The Carol Burnett Show
I’m nine years old. I live in Queens. (A place I wanted to get out of so badly but now revisit in my mind almost daily.) It is summer and it is hot and it is sticky and the basement is where I spend most of my day. Watching TV in the underground coolness. My mother desperate for me to go outside. Leave the house, it is summer. I’m supposed to be outside. I pray each morning for it to rain. It never does. (Ironically, in later life I become fixated every summer on it not raining, each vacation destination planned for optimal sunshine probability. A trip in my thirties to Provincetown with five straight days of rain is something that still makes me sick to my stomach. Gay people are obsessed with the summer. Preparing for it with the kind of ferocious dedication usually reserved for Olympians.)
I was sent to day camp when I was seven. Getting on a bus with other kids and taken to some local park that was five minutes away but might as well have been South Dakota. Sickly sweet orange drinks handed out from cardboard boxes. And kids would take one and then waltz right up to each other and start talking. Just like that. Like the most nightmarish tiny cocktail party you could imagine. And then they would run or jump or throw a ball or some other terrible thing. I would’ve sooner walked out into the middle of the Long Island Expressway and opened a lawn chair before I joined them.
There was one counselor that I liked, though. She was the wife of a man my father knew from his job as a salesman for Cunard Cruise Line. Rose had black hair she wore to her shoulders and seemed impossibly cosmopolitan to me because she carried a PBS tote bag. In the ’70s that was as close as I was going to come to a safe space. Each day I would take my orange drink and walk up to Rose, who was usually reading a paperback while infrequently glancing up at the kids, and sit with her. I was never more relaxed than when I was with a woman over thirty reading a book. “Don’t you want to play with the other kids?” she’d ask. “I don’t,” I’d respond. Eventually she stopped asking.
“So what’s new? What are you reading?” I’d say as I sidled up next to her on the picnic table bench. (I was good at making small talk with anyone twenty-five-years or more older than me. A fellow child was like something from another planet. But a married woman with sunglasses and a cigarette was my kind of company.)
Rose and I would chat each day. She would tell me what she was cooking for dinner that night, what she was watching on TV, small things that maybe she told nobody else. (My little gay seven-year-old self already practicing for what would be years of listening to women talk about their problems, until I got to the age when I was able to have my own relationships and then would inevitably force them to listen to my much more embellished, overly dramatic ones. These tables turn usually overnight for all gay men and their closest female friend. We learn from them and then we take what we learn and we raise the stakes exponentially.)
I would look forward to seeing Rose. I suddenly wasn’t going to day camp but rather was taking a bus to meet with my dearest girlfriend. In a kinder world, one that didn’t frown on relationships between seven-year-old gay boys and thirty-year-old married women, we’d be getting coffees on our way to yoga instead of sitting on damp grass watching fat kids play Wiffle ball.
My mother was happy that I now seemed to enjoy camp. She would quiz me on what I was doing there and I would respond noncommittally, “Stuff.” She never pressed too hard, so relieved was she that I would finally leave the house without a meltdown that could rival Olivia de Havilland in The Snake Pit.
Weeks pass uneventfully until one day my mother asks me why I spend all my time with Rose and won’t play with the other kids. Rose is concerned, my mother tells me. And this is my first taste of betrayal. Here I was thinking we were having a lovely summer together, Rose and I, only to find out that she saw me as nothing more than some child. Some friendless kid who didn’t know how to throw a ball. Some nobody. Gay people, even at the tender age of seven, know how to turn against someone in the most chilling of fashions. Damien in The Omen didn’t give as dead-eyed a stare as I did the next time I saw her. “Good morning,” I said, with the inflection of a corpse. I think she might have even gasped, so bitchy was my demeanor. A stark contrast from the chummy Laverne & Shirley roles I’d previously cast us in. My carefree smiles and easy laugh now replaced with the expressionless mask of a sociopath. “I’ll take my juice now, please,” was the last thing I ever said to Rose.
The following summer, when I’m eight, on the first day of camp, I hide my bus pass in a jar of peanut butter. My mother scrambling to find it as I casually leaf through TV Guide, planning my day. “It was right here!” she says, frustrated as she scans our compact kitchen again. “Well, I guess I can’t go,” I say. “What did you do with it?” she asks, suddenly on to me. “Nothing. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be in the basement watching Double Indemnity.”
