NO STINKIN AUTOGRAPHS!

 

NO STINKIN AUTOGRAPHS!

by Teak Kilmer

circa 1999

 

“Wow!  That is powerful!  I want a copy!  May I have a copy?”

“Sure.” 

“I’ll be right back.  I’ll just go make a copy”

Pacing while I wait for Faruk Abuzzahab, MD, PhD to return to his, my psychiatrist’s office.  He returns, flips the poem around, places it on his desk that is on the pile of books and papers nearest to me on his desk and says, “Sign it for me, please.” 

I do, and I soon leave after I’ve told him there’s another one I just wrote, similar topic, more humorous. 

“Be sure you bring it next time.” 

“Yah, I’m intending to publish” I say.

Seven and quarter hours later I realize I’ve just given out my autograph, then asked for and gave my autograph.  I’ve never sought an autograph, not from Jerry Lewis or Joe DiMaggio that I introduced myself to at 14 years of age (got Jerry’s picture – clown pose) and dove into DiMaggio in the pool at the Traymore Hotel in Atlantic City.  I also met Nelson Rockefeller, Peter Jennings (major news network anchor), Lee Marvin (in his cups, just like in Cat Ballou), Betty White, Chill Wills, Emilio Estevez, Ben Stiller, and many others including Tony Curtis (told him the Bernie Schwartz joke ─ twice, ‘cuz he forgot it even though Bernie Schwartz is his real name, but drugs and twenty-five years later, well you know; I think he’ll not forget it again, he’s sober now).

I also didn’t ask for autographs from Brooks Robinson, a hall of fame shortstop (called “The Vacuum Cleaner”), even though I was his host and guide for a full evening, nor from Nina Simone at a Cornell University concert; at the cast party, I asked her to dance, and we did, and wrote a poem about it. There was Brock Peters who played “Crown” in Porgy and Bess.   I followed him into the men’s room at the Village Gate in Greenwich Village and sidled up next to him at the adjacent urinal and started talking. 

There was Paul Williams, Robert Bly, Garrison Keillor (he gave me his home address to mail an anti Iraq war poem of mine ─ I lost his address).  There was also Richard Nixon and I got his whole entourage including him to break up in laughter; a friend took a picture of this and I taped an enlarged print to the inside of the top of my toilet seat along with a note to pee where you will.  I saw Louis Armstrong in his shorts at the Johnson City Pavilion in New York.

There are more that I can’t recall at the moment but you get the drift ─ I didn’t need no stinkin’ autographs.  The memories and stories have been worth much more.