The Worst Humiliatin of My Professional Life

I walked right into it, and had no one to blame but myself.

After the dissolution of my second serious performing band, The Pits (whose lamentable name derived from my song You’re the Pits, inspired by Cole Porter’s You’re the Top), I contacted Rolling Stone, which was pretty pleased about my willingness to write for them again. I suggested a profile of a gloriously original young comedian I’d first seen on Saturday Night Live, Andy Kaufman. They liked my piece, and published it. I felt pretty self-confident again.

Listening back to my interview with Andy, it occurred to me, when I heard that he was about to join the cast of the popular sitcom Taxi, that I might be able to wring a second piece out of it. I sent it to Oui, at the time a slightly hipper version of Playboy, for slightly younger readers. Finally I heard back from Oui editor Peter Something, who said he’d rather see the magazine go out of business than publish my little piece. I thought that was a little harsh.

A few months went by. Rolling Stone ceased to be fond of me, and no one else seemed in any great hurry to publish my work, but I was years away from realizing that I’m a better graphic designer than writer, and that I enjoy the work more, so I kept writing to editors. Things were very different in those days before email. If you were a freelance writer who hoped to write for a particular magazine, you schlepped down to the photocopy shop with a mittful of your clippings, copied ‘em, mailed the copies to an editor, waited to hear from him or her, didn’t hear from him or her, phoned him or her, and was advised that he or she was in a meeting, but would get back to you. A guy from Oui, of all places, finally invited me to come in and talk about what I might write for him. I was thrilled to the marrow.

When I turned up, though, Mr. Ed Dwyer’s secretary advised me that the great man had decided to go to lunch with several of his fellow editors. When I told her we had an appointment, she frowned at me and phoned him at the restaurant. If I wanted, I could come find him there.

I should have asked her to give him a note inviting him to eat my shorts, but boy, was I desperate, and boy, did I want to write for Oui, so I trundled sighingly over to the restaurant, where I discovered that Mr. Ed Dwyer and his colleagues — among them the sneering Peter Something — were a bunch of giggling preppie potheads. Over 30 years after the fact, I kick myself for shaking Something’s hand rather than unzipping my Chemin de Fer leather-look jeans and peeing all over his salad.