How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

part one of an autobiography

introduction:Once upon a time, when everyone else was afraid to speak out about a certain infallible emperor as he paraded grandly through the streets, there was one little boy who insisted that the emperor was naked. That little boy grew up to be Lenny Bruce, the most controversial -- and the most busted -- comic of our generation.

Today, almost every time Bruce opens his mouth or takes his medicine he gets arrested, either for obscenity or on a narcotics charge.

His narcotics busts have occurred in Philadelphia (dismissed), Miami (dismissed), Van Nuys, California (dismissed), and in Hollywood (convicted). In the Hollywood case earlier this year, a jury found him guilty despite conflicting expert testimony; two doctors stated that a series of standard chemical tests proved that he was not an addict, but two psychiatrists who interviewed him briefly said he was. Instead of sentencing Bruce to jail, the judge invoked California's "Department 95" which provides for indefinite hospitalization for a period of up to 10 years. The case has been appealed and, as of this writing, Bruce is free and working.

Why all those narcotics arrests? Bruce says emphatically that he takes only certain legally prescribed drugs for physical trouble related to a couple of bouts with hepatitis years ago and carries with him letters by three physicians to that effect. But the letters carry no weight with vice-squad officers whose real interest in him, Bruce says, is a desire to somehow punish him for his night-club material.

There does seem to be a correlation: besides obscenity arrests in San Francisco (acquitted), Chicago (convicted in absentia, one year and $1000, under appeal), and Los Angeles (two cases dismissed, one pending), Lenny has also been the target of police warnings, visitations and investigations in almost every city that he's worked. Night after night, teams of detectives loom in his audiences, eagerly keeping score of his "dirty" words. (Since one of the legal criteria for determining obscenity is the appeal to prurient interest, Bruce is fond of saying: "If any of my words stimulate police officers sexually, they are in a lot of trouble.")

The word watchers and vice raiders have also taken to hitting Bruce in the bankbook, using their flashing badges to badger nervous night-club owners. In Vancouver last year, a club owner regretfully closed Bruce out after local officials threatened to tear up the club's license. The same thing happened in Australia. And, earlier this year, Bruce wasn't even allowed to enter England. There is no way of knowing just how many potential U. S. bookings have dried up under official heat, but it is safe to say that (1) the majority of American club owners admire Bruce but (2) they're now afraid to touch him.

Police action against Bruce has become so consistent that Variety deemed it newsworthy to report that he was not arrested during his engagement earlier this year at San Francisco's Off Broadway.

But Bruce has not compromised his performances. On opening night at Off Broadway, a man in the audience suddenly hollered out with spontaneous sincerity: "Lenny, you're honest!"

That salute has become the rallying cry of the many perceptive people who admire and respect the man upon whom Time magazine originally hung the albatross label of sick comedian -- "the sickest of them all." To his supporters, Bruce's brand of humor is not an illness but a potent antibiotic, capable of attacking -- and perhaps curing -- our real social ills.

"Lenny Bruce is here to talk about the phony, frightened, lying world," wrote the Chicago Tribune's Will Leonard scant days before Bruce's obscenity arrest at Chicago's Gate of Horn this year. And Richard Christiansen, in the Chicago Daily News, termed Bruce "the healthiest comic spirit of any comedian working in the United States today." His act, said Christiansen, "is right smack at the center of a true comedy that strips all prejudices and reveals man's inhumanity to man."

Total honesty, of course, is not necessarily total wisdom or even total goodness. In Bruce, a compulsive, albeit honest, desire to develop the inherent humor in macabre situations is often misunderstood by literal-minded listeners. Accused of being sadistic in his comedy, he once replied; "If there is any sadism in my work, I hope I...well, if there is, I wish someone would whip me with a large belt that has a big brass buckle."

Unable to grasp the subtle side of Bruce, his enemies have been forced to attack the one thing about him that they do understand -- his vocabulary. Much like the militant folk of Butte County, California, who succeeded in having several copies of the scholarly, 670-page Dictionary of American Slang destroyed because it contained some words they considered obscene, many Bruce-haters would like to see him burned because he, too, contains a few dirty words.

But there is a reason for Bruce's "dirty" words and, fortunately, there are still some articulate people who see it. Columnist Ralph J. Gleason, writing in the San Francisco Examiner, put it this way: "That Bruce can be hilariously, brilliantly funny without the use of his steaming vocabulary is absolutely true. But it also seems to me that it is equally beside the point...

"Lenny Bruce says that words are not, in and of themselves, dirty. That he illustrates this by the use of words you and I may think are dirty, and in the process cleanses these words, seems to me to have considerable reputable precedent, not the least of which is Lawrence and Joyce.

"Bruce constantly, and in an infinite variety of ways, attacks the hypocrisy of today's world...Lenny Bruce makes you think and makes you examine your basic attitudes. This is upsetting. If it distresses you and you can't come to grips with it, then perhaps the hang-up is yours, not his."

Writing on the subject of Bruce and his vocabulary, Professor John Logan of the University of Notre Dame came to a similar conclusion: "I find him a brilliant and inventive moralist in the great tradition of comic satire -- Aristophanes, Chaucer, Joyce. If his use of four-letter words constitutes obscenity, then those satirists were also obscene."

His curiosity aroused, he tells us, by all that he has read and heard about himself, Lenny Bruce recently decided to figure himself out by writing his own story.

The result is an autobiography that is much more than merely factual -- it is true. It explains the why and how of Lenny Bruce. And, because we believe that Bruce is worth understanding, we are proud to present -- in this and forthcoming issues of Playboy -- his story.

Any potential reader who may have been offended by Bruce's language onstage is forewarned that "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People" is written in the same idiom. To have altered it would have been untrue to what he is.

As Kenneth Tynan, Britain's leading drama critic, has written: "We are dealing with an impromptuprose poet, who trusts his audience so completely that he talks in public no less outrageously than he would talk in private...Hate him or not, he is unique, and must be seen."

Similarly, we believe, he must be read.

Ladies with short hair are Lesbians; colored men are built abnormally large; Filipinos come quick.

Such bits of erotic folklore were related daily to my mother by Mrs. Janesky, a middle-aged widow who lived across the alley, despite the fact that she had volumes of books delivered by the postman every month -- A Sane Sex Marriage, Ovid the God of Love, How to Make Your Marriage Partner More Compatible -- which always arrived in a plain brown wrapper marked "Personal."

She would begin in a pedantic fashion, using academic medical terminology, but within 10 minutes she would be spouting her hoary hornyisms. Their conversation drifted to me as I sat under the sink, picking at the ripped linoleum, day-dreaming and staring at my Aunt Mema's Private Business, guarded by its sinkmate, the vigilant C-N bottle, vanguard of Lysol, Zonite and Messingil.

Aunt Mema's Private Business, the portable bidet, was a large red rubber bulb with a long black nozzle. I could never figure out what the hell it was for. I thought maybe it was an enema bag for people who lived in buildings with a super who wouldn't allow anyone to put up nails to hang things on; I wondered if it was the horn that Harpo Marx squeezed to punctuate his silent sentences. All I knew was that it definitely was not to be used for water-gun battles, (continued on page 108)how to talk dirty(continued from page 106) and that what it was for was none of my business.

When you're eight years old, nothing is any of your business.

All my inquiries about Aunt Mema's large red rubber bulb, or why the hairs came out of the mole on her face and nowhere else, or how come the talcum powder stuck between her nay-nays, would get the same answer: "You know too much already, go outside and play."

Her fear of my becoming a preteen Leopold or Loeb was responsible for my getting more fresh air than any other kid in the neighborhood.

In 1932 you really heard that word a lot -- "business." But it wasn't, "I wonder what happened to the business." Everyone knew what happened to the business. There wasn't any. "That dumb bastard President Hoover" was blamed for driving us into the Depression by people who didn't necessarily have any interest in politics, but just liked saying "That dumb bastard President Hoover."

I would sit all alone through endless hours and days, scratching out my homework on the red Big Boy Tablet, in our kitchen with the shiny, flowered oilcloth, the icebox squatting over the pan that constantly overflowed, and the over-head light, bare save for a long brown string with a knot on the end, where flies fell in love.

