Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir Read online

  I told my sister, Elen, about my trip, and she thought it was a good idea. She had been going through a rough time herself. I thought then, even though at the time I would never have said it, that she loved Wha. (Elen’s gay, but she felt pressure to act straight then and was living with a fellow named Mitch.)

  So off I went to the airport with my dog Sparkle. I was eighteen and I had never flown anywhere before. Beforehand I brought Sparkle to the vet to make sure she could make the trip. The doctor said the dog would be fine but asked if I would be okay. I thought I’d be fine, so I put Sparkle in a crate with some sleeping pills and told her I’d see her on the other side. I had never camped in my whole entire life, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let fear stop me. I had a backpack on filled with camping equipment and canned food for both human and dog. I had some charcoal drawing sticks and drawing pads, a Bunsen burner, jeans and T-shirts, a pup tent, and a sleeping bag tied to the bottom of the backpack. I guess I just never travel light. But those were the things Bob said I’d need. I paid $125 for that ticket and an ax—because I’d have to chop wood. I had a window seat and got a tuna sandwich, too. I thought it was delicious, and the stewardess was very pleasant. I was living large!

  When I landed in Toronto, I went to get Sparkle. There she was, barking her head off. The poor thing must not have cared for the ride. I would never do that to a dog anymore, now that I know how cold it is where she was in the plane. Then I went to customs, and a lady said, “Anything to declare?” I had a crumpled pack of Marlboros in my pocket and I said, “Nothing but these.” I was promptly sent to a more intense customs check, because nobody likes a wise guy, as the lady in the hospital told me.

  There they asked about my trip. I told them I was an art student going to the Algonquin Provincial Park to do a tree study for about two weeks. I guess I was a sight. With my dog in tow, I had on the red-brown suede jacket I had stolen from the department store in Roosevelt Field the year before, and a floppy red-brown suede hat that I flipped up so that I could see. I wore green jeans and a yellow T-shirt and some walking boots that tied at the ankle (so that I wouldn’t turn it when I was up in the park, which is what the man who sold them to me said).

  I was so excited and scared all at once, I could barely hear what the other customs man was saying because I could hardly wait to finally go camping. I thought about all those times that Phil said I couldn’t go because I had no camping equipment, and now I was going camping big-time. And I was going without him and his friends—I was going as the artist I had always felt I was, the one trying to live and make ends meet in a nonartistic world. I had always struggled to live in a world whose language I couldn’t speak and didn’t want to know. In that world, everything about me was wrong.

  I was going over and over in my head the plan that Bob Barrell drew out on that map that led to Algonquin Park, my destination. I was to take Thoreau’s Walden with me and read it. It was part of my assignment. It was what he called “walking on the path as a student of life.” On that path, it didn’t matter if I was different or stupid or lost, because I was going to find myself on my terms. That day, at the border of Canada, I was on my way to find out who, and what, I was.

  My plan was that Elen was going to wire me my unemployment check while I was in Canada, which would give me enough money to eat and to stay at youth hostels. But at the moment, all I had in my pocket was twenty-five dollars, and the customs agents said I’d need more than that to enter the country. They suggested I call my parents and ask them to front the money. So I called my dad. My poor dad didn’t understand why I had to do the things I did. When I called he said, “What are you doing in Canada? And why are you there in the first place?” He couldn’t afford to front the money, and I think he felt I’d stiff him anyway. I wouldn’t have, but everyone in my family thought I was trouble walking.

  When my father couldn’t help me, I was a little heartbroken.

  I tried to explain it to the customs agents but then I just started to cry a little. The funny thing about that group of customs agents was that when they heard how I had planned it and what I would do, they were rooting for me. They began to try and figure out how I could still do this tree study. My recollection of Canadians is how kind they were to me when I had nothing and I was nobody. I’ll never forget it. They allowed me to come in and told me, “Listen, get some bug spray because it’s June, which is blackfly season.” Another told me where to go in Toronto for a youth hostel. Then they wished me luck and let me go. I was in love with Canada.