But she insists, I must have done something with it. I shrug. I’ll go to my grave buried with that jar of peanut butter before I confess. “Well, come on, we’re going!” “I can’t go without a bus pass!” “Yes, you can, I’ll explain it to the driver.” What the fuck was this woman’s fixation on sending me to camp? The only way she was going to get me onto that bus was in a straitjacket. “I’m not going.” She looked at me, almost pleading, “Don’t you want to play with the other kids outside? It’s summer.” Was I not the same child that she had had for the previous eight years? Had I ever once played outside? “I want to watch TV downstairs.” And she let me go. This was the hill I was willing to die on, and she knew it.
I thought that was going to be the end of it. But it wasn’t. The following year, as I’m almost finished suffering through the countless humiliations of third grade, two months alone in front of the basement TV now so close I can taste it, my parents tell me they have a proposition for me.
“What?” I ask, suspicious.
“How about if we send you to sleepaway camp this summer?” If they had snapped our cat’s neck in front of me I would’ve been less horrified. At first my ears don’t even quite know how to process what they’re hearing. “It’s in the Catskills,” my mother continues, “and you can ride horses.”
“Horses?” I repeat uncomprehendingly and have to steady myself on a chair back as my knees start to buckle.
“They have all kinds of activities. Three-legged races, cookouts, canoeing…” Each word more hideous than the one preceding it. “Yes, tell me more about how my life is going to end.” I think at this point I depart my body and float above the room, looking down on the now empty shell of my nine-year-old self with complete detachment. “How peaceful he looks.”
My parents, while trying to entice me with their idea of a child’s idyllic summer had instead conjured a hellscape worse than anything Dante could have imagined. If we had smelling salts this would have been the perfect opportunity to use them.
I’m sure from my reaction they had an indication that this was not going to go their way. Finally, my mother says, “Well you can’t just stay home all summer!”
“WHY NOT?!”
The really perverse thing was that my sister, Maria, who was three grades older than me, had always dreamed of going to sleepaway camp. This was something we’d only ever seen in movies; as far as we were concerned sleepaway camp was something just for rich kids. But unfortunately for Maria, the offer was only good for me. They were only going to spend that money if it was going to get a head case like myself out of the house. They weren’t going to waste it on my sister, who was already happy as a pig in shit going to Clearview Day Camp. I remember her looking at the brochure longingly, saying, “It’s not fair!”
Neither is having to grow up gay in Queens, Maria!
Shortly after, they relent. “Fine. Go downstairs and watch TV,” my father says defeated. “Thanks,” I respond, already halfway there. “I’ll see you in September.”
And that is where I spend every day that summer. In front of the TV. My sofa, my cat, potato chips, Coke. Sunlight creeping through the small basement windows. If I could tape them with cardboard I would.
It is the same summer that New York City is terrorized by Son of Sam, the serial killer who is given orders by a Labrador retriever. Each day a new headline jumps from the Daily News. He communicates solely with one of the paper’s chief reporters. The city is transfixed. It’s the first time I’ve ever heard of a serial killer before and I’m not going to lie, it adds a certain je ne sais quoi to life in Flushing. It is also the summer where we experience a sweltering heat wave and a two-day citywide blackout. (Even at nine I was like, “This is A LOT.”)
I watched any and everything on TV. And liked most all of it. Although I despised both One Day at a Time and Alice, I never missed an episode of either. Already hate watching before it was in vogue. Criticizing each show relentlessly for their entire runs. Now I look back on them with the same fondness you have for a long dead relative whose faults you’ve conveniently forgotten.
Each night looking forward to the prime-time lineups. Happy Days on Tuesday, Charlie’s Angels on Wednesday. But there was no night for TV like Saturday night. Because this was the night The Carol Burnett Show was on.
The Carol Burnett Show was a variety show. Sketches, music, guest stars. But mostly it was just Carol, and each week she would answer questions from the audience and I would dream that I was in that audience instead of where I was. I would start getting excited for the show on Wednesday. By Friday I couldn’t eat. Saturday it was the only thought in my head. In that week’s TV Guide I could find out what sketches she’d be performing, who the guest was going to be, each word sending me into spasms of joy. There was nobody like Carol. I loved her.