I sort of felt sorry for the damn flies. They never hurt anybody. Even though they were supposed to carry disease, I never heard anybody say he caught anything from a fly. My cousin gave two guys the clap, and nobody ever whacked her with a newspaper.

The desperate tension of the Depression was lessened for me by Philco radio with the little yellow-orange dial and the black numbers in the center. What a dear, sweet friend, my wooden radio, with the sensual cloth webbing that separated its cathedrallike architecture from the mass airwave propaganda I was absorbing -- it was the beginning of an awareness of a whole new fantasy-culture...

"Jump on the Manhattan Merry-Go-Round -- the Highway, the Byway, to New York Town..."

"And here comes Captain Andy now..."

The biggest swinger was Mr. First-Nighter. He always had a car waiting for him. "Take me to the little theater off Times Square." Barbara Luddy and Les Tremayne.

And Joe Penner said: "Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk."

"With a cloud of dust, the speed of light and a hearty Hi-Yo Silver Away!"

Procter & Gamble provided many Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowship winners with the same formative exposure.

Long Island had loads of screen doors and porches. Screen doors to push your nose against, porches to hide under. It always smelled funny under the porch. I had a continuing vision of one day crawling under there and finding a large cache of money, which I would spend nobly on my mother and aunt -- but not until they explained the under-the-sink apparatus; and, if there was enough money, perhaps Mema would even demonstrate it for me.

I would usually hide under the porch until it came time to "get it."

"You just wait till your father comes, then you're really gonna get it." I always thought what a pain in the ass it would be to be a father. You have to work hard all day and then, instead of resting when you come home, you have to "give it" to someone. I didn't "get it" as much as other kids, though, because my mother and father were divorced.

I had to wait until visiting days to "get it."

I look back in tender relished anger, and I can smell the damp newspapers that waited on the porch for the Goodwill -- they never picked up anything we gave them because we never had it packed right -- and I can hear the muffled voices through the kerosene stove.

"Mickey, I don't know what we're going to do with Lenny. He was so fresh to Mema. You know what he asked?"

Then they would all laugh hysterically. And then my father would schlep me from under the porch and whack the crap out of me.

For being fresh to Mema. For forgetting to change my good clothes after school and catching my corduroy knickers on a nail. And for whistling. I would even "get it" for whistling.

I used to love to whistle. The first tune I learned to whistle was Amapola. "Amapola, my pretty little poppy...." I received most of my musical education from the sounds that wafted from the alley of Angelo's Bar and Grille, Ladies Invited, Free Lunch. I was enthralled with the discovery of the jukebox: a machine that didn't sew, drill, boil or kill; a machine solely for fun.

I almost always made a good score in back of Angelo's Bar and Grille; the loot consisted of deposit bottles. But there was a hangup -- you could never find anyone willing to cash them. The most sought-after prize was the large Hoffman bottle which possessed a five-cent bounty.

Mr. Geraldo, our neighborhood grocer, cashed my mother's relief check and so he knew we had barely enough money for staples. Therefore, the luxury of soda pop in deposit bottles was obviously far beyond our economic sphere. Besides, he couldn't relate to children. He disliked them because they made him nervous.

"Could I have a glass of water, please?"

"No, the water's broken."

When I brought the bottles to him, he would interrogate me without an ounce of mercy. "Did you buy these here? When did you buy them?" I would always fall prey to his Olga-of-Interpol tactics. "Yes, I think we bought them here." Then he would finger-thump me on the back of the head, as if he were testing a watermelon. "Get the hell outta here, you never bought any soda here. I'm going to report your mother to the welfare man and have him take her check away."

I could hear the welfare man saying to Mema: "Your nephew -- you know, the one who knows too much already -- he's been arrested on a Deposit Bottle Charge. We have to take your check away."

Then where would Mema go? We would all have to live under the porch, with the funny smell.

That was the big threat of the day -- taking the check away. Generalities spewed forth: The goyim were always being threatened with the loss of their checks because of their presence in bars, and the Yidden for their presence in banks.

Another sure way for a family to lose its check was for any member to be caught going to the movies. But I didn't worry about that. My friend and I would sneak in, hide under the seats while the porter was vacuuming, and then, after the newsreel was over, we would pop up in the midst of Lou Lehr's "Mongees is da chrrazziest beeple..."

Anyway, my next stop with the deposit bottles would be the King Kullen Market. The manager stared at me. I returned his stare with no apparent guile. I tried to look as innocent and Anglo-Saxon as Jackie Cooper, pouting, pooched-out lip and all, but I'm sure I looked more like a dwarfed Maurice Chevalier.

"I bought them yesterday -- I don't know how the dirt and cobwebs got inside..."

He cashed the bottles and I got my 20 cents.

I bought a Liberty magazine for my mother. She liked to read them because the reading time was quoted: "four minutes, three seconds." She used to clock herself, and her chief aim was to beat the quoted time. She always succeeded, but she probably never knew what the hell she had read.

I bought Aunt Mema a 12-cent jar of Vaseline. She ate it by the ton. She was (continued on page 188)how to talk dirty(continued from page 108) a Vaseline addict. She would rub it on and stick it in anything and everything. To Mema, carbolated Vaseline was Jewish penicillin.

Perhaps at this point I ought to say a little something about my vocabulary. My conversation, spoken and written, is usually flavored with the jargon of the hipster, the argot of the underworld, and Yiddish.

In the literate sense -- as literate as Yiddish can be, since it is not a formal language -- "goyish" means "gentile." But that is not the way I mean to use it.

To me, if you live in New York or any other big city, you are Jewish. It doesn't matter even if you're Catholic; if you live in New York you're Jewish. If you live in Butte, Montana, you're goyish even if you're Jewish.

Evaporated milk is goyish even if the Jews invented it. Chocolate is Jewish and fudge is goyish. Spam is goyish and rye bread is Jewish.

Negroes are all Jews. Italians are all Jews. Irishmen who have rejected their religion are Jews. Mouths are very Jewish. And bosoms. Baton-twirling is very goyish. Eddie Cantor, Georgie Jessel and Danny Thomas are Christians, because if you look very closely on their bodies you'll find a boil somewhere.

To trap an old Jewish woman -- they're crafty and they will lie -- just seize one and you will find a handkerchief balled-up in one of her hands.

I can understand why they can't have a Jewish President. It would be embarrassing to hear the President's mother screaming love at the grandchildren: "Who's Grandma's baby! Who's Grandma's baby!"

"...and this is Chet Huntley in New York. The First Lady's mother opened the Macy's Day Parade screaming, 'Oy zeishint mine lieber' and furiously pinching young Stanley's cheeks..."

Actually, she bit his ass, going "Oom, yum yum, is this a tush, whose tushy is that?" The Jews are notorious children's-ass-kissers. Gentiles neither bite their children's asses, nor do they hahhh their soup.

Gentiles love their children as much as Jews love theirs; they just don't wear their hearts on their sleeves. On the other hand, Jewish mothers don't hang gold stars in their windows. They're not proud of their boys' going into the service. They're always worried about their being killed.

Celebrate is a goyish word. Observe is a Jewish word. Mr. and Mrs. Walsh are celebrating Christmas with Major Thomas Moreland, USAF Ret., while Mr. and Mrs. Bromberg observed Hanukkah with Goldie and Arthur Schindler from Kiamesha, New York.

The difference between Jewish and goyish girls is that a gentile girl won't "touch it once," whereas a Jewish girl will kiss you and let you touch it -- your own, that is.

The only Jewish thing about balling is Vaseline.

One eventful day, I discovered self-gratification. An older kid conducted a school, and five of us graduated about the same time.

A few days later, I was all set for an afternoon of whacking it. I was propped up in bed, taking care of business. I was so involved, I didn't hear the door open. "Leonard, what are you doing?" It was my father! My heart stopped. I froze. "I said what are you doing?"

To say it was a traumatic moment would be euphemistic. I had to restrain myself from asking: "Would you wait outside for just a minute?" He snarled at me, "It's not only disgusting, what you're doing -- but, goddamnit, in my bed!"

He sat down and proceeded to tell me a story, that story we have all heard, with embellishments. Its grim conclusion left three of our relatives in state insane asylums -- poor souls who had never been instructed in the wisdom of sleeping with their hands above the covers. The story line implied that this sort of thing was a nighttime practice and was associated with werewolves and vampires. Their punishment was that their hands withered away into wings, and they couldn't do it anymore, just fan it a little.

