Private Parts Read online

  It Was the Worst of Times, It Was the Worst of Times

  The Ste rn Family Chapter 2

  My family story is actually pretty tragic. It's story of how two children of immigrants united to give birth to an innocent son and then, through an assortment of ingenious tortures, both consciously and unconsciously motivated, managed to turn that son's life into an emotional shipwreck. Then, as if that wasn't enough, this poor man-child found a woman to share his life and she came complete with an additional set of parents and siblings to torment him. Yes, this is my story, A Tale of Two Dysfunctional Families. It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

  RAISED LIKE A VEAL

  "Mrs. Stern, you have a really happy baby," the doctor said at my birth. "Howard's very smiley. He's as happy as a Mongoloid idiot." Who knew I'd grow up to be so miserable? Basically, my mother, Ray, raised me like a veal. It was like growing up in a box with no lights on. Sure I was tender -- because my mother would never allow me to do anything. She was constantly attentive, totally overbearing, and would always put fear in me. If I played sports, I'd get hurt. If, God forbid, I left the house without a coat on, I'd catch cold. I always had have rest periods to collect my energy. She had these kooky rules for everything. But it worked. To this day, I can't go out of the house for more than five minutes without worrying that something bad is going to happen to me. I live in fear of everything. I can't enjoy life so I sit in my house and vegetate. Under dim lights, of course.

  I confess. I'm an obsessive-compulsive, anal-retentive, miserable neurotic because I was raised by a woman who ran her household with the intensity of Hitler. Now, let me clarify things. I love my mother. She had the best intentions. She's a very moral, upright person. In fact, my mother broke the world down into a battle between good and evil. And anything that didn't conform to her worldview was definitely evil. Man, did she put me on a permanent guilt trip. One time I was walking down the street with my wife, Alison, and I saw a wad of bills on the ground. I picked it up, started to walk away, and all of a sudden I heard my mother's annoying voice: "Don't pick it up! Don't pick it up! That belongs to someone else!" Idiot that I am, I felt bad for the poor slob who dropped it and had this lunatic idea that he was going to come back to look for it. So I ran back and put the money down exactly where I found it.

  And boy, did this woman have wacky ideas and bizarre practices. First of all, I couldn't have any pets growing up. My mother was convinced that pets actually drain energy out of the humans who own them. To this day, I swear, if I'm feeling a little rundown, I walk around my house thinking that our cat is like Cujo or something.

 

  At six months, drooling like a Mongoloid.

  But some of the strangest of her practices centered around my underpants. My mother was obsessed with them. First of all, the minute she bought me underpants, she would have to sew big name tags into them. She was always concerned about me losing things. This I never understood. If I lost them, and someone else found them, what were they going to do? Drop them into the nearest mailbox? Who would even want to touch these dirty things?

  Plus, my mother kept this up all through college. Can you imagine my embarrassment when I was in bed with some lady and she's taking off my underpants and she slips her hand beneath the elastic waistband and says, "What's this tag on the back?" My mother never stopped. She went on archaeological digs in the dirty clothes hamper. She was like a research scientist and my underpants were her petri dish. She could even tell what I'd eaten for lunch.

  And God forbid she should find a little stain on a pair. She'd run upstairs to our only bathroom, run hot water in the sink, and rub soap into my underwear. The whole family would parade in and out to use the sink only to be stopped by the soaking underpants. You might as well have had a neon sign flashing: STAY AWAY FROM THE SINK. HOWARD HAD ANOTHER ACCIDENT. Was this total emasculation or what?

  My mother had me so crazy that, in kindergarten, when I pooped in my pants, I was always afraid to come home. I would come home with a full metal jacket in my underpants, run up to my room, take off my underpants, and sneak out in the backyard to bury them. Somewhere in Roosevelt, Long Island, there's a BVD tree with some pretty fertile soil around it.

  One time I ran out of underpants. So my mother told me to wear her panties to school. I actually put them on. They were huge and very soft, and as soon as she left the room I took them off, fished out the least crusty pair from the hamper, and wore them to school. Can you imagine the humiliation I would have faced changing for gym class? I might as well have moved out of state.

