How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

part three of an autobiography

Synopsis: Last month, in Part II of his autobiography, Lenny Bruce continued the story of his early show-business career; of his rise toward prominence as a "clean young comic" after acclaim on an "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" show, and of his growing dissatisfaction with the snickering "morality" of a world as difficult for him to understand as the crazy-quilt episodes of his rootless childhood had been. Disillusioned, he signed on in the merchant marine, only to fall in love with Honey Harlowe, a redheaded stripper, just before shipping out. He recounted his experiences aboard ship, where he unknowingly smoked hashish with a Turkish seaman who was horrified at the thought of drinking alcohol; and ashore, where he investigated a Marseilles bordello that catered to men's fantasies as well as their physical desires. Finally, Lenny told how he returned to the U. S., married Honey, and was immediately faced with the problem of supporting the two of them without letting his wife continue in her smirked-at profession. Casting about for a source of income while Honey took singing lessons, he recalled how, while in the Navy, he had successfully solicited help for a leper colony, gratis. Then, as the first step in his plan for becoming a free-lance fund raiser, he had stolen a bundle of priestly garments from a rectory, and, as Part III begins, Lenny is ready to go into business for himself.

The next few weeks were spent with a battery of lawyers getting a charter from New York State which legalized the Brother Mathias Foundation. This licensed me to solicit and disburse funds to the leper colony — which was not at all illegal, for I meant to do just that ... after "operating costs" had been deducted.

I had it made: a priest with a disease — an unbeatable combination.

The first place in which I chose to solicit funds was Miami Beach. Honey was stripping there, at the Paddock Club, and I was working at the Olympia Theater in Miami. We were living at the Floridian Hotel.

Honey was in bed, eating a breakfast that consisted of an orange pop and a hot dog with Everything. I had had Monsignor Martin's pants taken in at the seat and the legs let out. I had three suits all nicely tailored, cleaned and pressed. They fit perfectly. They hung in lovely incongruity: the clerical costumes and the G string, side by side.

The sun poured through the room and bounced off the beaded G string. The prism formed a halo as I walked out of the room in my somber black outfit.

I was just about to get into Honey's 1949 convertible Chevrolet with the leopard-skin seat covers when I heard it for the first time, loud and clear: "Good morning, Father."

The voice came from a sensual-looking, buxom woman of about 35. They bounced when she walked. Ooooh, Daddy! I stood looking at her, both reverent and horny at the same time.

"I'm Mrs. Walsh," she said. "Are you at the Floridian, Father?"

"Yes, I'm with the Brother Mathias Foundation, and we're in this area to collect money for the poor unfortunate lepers in British Guiana."

"Well, I don't have my checkbook with me ——"

"Oh, no," I interrupted, "a donation was the farthest thing from my mind."

"I know that, Father, but I want to give you something. I'm going to my room — 417. When you return, give me a knock, won't you?"

"Well, yes, if you insist."

I watched her do her little-girl pout. Some women can pout so that it looks as if they're putting in a diaphragm at that very moment.

"You won't forget, will you, Father?"

"No, I shan't forget."

With all the subtlety of an exhibitionist exposing himself in a subway station, she telegraphed: "My husband better not keep sending me down here alone."

I drove away as Honey scowled out the window, devouring another one with Everything on it.

I started to drive north from the Floridian, heading my winged chariot, which had a conventional shift that stuck, toward the wealthy homes.

A priest driving a convertible with the top down would cause a lot of comment in Boston, but here in the domain of David and Celia, I went unnoticed. I whizzed past the markets which proclaimed "Goodman's Noodles" and "Hebrew National," past the theater which advertised "Saturday Night Only — Cantor Rosenblatt, Naftula Brandywine, Yetta Stwerling, Direct from Second Avenue, in A Mema's Hartz — Jewish Drama."

Always the same problem with a little plot twist, like a pretzel. The Jewish girl marries a gentile boy and the Jewish girl's family immediately goes into mourning. The gentile husband stays drunk and beats her throughout the entire second act. The third act has the usual happy ending, where the girl gets pregnant, the drunken husband leaves her, and she goes blind working in a sewing-machine factory. The child grows up to be a brilliant physician who naturally, is a genetic representation of his mother's side; but he stutters terribly because of the gentile blood in him. At the end of the third act, his kindly old Jewish grandmother, who has been searching for him, meets him unexpectedly while sitting on a bench waiting for an offstage bus. He kisses her and whispers stutteringly in her ear, "I love you" — in Hebrew ... but the evil gentile part of him comes out and he bites her ear off as the curtain falls on the little theater off Times Square. About 40 blocks off Times Square.

As I stopped for a pedestrian to pass, a rabbi drove by and gave me a friendly wave. I wondered, do rabbis and priests always wave at each other, just like people in sports cars?

I reached a wealthy section a few blocks away which, interestingly enough, was inhabited almost exclusively by gentile families. I parked the car at the curb and knocked at the first door.

• • •

If you have ever done any door-to-door selling, whether it be encyclopedias, siding, shingles, baby pictures, or Avon cosmetics, you know that you receive rejection 95 percent of the time. I've always assumed that one would have to be a dedicated masochist to pursue this type of employment.

As a kid, I studied the color transference of a buttercup while lolling on a lawn retreat between soliciting subscriptions for the Long Island Daily Press. I would commune with nature to recoup my stamina and morale between houses. Actually, I was a door-to-lawn salesman.

It sure was uncomfortable standing on a porch, looking through a screen door at a shadowy figure bent over struggling with a mohair davenport while the roar of an unattended vacuum cleaner bellowed and wheezed. A nine-year-old salesman hasn't learned the refinements of the game....

The first telephone call: "Hello, Mrs. Harding? I hope I'm not disturbing your dinner.... Ha, ha, ha — well, I won't keep you a minute; I know it must be delicious. My name is Schneider. Your neighbor, Mrs. Wilson, gave me your number. Now, before you hang up, don't get the idea that I'm trying to sell you anything. Certainly not! You are very fortunate, indeed, because my company is engaged in a market-research project and, providing you qualify according to our strict specifications, I may be able to offer you a most valuable service, free of charge — absolutely free — which will not cost you one single penny ... that is, of course, providing you do pass our strict qualifications...."

The strict qualifications being that she doesn't hang up.

But I cannot indict the system. It is no more corrupt than any other form of selling. The term itself, "selling," implies talking the customer into purchasing an article he has not previously had any need or desire for.

When I was nine years old, I would find myself standing on a strange and unfriendly porch, getting the breath scared out of me by some dopey chow dog who always leaped out at me from nowhere. Luckily he would just miss me by the six-inch strain on his chain. Dogs seem to take a particular delight in scaring nine-year-old boys. I think it's really a game with them, harmless enough, like fetching sticks, because they are certainly capable of killing you if they wanted to. They don't, though; they just nip at your heels when you ride past on your bike. It's all in fun. For them. I didn't understand the rule of the game when I was nine years old.

I was a prepubic spoilsport.

I must admit that when you stand on that porch and they leap out, it does serve some useful function. If you have sinus trouble, your nasal passages are cleared up in seconds. I imagine that's what the cave men must have done instead of taking nose drops. If a kid's nose was stuffed up, they just stood him in front of a cave until a dinosaur stuck his head out.

By 1951 I had considerably refined my sales approach. I still had no "opener" telephone call to ease my introduction, but I did have a uniform.

A uniform is an important means to instant acceptance.

A man is no longer just a man; he is part of an institution — milkman, postman, diaper man — he has conquered the suspicion of being a stranger by acquiring a kind of official anonymity. He is associated with a definite mission. He means business.

I learned that from my experience in the Navy, the merchant marine and, of course, the WAVEs. Now, my priest uniform overshadowed General Eisenhower's in commanding respect.

I walked up to that $90,000 bay-front home with the yacht parked in the back, and the chow dog lay down just the way Daisy used to in the Blondie movies. That's what preacceptance does for you. Androcles had achieved it for me thousands of years before, taking that thorn out of the lion's foot.

The door opened even before my foot touched the first step. A flustered maid, wiping her hands on her apron, gulped: "Good morning, Father, won't you come in? Mrs. McKenery will be right down."

The house was immaculate. The maid led me to the Music Room. In the center was a beautiful Baldwin grand, the grandest piano I had ever seen. It probably hadn't been played since the little girl whose picture stood on top of it had grown up.

I conjured up a mental picture of the mistress of the house. People usually look like their homes. This house was spotless, but not the crisp, white-kitchen cleanliness with yellow-flowered curtains and a cute Donald Duck—clock decor with which some reflect themselves. This house smelled of wood polished with linseed oil.

Some women are Clorox scrubbers; others are dusters or straightener-uppers. (continued on page 241) how to talk dirty (continued from page 184) Mrs. McKenery was a banister polisher.

She entered, a woman in her 60s, with slightly oily skin, satiny as the furniture. She probably used some expensive monkey-gland preparation for the purpose of preservation, and it certainly served its function; all of her wrinkles were well-preserved.

Within half-an-hour, all I was able to contribute to the conversation was, "I am from the Brother Mathias Foundation, and we are in this area receiving contributions for the unfortunate lepers in British Guiana...." And I had to fight to get that in. She had taken a deep breath when she sat down and didn't stop for another one as she treated me to the most intimate revelations of her life. First she related the details of all the Good Work she had ever done — the organizations to which she gave unstintingly of her services. Then she concentrated on her real sacrifices — being married to an insensitive, cruel man and remaining with him only for the sake of their daughter so that she could have a normal upbringing.

Of course I had to agree that she, Mrs. McKenery, had wasted her life so that her Dolly could have a mother and father and not suffer the indignity of "a broken home." I inquired where Dolly was, and I was not overly surprised to find that she was at the analyst.

After Mrs. McKenery cataloged all the sacrifices she had made since her marriage, she described how she had been raped "by a nigger farmhand Daddy had fired." She was only seven years old when it happened, but she related the Sabine scene to me in intricate detail; detail that is acquired only by constant retelling. It was in the Poe Classicist manner. "We lived on a two-hundred-acre estate — do you know where that big new store downtown is? Daddy used to play croquet with me there — it was our front yard."

She went on and on and on, into the ghastly description of the lynching of her attacker who, incidentally, had never actually "touched" her, but had been drunk and was merely boasting to others of his intentions.

"What if he had gotten to me? I still shudder when I think about it."

After the confession of her early traumatic sexual experiences, she discussed frankly her husband's lack of manliness. "He was never an affectionate man." She sighed deeply, but before I could take advantage of this opportunity to make my pitch, the maid interrupted: "Excuse me, madam, but Mr. Madison is here."

I was introduced to Geoffrey Madison, "a brilliant young poet" who was acquainting Mrs. McKenery with the Greek classics and teaching her to appreciate tragedy. He was taking her to the opening of the first espresso house in Miami Beach.

