Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Page 4

  John and Yoko always talked about helping the world. When I was living in West Hempstead, I saw an empty factory and thought it would be a great place for recycling. So I went to the town hall to make my case. Even though people argued against me, when I came back to visit years later, there was a recycling center there. I realized then that you never know how you can affect life, even if you don’t see yourself as doing something big. Sometimes it can just be bringing up an idea that makes sense. (Although some folks said the recycling center brought rats. So maybe it wasn’t such a great idea.)

  When my sister and I and Wha moved out of Valley Stream we found a place in West Hempstead, in a new apartment complex right across from the West Hempstead stop on the Long Island Rail Road. The apartment was really sweet, except for the fact that I had some roommates that were hard to get rid of: roaches. There were so many that some of them were albino. You know how many thousands of roaches you need to get an albino? We kept spraying every week. They were in the kitchen cabinets. Once they were in the bed.

  Times were not so good. The guys next door were dealing drugs and then everybody became boyfriend and girlfriend and I still had no job and had trouble paying for food. One time I was so hungry that I looked at a picture of Krishna and thought for a minute he was giving me food, and then my hunger went away. I took that as another little miracle in my life and maybe a little payback for cleaning his temple. Either way, it was a blessing.

  I kept trying to get and keep a job. I finally got a job as waitress at IHOP, on Hempstead Boulevard on the other side of the railroad station two blocks away. My mother was a waitress, and she tried to train me, but I just wasn’t very good. It was hard for me to work really quick. We were given little cards with tiny boxes to check when people placed their orders, I guess to speed things along. But the print was so small I kept confusing the fried chicken with the chicken pot pie. And let me tell ya, you can’t believe how pissed people get when they’re served fried chicken instead of chicken pot pie. I used to think, “They’re both chicken, ya know! And don’t think it’s any healthier eating all that dough in the pie, either!” Eventually the manager pulled me aside and said, “Look, kid, maybe waitressing isn’t your cup of tea. What about being a hostess?” And I told him I needed to make more money than a hostess and he said, “Yeah, but your mistakes cost more than your salary.” We were sitting at a booth and he reached down and started rubbing my legs. I pushed myself right out of there.

  So I tried something else. Two blocks down the other way from the apartment was a place that did mailers with samples of cosmetics and coupons. It was the kind of place that might have sent out those tampons that turned into pillows and gave people toxic shock syndrome. I’d stand at my station and take samples from the conveyor belt and put them in a box. As I was doing it, I’d start to giggle, because of course I couldn’t do it quick enough. And there was a guy in a pulpit—there was actually a pulpit overlooking all these women at their stations—who kept making up little contests. He’d say things like, “And now we’re going to see who can be the fastest at putting these ten items into the box!”

  So I’d try to keep up with the faster and faster pace of the conveyor belt as the little items went speeding by. I felt like, “Okay, where’s Ethel?” And the guy thought it was no laughing matter so he said, “Hey, Lauper, wipe that smile off your face.” Well, I couldn’t then, and I still can’t now. I think that the only way I get through sometimes when things are so ridiculous and so bad is that I’ve gotta laugh.

  But I was very scared all the time because bad things would happen. When I was young I would compare living in the world to being in an ocean. I didn’t know how to fix what may or may not have been my fault as a child, but I knew that if you were bleeding, sharks would come. I didn’t have money to get around then, so I would hitchhike to places. Hitching is really, really, really dangerous. I jumped out of cars; I was in car accidents with men driving like idiots. I don’t even know how I made it out alive. But somehow I did.

  For instance, I once had a job interview, and I wore pantyhose and a dress that my mother had made short to wear with matching pants. But you could still wear the top as a minidress, so that’s what I did. And all I had was some old high heels that I used to wear at my first job with Simon & Schuster. At the time, I didn’t have enough money to even buy underwear or a bra. And I didn’t have money to get to the interview, either, but I needed a job, so I hitchhiked. A guy stopped and picked me up, but then he wouldn’t let me out of his car—not until I went down on him and he on me. It was a bad experience and then I felt I deserved it because I must have looked like a whore.

