A Mother's Day Missive 4 A Boy's Best Friend
Is there a reason why mama's boys are always a cinematic shorthand for the psychotic?
The story spilled out all over the Thanksgiving table. The same table where horror stories are best spilled out. You see Thanksgiving is a conclave for family readjustments of the most crucial kind: 12 players, in this case, in search of a playwrite.
The ne’er-do-well son, a familiar role for “Josh” who was that son, had started during dinner to absorb a standard amount of punishment but Josh had reached the age of reason. That being, the age when enough is enough. So Josh blurted out a secret he had kept under wraps since he was about 10 years old.
“Blurt” is actually the wrong word. He really sort of spooled it out.
As it turned out when he was 10 years old he had come up with a plan. He would wait for his father to go to work, and for his Mom to get about her day, and then he’d double back from the bus stop and play hooky for the day before anyone got home. Today though was a little different and instead of heading off to the bus stop he said his goodbyes, slammed the door, reentered the house and went into his parent’s bedroom to hide under the bed until Mom left.
I am glad to report that my love for my mother is deep and abiding, and if it didn’t make me sound even a little bit like Norman Bates, I might even make the claim that…I’ve had no better friend.
But this day…Mom didn’t leave, so he hunkered down under the bed while waiting for her to do so. Which she never did. What she did instead was to invite a gentleman caller in. The man who now sat across from him at Thanksgiving, his erstwhile stepfather, was that gentleman caller and over the next 30 minutes he was the unfortunate recipient of an experience that no 10-year-old should have to experience: his mother fucking someone not his father. Though had it been his father it would still have been fairly horrific.
Recounting this as he was during Thanksgiving dinner may have been deeply thrilling on a certain level, but me, when I heard the story and all serious-minded people really, wondered what his Mom did with this timely but unfortunate revelation, so I asked the teller of the tale to tell me.
“What do you think she did?” She asked me and I drew an absolute blank. Shaking her head she kind of snorted, “She started crying!”
“Did it work?!?!”
“Of course it did.” She had, with an act of maternal legerdemain, turned the tables, emerged as some kind of a victim and the dinner, the Thanksgiving Dinner, proceeded apace.
I think about his Mom more often than I should as we ease up on Mother’s Day. For no other reason really than to underscore that even more so than our fathers, our relationships with our mothers can be….fraught.
Can be, but not is, in my own case. In my own case I am glad to report that my love for my mother is deep and abiding, and if it didn’t make me sound even a little bit like Norman Bates, I might even make the claim that over the years, even those during which we were estranged, I’ve had no better friend.
A friend of a girlfriend had once asked said girlfriend, in front of me, “is Eugene a Momma’s boy?” If the girlfriend had had the slightest ounce of self-preservation she would have known to trod lightly here, recalling as I was James Cagney in White Heat. The same Cagney that smashed the grapefruit in his girl’s face when she said a cross word about his Mom.
[W]e’ve decided to embed it and the attitude in the family crest with a legend that reads: What’s THAT Supposed to Mean?
“Oh yeah!” And there, in front of my eyes, a 100-foot-cliff dive into total stupidity. How were you ever going to win that one? How were you not able to see that the man I am today is largely, for good and for ill, a product of her steadfast support and tutelage? And finally how could you not know me well enough to know that this would never be forgotten?
Indeed grudge-holding is a family trait and with one of my sisters, an accomplished artist, we’ve decided to embed it and the attitude in the family crest with a legend that reads: What’s THAT Supposed to Mean?
That girlfriend is now an ex and my mother, at 85, is someone from whom I keep nothing and who opined in a moment of clarity just a few weeks ago that “you’ve been my buddy for so long and gone through so much with me”, before she stopped talking, voice choking with emotion.
I’m unsure what kinds of relationships other people have with their mothers but, amusingly, mine seems to confuse people.
“Wait…your Mom is going to your show?” I’ve been asked this on any number of occasions when I’ve played New York, where I’m from and where she still lives.
“Of course,” I say. “Why wouldn’t she?”
And the unspoken but clearly outlined thoughts have everything to do with a past history of stage nudity and casual masturbation. That would be mine, not hers. And the ever-present specter of violence.
“So, Ma…you like the show?” I asked her once, post-show.
“Yeah,” she said chuckling. “But it was a little uncomfortable. Every time you took an article of clothing off, everyone looked at ME. I guess they forgot I used to change your diapers!”
And this disconnect continued, as at the end of the interview in Decibel that the opening image above is from, you can feel the journalist not totally buying into this maternal rebop regarding what a grand and loving guy I am. So he waits until interview end and it’s almost like he can’t take it anymore and so he says something to the effect of “you KNOW he’s a fucking lunatic right??!?”
She brushes it off with only the slightest nod, “well he’s probably not the kind of person you’d want to do something negative to…” and then bing, bang, boom, interview is over and her record of batting 1000 for me continues unabated.
“You’re his MOM, alright,” I remember this being screamed at her during some argument she had with someone, an argument she had already, as was her habit, won. “MA BARKER!” he screamed recalling the famous maternal crime lord, and this stuck with me more than lots of other things. Not because it wasn’t true, but precisely because it was. (Most recent count of people she’s kept me from murdering? Two.)
My father, post-divorce, had ham-handedly tried to turn me against her by regaling me with tales of their sex life. And he failed miserably because, well, because she raised me so well, so this was just a nonstarter for me.
Something I remembered in 2024 when on taking me out for a birthday dinner at Tavern on the Green she asked me how my book was doing. I had said that so far it seemed to be doing well and I’d only been threatened with one lawsuit because of it. The whole table quieted down and she asked for WHAT?
“I mean which part of the book?” She asked.
“Oh,” I said, “The chapter called ‘My First Threesome’,” and those in attendance who didn’t know me well, and some that did, as well as the waiter and nearby diners were….well, aghast would be too strong of a word, but in the right direction at least.
“What?!?” I started handwaving, dismissively. “She’s MY Mom,” I laughed. “Plus she’s read the book!”
So it is today that I’m glad to be able to pay tribute to her in the most aggressive way possible…HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, MA…!!! I’ll call you as soon as I post this!
TICKETS?!?!? GET YOUR TICKETS HEEEEERRRRREEEE…..
And if books are still your thing and you still do books, please do this one…the memoir A Walk Across Dirty Water and Straight Into Murderer's Row, from Amazon…Or the Bookshop.Org dealie: Here?
And if you’d like to book a book show? Please DM.