She explained to this sensitive fellow the purpose of my visit — the wonderful work I was doing for the unfortunate lepers in — "Where was that place?"

Madison smiled askance at me. One hustler to another.

He reminded me that they had only 15 minutes to get to the art exhibit, and she hurriedly wrote me a check, putting in the amount and signing it, telling me to fill in the name of my organization. She kissed my hand and left me alone with the maid, who had been raped, too. When she was 14.

I don't know if I have an extrasensory gift for divining violated virgins, but of all of the women I interviewed, nearly 80 percent had been raped. The other 20 percent had either been hurt on a bicycle or horseback riding, or fallen accidentally on a fence. Their big problem was that their husbands never believed them.

The maid gave me an envelope, and I couldn't wait till I got out of the house to the car so that I could open it and peek at the amount on Mrs. McKenery's check; I was too discreet to conduct such an investigation on the premises. The envelope contained a poem Mrs. McKenery had written about Saint Agnes, also a clipping from the Seventh-day Adventist paper about the tea cozy she had made for the Korean Orphan Drive, and the check. When I looked at the amount on it, I thought there must have been a mistake. I saw the number 750 in the upper-right-hand corner and figured she had forgotten the decimal point; but there it was spelled out: "Seven hundred and fifty and no/100 dollars."

I knew then that I was on my way to being the highest-paid analyst on Miami Beach.

In two days I made only nine calls. The sessions got longer and longer. I got only one rejection and collected $5300 in cash and checks. All from the purest, most self-sacrificing women who were unfortunately married to insensitive, unaffectionate husbands, and who would all be virgins to this day if it weren't for what seemed to be the same lustful rape artist or a fence whose height had been just a little underestimated.

I was mildly annoyed because I never got a chance to discuss religion, which was my official sphere of interest. I had done a lot of reading in preparation, and it was all being wasted.

The only trouble I had was from Honey. When I came home that first night, she wouldn't believe that I had gotten "all that money just for nothing." She insisted, "No woman's going to give you $750 just for talking."

She would go through all my clothes for lipstick traces; she would sniff me all over for the scent of powder or perfume.

I never did anything but shake hands with any of these women, but there were times during our marriage when I kissed other girls, and I had found it much safer to leave the lipstick on and explain it away with, "I couldn't help it, this tipsy old lady just grabbed me and kissed me, she said I looked like her son who was killed in the war, she must've been about seventy ..."

If you've ever tried to rub lipstick off, you know that even if you remove it all, your mouth is twice as red as it was when you left it alone.

When Honey and I had first started going together, she had told me: "I know how men are, like butterflies going from flower to flower. I understand that from time to time you may kiss another girl, and I don't mind, as long as you tell me. I just never want to hear it from anyone else."

And I believed her.

And I did tell her.

Just once.

"I'm glad you told me," she said, and began a slow burn. Within half-an-hour, she had broken every record I had — including my Gramercy Five 78s — and ripped up all the pictures I had of anybody I knew before we were married, and demanded that I tell her the girl's name and that we go together to her right then at four A.M. and "have it out." She ended with: "OK, if you can have a good time, I can have a good time, too!"

For weeks after, every time I came home from, say, the drugstore, she would say, "How's your girlfriend?" Whenever I talked to anyone on the phone, or on the street, or in a store — even a salesgirl — Honey would charge over or, following me in the car, pull up to the curb and challenge: "Is that her?"

Three days after my confession she saw me talking to the secretary of an agent who was trying to get me a booking. This, incidentally, was a woman so ugly I wouldn't have kissed her if she were the last woman in the world. Somehow Honey got her name, traced her number and called up her husband. She introduced herself and told him "It's not my husband's fault, he's very weak-minded." Therefore, his wife was to blame, and he probably knew she was a tramp, but if he wanted her "in one piece" for himself when his turn came, she'd better keep her hands off me!

The funny thing was that the secretary had been giving her husband all kinds of hell for cheating until then. It really created a lot of confusion. He was very sympathetic to Honey and invited her over to hear the whole story. When she went over there, he was half-looped and made some pretty strong advances, figuring that they would console each other, and she was struggling with him when his wife walked in.

Honey came home with her blouse ripped and her lipstick smeared, and I really gave her hell.

The next day I "made" the stores on Lincoln Road. Honey happened to be in one of the shoe stores and heard me give the manager my pitch. After that, she believed me. He gave me a check for $100, which was considerably less than the average, but, after all, he had never been raped.

• • •

One afternoon as I left a big house on Palm Island with $250 in cash warming my pocket, I beheld a sight that made my heart stop just as it did that day so many years ago when my father walked in on me while I was stroking it. A cop on a motorcycle pulled up to the curb, kicked the prop stick in place, and said: "Can I talk to you for a moment, Father?"

"Yes, my son, what is it?"

He was a nice young man with a polite but straightforward approach. "We've had complaints from residents in this area concerning soliciting. It's just a matter of form, but I have to ask to see your permit."

"Permit?"

"Yes, your permit."

"Oh, yes, my permit ... oh, yes ... hmmmm."

He just stared and repeated: "Yes, your permit."

"Gracious, let's see, did Brother Leon take care of that matter? I know I spoke to the Cardinal about it after Mass...."

I kept mumbling until my voice was choked off by the sight of a squad car cruising down the block. It stopped about 20 yards from us, and the police inside the car motioned to the motorcycle cop in a grandiose manner. He walked over and exchanged a few words with them, while I stood there not knowing what to do.

"Hey, you! C'mere! You! Hey! Get the hell over here!"

I looked all around me as if I could not believe that anyone could possibly address me in that tone of voice.

The officer in the car got out. I don't think I have ever seen such a huge man, before or since. He was about 60 years old, must have weighed about 250 pounds, and was easily six feet, eight inches tall. White hair, crew-cut. Not one ounce of fat.

Just then another car came wheeling around the corner and slammed up right in front of us. It was a stripped-down 1951 Ford. Obviously two plain-clothes men.

Paul Bunyan walked over to them and conferred with them as four more motorcycles blasted up, their sirens screaming.

By this time, all the people were pouring out of their homes. Within 10 minutes there were four police cars, six motorcycles, and three kids yelling "Bang! Bang!" while rolling in the dirt.

No one had said a word to me since "Hey, you!"

They just stood off a few paces and eyed me with a sort of take-him-dead-or-alive look.

The giant spoke his line again: "Hey, you!"

I attempted to preserve my dignity in front of my parishioners, who were watching anxiously.

"Sir?"

"You heard me, Jack, take the shit out of your ears!"

Those past few days, sipping tea from bone china with ladies and nibbling Ry-Krisp and watercress, had made me feel quite pious. I actually shocked myself when I heard my voice come out with: "I see no reason to use vulgarity, my son."

Two elderly ladies came to my aid, shaking their fists at the giant's hip pockets. He actually apologized to them for his outburst, but when I looked at him with benevolent forgiveness, he got hot all over again.

I edged over behind the old ladies.

"Get in the car," he commanded. One old lady got so frantic she had her prayer beads skipping around as if she were doing a hula.

"We're not going to let them take you, Father," said one benefactress. "They belong to Satan's army."

An officer tried to grab my arm but one of the plucky old dolls came up with her purse which must have had nothing less than a brick in it, because it knocked him squarely on his butt. As a reflex, the sergeant came up and kicked the old woman in the ass, not hard, but hard enough to bring a Doberman pinscher bounding seemingly out of nowhere. In retaliation, he took a good piece out of the sergeant's hip.

It wasn't long before I heard more sirens, and soon enough we were drawn up in battle lines. On one side were about 50 policemen, paddy wagons, tear-gas guns, riot-quelling equipment, and the fire department, whose men were beginning to screw the fire hose onto the hydrant.

On the other side of No Man's Land I held my ground with my army of elderly ladies and our K-9 Corps, Brutus the Doberman.

Although we were no more than 25 feet apart, the captain in charge picked up one of those electric speakers you see in prison pictures, where the warden always says, "Give up, Dutch, we have you surrounded!"

My ladies had formed a Red Cross unit and were passing out hot coffee to the ranks.

The mechanical voice boomed over the megaphone. "This is Captain Goldman! Give up now and no one will be hurt! You will be given fair treatment, whether you are a priest or not! We just want to take you down for questioning! If you have any Christian feelings, you will surrender yourself and spare this mob the tear gas and fire hose which we will use if they do not disperse!"

I looked at my forces and my heart swelled. There were nearly 50 women, the youngest about 80 years old. They stood at attention, awaiting the decision of their leader.

Everything was orderly and disciplined except the kids. There were dozens of them yelling "Bang! Bang!" "I'm Hop-along Cassidy!" "I'm Bishop Sheen!" as they rolled over in the dirt, creating the impression of a genuine skirmish.

But my ladies stood fast. I like women in that age bracket, because they're the only ones who still wear rouge. I looked sadly at my troops and said, "I had better go."

A cracked cracker voice in back of me spoke up determinedly. "If you don't want to, we're behind you, Father!" And I heard the click of what sounded like ... and to my amazement, it was indeed ... she had cocked the breech of a monstrous-looking elephant gun.

"We're behind you," another cried. And she started to hum, then all joined in singing, "I'm brave when He walks with me...."

The police stood across the way and gaped, dumbfounded.

For one crazy moment, I thought, "How nice. Honey and I will move into this neighborhood and I will be their pastor."

"You have ten seconds!" The voice boomed over the loud-speaker. The la-dies pressed together around me in a solid phalanx. Brutus pricked up his ears. "One ... two ..." I saw the firemen ready the hose.

"Beat your swords into plowshares," I said gently, raising my hand in peace, and walked away from my blue-haired battalion toward the enemy.

The captain whispered in my ear: "Don't make any dramatic gestures to those biddies or I'll crease your head with this club."

"Incitement to violence is not the path of righteousness, my son," I assured him.

They took me in the squad car. Instead of going directly to the police station, we pulled up at a Catholic church. The captain intended to assure himself that I was a fraud before they booked me. The Monsignor came out. We spoke for half-an-hour.

The arrest report describes the result of that meeting: I was booked on a charge of vagrancy.

They searched my hotel room, found the charter of the Brother Mathias Foundation, and realized that everything was in order. They wired New York to find out if I was wanted there. When I came up clean, they released me.

In court the next morning I was found not guilty.

The law had taken a close look at me and recognized my occupation as legitimate. It was Easy Street from now on. I went home and counted my receipts. I had collected about $8000 in three days.

I made out a check for $2500 to the lepers and kept the rest for operating expenses; it would take a lot of gas to get us to Pittsburgh.

My vision mathematically calculated the numbers on the highway signs. U.S. 101 ... Penn. 42. (101 plus 42 is 143.) Peripherally I read the impersonal directions: Truck Route; Detour; Go Slow; School Zone. Did the guys who had painted those signs wonder where they would be placed?

