Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [161]
The ambulance came. Took them about fifteen goddamn minutes before they came. I almost got into a fight with one of those stupid punk fans there. Andy was taken out on a stretcher. The cameras were all over the place. I was in the ring with him. I was holding his hand…. Initially, we were told that he had a compressed vertebra and a short disc space between his fourth and fifth vertebrae and severe muscle strain around his neck. Later it turned out that it was primarily muscle strain. He was in traction for three days in St. Francis Hospital and took every kind of conceivable test—cat scans, bone scans, brain scans. The X rays indicated there was nothing serious. It was probably a cervical sprain from an old injury and that was alleviated by the traction. He’s supposed to wear a neck brace for a day or two.
He was released from the hospital on the eighth and went home to Great Neck to celebrate Passover with his family, all of whom were mortified and Stanley actually did want to sue and Andy shrugged and happened to tune in Saturday Night Live on the tenth, most of which was devoted to a live viewer phone-in poll wherein people were casting votes as to whether or not a lobster named Larry should actually be boiled on television. Larry’s life was spared—239,096 votes to save versus 227,452 to boil. He liked this bit very much.
He wore the neck brace in public for the next five months.
He repeatedly announced that he had now officially retired from wrestling, but contended that at least he remained the undefeated in-tergender champion. He also said, “I just realized after this happened what a delusion I’ve been going under for the last four years. Just because I’ve never lost a match, then they gave me this belt—The Intergender Wrestling Champion of the World—I started thinking I was a sports hero. You know, I’ve just been under this macho delusion that was building up to the point where I could actually seriously think that I could beat a Jerry Lawler in a wrestling match. I mean, that’s stupid. I was just stupid.”
He was quite gleeful really. As was Lawler.
Lawler told the media that he was glad that he had injured that wimp and that he was not at all sorry and that he wished that he could do it again.
Then Andy went on the Letterman show five weeks after the match; he went on the program to maunder pitifully—with chin nestled in his woeful brace—and to stammer contrition and welcome empathy. He tried to address the camera to send a heartfelt message and quavered—“Can I say something? Mr. Law—Well, I hate to be hokey about it. But, Mr. Lawler, if you—I wish—Well, I just wish he’d apol—you know … I don’t want to see anybody suffer. I think he’s suffering now enough from people hating him so much for what he did…. And I forgive him … And I think he should vindicate himself …” And Letterman nodded along sympathetically and then said, “What about a song, Andy?”
On July 28, they would reunite on Late Night—although according to Andy’s datebook he had quietly stolen back to Memphis during the last week in June. But they would now appear together publicly for the first time since the night of suplex and piledrivers and sirens and jeers. Andy had called Lawler when the date was confirmed and they both took rooms at the Berkshire Place and went separately to meet with talent coodinator Robert Morton to roughly strategize what would occur on the program. Morton told Lawler, “Andy wouldn’t come in if you were in the same room, so we’ll just do this individually.” The plan was that they would appear in two segments interrupted by one commercial break. In the first segment, Morton said, footage of the Memphis