  The funny thing is, sloppy underpants weren't even my fault. My mother never toilet trained me right. She never taught

 

  "Uh-oh! I think I had an accident!" Me at seven years old .

  me the proper method of wiping. When I was four, I developed a bad case of rectal worms. I had to take a dump in a cardboard box and my mother and father drove me and my turd to the doctor's office, where he made the diagnosis.

  The worms cleared up but a much more chronic condition ensued: anal fissures. I itched like crazy. I would bury my finger so far up into my underpants that I would poke holes in them. I had no idea how bad it was until a doctor fresh out of medical school took one look at my sphincter and told me I had a hole the size of a garage door down there. It was like a blowhole. And all because I never learned how to wipe properly. Now don't laugh at me, because judging from the amount of hemorrhoid creams and ointments being sold, a lot of you don't know how to properly care for your sphincters, either.

  HOWARD'S R ULES FOR A HEALTHIER RECTUM

  So, as a public service to my readers, I will now impart to you the wiping wisdom I've learned from sources other than my mother. Pay attention because you will never have another hemorrhoid or problem back there again. I used to overwipe. I would scrape and strain. But you must only take three swipes and that's it. Oh, and stay away from dyed toilet paper. Use white and you'll be all right. If you feel dirty down there, jump in the shower and scrub down. But stick to the three-wipe maximum. Also never push. Wait until that bowel movement is sliding out of your ass before you go to the bowl. If you're pushing a lot, you probably need oat bran cereal for breakfast plus three tablets of Evening Primrose oil, one with each meal. That should grease it all up.

  My mother also had this kooky compulsion to constantly monitor my temperature. And, of course, she used a rectal thermometer every day of my life until I was eighteen years old!

  It's amazing I didn't become a mass murderer like John Wayne Gacy. When my mother dies I'm going to have her mummified. I'll prop her up in my attic and tie her to a chair. I'm going to save all her clothes and I'll wear a bad wig and parade around the house in her housecoat and panties.

  Mom, I love you. And thank you for putting me in touch with my feminine side.

  RAY: Howard, I can't believe these stories you're making up. You exaggerate everything.

  HOWARD: Don't say you didn't make me put on your panties.

  RAY: I never did.

  HOWARD: Well, what about taking my rectal temperature until I was eighteen years old? You humiliated me by raping me with that piece of plastic!

  RAY: Don't make a big deal out of everything. You grew up to be a very well-adjusted individual.

  HOWARD: It's a miracle I'm not a homo.

  RAY: That's what a homo comes from?

  HOWARD: You better believe it. Before you know it, you're putting ashtrays up there. It's a miracle I'm normal. Although I did pay a woman $150 the other night to take my temperature with a drumstick. Thermometers just don't satisfy me anymore.

  "SHUT UP! SIT DOWN, YOU MORON!"

  My father, Ben, is a no-nonsense guy who has guided me in my career and stood by me no matter what. He loves me, but he was tough on me. It was understandable, though, because his dad had been real hard on him, too.

  My father was a radio engineer who eventually bought his own recording studio with five other guys.
He never made big money, though. We were living in Roosevelt in a house that cost my old man $14,000. A good house would have cost about double that back then, but my father didn't mind driving an extra fifty miles to save money. Every day he'd drive to Queens, park, and take the subway to work. Then he'd come home and sit down at the dinner table and expect to be served like a king. Even today, he just sits there with a miserable expression on his face until his wife serves him.

  As a kid I was disturbed that my mom had to serve my father like

  that, but then I started to analyze it and I realized he was right. In fact, I try to do the same thing with Alison. I just sit there while Alison sits down with her plate all full and eventually she'll look over at me and go, "Oh, Howard, you don't have anything." Then I get up and get it myself.