  Then I hitchhiked to the park. It was so wild. When you’re in the woods and you don’t know anything, you do everything stupid. Like I brushed my teeth and spit in the water. I didn’t know. Somebody who was canoeing past me gave me such a dirty look. Okay, the spitting in the water: not good. When I built a campfire, I remembered how my sister and I used to watch the Smokey the Bear “Careless Camper” commercial and reenact it under our kitchen table. We’d take turns being Smokey the Bear and the Careless Camper and light a fire, then recite, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” Then my mother would come home and ask us about the new dark spot under the table, and I’d say, “I don’t know what that is, maybe you should use Comet.” I’m glad that before I left for Canada, Wha taught me how to build a proper fire pit.

  I was scared, but the one thing I always felt was that I wasn’t alone. I felt like I had some protective force with me. I drew, I wrote poems, I acted out things, I made myself laugh. At one point I bent down in front of a little tree and said, “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as this tree.” Stupid things. I could do that because I was by myself and it didn’t matter.

  I was there for maybe two weeks. I wanted to find myself. Like I said, I felt that I would never find anyone who would understand me if I didn’t understand myself, so I needed to make this journey. It’s kind of dangerous in the end, when you think about it. There wasn’t a spot on me or poor ol’ Sparkle that wasn’t bit by blackflies. I don’t know how the hell I lived (although I was carrying that ax with me and would have killed somebody if they fuckin’ came at me). It was an interesting time. That was still at the end of the whole hippie thing. There still were people who were gentle souls.

  I don’t know how I got from the campground back to Toronto, but when I did, I met a guy there who had a bus and he was going to drive down to New York. It was a magic bus, like a hippie bus. A few people were going, so I figured I’d go, too. On our way there, he stopped at the Saint Lawrence River and we all got out. And I took off my shirt because in my whole life I had never had the wind blowing on my chest like a man. I thought, “Wow, that’s what it feels like to be that free.” Then I put my shirt back on and met a fisherman in the Saint Lawrence River. He taught me how to clean and fillet a fish. That came in handy later on. Then we got back on the magic bus with everybody and we drove to New York.

  CHAPTER THREE

  IN NEW YORK CITY, I visited my sister, saw some old friends, and wound up coming back home to my mother, who had divorced her second husband. That was one of the great things about my mom. She always said, “You could come riding in on horseback—you’re still my kids.” I took her at her word. I didn’t exactly ride a horse back home, but I’m sure my outfit made just as strong an impression.

  My mom didn’t just get a divorce, she was moving away from the house she and I grew up in. It was a little traumatic and freeing all at once. She found a place on Ninetieth Street. It was a little bit of a fixer-upper. My younger brother, Fred (who we called Butch), was still living at home too. I got a bedroom, and my brother was staying in what would have been the living room, as is usually the case for folks without a lot of means. So our bedrooms were right next to each other. Yikes! No privacy. It was kind of like college. We also lived with Ralph, my mom’s one-day-to-be-third husband. Because Ralph was in construction, there was always a project to be finished, which is always the case for folks who like a fixer-upper opportunity (my mom loved that).
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  I also saw Phil, who decided he wanted to get back together. He said, “You made your point. You can come back to live with me now.” I thought, “Are you kidding me? You didn’t love me, and actually, from a distance, I realized that I didn’t love you, and I can’t live your kind of life.” I had been through so much that I just felt free of it and stronger—although I didn’t really have a plan beyond that. I took the dog to the Village and panhandled for money. I always panhandled. You know: “Can you spare some change?” Sometimes people would tell me to sell my dog. I didn’t care what anybody said. You’ve gotta understand, it didn’t matter to me, because I had had horrible things happen to me before. You’re going to give me money? Good. You’re not going to give me money and you’re going to insult me as you walk by? Fine.

  I had my guitar, so I used to busk, too, but I only knew how to play two Joni Mitchell songs—“Carey” and “This Flight Tonight”—because I tuned the guitar to them, and once it was tuned, that was it. I got a couple of dollars, which is all I needed (although it would have been great if I had a bigger repertoire). Some guy came up to me one time and gave me two dollars and said, “This is for your second album—remember me then.”

