American on Purpose Read online

  For schoolteachers, however, it was different.

  Her name was Mrs. Sherman and I still think of her, after twenty-five years in show business and two failed marriages, as without question the most colossal fucking bitch I have ever met in my life. She was a small woman, birdlike and nasty, with a dyed, metallic-rust-brown “permanent” hairdo and horn-rimmed glasses. (I still associate horn-rimmed glasses with rage and steer clear of anyone who wears them.) She wore tweed the year round and thick flesh-colored stockings and too-shiny brown shoes. She was the infant mistress at Muirfield Primary School in Cumbernauld and she was the first person, other than my mother, who ever hit me.

  My first day at Muirfield, an ugly prefabricated building with the appearance of a small, dowdy factory, she belted me. It was 1967 and I had just turned five years old, but corporal punishment would remain legal in Scottish schools until the European Court of Human Rights banned it 1979. When I started school it seemed almost mandatory.

  “The belt,” as it was called, was a custom-built leather strap (they had a factory that made devices for hitting children!) that came in three strengths—soft, medium, and hard. I could never tell which one was being used on me, they all hurt. A lot. You had to hold out your hands in a grotesque parody of begging, and then the teacher would whip the weapon down with all her might on your outstretched palms. The fact that it stung so much was bad enough, but that you had to be complicit in your own anguish was horrifying. Occasionally a kid would refuse to hold out his hands, but that would only send him up the chain of command through the academic hierarchy until he reached the headmaster’s office, where presumably something even worse than the belt awaited—the rack? the iron maiden? we ruled nothing out—and so defiance was rare indeed.

  Mrs. Sherman took me and a couple of other kids, barely more than toddlers, into her small dark office and yelled at us in a shrill falsetto until we cried, and then she belted us ferociously across our chubby wee hands. I can’t remember what the specific offense was, but I am at a loss to think what any five-year-old could do to warrant that degree of rage and hatred. I don’t know what she expected to achieve with her tactics; probably she was just enjoying herself, but she set me up nicely. For the rest of my school days I was convinced that teachers were a fearsome and unpredictable enemy and I loathed them. There were exceptions, of course:

  Mrs. Fraser, my sixth-grade teacher, a lovely warm blond woman with an easy laugh who wore lots of tight, cozy knitwear over her spectacular breasts, which I remember still with awe. Or the earnest and inquisitive Mr. Biggins, the high school guidance counselor/PE teacher whose name alone was a wondrous comedic gift and who either really gave a shit about every kid he dealt with or was an extremely talented actor. These two were far from the rule; most of my teachers were erratic sadistic nutcases who had no business being around children.

  I ratted out Mrs. Sherman (first name unknown, but I suspected something cruel like Agnes) to my mother when I got home that day, and although I got a fairly sympathetic hearing, the general feeling was that I must have somehow deserved it. (I didn’t think so then and I don’t now, but perhaps after forty years it’s time to move on.) My parents came from a generation that trusted doctors and teachers and policemen, trusted that the system was always right and would never let you down. They allowed the schoolteachers to beat us because they believed teachers knew best, and also, compared to their own childhoods, mine seemed pampered and idyllic. (Attitudes change over generations, of course. I believe the system is flawed and that it protects the corrupt and the lazy, and any teacher who lays a finger on a child of mine better have medical insurance or a fucking secure hideout.)

  From Mrs. Sherman’s office on, the predominating theme of my childhood outside of the house was: fear. That’s what I remember: being afraid. The teachers of course scared me. The other kids did, too, but that had to be hidden. There was a merciless Darwinism in the schoolyards although until the teenage years it was less about real violence and more about bluff. The teachers were the only truly violent ones early on. So I learned to bluff. I tried to appear alternately aloof and enigmatically dangerous, which is no easy feat for an anxious, corpulent, farty preteen, but I got by. I think the armor I have used to survive in Hollywood was forged back then. Appear tougher or cooler or funnier than you feel and there is a chance you’ll make it.

  What was especially perilous to do at school was to stand out in any way. If you excelled academically, there would be hell to pay in the playground. I always made sure I got a few answers wrong on tests so that I would pass, but not by too much. You couldn’t fail by too much either or you’d be tormented by the other kids for being a moron. Obviously you couldn’t be a teacher’s pet, but it would also be a mistake to be too much of a rebel, because then the teaching staff would single you out, and every time they needed someone to belt, it’d be you, guilty or not. The only way to endure a public education in Scotland in the 1960s and seventies was to remain anonymous. Don’t fail. Don’t succeed. Don’t appear. Just don’t. Any movement was potentially dangerous. This will tend to quell a child’s natural ambition. I certainly learned to shut up about any dreams I had. It astonished me to learn, later on, that education wasn’t always like this.

  School did give me one of the greatest gifts of my life, though. I learned how to read, and for that I remain thankful. I would have died otherwise. As soon as I was able, I read, alone. Under the covers with a flashlight or in my corner of the attic—I sought solace in books. It was from books that I started to get an inkling of the kinds of assholes I was dealing with. I found allies too, in books, characters my age who were going through or had triumphed against the same bullshit. Tom and Huck dealt with no end of injustice, and Huck’s pappy was a dead ringer for one of my teachers. Richmal Crompton’s “William” was a resourceful and hilarious guerrilla against adult tyranny. Tom Brown had suffered awful indignities but finally had a gratifying retribution against Flashman. According to Enid Blyton, some of the posh kids were so fucking cool they didn’t even go to school, they just farted about riding their bikes and solving mysteries.