How tragically ironic that most of these signs are made and painted in prisons, perhaps by life termers who would never have the opportunity to see their handiwork in "action."

How sweet and truly Christian it would be if every priest, minister and rabbi would be responsible for a lifer and take him out for just one day so he could see his artwork on a sign or perhaps on a license plate and be able to say to himself: "I made that." Just one day out of his cage.

Goddamn the priests and the rabbis. Goddamn the popes and all their hypocrisy. Goddamn Israel and its bond drives. What influence did they exert to save the lives of the Rosenbergs—guilty or not? Again, the Ten Commandments doesn't say "Thou Shalt Not Kill Sometimes...."

So the pope has his secretary issue a statement about not executing Chessman. What is that? With the tremendous power of the Church I don't believe they could not have exerted pressure enough to get him off if they had really wanted to. But they didn't. He was an agnostic. He did not ask for forgiveness. He might have had a chance if he hadn't been so stupid as to continue claiming he was innocent.

Why don't religious institutions use their influence to relieve human suffering instead of sponsoring such things as the Legion of Decency, which dares to say that it's indecent that men should watch some heavy-titted Italian starlet because to them breasts are dirty?

Beautiful, sweet, tender, womanly breasts that I love to kiss; pink nipples that I love to feel against my clean-shaven face. They're clean!

Why doesn't the Legion of Decency say: "It's indecent that men should stand by and watch cyanide gas administered to human lungs in a death chamber!" The answer is because in their philosophy life is not as important as death. If death and the imminence of death serves the purpose of bringing a person to his knees before the Church, then it is worth using as a positive instrument of propagating the faith. The Church therefore condones capital punishment.

They went a long way toward refining its methods themselves during the Crusades and the Inquisition.

Of course I disagree with them and of course they have a right to believe whatever they do; all I want is for them to come out and admit it and stop issuing sanctimonious bulls which say one thing while they pursue the opposite.

The Burma-Shave signs whizzed past and suddenly Pittsburgh sprang up and yelled "Boo!" as the dark broke. It looked so dramatic, the city in the dawn, that I felt a twinge in the pit of my stomach. I don't know exactly what it is, but any city at that time of day gives me the feeling I used to get when I swallowed the contents of a Benzedrine inhaler and chased it with Coke. It really was "The Pause that Refreshes."

I guess I feel funny about the city because it's so big and alone. Christ, I hate being alone. I was always alone when I was a kid.

Pittsburgh was all alone, too. Like a tough Polish kid with a homemade haircut, cap, knickers, and a broken tooth.

• • •

Honey and I checked into the Milner Hotel.

Those Milner Hotel rooms were beautiful, with high ceilings and fake fireplaces and the mirrored pictures with the flamingo bird. "A Dollar a Day and Servicemen Welcome."

We always got a special rate for a double. There was no toilet in the room — it was at the end of the hall — but there was a sink in the room. Needless to say, I never washed my face in it.

The thing I especially liked about Milner Hotels is that they always had real pillows with chicken feathers in them. I hate those foam-rubber pillows. You can't bend them over. They keep bounding up. Nothing is more obscene to me than a foam-rubber pillow covered with a dear plastic polyethylene zipper bag, even more so when it starts to turn brown; it looks like the burnt isinglass in a potbellied stove.

I'm probably the only one who ever really looks at the mattress in hotels. There always seems to be a brown stain around one button. I've never stained any of these mattresses, and I've asked a lot of people who are very truthful and have no inhibitions, and they've told me they never stained any either. There must be some guy who stains these mattresses before they leave the factory.

I finished examining the mattress and then I double-locked the door. Honey had the dopiest thing about always making sure the door was locked. I used to tell her, "What the hell, I'm in the room, nobody is going to bother you." But she would go through the whole ritual of going outside the door, having me lock it from the inside and making sure no one could get in.

I used to really put her on. When she was locked out I'd start screaming and yelling to her as she tried the door. "Get away! Leave me alone, you horny broad! You're a nymphomaniac! I'm all sore, I can't do it anymore!"

Honey gets embarrassed if she coughs in an elevator. She hates anything loud, and although she is a sensitive and delicate lady, she gets me hotter than any woman I have ever known. When I finally let her back in the room, she was angry, so we made up.

Later we decided to get the rest of our stuff out of the car. To my consternation, the car was gone. Stolen? The audacity! I had a sign on the windshield which clearly read: Clergy. What a sin — stealing a holy automobile! Should I call the police? No, I would call headquarters. "Hello, operator, give me Rome — IVMLV."

Honey, being more earth-bound than I, hustled me off in a cab in the direction of the Car Pound. She noticed that we had been parked the wrong way on a one-way street on the No Parking side during a rush hour in front of a fireplug.

As we rode along, the wind blew her long natural-red hair across me so that it caressed my neck and shoulders. I took her in my arms; it was so luxurious, riding in the back seat as if I were Mr. First Nighter with his own chauffeur. I held Honey tight. Every part of her was warm and sensual. She always dressed crisply and smelled clean. I don't know how long we had been parked in front of the Car Pound when the driver finally summoned up "Ahem" and pointed to the meter, which was still running.

The officer in charge treated us to a brief lesson in morality. "What's the matter with you people — don't you believe in signs?"

I never understood what that was supposed to mean. "Don't you believe in signs?" Suppose you say, "No, I don't believe in signs." Will they let you go because in this country we're guaranteed freedom of belief? No man is to be forced to believe in something that goes against the grain of his conscience. "That's right, officer, I don't believe in signs." "Very well, brother, go in peace."

Anyway, we paid the fine and got the car out.

It was the black 1951 Chevy convertible that we had bought on time. That's such a cute way to put it, the implication being that you don't really have to pay money, you just sort of adopt it for a little while, keep it around, and it's yours.

I recently found my financial records and looked up the figures. There was no record on the Chevy, but the Cadillac I bought right after it originally cost only $161 a month. I took a loan on it and had it refinanced to payments of $63 a week. It was new when I bought it in 1951, and when I sold it in 1957 — still making payments of $254 a month — I still owed $1200 on it. I got only $900 for it and had to scrounge around to make up the difference of $300 in order to stay out of debtors' prison for the right to ride the bus.

Honey and I were on a tight budget in 1954 — $17 for groceries, $6 for insurance, $4 for the Laundromat, rough-dried and folded. Laundry was always a big problem. Honey figured out that when the baby came, our laundry bill would be doubled and we could save a lot of money by getting a washer-dryer combination which was advertised by the appliance store for only a dollar down "on time." That's all she could see: "It's only costing us a dollar, the Laundromat is paying the rest." Instead of $20 a month to the Laundromat, we paid $21.06 to the appliance store. We were going to save what would otherwise have been "doubled" when the baby came.

I knew intuitively that it was a mistake. But Honey always had a way of explaining things to me so that it looked as if the store was taking a big screwing. We took advantage of more stores — it's a wonder they're still in business.

Just $1 Down ... Only $21.06 A Month No Hidden Charges ... No Gimmicks

And they were telling the truth. Your only investment was a dollar — that is, if you were willing to use your washing machine in their store. They wanted $36 for trucking charges to deliver.

"Are you kidding — $36? I'll get a couple of the guys, we'll have it out of here in a minute...."

The first step in exploiting your friends into doing manual labor is to get them to admit they're not doing anything first.

"Hi, Manny, what's happening?"

"Nothin' — we're just hanging around the pad here."

"Listen, you want to have some kicks? I got a new Kenny Drew album and Joe Maini is on it and he really sounds good. When will you be over? In about ten minutes? Oh, wait a minute, I got a wild idea. Listen, I've got to talk soft. Honey is in the kitchen. I saw a nutty-looking chick in this downtown store who's a real balling freak. And I hit on her and she's a nut for bass players, so I told her that I'd bring you over. It'll be perfect; I can sneak out on Honey because I've got to go over there anyway to pick up something."

This operation is quite successful with the average satyr who is always "ready." The girl-in-question has always conveniently taken the day off when you get there, and after your friend recovers from the disappointment of the vanishing phantom lady, you march him to Appliances.

I shared his second shock. It was a big white monster that was designed to "wash 'n' dry" in one cycle. It really was quite a wonderful machine. It could do everything but get through the goddamned door.

"A little this way." "Up on this end." "Easy now, easy now, easy now, goddamnit!" "Oh-oh, one sure thing, we can't take it back now." "Well, we're lucky it's just scratched in the back."

Of course, there are always hallway superintendents that hit you just when you are in the worst position, when you're going down the stairs with it. One guy's fingers are slipping, and it has your shoulder pinned against the fire extinguisher, and you have to go to the bathroom in the worst way — and he hits you with encouraging words like "Are you guys kidding? You'll never get that thing out of here!"

And there is still one guy who asks, "You got a match?" And would you believe it, I invariably reach for one.

With the help of a young, willing kid we got the machine into the street. Young boys are sincerely godlike in attitude. A young kid will always help. I think the motivation is for adult acceptance, and the sweet part about it is that you know it's never profit motivation, because when you go to give them some money, they always say in a shy, awkward manner, "No, that's all right, Mister." And when you force it on them, they're quite embarrassed.

What happens to sweet, willing young boys? What happens to all of us? We never stop anymore and say, "Can I help you, Mister?"

My musician friend had a 1940 Pontiac convertible, and the washer-dryer just fit in the back seat. The edge of the machine pushed the driver's seat close into the wheel, leaving my friend pushed tightly against the wheel. As we drove along, he looked very intense because of his position, as racing drivers look, hugging the wheel.

We were talking and laughing about the dirty trick I had pulled on him, but the conversation stopped at every bump and I would just hear whoosh, as the machine inadvertently served as an artificial respirator.

We got to the house, and the car couldn't make the steep driveway, so we had to lift the machine out of the car and carry it 60 feet. As we were carrying it, I thought this would be a great torture device to give to the Secret Service.

The landlord looked on apologetically, and then said, "I would like to help you" — he was one of those guys — "but, you know, I'm not supposed to lift anything."

The final coup de grâce which I had anticipated with fear now became a reality: the kitchen door was too small. But you still keep thinking that no one would design a product that couldn't fit through an average door.

We finally got it through the living-room door. By this time, my thumbnail and my index finger were Mediterranean blue. My friend's back would never be the same.

We set the machine down with a thump on the living-room floor, taking a breather before we attempted to lug it into the kitchen. It was such a cute little kitchen. The house was really a cute little house. A cute little gingerbread kitchen with a cute little door, six feet high by two-and-a-half feet wide. Now I don't care who you are — even if you're the mover who did William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon job — you're not going to get a washer-dryer, four feet high by four feet wide, through that door.

Well, what the hell, a lot of people have washer-dryers in their living rooms.

