The Funniest Thing

1972

True Story:

I think the funniest situation I ever got myself into back then was working for these two queens who lived next door to each other in the West Village.

Richard Astor called himself the "Black Sheep" of his family. I don't know which family that was but I know it wasn't the Astors. Everything about Richard was a sham. He was a big time con artist who was constantly in litigation. I only learned the extent of it when I picked up a biography of Roy Cohn and they gave him a couple of pages. Richard lived in a pale green brick townhouse with white shutters on Greenwich Street, right near the infamous International Stud. He was Roy Cohn's ex-lover and, when Cohn broke up with him - probably realizing here is a queen even more nuts than I am - Richard embarked on an epic smear campaign against Cohn.

He cut a stencil out of a cardboard box and spray-painted "Roy Cohn is a Fag" down the sidewalk in front of his law offices.

He phoned the Coast Guard, when Cohn was cruising off Provincetown on his yacht, and told them he had a shipment of illegal narcotics on board.

He learned to impersonate Cohn's voice and would have the mechanic make expensive, unnecessary repairs on Cohn's limo. "Put in a new transmission! Just to be on the safe side."

Finally, Richard turned up in the recovery room at one of Roy Cohn's facelifts - in hospital scrubs, with a bouquet of dead flowers.

That was it.

Cohn pulled some strings with a judge he knew and had Astor shipped upstate for harrassment for 18 months.

After Richard got out is when I met him. He drove by in a Bentley full of boys and stopped. "Do you know where Sam's Bar is?" he asked me. I said No. I looked at the boys, who were laughing. "Do you want to help us find it?" I said Sure, and hopped in. I was crazyin those days. Richard was an odd-looking character. He wore a wifebeater and torn jeans with combat boots. He looked to be in his 40s. His face was slick with liquid bronzer, his eyebrows were penciled in, and he topped the whole thing off with a curly Shirley Temple wig.

I was captivated.

Richard employed me to be his driver. He didn't pay much but he never tried anything, gave me room and board, and let me use his cars. I looked them over and said "Deal." I have always loved cars; I knew the names of all of them by the time I was four.

Basically they were clunkers. There was a mid-60s Bentley, repainted a blood red with white seats and green carpeting. It looked like a pimp might own it. Then there was a black Rolls Royce, ancient, with bug-eye headlights and a stick shift. He also had a Mercedes Pullman.

Right next door, in a modern townhouse with a glass atrium, was Georg Mueller. He was an importer from Germany who hired me to work in his office in midtown. He saw me around Richard's and struck up a conversation, which consisted of him basically telling me that he loathed Richard "Asssstor," he would always draw out his last name, and towed his cars from his driveway if they were even an inch over the line.

So it was the Hatfields and the McCoys, two queens facing off, and I was in the middle.

I needed to earn some money though. Finally, as these things so often do, it all came crashing down.

I had discovered that a Bentley is a good accessory to have when you are cruising outdoors. All sorts of people wanted to talk to me when I pulled over to the curb near the Trucks, a place on the waterfront where people had sex in tractor trailers. Suddenly, they dispersed. I looked in the mirror and saw two policemen heading toward the Bentley. "Hello Officers!" I said brightly.

"License and Registration."


I came up with my license, but the registration was nowhere to be found. This of course meant trouble for me because who's to say this wasn't a stolen vehicle.

"Who is the owner."

"Um, Richard Astor. He lives around the corner."

"Take us there."

Richard made a sweeping appearance down his townhouse stairway that will remain imprinted in my mind forever. It was as though he pictured himself as Bette Davis. He certainly looked like Bette Davis, or at least was holding himself like her. I expected him to take a puff off a cig.

"Officers, come in, come in." He paused midway on the stairs, looking half mad, which is what he was.

"You're from the Sixth Precinct?"

"Yes we are. We need to see the registration to a red Bentley."

"Well, gentlemen, by the way, who's your captain over there at the Sixth? Kramer, isn't it?"

"No, Cunningham. Listen. . . "

"Cunningham, that's it. His wife and my wife play bridge together up in Tuxedo Park."

I stared at Richard. I couldn't believe my ears. I looked at the cops. They seemed intimidated.

"You see gentlemen, the car was stolen about a month ago, and they ripped up the registration papers and I am still in the process of getting them back through the DMV."

The cops murmered something about not letting people drive your cars if they're unable to provide a registration, and they left, practically curtsying on their way out.

Richard gave me a look and went back upstairs.

I realized I was sitting at the feet of a master. I had enjoyed the past Summer, shuttling his black female attorney up to Harlem after court. He was running a fur coat scam where he'd leave a coat in a cab to make a phone call. The driver would take off, he'd sue the company and get damages. Every night I would drive her home. She sat in the back of the Bentley with the windows down, Yoo-hooing to all her friends along 125th Street, who ignored her of course. She was frontin.'

Without Richard paying me, and the absence of a Bentley to drive, I gradually withdrew from his life. Even without having read the Cohn book I knew he was no one to mess with. I always stayed on his good side.

Contemporaneously, after a month of working as a clerk at his office, Georg Mueller began to amp up a seduction routine that I didn't see coming, but should have. He invited me over and showed me his house, made me a sandwich. His little white ankle-biter had a sanitary napkin strapped to its behind. "She's in heat. Would you like more roast beef?"

Georg was proud of his German sound system, the amps inside the speakers, and the crispness of the sound, which he played at high volume to demonstrate. I also liked that he kept a Cougar convertible in his garage, the exact model Diana Rigg saves George Lazenby in in the immortal "On Her Majesty's Secret Service."

The little white dog kept rubbing herself on things, looking like she needed dick bad. Then it was time to see the sauna.

Georg sat on the wooden bench in the sauna and I stood next to him peering in. It was nice, kind of small, and then he looked up at me and unbuttoned three lower buttons on my shirt. He kissed me on my stomach, never taking his eyes from mine. I didn't know what to say. I mouthed the word "No." He slowly buttoned me up, continued with the tour, and bid me good afternoon.

I was fired the next week.

I didn't act like a tease. It's just that when you're 20 people walk into your life and give you an option. Soon, I was taken up by one of Jack Kerouac's last editors. He idolized Kerouac and I think he liked the fact I once lived next door to him. He thought our meeting was synchronicity.

But that's another story.