EIGHT

Like most people alive at the time, I remember the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I saw the TV coverage at first through the door of my friend Pete’s apartment. The entire country grew numb and everything seemed to halt to a grinding stop. I found it hard to believe this could happen in the USA. But shock gave way to boredom for our circle of friends; we were 15 years old with nothing to do that weekend. All the stores were closed and most radio and TV shows were cancelled. With nothing else to do on Saturday night, we just roamed the streets, walking through unfamiliar neighborhoods while checking the radio for updates, but I was hoping that with this suspension of all things familiar, comfort things really, that my favorite radio program would nevertheless be on. To my glee, “Sink or Swim with Swingin’ Slim” was not cancelled.

I was one of Slim’s most ardent listeners. I was madly in love with the beautiful Fran Goldstein in those days, but she favored an older more dangerous looking Italian kid and we remained just friends, until one Saturday night when we wound up making out at a party at her house. I kept one eye on my watch, however, and at the stroke of whatever time Slim’s show began, I told her I had to leave. She was shocked at my abrupt disappearance and I never got another chance with her, but I could not miss Swingin’ Slim for anything. As a DJ he left much to be desired, but as the owner of the legendary Times Square Records he was the undisputed king of doo-wop music. If I missed hearing any of the super-rare 45’s he was playing, I might never hear them again. Doo-wop was paramount to me in those days obviously, and still remains my favorite music of all time. Slim even wrote a column for my Big Beat fanzine, which I began in 1963.

Between the President’s death, the arrival of the Beatles in America shortly afterwards, my family moving to Coney Island and my meeting the young lady I would marry, the 1963-4 school year was a time of change and upheaval for me as it no doubt was for everyone else. I’d met Ellen at a party and we’d kind of hit it off, but as we were both relatively new at the exciting world of dating, had no intention of getting serious until I heard she’d sat on Rance’s lap at a party. I could not abide with the thought of these two in such close proximity, and worried about what could occur on a second date, quickly nipped this in the bud by asking Ellen to go steady. True, Rance had escorted me through his parents’ collection of antiques years earlier, but at another time he also had punched me pretty hard causing my Fuji radio to hit the sidewalk and crack. I had, of course, made fun of his last name. Teddy had made up a ditty, rhyming his last name with a body part which I foolishly repeated in Rance’s presence. Another time, Teddy changed the words of the theme song to Fabian’s new movie, “Hound Dog Man” which I then sung for my mother. Apparently Ted’s lyric had a homosexual connotation that I didn’t get. Mom replied, “why would you want to be one of those?” Why, what is it?, I asked? Someone very unhappy was her answer.

I graduated from New Utrecht in June of 1964. I could have graduated six months earlier and entered college at only 15 years old, but turned it down as my childhood was slipping away quickly enough. I was never a big fan of school, or of anyone teaching me anything for that matter. I liked to figure things out for myself and had no intention of going to college, but at that time it was totally free. For a minimum 85 average in high school, (90 for Brooklyn College) one could apply to any of the city owned schools and be pretty assured of getting in. I tried to get Itz to let me take a year off before deciding but he wouldn’t hear of it.

                                             With Hannah and Lola Nunberg 1961

                                                        Family photo 1964

                                                          Trump Village 1965

                                        Attempting to harmonize 1965, Mark on right

                                  Graduation photo, New Utrecht High School, 1964

I had no idea what major to go for. I knew I wanted to open a record store, but Pop said records were just a hobby, maybe something to fall back on someday. I wish I would have thought of taking business courses that would certainly have helped me in my chosen field. But he was pushing for electrical engineering. What the heck’s that? Driving a stupid train or something, I answered flippantly. Remember, he asked, when you used to like to take electrical things apart? Sure but I’d never be able to put them back together, was the retort. Then he reminded me of the time I shorted out all the power in our apartment. I’d wired a plug so that the positive and negative terminals were attached, plugged it in and Zap! This is why I should be an electrical engineer, I asked? What does an electrical engineer do? I don’t think he knew; but he said I could always change my major if it didn’t work out. Dad graduated from college the same time as I did from high school. He’d gone for years at night, majoring in English Literature, dreaming of being a teacher. His degree was a source of pride, but he convinced himself he was now too old (44 at the time) to actually pursue this dream. He was happy for me to be entering college at my young age with my whole life ahead of me. He wanted me to take advantage of opportunity that he never had.