They also have pigs and chickens, but they're Indians, and they live in Mexico. That's it, goddamnit, the majority rules. If I were a Mexican or an Indian, and all our neighbors were Mexicans or Indians, we'd think nothing of having the washer-dryer in our living room.

As I sat with a glum look on my face, wondering whether we ought to move to Mexico with the washer-dryer, Honey started in with, "What the hell are you so grouchy about? Boy, you take the fun out of everything. I have to sit here all day by myself, and you've been gone three hours."

Yeah, that's it. I'm just selfish. Manny and I, we're just having all that fun, smashing our fingers and putting our backs out of whack. But I never even would go into these things with Honey. I just thanked her, grateful for the laughs she gave me.

We couldn't decide where to put the washer-dryer; perhaps next to the sofa, or better yet in a corner, since the living room was a little overcrowded anyway. Honey considered making a coffee table out of it, but then we would have to build up all the couches and chairs. Of course, we could have made a "coffee counter" out of it.

But what the hell, we were saving money. Luckily, we hadn't sent the weekly car payment in yet, because it cost that much plus $10 to have the plumber come in and connect the machine.

It really looked wild ... those two big, long black hoses going out of the living-room window into the yard ... like the laboratory where Frankenstein's monster was born.

Everything worked fine, until the neighbors started watering the lawn. It had something to do with the pressure. When Honey was washing clothes, the owner would stand there holding a watering hose in his hand with just a trickle coming out.

We got the plumber back to do some more fixing and pipe changing. Now Honey could do the washing, and the landlord could water the lawn—but suddenly his wife screamed out the window: "The toilet won't flush!"

Whenever anyone flushed the toilet, you couldn't wash clothes or water the lawn. Which worked pretty good, except for those of us who had problems because of early toilet training and suffered from anal repressions, since it was necessary to yell at the top of your lungs, "I'm going to the bathroom! Stop washing and watering!" Then you could flush the toilet.

For those of us who found this announcement too traumatic, there were proxy announcers. I learned, also, that the landlord, who was quite a timid soul, was using the facilities next door.

The dopey dryer part of the machine was gas-operated, and it had a pilot light that kept going out. The pilot was right on the bottom, one inch from the floor, so you couldn't see it, you had to feel it. You had to reach in with your fingers, press down a button and light a match: then you had to hold it for at least 30 seconds till it took. I don't know what kind of matches the inventor of the machine used, but in 30 seconds, the matches I used always burned my fingers — or else, because of the fact that most floors carry a bit of a draft, the matches burned out in 15 seconds.

But the machine had a "guarantee." Of course, like all guarantees, it only covered parts. The particular part that was giving me trouble cost 38 cents, but the son-of-a-bitch who had to come in to replace it cost $26. It wasn't bad enough that I had been exploited by the department store, but now a mechanic, too.

That's something which has always bugged me. Radios, automobiles, whatever — you're really at the mercy of the repairman, because when they look in "there" and throw a lot of mechanical terms at you, you really feel like an idiot. It's the same with a broken watch. When the guy tells you that you need a new blah-blah-blah, can you say, "Why, that blah-blah-blah is in perfect condition."

Maybe some day I'll write a Manual of Stingmanship. It will contain one completely esoteric reference to apply to each mechanical device the average guy owns, so that the repairman will assume that you're a genius and that you know twice as much as he does.

For example: You take your radio in to be repaired. Before the guy unscrews the back, you say: "I don't know what the hell it is — those new low-impedence osculators haven't had quite the filtration powers that the old X72103 set had. I'd check it out myself, but I've got to rip down that damned radar installation I put up last month in the Radon Valley."

After you give the repairman your name and address, leave immediately, before he has a chance to ask you if this radio is A.C. or D.C., which, if you're like I am, you wouldn't know. All the Manual would contain would be one or two good sentences for every appliance.

I wonder where that washer-dryer is today.

I've always wondered about things like that. When I look at a refrigerator which I figure must be 30 years old, I know that the couple who first bought it loved it dearly and shared many personal experiences with it. Probably it was already there in the house at the arrival of their first-born. It probably held the formula for all their children.

And then what? Sold. Perhaps to some guy who had a Boat, Dock and Fishing Equipment Shack: and the butter, milk, eggs, Jell-o and leftover spaghetti was replaced by frozen bait and cans of beer.

Then maybe, in between homes and people, it stands in a Used Appliances store. You've seen them: big, bare stores with maybe 50 or 60 refrigerators, old and new, with descriptions scrawled on them in black crayon: "As Is," "Perf. Mechanical Cond.," "Beauty, Clean," "Repossessed."

Are they happy there, all the refrigerators together? Do they talk to the gas stoves? Are electric stoves snobs?

There they are, an army of refrigerators, expensive ones and budget jobs, rich and poor. If one of them were socialistically minded, he might indeed say, "Some of us are old and some are quite modern with roll-out trays and automatic cube dispensers, but while we are here, we are all the same ... because we're all defrosted."

• • •

Living from one crazy disaster to another, Honey and I were always laugh-ing, kidding, teasing, loving each other. Nothing could really hurt either of us because we were always together, and when one of us was down the other would pick the both of us up.

I had never enjoyed sleeping as much as when I slept with Honey. She just seemed to fit so nice, and I would really sleep soundly. It was funny, because when we first got married, I had never slept with a woman before. I had made plenty of women, but I had never slept with one. I was fairly promiscuous, but I always went home "after," so it took me awhile to get used to sleeping with someone. I remember, about the second week of our marriage, Honey was heartbroken because I asked for a room with twin beds. But little by little, I got used to sleeping with her, and after a while I couldn't sleep without her.

I was like that kid in Peanuts with his dopey blanket.

Honey was the most ticklish person in the world. All I had to do was look at her and say, "I'm going to tickle you now, I'm going to give you the worst tickling you've ever had," and she would really get giggly. I would just have to touch her side, and she'd laugh so hard the tears would come to her eyes.

She really made me laugh and did all kinds of bits for me. As I've said before, she had the most beautiful hair I'd ever seen. It was naturally red, and she could sit on it. When she wears it down, some women are so catty that they come up to her — in a hotel lobby, a shopping market, a movie theater — and say, "Oh, what lovely hair you have!" — and then they always touch it and give it a little yank; Honey wised me up as to their motivation — some women wear things called "switches," long pieces of store-bought hair that fit in their own hair and match it in color, by which device they can make their hair look about a foot longer than it really is. I had never seen anyone with hair as long as Honey's; to hear others talk, though, 80 percent of the women in the world had hair that long, but they just cut it last week. "Oh, when I see your hair that long, I could just shoot myself. My hair was just as long as that, and I cut it, like a damn fool."

If I were depressed, Honey would even use her hair to try to cheer me up — tickling me with it, or making a mustache out of it.

We were driving happily along the streets of Pittsburgh, as silly as a couple of kids, sitting squeezed up tight to one another, deliciously in love, and laughing about my plans for the Brother Mathias Foundation.

We approached an intersection and came to a stop. It was dusk. There was a large truck a block-and-a-half away, coming along at about 40 miles an hour. I saw that we had plenty of time and nosed out to make it across. But as I pulled out an old Packard touring car whipped around the truck, passing it at breakneck speed. It was a convertible — as it came on us I could see the sudden terror in the driver's eyes. He involuntarily screamed, "Ma!"

I felt a rough substance coarse against my lips. It was cement. I had been thrown out of the car, and my mouth bit into the pavement, the curb connecting with my head with the thud of a coconut cracking. I found out later that my skull had been fractured, but I stood up immediately with that super-human strength which people always have when "My life was saved by Eveready flashlight batteries."

To my horror I saw the Packard ramming my car down the street. The seats were empty and both doors flapped like mechanical wings of death. I saw the back wheels go over Honey's soft young body. I heard her hips crack like the sound of a Chinese fortune cookie. The next moment the truck, coming behind the Packard, also ran over her.

I raced to her and threw myself upon her. I felt something warm and wet, and looked down. It was her intestines. Oh, my sweet wonderful baby, my wife, every combination of everything, my mistress, my high priestess, I love her so much, please God let this only be a nightmare.

Her face was gray and there were puddles of blood around her. I yelled, "Oh God, why are you punishing her for my sins, why?"

I kissed her cold face and shouted into her ears, "I love you, take me with you!" I prayed and cried and wished for death, and all at once I realized we were in the center of a huge circle of people. I looked up into the faces of the crowd that had gathered and I knew I had been punished.

I sat on the curb and wept as the siren of the ambulance became louder.

"Oh, dear God, how ashamed I am, not ashamed of sinning, but ashamed that I have fallen into the mold which I despise. I am the image of the men I hate, the debauched degenerate that all men are who only in last resort find religion. How shallow you must think me, God, for surely if I were your God, I would say 'To hell with him. When he needs me, then he prays. But when he doesn't need me I never hear from him.' I cannot say I am sorry that I posed as a priest, but I can tell you this, if you let Honey live I'll rip up the charter and never do it again."

Four months later, Honey took her first step. The doctor said that with proper care, exercise and rest, she would regain her normal posture and health within a year.

I thanked God silently.

Thus ended the career that might have dwarfed those of Billy Graham and Oral Roberts and all the other evangelists who save. Save every penny they can lay their hands on.

The only hang-up now is, I wonder if God is a man or woman, or what color He is. Since the Bible could not be read if it weren't for printing, and the Chinese people were smart enough to invent printing, God must be yellow. What would His son's name be? Jesus Wong? Or Wing Fat Christ? "Yea, I say to thee vellilee." I know that God is not Japanese because they killed nuns at Pearl Harbor.

"Well," the theologians say, "I don't believe that God is a person. God is within me." Then He's a cancer, and all those scientists who want to cut Him out must hate God.

Or perhaps God is a transvestite who practices voodoo — the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost. And I'm confused about the direction of Heaven. It's not up there, because the earth revolves, and sometimes you go to Hell at 8:30, and Heaven at 12:06.

The Romans' God had naught to do with religion, except for Tuesday Night Wrestling & Christian-Eating. And the Egyptians before them didn't relate to Christianity; Rameses was the son of God, and he balled everybody in the kingdom including Moses' mother.

And Jehovah's Witnesses came to Atlantic City during the busy season and couldn't get any rooms. What is the answer? There is no God. Dominus non sequitur.

Certainly on an intellectual level I cannot buy the mysticism attached to any man-made religious object, whether it be the mezuzah nailed to the door sill — at least if they'd make it functional and put a chain on it, you could use it for a lock and kiss it at the same time — or the white plastic statues that Father Gregory from Louisiana has manufactured, the proceeds of which go to building segregated Catholic schools — they can make those white plastic statues functional, too, by tying them in electronically with the bumper and the windshield wiper, so that when you do someone in, you can give him the last rites and baptize him at the same time.

