Easy Street (The Hard Way) A Memoir Read online

  He said, “How about trumpets?”

  I said, “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Anything? Piano?” I told him I took five years of piano lessons but couldn’t even play chopsticks. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Practice—could never do it.” That was it, I thought, blowing my last chance to be a musician as my family expected me to be. I was clueless, though, on how this balloon-bursting letdown would introduce me to another art that was then so entirely outside my radar. I remember how this place gave me one of those life-changing opportunities we don’t get too often.

  Once I got the message that family connections wouldn’t let me fake my way into the band, I knew it was time to stand and deliver. I began a mad dash to find a way to contribute, to distinguish myself from the pack. I knew I was not going to win any points with “talkmanship” because I was always a wreck when it came to talking to girls; the low self-esteem just basically exacerbated whatever shot I had at turning on the charm. I was a man in search of a place to fit in. Some said that with my size, I could be a human blockade or a lineman for the football team. But a year earlier a star football player died on the field from what we now know as “sudden death” or heart failure, causing the school to scrap the entire football program the year I entered high school. I hated football anyway. The school had a baseball team, but back then it was kind of ragtag and nothing worth aspiring to. So I gave the swimming team a shot, and with the modest skills I had acquired during summers at the family urban country club, I actually made it. I was happy to become an undervalued member of the swimming team because at least I was on a varsity team. I was second string, or maybe third string, if all the great kids showed up on the same day. But I practiced really hard, got into really good shape, and dug being a part of something.

  That’s another thing I thank my dad for—that is, making sure we were passably athletic at all sports. He joined and paid for a membership to a new place called the Fieldstone Baths and Tennis Club in the Bronx. It was built under a cross-section of elevated subway trains near Van Cortland Park that was noisy as all shit. Yet we spent family times there from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and I would go on my own a lot to swim in the Olympic-size pool. I became a fairly decent swimmer, at least good enough to make a team.

  When I was in my second year of high school, then a junior, I made the tryouts and was again on the swim team. However, it wasn’t long after the swim season started when one day during practice the coach blew his whistle. All of us guys in the water with our swim caps and goggles stopped and treaded water or held on to the side a minute to see what the coach wanted. Who could have guessed that the very tall, very skinny man standing next to the swimming coach would redirect my flight path to the very one I find myself on to this day?

  This mysterious man standing there was a very well-dressed gentleman, like a Brooks Brothers window manikin (or today we’d say he was right out of GQ). He was a striking contrast to our swimming coach, a hard-core jock, with his classic cardigan sweater with the holes in it. Just then my coach pointed in my direction. I looked back, hoping to see that there were guys behind me. But no. The coach blew the whistle again, then shouted, “Perlman, out of the pool.”

  “What’d I do?”

  “Just get out of the pool.”

  When I went over to him, still dripping wet, I asked again what I did.

  “Nothing. You’re going with this guy.”

  “Who is he?” I didn’t even look at the man next to the coach, as if he wasn’t there.

  “He’s the drama coach, and you’re going to audition for the school play.”

  “What if I don’t want to go?”

  “You don’t have any choice—you’re going. They had thirty-five girls show up for the school play to audition and no boys, so they’re looking for boys.”

  “Why me?”

  “’Cuz maybe you could do the drama department a little more good than you’re doing the swimming team.”

  “What if I don’t get a part?”

  “You’ll come back and be a red-shirt swimmer for the rest of your life.”

  I knew that meant I’d never get into the water during a tournament.

  When I finally turned to look and acknowledge the drama teacher, he gave me a half-ass polite smile. “Get dressed. I’ll be waiting with other students who are also trying out for the play. Go to classroom number [so and so], in the corridor near the theater. You’ll be doing a reading.”

  I had no idea what a reading was, but I showered, packed my gym bag, strung it over my shoulder, and went with my curly hair still half-wet. I liked the camaraderie of being part of the swimming team and thought I was coming back. I remember saying to some of the guys that I’d see them in an hour or so. I never felt that anything was going to come of this “reading.” I just thought I was going to audition like the guy asked me to and then maybe even have time that same day to show up and catch the end of swim practice.

  But fucking circles—they come at you when you least expect it. Life has this giant Jules Vernesque smoke machine, run by some great magical forces in the universe that blows rings at you. When I smoked cigars, if alone and sitting back, it was cool and meditative sometimes to watch the exhaled smoke rings I could make. Some were nearly perfect circles before wobbling into misshaped Os and then dissipating. Opportunity is like that. See that perfect ring and take the leap and jump through it. Head first, hands pointed above your head to make yourself like an arrow, as if plunging into the pool at the clang of the start bell. Seize that next opportunity that comes your way. Give it an honest try and your best shot. That’s how the idea of being an actor even entered my consciousness as something I could do.

  The audition was in a classroom. The drama teacher sat at a desk a few rows back from the front. There were two or three of us at the head of the classroom, holding sheets of paper we were just handed. At first I wasn’t really enthusiastic about it, but I also didn’t want to stink up the joint; I came all this way, so I decided to do the best I could. I wasn’t trying to get the part; I was just thinking about rising to the challenge of taking this text and reading it well. In theater I later learned this is called a “cold read,” though, glancing through the pages, I could see that this piece was entertaining and written to be spoken with feeling.

  So I gave it a shot and noticed the acting teacher apparently liking what he was hearing. He then asked me to read the lines of another character. As I did I noticed he got a glint in his eye and a sort of a self-satisfied smirk on his face. It seemed whatever I was doing in regard to reading the text and trying to make something out of it was hitting its mark.

  I didn’t go back to the swim team practice that afternoon. We were told to check a bulletin board outside the classroom where the audition took place the following day. The results were there first thing the next morning, and to my utter amazement my name was listed there as the lead actor. It was kind of like, whoa—not only was I not expecting to be in the play, but I certainly didn’t think I was star material. For that moment I was feeling pretty good, fantasizing that I was the lead, like in the movies my dad and I watched. I was Gary Cooper, or the fuckin’ Duke, first time out of the gate. But I didn’t want to make too much of it because, I said to myself, This has got to be a mistake. I’m not primed for this; I’m not trained for this. I wasn’t even aware of what I was reading when I was reading it. But by the same token it was a small boost in self-esteem and a little bit of an internal “Fucking A—Yes!”

  I went back to the swim coach and told him that it turned out that I got a part in this play and asked him what he wanted me to do. “I don’t wanna leave the team,” I said.

  “Let’s just say that you’re leaving temporarily so when this play is done, if you want to come back, I’ll take you back.”

  As I sit here now I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the swim coach, but he’s surely one of those people we all meet in life who you can’t help wanting to
thank. Years later I realized I didn’t get the part in the play because of my brother’s artistic reputation; instead, I think the drama teacher probably went around asking other teachers if they knew kids with a certain disposition that might make them good for theater. My MO was being a cut-up, a class clown, and, as I mentioned, making people laugh was my main defense mechanism against a world that always stood ready to ostracize me, or so I thought. When that whistle blew, my name was the only one called. The coach obviously saw something in me, some sort of spark that may have been something that could be used outside the pool. So he threw out his own Hail Mary and a from-the-gut guess, but he hit the mark, because it worked out and changed my life. I wish I could thank that muthafucka because he’s responsible for everything. That was an amazing call on his part. I never went back to the swim team.

  I was cast as Peterbono in a play called Thieves’ Carnival by French playwright Jean Anouilh. It was a very stylized comedy full of French farce about a bunch of conmen and salesmen who hoodwinked and scammed customers. Peterbono clearly was the guy in charge, the grand poobah running this merry band of scam artists. It was over-the-top theatrics, meant to be humorous, but in reality it was quite a stylistically ambitious play for a high school drama teacher to pull off, given the bunch of amateurs he had to work with.

  Rehearsals started right away. I didn’t know any of the other kids. There were a few who had been long aspiring to be actors or actresses, but most were like me—first timers. So we were all on equal footing, but I was immediately comfortable in this new subculture, a mini-society, a society within a society. Theater was a haven for a lot of people who felt very much like me internally. We were a bunch who couldn’t get shit right in life. But in the darkness of the stage, where you couldn’t see into the first row because the footlights are blinding you, you get into this private little world where you are able to create order from chaos. It made us misfits feel as if we were finally in some sort of strange control, finally getting something right.

  Within the first week I was welcomed into a community of people who were exactly like me: freaks, outcasts, low self-esteem, kids who didn’t really fit in and were wearing the same two left shoes I had been wearing my entire life. I had finally found the group of people I was most safe with. This is a very specific, strange world of like-minded people. When the group rehearses diligently for weeks you develop an intimacy and a unique bond. It was like going home. It was like after trying on fifty jackets, you finally found one that fit. I had found my own level of community. I no longer felt like a loser. In fact, I felt like the one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind. I felt like the fucking Hunchback of Notre Dame when they made him king of the freaks because he’s the ugliest—even though I was the ugliest, I was still okay. The beginnings of peace replaced that awkward restlessness. There were enough peaceful moments that were strung together from being in that community of people and knowing that I could fail, that I could be loved and appreciated, that I could fall on my face and everybody would say, “Oh, yeah, but look at that effort, man.” All this out of the unexpected happenstance of getting yanked off the swimming team and showing up for a reading. I felt this way from the moment it happened. Later I realized that I’m one of the lucky ones who actually found his niche in the world, doing what I was meant to be doing, with the people I was meant to be doing it with.

  The rehearsal process took about four or five weeks prior to opening night. It consisted of this string of epiphanies. It was like some state of grace in which I was forever in a state of discovery. I would learn ten new things about acting in a day and ten more the next day. I was a big sponge. I developed a much deeper connection to my fellow actors than I ever had on the swim team. I had to count on the other members in a troupe for timing, as there are no cuts or retakes in live theater. I learned from that first experience that the better the ensemble is, with dedicated people around you, the better the chance that you will do good. If you say your line and the other guy’s not responding, you’re fucked. The whole play starts stinking and then you die.

  As my career progressed I worked with a lot of actors who thought just the opposite. There are a lot of really big-name stars who I’ve worked with who prefer to work with people who are mediocre, believing it will make them look better. Not only could they be any more wrong, but it’s also a corrupt and narcissistic way of calling attention to yourself. My experience is that in acting, whether it is in a movie or theater—though far more important in theater because it’s a spontaneous art form—the acting process is very interdependent on a lot of people. The higher the level of the ensemble, the higher the level each of the players are going to work or be called upon to give and dig out of themselves—it will only make all look better. Surrounding yourself with enthused people makes executing the project easier, and everybody’s work is going to be better.

  In retrospect it was also a boon and another one of those positive serendipitous circumstances that I happened to have a teacher by the name of Kenneth Goldsberry as the school’s theater director during high school. He was the first homosexual I ever met, and in no way do I mean that derogatorily. In those days being openly gay was perilous to your career and even physically dangerous. He had the guts to attempt to train us to pull off a very difficult kind of theater. He was a tall, thin man, always dressed impeccably. When he was young he had his crack at working in professional theater. From what I understood, he never acted but did a lot of jobs in theater in costume departments and scenic design.

  Nevertheless, theater was his life. He was encouraging as opposed to criticizing, which was really an excellent foundation for setting the groundwork for a positive experience. Now if he had been a prick who was yelling at everybody, I could’ve easily gotten turned off and quit acting. He also had a phenomenal temperament. He never raised his voice, never became angry or frustrated with people. Mr. Goldsberry had a lot of patience, and he had a huge amount of appreciation every time you brought in something that was fresh and really worked. He gave us this kind of a laboratory to expand our dreams. It was like this creative prayer in which he engaged us, a prayer that if we all worked hard to get this right and put more and more time into it until we were the best possible, then he assured us that our chances of performing a good play were pretty good.

  By about November of that year, after weeks of rehearsals and costume dry runs, we were finally ready for opening night. We had four shows scheduled: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I remember standing behind the curtain opening night, with the rumor that the audience was packed with a thousand people or more. What I experienced moments before my entry was the same I still experience today. There’s a measurable amount of what’s known as stage fright or nervousness. No matter how much I rehearse, no matter how good I know I am, I’m terrified that something is going to go wrong. I’m terrified that I’m going to stink; I’m scared that I’m going to forget something I was supposed to do. But those fears, generally, at least 85 percent of them, leave the moment I walk out on stage. Yet during those moments leading up to the performance, I am simply terrified. To this day I am.

  Once I walk on stage, I go into “Go Mode.” I tell myself, We rehearsed this, we all know what to do, so let’s just do it. The minute I get the fear out of my head and get into the action of the moment, a lot of the anxiety melts away. Then I start to feel the exchange take place between me, the other actors, and the audience. I wait a minute and hear the audience really quiet down out there. I realize they’re really listening to me; they’re actually waiting to hear the next thing I’ll say or see the next thing I do. Even though I can’t see the audience due to the brightness of the stage lights, I can feel them listening. And an exchange begins to take place. And suddenly I’m having a conversation with a thousand people that I am in total control over. It’s trippy. It’s cool. It’s like an aphrodisiac. For I have entered into the realm of collective consciousness, the highest and most sophisticated of all human interactions—I get h
ooked. As if I’ve taken a substance. It’s like sex, like hitting a baseball with the fat part of the bat and watching it sail four hundred–plus feet.

  Even though I was still a virgin both in theater and in bed at that point, I now compare that feeling I experienced in the first play to sex. I couldn’t get enough of it. It was like a hot knife through butter. And when I do that with a troupe of other players, I’ve just created a bond between the cast and the ensemble that is palpable, quantifiable, indescribable, and definitely something I want more of. Acting, for me, instantly became habit forming.

  After our four-night run I absolutely couldn’t wait to experience those moments on the stage again, and again, and again. The minute that play was over I said, “Okay, Mr. Goldsberry, what’s the next play?”

  The performances went better than any expected. Everybody genuinely liked it and had a good time. It was all positive comments from kids I met in the hallways, even some of my old swimmates, which was like getting rave reviews. Our production even got written up in the school paper with great things to say about it. It was all good; it was win, win, win.

  I became a member of the Goldsberry troupe. Whatever play he was doing, I was in it. I ended up doing Carousel and The Crucible for him. There was also another theater director that did other plays, which I was also in. It can’t remember all of them, but I went from one play to another. This became my afterschool and in-school obsession, so much so it became my distinctiveness—Ron and the drama department were synonymous.

  Goldsberry thought I had talent and handpicked me and another dude named Arthur Mulford to be his protégés. For the next two and a half years, Artie and I alternated playing leads in every play done at GW. It became a given; we were like the Hope and Crosby of George Washington High School. Because of this strange but meaningful anointing, Artie Mulford became my first best friend from outside the circle of kids growing up. Artie was an OG (outstanding gangster), a tough Irish kid from the Heights with a no-bullshit demeanor and rugged good looks. As a leading man, he was a natural. And as a best bud, he had everything it took to gain my ultimate respect and trust. Plus, he was drop-dead funny, not to mention the fact that he was the other straight kid invited into this exotic world of Goldsberry’s to absorb, for the first time in our respective lives, a glimpse into the real inner workings of the New York Theater. On more than one occasion Ken invited us to his very elegant brownstone in Chelsea, where he lived with his partner who worked at Brooks-Van Horn, the most prestigious costume house to all Broadway Theater. He was a very legit guy and also piss elegant—I mean fuckin’ piss elegant—but both were theater people to the core. They would have us to their house and give us Heights bums a real look at the finer things in life. We were taught what forks and spoons to use in a formal dining setting. We were used to a spoon that you just rinsed off in the sink; now we were seeing an army of silverware on either side of the plate. I remember first thinking, Why the fuck would anyone need so many utensils for one meal? But we learned how to use them in order. Goldsberry and his partner served this food we couldn’t pronounce, but it was incredible. Not bad at all for a couple of Oscar Mayer frank aficionados. All of a sudden I’m eating Paella Valenciana and getting a glimpse of this whole subculture theatrical New York universe. I might as well have been on another planet!