  After Phil, I met a guy named Richie, who used to date my sister’s friend. Then he hit on my sister, and then me. I said, “Hey, Richie, not for nothing, but that ain’t gonna happen. We’re friends.” He was a terrific illustrator but a troubled soul. We decided to hitch to Massachusetts to find a place where I could live. I couldn’t live in New York by myself because I was eighteen, and you have to be twenty-one to sign your own lease, and if my father wasn’t going to give me money, he was not going to cosign a lease. So Richie and I headed to Massachusetts, and we would set up camp and sleep in the woods along the way. We were sitting by the fire one time and he said to me, “You know what? You shouldn’t spell your name ‘Cindy,’ you should spell it C-Y-N-D-I.” So I did.

  Then we kept going, to Vermont. Sometimes I would have dreams before things happened, and a long time before we got to Vermont, I had one where I saw Jesus in a field with my dog Sparkle. Jesus was opening his arms and smiling, and the dog was jumping all around in the grass. When we got to Vermont, my dog ran down a hill and there was this field and she was jumping around in it, and the only thing that was missing was Jesus with his arms open. Vermont was so beautiful. It looked like a nature show, or like Walt Disney Presents. I had never seen anything like it, so I stayed.

  But Richie had to leave when we arrived in Vermont, and I was on my own. I went to a youth hostel in Burlington. When the other kids in the hostel heard me approaching, they would say, “Here comes New York.” They didn’t like my accent. I met some people who said they would help me, and they enrolled me in this program to establish myself in an apartment. They put me on welfare and got me a job. First, I was a mother’s helper. The people were very nice and had these two little boys. They bought an old farm but had this modern house, and they had two cows, but they were pets. They had a room for me in the basement, and that’s where Sparkle and I lived.

  I tried to be what the lady wanted, and the two little boys were all right, but one day she gave a party for one of her sons, and twelve kids came over. The father had given the kid a tractor, and the kids piled into the large shovel attached to the front, and the son was driving them around. While this was happening, my dog was running back and forth, and it was making me nervous. I kept telling the kid to watch out for my dog. I went to the mother and told her things were getting a little out of control, and she said, “That’s your job, isn’t it?”

  Well, the five-year-old kid driving the tractor ran over the dog. I couldn’t believe it. I loved that dog. We slept together. We lived together. She was my family. The tractor ran right over her ribs. The father and a friend of his drove me to the vet and they talked about how they lost their dogs. I’m thinking, “Nice, can we see what the vet says first, you silly old goats?” We took her to the doctor, who said, “Listen, if she lives through the night, she’ll live.” I was really shaken up. They brought me back to my cellar and that night I had another dream, that I saw the Blessed Mother, only this one didn’t look anything like I was taught. She had a kind face, and freckles, and sandy hair. She was smiling at me, and the dog was there, too, and there was a rainbow in the sky, just like there had really been earlier. It was as if she was superimposed over the scene from that day. It was a great comfort to see her in my dream. Growing up as a Catholic, Mary and Jesus are kind of like your secret friends who you can call in times of trouble. And the next morning when I woke up, I got the news that the dog lived, so it was a miracle.

  I quit the job—big surprise—took the dog, and left. Eventually I got another job and an apartment in Burlington, but I was so lonesome. I remember when it was Christmastime, I kept hearing that Joni Mitchell song “River” bleed out of the bars on Church Street. You know the one: “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees.” I was so sad, and I met this guy in a bar. He seemed to be a kindred soul, and he came back to South Burlington with me. We began seeing each other, and soon enough he was moving in. My feeling was, “Okay, whatever.” (Remember, it was the seventies.) We both used to paint, but his paintings were so raw that they were almost childlike. I thought it was like van Gogh. He wasn’t working, but I had recently found a job, after I went to the welfare office and said, “Can you just give me a job, please?” I really did not want to be on welfare.

  They got all excited and brought me to this one man at the office, who asked me what I’d like to do. I told him I wanted to be a painter. He said that if I lived in South Burlington for a certain amount of time, I would be able to apply for a grant and go to school. In the meantime, I’d have to work. He asked me what sort of things I liked, and I said animals. So he got me a job at a kennel/pound. I used to love to work in the pound more than the kennel because those dogs were so much more loving and sweet, and appreciated everything. I loved those animals so much. The woman who owned the place used to like to put them to sleep (she had this weird thing going on). Whenever I would see that she was coming to put one to sleep, I’d take the dog for a walk. Then she kind of got wise and killed them on my day off. There was one dog that I just loved. He had a broken leg, and I nursed him back to health. I named him after an actor called Herschel Bernardi. He was very funny. He used to run around all the time and the owner would catch him. Well, the last time she caught Herschel, she put that poor dog to sleep, too.

  I tried to get my boyfriend work at the kennel, because they wanted some help. Then one day the owner came to me with her husband, and they sat me down. He said, “Cyn, listen, I did some checking on your friend. You know that he got a discharge from the army because he had a mental breakdown, right? You know those childlike pictures of his? There’s a reason for them.”

  I was like, “Ooohhh.” It made sense. There were times when I would talk to him and he was very quick to get angry over nothing. And when I asked him to leave, he got a little weird with me. He was very upset and was yelling while I was helping him pack. He was still yelling when I was helping him to move his stuff into his car, and then he pushed me into the Christmas tree. I got up and continued to help him, and when he finally got out, I locked the door. Because I grew up seeing violence, I remained calm.

  I went through a lot in that apartment. I had no television, no stereo, nothing. I was still a kid, and I was alone. A lot of times I couldn’t take it anymore, so I just lay in bed all the time. When I really couldn’t deal with anything, I used to get the shakes, just complete anxiety attacks. When they happened, I’d hold myself and try to talk myself down. I’d say to myself, “You’ll be okay—take a deep breath.” Then, if I was feeling like I really needed to feel protected, I would empty out the cupboard underneath the sink and crawl under there. I’d stay in there because it was enclosed, and slowly I would begin to feel better. Because I was alone, I’d allow myself to do things that had they been done in front of other
people, they would have said, “Whoo, she is crazy.”

  Sometimes I would sit in a closet if I felt really fearful, and I’d tell myself, “Okay, now you’re sitting in a closet—good. Go ahead, sit anywhere you want in the whole apartment. It’s your apartment. Wait until you feel better, then come out. If you want to sit in that chair over there, sit wherever you want until you feel better. If you can’t handle it, and you want to get into bed, stay in bed. When you feel better, get up and try again.” That’s how I got better: I allowed myself to fall apart.

  One of those days when I stayed in bed all day and all night, I woke up in the middle of the night and saw an angel in my head. He was sitting at a desk with a big fat book and he was showing me the scene of a courtroom. My mother was in it and she was crying. Then a mean judge told me that I judged my mother too harshly. The angel was sweet looking, with wings and curly blond hair. I looked over his desk to read the book and in the pages, I saw myself just lying on the ground with chariots running over me.

  As time went on, I got really sick. Apparently, the guy with the mental breakdown had given me hepatitis. He had been throwing up a lot, but I was used to cleaning up puke because I always cleaned the vomit from the dogs. Hepatitis was going around in Burlington that year. I went to work anyway but got very, very sick one day when I was there and they had an ambulance come. They took me away in a stretcher. I was so tired but I could feel Krishna inside of my body as a young boy showing me how to rest, and I knew it would be all right. When I got to the hospital, I was told I had hepatitis. As I lay in my hospital bed with an IV in my arm, I heard the nurses talking and one of them said, “How did she get hepatitis?” And the other nurse turned around and said, “An affair.” All of a sudden I felt like I was in a Bette Davis movie—I had an affair. I called my dad and he was going away on his honeymoon with his new wife. “Poor thing,” he told me. “Please call your mom.” It’s not like anyone could really help me; I was fine, I was in the hospital.