With the money that Honey and I got from the accident, we bought a new Cadillac — a black four-door, really chic job that cost $4017. We drove to Arcadia, California, to see my father, who had remarried. We were going to go to Hollywood — "where my father is" — and then Honey would really get into the movies. My father wasn't really involved with the motion-picture industry; in fact what he was really involved with was a chicken farm.

We worked on the farm for two months. It was like being back with the Denglers. I really put the place into shape. Honey did the canning.

Then my father and I had a beef, and we left. We couldn't get jobs. California is a weird place — you've got to get booked from New York.

• • •

Until Honey and I started "winging" — that is, getting into a higher-income bracket — we always bought secondhand stoves and refrigerators. You could get a stove for about $35 and a refrigerator for about $75. When we were living on the Coast, I knew she wanted a new refrigerator, but I couldn't afford it.

At that time, I was working a burlesque club, and there was a TV producer from the show, Your Mystery Mrs., who was a regular customer. Like most voyeurs, he needed a rationalization for watching the strippers. "The girls — are you kidding? Those old bags! I go to see the comedians!"

This was in part true. Somehow these guys have the misconception that the emcees can fix them up with the girls. But the request — "Will you fix me up with so-and-so?" — is preposterous, unless a girl is an out-and-out hooker, which strippers are not: otherwise they would be hookers, not strippers.

Of course, there are some people who sell themselves for money. That "some" constitutes 90 percent of the people I've known in my life, including myself. We all sell out some part of us.

Any 19-year-old girl who is married to a wealthy, elderly guy ... well, never mind that — just anyone who is married for security is a hooker. Two dollars for a short time, as opposed to a marriage license and a lot of two dollars for a longer time.

The point is that women, unlike men, cannot be "fixed up." With the exception of a hooker, you can't go up to any girl and say. "How about doing it with my friend?" For women to make it, there has to be a love motivation, or at least a chemistry that passes as love.

On the other hand, men are animals. Again, guys will make it with mud, dogs, cats, goats — ask any guy who has been unfortunate enough to spend time in an institution, or a place where men are deprived of women. Many of these men will practice homosexuality, never to return to that pattern upon release.

Ironically, the way homosexuals are punished in this country is by throwing them into jail with other men.

I remember one of the funniest newspaper shticks I've ever read was about this case in Miami. Judge Albert Saperstein gave two guys 30 days in the county jail — are you ready for the charge? — for kissing each other and dancing in one saloon or another on Alton Road. He told them in court, "I realize that this is a medical problem, but I have to set a precedent at the beginning of the season."

You can do it all you want in March, but don't do it in February.

Before I go any further, I had better explain what kind of show Your Mystery Mrs. was....

Announcer: In 1931, today's Mystery Mrs. lost her family in a mine explosion. Bravely she went on alone and through years of self-teaching and discipline, she was able to support herself. Where other women, used to the support of a husband, would live off the charity of relatives, your Mystery Mrs. studied day and night, came to New York City, and now has a wonderful job. She is an usherette at the Roxy Theater.

One night last month, in the line of duty, showing two people to their seats, she tripped and fell and has been incapacitated ever since. She has been too proud to accept any help. Our show heard about this plucky widow and decided to do something. There aren't many plucky widows, folks. How many of you out there can say you know a plucky widow? How many widows can say in all honesty, "I'm plucky!"

(All the widows in the audience stand up and say "I'm plucky!")

Announcer: Our Mystery Mrs. has always dreamed of having her own set of matched luggage. We're going to make that dream come true. And our Mystery Mrs. is ... (Organ fanfare ... camera pans to Mystery Mrs., seated in audience.) ... You, Mrs. Ralph Whoozis from Alberta, Kansas!

Mrs. Whoozis does her "surprise" take — sometimes referred to in the business as the "Does he mean me?" take. There are several accepted methods of creating expressions for the surprise. One is to clench the fist of the left hand, simultaneously drop the lower jaw, and in a split second bring up the left side of the other clenched fist so that the index finger lands between the teeth. Individuals who have seen a few neorealistic Italian films, where the "wronged" bites the index finger in anger, usually do well with this take.

The announcer waves both wrists limply but speedily to encourage applause. Mrs. Whoozis takes her luggage after shedding a few tears on the unbreakable, unscuffable, unfashionable crap they give her — and housewives at home sigh and identify.

Now, when the producer of this show was drooling at his favorite stripper, I never dreamed that a time would come when I would be involved with a Mystery Mrs. "You know, Lenny, you're a pretty creative guy," he said one night, having corralled me backstage, "because every time I come in here you've got some new material. You know, I'm pretty creative, too. I don't like to blow my own horn, but I'm a brilliant writer. The shame of it is, nobody knows."

"How's that?" I asked, looking at him as one looks at a desperate man standing on a ledge.

"Lenny, did you see Your Mystery Mrs. yesterday?"

"Hardly. It goes on at nine o'clock in the morning."

"I had on a widow that not only lost three sons in the War, but two husbands. And she's a blood donor. We got more telephone calls on this show than on any one we've had in two weeks. People from all over. Some furrier from the Bronx is going to send her a full-length sheared-beaver coat to keep her warm. The pitch was, she has given so much blood that now, by some strange quirk, she has low blood pressure."

"Amazing," I said. I always say that when I don't know what the hell else to say. When I don't say "amazing," I switch off with "Boy, some people," or sometimes an "I don't believe you." Another good phrase is "Can you believe that?" If the talker is bitching about being exploited, the best one for that is, "It seems some people, the better you treat them, the worse they are to you." Or, "It just doesn't pay to be nice to people."

After I gave out with two "Hmms" and a "That's one for the book," the producer laid it on me: "They eat it up, Lenny, you wouldn't believe it, but they eat it up. The cornier it is, the more they eat it up. And now are you ready Lenny? Are you ready for the bit? It's all bullshit, ya hear me? Bullshit with a capital K. I write it. Me — poor little, stupid me — is the one that makes 'em laugh and makes 'em cry. I make it all up!"

"You know who that plucky little widow is? She's a waitress I met when I was in the Air Force. I bumped into her in a dancehall last week — now, mind you, I haven't seen her in over, let's see, the War was over in 1945, I came back to L.A., why, it's an easy fourteen years — and I says to myself, 'Now I know that broad from somewhere.' Then it hits me. She's 'Go Down Gussie.' This broad was the greatest French job on the West Coast. Loved it. Couldn't get enough of it. I said, 'Hey, remember that place where you used to wait on me?' She looked at me for a minute and couldn't place me. I didn't have the toupee then and I guess I look different without it."

His toupee was the kind which had lace in the front that looks like a screen door cut out, and he always had it on a little crooked. I don't know who it could have fooled — maybe passed-out drunks or little babies. When he sweated, it used to curl up in the front.

Anyway, he continued: "We shot the shit for a while and then I told her what I was doing and asked her if she would like to be a plucky widow next week. 'What's in it for me?' she says. 'Nine inches,' I says. 'Always braggin', ain't ya?' she says. I says, 'Let's go up to your apartment and fix some grub, I'm starved.' She says, 'I don't think I got anything in the icebox.'"

Of all this degenerate flack he was throwing at my ears, the one thing that hit me was her icebox. How sad — the icebox again. I wondered where she got her icebox. Maybe it was one of those built-in iceboxes that Pullman kitchens have. Hookers' iceboxes always look the same: a jar of mustard, a Coke, maybe a lemon, and an onion that is blooming with those long sprouts.

The producer went on and on, describing in lewd detail how she had Frenched him. The poor French. There's an example of how one minority group has given a whole nation an erotic reputation. It could easily have been another country, and he could just as well have said "She Polacked me."

He explained that the "widows" or "grandmas" or "have-a-year-to-livers" were all people who could be trusted — friends of his or the other writer for the show, or people those friends sent. They could have their choice of two deals: One, take a straight $50 and he would keep the prizes; or, two, if it was the "Basket Case" (the act which had the most dramatic impact), you would get $50 and split the prizes. The big prizes were a color-TV set, a washing machine, a set of silver, and an air-conditioning unit — all of which they got free from the distributors in exchange for plugs.

"You need anything, Lenny? Any appliances?"

"Well, I could use a new refrigerator...."

"You got it."

"I don't think I'd make a very convincing plucky widow."

"Look, Lenny, if you can get me an old lady about 60 years old that you can trust for next Wednesday, the machine is yours. And, let's see ... er — if you can get me — yeah, that's it, get me a 60-year-old lady and her wedding picture, get the wedding picture as soon as you can so I can get it to the lab and have it blown up, and I'll give you a script Monday.

"She doesn't have to remember much. I never give them more than a few lines: 'I only wish the Mister was alive to see this!' Or, 'My boy is coming home from the Veterans Hospital, and this TV set will make all the difference in the world to him!' I gotta go, Len, I'll see you Wednesday at the office. Here's my card. Bring the wedding pic. I'd like to stay and see Princess Talja, but I gotta go. You know what they say, when ya gotta go, ya gotta go."

I've never known who the hell "they" are, but I'll bet they belong to the American Legion, have very white skin with real white legs, and wear Jockey shorts, and black shiny dress shoes with black stockings on the beach.

A 60-year-old lady?

Mema had a relative that she was pretty friendly with, and she called her on the phone and explained in Yiddish what she was to do. She said "Nix," but she had a friend who was a real vilda chi (wild one). She said this woman was perfect, she spoke very good English, etc.

I went over and met Mrs. Stillman. The woman was about 70 but looked about 55, had bleached-blonde hair, full make-up, and platform shoes — the highest I'd ever seen, about 10 inches. With the platforms, she was about four feet tall. Some Jewish ladies look like little birdies to me.

I flipped when she showed me the sheet music she brought over. She was going to be on TV, so she was going to sing. She had all of the Sholom Secunda hits (he is the Yip Harburg of Second Avenue).

She said she also knew a few stories, but maybe they were a little shmutsik for TV. When I told her that the program wasn't exactly that type of format, she was visibly shaken. I was afraid I was going to lose her, so I started to pad — "But then, after you tell them about your tsooris maybe you'll sing your song." That made her happy. I figured after she told the story I would shuffle her off into a room and give her a quick con about overtime. The song she was planning to sing was Bells Mine Schtatetala Bells.

She gave me her wedding picture, and I got it over to the office. It was perfect. A real old tintype. The story was going to be a real basket case:

"Miss Whoozis was a spinster who searched her whole life for the perfect man. She has always been lonely and unhappy. Two months ago, on a boat from Greece, came a man who was her ideal type. They met at Horn & Hardart's Cafeteria, by the silverware section. He was confused by some of the food, the chow mein in particular. They met every day and fell in love, but sad-ness struck our happy couple.