I had all sorts of horrendous visions of my future: my spine would collapse; my toes would fall off. Even though I resolved never to do it again, I felt I had done some irreparable damage.

Oh, what a cursed thing! I could see myself on a street corner some day, giving a testimony for the C.B.W.A. -- Crooked Back Whackers Anonymous:

"Yea, brothers, I was of mortal flesh. Fortunately for me, my father walked in that day while I was having my struggle with Satan. Suppose he had not been an observant person, and merely thought I was doing a charade -- committing hara-kiri triple time -- what then? But no, brothers, he knew he had a pervert living under his roof; the most dangerous of them all -- a whacker! I would have to stop. No tapering off. I would have to stop now! In the language of the addict's world, I would have to kick the habit -- cold jerky..."

• • •

I credit the motion-picture industry as the strongest environmental factor in molding the children of my day.

Andy Hardy: whistling; a brown pompadour; a green lawn; a father whose severest punishment was taking your car away for the weekend.

Warner Baxter was a doctor. All priests looked like Pat O'Brien.

The superintendent of my school looked like Spencer Tracy, and the principal looked like Vincent Price. I was surprised years later to discover they were Spencer Tracy and Vincent Price. I went to Hollywood High, folks.

Actually, I went to a North Bellmore public school for eight years, up until the fifth grade. I remember the routine of milk at 10:15 and napping on the desk -- I hated the smell of that desk -- I always used to dribble on the initials. And how enigmatic those well-preserved carvings were to me: Book You.

My friend Carmelo, the barber's son, and I would "buy" our lunch at the little green store. That's what we called the student locker from which we stole many a hot cold lunch. "Let's see what we've got at the little green store today."

We would usually go shopping around 11:30 on the eight-grade floor, when everybody was in homeroom. Carmelo would bust open a locker. A white paper bag! Who used white paper bags? people who could afford to buy baked goods and make their children exotic sandwiches. Tuna on date-nut bread, four creme-filled Hydrox cookies, a banana which was unreal -- the color wasn't solid brown, it was yellow tipped with green, and the end wasn't rotten -- and the last goody: a nickel, wrapped in wax paper.

Sometimes we would go over to Carmelo's house to eat dinner. His father had a barbershop with one chair and a poster in the window showing four different styles of haircuts, and guaranteeing you sure-fire results in securing employment if you would follow the tips on grooming: "The First Things an Employer Looks at Are Hair, Nails and Shoes."An atomic-energy department head who looks at these qualifications in a job applicant would probably be a faggot.

Carmelo's mother was the manicurist and town whore. Those symbols of my childhood are gone -- what a shame! -- the country doctor, the town whore, the village idiot, and the drunken family from the other side of the tracks, have been replaced by the Communist, the junkie, the faggot, and the beatnik.

Prostitution wasn't respected and accepted, but I figured that if she was the town whore, then all the people in the town had had her and had paid her and they were all a part of what she was. I staunchly defended Carmelo's mother.

My mother worked as a waitress and doubled as a maid in fashionable Long Beach, Long Island. My father was working during the day and going to college at night. His motive was to better himself and, in turn, better us all. If he had graduated, I might not be where I am now. I'm the head of a big firm today, thanks to my dad's foresight in placing handy knowledge at my fingertips.

"You're going to have that set of encyclopedias for your birthday," he had pledged. "You're going to have everything I never had as a child, even if I have to do without cigarettes." And then, to demonstrate his self-sacrifice, he would roll his own in those rubber roller things that Liberty Bugler used to sell.

Today I give my daughter what I really didn't have as a kid. All the silly, dumb, extravagant, frilly, nonfunctional toys I can force on her. She probably wants an encyclopedia. That's how it goes -- one generation saves to buy rubbers for the kids on a rainy day, and when it comes they sit out under a tree gettingsoaking wet and digging the lightning.

My father instilled in me a few important behaviour patterns, one of which was a fantastic dread of being in debt. He explained to me such details as how much we owed on the rent, what the coal and light bills were, how much money we had and how long it would last.

He would constantly remind me that we were living on the brink of poverty. He would go miles out of his way to look for his bargains. He would wear clothes that friends gave him. I became so guilty about asking for anything that I concluded it was much more ethical to steal.

When I was in seventh grade and, for physical education, each boy had to buy sneakers which cost about $1.98, I couldn't bring myself to ask my father for the money. The previous night he had confided to me that he didn't know where he was going to get the money for the rent. I decided to steal the money for my sneakers from the Red Cross.

The class kept all the money they had collected for the annual Red Cross drive in a big mayonnaise jar in the supply closet. I volunteered to stay after school to wash the blackboard and slap out the erasers. I knew that the teacher, Miss Bostaug, was always picked up at 3:30 sharp by her boyfriend.

She was the kind of woman who was old when she was 23. She wore those sensible" corrective shoes with lisle stockings; and crinkly dresses, the kind that you can see through and don't want to. The only color she ever wore was a different handkerchief that she pinned on her blouse every day. Her short sleeves revealed a vaccination mark as big as a basketball.

As soon as Miss Bostaug left that afternoon, I picked up the radiator wrench and jimmied open the closet door. I really botched up the door, but I made the heist. My heart was beating six-eights time as I split with the mayonnaise jar.

I hid under the porch and counted the loot. Over $13 in change.

I spent some of the money on the sneakers and a carton of Twenty Grand cigarettes for my father. I figured I would take what was left and return it. Maybe no one would miss what I had spent. Maybe no one would notice that the door had been torn off its hinges.

But as I neared the classroom, I could hear the storm of protest, so I changed my mind and joined in the denunciation of the culprit. "Boy, how could anyone be so low? Stealing from the Red Cross! Don't worry, God will punish him." I felt pretty self-righteous condemning myself, and quite secure that no one suspected me.

But I had underestimated Miss Bostaug.

"Boys and girls," she announced, "this morning I called my brother, Edward Bostaug, in Washington. He works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He told me that if the criminal doesn't confess today, he is going to come up here on Monday with a lie detector." And then, in minute detail, she described the technical perfection of the polygraph in spotting the slightest irregularity in blood pressure, pulse and temperature. As she spoke, my heart was pounding and I was sweating.

After everyone left, I marched boldly up to her desk. She was creaming her face with Noxzema. "Miss Bostaug, I know who stole the money. I told him the jig was up, and he told me to tell you that he only spent three dollars and is willing to give me the rest to bring back and he will make up what he spent, little by little, if you promise not to call your brother from the F.B.I."

A week later the Long Island Welfare Board paid a visit to my father, attempting to ascertain what sort of family atmosphere produced a criminal of my proportions.

Miss Bostaug hadn't "Squealed" on me, but she had done her duty, not only to the authorities, but also to me. She was aware that my environment was as much to blame for my behaviour as I was. She was trying to help me.

My father didn't see it that way, however, He was simply amazed. "How could a son of mine steal, when all he has to do is ask me for anything and I'll give it to him. even if I have to give up cigarettes?"

He sat down and talked to me. It was difficult for me to answer because he was sitting on my chest.

My mother's boyfriends were a unique breed. They were buddies rather than beaux.I can't remember seeing anyone ever kiss my mother -- not on the mouth, anyway -- and for sure, I never saw her in bed with any man, not even that once-in-a-while "mistake" in the one-bedroom apartment when "Ssh, you'll wake the kid up!" makes going to the bathroom during the night a combination of horror and fascination.

I can remember only one "walk-in" in my life. As an eight-year-old child, I stumbled through the living room on the way to the bathroom at four o'clock in the morning. My cousin Hannah and her husband were pushing, kissing, tearing and breathing in asthmatic meter. I watched and listened in wonderful curiosity.

I had no concept of what was going on. They were maintaining a consistent rhythm that kept building in strength and force. Then the rhythm became overpoweringly intense and heavy, and his voice changed pitch -- that crazy so prano sound that the funnymen in the movies affect when they imitate ladies.