  King Ben would come home and sit on his throne and everything had to be just right. One of the nightly rituals was serving him a Rob Roy, his favorite drink. I swear they tasted like paint thinner. But my mother didn't mind making him toxic drinks because she figured they'd tranquilize him. She'd spend half the day preparing the Rob Roy for his dinner. And he would give her explicit directions on how to do this. First, she had to chill the glass. Then she took a lemon rind and ran it around the rim of the glass. Then she mixed the alcohol -- one part vermouth and one part whiskey -- and chilled it. Finally, my mom would put a piece of Saran Wrap over the top of the glass in the refrigerator so everything would be perfect when he got home.

  My old man could be a bastard sometimes. She would kill herself for half the day preparing this stupid drink and he'd sip it and go, "Hmmm. Not as good as the one you made last night, honey." Meanwhile, we were living in Roosevelt, an almost all-black community, a place worse than South Central L. A. There wasn't a white neighbor in sight, and my father was in his little bungalow, making believe he was in some fancy country club, sipping away at his Rob Roy.

  My mother let me make my dad his Rob Roy one night, which was a big mistake. I sure as hell wasn't going to go through that torture. I'd piss in that damn glass before I spent half my day making a stupid drink. If I got it j ust slightly off, my father would scream his head off at me.

  Those drinks didn't tranquilize him at all. He would just get all lit and red-faced and then scream even louder. No matter what I did or said, he'd just yell at me.

  "Hey, Dad, how was your day?"

  "Are you putting me on? SHUT UP!"

  "Dad, I'm just asking..."

  "You don't care about my day! SHUT UP, YOU MORON!"

  He'd be bitching to my mom about work and how his partners were screwing the business up and I would try to empathize with him and ask him questions.

  "What?" he'd yell at me. "What did you say? I'm talking to your mother, you dummy. You don't know what it is to have a partner. You never even worked. GET OUT OF HERE! SHUT UP!"

  I remember one time I told him that I wanted to be a millionaire and he chased me up the stairs. He was going to beat the fucking shit out of me.

  "You dope, you don't even know what it's like to make money!" he screamed. "You say you want to make money? Let me see you work. YOU WON'T EVEN LIFT YOUR ASS TO MOW THE LAWN! SHUT UP!"

  Meanwhile, if I even tried to mow the lawn, he would grab the lawnmower from me and complain about how he was the only one in the family that had the brains to know how to mow the lawn right.

  My dad and I never did things that most dads and their sons do. I think he was a pretty good athlete but he never suggested we play sports together. Once I played catch with my father. I threw him the ball and he missed it and it hit him in the nuts and that was the end of that.

  My father's favorite sport was yelling. And he was pretty scary. I'm surprised that he didn't just wake up one

  night and wipe us all out like a disgruntled postal worker. Maybe he got all his frustrations out by yelling at us. Actually, it was mostly yelling at me. My father would never yell at my sister, because she was his favorite, his little jewel. And my mother actually dug it when my father yelled at me because that would take the heat off her. I was the designated yellee.

  He'd do it everywhere and under any conditions. We'd go out to a restaurant to eat and we all had to know what we wanted to order before we even got there. He'd get all embarrassed in front of the waiter for some stupid reason. My mother would fumble around with the menu, indecisive about what to eat.

  "I know what I want to eat before we get here. You shouldn't need a menu!"

  Then he'd get bent out of shape if we ordered out of order.

  "Howard. You order your appetizer, then your salad dressing, then your entree, you moron!"

  Here we are in some shithole Greek diner and my father's worrying about following the rules of Amy Vanderbilt and Emily Post.

  I once asked for Russian dressing after my entree and all hell broke loose.

  "What do you care what the waiter thinks?" I'd ask.

  "THERE'S A PROPER WAY TO ORDER, YOU IDIOT!"

  He's that way to this day. I should take Stuttering John out to dinner with him. He'd put him right through a wall. When we go out with my parents to dinner, I always order the same thing just to please my father. Meanwhile my wife's like a retard. She starts nudging me with her elbow. "I don't know what to order. Help me." My wife goes into a panic because if she doesn't order properly my father starts to get all agitated.

  When I graduated college, my father came to the commencement ceremonies and then he yelled at me all the way home.

  "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW, YOU IDIOT?"