"George Polous was unemployed and the Immigration Department was going to send him back. But he has a lot of money coming to him, if only he can find his Uncle Nicholas who has $7000 of his inheritance. This is a wedding picture of Uncle Nicholas and his wife. Your Mystery Mrs. did a great deal of research and was saddened to discover that George's Uncle Nicholas had passed away. But his wife was alive, and his wife had the money put away for George."

And guess who the aunt was going to be, boys and girls — that little Jewish bird lady, my aunt's friend. Her wedding picture would be shown on a TV screen. There was Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Polous in their wedding picture — alias Mr. and Mrs. Stillman.

It was two days away from the show when Mrs. Stillman called me and asked me to come over immediately. It was about the show. On the way over, I figured the worst. Maybe she wanted a trio in back of her when she was singing.

She looked pleasant as she sat me down on the polyethylene-covered furniture. "Mr. Bruce, I want you should feel very relaxed wid me; efter all, you and I boat know things about life."

I thought to myself, Christ, who is going to believe this Hebrew National is a Greek? Well, maybe they would introduce her as a symbol of brotherhood. A Greek woman who lives in an old Jewish neighborhood and has assimilated.

"What I'm gettin' et, is, you are dishonest cheating me."

"Oh?" I said. After all, her prize was supposed to be a refrigerator-freezer combination, a washing machine and a TV set. I was going to get the refrigerator, she would get $50, and the producer would get the rest of the prizes.

"Don' ect tricky wid me, Sonny."

"Tricky? What the hell are you getting at?"

"One tousend dollars, that's what I'm getting at ... I talked to my son in West Chester dis mornin', end I told him to watch me on the television. He sed to me, 'I'm so heppy for you, Momma, how much are you getting?' I told him $50. Vell, he's leffing so hard, I said, 'Oh, I'm a comedian.' He says, 'Momma, you are de biggest sucker in de world, people are always teking edventage of you.' Well, that is the trut, Mr. Bruce, people hev always made a good-time Benny out of me.

"He told me that Shirley Beck, who lived downstairs from us when we lived in Laguna Beach last year — was it last year now, let me see, Vera was 32 years old, and Helen was pregnant in June, yes, it was last year — Shirley was on the Groucho Marx show and got $1000, and Mr. Bruce, $1000 is not $50."

"Is that right, Mrs. Stillman — $1000 is not $50? Do you realize that if this information gets into the wrong hands, our country could be in great danger? Now, look, I don't know what you're trying to prove, but gonsa geschikta" — which means "the whole thing"; it's always good to throw in a couple of Yiddish words when you're debating with a member of the older generation — "is for our refrigerator, which I need, and that's the reason I'm getting you on the show. And for doing this for me, I want to give you $50 from my own pocket. The rest of the prizes are a washing machine and a TV set that the producer wants for letting me get you on the show in the first place. Now, I don't know where any thousand dollars is going to come from."

"Vell, dat's your headache already. I'm not doing it for a penny less than $1000."

I left her house a beaten man. I'm such an impulsive nut that as soon as I had heard about getting the refrigerator, I had promised ours to a couple who had just been married, and they were so happy about it.... I told Honey the bad news. She said, "That's all right, Daddy, the old one is plenty good."

"Yes, but I promised to give it away, and I can't disappoint these people."

"Why do you have to use Mrs. Stillman? Get another woman."

Of course! It still wasn't too late. I was supposed to bring Mrs. Stillman down to the studio for her to sign her release the next day. Honey knew a woman of about 60 who made most of the strip wardrobe for the girls. She was very good-natured. We called her on the phone and she was perfect.

The only slight problem was that they already had the wedding picture of Mrs. Stillman blown up ten feet high by four feet wide; and Mrs. McNamara, the seamstress, was about five feet, nine inches tall and weighed 160 pounds.

I briefed her, and then we met the producer. "This is Mrs. Stillman," I said, "our basket case."

"Well, she doesn't look too much like her wedding picture. How the hell tall is her husband?"

"Oh, he was a big man," she said without missing a beat.

The show was 36 hours away.

And then I got a call from one of my best friends, a saxophone player. He was broke, and he had a chance to make some bread in a recording session, but he needed $50 to get his alto out of hock.

It came to me in a flash.

"Joe," I said, "your mother's going to give you that $50."

"Are you kidding, Lenny? She hasn't got 50 cents. And if she has, she's already spent it on wine." Joe's mother was the sweetest, best-natured woman I've ever met, but she did like her Napa Valley.

I explained the TV deal to Joe, and he called his mother and then called me back, saying that it would be a perfect deal. Joe's mother would be Mrs. McNamara, posing next to Mrs. Stillman's picture, who was supposed to be Mrs. Polous, who was going to give to her Greek nephew, who was going to be deported, $7000 that she had been saving for him ever since his Uncle Nicholas had died. Then George and his Horn & Hardart sweetheart could be married, and I would get my refrigerator, and Joe's mother could have $5 for wine (which I gave to her as an advance), Joe could have his $50 to get his alto out of hock, and the producer could go straight to jail if anything went wrong.

At 8:30 on the morning of the show, Joe's mother and I met the usher as we had been directed to do, and he sat her in a special seat, with me next to her. The people who were going to be "surprised" always had to be seated in the right seats so that the cameraman knew where to pick them out.

Luckily, the producer of Your Mystery Mrs. came late, and when he saw Joe's mother sitting next to me, clutching her brown paper bag twisted into the definite shape of a wine bottle (and she really was boxed — I had never seen her so drunk — and just think, she'd be on television in 10 minutes), he kept staring at her with a what-the-hell-am-I-losing-my-mind-is-that-the-same-woman-who-was-up-in-my-office? look.

Before the program started, a warmup master of ceremonies told some disgusting water-closet-humor jokes. Then he explained about the applause. And then the show was on:

"Somewhere in this fruitful land, there is a soul that needs a helping hand ... and we present, with love and kisses (Organ fanfare.) ... Your Mystery Mrs.!"

The first act was a light, what they call humorous, bit. Four men were onstage in back of a rig with their pants rolled up to their knees, so that you could see only their legs. If this woman could pick her husband's legs, she and her husband could win a round trip to Holland to attend her father's funeral.

I heard a strange sound and my heart stopped. Joe's mother was snoring. I gave her a good pinch and brought her out of it. When the announcer said, "And it's lucky you, Mrs. Nicholas Polous!" the camera panned to her just in time to see her kissing the brown paper bag. I whispered, "Go ahead on up there, please. Don't forget, you're not doing this for Joe's alto but for my icebox."

It took her two years to get up to the stage.

The emcee observed very quickly that his next guest was drunk. "Mrs. Polous is certainly a brave woman, folks. She was just discharged from the hospital this morning, and against doctor's orders she's here. I'm going down to help her." This got the audience's sympathy, and his quick thinking turned round one into a winner.

They flashed the wedding picture on the screen, and you would have had to be blind not to have seen that this was not Mrs. Polous. There was a weight difference of about 80 pounds — which difference you might buy; people do lose and gain weight. But they don't grow seven inches. Mrs. Stillman was a little tiny woman. Joe's mother was even bigger than Mrs. McNamara.

But when they flashed the picture on, all the women in the audience gave one of those "Oh, isn't that sweet?" sighs. The announcer reminisced about the wonderful life that Mr. and Mrs. Polous had shared, and how brave she was, and how he knew that she was comforted by the memories of her late husband.

And all Joe's mother kept saying was, "Yeah, he was a hell of a man!"

The emcee didn't quite believe what he had heard the first time, and he sort of laughed to cover up, but she kept saying it: "Yeah, he was a hell of a man!" He sensed she was going to go into a stream of profanity, and when I looked up inside the glass booth, I saw the producer staring down at me, nodding his head slowly and mechanically.

All of a sudden I saw a cue card that the audience saw, too: "Get To The Prizes And Get Her The Hell Off!" This certainly confused the studio audience. A brave woman like that, who had just gotten out of the hospital? Is that the way you talk about her? Get to the prizes and get her the hell off?

"... And a beautiful refrigerator with a double-deep freezer compartment will be sent to your home...."

The show was over, and I hustled Joe's mother into a cab, after she insisted I go back and get her the wine she had left under her seat.

I came home with a bottle of champagne and two hollow-stemmed glasses. Honey loved that kind of glass, and she loved champagne. She was standing in the doorway with an I've-got-bad-news look on her face.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?"

"I just got a call from guess who — Mrs. Stillman. Her son in New York watched the show and saw her picture being used. He called his lawyer and they're suing for invasion of privacy."

And sue they did. But everything turned out OK. I got the refrigerator, Joe got his alto, his mother got her wine, and Mrs. Stillman settled out of court.

Naturally, though, the producer lost his job. I felt sort of bad about that, but soon enough he was producing a show twice as big as the Your Mystery Mrs. package. And this one is still running; still successful.

All of which goes to prove the old adage, "You Can't Keep a Good Crook Down ..."

• • •

It was starting to get desperate for us financially, and Honey said, "OK, I've got a chance to strip."

"Oh, Christ, no. I don't want you to go back to stripping!"

"Well, I'll just go stripping for two weeks, and that'll be it. I'll play Las Vegas."

The thing was just to get enough money to make payments on the car — $120 a month. I had it all figured out. I got a room for seven dollars a week. I ran an ad in the paper: Lenny The Gardener — Let Me Edge, Clean And Mow Your Lawn For $6.00.

And I lived, just for the hell of it, on 15 cents a day. I cooked for myself. I was making $90 in a burlesque joint, plus the money I got from gardening. I had Honey's picture up and flowers in the window of my room, just like a shrine.

I had never been separated from her before, and I just couldn't wait for the two weeks of stripping in Vegas to end. But the night she was supposed to come home, she called up and said she had a chance to stay over for two extra weeks.

"Are you kidding? Come home."

I begged and begged and begged, but she stayed there anyway. That was a telltale sign of where I stood in the marriage. I started eating more crap and more crap. I was a complete slave. I was really hung up on her.

Eventually, Honey and I were to get divorced.

I finally had some guts and got rid of her. She left me.

We kept breaking up and going back together at my insistence. She was always better at holding out.

After you break up and go back again enough times, you get hip to one thing: the time of day you break up is very important. If you run away in the middle of the night, there's no place to go. You can't wake your friends up, and in a small town you're really screwed. It's best to break up on your day off, in the afternoon. You get out and you go to the movies. Otherwise, like a schmuck, you're standing on the lawn at three o'clock in the morning with a pillowcase full of clothing and the door locked behind you.

That's when you're not proud that you've "lived next door to someone for 15 years and didn't even know their name."

When I got divorced, a couple of major magazines, like Time, asked me, five years later, that dumb question: "What happened to your marriage?" I figured I would throw a real stock line and they would know I was putting them on and they would cool it.

"What happened to my marriage? It was broken up by my mother-in-law."

And the reporter laughed — "Mother-in-law, ha, what happened?"

