Chapter One
Mr. Long Black Coat From New York The only thing I loved more than going home for Christmas was turning around a day or two later and getting back to New York City. It wasn't that I didn't love my liberal little family, or my conservative little hometown down the shore. But moving to the Big City at the age of nineteen had offered greater hope for love and splendor, and artistic success - everything that had seemed elusive in West Long Branch, New Jersey. And I had a much better shot at getting laid.
All this was especially true on Christmas Eve 1980, two days before my impromptu grand opening at the luncheonette. I stood at the mirror, wrapped in my vintage, hand-me-down black cashmere coat - scarved just so - and imagined how it transformed me from Jersey Boy to Nouveau Yorker. Even my thinning hair blossomed with new volume, reproportioning my face as if I'd gotten a nose job - just one of the benefits of a salon perm. I pivoted in front of the full-length mirror like I was modeling Sasson jeans, sniggering over my shoulder at my own reflection.
Okay, so the transformation was not yet complete. But at least I was having fun trying to become a star. For me, every day in New York City was like Christmas Eve, filled with the anticipation of gifts waiting to be opened and a feast to be consumed. I still loved my visits home, but West Long Branch was more like Christmas Day, when there were no more surprises left - only the feeling that I'd had too much to eat.
But sometimes, you just have to go home.
One-sixty West Seventy-seventh Street was also home. I could hear the traffic that vroomed and honked up Amsterdam Avenue, and snippets of street conversations from below my ninth-story window. Some called it noise, but I loved it.
As a singer, I heard the city sounds as chords in an orchestration marked vamp till ready, like the strains that once guided me into "If I Were a Rich Man" on the hallowed stage of my high school. A statuette of Tevye the Dairyman, frozen in his deedle, daidle, dum pose, stood on the dresser, a gift from my parents when I played the lead in Fiddler on the Roof. I hoped that my teen glory days were a portent of things to come. But until such day when the stretch limo pulled up to whisk me away to some stage door, I still had to straighten up my own room.
I gathered up the spread of eight-by-ten head shots and the scattered sheet music from my recent frenzy to choose an audition piece for the Grease open call, and packed them away in the middle desk drawer. Then I opened the top one and rummaged through my collection of matchbooks from the Wildwood Bar at Seventy-fifth and Columbus. First names and telephone numbers were scribbled on the inside flaps with little monikers to jog my memory of each prospective soul mate, like great teeth or contortionist. I suppose it was about time I transferred Parris - or as I had so spiritually described him on his flap: dancer with the thighs - into my Filofax. I shut the drawer, hiked up my coat, and slid his matchbook into my pants pocket.
Ah, yes. Parris. I'll call him before I get on the train.
I opened the valet on top of the dresser, and there among the string ties, gold chains, a roach clip, and a tuning fork (so I could always find an A-natural) - was my pick comb. I used it quickly to pull at my (unnaturally) curly hair until it was expanded to full volume like a Jackson.
Finally, I hitched my canvas sack onto my shoulder and picked up the Big Brown Bag from Bloomingdale's and the red one from Macy's where I had stuffed all my family's Christmas presents. Key ring suspended from my finger, bags in hand, Afro picked out to full capacity, black cashmere coat - scarved just so, I took one last backward glance at myself in the mirror. Satisfied with the big picture, I left the apartment and scurried down Seventy-seventh Street to Columbus Avenue. I must admit that I relished my role as twenty-three year-old artiste as I scooped the tails of the long black coat into the Yellow Cab after me and directed the driver to Penn Station.
"I'm going home for Christmas!"
I think Dad was secretly delighted that I wanted a career in musical theater. After all, he was the one who had fostered my love of the arts - especially music. But like everything else, we never talked about it directly. Fortunately, we had a twenty-seven-inch Magnavox as a go-between. For years, we shared a sofa and gabbed through every episode of The Dean Martin Show and all the Perry Como specials. It was like having my own personal tour guide through the golden age of television variety shows.
"Hear that?" he said one Saturday night as we watched Jackie Gleason introduce the Sammy Spear Orchestra.
"Hear what?" I was puzzled, the musical piece had barely begun.
"It's 'Skylark' - Gene Krupa's big hit in 1941," he announced proudly. "Anita O'Day could really sing this one!"
I knew he wasn't finished.
"And of course Krupa was on the drums and Roy Eldredge played trumpet. I think Musky Ruffo was on alto sax. Yeah, Musky Ruffo."
Musky Ruffo?! Dad was in his glory in those moments.
And when he wasn't wowing me with his encyclopedic knowledge of everything big band, I loved listening to him sing.
Every day, during his morning shave, he'd perform his velvet-voiced repertoire of forties standards straight off the airwaves of the Make Believe Ballroom or the Milkman's Matinee ...
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Luncheonette by Steven Sorrentino Excerpted by permission.
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