  "But Dad, I graduated magna cum laude."

  "SHUT UP! I PAID TWENTY GRAND FOR THAT DEGREE. I NEVER WENT TO COLLEGE."

  People always thought I was kidding or exaggerating when I talked about the way my father yelled. But then we found some evidence. I unearthed some old tapes that my father neglected to throw out and I brought them in to Scott the Engineer. The next day he came into my office.

  "You don't know what's on these tapes," he marveled. Apparently they were tapes made of the Stern family at my father's recording studio when I was seven years old. Once a year, my parents would march me and my sister and my cousins to the studio and he would record us singing and fooling around. Except he didn't like it when we fooled around. In two seconds, my father would lose his patience and start screaming like a banshee. And now I had the tapes to prove it.

  These sessions were supposed to be fun, but I dreaded them. Who wanted to be humiliated in front of his sister and cousins? My father would "interview" us and ask us questions about current events and stuff and I would sweat bullets because if I said one wrong word, that was it. My sister would just breeze through the questions, because he'd never yell at her. But just listen to this sample exchange:

  BEN STERN: Do you feel the United States should remain as a member of the United Nations?

  HOWARD: Yes, I really do.

  BEN STERN: Are there any special reasons why you feel they should?

  HOWARD: There should be peace in all the countries and we wouldn't have any war because we don't want the Japs anymore haa-haa-haa-haa. [I imitated the sound of a machine gun.]

  BEN STERN: I TOLD YOU NOT TO BE STUPID, YOU MORON!

  See? See? Right away with the "moron" stuff. I was just doing some shtick, some humor, and my old man freaks. And being called a moron to me was real. I thought I was a moron. At seven years of age, you'd think he'd cut me some slack. But no, it was "SHUT UP! SIT DOWN!"

  We played these tapes on the air and my father called in and said he felt like Nixon. We get along great now as adults, but believe me, at the time, he turned me into a basket case with all the yelling. The day after we played the tapes on the air, a neighbor of my father's came over to him and said, "Hey, Ben, how do I get my kids into that Ben Stern Day-Care Center? They're out of line." One of our classic bits was about to be born.

 

  THE BEN STERN DAY-CARE CENTER

  A child's world is a fragile one . . . and that's why you n
eed the Ben Stern Day-Care Center.

  If you want to turn your child into an overachieving, self-hating megalomaniac who spends his days hiding from his family and his nights masturbating, then the Ben Stern Day-Care Center will work for you....

  Our Motto

  SHUT UP! SIT DOWN!

  SHUT UP! SIT DOWN!

  SHUT UP! SIT DOWN!

 

  Our Founder Ben Stern

  My father was definitely the disciplinarian, but during the day, when he was at work, my mother was in charge of giving me a smack

  if I got out of line. So one day she complained to him that her hand was hurting from smacking me. He told her to get a stick and hit me. So she got one of those half-wooden, half-wire coat hangers from the dry cleaners and she detached the wire part. My father came home from work and my mother told him that this wasn't good either because I held her arm so she couldn't hit me. So my father called me over for a little talk.

  "Howard, your mother tells me you're not letting her discipline you," he said.

  "Who in their right mind is gonna just stand there and let someone whack 'em with a stick?" I asked.

  "Look, your mother has to express herself in some way," he told me. "Let her give you a couple of little bangs and we'll get it over with. Why are you making such a big thing out of it?"

  But I always resisted being disciplined. "No, I don't want to go up to my room," I'd say, trying to brownnose her. "I want to be by your side."

  One time she forced me to go up to my room, so I started chewing up my furniture. I don't even think it was a protest or anything, it was just a fun thing to do. I was gnawing at my wooden dresser drawer, scraping my teeth against it, and by the time my mother came up to get me, there were big chunks ripped out of it.

  Actually, that was probably a very rational thing to do given my circumstances. Can you imagine being trapped in that madhouse for eighteen years with no way out? I didn't have the balls to run away from home and live on the streets. All I had to do was go to Times Square and have sex with a few old men like Jon Voight did in Midnight Cowboy and I could have had my own pad.