Lost in the Funhouse_ The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman - Bill Zehme [43]
Bobby King, meanwhile, was dating an Irish-Catholic girl named Gina Acre, whose sister Gloria had been two classes behind Andy at Great Neck North. Gloria Acre was dark, mystical, stylish, well-read, spiritual, sweet, wise; she had a knack for dispensing advice and insights among disillusioned constituents—“Like Lucy in the Peanuts comics with the five-cent psychiatric counseling booth,” she liked to say. Andy had once gone to her home, at the urging of a mutual friend named Almus P. Salcius, who told her, “I really think he needs to talk to somebody.” Gloria recalled her new patient “sitting on my couch in an Andy way, sort of slouched, his hands on his lap, and not really having much to say except ‘Do you want to go to a movie?’ That was the beginning.”
Lost year was not so bad, really, now with her, void was filled. He bought himself a black limousine sedan with flip seats in the back from the Grace Shipping estate (four hundred dollars) and got a livery cap and drove her everywhere unless he borrowed one of Grady’s Econoline vans and drove her everywhere, usually with her sister Gina and Bobby King along for the rides. (Stanley remembered donning the livery cap himself for fun and chauffeuring his son around Great Neck, son imperiously waving through rear tinted windows at gawking pedestrians. Said father, “Once we mended, we were mended. More or less.”) He became Elvis for Gloria—“He sang ‘Love Me Tender’ to me all the time. We couldn’t go anywhere if there was an Elvis Presley movie on television”—and played role of boyfriend with greater conviction. They did not say they loved each other—how did people ever do that?—but they did. “It was very intense. It was very all-consuming.” Den couch kissing moved down hall to full intimacy behind bedroom door, parents upstairs looking the other way. (“Again, it was almost like the Peanuts cartoons—you heard the parents, but you never saw them.” She overheard just one screaming match between Andy and Stanley—surprised by the vituperative passion exchanged—whereupon Andy took her and stormed out of the house.) They smoked much pot, drank whatever could be found—Grady sometimes came over with bottles of Champale malt liquor and passed the bounty.
Gina Acre called him Crazy Andy—a sobriquet he had heard quite plentifully by now—and he led all concerned on addled adventures. On Halloween, deeply stoned, they infiltrated the small cemetery behind All Saints Church and attempted to raise the dead. Gloria accidentally moved a granite slab and unearthed two urns of cremated ash—remains of some eternal couple—and instigated a séance. “We lit candles and held hands in a circle and I began, ‘I am a bridge into the unknown. Come to us, Spirits!’” Whereupon a gang of local greasers pounced and scared them into apoplexy, which was exciting. They once ended up in Professor Corey’s kitchen—after some civil rights fundraiser—smoking dope with the wild-haired Professor, his wife, and their son Richard Corey, a rare fellow Elvis enthusiast. “I think it was the Professor’s pot,” said Gloria. “It was the first time we ever got stoned with actual adults.” Said Gina: “Andy worshiped the ground the Professor walked on. Gloria would complain to me, ‘Oh, we have to go to the Corey house again!’” He took her to the city—often earning fast cash by chauffeuring in impatient rail commuters—and playacted various street scenes of romantic intrigue. (“He would storm up behind me and say, ‘You! I told you I never wanted to see you again! Why are you following me!’ And I’d go right into, ‘I’m sorry! I can’t stay away! It’s impossible! Don’t do this to me!’ And people would be turning around, looking.”) Gil Gevins had gotten a rattrap apartment on the Lower East Side, near his New York University classes—Andy and others contributed rent toward stay-over privileges—and they would call to order impromptu