  From very early on, possibly my first day, I wanted out. It seemed to me that school involved too much physical abuse. Better to be in the workplace, where at worst your boss could only fire you. I had no idea what profession I would ultimately end up in, though I do remember having the vague notion that famous people didn’t have to go to the dentist. There might be something in that idea; plus, if I were a pop star or something, I’d show them. “Them” of course being the other kids. And the teachers.

  It seems to me now that this profound sense of isolation, resentment, misanthropy, and fear in a prepubescent child is an extraordinarily ominous portent. I should have put my name down for rehab then.

  One night when I was seven years old I was allowed to stay up past one o’clock in the morning. My whole family was gathered round the television—even my baby sister, who was only four, and I didn’t know why she should be allowed to stay up so late since I had never been allowed to at that age. My brother pointed out that I was only seven and that he himself hadn’t been allowed to stay up this late (and he was nearly twelve!) so put a sock in it.

  I put a sock in it anyway. Not because he told me to but because the door opened on the lunar module.

  When Neil Armstrong, who we all knew was of Scottish ancestry, put his foot on the moon, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. From that moment on I would do whatever it took to be Scotland’s first astronaut. (I must have really wanted to get away.) I had enough innate practical sense, though, to realize that Scotland would be unlikely to develop its own space program in my lifetime, so I decided I would throw my lot in with the Americans. My amused mother helped me draft a letter to NASA headquarters informing them of my decision, and then walked me to the big red post office box at the end of our street, where I mailed it.

  I think my mother was as surprised as I was when the big buff envelope containing NASA’s res
ponse landed on our doorstep two weeks later. NASA was, I suppose, on something of a high at the time and had sent me a book of photographs of Saturn 5 rockets and astronauts along with the two wall posters that would obsess me for years. One depicted the moon, up close and detailed with the names of all the craters and rock formations indicated. The other was of the galaxy, the planets and their moons all accounted for and showing their placement in relation to the sun. It still amazes me that this kind of stuff was sent out to any kid, American or otherwise, who wrote to NASA expressing an interest in space. (I’m sure by now some fuckwit corporate bean counter has put a stop to it, but these posters changed my life.)

  I hung them above my bed in the room I shared with my older brother, and even though his choice of wall art at that point was Raquel Welch in a fur bikini, he admitted my NASA posters were cool. They certainly drew me closer and closer to the U.S.A., and, perhaps just as important, they bonded me with Gunka James.

  5

  James the First

  My mother and my father both have brothers named James. My father’s, James Ferguson, was the first of our family to emigrate to the United States. He arrived in New York by boat, having worked his way over as a deckhand on a freighter in the 1950s. He was an immense influence on my later life. But in childhood the most influential James was my mother’s brother, James Ingram, or Gunka James, so called because one very young nephew or niece (perhaps even me, no one remembers for sure) had great difficulty pronouncing the word “Uncle.” It came out “Gunka,” and it stuck.

  Gunka is an odd bird amongst my kin. He didn’t marry until much later in life, never had children, has traveled all over the world, and was the first person to give me a firsthand account of what the mythic kingdom of America was like. He is a mathematician who is also literate and loves music and the arts. He is an extraordinarily charming gentleman, tall and elegant, with a huge infectious laugh that trumpets out of him after even the very first dram of Laphroig. He’s worn thick glasses since he was a teenager, his hair sticks up when he’s thinking, and there is nothing about our planet, our universe, or human relations that doesn’t interest him. If you meet Gunka James and you don’t like him, you’re a dick.

  Gunka taught mathematics at the high school I would eventually attend, where he started an Astronomy Club for the students who wanted to go on field trips to study the stars. To my knowledge, he never once belted a kid yet had no problem with the unruly teenagers in his charge.

  Gunka was thrilled to learn that I was taken with the space program, helped me make a big pastel drawing of an astronaut, showed me the rings of Saturn through the small telescope that he bullied the school into buying, and told me about his forays into America and Canada. I suppose Gunka had time to spend with his nieces and nephews because he didn’t have children of his own, and we all venerated him. My brother and my sisters and many of our cousins think of him as the person who first got them interested in something, sparked their enthusiasm about stuff, even though being passionate about anything other than soccer left you open to derision from the ever-present bitterness of many of the Scots I grew up around. Gunka never paid any attention to those assholes. He still doesn’t, God bless him.

  I have felt indebted to Gunka ever since my eighth birthday, when he took me by bus to a music store in the center of Glasgow. This was like nothing I had ever seen before. Studious guys in their twenties dressed in black were leafing through racks of albums, girls were wearing dresses even though they weren’t at church or a party. In hindsight I realize I was wrong—to them this place was both.