I saw the sweet dizzy quality on the face of my 23-year-old cousin, as her paint and powder dissolved and mixed with her lover's sweat. She was looking over his shoulder, as if right at me, but her eyes looked funny -- like my cousin Herman's when he was drunk. Her legs -- lovely, smooth legs with just a suggestion of fine, soft hair, like the guard hairs on the willow-limb flowers -- seemed in a tortured fashion, to float heavenward, her toes twisting in a tortured fashion, praying for release.

Now her eyes started to roll as if they were completely disengaged. My cousin Harry must have broken that thing that makes the doll's eyes go up and down.

Her lips parted slowly and she joined him in a chant of submission -- a chant with the vocabulary of theology, although I have never heard it again in synagogue, church or Buddhist temple -- a chant that was perhaps pagan: "Oh God, oh God, oh goddamnit God! Oh it's so good, Harry -- oh God it's good -- ohhhh...Oh!"

Suddenly Hannah's eyes focused on me. She screamed as if I were some horrible monster, "How long have you been standing there?"

She reiterated: "I said, how long have you been standing there?"

I reacted subjectively, assuming they wanted me to show off since her question related to an area of learning that I was involved with at the time. I looked up at the clock, thought for a moment, and repeated her question. "How long have I been standing here? Well, the big hand is on the five, and the little hand is on the three, that means it's -- umm -- 3:25."

They told me that was very nice and I was a very clever boy, and that I should go to bed.

Without someone telling me what they had been doing, I could never tell you whether that was a clean act, a dirty act, a self-indulgent act, or a religious act of pure religious procreation. With all the exposure I've had, I still can't tell you. You must interpret what went on in your own way -- and, of course, you will.

My childhood seemed like an endless exodus from aunts and uncles and grandmothers. Their dialog still rings in my ears: "I had enough tsooris with my own kids.... How many times have I told you not to slam the door?...Don't run up the stairs.... Don't tell me Danny did it-- if Danny told you to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge, right?...Children have children's portions and big people have big people's portions-- if you're hungry you'll eat more bread -- and there's plenty of cabbage left..."

"Don't read at the table," I would be told.

"Why do they put stuff on the cereal box if they don't want you to read?"

"Not at the table."

When I get big, I thought, I'll read anywhere I want.... Standing on the subway:

"What's that you're reading, sir?"

"A cereal box."

The plan was I would stay with relatives till my parents "get straightened out."

I learned there is no Judge Hardy, there is no Andrew, nobody has a Mom like Fay Bainter.

Oh God, the movies really did screw us up.

• • •

As an imaginative young sensualist, I dreamed about living over a barn, seeing the stars through a cracked-board room, smelling the cows and horses as they snuggle and nuzzle in a shed below, seeing the steam come up from the hay in the stables on a frosty winter morning, sitting at a table rich with home canned goods with seven other farm hands, eating home fries, pickled beets, fresh bacon, drinking raw milk, laughing, having company in the morning, having a family, eating and working and nanging out with the big guys, learning to use Bull Durham.

At 16 I ran away from home and found it. Two rich, productive, sweet years with the Dengler family on their Long Island farm.

The Denglers were a combination of Swedish and German stock. Although they were still young--she in her 30s and he in his 40s -- I never saw them kiss each other. I was shocked when I learned that they slept in separate bedrooms. I knew they were tired after working a long day, but I couldn't understand why anyone who could, wouldn't want to sleep in another person's arms.

I would wait for an opportunity when Mr.Dengler was enjoying a good laugh, and then I would catch him unawares and give him a big hug. Mrs.Dengler called me a "kissing bug," but she never rejected me. They said I would probably end up being a politician.

The Dengler farm faced the highway. As I carried the pails of slop to the hogs, I watched the cars whizzing by on their way to Grumman and Sikorsky and Sperry. Neither the drivers nor I realized that their day's work would some day put an end to someone somewhere also carrying slop to hogs. A couple of times when the cars overheated, they would stop for water, and I would ask them what they were making out at Sperry's

They didn't know. "Some fittings...." Some fittings -- the Norden bombsight to fit into the B-17. "I just do piece work."(My approach to humor today is in distinguishing between the moral differences of words and their connotations; then it was simply in the synonym: "Oh, you do piece work? How about bringing me home some?")

Directly opposite the highway that ran by the farm was a long dusty dirt road with crops on each side -- potatoes, carrots, lettuce -- everything you buy in your grocery store. They were cultivated, irrigated, weeded and fertilized by the farmhands. Some of the fertilization was direct from producer to consumer: There were no lavatories in the fields, but the itinerant day workers --six Polish women -- had a very relaxed attitude toward the performing of their natural functions.

To this day, I always insist that all my vegetables be washed thoroughly.

I was entrusted with the unromantic job of weeding, although I did get to drive the old truck with the broken manifold, back and forth across the field, which really gassed me. I imagined myself to be Henry Fonda. The only thing that bugged me was that it was so lonesome out there all day. I tried to talk to the Polish ladies, but they didn't understand me. I even brought them candy -- Guess Whats, Marry Janes, Hootens -- but all they did was grunt.

They allowed me to witness their most intimate functions, but it was as if I didn't exist.

Mrs.Dengler would get up about 3:30 in the morning to cook breakfast for eight men; she would work in the fields herself till about eight o'clock that night, and then she would do her housework.

During the winter months, the Denglers ran a roadside stand selling canned goods and eggs to the workers on their way to and from a nearby defense plant.

The canned goods would actually be sold out the first day, and we only had enough chickens to supply eggs for about two or three cars. So we bought eggs wholesale from as far away as Texas, and Mason-jar canned goods from an outfit in Georgia.

My job was to immerse the jars in hot water, wash off their labels and put ours on. I would also open the eggs crates -- which were packed by the gross -- and repackage the eggs in our cartons, by the dozen. With my philanthropic sense of humor, I would add a little mud and straw and chicken droppings to give them and authentic pastoral touch.

People were always coming back and telling us: "How fresh the eggs are!" Sales increased rapidly and I soon had a big problem. Although I had enough straw and mud, there were only 22 chickens -- and I was too embarrassed to ask if there were any wholesale chickenshit houses in Texas.

I decided to cut the pure stuff with cow manure. There was never a complaint.

Once a week a big LaSalle would drive all the way out from the city to get farm-fresh eggs. The chauffeur was a little wizened old Englishman who never, ever spoke. The owner was a woman who looked like Mary Astor. She was a very grand-type lady, about 35, which seemed quite old to me.

She said the farm was "quaint" and remarked how fortunate I was not to be "cursed by city pressures." She began to bring me things -- sweaters, shoes, even a tennis racket. I fed her charitable id and exclaimed: "Oh, gosh, a real sweater! I always wanted one with no patches on it!" All I needed was "Gloriosky, Zero!" to complete the picture.

Once I sensed she was feeling a little low, so I told her that my mother and father had been killed. I fabricated a very pathetic story for her, and it really picked her up. It was a sort of Fantasy Care Package -- a little something extra added to the product, like with the eggs.

One day she forgot all about buying the eggs, and insisted on taking me to town to buy a new jacket. I had an old suede jacket with a broken zipper that had to be pinned shut. She told her I couldn't have the stand. She told the chauffeur to get out and take over for me, and she would do the driving.

On the way back from the city, she pulled over into a shaded area and stopped. We talked for a long time, and she told me about her son who was drowned, and also about her husband who manufactured and rented candy machines. She intimated that she would like to adopt me.

She asked about my religious beliefs. She asked if I had ever been naughty with girls. I had never even kissed a girl -- I hadn't gone to high school and I was very shy -- I had often thought about being "naughty" with girls, but I could never seem to arrange to be in the right place at the right time.

We talked about some other things, and she told me to look in the glove compartment for a surprise. Inside I found a sheath knife and a flashlight. There was also a packet of pictures, and she asked me if I would like her to show them to me.

I had never seen any pictures like those before. They were of men and women in various attitudes of lovemaking. The nudity and the absurdity of the contortions amused me, and I started to laugh. She was quite disturbed by my reaction, but I couldn't help it. I had a genuine giggling fit.

She asked me if I thought the pictures were dirty, and when I couldn't stop laughing long enough to answer, she said that it was a cover-up for a filthy mind. Not wanting to lose the jacket, I apologized.

