I Shared a Toilet with Joey Ramone

I was working three jobs during the winter of 1996; construction labor, dishwasher, and warehouse Christmas help at Macy's. The Macy's job was the worst, but one night there was a catered party on one of the floors that showed me a world I hadn’t seen before.

The caterers had a makeshift kitchen set up in the storeroom and one of them overheard me make a typically sarcastic remark to my supervisor. She thought it was funny and asked me if I wanted to come work with them. Macy's paid me $7 an hour and catering started at $15.

This woman seemed really cool, so I dropped my broom, walked off my job, and went home with her that night. We smoked a joint on her terrace overlooking the city and made out on her couch.

My first catering job was at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco, and I made $100 passing out Champaign while I walked around at looked at the paintings.

When I moved to New York, I mentioned to someone that I used to cater in SF; they said they knew a chef at one of the big companies and I was hired with a phone call, though I thought it strange that they asked me to fax a headshot along with a resume.

Do I have to be pretty to work here?

Yes, because you’re a whore.

I worked some real shitty bar-mitzvahs and cheesy weddings, but I’ve also traveled the world with the pocket change of movie stars and world leaders.

It’s hard to be the guy pouring drinks with a skyline view and not think for a minute that it is my party, my terrace, my guests, and my world.

For a moment, it was.

I walked amongst the gods, picking up their discarded napkins.

At a party for Time magazine, John F. Kennedy Jr. put his hand on my shoulder, and asked “Can I get around this way?”

If words came out of my mouth at all, I must have said “You can do anything you want.”

Yes, he was amazingly handsome, so amazingly handsome. I have been fascinated with his father’s presidency and his family’s legacy for years. I had fantasized that America’s Prince John-John would be president himself someday. I was so honored and humbled to be in the same room with him, and here he had snuck up behind me and placed his hand on my shoulder, asking me a question.

Basically, I was in JFK Jr’s way and was asked to move, but what a proud moment that was. Such a gentleman; that was his mother’s influence.

He’d be dead a few months later.

I’ve brushed shoulders with some of the greatest writers of my age, usually picking up after they were done eating.

I waited on the great American writer Tom Wolfe of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test and the Right Stuff, and saw him leave in spats and a cape, always a dandy. Saw Paul Simon in the lobby of his building while I was there to do something else, and Sam Sheppard at a cast party for True West.

I repaired Wallace Shawn’s bathroom in the Village, and he still owes me $60. He is a well-respected playwright, but you know him best as the voice of the dinosaur from Toy Story. The idea for My Dinner with Andre was stolen from me. I was dating his personal assistant at the time, about whom I could tell you stories. Every time I see Wally on TV, I say “The guy owes me sixty-bucks!” I don’t blame him for Andre. It was a dumb idea.

I saw Arthur Miller at the last night of Death of a Salesman on Broadway with Brian Dennehy. Got a ticket for $25, sat next to one of the guys from Lost before there was a Lost.

I served dinner to Beloved’s Toni Morrison. She had such regal presence and was very polite.

I saw Eric Bogosian buying bottled water and condoms at a convenience store and acted like an idiot in front of him, hoping I’d turn up as a character in one of his monologues.

These poor players strutted and fretted their hour upon my stage, and then I was heard no more.

I got Paul Newman’s autograph for my mother after I helped him at an auction when he accidentally bid on a case of wine and won. I took care of it. A real gentleman.

I have laid my eyes upon Al Pacino as he walked past me in a hallway, and Dennis Hopper when I brought drinks to his table.

I helped Leonardo DeCaprio get a beer when a bartender wouldn’t serve him.

Saw Elizabeth Taylor, very frail with someone helping her walk on each elbow. She was small and grey, but stunning like royalty.

Eric Stoltz is an asshole. I’ll leave it at that, but who gives a shit about Eric Stoltz?

Bentito del Torro, that guy is huge, and David Byrne of the Talking Heads, that guy is tiny.

I must have lived in the same neighborhood as William Defoe because I would see him and his son walking down my street all the time. Same with Alec Baldwin, I ran into him a few times, and he was always pissed-off. Saw Ron Howard pushing a baby stroller down the street. Do you believe that? I lived in the same town as Opie Cunningham.

I have made a fool of myself to many of my idols, an instantly forgettable imbecile to legendary influences of our age.

John Waters has seen me naked. The director of Pink Flamingos and Hairspray said I had a “nice dick” when he reviewed a student art film that I masturbated for. When I met him at a gallery opening a few months later and mentioned it, he had no idea what I was talking about. I went out to dinner with his vampire buddies from Baltimore and drank something from a goat’s hoof, so the night wasn’t a total loss.

