dead overnight—and now the costume jewelry business was similarly plunged into dire spiral. Stanley and his father’s partner, Ruderman, cut future loss by pulling the plug in October. Panic reigned on Grassfield Road everywhere but in the downstairs den where Andrew G. Kaufman of the eleventh grade now hosted various visitors of unseemly dishevelment and intent. Vacant-eyed longhairs came and went down there—usually through the outside rear sliding glass door of the otherwise sealed sanctum—issuing upward sounds of larger commotion, cackles, screams, guitar-twangs, drumbeats, soul music, James Brown music, folk music, Elvis music (always accompanied by a chorus of displeased groans). Upstairs, the irritable head-of-household would occasionally accost his son, berate him for his slovenly appearance, the unkempt facial hair, the sorrowful wardrobe selections, the lack of self-respect and self-discipline, the continuance of academic devastation, and the sudden ongoing presence of questionable youths on the premises. His pipe collection, he noted, had vanished from the house. His liquor cabinet—he may or may not have known—was being plundered as well. Was that burning incense he smelled? Correct responses to all criticisms/allegations were demanded. Only the briefest of yelping excuses were proffered—I thought you wanted me to have friends! et cetera—upon which son would walk away, upon which father would howl after him or shake his head defeatedly or howl elsewhere. Janice registered it all as familiar din, became very involved in television soap operas, made the best of all circumstances. She also made late night snacks for Andy and his odd crew, which balanced tensions nicely. Because, adding to the tumult, Stanley had immediately decided to make a new go of it, to start his own jewelry business (the only business he knew), but do it all different, get a new partner, aim for a new youth market, lighten things up, address the new tempo of the new times—they would even call the company Tempo so as to declare themselves mod as mod could be, thus bankable. New pressure therefore gripped him, shook whatever equilibrium he still possessed. “I was wetting my pants,” he would remember. “I was scared stiff.”
The boy had taken to truancy as means of escape.
Whereas previously he could disappear from reality without leaving the room, he had recently learned to disappear—quite physically—into mad shared adventure, into nocturnal unaccountability, into the gloamy parks of Great Neck and the sensual abyss of Manhattan. He perfected sneaking off as minor artform. Told parents he was somewhere he wasn’t and had no intention of being; manufactured alibis and cover-ups and rarely got caught. He was independent, his father remembered, not knowing the half of it. He rode the Long Island Railroad like a veteran of suburbanschlep wars. Gregg Sutton, his first and only ally in Elvis appreciation, had moved after sixth grade with his family to the city’s Upper East Side, to the ninth floor of a building on Sixty-sixth and Third—three floors below his colorful cousin Glenn Barrett, one year older, susceptible to any entreaty of mayhem. One night in 1964, Sutton answered a light knock at the apartment door. There he stood: “Um, do you remember me, Andy Kaufman from Baker Hill Elementary?” “He had been to Hubert’s Museum that night and decided to come over. We had stayed in touch a bit on the phone, so he knew where to find me, but I hadn’t seen him since Great Neck. He was talking about Fellini’s 8½ and had The Hollering Mangoo with him—what a piece of work. I got Glenn to come down, then we went to Central Park that night and sort of fantasized and played. This became a regular thing. We’d go to Central Park, maybe blow a joint or whatever, and just act crazy. You can be anything you want in New York City—it doesn’t matter. You can be any way on the street—which became one of Andy’s credos. We’d be soldiers or rock stars in the band shell. We’d do characters and get into fake fights. He loved the fake fights. He and Glenn would roll around the