Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [38]
Their sieges upon Manhattan escalated; they nearly destroyed a Bleecker Street spin-art emporium (squirt paint, rotating canvases; acid, havoc); they played inebriate pirates—lots of arrgh matey!—aboard the Staten Island Ferry (promptly ejected at port); they camped out on the remote Point at Central Park Lake; they panhandled in front of the Plaza Hotel, Andy offering tuneless songs for coinage; they slept in a rotting abandoned building on the Lower East Side; they preferred that their nights of rabble never end.
Doug DeSoto played in a band called Fragment of Love that appeared at Central Park music festivals, where they met a sophisticated fifteen-year-old named Ginger Petrochko, who would go-go dance along onstage and quickly become an F Troop fixture. F Troop once came to a party at her family’s apartment, brought fireworks, burned holes in kitchen linoleum with sparklers, were thrown out.
Andy always went to Fragment of Love practice jams, never much liked the music, rolled up his jacket like a pillow and took naps on the floor; during breaks, he would awaken, borrow a guitar, and pretend to be Elvis—thankyou thankyouverrrramuch.
He began making fateful allusions—casually—would say things —When I am famous … I am going to be famous one day, mark my words….
He told them that Elvis would personally assure his success.
They never necessarily believed anything he said.
They razzed him about the Elvis hit, “In the Ghetto”—would relentlessly mock the word ghet-tohhhhhh. He took umbrage always, would contend, “He’s not so bad!” On the other hand, he thrilled to any one of them going off on a temper tantrum. Sutton and Gevins, mostly. He thought it hilarious.
Members preferred not to be alone with him, since he never said much, preferred having somebody else there to cover the silences, which were sometimes elephantine and, well, a little dull.
They all loved his eyes, theorized as to what might be behind them.
He wanted them all to think he was crazier than he was; they knew he wasn’t as crazy as he wanted them to think; they thought he would either become famous or become a dead wino.
Great Neck police came to know all of them on a first-name basis. Hassling F Troop was de riguer for local law—they were instructed at every turn to empty the contents of their pockets, usually on the hood of a patrol car. Andy would always go last. He would begin methodically—“We’d all stand there thinking, Please, please, don’t have any marijuana in your pockets!” said Barrett—and continue slowly, reaching, digging deep, front and back, jacket and pants, searching, extracting papers, snot rags, cards, string, gum, comb, keys, coins, dollars, tissue, Elvis pocket calendar, stuffed wallet, copy of On the Road, lint as well. “Everything would come out. Even we were amazed at the amount of junk he would have in there. But that was Andy—he’d say, ‘Oh, wait a minute, I have one more thing,’ then again, ‘Oh! Here’s something else.’ He wasn’t even a wiseass about it. The cops thought they were being put on. If they were, he never told us.”
One night, F Troop gave an impromptu “concert” at the Great Neck home of ancillary member Peter Wassyng, whose parents were out of town. Twenty revelers paid for the privilege of witnessing the haphazard spectacle (such was their lure). Andy opened the show, staging a fight with Barrett that began on the roof of the Wassyng house, continued on and down an adjacent tree, from which they rappelled in full tussle to the ground, where Barrett feigned collapse, Andy feigned victory, upon which he picked up a guitar and began playing and singing an exaggerated version of the Animals’ hit dirge, “The House of the Rising Sun”—There izzzz a house in New Orleans…. Then, at the end of the song, he pretended to die—and die—and die. “He died for fifteen minutes,” said Gevins. “Like he’d been shot in one place, goes down, gets to