But in terms of making a fool of myself to a famous person, when I grabbed Lou Reed’s hand at an awards dinner and started patting it, thanking him profusely in an indecipherable babble, and not letting go, the look on his face as he nodded and walked away from me made me feel like the biggest loser on Earth, but I couldn’t help myself and I’d do it all again.

No, the worst is when I was doing a Harvey Keitel imitation of his nastiest dialogue from Taxi Driver “you can fuck her in the ass, cum on her face…” to turn and see him standing 10 feet away, staring at me from the bar. I nodded. He looked away.

No, actually the worst is probably when I bumped into President Clinton, literally. I fell on to the President of the United States in a crowded room as I tried to put a bread stick on his plate when someone bumped me. His look said “Hey, I’m the President, are you fucking kidding me?” All I could do was apologize. When I offered him cream and sugar for his coffee later, he brushed me away with his hand. I’m just lucky I got out of there without creating an international incident.

No. That’s not it.

I made such a fucking idiot of myself to Francis Ford Coppola and was never the same again.

I was in Paris, walking alone along the left bank of the Seine in January of 1999. Coppola and his mistress stepped out of a bar and walked along with me simply because we were in the same spot at the same time.

I must have been staring at him with my jaw dropped wide open as we walked along side by side for about a block when we came upon a large statue along the walkway, a nude figure of Zeus or some kingly warrior, but a bit past prime, with a bit of a gut.

Coppola and his mistress (I have seen Hearts of Darkness and that was not Eleanor, his wife), not that I’m judging, I mean shit, this is Francs Ford Coppola, fuck anyone you want, hell, I’ll suck your dick. Anyway, they stop at this statue, probably so I’ll just keep walking past, but I stop with them and pretend to admire it.

I look over at him, the man who made the Godfather, the man who went to the end of hell to make Apocalypse Now, the man who was my artistic idol, my role model for the creative process, one of the few people on the planet I would most want to meet, but am not supposed to ever meet.

He looks at me and says “Big fella,” nodding toward the statue.

And I respond, “But such a small penis.”

He chuckled and they walked away.

I went to my room on the Rue Saint Jacques and drank myself into a depressive stupor with a bottle of cheap red wine. I should have been in a three-way with Coppola and his French mistress, reading a part for his next epic.

That was the night I gave up the dream of ever making it in the movie business.

A few weeks later all of my video equipment, from my laptop to the super-8 camera I’d had since I was 10 years old, was stolen. Definitely a turning point.

I refilled Aphrodite’s lipstick smeared wine glass.

At a premier party for Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, Uma Thurmond sat at a table of admirers, holding court as it were. I brought drinks to her table, but her flunky made sure that he handed the drink to her. She is more beautiful than I imagined.

Speaking of beautiful, I worked a Victoria Secret party. I never realized that those models have such big heads. I guess I was looking at something else. I gave a glass of sparkling water to Tyra Banks. She said, “thank you.” My god, she was beautiful, and tall like an Amazon warrior. I’ve been in love with her ever since, but that’s as close as I’ll ever get.

Elizabeth Hurley was hot, Mira Sorveno was hot, and Vanessa Williams was hot.

I’ll tell ya, Anita Hill was pretty hot, any Supreme Court Justice would want to watch some Long Dong Silver with her.

I saw Bjork around town a couple of times, once checking her makeup in distorted mirror in a hotel lobby. She was simultaneously adorable and frightening.

I served fish diner to Phoebe Cates, the first woman I ever jerked-off to. You know the scene. She still has a beautiful ass.

The great African American leaders of my time crossed paths with me, usually as I carried their scraps to the garbage can.

I passed the mic to the Reverend Al Sharpton at a protest rally in Philadelphia at the Republican Convention in 2000. I was running for a Senate seat, and he signed my petition, saying “somebody’s got to.” I stumped Jessie Jackson on a question about gang violence when he came to our school for something but babbled incoherently when Barack Obama shook my hand during a campaign stop.

I helped Muhammad Ali find his seat at a dinner event.

I slopped mashed-tators to likes of San Francisco mayor Willie Brown and Chuck D of Public Enemy. “Yo, fight the power! Would you like more napkins?”

I actually called the cops on a party for Ice-T when I’d put up with enough bullshit. It’s a long story but it involves a shitload of punk assholes smoking blunts and pissing in the corners, a coked-out boss who couldn’t be found, and me being detained and questioned by the police and spending the night in the hospital. I learned to always use an outside line.

Spike Lee was a real prick about wanting a bottle of Champaign that he hadn’t ordered, and it involved me and the waiters taking up a collection amongst ourselves and a run to the liquor store. It’s a pain in the ass when a star don’t pay for his drinks.

I once told former New York mayor David Dinkins to “sit his ass down” not knowing he was in ear shot of my ranting. He sat down, by the way.

