggling to catch my breath.
“Oh, sure, Edd,” I claimed. Edd seemed worried, though, and I was overcome with anxiety, seeing the huge area through which I needed to jump bright and early the next morning. Edd said nervously, “Go to your hotel and get a really good night’s rest, Pete. You’re going to need it for tomorrow.” Little did he know that telling a lifelong insomniac to get a really good night’s rest is a surefire way to induce an anxiety attack. I was panicked and knew sleep would be an impossibility. I had heard about a fast-acting sleeping pill, Halcyon, that worked when others failed, leaving little or no hangover the next day. So I called a friendly LA doctor, picked up my prescription, and tried for an early night, to be ready for a 5:00 a.m. wake-up call.
I have no recollection of my trainer, along with hotel security, forcing open the chain on my hotel-room door. Apparently, not being able to fall asleep, I took one pill and then another. The next thing I do remember is being in my trailer on the set, asking Edd, “When we gonna start filming?”
“Peter, are you okay?”
“Sure, Edd, why?”
“Because, Peter, you’ve been jumping all morning. It’s a wrap.”
Halcyon didn’t last too long on the market, thanks to one of its side effects: severe short-term memory loss.
The cinematographer of the shoot was a gentleman named Fred Elmes. Fred shot Blue Velvet for David and was meeting him for dinner later that night. When I first saw Blue Velvet, it was quite a surprise to see that Kyle MacLachlan, who portrayed the lead character, Jeffrey Beaumont, had so many of the qualities of the David I knew back then. I sent someone on the production team to purchase a copy of City of Nets by Otto Friedrich, one of my favorite books about Hollywood and the dismantling of the studio system. I wrote a note to David congratulating him on all his success and asked Fred to give it to him with the book at dinner. The following day Fred handed me an envelope with a note inside:
