The Reluctant Daddy

(Continued from NEEDLE EXCHANGE)

Remember that scene in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, when Shirley MacLaine rampages around a hospital because her dying daughter played by Debra Winger is in agonizing pain and desperate for her morphine shot?  ”GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!” Shirley shrieks at the top of her lungs to a group of terrified nurses who have imprudently chosen the absolute WRONG time to take their coffee break. At the conclusion of Shirley’s meltdown, a kindly nurse grabs a syringe and what looks to me like a boatload of morphine and dutifully heads to Debra’s room to administer her fix.  Shirley, now calm, heads back to Debra’s room and while smoothing out her rats nest hair, has the presence of mind to thank the staff of terrified nurses for their kindness.  I’ve replayed that TERMS OF ENDEARMENT scene hundreds of times in my mind trying to imagine my mother as Shirley MacLaine and me as Debra Winger.  No matter how many times I try to picture it, I just can’t see my mother careening around Cedars Sinai in her Chanel suit, Christian Louboutin pumps and Raquel Welch ‘Siren’ wig screaming at the nurses to give her dying son his pain meds.  My mother has too much dignity for that, and like a pioneer woman, has made it through three child births, scores of ‘elective’ and non-elective surgeries, car accidents, spills, tumbles and falls and rarely, if ever, taken pain medication. In the TERMS OF ENDEARMENT scenario playing in my my mind, my mother is superhuman, and I’m just a pussy with terminal cancer who ‘just can’t hack it.’

I had no choice but to shrug off my mother’s monstrous pronouncement that during her pregnancy with me, she ingested large amounts of booze, cigarette smoke, and to my complete horror, a series of scary, presumably toxic hormone injections. My husband George and I tried to glean additional information, but my mother was now shit-faced and recalled neither the name of the hormones, nor the mysterious doctor who administered them.

“What’s the difference?” she slurred.  ”You’re still here after 46 years, and aside from gaining a few pounds and a few unsightly wrinkles, you look A-OK to me.”

I ignored her last comment, and magnanomously allowed her to retreat into her vodka haze.  As I had nothing better to do, and was feeling particularly vengeful, I continued bickering with George.  I launched into yet another tedious speech regarding our misguided faith in the American medical establishment that had not only exposed me to a lamentable cocktail of chemicals, compounds and god-knows-what hormones, but had also caused my son to develop an appalling needle phobia.

“I can fix that.” my mother said out-of-the-blue.

With dread, I ceased speaking and again George and I turned our eyes towards my mother.

“How?” we asked in unison.

“Simple, we’ll take him to see Dr. Yi.”

“Your plastic surgeon?” I gasped.

“Sure. What better way for Ethan to get over his fear of needles than by watching you and I get Botox injections? It will be my treat!”

Suddenly and without warning, the image of my mother, Shirley MacLaine, charging around her plastic surgeon’s office shrieking for someone to give her son his shot became frighteningly clear.

(To be continued)

Before our son Ethan was born, my husband George and I made it our life’s mission to argue about EVERYTHING. We argued about our future son’s name, the color of his room, the organic formula he would consume and eventually shit out, in addition to the non-gender biased, non-toxic, EARTH FIRST! approved toys that I placed in his nursery. One of the most heated arguments George and I had was over his repulsive insistence that our son Ethan take any and all vaccinations our drearily Western thinking pediatrician offered.

To all you horrified mommies and daddies reading this blog who subscribe to that ‘MMR-vaccine-definitely-causes-Autism’ bullshit, bear in mind George is a product of the early 60′s, when the prevailing AMA-approved philosophy dictated that expectant mommies possess NO knowledge of the inoculations their babies received, and were encouraged to smoke and drink heavily during any future pregnancies in order to decrease their offspring’s birth weight. It is somewhat surprising that the radical and ‘progressive’ decade that gave rise to the Vietnam war, Nixon, and LSD would uncharacteristically embrace the old-fashioned ‘smoking-and-drinking-while-pregnant-is good’ philosophy of the 50′s.  Of course all the fun ended in the 70′s and 80′s when it was determined that smoking caused cancer and expectant parents were beginning to question the advice of the American Medical Association.

Against my better instincts, I agreed to the horrifying regimen of vaccinations recommended by Big Pharma. Now of course, my son Ethan has developed a paralyzing fear of needles.  The instant our family doctor injected him with the first of the 82 zillion inoculations he was to receive, the ear shattering, nerve jangling shrieking began.

One night as my husband George and I fought over the merits of the frightening innocuations my son was receiving, my mother casually and alarmingly announced to me  ”Christ, I don’t know what you two baby ‘experts’ are whining about. Not only did I smoke like a chimney and drink like a fish while I was pregnant with Tod, I also had a whole series of hormone shots to make sure he’d come out picture perfect.”

The last of my mother’s statements caused me to spit up the expensive Grey Goose vodka I had been sipping and the blood in my veins to suddenly run cold.  Flabbergasted, George and I immediately ceased arguing and turned our attention to my mother who was reclining regally on my living room sofa and enjoying an enormous, Alexis Carrington-sized Apple Martini.

“What hormone shots?” I asked, suddenly terrified.

“I don’t know.” my mother responded.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

“How should I know what the doctor shot me up with.” As if her ignorance was the most natural thing in the world, my mother explained, ”In those days, you did what the doctor said and you shut your mouth. Now, which one of you two Fagelahs is gonna freshen my cocktail?”

George shot me a piteous look as I stared at my mother in abject horror.

(To be continued.)

(Continued from PLAY TIME PT. 2)

“You know, I’ve read your latest blogosphere missive,” my mother sniffed icily into my ear, “And believe your suffering from early onset senility.”

My cell phone rarely rings anymore. As a matter of fact, people who telephone me are easily divided into two distinct camps. Those to whom I owe money, and those who insist on telling me to fuck off.  As you can imagine, there’s a fair amount of crossover, as those poor souls misguided enough to work for me, or worse, have the misfortune to be related to me all seem to agree on one thing – I’m a total asshole. In my unapologetically narcissistic world, there’s very little difference between the contempt in which my gardener, housekeeper or pool boy holds me, and the scorn exhibited by my mother after she read last week’s PLAY TIME PT. 2 blog post.

Several minutes after I hit the ‘Publish’ button on my blog dashboard, my cell phone began to blow up with cryptic texts from my mother like “Honor thy Parents!” and “Et tu, Fruité?”   I marveled at the way my written word, passive -aggressive naughtiness caused me to be both exhilarated and terrified all at the same time. Hoping my mother’s wrath might fade after a few days, I cowardly hid in my Los Feliz rathole before mustering the courage to call her.

“In what way am I senile, mom?”  I responded coyly.

“Are you serious?!” she railed. “I mean I may have gotten a tiny bit ‘tipsy’ on a few school nights as you allege, and may have opted out of seeing your theatrical ‘triumphs’ in those dull-as-dishwater plays so that I could stay home and watch RHODA, but as God is my witness, we NEVER sat in the rear of the mezzanine when we went to the theater!  I mean ‘artistic liscence’ is one thing, but you’re out-and-out lying and I won’t have it!”

As I listened,  my mother methodically and without any kind of reservation revised our sordid family history. In addition, she requested that in my future writings, I take the time to rethink her ‘character’ and concentrate less on her White Wine Spritzer-induced indiscreations, and focus more on the loving and devoted, Jewish American Princess, Carol Brady image that she had so carefully cultivated for herself. In light of the mountain of money I’ve thrown at therapists, finally forgiving my mother and agreeing to her audacious ‘re-write’ request did make a certain demented sense.

Now, days later, as I sit in my son Ethan’s claustrophobic class room, watching his tortuously unfunny performance as sock puppet Xerxes in The Battle of Thermopylae, my knees shoved painfully against my chest, choking on the putrid stench of industrial-strength Formula 409, day-old chicken fingers and hamster shit, I am astounded for who should be sitting in the front row but my head-to-toe, PRADA-clad mother!  I’m momentarily dumbfounded, but quickly brought out of my stupefaction by my irksome cell phone whose staccato vibration indicated I’d received a text.

“He’s got more acting talent in his little finger than you have in your whole pathetic body – mom.”  I laugh out loud and promise myself not to rewrite a single word.

(Continued from PLAY TIME)

In the many long, drawn-out pages of this blog, I’ve written about my childhood obsession with the theater. From the wistful, yet slightly delusional way I drone on and on about it, you might think that I attended Juilliard and was in the original Broadway cast of ANNIE, THE WIZ, BEATLEMANIA, and GODSPELL.  Believe me, as a child, the closest I ever came to the Broadway stage were the nosebleed seats in the farthest reaches of the mezzanine. Despite being so far, yet so incredibly close to my Broadway dreams, I sat in my tacky velvet seat with my mother-of-pearl opera glasses glued to my face hungrily taking in every breathtaking site and sound. (By the way, if your 8 year old son insists on bringing mother-of-pearl opera glasses to the theater, I foresee fabric swatches, peroxide, floral centerpieces or figure skating in your not-so-distant future – if you catch my drift.)

Now, you may be tempted to think that after my family’s sojourn to the Garden of Eden of American culture, New York City, I would return to our shitty suburban tract house saddened by my unfulfilled Broadway aspirations.  On the contrary, I returned energized and more determined than ever to make my melodramatic dreams a reality. However, when one resides in the cultural dust bowl of suburbia, the theatrical pickings are extremely slim.  One has to take what one can get.

In the year proceeding my electrifying performance in Joyce Kilmer Elementary School’s CANDIDE,  I had won the role of country bumpkin Available Jones, a minor but pivotal character in the school play L’IL ABNER.  For weeks I enthusiastically rehearsed my lines.  I also purged the grotesque Philadelphia accent that had come to pepper my everyday speech and attempted to adopt the pitch, cadence, and intonation of Jethro Bodine, the Appalachian stud-muffin from THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES. Despite my best efforts to emulate Jethro,  I sounded more like Elly May.  I prayed that my undying passion for the role and finely honed theatrical instincts would more than compensate for my girlish affectations and queerish lisp.

My mother, who at the time had developed a manic knitting fetish, took small notice of my acting preparations. Each night as I recited my lines in the living room, she would open a bottle of Blue Nun wine, smoke her Virginia Slims cigarettes, get fucked up, and furiously turn out overwrought wool sweaters that scratched and itched when placed upon the body.  I will always remember the kind words of encouragement she drunkenly bestowed upon me opening night. “I would wish you good luck, but I know you’ll fuck this up anyway.”

(To Be Continued)