And the twisted thing was that I wasn’t even allowed to stay up to see the show most weeks. It was on at 10:00 P.M., which was my bedtime. Once in a while there was a special episode that was on earlier. And every so often my mother would let me stay up to see it, so worn down was she from the constant pleading that I usually started days in advance. But she was capricious, my mother. Some weeks I’d ask once and she’d say okay. Others it was no, and there was nothing I could do to change her mind. In fact, the more I begged, the more resolved she became.
And on this night, this summer, when I am nine, I see in the TV Guide that Carol Burnett is doing a Eunice, Ed, and Mamma sketch, and I’m desperate to stay up late. Eunice, Ed, and Mamma was my absolute favorite. Like a perfect little play inside of the show, occasionally with its own commercial break in the middle, giving me even longer to savor it. Sometimes an hour could hold so much.
But this night, this summer, when I am nine, my mother says no. And not any amount of bargaining or cajoling will change her mind. It’s almost impressive what she can withstand. How little I can move her. I see that this is going to be one of the weeks where I have lost. And I hate to lose. Lying in bed, wide awake. Sweating in the heat. (My parents having refused to put the air-conditioning on because we had it on yesterday. The logic to this is lost on me. Were we only allowed comfort on odd-numbered days? Put it on every day! Let’s live like kings!) Besides, who the fuck could sleep knowing Carol was right there? So close. Happiness an on/off switch away.
(Many years later, when I am writing for television in Los Angeles, I meet Carol Burnett at a charity event. She is with a writer I know, and they stop briefly to say hello. Inside I am buzzing, the room now only me and Carol. Carol and me. How do you tell someone that they were your childhood? That some weeks they saved you? That because of them, you would imagine new endings to the sketches you loved most, new jokes—that you started writing in your head without even knowing that’s what it was you were doing, only to realize it decades later. That without them you might not have ever even become a writer. Might not be standing here right now, in this very spot, in front of them. How do you tell someone that? You don’t.)
And now, in bed, sweating, sweating, I hear a noise that I’ve never heard before. It sounds like a helicopter. And it is. And now there are lights flooding through our windows. And the doorbell rings. At 10:00 P.M.! Which is something that had never happened before. And I get out of bed and I look to see who it is. Creeping in my pajamas. The gay child already sniffing out drama like a bloodhound. A policeman is standing at our front door talking to my mother. I’ve never seen a policeman on our block before, much less at our door. The squad car out front, lights blinking. And now the most extraordinary thing happens. They think Son of Sam might be in our neighborhood. Might be in someone’s yard. They want us to stay inside. Helicopters scanning the entire street. A serial killer! In our backyard! It was all too wonderful!
My mother lets me stay up, in the sudden excitement all bets are off, and I sit in front of the TV (windows now locked, cool air-conditioning filling the room) watching Eunice, Ed, and Mamma as policemen comb through our backyard with flashlights. Thinking life doesn’t get much better than this.
It ended up being a false alarm and Son of Sam (also known as the .44 Caliber Killer—you know you’re doing something right as a serial killer when they give you two names) continues his murderous rampage for several months more until he is finally caught. Now I’m not saying he wasn’t a vicious monster, but I am saying he did do me a small favor one summer night, when the city was on fire.
Teaching Little Fingers How to Play
I start taking piano lessons in the third grade. My mother insists both my sister and I learn an instrument. Maria, since she is older, starts learning first. Then I follow three years later. Maria takes to it right away. She practices every afternoon and advances steadily. Forced to entertain company on holidays with a concert of Bach or Beethoven on our upright.
I take lessons on Wednesday afternoons at The Church on the Hill. (I went to Catholic school. We only had a half day of school on Wednesdays so the kids who went to public school could come on Wednesday afternoons to take religion classes. To this day it feels weird to do any work past noon on a Wednesday.) The Church on the Hill was a Protestant church in the neighborhood where my piano teacher had his office and gave lessons. The Church on the Hill was a no-frills, nondescript building. (If you’re going to build a church, take a page from the Catholics and fucking build it. The Catholics are the RuPaul’s Drag Race of religions. We put on a show, honey.) The Church on the Hill was the kind of place where they had AA meetings on Tuesday nights. St. Mel’s did not have AA meetings. That was some kind of liberal bullshit. In the ’70s Catholics didn’t even use the word alcoholic, we just said Irish.
