But for all of that, my father was this unbelievably lovable person. I mean, you know those people that for some inexplicable reason are just a pleasure to be around? Well, maybe you don’t, but I do, and my father was very much one of these endearing humans. Even after everything he both did and didn’t do, I somehow couldn’t help but enjoy spending time with him.
My father wasn’t successful with women because he had been rich and famous, though that didn’t hurt. People gravitated toward him because he enjoyed them. He had a way of making you feel special. Because when you stepped into his sphere, you were all but guaranteed a good time. And though you knew with every part of your being that time with him couldn’t be scheduled or relied on, all that was somehow forgotten within minutes of finding yourself in his company. There you were yet again, the chump that couldn’t seem to resist his playful charisma. Not even after promising yourself that the next time you found yourself succumbing to his eternally boyish charm—you’d remember, you wouldn’t be that innocent putz who would buy into anything he promised. You would never again end up going through the withdrawals after, inevitably, once more finding yourself being denied access to that incredible way he had of making you feel not only special but necessary, even essential, to him.
And all of this was as true to him as it was to you while it was happening. You can’t counterfeit feelings like that, right? Again, I’m really asking. In my opinion though—in the well-appointed interim, until you get back to me—the answer is absolutely and unequivocally NO!
I had workshopped my show Wishful Drinking at the Geffen Theatre in Westwood, California, for a number of months before moving it up to the Berkeley Rep theatre in 2008. This was where we settled in to further work on it with an eye on eventually taking it to Broadway.
I’ve always been one of those people who loved San Francisco, and not just because it’s a beautiful old city situated around a sparkling bay. Over the years I’ve found myself spending quite a lot of time there attending to all things intergalactic. And, in addition to George and all the folks who work for Lucasfilm, over time I found I’d collected a small group of other friends, several possessing a sort of literate/spiritual bent.
And, as if all these enticements weren’t enough, it appeared that my now newly widowed father—Rest in Peace Betty Lin—was in dire need of a mother. And as I had been recently suspended from my mothering duties, I was free to parent anyone who might enjoy being parented by me in the otherwise awful extended interim. And who should turn out to long to be cuddled and mothered like the big bad overgrown baby boy he’d always been? You guessed it—Eddie! That’s right, I became my father’s mother. It turned out that the best way to have a loving reliable familial bond with my dad was for me to give him everything I’d ever wanted from him, and in so doing, corny as it sounds, I’d get everything I gave him back again. In spades, clubs, hearts, and diamonds. He needed me. Finally. Somehow and happily, nothing and no one but me would do.
Over the course of the time I found myself performing in Berkeley, my father confided in me that there was something he wanted to do before his life was over. He didn’t have a bucket list as it turned out. What he did have was a bucket wish. And it took a few weeks for him to express just exactly what that wish was. And when you hear what it was, you might understand just why he was somewhat shy about sharing it with his eldest child.
What my father wanted was access to the recess between a woman’s legs. One last romp—a romp at his age being a fairly limited affair, but that did not concern him. He’d devoted his entire life to getting laid, sacrificing everything he’d ever had to it—his career, his fortune, and basically any real, lasting relationship with either friends or family. Now, I’m sure many men at the end of their lives entertain similar fantasies. The only difference here was that most of them would be too embarrassed to admit such an undignified longing in someone of such advanced years. But my father had no such compunctions, though initially it wasn’t me to whom he confided this final desire of his. It was to my friend Garret, who traveled with me also as one of the producers of my show. He called Garret “Cowboy,” though in later years there were times he was convinced that Garret possessed an assortment of other identities including, but not limited to, President Barack Obama. It turned out that after suffering several strokes as the years progressed, my father was showing increasing signs of dementia. Of course, his daily marijuana intake didn’t help matters, but ultimately I don’t think it was the pot that caused my father to confuse a 32-year-old white boy from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, with our president. But in his right mind or out of it, his passion for one last pass at pussy remained undiminished.
So one night, while I was performing my show, I made an announcement that if anyone knew any prostitutes, please leave a note with one of the ushers. I did this in large part not only to amuse and/or shock people; it turned out that it wasn’t all that simple to find and secure the services of a prostitute. At least not in San Francisco in 2008. I’d spent inordinate amounts of time searching Craigslist. But after a while, I would’ve perused any list! Schindler’s! Or Franz! I fantasized that even though my brother and father were far from close, I might be able to induce my brother to take on this task, but that potential bonding experience did not come to pass.
As it happened, though, my father had a very capable, kind nurse named Sarah, a Mongolian woman who devoted herself to his care in his declining years. But after a while my dad’s care became more… challenging, you might say, so Sarah hired a very cute little girl who ill advisedly came to work wearing a little outfit consisting of a short little skirt and a little shirt that ended very close to where her midriff began—a kind of slutty cheerleader type of get-up. And it wasn’t long before Sarah phoned to tell me that this new part-time nurse had expressed outrage—OUTRAGE!—when my elderly parent attempted to put his arthritic hand on her breasts. Which was enough to bring us to a moment where this girl accused him of sexual harassment. Now, this was a man who not only couldn’t do anything for himself anymore—he could barely move—but would also mistake a blond 32-year-old white boy for Barack Obama. At that point, had he been able to understand what was going on, my dad would have seen it as something of an honor to be accused of sexual harassment. But I had to tell him that I had talked to the girl (which wasn’t true, though Sarah had) and that she’d apparently said, “What does he think I am, a prostitute?” I don’t think it was so much that he thought she was a hooker as that he hoped she might be induced to behave like one.