  Everyone seemed very tall; plus, I had never seen so many skinny people in one place. In fact, Gunka and my father were the only skinny people I knew. But here there were dozens of them, clicking their russet, nicotine-stained fingers in time to what I assumed to be complicated and indecipherable jazz piped through on the big roboty headphones they were provided by the store. I’m almost certain I heard the word “groovy” uttered in a thick Glasgow accent when I was in this store, but that hardly seems possible. It may have been 1970, but the word “groovy” has and never will be a word in common Glaswegian parlance. I desperately wanted to be one of these cool people when I grew up. They seemed engaged, occupied, interested.

  They seemed calm.

  Gunka got me a set of headphones and we sampled some music. He played me a selection from Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt Suite and I thought it was grand, especially after he explained the story to me. His version of what was going on in the music may not have been the same as the composer’s but I loved it. Gunka explained that when I heard sweet, light violin and flute melodies I should imagine wee fairies dancing around in the meadows, and when the booming brass and timpani sounded it meant that giants had charged in and were attacking the helpless sprites.

  Giants and fairies was how he described classical music. He could just as well have been talking about show business.

  Gunka said he’d buy me one of the big waxy discs for a present, yet as much as I had enjoyed the Norwegian composer’s opus, I wanted a pop music album instead. Gunka agreed that that might be a good place to start, and we whittled the options down to two: the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper or a Monkees album called Headquarters. To my eternal shame, I chose the Monkees. This was because I was only eight and the Monkees looked cheerful and friendly on their album cover, whereas the Beatles had beards and my father had told me that you couldn’t trust a man with a beard because you didn’t know what he was hiding. Crumbs, for instance. I believed men with beards were evil.

  Years later I made the acquaintance both of Mickey Dolenz, the Monkees’ drummer, and Ringo Starr of the Beatles. Mickey, still clean-shaven, is in fact very cheerful and friendly. And although Ringo still has some kind of whiskerish arrangement going on, he doesn’t seem so evil to me anymore. Shy and maybe grumpy, but not evil. Then again, I hardly know the man.

  Gunka paid and the salesgirl put my album in a brown paper bag for me. Then we headed off for fish-and-chips. Glasgow has the best fish-and-chip shops I have ever been in, probably due to the enormous influx if Italian immigrants driven from their own country by poverty in the late nineteenth century. Many of them went to America, of course, but for reasons that have never been satisfactorily explained to me, some wound up in Glasgow, serving superlative Italian cuisine much appreciated by the natives. It’s no secret that the Italians know a thing or two about food, and the Scots, well, maybe not so much.

  Gunka and I went to a café, where he ordered a cappuccino and I had a birthday feast. Fried cod, chips, and green peas followed by something called a “Knickerbocker Glory,” which was three scoops of ice cream with raspberry sauce and sprinkles. I washed down the whole thing with a giant glass of Irn Bru, a sort of Scottish hybrid of Dr Pepper and maple syrup. It’s a beverage much adored by children and hung-over alcoholics. I have drunk gallons of it in my life.

  I was replete and food-stoned as Gunka held my hand and helped me to waddle like a chubby duck back to the bus station. The offices and factories were emptying by then and rush hour was in full swing. We sat in the back of the bus as it filled up with apprentices and shopgirls, bank clerks and tradesmen, all talking and laughing, and every one of them smoking a cigarette.

  Then, as the bus pulled out of the station, it started raining, so they closed the windows. The dampness outside, the smoke inside, and the jiggling of the rattly old bus worked bad juju on my tubby wee body full of potatoes and lard and fish and sugar. Gunka saw the look on my face, or maybe just its color.

  “Do you feel sick?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “Are you going to be sick?”

  I shook my head. I’m not much of an upchucker. I can and have eaten pizza on heroin.

  “Do you need to go the bathroom?”

  I nodded.

  “A pee?”—he hardly dared say it—“or something else?”

  “Something else,” I squeaked guiltily. “Really bad.”

  By the
time we had this conversation we were almost halfway home. Out of the city center and crossing the green fields and country roads back to Cumbernauld.

  “Can you hold it?” he inquired tentatively

  I shook my head. I couldn’t speak now. All my concentration was on clenching.

  He sprang to action: reeling up the center aisle of the bus like a sailor in high seas as it careered around the winding roads, he made his way down to the front and talked to the driver.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying but it seemed the conversation was getting a little heated. I was a little heated myself. I had been judiciously letting out teeny cautious farts to relieve the pressure, but even that now seemed too dangerous. Eventually the driver pulled onto the side of the road at the tiny village of Moodiesburn, which seemed to consist of two cottages along with a bus stop sign.

  We got off, me moving very carefully like a miniature John Wayne because the pressure was excruciating. As soon as we’d cleared the door it hissed shut and the driver sped off as the mystified passengers stared back at us through the little peepholes they had wiped in their steamed-up windows. The argument had been with the driver, who didn’t want to stop at all. “This’s ra express. Naebdy gits aff here.”

  Gunka had only persuaded him by explaining there was another sort of express headed his way on a collision course charted by me, and not only was my express on board but it would be arriving at any moment. This threat was sufficient to make the driver not only stop but also write a note to the driver of the next bus so that Gunka would not have to pay another fare.