My piano teacher, Mr. Anderson, was the first adult male that I knew who rode a bicycle. This was, no doubt, another sign of the freewheeling Protestant lifestyle. Each Wednesday I might as well have been going to Woodstock. My first music book was titled Teaching Little Fingers How to Play, after that, things would get increasingly more challenging. And if little fingers don’t practice, little fingers don’t learn how to play. I was able to muddle my way through the first year on my scant charm and the simplicity of the early material. Much like learning another language, it’s from year two on where you’re really fucked. Any idiot can memorize a few vocabulary words, but I still don’t know what the past imperfect is, nor do I ever wish to find out. I’ve made it this far.
Mr. Anderson insisted I practice every day after school in order to improve. He actually could get pretty pissy for a Protestant youth minister or whatever else he did outside of teaching piano and adult bike riding. By the time I had been taking lessons for about two years or so my sister had already advanced beyond what Mr. Anderson was capable of teaching her and had been sent to study on Saturdays at the Manhattan School of Music. (Her concerts for company now accompanied with a prologue from my mother about her advanced studies. I was often entreated to be her opening act, but, darling, even at ten, I was nobody’s opening act, “no thank you, I’ll just sit here listening for mistakes.”)
I, on the other hand, still apparently had years more to learn from Mr. Anderson. It’s not that I didn’t want to practice, it’s more that I never got around to it. My TV watching schedule was intense and allowed little room for flexibility. Plus you don’t have to practice on Wednesday, that’s the day you have the lesson. And Thursday is super close to Wednesday, you still have an eternity before your next lesson. Friday is the best day of the week, so don’t waste it on practicing. Saturday, see Friday. Sunday is spent in a crippling depression. How can any human being focus on scales when the horrors of a fresh week are ticking down? By Monday, well, I really do have to practice. But then realize how far behind I am, and it’s all suddenly too much. Tuesday is better spent plotting excuses than actually practicing, which by this time is way too late anyway. As if school wasn’t a torture enough, I now also had this once-weekly added terror to contend with. It was like being told by a doctor that you had cancer and your cancer also had cancer. The drive to The Church on the Hill Wednesday afternoons became its own mini-torment. There was one traffic light on the way to that church, and I swear to God for the ten years I took lessons it was always green. I would pray for the light to turn red as we were approaching it, if only to buy myself a few more moments of freedom before the inevitable. But it was like we were in the Indy 500 when we were going to that fucking church. It was a straight shot to hell.
My excuses for not practicing would vary from: the books fell behind the piano and I couldn’t find them, to the garden variety of children’s illnesses, to the stubborn insistence that I did practice and I have no idea what’s happening now. “I did it right at home!” But to fuck things up even further, some rare weeks I would practice, and on those weeks my lesson went well. Mr. Anderson now coming to life. Maybe I will play for the company next time, Maria. You can sit this one out, dear. Also, I liked keeping Mr. Anderson off-balance. Just when you’ve written me off … here comes little Liberace. (Even as a closeted gay boy I instinctively knew that keeping people off-balance was a tool that would come in handy in life. This must also be part of the DNA makeup that determines sexuality.)
At any given time, I usually had one exercise book (hated), two classical books (hated), and after a few years of lessons, a Broadway sheet music book (LOVED). These I would practice. Learning the score to West Side Story and Brigadoon and Cabaret. I’ll pass on the Bach concertos, Mr. Anderson, and take a double helping of “A Boy Like That.” After I finished learning the score to one Broadway musical, I would immediately start another. When I’m twelve years old the next book I get is for the musical The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and I’m obsessed with everything in it. Now, at the time it didn’t seem unusual to me that my piano teacher, who was also a Protestant youth minister (I think), would assign me the sheet music to The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. And my mother certainly didn’t seem to think there was anything unusual with me belting out “Texas has a whorehouse in it / Lord have mercy on our souls!” for a half hour each night.
“Sounding good!” she’d call from upstairs while preparing dinner. (If the cat ran across the keyboard, she’d still say “sounding good,” so I took her compliments with a grain of salt.) But my favorite song was “Hard Candy Christmas” and I’d play it over and over. In this song the hookers have to leave the whorehouse because it’s closing and they dream about their life outside the whorehouse walls. And I sang it constantly. (For full effect please Google the Original Broadway Cast recording of this song and listen to it now.)
Copyright © 2022 by Gary Janetti