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By Root 1316 0

the act.) “At eleven years old, he was a businessman,” his father remembered. “Nobody had ever been doing this. Parents who had birthdays for their five-year-olds just dreaded throwing these parties. When Andy started taking over, they were absolutely thrilled. They actually left their homes with him in charge. And the children idolized him. We got accolades.” The commitment to show business, as such, was fortified so much so that, by age fourteen (Andy’s memory; others claim earlier), he drew up an advertisement for his services and, unbeknownst to his family, paid ten dollars to place it in the Great Neck Penny Saver newspaper—and, suddenly, the calls started coming with impressive regularity. “He began by charging five dollars for two hours of entertainment and worked his way up to twenty-five dollars for one hour,” said Stanley. “Eventually, he was working parties as far as twenty miles from our home. Since I delivered him by car to his jobs, I had to lug the movie projector, which felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Several years later, I had a hernia repair—and all I could think of was that goddamned projector.”

These performances would now become the most important part of his life and he worked and worked to think of new things to do. “I was very successful and I kept doing this through junior high and high school and for a year after, when everyone else went to college,” he recalled, ever proud of his initiative. His parents were also proud, if amazed and baffled by what was happening here. They had been raising an unusual boy, they knew, and now they realized that they might have to try harder to respect his eccentricities, which grew exponentially. It was, oftentimes, a most difficult challenge. The clamor from the den below—the thumpings and the rock and roll and the voices and the strange yelpings—took on a certain fevered intensity, bigger, broader, louder. Thank God he could close the door to the room, which he did, always with a solemn sense of purpose. No one dared to enter without invitation. His father would state, “When he closed the door in the den, he closed the door. That was that. It was his inner sanctum.”

4

… The madman drove me home to New York.

Suddenly, I found myself on Times Square … and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream….

—Jack Kerouac,

On The Road

He made himself a freak, which was fine, because everything was always fine; whenever asked how he was, he was fine—um, fine—was how he always was, no more, no less. He was visibly unflappable in his freakishness, unruffled by accompanying torment: ostracism, fine; humiliation, fine; you’re-such-a-freakin’-freak, fine, um, thank you. But he was not meant for peer approval, not until he had peers who were also freakish. That would happen soon enough—the American sixties, psychedelia, peacelove, whatever-turns-you-on, friendly friendlier world—but first, he was made to thoroughly understand his lowly place in the local adolescent firmament. One recollection, for instance: “I have never been an athlete in my life. I was always the worst. As a matter of fact, in gym, when we were kids, like if all the classes got together and played coed sportings events—all the girls and all the boys together—they wouldn’t choose me till last, after all the boys and all the girls were chosen. It was very embarrassing.” It was also very fine; he didn’t dislike it that way; he just accepted it; plus, he always embellished these tales for greater obfuscation of truth; no, really. Nonetheless, he didn’t mind that he threw like a girl. He wasn’t suited for ball sports or team sports, anyway. It never occurred to him to adapt or to change or to be better or to dedicate himself to any popular endeavor that disinterested him. His nonconformity was not meant as a statement, although it would be taken as such. If it was rebellion, it was causeless rebellion, which was,