No U Turn. Michael Taylor

Boogie continued, “Then I go ahead and slip it in, so to speak, and I have never been inside a woman that has been larger and wetter and sloppier and needless to say—”

      ≈ But he’ll say it anyway! ≈

      “—I mean, here I had all this thing, and I’m not sure, but maybe she was just overexcited or something, but it was a big letdown anyway. So that was my 13 years of anticipation, all blown out in one inglorious moment. And Harriet and I have never seen each other again. So I just wanted to complete that whole story of how what we sometimes think in anticipation—that it sometimes doesn’t work out as nice as we had hoped. So, there we go! Philadelphia.”

      ≈ Let’s try this again: Tell me about your driving experiences ≈

      “Basically, we all taught ourselves how to drive. I started driving when I was 12 years old, obviously, illegally. We had a 1956 Buick Special; a big ol’ car back then. And here this was 1960 or so. I was 12 years old. In the middle of the night, one—, or 2 o’clock in the morning, with my younger brother Jay, we would go outside. Back then, we didn’t have carports or garages. They just had a driveway, a gravel driveway. So we would push the car out into the street without any engine going; then start the engine and go off. And then drive down to Miami Beach, or wherever, with some friends.

      “And here we were 12 years old, and I had an accident in which I had injured my right eye, and I was blind in my right eye, so my friends used to cover my left eye—my good eye—and have me try and drive basically blind,” recalled Boogie, amused, “which was a little bit crazy. Thank Goodness—”

      ≈ Trying to thank God again? So say it! ≈

      “—I had never had an accident or anything like that, but those were the earliest recollections about being twelve—, and 13 years old and sneaking out the old car. I’m sure everyone has done it.”

      ≈ Nooo, everyone has NOT done it! ≈

      “My brother Len … I learned behavior from him. And he had actually had an accident, one time, and it created a big hoopla. Back then, that was the worst thing you could do, have a car accident, and you know, and ‘My God!’ ‘The whole family will never be the same again!’ and ‘Lawyers,’ and so forth. So those were my earliest driving experiences.

      “A couple of years later, we were 14 and doing basically the same thing except now, here I was a big man, I had two years of driving experience, and so we were going down mostly to the Miami Beach area because: A. Those friends of ours had more money and were more fun to be around, and B. There were some great-looking chicks at Beach High.

      “And here we were 14, telling them we were 17 and trying to make dates and stuff with the girls and little do they know, I didn’t even have a legal driver’s license. Those were the earliest driving times—I mean, driving experiences … You can cover all kinds of crazy stuff if you want to.

      “Now, that kind of conjures up, here I am fourteen—, 15 years later in California, 1974, driving my 1967 Cadillac Deville convertible. And I don’t know if anybody’s familiar with the design—”

      ≈ Who is he talking to? Does he think this is a Late Night TV show? ≈

      “—but the headlights are headlight-over-headlight. And it looks like a shark coming at you. Well, it’s really more like a can opener. When you hit parked cars along the side of the road, you just rip’em right open! And, unfortunately, back in ’74 I was doing a lot of that,” Boogie admitted, “because I was driving under the influence of Quaaludes.” The latter said with a rising falsetto quality and a tinge of embarrassment.

      “So we did all kinds of stuff. I’ll never forget … one night we were … I’m going down this alley … in Hermosa Beach. And the beach area in California is different than everywhere else. It’s very tiny streets and alleys, with the houses all on top of the other and you could barely fit one car through. And then there’s cars parked on either side of the alley, so you had maybe four inches of clearance on each side. It’s tough enough to be able to do that when you’re sober, let alone when you’re not. So here it is one night about three o’clock in the morning and I’m NOT sober! And I’m bouncing off of cars coming down, and then I hit this one car and then basically couldn’t go any further. Then the lights come on in this apartment. I see some guy coming down the steps, and he tackles me out of the car and throws me on the ground. And to make a long story short, he was a cop! And basically arrested me that night.

      “And a good thing too, because I certainly would’ve destroyed more cars. So a lot of the driving experiences, unfortunately, hearken back to not so great memories and basically doing some pretty stupid things. Not too smart to drive when you’re …” was purposely left unfinished by Boogie, leaving others to accurately fill in the blank.

      ≈ When you’re Loaded? Or …

      When you’re High? ≈

      “The police in California had this pretty simple test for deciding whether you’re sober or not sober. They would ask for your license and registration, and when you were not able to produce your license out of your wallet—because you were so stoned that you couldn’t handle that simple task—they arrested you. I’ll never forget, when I read one of the police reports a day or so later, it said, ‘Failed to issue Field Sobriety Tests. Feared for subject’s safety.’ ”

      Boogie then summarized what he recalled by uttering words he may not have been capable of hearing at the time, let alone either understanding or accurately remembering all these years later.

      “So they just said,” Boogie went on in a gruff voice, attempting to imitate one of the cops, and finishing with a loud, infectious, good-natured laugh, “ ‘No, we’re not giving him any of the tests, just throw him in the backseat!’

      “I was arrested 11 times in Southern California, in the space of sixteen—, or 18 months. All DUIs. All under the influence of Quaaludes. And I ended up doing 90 days for—basically for driving stoned. But it was really for a violation of one of my probations and I was sentenced to 90 days, and then I dealt the 90 days to all the other 10 judges. They all agreed to sentence me to 90 days—to run concurrently with my 90-day sentence; so I could use this 90-days to wipe everything clean. At this point I was in the mode of trying to clean up and doing that. But then I had this one hard-ass Judge who said to my attorney, ‘No. Your client puts other people at risk!’

      “Now just prior to my case, there was a drug addict’s case, where he was charged with possession of narcotics and so forth. And the judge said, ‘That guy hurts himself. Your client’—meaning me—and he was 100% right—‘puts other people at risk!’ So he said, ‘I’m going to give your client a year.’ ”

      Boogie recalled solemnly, “Here I was like thinking, ‘Oy, yuh-yoy, yuh-yoy. A year! This Jewish boy can’t do a year.’ ” Boogie ended with a light, nervous laugh.

      “So luckily, my lawyer was smart enough to be able to postpone. And then he got my case, because he had a number of different cases that day in different Courts. So he had my case, what you call, ‘trailed’ to another Court, and another judge—which he was already seeing. And that Judge just rubberstamped the 90 days, like everybody else had done. So it just shows you that there are some judges that, rightly so, want to get people off the streets that are putting other people in jeopardy. And I certainly was doing that,” said Boogie too casually, trying to disguise a serious but truthful tone.

      “I mean, one night in Hollywood, I was arrested three times within a 12-hour period! Back then, I had a mustache and curly hair and was pretty thin and I kind of looked like Gabe Kaplan from the TV series. So the second time I was arrested, when the intake police officer, a sergeant, saw me again—he’d seen me four hours earlier—he said, ‘Welcome back, Kotter!’ ”