She forgave me and then delivered a lecture on how some women can give you a terrible disease. She explained how you can get some diseases from using towels or from sitting on toilet seats. She asked me if I knew what the symptoms of these diseases were. I confessed my ignorance, and she grew alarmed.

"Why, you can have one of those diseases right this minute and not even know it!"

And, with a very clinical attitude, she unbuttoned my pants.

A few years later in boot camp, when we got our first illustrated lecture on venereal disease, I was disappointed that it lacked the same personal touch.

The Denglers were quite upset with my impatience to volunteer for the Navy. I pestered Mrs. Dengler daily, waiting for that official letter. I had some literature about the Navy and the training courses they offered, and I reviewed it at every opportunity in my "reading room" -- a four-seater (one seat was entirely sewn up by a cobweb) with a wasp hive up in the right-hand corner of the ceiling that was the color of gray cardboard. I always read uneasily, in dread of an attack.

The outhouse is to the farmhand what the water cooler is to the white-collar worker.

But, working for the Denglers, goofing off wasn't necessary for me. They were easy bosses to work for. Although I put in about 60 hours a week and received $40 a month plus room and board, I felt no resentment, because they worked longer and harder.

Then, too, they were my mother and father -- the mother and father I had always dreamed about -- and I always had good company, which made me think about all the lonesome people who lived in furnished rooms with their container of milk or can of beer on the window ledge. Wouldn't it be nice if all the people who are lonesome could live in one big dormitory, sleep in beds next to each other, talk and laugh, and keep the lights on as long as they want to?

Lonesome people are a vast neglected segment of that mythical American Public the advertising men are always talking about. One mustn't assume that all lonesome people are pensioners, old maids and physically handicapped shutins. There are lonesome young men who sit in the Greyhound Bus Station and there are secretaries who live in immaculate apartments which they wouldn't mind having messed up by some guy who doesn't hang up his clothes.

Sometimes when I'm on the road in a huge hotel, I wish there was a closed-circuit television camera in each room, and at two o'clock in the morning the announcer would come on: "In Room 24-B there is a ripe, blue-eyed, pink-nippled French-and-Irish court stenographer lying in bed tossing and turning, fighting the bonds of her nightgown. All the ashtrays in her room are clean, her stockings and panty-girdle have just been washed and are hanging on the shower-curtain bar. This is a late model, absolutely clean, used only a few times by a sailor on leave."

Or: "In Apartment 407 there is a 55-year-old Jewish widower who is listening to Barry Gray on the radio, sitting in his underwear and looking at the picture of his daughter and son-in-law who live in Lawrence, Long Island, and haven't called since Yom Kippur. This is a bargain for an aggressive young woman who can say to him, 'I like you because you're sensible and sensitive -- all right, it's true young men are a "good time," but after that, what? -- I like a man I can have a serious discussion with, one who can co-sign....'"

Mrs. Dengler drove me to the station of the Long Island Railroad to catch the train that would take me away to war. I kissed her and said, "Goodbye, Ma." She smiled at me and left. She never had any kids of her own.

• • •

One day I was standing at 90 Church Street in downtown New York City, literally in the hands of an Army doctor who was telling me to cough -- that universal male experience.

I volunteered for the Navy in 1942. I was 5'2", weighed 120 pounds, and had a heavy beard that needed removing about once every six months.

The Navy taught me a sterile sense of cleanliness, punctuality, and gave me the security of belonging. For the first time I was able to relate to my fellow man.

My first "relative" was Artie Shaw. We took boot training together in New-port, Rhode Island. During that 21-day incubation period, the excitement of war was dwarfed by "Artie Shaw is here!" Artie Shaw: Begin the Beguine, Night and Day, Dave Tough, Max Kaminsky, Lana Turner, Kathleen Winsor. Artie Shaw -- Orpheus, music and love -- and me; we were brothers in blue. Of course, I never saw him, but it was enough for me that he was there.

(Eighteen years later I got the same gratification from those magic words, "Artie Shaw is here!" -- when the owner of the Blue Angel Café whispered it to me before I went onstage. "Artie Shaw is here!" How just, how natural -- we were in the war together.)

He had enlisted as an apprentice seaman. He could have gone in a dozen other ways -- like Glenn Miller, for example, with a commission in clarinet -- but he made it as an apprentice seaman, which was a silly-ass thing to do.

As it turned out, he had a much rougher time in service than I did. He either got an over-solicitous: "This is Artie Shaw, Captain Alden, he has agreed to give you that autographed picture of himself for Admiral Nimitz!" -- or, more often: "Look, pretty boy, you're not in Hollywood now, there ain't no butlers around here!" Artie Shaw would have been glad to have been as anonymous as I was then, an ordinary seaman with a serial number, wanting to fight for his country.

Even as a kid, I was hip that 80 percent of the guys that go for Civil Service pension security have no balls for the scuffle outside. I am not knocking the desire for security; we're all kind of scared and would like to be sitting under the kitchen sink, picking at the linoleum. But it really bugged Shaw. He put in an urgent request for a transfer to the Mediterranean. We were all anxious to go and be blessed by priests and rabbis, thereby giving us the OK to kill the enemy.

Those dirty pregnant Japanese women who stood in the silent army, like Italian mothers standing over boiling pots of spaghetti, and Jewish mothers slaving over pots of chiken soup -- women unconcerned with politics; all they know is that 49 cents a pound for chopped meat is ridiculous. Those dirty Jap babies crawling on the floor, amused by the magic of a cat, his purr, his switching tail. Those dirty Japs we hated, who now fill the windows of American stores with cameras. Those dirty Japs that knocked up the portable-radio industry.

Where the hell was Criswell Predicts then?

Now there are no more dirty Japs; there are dirty Commies. Those dirty Commies! And when we run out of them there'll just be dirty dirt. And dirty mud. Then we'll eat the mud and Pearl Buck will write a book about it. By that time, the few hippies who discovered that it's the earth which is dirty will have made it to the moon for the Miss Missile contest.

On a cruel triple-brrr snow-cold gray winter morning at Coddington Point, Rhode Island, Artie Shaw and 20-odd other sailors sat in the fetal position with their red eyes and chapped thighs, waiting for chow to blow. A Chief Petty Officer came in and told Artie that a Lieutenant Commander was outside the barracks and wanted to see him immediately. Shaw was sure that this was his transfer.

He marched out with his Don Winslow snap, the other sailors nervously peeking through the barracks window. When you're in boot camp, a Lieutenant Commander might as well be the President. Shaw was understandably nervous as the Lieutenant Commander reached out his hand, saying, "Put'er there, Artie," and then said 14 words that had more impact than Roosevelt's "December 7th, a day that will live in infamy" speech.

The Lieutenant Commander looked Shaw in the eye and said: "I just wanted to shake the hand that patted the ass of Lana Turner."

It was in the Navy that I had my first love affair -- a one-night stand with Louise -- the kind of chick that makes and elevator operator feel possessed of great control because he went up 18 floors and didn't rip off her dress.

Louise was 28 when I met her. Her father and mother had just died, and she and her brother inherited the business: a 13 x13-foot combination Italian-American grocery and soda fountain, with living quarters in the back. Her brother took care of the store during the day, and she worked there at night so he could go to CCNY.

Her husband was a private in the U.S. Infantry, stationed in Iceland for the duration.

I walked into the store in white hat, dress-blue uniform and my Endicott-Johnson shoes, so new they slipped on cement. I was announced by the little tin bell -- the candy-store burglar alarm. Behind the counter stood Louise.

Doctors who have probed, cut, sewn and rubber-gloved so many women that it has become a task would get shaken by a Louise.

"Hmm, your adenoids seem quite normal; perhaps the trouble is respiratory. Unbutton your blouse a moment and we'll give a listen to the old ticker. There's quite a bit of flu going around and I...there, uh...actually...uh, uh...here, uh...Oh God, oh merciful Mother of God, what a body! You're so tan and yet so white. Please, may I touch you? Not as a doctor...Let me unbutton my shirt and feel you close to me. Please don't push me away. Here, let me...please...oh God! I'm losing my mind, let me latch the door...let me just kiss it, that's all I want to...Oh, please please please, please. please just touch it, Just...look at it...I do respect you. I just can't catch my goddamn breath!"