I had finally gotten used to the idea of high school. My mates and I sang doo-wops in the school lunchroom, I was beginning to find the nerve to speak to girls, and as a senior I felt like sort of a 'big-shot' for the younger kids to admire. Maybe. Most of them could beat me up. Well, at least I knew the layout of the place. College, City College to be exact, was a shock. It was an hour ride on the train to Spanish Harlem, and then a several blocks walk. Depending on the day, I’d either get off at 125^th Street and head north, or at 137^th Street and go south. The thing that struck me the most was how alone I felt. Most of my friends had made it into Brooklyn College, my first choice, not that I would’ve succeeded there either. But this daily commute was so alien. I knew no one on the train. I’d see few students at all, and they were buried in their studies. Everyone else was reading the Daily News, a few people reading the Times, and an occasional freak with a book.

Little to no conversation would occur on the train, just those wailing and screeching noises as it passed from the elevated platforms into the dark underground tunnels. On one early trip, I ran into a high school friend, an older kid that had taught me how to smoke cigarettes while I tutored him in math. I’d run into him on the trains before; he’d offered to teach me how to smoke pot last time. I said no, to which he replied, “well, that leaves more for me and my friends”. On this occasion, there would be another lesson. We chatted briefly, then he asked me why I wasn’t looking at him. What do you mean, I asked, gazing around the train car as usual. He said it was disrespectful to do that when someone is speaking to you. He demanded that I make eye-contact. I’d never heard of this point of etiquette before, but I dutifully began doing it from that day. Sometimes I have to keep my eye on people in my shop these days, and have to break etiquette, but here was a lesson taught me not at home but by a street tough, and I’ve never forgotten it.

Not that etiquette was totally ignored at home. Some of my earliest memories include seeing a soft-bound etiquette volume in our bathroom on Stockton Street, across the river from Beth Israel Hospital. It was always there, although my dad doesn’t remember it, so it must have belonged to Grandma Rose. Perhaps it was a hint she left lying around for my father, whom she never really liked. She knew that her daughter Norma had a bad heart, and preferred that she did not marry at all, or at least have no children. She offered to pay Itz quite a sum if he’d get lost, but they were in love. The tension between Grandma and dad was pushed into the background, but never completely abated. I, of course, was unaware of all this back then. They all loved me, just maybe should have punished me a little more often.

Late one night at two years old while sitting on that potty staring at the ever present etiquette book, wondering about its secrets, my bathrobe somehow slipped into the bowl and attached itself to a poopie. When I quickly jumped up to complete my business it flew onto the bathroom floor sending a wave of shock and horror throughout my very being. The entire household responded to my screams; I don’t know if I was more scared or embarrassed.

Back on the train I began running into a kid I’d met from the neighboring high school, Erasmus Hall, Babs Streisand’s alma mater. He was actually going to City College as well! I couldn’t believe how weird this was, that he was the only other student I ever recognized on the train. It’s not like CCNY was some small school. I had a problem with this young man however; he stunk so bad of garlic, that I could not stand it. At first I tried, with eye-contact and everything, being desperate for someone to sit with and speak with on that train. After a while, though, I just lost myself in the Daily News like everyone else.

Emerging from the subway, I’d flip on my transistor radio, tuned to one of the R&B stations, and bop my way to school as Mark will teach me to in another chapter. Sometimes my trajectory took me through a park located on a steep hillside. Years later I read that quite a few folks got killed in that park. Then I’d finally arrive at a cavern of a room for the 8 AM Chemistry lecture. I’d sit towards the top of the stadium-seated room by myself, and try to understand what the professor was teaching. He was one of those guys that always, and I mean without fail, has a piece of food or mucous or something stuck in his mouth, that would be half on his upper lip, half on his lower lip when he spoke. It became impossible for me to not watch him as he was teaching; you know when something is so disgusting that you can’t look away? Even if I had found it possible to concentrate, this was mad scientist math, not the stuff I got an “A” for in high school. In fact, I got an A on the first exam, a high school review. On the second test there was still a little of the older material and I got 40% of it, for an F. I got nothing right on the third quarter exam, even after buying a book to help me figure it out. I didn’t even show up for the final as there was a subway strike and no way for me to get there; I’d no friends with cars, no driver’s license or any clue how to drive. I’d lost the will to be an electrical engineer.

