One day while shooting, Clay Aiken, Arsenio Hall, Lou Ferrigno and I were sneaking out of Trump International Hotel behind a laundry truck, to hide from the imaginary paparazzi. We’re all sub-stars, and we’d all been in showbiz for a while, so we were used to being walked in through the kitchen so the paying customers wouldn’t see the show folk. There were a few others with us, but I was trying to shock you with that opening foursome. Dee Snider, from Twisted Sister, was with us too. It was November in New York City, but in TV phony- baloney world it was March. I had been up since five a.m. for makeup, and a few days before I’d had a heart-to- heart talk with Clay. I would have preferred waterboarding. I don’t like heart-to-heart talks with anyone, but Clay Aiken? Strap me to the board, and put the wet towels over my face. Drowning sounds nice. Clay had put his arm on my shoulder, looked in my eyes and said softly something like, “You know, Penn, I really like you, I do. I think you’re really smart, but I have to talk to you about some things that are bothering me.” Clay told me, gently and kindly, that I was being condescending by talking over people’s heads. He was accusing me of being condescending and he was being… condescending. When someone is busting you for being condescending, it takes a bigger asshole than me to say, “Are you sure you know what ‘condescending’ means? It means to talk down to, not talk over someone’s head. So, you see, honey, I’m not condescending, I’m pompous, let me explain…”
So, I nodded, yeah, I’m condescending. Greed and clawing for fame got me to the point where I was pretending to care what Clay Aiken thought of me. What have I done?
Clay spent over an hour and a half of his time, and wasted much more than that of mine, having a heart-to- heart with me over how he, Clay Aiken, thought I should treat Lou Ferrigno. He wasn’t talking about how Clay Aiken thought I should treat Clay Aiken, about which I would have had to work hard to give a flying fuck. Clay was talking to me about how he, Clay Aiken, thought I should treat the guy who played a cartoon character painted green, decades ago. He also told me to stop using the word “groovy.” This from a man who uses the word “bitch.” I like the word “groovy.” I don’t like the word “bitch.” After our talk, I went back to the hotel, called my wife and talked to her about being upset about my talk with Clay Aiken. One’s wife could bring home a couple of her sexy MILF friends for a very special sex birthday party and one could be unable to get a hard-on and then pee all over oneself and start crying like a little girl while chewing egg salad on soft bread with one’s mouth open, and it would disgust one’s wife less than talking about one’s heart-to-heart talk with Clay Aiken. She’s a very understanding woman.
If you’ve gotten yourself into a situation when Clay Aiken is going to talk about his feelings with you… and if your cock is bigger than a cashew, it’s time to kill yourself. If it weren’t being documented, you could kill him quickly and bury him in a shallow grave—who’s going to notice? You could go on living your happy normal life, but if there are TV cameras pointed at you while Clay is pretending to soul search, and your wife is going to find out and some of your friends from the carny might watch the show in a bar somewhere, well… you should kill yourself.
It is a tribute to having the greatest parents in the world, my wonderful wife and children, and to having character rammed into me by my third-grade teacher that I’m still alive to write this now. Clay was explaining to me how I could live my life in a way that would please him, while we sat on an upper floor of Trump Towers and the door to the balcony was unlocked. I could have jumped. As the cameras shot us, Clay looked directly in my eyes like he was showing compassion for an autistic child while he knew he was on a reality TV show. He was playing compassionate, smart and practical in the face of this big loud aggressive guy. Then he used the word “bully” against me (that word was used a lot during that episode), referring to how I dealt with Lou Ferrigno. Lou had called me a “fat motherfucker” and hit me, and hurt me, several times as he pretended to greet me and show me affection but really as he showed me how strong he was. Lou said that his roughness with me was proof that he liked me. I said, “Then don’t like me.” I sure believed it was affection. He would swear that he never hit me and he wouldn’t be lying. What he considering greeting, I consider battery. I’m a pussy. I hate that jock hugging hitting thing. It’s why I became a theater guy. Lou explained to me that “no kidding” he was trained in combat and could kill me in three seconds. Clay explained how I should deal with Ferrigno. Clay said that he knew how to deal with Lou because Clay himself had worked for years with intellectually disabled students before he discovered himself on
You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what I was thinking as Clay’s perpetually half-closed, unfocused eyes met mine and he placed his “comforting” hand on my shoulder. I was thinking,
How long is an hour? When my wife and I decided to get married and have children, the conversation took forty-five minutes. On my mother’s deathbed, the honest “I love you”s took a half hour. The decision for Teller to quit his tenured classics teaching job and spend the rest of his life working with me took ten minutes. This “good TV” heart-to-heart with the second place winner of a talent show took over an hour. An hour during which the people I really loved, my mom, my wife and Teller, were being spit and pissed on by my hearing out Clay on camera about something completely unimportant. I should have jumped. At least some of you might have respected that. No one respects me talking to Clay Aiken about feelings. Not even Clay. He was just doing it to win a TV game so he wouldn’t have to go back to condescending to mentally disabled children for a career.
What happened? Did I forget how to say “Shut the fuck up?” Or, “I’m sorry, I think I left the bathwater running in Las Vegas, and you know it’s the desert, there’s a water shortage.” Or, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English. I learned our Vegas shows phonetically.” Or, “Hey, Clay, there are more TV cameras on the other side of the room. Why don’t you have a heart-to-heart with Arsenio Hall? That might get you more close-ups.”
I owe my family and Teller my full attention no matter what tripe they want to babble, but those people never babble tripe. I owe Aiken jack shit, and yet I was letting him tell me how I should act. He’s not fit to eat shit off Teller’s shoes, and I gave him more time than I’ve ever given Teller? The time didn’t mean anything to Clay. He would have a heart-to-heart talk with a salmon if there were a chance it would be broadcast. If you’ll listen, he will talk. He’s used to having cameras around him all the time, and he knows how to create an improvised soap opera for TV. When he said he wanted me to treat people differently, I said “Okay” and I changed how I was. Everyone who was on the show or watched the show noticed that I took all his advice and changed how I acted. I did that instantly. I told him I’d do that in the first five minutes of our talk. He got that promise from me and I kept that promise—it’s on video. But he wasn’t telling me things to have me change. What I was doing didn’t matter; it was the talk itself he wanted to have on camera. He was gathering evidence and not actually talking. Crazy world this showbiz thang.
I try to have an honest relationship with my wife, so that night I called her and told her that I’d had a heart- to-heart with Clay Aiken. I could have told her that aliens had come down and given me intergalactic herpes on my asshole and she would have been more credulous and less disgusted.
So the morning after my heart-to-heart with Clay, I’m sneaking out of Trump International, as part of my quest to have my fake business abilities judged by Trump. I’ve run a very successful business for almost forty years and have always been in the black. Always. Teller and I never went bankrupt. We’ve paid all our bills and supported our families and the people who work with us. Before Clay Aiken touched me, I was a fucking artist.
I’m walking beside Dee Snider. We’ve got our hair and makeup done, and we still look like men in their fifties with long stupid hair. We get out of the loading dock, and there’s freezing rain and wind hitting us in the face. Dee had broken his finger falling off a horse, while dressed in drag, for a medieval dinner theater show in Jersey that I made him do when I was
Dee had nailed it. His broken finger had not beaten his real-world perspective, the way Clay’s heart-to-heart had broken mine. He still had some non-