With eight dollars hidden in my shoe and a dollar in my hand, I walked up to the counter and spoke out with a jaded-enough tone so that Louise would know that I'd been around. "Pepsi, please, and a bag of potato chips."

She ripped the stapled chips away from the cardboard. When she spoke, her words stunned me. I never expected a woman who looked like that to talk that way to a bon vivant such as I.

"How the hell did you get gum in your hair?" she asked.

"The guy who sleeps in the bunk above me stuck it on the edge of my rack. I thought I got it out."

"C'mere, I've got some benzene, it'll take it out."

I followed her through the blue-rayon portals that separated the store from her home. I sat on a soda box and watched her rumble through the medicine cabinet, which was a cardboard carton under her bed.

She soaked the rag and stood over me, gently kneading the chewing gum from my hair. Her thighs, with the good-life scent of the white dove, pressed weightlessly against my cheek. The gum was long gone and my first love was nurtured, in a setting of Medaglia D'Oro coffee, Ace combs and Progresso tomato purée.

I wonder if any Chilean chicle worker ever Dreamt of the delicious fruit that I received from the by-product of his labor.

I was assigned to a light cruiser, the U.S.S. Brooklyn.

Me -- Leonard Alfred Schneider -- on the deck of a warship bound for North Africa, along with 1300 other men and enough munitions to bring a man-made earthquake to Ain el Turk, Bizerte, and Algiers, which was to be followed after the war by a socio-political earthquake-- for we were blasting more than enemy breastworks; we were shaking loose the veils from shadowed Moslem faces and the gold from their front teeth.

I had two battle stations-- one on a 1.1 gun and my watch was on a five-inch deck gun. A cannon in the Navy is always called a gun.

Five in the morning, reveille. Five-ten, topside; wash down the deck and do paint work. Seven o'clock, secure. Seven-thirty to eight, chow: prunes, beans, cornbread, cold cuts, Waldorf salad, coffee, Eight o'clock, turn to: painting, chipping, scraping, ammunitions working party. Twelve O'clock, chow: Braised beef, dehydrated potatoes, spinach, coffee, cake with icing, One o'clock. work. Two-forty-five, attack by enemy planes, man your battle stations, fight with planes.

(I could use Navy time, zero six-hundred, etc., but I had elevated to the idiomatic group: "Look out the window and see who is on the left side of the boat.")

The secure from battle may be at eight p.m. Secure at sea, ammunitions working party, replace expended ammunition. Quick scrubdown, 12:30, hit the sack. I never got more than 4-1/2 hours sleep a night in three years.

Blood and salt water mixed together look blue. Eight men followed by 12, then by about 40 more, floated gracefully by the bow of the U.S.S.Brooklyn.These dead Air Force men that just a few months ago were saying...

"What do you want, Hi-Test or Regular?"

"Did you get my pants out of the cleaner's sweetheart?"

"They'll never get me -- my uncle is an alderman."

"Now listen, Vera, I'm going to put all my stuff in these cardboard boxes, and I'm going to lock them in that closet back of the den. Please don't let anyone touch them -- and don't just say 'Yes' to me -- I don't want anyone, do you understand, anyone, fooling around with my stuff..."

His stuff. My stuff. Everyone was worrying about their stuff...their papers...their possessions.

The bodies continued to float by, their heads bumping the starboard side.

Seeing those pitiful, fresh-dead bodies, I knew then what a mockery of life the materialistic concept is. After they got the telegram, someone would go through his"stuff" and try to figure out why in the world he wanted "all that stuff." The stuff that he kept so nice would eventually be thrown out of the basement, for the stuff would now be crap. "Hey, throw this crap outta here!"

• • •

Standing on the deck of a warship in battle, you get a good look at the competitive aspect of life, carried to its extreme.

Our society is based on competition. If it isn't impressed upon you at home with the scramble for love between brothers and sisters, they really lay it down to you in school -- in numbers any child can understand -- that's what grading is.

You bring home 100 percent, and your mother hugs you and your father pats you on the back. The teachers beam at you. But not your schoolmates; they know they're in competition with you, and if you get a high percentage they must get a lower one. Everybody wants love and acceptance and he soon learns that one way to get it is by getting higher marks than the other fellow.

In essence, you are gratified by your schoolmates' failures. We take this with us into adulthood. Just look at the business world.

So, my first instinct in this structure of economic and critical success is to want Mort Sahl, Jonathan Winters, Shelley Berman, etc. (my "schoolmates") to bomb. If I bring in a bigger gross at a café or a concert than Mort does at the same place, I've brought home a good report card.

I struggle with this part of me which is inhumane, and now -- perhaps this can be explained by the fact that I am making enough money to afford to be magnanimous about it -- I genuinely rejoice in another's success.I would like to believe that if I were still scuffling and Mort was doing well I would still be happy for him, But I wonder. I am happy he's doing well. But not better than me.

The U.S.S. Brooklyn was a big ship, and she was considered quite a danger and a nuisance by the enemy. At night the enemy planes, unless they had inside information, could only tell what they were bombing by the fire power that was thrown at them. If they received nothing but 20 millimeter and 40s, they would assume that the largest craft below was d DE or some other small craft that the carried only small arms.

We were trapped in a strange bind. We were the only heavy power in the area, but if we threw up our big stuff -- our five-inch guns -- they would know immediately that we were a cruiser, and then they would send for assistance, and do us in.

When General Quarters sounded at sea, it was usually an E-boat or a submarine. I loved this because I wasn't as afraid of being killed in battle as I was of being bored. Lucky for me that the guys in power at the time knew the real grateful, but it was still pretty exhausting, fighting 60 hours without securing from battle stations.

Through three years and four major invasions -- Anzio, Salerno, Sicily, Southern France -- I was a shell passer with a heavy helmet that was lined with smelly foam rubber. Two years of sleeping in a hammock, then graduating to a lower bunk. Three years of hearing "Now hear this!" till I didn't want to hear it ever again. Three years of being awakened by a buzzer that made the sound that a gigantic goose would, laying an egg the size of a Goodyear blimp.

Gonk! Gonk! Gonk! Gonk! -- that was the base line. The boatswain's whistle and the trumpet just lacked a rhythm section to keep them from being real hard swingers.

The impersonal voice would boom over the speaker: "All men man your battle stations, secure all hatches, the smoking lamp is out."

I'd scramble up the ladder just in time to get my helmet knocked off and my nose bloodied from the concussion vacuum created in the hatch cove.

We would be bottled up in Naples harbor, the Germans bombing and strafing every ship in the bay. It was blind-man's buff.

As a child I loved confusion: a freezing blizzard that would stop all traffic and the mails; toilets that would get stopped up and overflow and run down the halls; electrical failure-- anything that would stop the flow and make it back up and find a new direction. Confusion was entertainment for me.

While the war was on, the alternation of routine and confusion sustained my interest, but then it was over and I wanted out.

I had been a good sailor with a sterling record of consistent performance, but I wasn't a mensch. However, I didn't put the Navy through any red tape coming in, so I felt they should permit me to exit with the same courtesy. A lot of guys tried to get out during the war and I considered that cowardly, but I rationalized my schemes with: "Why not -- the war is over."

But how does one go about shooting his toes off with an oar?

We lay at anchor in the Bay of Naples and the night closed in around me. I had to get out, and get out fast. Other guys had gone wacky-- some on purpose -- and the only ones that got out were those who could just sit and say "No" to everything. They got out, but with a dishonorable discharge. And by the time they were processed, it was six months in the brig, a trial, and such a hard time that it wasn't worth it. I had to think.

You spend your whole life thinking and worrying. Worrying about the deposit bottles, and where to cash them. That night it seemed that getting out of the Navy, or even getting out of the Mediterranean, was years away. I wondered who was buying Mema her Vaseline.

I closed my eyes in the pitch-black night and then, all of a sudden, the heaven seemed to light up like Times Square. For a moment, I thought: "Oh-oh, I don't have to worry anymore; my problem has solved itself; I won't have to pretend." I recalled previous flashes on my optic nerves...

I am sitting at the Silver Dollar Bar in Boston, next to a girl with chipped, bitten-off, painted fingernails, and lipstick on her teeth. We are having out picture taken by the night-club photographer.Flash!

The first time I ever saw a flashlight, my cousin Stanley was sticking it in his mouth, making his cheeks all red.