In my second year, yes they suffered me another term, I switched to something called ‘liberal arts’. I actually managed a “B” in one class, health. The class cracked up at the end when we were asked by the teacher what we’d gotten out of the class, and on my turn I said, “learning about the rhythm method so that I could have sex with my girlfriend and not get her pregnant”. I was, of course, serious; that had been the highlight of the class for me. I was not such a hit in English, however, when the prof asked if there were any questions concerning our first assignment. We were to report on objective vs. subjective observations on a street corner, and I hadn’t a clue what the difference was. Here again, the class exploded with laughter when I asked, and the teacher thought I was making fun of him. No, I said, I really don’t know those words, and still didn’t understand the assignment after he explained it again. If only he knew that I’d only just recently become comfortable with left vs. right.

My Speech teacher really hated me; in my presentation, I’d subtracted a third of one’s life spent sleeping, another third spent eating, to demonstrate that we lived only a very few years of our adult lives doing truly fun things like having sex. “So, I’m over-the-hill then at 34” he said, “is that what you’re saying?”. It wasn’t, but he was also annoyed by my terrible diction. He could not get me to properly pronounce the word bottle, nor can I do it to this day. Since moving to the west coast, I don’t know how many people have asked me what part of New York I’m from as soon as I open my mouth. The teacher broke my heart when he told me I’d never be a disc-jockey, my dream vocation. Undaunted, I eventually spent fifteen years on-the-air scrupulously avoiding the word bottle or anything with a 'p' in it. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, as my pop often said.

When I dropped out of school, I first took a job as a trainee on Wall Street. This lasted two weeks; it paid well but it was just too boring for me. While there I drew a cartoon that I’d seen in Help Magazine, of Jesus on the Cross with the caption, “Hoo, that smarts”. One of the other employees saw it and asked me how I could make fun of G-d. Living in liberal New York, I guess I’d forgotten that some folks considered Him to be G-d. I had to apologize, but didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Aren’t people supposed to have a sense of humor?

Next I applied where I really wanted to work, the music department at Mays Department Store in downtown Brooklyn. I loved it there because they had a great selection of soul 45’s, at only 79 cents each. At first they balked at hiring me, a scrawny white kid and insisted on testing me first. Ask me anything, I bragged. They asked who recorded the song “Searching For My Love”. Bobby Moore, I said; c’mon ask me something hard. They couldn’t stump me and I was hired at minimum wage, $1.00 an hour. The head honcho of the department worked in an office upstairs, a Jewish hipster and a good friend of Murray “The K” Kaufman, the most popular dee-jay in New York City at the time. Once, Kaufman even sauntered into the place wearing pink slippers, accompanied by two bodyguards.

The manager was Cuban-American, and his assistant was a white man who was married to a black woman and they had three kids together. There was also a black employee who liked to stab someone every time he bought a new knife, once stabbing a rabbi; a half-Chinese, half black man, and a young Puerto Rican man. I was low man in this group, made fun of and called 'fag' once again, until another Jewish guy got hired and became the brunt of our jokes. Have you seen the movie “Car Wash”? That was us but in a record department. The longer I worked there, the more 'black' I thought I was becoming. I learned the slang and tried to emulate the lifestyle of my friends. I recorded a 45 with some of the neighborhood characters I sang doo-wop with. I wore a ‘black power’ button; I fell in love with a young black woman. It took a while for some of this to wear off once my next job took me to an Italian neighborhood, but like Leonard Zelig in the Woody Allen film, I adjusted to the new surroundings.