Wesley Snipes’ little sister was hot for me (but my friend told me not to sleep with her - fucking asshole - no, I was scared. She called herself “Candy Cane” and she was hot for everybody). I smoked a joint with Isaac Hayes’s stepson.

My manager said we greased the wheels of civil rights by being white step-and-fetch-its to bourgeois blacks.

The money changers were at the temple, and I emptied their ashtrays.

Donald Trump, that scumbag, I’ve seen him a bunch of times. That comb-over is truly disgusting, like a piece of bacon. He always had a girl a fraction of his age on his arm, not his daughter and not his wife. Boy, if I had known what that asshole was going to do…

Edgar Bronfman. Shit, I could have killed all those rich bastards, the “one-percenters” as I cut the meat to put on his plate. I saw Gordon Gecko, Michael Douglass himself, walking up the stairs in front of me, at the old stock exchange building on Wall Street no less. His hair was greasy and curled on the ends.

I ate the leftovers of the rock gods of my age.

Never met any of the Beatles, but I have seen me one of the Rolling Stones. I handed a martini to Keith Richards, switching out his empty without him even knowing I was there, as he cackled away to a tightly bunched group of admirers. Floating like a coffin amongst the arms of his entourage, I could not understand a single word he said.

You don’t want to know what happens to John Bon Jovi’s leftover fish at a bar mitzvah. I think the kid’s dad was a music exec who Bon Jovi must have owed a favor to. I brought him a plate of salmon. He ate about half of it. I took it back to the kitchen and immigrant dish washers and queer busboys fought over who could have it, wanting to sell it on eBay or jack-off on it. I don’t know who won.

I was stupid big into R.E.M. when I was a kid, and one job Michael Stipe flirted with me all night long. First, he noticed the microphone in my sleeve, “What’s that?” he asked.  I called it a “Borg implant,” said it was so I knew “how many butter knives they needed on table 12,” or some shit like that and he thought it was hilarious. He was with Larry Mullen Jr, the drummer from U2, and some cutie it-boy actor from the time. They were drinking these Champaign fruit things the place was trying to be known for, and I kept bringing more as they needed them. He always had something to say to me and some part of my uniform to touch. I think there was an auction, maybe some performers, about a thousand guests. It was an average night for the place, but on his way out, Michael came over to shake my hand and tell me “It couldn’t have been weirder.” Quite the complement coming from an indie rock god, so I told him how I played Murmur over and over in the closet of my bedroom when I was in high school. He was genuinely touched. In the age of cellphones, we would have probably met up for a drink, and I’d been in a R.E.M. U2 3-way. You get a pass for that, right?

Saw Iggy Pop at a record store. He looked like a puddle of puke, but hell, it’s Iggy Pop.

I watched my brother literally walk into Ric O’Cassic of the Cars at Kim’s Video on St. Marks, and then we saw Fred Schneider of the B-52s carrying his groceries home. My bro saw Leonard Nimoy one time. Spock. How fucking insane is that?

I stood in the front row and watched Liza Minnelli sing her classics. I couldn’t stand it. I watched Bert Baccarat play piano and sing in an Upper East Side living room for one of Chuck Schumer’s first fundraisers.

Did a party for America’s Mayor Rudy Giuliani, back when he was just New York’s asshole, and I recognized the guests from a Mafia party the week before. Saw him a few times.

Fashion designers, what a bunch of pricks.

Ralph Lauren had so much security around him; you would have thought he was the president. Someone should have protected him from the sun, because his skin looked like leather.

Tommy Hilfiger at least let me keep the pants and shirt that they gave us to wear at his party. He was with Sheryl Crow; someone had already given her a drink. That mouth of hers, like a trout. I guess the mole makes it sexy.

Saw Jarred from Subway walking down the street, so happy with himself. I just wanted to punch him in the gut. I guess we all know he eventually got his footlong.

Some celebs I just wanted to punch in the gut, watch them drop, and kick them in the gut. Fuck them and their perfect little worlds. I rank my celebs by how many punches it would take to drop them. Most of those bitches are lightweights.

Honorable mention: You like Carly Simon? She’s a total head-case. Steve Young? Yep, he’s gay. Sandra Bernhard? Jeanine Garfallo? A couple of the rudest bitches you will ever meet. Chuck Close? Pretty full of himself. Mario Van Peebles? Kind of a dick. ABC News anchor Peter Jennings told me to get a drink for his wife, like I was a fucking dog.

Joey Ramone? I saw the punk rock legend at a 24 hour diner off St. Marks. He came out of the bathroom as I was going in. There was one toilet in there. It was unflushed. Our fluid waste is mixed together for all eternity. Probably the celebrity moment I’m most proud of.