"My wife came home early from work one day and she found us in bed together."

"In bed — that's perverse."

"Why? It was her mother, not mine."

One thing about getting divorced, it gave me about an hour's worth of material. That's not bad for an eight-year investment.

But I didn't know how screwed up I was over Honey until one night she came into the club where I was working and sat ringside with some guy. I completely fell apart, and was able to do only a nine-minute show.

Guess who I saw today, my dear ...

• • •

Four years of working in clubs — that's what really made it for me — every night: doing it, doing it, doing it, doing it, getting bored and doing it different ways, no pressure on you, and all the other comedians are drunken bums who don't show up, so I could try anything.

The jazz musicians liked me. I was the only hippy around. Because I was young, other people started to work the same clubs for nothing, just to hang out the way you do when you're young. Hedy Lamarr would come to see me work, and Ernie Kovacs. Every joint I worked, I'd start to get a following.

"You should get out of this place," I would be told, "you're too good for these shithouses." But I knew I wasn't ready yet. I was still thinking in terms of "bits" — you know, "I've got my so-and-so bit, and I've got this other bit. I've got two complete shows."

Then, after a while, instead of just getting material together, little by little it started happening. I'd just go out with no bits.

"Hey, how come you didn't do any bits that show?"

"Well, anything is a bit if I do it twice."

And I really started to become a craftsman, where I could just about structure anything into humor.

Up until 1957, I had never gotten any write-ups. I had worked all these burlesque clubs, where they just had the ads for the club — the names of the girls in the show, and then on the bottom they had:

Now, when I went to San Francisco I stopped working these burlesque clubs and I worked the so-called straight clubs, such as Ann's 440, where I would be the only act.

I hadn't realized till then how much material I had, because here was a place where I wasn't just emceeing between 15 strippers. I could just wheel and deal for hours and hours. And the same people started coming every night, and there was always something different, and it would really drive them nuts. I had a whole bagful of tricks, which I'd developed in the burlesque clubs.

There was already this "in" kind of thing with all these musicians who had heard of me, but the controversy that actually did, let's say, "make" me was the bit I did called "Religions, Inc."

I had gotten a job as a writer at 20th Century-Fox. They were working on a picture called The Rocket man, and Buddy Hackett told them, "Lenny's very good, he's funny and he can create and everything. Why don't you let him have a crack at it?"

So they told me to read the script over the weekend.

The average writer knocks out 15-20 pages a day. I went and did about 150 pages over the weekend and I came back and really impressed the hell out of them. They changed the whole theme of the picture.

The story was about these kids in an orphan asylum. It was just a cute little picture. Nothing unusual. I added to it — there was a Captain Talray who had a space show for kids. He goes to the orphan asylum and he gives the kids all these toys. And Georgie Winslow is the last kid he sees, and he doesn't have a toy left for him, and so the kid is really sad. But then a space gun appears — Pchewwwww! — a magic gun.

Georgie Winslow starts using this gun — like when a car's going to run over him — Pchewwwww! — he stops the car. And that was the whole different twist I gave the picture: the magic space gun.

They gave me a contract and I was so proud. My God, a writer at 20th Century-Fox! My own secretary! Man, I just couldn't believe it. It was one of the most thrilling things in my life, because all the other things that have happened to me have happened gradually.

Anyway, I wanted to produce my own picture. At the time I was sort of swept up with the story of Christ — this big, beautiful man — and the picture I had in mind was about a handicapped bum who wore a hearing aid. His whole ambition in life was to save enough money to buy a black leather motorcycle jacket. Some day the motorcycle, but first he just wanted to get enough money together to buy the jacket.

There was to be a scene in the picture where he was really disappointed, and his hand was caught in the door and had to be all wrapped up in a bandage, and he was struggling with his suitcase ... and he passes this statue of Christ. It's a beautiful statue. It doesn't show Christ being crucified: it shows him very stately, on top of the world, standing there, and he's King of Kings.

The shot was to be this: I walk up to the statue, pass it, look back, gaze at it for a while. There are some flowers on the ground at the foot of this ball which is the earth. I pick up the flowers. I can just about reach His toes, and I put the flowers at His feet, and then I just sort of fall on the globe, embracing it. When we go back to a long shot, showing my arms outstretched while I'm falling there, it looks like a cross.

Now I had searched and searched for a statue of Christ. It took me two days to find the right one. I found it outside in this big churchyard, on Melrose and Vine Streets in Hollywood.

I still had a concept of priests which stemmed from all the Pat O'Brien movies. You know: you're in trouble, they just come and comfort you.

Well, I couldn't get to talk to one of them.

So I went directly to the headquarters, on Alvarado Street, the center where all these different priests go.

At the rectory, I got this kind of answer: "It's not my parish."

They'd all close their windows, and they wouldn't even talk to me. True, I was dressed as a bum, because I was doing the picture, but still.... They just wouldn't talk to me.

Finally — and this part didn't actually happen, but I made a joke out of it on the stage that night — I said: "I tried to find a statue of Christ today, and I tried to talk to priests, and no one would talk to me, but I finally got a chance to talk to one, and he sold me a chance on a Plymouth."

That was the first joke I ever did on religion. It was only a joke, but it really related to the rejection and disappointment I had felt that afternoon.

Then came the extension on that. The abstraction was: "The Dodge-Plymouth dealers had a convention, and they raffled off a 1958 Catholic Church."

And that was the beginning of Religions, Inc.:

And now we go to the headquarters of Religions, Inc., where the Dodge-Plymouth dealers have just had their annual raffle, and they have just given away a 1958 Catholic Church. And seated around the desk on Madison Avenue sit the religious leaders of our country.

We hear one of them. He's addressing the tight little group in Littletown, Connecticut (Madison Avenue is getting a little trite).

"Well, as you know, this year we've got a tie-in with Oldsmobile. Now, gentlemen, I don't expect any of you boys to get out there in the pulpit and hard-sell an automobile. That is ridiculous. But I was thinking now. What do you say to this? If just every once in a while, if we'd throw in a few little terms, just little things like, uh, 'Drive the car that He'd drive!' — and you know, you don't have to lay it on, just zing it in there once in a while and then jump maybe to the Philistines.

"Gentlemen, as far as merchandising possibilities are concerned this year, the rabbi, here, has come up with a winner. For $19 a gross, the genuine Jewish star, lucky cross and cigarette lighter combined, turn it over in the snow and see Rosebud. And for the kids, the Kiss Me In The Dark Mezuzah — really a winner.

"Now, here we go with our first speaker tonight, one of the great Holy Rollers in America today, a great man, gentlemen, and a great Holy Roller."

"Well, thank you verrrry much. Gentlemen, tonight is thrill night. Is it thrill night for the teenagers, the Elvis Presleys? No, gentlemen, it's thrill night for me, because tonight, for the first time in seven years, I'm talking to men of the industry. For the first time in seven years, gentlemen, I'm not going to look into one sweaty face, not one thick red neck, gentlemen ..."

Ordinarily, an opening at a small club — and Ann's 440 was a damned small club — would get no attention at all. But when I opened there, the press got wind of it, and I really blew the town apart.

Hugh Hefner heard about me, and he came to San Francisco to hear me. He arranged for me to come to Chicago and work at The Cloister. They offered me $600, but I had been working Ann's 440 on a percentage and getting $750 a week (not bad after coming from a room where I was making $90), so I asked for $800 at The Cloister, and if they held me over, I would get $1250 a week.

Recently — five years later — I was arrested at The Gate of Horn in Chicago for "obscenity." But, according to Variety, "... the prosecutor is at least equally concerned with Bruce's indictments of organized religion as he is with the more obvious sexual content of the comic's act. It's possible that Bruce's comments on the Catholic Church have hit sensitive nerves in Chicago's Catholic-oriented administration and police department...."

And actually I had praised the Catholic Church.

Remember the freak shows — the alligator lady and the guy who could typewrite with his toes? The irony is that the generation now that is really offended by "sick humor" — talking about people that are deformed — they're the generation that bought tickets to see the freaks: Zip & Pip, the onion-head boy, Lolly & Lulu, all these terrible, bizarre-looking freaks.

Now, dig the difference between the generation today and my father's generation. These young people today, the ones who are "going to hell in a basket," they're really better Christians and more spiritual than that last, perverse generation, because this new generation not only rejected but doesn't support freak attractions — that's not their entertainment shtick — they like rock 'n' roll as opposed to the freak shows. But, thank God for the Catholic Church, there'll still be freaks — the thalidomide babies — they'll grow up and get a good tie-in with Barnum & Bailey.

• • •

"Are you a sick comic?"

"Why do they call you a sick comic?"

"Do you mind being called a sick comic?"

It is impossible to label me. I develop, on the average, four minutes of new material a night, constantly growing and changing my point of view; I am heinously guilty of the paradoxes I assail in our society.

The reason for the label "sick comic" is the lack of creativity among journalists and critics. There is a comedy actor from England with a definite Chaplinesque quality. "Mr. Guinness, do you mind being called a Chaplinesque comic?" There is a new comedian by the name of Peter Sellers who has a definite Guinnessesque quality. "Mr. Sellers, why do they say you have a Guinnessesque quality?"

The motivation of the interviewer is not to get a terse, accurate answer, but rather to write an interesting, slanted article within the boundaries of the editorial outlook of his particular publication, so that he will be given the wherewithal to make the payment on his MG. Therefore this writer prostitutes his integrity by asking questions, the answers to which he already has, much like a cook who follows a recipe and mixes the ingredients properly.

The way I speak, the words with which I relate are more correct in effect than those of a previous pedantic generation.

If I talk about a chick onstage and say, "She was a hooker," an uncontemporary person would say, "Lenny Bruce, you are coarse and crude."

"What should I have said?"

"If you must be specific as to her occupation, you should say 'prostitute.'"

"But wait a minute; shouldn't the purpose of a word be to get close to the object the user is describing?"

"Yes, and correct English can do this; 'hooker' is incorrect."

"And I say 'prostitute' is incorrect."

The word has become too general. He prostituted his art. He prostituted the very thing he loved. Can he write anymore? Not like he used to — he has prostituted his work.

So the word "prostitute" doesn't mean anymore what the word "hooker" does. If a man were to send out for a $100 prostitute, a writer with a beard might show up.

Concomitant with the "sick comic" label is the carbon cry, "What happened to the healthy comedian who just got up there and showed everybody a good time and didn't preach, didn't have to resort to knocking religion, mocking physical handicaps and telling toilet jokes?"

Yes, what did happen to the wholesome trauma of the Thirties and Forties — the honeymoon jokes, concerned not only with what they did but also with how many times they did it; the distorted wedding-night tales, supported visually by the trite vacation-land post cards of an elephant with his trunk searching through the opening of a pup tent, and a woman's head straining out the other end, hysterically screaming, "George!" — whatever happened to all this whole-someness?