Mays paid 53 cents for those 45’s we sold for 79 cents. But we sold so many that money was still made. A Motown hit, this was the heyday of the Supremes, Temptations & Four Tops, might sell 3 or 4000 copies just at this one location. When I became the 45 buyer, I negotiated a better price with a different distributor, unaware that a nickel a record was being kicked back to the head man. When I found out, I was in awe that at least someone had figured out how to make money at this low paying company. A lot of the records went out the door gratis, too. We had a security system made up of slanted mirrors there and often busted small fry who never tired of finding new ways to steal. One guy would come in with a wheelchair and stuff albums into a compartment below his seat. Others would come in with a box that had a false opening. The day before my aforementioned army physical, I caught a young man, who vowed revenge on me and came looking for me the next day with some friends. I was too busy flunking the army physical, though.

Doctor's letter to the draft board

Remember the other Jewish kid? Well, we’d taught him how to catch shoplifters but forgot to tell him that there were certain tough gang members that we didn’t stop, since we valued our lives. One particular fellow was wearing a coat with big pockets, and stuffed about 50 45’s in each pocket. We all thought that the new employee was really brave, but also really stupid. That evening, a gang assembled on the street corner to exact their revenge. We watched them out of the display window as more and more of them joined the group. The employee thought he was really going to die, and at quitting time was escorted outside by a security guard. Nothing happened, but he did quit shortly afterward.

The employees used to steal, too. We’d fill up a box containing an iron record rack with other merchandise, pay the $4.95 for the rack and be escorted to the door by a security guard. Outside we’d all divvy up. If someone got caught, he’d be punished by being transferred to another department.

On the train coming home one evening, I ran into that fellow that had taught me how to smoke cigarettes in high school. I’d declined his offer of smoking pot lessons, but shortly afterwards gave that honor to the employee with the knife. He pulled out the skinniest 'J' I think I’d ever see, and showed me how to hold the smoke in my lungs. The next day at Mays, one of the guys, Jose, asked me how it was and whether I’d listened to jazz while stoned, which had been his advice. But I felt nothing my first time, nor could I imagine that jazz would sound any better while high.

Sexual experience used to be measured in 'bases', as in baseball. You can imagine what fourth base, or a home run, meant I’m sure. First base was probably just making out. Second and third fell under the realm of what was called 'petting', which my steady and I would do in the hallway at the staircase leading to her apartment, and at our high school 'frat' house which I believe we called Mu Epsilon Phi. I always felt guilty afterwards and it was disturbing to me. Why should I feel so guilty just for doing what was so exciting to both of us? Of course none of our parents would approve, but that made it more exciting. I always got her home on time like a good lad, after all. I hoped to find a way to deal with the intense guilt, and felt that something must be wrong with me. Something was certainly wrong; something called sin. Could that really be it? How quaint, I thought. Maybe I really did need a shrink, as my dad had often suggested.

Once I went as far as to allow a meeting with a social worker that pop hooked me up with. He asked me some stupid questions; I told him to have intercourse with himself, threatened to strike him, and it was over in about five minutes. Crazy sinner I was; nahh, just a typical new yawkah. And proud of it. Once I tried to actually provoke a fight with my father; I think it was because he was trying to get me to do my own laundry. I put up my scrawny fists; he put up his 'dukes', and my survival instincts told me ‘this is going to hurt’ and I quickly backed down. We were both under a lot of pressure with my mom suffering in that that awful hell-hole, and nothing we could really do about it.

I’d started hanging out with my old friend Bill again, smoking pot and listening to rock music. I learned to finally accept the hated Beatles; although they’d tidily done away with my beloved doo-wop music, they also smoked pot and so were cool. Phil turned me on to the Velvet Underground, who quickly became my favorite band of all time. Phil loved their anthem “Heroin” especially. To me, their music was life-changing, and indeed all so-called alternative rock music can be traced back to their doorstep. They even had a song called “Jesus”, which contained a line about ‘falling out of grace’. I was fascinated by this concept. What did that mean? And what was grace?

