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.So listen up, amigos and socios,Yvonne.Willie, as I told you from the time you were yo high, and Ican never tell you enough: lies, distortions, half-truths, and criticalomissions are the glue to all relationships.Then he hits on Yvonne. Yvonne, yum, Yvonne, you look nice.There s so many things I could ve done to your Bosco candy-coatedthighs.And he blows Willie away in front of everybody. I love you, but you re a big disappointment.I m sorry, but youare.I couldn t make you a man.The war couldn t make you a man.What makes you think in your wildest dreams that this poor sixteen-year-old titty-bopper s got a shot?Nobody in the family is really surprised that Felix is being sucha dick to his own son.In his taped speech, Javier tells his dad,  If Icould have an orgasm, then I could have a family, and if I could havea family I wouldn t fuck it up like you did.I know you re ashamed ofme.But I m more ashamed of you. But don t worry about old Javier.I always got along without yousomehow.I dance in my thoughts.I play basketball in my mind.And I get off in my dreams.See, Dad, everybody gets their discountdreams.Discount dreams.That s the key to what makes Felix such a bit-ter, mean, angry fuck of a dad and husband.The harsh realities of theworld have totally beaten him up.Like my dad when I was a kid thewould-be movie director, reduced to making ends meet and rais-ing a family as an immigrant in Queens.My dad s relaxed a lot andmade his peace with the world since then.My brother even refuses tobelieve how nice and affectionate my dad is with my kids.Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends 111* You have to get that on video, he says. I don t believe it.Luckily, neither my mom nor my dad knew that Gladyz and Felixwere versions of them.There were too many brothers, it was a Laun-dromat instead of their little real estate empire, so they didn t recog-nize themselves in it.Whew.My mom eventually figured it out later.and she wept.And then when she saw the mom in Freak she wasmad as hell at me.I changed their names, but it s still Mom and Dadand I m still John, so it seemed a lot more openly autobiographical.Which it was.Years later, she s still mad at me about Freak.Just lastMother s Day somebody unfortunately brought it up again.She dhad a couple of drinks and started complaining. That s not true! That s not me!I said,  Who do you think it is?She flapped her hands. I don t know! Some floozy you met inyour travels maybe, Mr.Big Shots.I said,  But what about the part where  Okay, that part s true but not the rest of it!It was Mother s Day, so I didn t pursue it.We ve been having thatfight for years, how much of Freak is true.I mean, I can understandwhy they re mad at me.Even though I was very careful to bill Freak as a semi-demi-quasi-pseudo-autobiography, it s the first show whereit s obviously John Leguizamo telling stories about his real family.Isay it s my interpretation of things as I remember them, and leave itat that.Okay, I know what you re thinking.A shrink would have afield day with a case like me.As a kid, he s completely dominatedby his autocratic, hyperworkaholic, womanizing dad, who abandonsthe family when the son s a vulnerable adolescent.The son grows upwith this domineering father figure looming over him.He s alwaystrying to impress him, but nothing he ever does is good enough.It s always good, and not so good.So the son is driven to become112 JOHN LEGUIZAMO*a perfectionist and a control freak.As an adult, he seeks the powerand control over his life and his family, which he could never haveas a kid.Since he s an actor and a writer, one way he can have thatcontrol, at least symbolically, is by becoming his family on stage.Onstage, he s got complete power over them all.They do and say exactlywhat he wants them to.Oh man, am I really that fucked up? No wonder my family gets somad at me.I mean, when you think about it that way, my shows add up to onebig Freudian slip.A Freudian pratfall.I m like the Charlie Chaplin ofdysfunctional-family comedy.The title Spic-O-Rama pissed a lot of people off, too.I caught a lotof shit for it.It comes from something Miggy says.He s telling aboutwhen he and Ivan were at the Fresh Air Fund summer camp andthey invented a game called  spit basketball, where everybody had tospit in a bucket and the first person to get twenty-one won. Miggybeats this big white kid at it, and the kid yells,  Get out of my country,you stupid ugly spic!Miggy stares at him and says,  Yes, yes, yes, I am a spic.I m.I m spic-tacular! I m spic-torious! I m indi-spic-able!.Our wholefamilies must be spic-sapiens mondongo-morphs, and when we havepicnics together it s a spic-nic. He and Ivan promise each other thattheir lives will be  nothing less than a Spic-O-Rama!That story came straight out of me growing up in Queens.I grewup with a lot of white-trash kids, Irish kids, Italian kids, whatever.I didn t have a choice.The spics hadn t yet moved in in sufficientnumbers to chase all the honkies away.Normally it wouldn t be anissue.We d all just be playing together, hanging out together.Butthen something would go down, some kid would get pissed off aboutsomething, and suddenly it was,  You fucking spics! Get out of ourneighborhood.Go back to where you came from. Things they heardPimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends 113*from their parents, I guess, about how the fucking spics were bring-ing down the neighborhood.Like we were holding their arms so theycouldn t paint their damn houses.Stealing their pens so they couldn tfill out a job application.Get real [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]