What happened to the healthy comedian who at least had good taste? ... Ask the comedians who used to do the harelip jokes, or the moron jokes — "The moron who went to the orphans' picnic," etc. — the healthy comedians who told good-natured religious jokes that found Pat and Abie and Rastus outside of Saint Peter's gate all listening to those angels harping in stereotype.

Whatever happened to Joe E. Lewis? His contribution to comedy consisted of returning Bacchus to his godlike pose with an implicit social message: "If you're going to be a swinger and fun to be with, always have a glass of booze in your hand; even if you don't become part swinger, you're sure to end up with part liver."

What ever happened to Henny Youngman? He involved himself with a nightly psychodrama named Sally, or sometimes Laura. She possessed features not sexually but economically stimulating. Mr. Youngman's Uglivac cross-filed and classified diabolic deformities definitively. "Her nose was so big that every time she sneezed...." "She was so bowlegged that every time...." One leg was shorter than the other, and Mr. Youngman's mutant reaped financial harvest for him. Other comedians followed suit with Cockeyed Jennies, et al., until the Ugly Girl routines became classics. I assume this fondness for atrophy gave the nightclub patron a sense of well-being.

And whatever happened to Jerry Lewis? His neorealistic impression of the Japanese male captured all the subtleties of the Japanese physiognomy. The buck-teeth malocclusion was caricatured to surrealistic proportions until the teeth matched the blades that extended from Ben Hur's chariot. Highlighting the absence of the iris with Coke-bottle-thick lenses, this satire has added to the fanatical devotion which Japanese students have for the United States. Just ask Eisenhower.

Whatever happened to Milton Berle? He brought transvestitism to championship bowling and upset a hard-core culture of dykes that control the field. From Charlie's Aunt and Some Like It Hot and Milton Berle, the pervert has been taken out of Krafft-Ebing and made into a sometimes-fun fag. Berle never lost his sense of duty to the public, though. Although he gave homosexuals a peek out of the damp cellar of unfavorable public opinion, he didn't go all the way; he left a stigma of menace on his fag — "I sweah I'w kiw you."

I was labeled a "sicknik" by Time magazine, whose editorial policy still finds humor in a person's physical shortcomings: "Shelley Berman has a face like a hastily sculptured hamburger." The healthy comic would never offend ... unless you happen to be fat, bald, skinny, deaf or blind. The proxy vote from purgatory has not yet been counted.

Let's say I'm working at the Crescendo on the coast. There'll be Arlene Dahl with some New Wave writer from Algiers and on the whole it's a cooking kind of audience. But I'll finish a show, and some guy will come up to me and say, "I — I'm a club owner, and I'd like you to work for me. It's a beautiful club. You ever work in Milwaukee? Lots of people like you there, and you'll really do great. You'll kill 'em. You'll have a lot of fun. Do you bowl?"

The only thing is, I know that in those clubs, between Los Angeles and New York, the people in the audience are a little older than me. The most I can say to people over 50 or 55 is, "Thank you, I've had enough to eat."

I get to Milwaukee, and the first thing that frightens me to death is that they've got a 6:30 dinner show ... 6:30 in the afternoon and people go to a night club! It's not even dark out yet. I don't wanna go in the house, it's not dark yet, man. If the dinner show is held up, it's only because the Jell-o's not hard.

The people look familiar, but I've never been to Milwaukee before. Then I realize—these are the Grayline Sightseeing Bus Tours before they leave—this is where they live. They're like 40-year-old chicks with prom gowns on.

They don't laugh, they don't heckle, they just stare at me in disbelief. And there are walkouts, walkouts, every night, walkouts. The owner says to me, "Well, I never saw you do that religious bit ... and those words you use!" The chef is confused — the desserts aren't moving.

I go to the men's room, and I see kids in there. Kids four years old, six years old. These kids are in awe of this men's room. It's the first time they've ever been in a place their mother isn't allowed in. Not even for a minute. Not even to get something, is she allowed in there. And the kids stay in there for hours.

"Come out of there!"

"No. Uh-uh."

"I'm going to come in and get you."

"No, you're not allowed in here, 'cause everybody's doing, making wet in here."

In between shows I'm a walker, and I'm getting nudgy and nervous. The owner decides to cushion me with his introduction: "Ladies and gentlemen, the star of our show, Lenny Bruce, who, incidentally, is an ex-GI and, uh, a hell of a good performer, folks, and a great kidder, know what I mean? It's all a bunch of silliness up here and he doesn't mean what he says. He kids about the pope and about the Jewish religion, too, and the colored people and the white people — it's all a silly, make-believe world. And he's a hell of a nice guy, folks. He was at the Veterans Hospital today doing a show for the boys. And here he is — his mom's out here tonight, too, she hasn't seen him in a couple of years — she lives here in town.... Now, a joke is a joke, right, folks? What the hell. I wish that you'd try to cooperate. And whoever has been sticking ice picks (concluded on page 277) how to talk dirty (continued from page 269) in the tires outside, he's not funny. Now Lenny may kid about narcotics, homosexuality, and things like that...."

And he gets walkouts.

I get off the floor, and a waitress says to me, "Listen, there's a couple, they want to meet you." It's a nice couple, about 50 years old. The guy asks me, "You from New York?"

"Yes."

"I recognized that accent." And he's looking at me, with a sort of searching hope in his eyes, and then he says, "Are you Jewish?"

"Yes."

"What are you doing in a place like this?"

"I'm passing."

He says, "Listen, I know you show people eat all that crap on the road...." (Of course. What did you eat tonight? Crap on the road.) And they invite me to have a nice dinner at their house the next day. He writes out the address, you know, with the ball-point pen on the wet cocktail napkin.

That night I go to my hotel — I'm staying at the local show-business hotel; the other show people consist of two people, the guy who runs the movie projector and another guy who sells Capezio shoesn — and I read a little, write a little. I finally get to sleep about seven o'clock in the morning.

The phone rings at nine o'clock.

"Hello, hello, hello, this is the Sheckners."

"Who?"

"The people from last night. We didn't wake you up, did we?"

"No, I always get up at nine in the morning. I like to get up about ten hours before work so I can brush my teeth and get some coffee. It's good you got me up. I probably would have overslept otherwise."

"Listen, why we called you, we want to find out what you want to eat."

"Oh, anything. I'm not a fussy eater, really."

I went over there that night, and I do eat anything — anything but what they had. Liver. And Brussels sprouts. That's really a double threat.

And the conversation was on the level of, "Is it true about Liberace?" That's all I have to hear, then I really lay it on:

"Oh, yeah, they're all queer out there in Hollywood. All of them. Rin Tin Tin's a junky."

Then they take you on a tour around the house. They bring you into the bedroom with the dumb dolls on the bed. And what the hell can you tell people when they walk you around in their house? "Yes, that's a very lovely closet; that's nice the way the towels are folded." They have a piano, with the big lace doily on top, and the bowl of wax fruit. The main function of these pianos is to hold an eight-by-ten picture of the son in the Army, saluting. "That's Morty, he lost a lot of weight."

The trouble is, in these towns — Milwaukee; Lima, Ohio — there's nothing else to do, except look at stars. In the daytime, you go to the park to see the cannon, and you've had it.

One other thing — you can hang out at the Socony Gas Station between shows and get gravel in your shoes. Those night attendants really swing.

"Lemme see the grease rack go up again," I say. "Can I try it?"

"No, you'll break it."

"Can I try on your black leather bow tie?"

"No. Hey, Lenny, you wanna see a clean toilet? You been in a lot of service stations, right? Did you ever see one this immaculate?"

"It's beautiful."

"Now don't lie to me."

"Would I lie to you about something like that?"

"I thought you'd like it, because I know you've seen everything in your travels ——"

"It's gorgeous. In fact, if anyone ever says to me, 'Where is there a clean toilet, I've been searching forever,' I'll say, 'Take 101 into 17 up through 50,' and I'll just send 'em right here."

"You could eat off the floor, right, Lenny?"

"You certainly could."

"Want a sandwich?"

"No, thanks."

Then I start fooling around with his condom-vending machine.

"You sell many of these here?"

"I don't know."

"You fill up the thing here?"

"No, a guy comes around."

"You wear condoms ever?"

"Yeah."

"Do you wear them all the time?"

"No."

"Do you have one on now?"

"No."

"Well, what do you do if you have to tell some chick, 'I'm going to put a condom on now' — it's going to kill everything."

I ask the gas-station attendant if I can put one on.

"Are you crazy or something?"

"No, I figure it's something to do. We'll both put condoms on. We'll take a picture."

"Now, get the hell out of here, you nut, you."

I can't help it, though. Condoms are so dumb. They're sold for the prevention of love.

As far as chicks are concerned, these small towns are dead. The cab drivers ask you where to get laid. It's really a hang-up. Every chick I meet, the first thing they hit me with is, "Look, I don't know what kind of a girl you think I am, but I know you show people, you've got all those broads down in the dressing room, and they're all ready for you, and I'm not gonna ..."

"That's a lie, there's nobody down there!"

"Never mind, I know you get all you want."

"I don't!"

That's what everybody thinks, but there's nobody in the dressing room. That's why Frank Sinatra never gets any. It's hip not to ball him. "Listen, now, they all ball him, I'm not gonna ball him." And the poor schmuck really sings Only the Lonely....

It's a real hang-up, being divorced when you're on the road. Suppose it's three o'clock in the morning, I've just done the last show, I meet a girl, and I like her, and suppose I have a record I'd like her to hear, or I just want to talk to her — there's no lust, no carnal image there — but because where I live is a dirty word, I can't say to her, "Would you come to my hotel?"

And every healthy comedian has given "motel" such a dirty connotation that I couldn't ask my grandmother to go to a motel, say I want to give her a Gutenberg Bible at three in the morning.

The next day at two in the afternoon, when the Kiwanis Club meets there, then "hotel" is clean. But at three o'clock in the morning, Jim.... Christ, where the hell can you live that's clean? You can't say hotel to a chick, so you try to think, what won't offend? What is a clean word to society? What is a clean word that won't offend any chick? ...

Trailer. That's it, trailer.

"Will you come to my trailer?"

"All right, there's nothing dirty about trailers. Trailers are hunting and fishing and Salem cigarettes. Yes, of course, I'll come to your trailer. Where is it?"

"Inside my hotel room."

Why can't you just say, "I want to be with you, and hug and kiss you." No, it's "Come up while I change my shirt." Or coffee. "Let's have a cup of coffee."

In 50 years, coffee will be another dirty word.

Lenny Burce, Master of Ceremonies Three Shows Nighly 9:30, 11:30, 1:30 Ladies Invited, Plenty of Free Parking

This is the third installment of "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People," the autobiography of Lenny Bruce. Part IV will appear next month.