I bought a cheap guitar and a Beatles songbook, and taught myself how to play guitar poorly, then began writing my own songs, beginning with a Beatle-esque tune which I sang in a faux British accent. One day, while pounding on the guitar and droning about lost love and pain, my mom on temporary leave from the hospital, entered my bedroom and although suffering so terribly under the weight of her illness said to me, “Why do you write such sad songs? Life is beautiful; it’s not so bad.”

Fourth base (obviously I’m no sports fan or I’d call it a home run) was achieved on New Year’s Eve of 1966, when we finally found ourselves alone in my room. We’d gone steady a couple of years by then, frustratingly sneaking around in hallways and closets. Once my dad had entered my bedroom closet and literally yanked us apart, hoping to forestall the inevitable. Then he confronted me in the living room and said to me, “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘coitus interruptus’? I had, in fact, never heard this term before, nor ever heard my dad say anything in Latin, and I just broke out in hysterics. This was not a laughing matter, he scolded. Ellen and I were married the following year, both of us 18 years of age. We had a large and beautiful engagement party before she started to show, shortly followed by a lonely, legal marriage ceremony.

                                                       Engagement party, 1966

I was glad to get married and leave the authority of my dad, but truly his 'yoke' was easy. Many people are so scarred by their fathers that they find the image of a 'heavenly Father' too severe to consider Christianity. I didn’t completely appreciate how wonderful Itchka was then; actually a picture of Jesus, a solid rock, stern perhaps at times, but totally loving and forgiving. And if my dad was Christ-like, my mom was surely so as well. Pure, angelic and non-judgmental, I pray to G-d each year at her yartzeit (anniversary of death) that I’ll see her again someday. I apologize to G-d each year that I’m praying 'for the dead', something that Christians don’t, but Jews do. I know 'in my knower', an expression I’ve heard in church, that had my mother lived long enough she would have been ‘born again’. And I hope against hope that G-d also knows that.

Our son was born at a tiny 'boutique' hospital in Brooklyn. I didn’t really want to be a father then, and actually prayed to G-d during my wife’s delivery that the child wouldn’t live. What sort of monster prays such a thing? I was so sorry, but too late. He was born without a diaphragm; they kept him alive for an hour, but didn’t have the facilities to save him. He was buried in New Jersey at a special Jewish graveyard for children that die prior to eight days of age and so have not been circumcised. It was a little like David and Bathsheba, except he wanted his son to live. I am so humbled at the thought of meeting my son in Heaven, and he’ll have long ago forgiven me. A nurse asked if I wanted to see my son, and brought in his tiny lifeless body. I gazed longingly at the child that was almost mine, until she said, “well, is that long enough already”?

We both had decent jobs by then, and at my direction proceeded to live lives of hedonism and indulgence. We stocked our bar with various liquors and inspired by the new 'head' shop that opened in the neighborhood began experimenting with LSD. Soon we began being invited to parties thrown by like-minded 'heads', and I grew my hair long. One party a couple of floors above us worried me at first. Everyone was passing joints around, pot cigarettes, but all the men there had super short hair. It turned out they were all policemen, smoking confiscated weed. Taking drugs made me paranoid; every time I heard a siren (this is New York City, remember) I thought they were after me. I wasn’t very good as a pothead, but I sure kept trying.

I worked for an Italian owned record distributor about two blocks from our apartment. One of the partners was a 'head' and we’d gather at his apartment in Manhattan to listen to records on his expensive stereo setup and smoke pot. It was across the street from one of those famous delis, Carnegie I think, handy when we got the munchies, although a dangerous street to cross, especially while stoned. Once I became entrenched at my new job, I hired all my own pothead cronies to work there, from Bill to cousin Larry, and even my wife, her sister and my secret love from downtown Brooklyn, although it remained unrequited. I met my friend Franklin there as well, whose influence on me would be strong. While I copied a lot of things from Bill, such as wearing two different colored socks, and much lingo, Franklin taught me more 'spiritual' things.