  When I got out of the car, I walked into the interview. I felt stunned and disgusted and sad. I tried to answer all the questions put to me as best I could, because I really needed a job. And then to get back to the apartment, which was a few towns away, I remembered how I saw the railroad tracks running alongside the highway. So I just started walking home on the side of the train tracks so that I wouldn’t get lost. God, it was a long, hot walk in those heels. Obviously, I didn’t get the job.

  I was so depressed afterward. As kids we used to have a saying: We didn’t feel like shit, we felt like the ground that shit fell on. I didn’t know how to make it stop. I was so lost. I felt like I couldn’t figure out why I was even born. I kept chanting in my head John Lennon songs, the ones that made it possible to stand and continue, like “Across the Universe.” I sang it to myself all the time, because it had a prayer in it and it would help me to free my mind instead of agonizing over my life.

  I had so many almost-jobs while living in West Hempstead, but finally I started working at Burt’s Shoes at the Roosevelt Field Mall. That was steady for a while. I actually thought I did a good job at times. I met a young woman who worked there too, who was tall and pretty. I remember she told me once that the best way not to get pregnant after sex was to douche, which was actually the opposite of what you should do. She also taught me how to steal from a department store by putting the clothes underneath my own. She explained to me that it was a big department store and no one would really get hurt too badly.

  At that time, I couldn’t make enough money to buy a coat for the winter. I never had enough money to buy something and eat and pay rent, too. Getting through to the end of the month was a struggle. I couldn’t keep asking my mom for money, either, because she didn’t have much, and there wasn’t anyone else I could ask. So the first thing I stole was a coat. It was around Christmas and very cold. And then I stole a dress for Wha and a skirt for Elen. I just figured, the hell with it, but I felt bad doing it. I had never stolen before (and I never have since).

  Three weeks before Christmas at the mall, the Christmas crèche went up. I always loved Christmas, and a crèche to me was like a big Christmas ornament. I couldn’t wait to walk around it. And when I saw the baby Jesus, I thought I’d buy him a big chrysanthemum for his birthday. So during a lunch break the next day, I went to the florist at the mall and bought a big mum and walked up to the statue of the baby and laid down the flower in front of him. I went by every day to see the baby and to see if the flower was still there.

  It was there for two weeks without any water and it looked as fresh as the day I laid it down. I wasn’t sure if someone else had changed it from time to time, but I decided to take it as a sign—take it as another little miracle that could happen right under people’s noses. It was as if that little group in the crèche was telling me that someone was watching over me and that someday, everything would work out. As my life took on changes, I never forgot that little miracle. And every time I passed a crèche around Christmastime I would stop and sing quietly for the little group. Sometimes I would stop in front of people’s houses if they had a crèche and I think my neighbors thought I was nuts. I was, a little. I think I just took the “little drummer boy” song too far. And I think it scared folks too, so I wouldn’t recommend it. But sometimes, I remember it when I’m singing onstage, an
d I sing to the little crèche again in my head.

  When I didn’t have big things happening for me—especially then—I would just try to find some happiness in the little things. So if I was cleaning or straightening or whatever, I’d try to stay exactly in the moment and enjoy the little joys of doing the task. I believed, at that time, that everything was alive and had a vibration—even a cup or a table. And when I was sad and had no hope, I’d think, “Well, you can either stew in your sadness, or you could say, ‘Oh, look at this, isn’t this beautiful.’” And that’s how I lived. I don’t always remember to do that now.

  I saw this black woman once in Jamaica—Jamaica, Queens, I mean—when I was still living at home. She was going to work and I was just wandering, coming from the only place girls could buy decent jeans, a men’s shop, and not wanting to go home. I was just looking at the sky and thinking how pretty it was, and I looked at her because she was looking too, and she smiled and said, “That’s the Lord.” I thought that was beautifully put. I had started to read about different religions at that time and that’s kind of what held me together, too. I tried to teach myself not to want anything.