Magic lights-- the flash of lightning on choppy Long Island Sound as my Uncle Bill pulls in a flounder.

Fireflies through the window screens.

The lights in the Bay of Naples kept getting brighter and brighter. I wondered for an instant -- is this the spiritual illumination I've read about? Will I see the Virgin with the Fatima appear next?

My vision cleared and simultaneously I felt a smothering wave of factory heat -- hotter than all the asphalt road in Arizona put together. Mr. Vesuvius had erupted for the first time in centuries.Mr. Vesuvius, the earth that bore the tree, that bore the fruit, that fed man. The carbon process-- each of us one molecule in the vast universe.

The earth that saw man destroy his competitor.

The earth that saw Italians killed. Italians -- the Venetians, the brilliant colorists. The Italians that would soon clothe Miles Davis.

The earth saw this and vomited that night in Naples.

In the Army you can get out if you're a wack. Why couldn't you get out of the Navy if you were a WAVE?

Down in my bunk I had a copy of Psychopathia Sexualis by Krafft-Ebing. There it was.

A transvestite is a nut who likes to get dressed up in women's clothing. He may never engage in homosexual practice or do anything else antisocial. He's completely harmless. But obviously he would be an inconvenience to the Navy, where they like to keep everything organized by having everyone dress alike.

I figured that if I could demonstrate to the Navy that I still had a great deal of patriotism and loyalty to the uniform, the old esprit de corps -- rather than indulging myself with the obvious sort of feather-boa negligee and gold-lamé mules drag-outfit -- then maybe instead of booting me out, they'd open the door politely and escort me out like an officer and a lady.

Swanson, one of my shipmates, could sew as well as a girl. He was also a beer addict. He's do anything for a bottle of beer.

In North Africa, Gibraltar, Malta, Corsica, Sicily -- wherever we made port -- they had given us chits that entitled us to so much beer. I didn't drink beer, and I saved all my chits. Along with these, I won some gambling, and I also received quite a few for standing watch for different guys. I had enough beer chits to play Scrooge at an AA Christmas show.

I gave my chits to Swanson, and his fingers flew to the task. The way he threw himself into his work made me wonder about him. With the pleats, the shields, everything, he made me a Lieutenant.

For a while it was just scuttlebutt that a WAVE was seen promenading forward at the fo'c'sle during the midnight watch. A number of guys who saw it didn't report it out of fear that they'd be given a Section 8 themselves. Finally one night I was doing my nautical Lady Macbeth when four guys, including the Chief Master-at-Arms, jumped me.

I yelled, "Masher!"

Four naval psychiatrists worked over me at Newport Navel Hospital.

First Officer: "Lenny, have you ever actively engaged in any homosexual practice?"

Lenny: "No, sir."

(An "active" homosexual is one who does the doing, and the "passive" is one who just lies back. In other words, if you were a kid and you were hitchhiking and some faggot came on with you and you let him do whatever his "do" was, he was an "active" homosexual because he performed a sexual act with someone of the same sex, and you are a "passive" homosexual if you allowed any of this to happen. You'll never see this in an AAA driving manual, but that's the way it is.)

Second Officer: "Do you enjoy the company of women?"

Lenny: "Yes, sir."

Third Officer: "Do you enjoy having intercourse with women?"

Lenny: "Yes, sir."

Fourth Officer: "Do you enjoy wearing women's clothing?"

Lenny: "Sometimes."

All Four: "When is that?"

Lenny: "When they fit."

I stuck to my story, and they finally gave up. Only, it didn't work out the way I had figured it. They drew up an undesirable discharge.

At the last minute, though (this does sound like a Fairy Story, doesn't it?), the Red Cross sent an attorney who reviewed the case and saw that the whole thing was ridiculous. There were no charges against me. The entire division was questioned, and when it was ascertained that I had a good credit rating in virility -- based upon paid-up accounts in numerous Neapolitan bordellos -- I received an honorable discharge.

So everything worked out all right, except that they took away my WAVE's uniform. It bugged me because I wanted to have it as a sort of keepsake of the war. I wouldn't ever wear it, naturally--except maybe on Halloween.

• • •

The first place I went to when I got out of the Navy was back to the farm. I was anxious to show the Denglers my uniform and battle ribbons. And I wanted to see the Soaper farm down the road and the Ettletons across the way.

I got off the bus, and there were Mr. and Mrs. Dengler in the front yard, crating tomatoes. I ran over and threw my arms around Mrs. Dengler. She said "Hello" to me as if she had seen me only an hour before and I had just finished cleaning the stables.

I had written to them many times from overseas and had never received any reply, so I assumed they had sold the farm. I hadn't expected to see them now; I merely wished to find out where they moved. I couldn't believe they just wouldn't answer, because I'd thought our relationship had been so close.

"Didn't you get my letters?" I asked.

"Yes, thank you. we've been so busy we haven't even had time to do any canning."

I had expected...I don't know what the hell I had expected. Maybe some crying, or a big surprise cake; but instead Mr. Dengler simply climbed into the truck and his wife joined him.

"You put on some weight," she said. "Are you going to be around? Probably see you later."

And they drove off, leaving me staring at their dust.

Would I be around? I wept out of embarrassment. I really felt like a clown in my uniform. The next train didn't go back to New York until 11 P.M.

I walked the six miles back to the station and just sat around, sort of half-hoping that Mrs. Dengler would come looking for me. She knew there were only three farmhouses in the area and only one train back to the city. She would go to each farm and inquire if I was there. Then she would rush off to the station and say, "Boy, you fell for the oldest trick in the world. You were really feeling sorry for yourself, weren't you? We were going to let you stay here another two hours just to tease you. I made a big surprise-party cake for you, and all your friends can't wait to see you and hear all about how it was over there."

But no one came to the station.

I bumped into one kid I had known slightly, and he asked me if I was looking for a job. They wanted some beanpickers at the Ettletons.

I knew then that this was all it had ever been: a job. Tom Wolfe was right when he said you can't go home again, but it's especially true when it was never your home to begin with. Still, you don't completely dissolve the fantasy...

Any minute that big black LaSalle would pull up, and my benefactress would make me secure with a sweater and some back-seat sex, and the chauffeur would shake my hand and say, "Good show, son! It's grand to have the master home!" Then we would drive off to The Little Theater Off Times Square, where Madame Chiang Kai-shek would confide to me in the lobby that the Generalissimo hadn't taken off his stinking Boy scout uniform in 25 years; Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be standing up, pushing his wheel chair, screaming, "See the boardwalk in Atlantic City!"; my mother and father would be there -- together -- because they were never really divorced...they would kiss each other and say, "It's all over, Lenny, it was just a joke." Now everyone is seated, the lights come down, the conductor strikes up the last 32 bars of Pins and Needles, the curtains open, and there is Mema, reading a cereal box and poking herself with that douche nozzle, squeezing it and getting the most beautiful sounds, and telling the whole world: "It's Nobody's Business But Lenny's."

My mother had involved herself with a girl named Mary. In business, that is...my mother did not profess Will Rogers' paraphrased philosophy: "I never met a dyke I didn't like."

They taught ballroom dancing. My mother's name is Sally, so they combined names and came up with "The Marsalle School of Dance."

The school -- a loft over Tony Canzoneri's liquor store -- consisted of an office and a big room where their pupils (pensioners and other lonesome men that belonged to The Great Army of the Unlaid, but who were fortunate enough to be reaping the benefits of Mutual of Omaha) waited to learn the tango and the peabody.

The sad thing was that the women these men got to dance with were Mary and My mother.

There were lots of rooms over the dancing school that were condemned. The whole building, in fact, was condemned, except for the lower loft. I loved to hang out in my own special "condemned room." I would indulge myself in bizarre melodramatic fantasies, the spell usually being broken by my mother's request to empty the garbage.

If it was Monday I would take the garbage with me to the VA building, because to empty the garbage downstairs you had to separate the cans from the papers. The landlord insisted that you put the cans in one container and the papers in another. He was a real twisted nut in regard to his refuse-filing system.

"Miss Clark, check in the files of May 18th, 1950, and bring me the eggshells and the coffee grounds and one orange peel..."