Most of my friends had by now begun growing their hair long like the Beatles, smoking pot and going to protest rallies. I started reading the Village Voice newspaper and supporting left-wing political causes. I never studied politics and had no clue about Marxism or any other ism, but I knew I was against the Vietnam War mainly because I was afraid to fight and die. I heard the term 'pacifist' from my cousin Larry, and figured, yup, that’s what I am. Then I started reading the East Village Other instead of the Voice. It was more extreme, more fun, more anarchic. I joined the kids with the longest hair and messiest clothes at the rallies, chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win”. I was certainly no 'commie'; I hated communists as much as anyone. It was the thrill of rebellion, of fun, of craziness that appealed to me, and Teddy. At one winter rally, from way back in the crowd Teddy threw a snowball and hit a police van. He was always the best at punchball and might have become an athlete if he was ever encouraged to. But he never had a political thought that I was aware of; yet he was at the head of the line where having fun was concerned. Then we all ran away, thousands of us, down Fifth Avenue when the true lefties started breaking plate glass windows. Teddy and I hit the subway and disappeared, knowing that the fun part of the thing was over.

Phyllis was beautiful and so cute, exactly my type, especially in the looks department. When I’d met her at Stevie’s record shop she was only sixteen and already had a young child. I’d go in there briefly during my half-hour lunch at Mays, barely enough time to drool over her, then have a slice of pizza and a couple of boiler-makers at the bar down the block. I was elated when she followed me to begin working at Apex where I learned that she had similar feelings towards me. She let this graphically be known by 'accidentally' dropping a condom out of her handbag one evening, saying “oh my, what’s that I’ve dropped”! I was dumbstruck and paralyzed, and just pretended I didn’t notice it. Some months later though, we were stoned and sitting at a train station in Bay Ridge alternating between making out and my showing off balancing on the edge of the platform. She had told her mom about me, and we had an 'our song', “Does Your Mama Know About Me” by Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers, that mixed-race Motown group that included Tommy Chong (of later Cheech & Chong fame). A white man and black woman embracing in public in Italian-Catholic Bay Ridge was not an altogether safe or recommended practice. Nevertheless we managed to safely board our respective trains, but this highlight of our non-affair was to end it. She felt guilty about Ellen; remember her? We’d only been married about a year at the time.

                                                     "Fat" Dan the Candle Man

                Lenny, Stevie, & Jerry Nazin at Stevie's record shop, downtown Brooklyn

                          Franklin

The other partners at the record distributor were not so amused by our hippie shenanigans and our days working there were all numbered. Once, the boss asked me to smell one of the bathrooms after one of the pot-heads had been in there. “Excuse me, did you just say you want me to smell a bathroom after someone’s just been in there”; I said, pausing for time to think about what to do. I lied and said I didn’t smell anything. I left shortly afterward for a six-month leave, too 'freaked-out' to go to work. Ellen was a fantastic Italian cook, and I gave her a recipe I’d found in High Times magazine for pot meatballs. But when she showed me the amount of pot the recipe called for, it didn’t look like enough and I asked her to double it, unaware of the profound difference between smoking it and eating it.

An hour later, I still wasn’t stoned and believed we should have added even more marijuana to the dish. I was watching “The Beverly Hillbillies” on TV, when Granny walked into the room. Suddenly I thought this was totally hysterical, Granny walking into a room. I laughed out loud, glad that I was finally high. But a minute later, I noticed that my heart was beating very fast. I put my fingers to my wrist, 120 bpm. Then I checked the pulse in my neck, 140. I asked my wife to heat me up some warm milk, thinking that would calm things. 160 bpm, 180 bpm, 200 bpm; how fast until my heart bursts, I wondered. I thought I would die that long night. In the morning I went to my heart doctor’s office and he gave me a couple of sedatives. Finally I returned home and fell asleep. But I wouldn’t be the same. For months afterwards I’d be seen taking my pulse constantly. One guy at work wondered what the heck I was doing. ‘You mean I can listen to my heart beat that way’, he asked? I got him into doing it. Except his heart beat was normal; mine had become wacky. I resolved never to use pot again. Then hay fever season hit hard. I spent most of that six-month leave in bed. When I finally came back to work I couldn’t concentrate. Bill and Larry had moved to California. I was developing asthma. My wife and I followed them to the west coast to become hippies in earnest.