  So I continued to not eat much when I was at Elen and Wha’s. We still never had enough to really go around. But like I said before, I also hadn’t been drinking water, so I got a serious kidney infection and had to go to the hospital. I wound up at Hempstead General, which I thought was an awful hospital. They never came in to check on anything, so basically I was a pain in the ass because I was never a silent sufferer. There was an old lady in the bed across from me who had told me that she’d had almost everything removed from her and that there wasn’t much else left to take. When she heard me wisecracking to the nurse, she looked at me and said, “Listen, kid, nobody likes a wise guy.” So I tried to listen to her because I kind of liked her. At night she would talk to dead people and I thought maybe she didn’t have much time. So why upset her?

  Then they brought a priest in. Yeah, well, that set me off. I wasn’t sure if he was there to do an exorcism or what, but I made the priest give me communion. He said, “Have you anything to confess?” I looked at him and said, “No, because I don’t think I sinned.” I knew I had him on a technicality; he had to give me the host, which really pissed him off. I think maybe I was still mad about when my sister and I were asked to leave Catholic grade school the first time, when I was in the third grade and Elen was in the sixth.

  While living at the West Hempstead apartment, I met this fellow named Phil. I slept with him, and I liked him, but I was scared. Like I said, I was frightened of everything. I was eighteen—a kid. Phil was twenty-four, and I felt like sometimes there was nothing to talk about. I was too scared to say anything anyway. But he must have liked me because he kept asking me to move in with him.

  I was always hoping to find a romantic partner. I would hook up with people thinking, “Okay, this guy?” I know it’s a weird way to think. I guess I’ve thought that way since I was a flower girl at my godmother’s wedding. I was four and thought I was marrying the ring-bearer boy. Of course that didn’t work out for me because he didn’t like to dance. Anyway, Phil and I wound up getting a place together. This was the era of free love, and I believed in that, because of the love part. I thought we might be married one day as freethinking people—kind of like John and Yoko. Unfortunately, like the ring boy at my godmother’s wedding, it didn’t work out.

  I was never any good at what Phil wanted. I was reading how John and Yoko were on a macrobiotic diet. So I made adzuki beans and brown rice and sesame-seed shrimp with miso sauce, while Phil would have really liked meat and potatoes. Phil wanted me just to cook and clean, and to stop spending time drawing all day and be like a wife, but with no strings attached. I thought, “Okay, a grown-up life without the complications of marriage.” And then I would play guitar and sing and he’d say, “You know, you’re very good but you’ll never make it. There’s so many people who want to do the same thing and somebody’s got to clean the fish.” Well, that was kind of the big gong for Phil as far as I was concerned. And again, what he said didn’t deter me. I never really cared who thought I was good or who thought I sucked. I would sit up and play anyway until people would tell me to please stop. I kind of understand that if you’re singing the same song over and over and over, just to get the inflections right, after a while anyone might say, “Cyn, can you please shut up?” But I never seemed to pay attention.

  And at this point, I’d come to realize that my parents’ dream for me was no longer mine. Even though I couldn’t figure out what that dream was, other than just to survive. Although I was grateful to them for carrying me on their shoulders, there came a point where I had to carry my own life. I was in a new phase. And I realized that if I was ever going to meet someone who would see me as an equal and who I’d be able to live with happily, I’d have to learn to live on my own and accept myself, so that someone else could accept me, too.

  Whenever I sang, it always felt like the division between the outside world and the inside world teetered on a very fine line. I was aware of what it felt like to look at life from the inside out and the outside in. It’s just part of my gift and I had rationalized myself out of it like most people who can do that do, and then I realized I needed to welcome it back in. I’ve always heard voices. I’m a singer, and I hear poems in my head—that’s how I write. I always thought I was crazy until a few years later my boyfriend Richie said to me that sometimes your gift can also be your curse. Not that I think it’s a curse, but if you don’t come to an understanding about how your brain works and use its strengths, then what could be a great gift does become a curse.