My reason for going to the Veterans' Administration (where I would just dump all the garbage, unsegregated, into a big wire basket) was the 52-20 Club. The Government gave all ex-GIs $20 a week for a year or until they could find a job. The accepted smart-thing-to-do was to find and employer who didn't report your wages or take out withholding tax, and then you could grab the $20 plus your salary.

I would fill out a report form, swearing that I had tried to find work that week. Which was true. I had asked my mother and Mema and two guys that sat next to me in a movie if they knew of any jobs.

When I finished filling out the weekly report, I noticed ink all over my fingers from one of those scratchy post-office pens. The man who invented them is the same guy who invented the wax napkins they give you with hot dogs. It doesn't wipe the mustard off; it rubs it in -- sort of like flavored Man-Tan.

I used a piece of newspaper to wipe the excess ink off my fingers. It contained a glowing account of Father Divine and all the money he was making. I stared at his picture and the amount. Then I went back to my "condemned room," carrying the work light from the dancing school. There was no electricity above the school floor; you just plugged in downstairs and carried up the extension.

I had my Fred Astaire fantasy, dancing up the steps with the light in my hand.

One day, while my mother was going through her "stuff" -- four or five earrings that didn't match; six pairs of platform shoes in simulated lizard that she never wore; numerous bras with broken straps that she intended to mend some day; and, always, five or six crumpled-up Kleenex with traces of lipstick -- she told me that she had decided to study eccentric dancing.

It was called "Legomania" or "Rubber Legs."

There was a fellow by the name of Joe Clooney who rented the studio to limber up early in the morning, for which he gave my mother a couple of dollars. After a while, he started trading her -- Legomania lessons for limbering-up space.

Within six months, Joe and my mother were doing an act together.

They started out by working hospitals and benefits, and then progressed to Saturday-night joints in Brooklyn; on Bergen Street, Ocean Parkway, or Coney Island. A short time later, Joe left the act and my mother was doing a single. The shows consisted of a comedian/master of ceremonies, a girl singer, a ballroom team, and my mother.

On one particular night, at the Victory Club on Ocean Parkway, the master of ceremonies didn't show up. He had trouble with his car...they found half-a-pound of pot in the trunk.

The owner asked my mother to emcee. She was petrified. She had never spoken a single line on the stage before. Moreover, audiences were not used to seeing women emcees. I had seen the master of ceremonies lots of times, so I asked my mother if I could do it -- what was so hard about, "Say, how 'bout a nice hand for the Soandsos, folks?"

What with a quick meeting with the boss, and the law of supply and demand, I was given my entree into show business.

It was about 15 minutes before show time. I went into the men's room to comb my hair. I pushed my pompadour as high as I could get it, and I put a little burnt match on the mustache which I was sporting at the time. I was really dap, with my sharp brown-suede shoes from A. S. Beck and a one-button roll suit from Buddy Lee's. It was bar-mizvah blue. I had a Billy Eckstine collar, a black knit tie, and a five-point handkerchief, handrolled, made in the Philippines, with the sticker still on it.

Should I wear my discharge button? No, I'll make it on talent alone.

Then I suddenly realized -- I don't have any make-up! My first show and no make-up. The men's-room attendant (sign, My Salary Is Your Tips, Thank You) had a can of white after-shave talc. I put that on, and in the rush I dropped it and spilled it all over my brown-suede shoes. I don't know if you've ever tried getting white talcum powder off brown-suede shoes, but it's worse than trying to use leaves in the woods.

The men's-room attendant started getting nervous and staring at me. I laughed it off and exited with my now brown-and-white-suede shoes.

The bandleader who was going to introduce me was doing a warm-up and getting laughs. Loud laughs. He was using his clarinet in a manner that was beyond mere phallic symbolism; he was swinging it between his legs and singing, "He's My Queer Racketeer...."

The cashier asked me, "You nervous -- want a brandy before you go on?"

"No, thanks. I don't know what the hell everybody is worrying about. I've emceed a million shows."

The ballroom team gave me their cues for applause. "Now, when I drop the one knee, she comes up...."

Suddenly my feet began to get cold, and I was in the men's room, throwing up. I was scared to death, and the attendant was flipping. It was five minutes before show time, all the waiters had been alerted, and a few of the "regular" customers had developed anticipatory neurosis.

My mother looked at me from the opposite side of the room and pantomimed: "Your shoes are dirty!"

I again retreated to the men's room, but the attendant blocked my entrance this time, and I threw up on a customer who was exiting.

I heard the strains of "Hi, Neighbor" -- one of the standard night-club music intros -- and I fled to the wings. My mother took one look at my powdered face and took me by the hand. I bolted away from her and into the ladies' room for one last purge.

I felt a wave of self-pity and identified with Aruzza, Manolete, Belmonte, and every other bullfighter -- scared not of the bull but of the crowd. A crowd that waits: to be entertained, to view, to judge.

I heard the bandleader:

"Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As you may know, our regular master of ceremonies, Tutti Morgan, is ill, due to a service-connected injury. Luckily, folks, show business has a big heart. A friend of his, Lenny Marsalle, a famous comic in his own right, who was in Guadalcanal with Tutti Morgan, is here it for a great comedian and a great guy -- Lenny Marsalle!"

I wiped my mouth with the square sheet of toilet paper that came in the container marked Onliwon, and made my grand entrance onto the stage right from the ladies' room.

Actually, my function was quite simple. I was going out there and I was merely to say "Good evening," do a few straight lines and introduce the girl singer. But why did that bandleader have to say I was a "great comedian" and all that dishonest stuff about the Ed Sullivan show? Now they were all waiting for a great comedian.

But he also said I was a "great guy." maybe, I hoped, that was more important to the audience, my being a "great guy." Maybe I could do some of my "great guy" stuff. Maybe I could have my mother go out and say, "He's really a 'great guy'" and everybody would believe her because a mother knows her son better than anyone.

I saw a strange, silver, rather grotesque looking ball in front of my nose. It was a microphone. I was onstage.

"Good evening, ladies and gentlemen----"

"Bring on the broads!" cut me short. Oh, my God, a heckler! The angry request came from one of two guys standing near the bar; with them were two Lernerclad ladies with the let-out hems, brown-and-white spectator pumps and whoopee socks, cloth coats with silver-fox collars which were a little too tight, and the final unique touch: lipstick on their teeth.

It shocked me into reality.

I looked at my mother and I saw a helpless smile. Her son, her baby that she nursed through chicken pox, working as a maid to sustain the both of us. Her child was in trouble and she couldn't help him.

Ma, help me; that boy hit me, Ma; gimme a quarter, Ma; I'm in trouble, Ma; I'm alone, help me, Ma....

"Bring on the the broads!"

This time the request was more positive and energetic. The heckler must have sensed a weak, inexperienced prey. The two girls and the man with him bathed in his reflected glory. His friend joined him and they screamed in unison: "Bring on the broads!" And their lady friends shrieked with ecstasy.

"I'd like to, but then you wouldn't have any company at the bar."

My first laugh.

It was like the flash that I have heard morphine addicts describe, a warm sensual blanket which comes after a cold sick rejection.

I was hooked.

My mother looked at me and really schepped nachis (which is the Jewish equivalent of "That's my boy!").

I introduced the first act, and an hour later, at the end of the show, when I was bringing my mother back for an encore, I said, "How about that, folks, Sally Marsalle -- isn't she great?"

How about that for silliness? I'm telling a group of strangers: "Isn't my mother wonderful?" I had a dangerous desire to extend the tribute: "Yes sir, folks, not only can she dance, but she makes great chicken soup, and sweet lima beans, and when I'm sick she rubs my chest with Vicks."

When the evening was over, to my surprise the owner did not assume the Eduardo Cellini posture with the dialog that I had been conditioned to expect in the movie scene where the novice succeeds. Lyle Talbot always nods to Eugene Pallette: "You've done it again, Mr. Florenzo, this kid's sensational! We'd better sign him up before the Rio Bamba gets him."

I received no such gratification. As a matter of fact, he charged me for a meatball sandwich and ginger ale.

And when I stood on the subway platform and reached into my pocket for a dime, I found that the men's-room attendant had gotten even. I won't go into the scatological details; I threw the coat into the trash can.

But I'd had a smell of it and the aroma lingered.

Well, that's show business.

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