  On the one hand, feeling like I walked with one foot inside and one foot outside myself could be called crazy. But on the other hand, it could be called a much-needed perspective to create. It has been a great tool for me, whether I write or draw or sing or act or art-direct. Being in touch with your insides and understanding how to see from the outside gives you a broader view—what people now call “thinking outside the box.” As a dear friend of mine, Bob Barrell, said (you’ll hear more about him in a minute), I would become a student of life.

  After my job at the Roosevelt Field Mall, I worked at a racetrack. I was a hot walker. It’s just what it sounds like: You walk the horses down when they’re hot. I had never been around horses before, but it didn’t matter to me. It was a job and I love animals. I would sing to the horses, too, which would kind of calm them down. I’d sing Hare Krishna chants in their ears and walk shoulder to shoulder with them. And the sunrises over the track were really beautiful too. I thought the scenery was so stunning that I could have painted it. I thought at first that the job would be perfect for me, but the hours were hard, and the older men hated the young girls for taking their jobs away. Eventually, the older guys would spook the horses on me as I’d come into the shed row, and the last time a horse reared, I did a figure eight in the air on the end of the lead. That was enough for me. I didn’t go back and was fired.

  I was still living with Phil at that point, but it wasn’t going too good. I thought I loved him, and I felt betrayed when I realized he didn’t love me. Because the only reason I actually moved in with him was to be loved. And when we’d fight, he would always throw me down, sit on me, and say, “Can’t you hear?” I started to think, “This isn’t a good idea. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  At the time, I had been going to visit my friend and great teacher/mentor Bob Barrell. I had met him when I was flunking out of high school. It was after one of those more hopeless days that I found this unlikely ally, in an unlikely place—under the El in Richmond Hill/Ozone Park, Queens, on 106th Street. I was walking home and there, in a little storefront, were all these paintings in the window. They were beautiful and had a depth, soul, and passion to them. They didn’t just speak to me, they screamed to me, “Wake up!” These were pieces of genuine art in the vast, desolate landscape of those who were too busy struggling to exist to be bother
ed with culture. Next to one painting was a sign that said, ART SCHOOL, UPSTAIRS. So I went upstairs and met Bob. He wasn’t just a wonderful artist, he was a wonderful teacher. He taught me to paint, and he thought I had talent, and that gave me a newfound courage.

  He also taught me about history and politics and life. He gave me a glimpse of who I could be. He had a whole gaggle of misfits that came to class on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Who knew? I had thought I was all alone. He was a great philosopher and talked to me about things that I never learned in school—about Gandhi and Martin Luther King and civil disobedience and Thoreau. So I’d go back and visit him, and we’d paint and talk.

  Bob put a name to what was going on around me. He would say that the struggling masses were a “product of misery.” He said that misery begets misery unless we break the chain. And that’s where the title of the song “Product of Misery” that I wrote all those years later, on my album Hat Full of Stars, came from.

  I told Bob about how Phil used to go camping with my other friends, but that I couldn’t ever go, because I didn’t have any equipment. But Phil didn’t know that I took two unemployment checks that I got after I left the hot walker job and bought camping equipment, because I thought, “Fuck it, they don’t ever take me camping, I’m going to go camping and I’m going to leave him.” Then I got some friends to help me move out on Phil, so that he couldn’t try to hold me down and shake me or whatever.

  Bob helped me work out what I was going to do. He said I could go to Canada, to a provincial park, and do a tree study. Everyone was hitchhiking in those days, and I could live on an apple and a dollar a day. So that night we knelt on Bob’s kitchen floor with the map opened up, and he helped me draw out where I was going in Canada and how I was going to do it.