My Least Favorite Year

Here's what I love about stand-up comedy:

Getting on-stage and making people laugh.

Here's what I hate:

Everything else.

Honestly, I'm beginning to wonder if this isn't the worst thing I could possibly be doing with my life, and if I'm just not cut out for it at all. Because lately, it's all feeling like 7th grade all over again.

Me at 13, with Dr. Bunson Honeydew.

Seventh grade was the worst year of my adolescence. That was the year I left the comfort and camaraderie of Brayton School, the local elementary where I had spent the past seven years, where everyone knew me, and where my father was everyone's pediatrician, and began a three-year stint at Newark Academy, a private school in Livingston, NJ.

NA was a horrible place. At least for me it was. The school itself was beautifully appointed, and the education was decent. (I particularly recall Ms. Galvin's English class and Mr. Ball's World Cultures class with fondness.) But the kids at NA were fucking evil. A mix of mostly Jewish and Italian children of wealthy North Jersey families -- including the son and daughter of Sen. Frank Lautenberg, and Steven Polaner, scion of the famous jam-making family -- they were caricatures of the sort of malicious types we've come to know in teen flicks like "Heathers" and "Mean Girls." (I should point out here that neither the Lautenbergs nor Polaner ever did anything mean to me. They just exemplified the level of hoity-toityness of the school.)

This was 1984. Reagan was president, Bill Cosby's new sitcom was premiering, and MTV was all the rage. Everyone was wearing day-glo and parachute pants and spiky hair. And here I was, in alligator shirts, cuffed khakis and penny-loafers with pennies in them. "The Preppy Handbook" was my bible, and my favorite music was Broadway, soft rock and oldies. (I particularly enjoyed Christopher Cross's hit song, "Sailing.") I was very gay and very loud; and I loved to sing.

A recipe for disaster, indeed.

The trouble really started in gym class (surprise, surprise), when I was standing around one day getting ready to play basketball, at which I was absolutely terrible. Amit Mehta, a tiny wise-ass of Indian descent who was inexplicably the most popular kid in class that year, asked me what I liked to do for fun.

"I like to sing!" I proclaimed, like some retarded kid in an after-school special.

"Oh yeah," said Amit, his eyes glowing. "Why don't you sing something for us?"

A small crowd had gathered.

"What do you want me to sing?"

He thought for a brief moment. "How about you sing, 'Rock of Ages?'"

Now remember, I was clueless when it came to pop music. For all I knew, Def Leppard was some unfortunate feline, growling off-key in the jungles of Africa. But I knew a song called "Rock of Ages;" we sang it every Chanukkah at Temple Sinai.

So I began to sing, in my pitch-perfect castrato soprano voice:

Rock of Ages, Let our song
Praise your saving power
You amid the raging foes
Were our sheltering tower
Furious they assailed us
But your arm availed us
And your word broke their sword
When our own strength failed us
And your word broke their swordWhen our own strength failed us

Even today, this record makes me cry.

At this point, every person in the gymnasium had stopped to listen to my performance, including the gym teacher, Mr. Sweet. And every one of them was rolling with laughter.

Things went downhill from there.
But as awful as that and subsequent gym classes were, they didn't compare to the single biggest horror I faced every morning:

The Bus.

Through the years I've told stories of my 7th grade morning bus ride to Newark Academy, and people always assume I'm exaggerating, misremembering, or making up tales out of whole cloth. I assure you, these things happened exactly as I describe them. Prisoners of war don't forget the details of their captivity, and neither will I forget the atrocities that took place on that little yellow torture chamber on wheels.

Wheels on fire...

*Note: The above image is copywrited and comes from this web site.

Anyway, Rev. William was hardly a responsible adult figure. He often led the taunting that was aimed at me. Once, during a relatively peaceful moment, the discussion turned to what everyone was going to be when they grew up.

"What about Sank?" Eddie Case wondered.

"He'll be a gay writer," came the booming reply from the driver's seat.

Look, I'm not saying the man was imperceptive; I'm just saying he was a dick.

One unlucky aspect of my morning bus ride was that I was one of the last kids picked up. This meant having to make something of a grand entrance each day, with my tormentors already seated. (To this day, the walk onto a stage is the most terrifying part of performing for me. I always expect someone in the crowd is going to hurl a projectile at my head.)

Then, it happened: A major snowstorm of the kind we used to get fairly regularly in Jersey in the days before global warming. Eight or 10 inches fell, and we got a snow day from school, which was heaven on earth. The next morning, with school back in session, the bus pulled up to my house. Wearily, with my head slumped in its customary bus-boarding fashion, I took my seat... and was suddenly struck simultaneously with multiple sensations of pain, wetness and cold.

For little did I know that moments before, the good reverend had stopped the bus around the corner and ordered everyone off to build snowballs, all of which were to be used on me.


Over the course of that year, on my way to school, I was

Kicked.

Punched.

Shoved.

Repeatedly called a "faggot."

The recipient of gum stuck in my hair and rubber bands shot at my face.

And, on one memorable occasion, pelted with snowballs.

Wait a minute, you say; how in the world does one get pelted with snowballs inside a bus? To comprehend that scenario, you first have to understand that it wasn't only the kids on the bus -- among them Eddie Case and his demented older brother Dan, Chuck Spinner, Andrew Hazen and Ned Zimmerman, who looked exactly as I imagined the humanized pigs we read about in "Animal Farm" in Ms. Galvin's class did -- who hated me. No, it was also the bus driver, a giant black man named William who, when he wasn't driving a bus, worked as a minister.

That's right, a minister. It's no wonder I have such warm feelings toward organized religion.

Do you have any idea how much snowballs hurt when launched at close range?

It didn't end after the initial attack. William stopped the bus repeatedly on the way to school so that my assailants could refuel. By the time I got to school, I was completely soaked and bleeding from the face.

It was then -- and only then -- that the school decided to act. William was fired, and I was moved to another bus, one that ferried kids to and from nearby Chatham. Curiously, despite my notoriety, the Chatham riders showed little interest in me, and for the rest of the year I rode to school in blissful silence.

Meanwhile, things at school remained tough for me. I had no friends, except for Kelley Wade, a homely fellow outcast with whom I did theater. The taunting and teasing continued. One day, Will Clossey and Mark Browin decided to imitate the way I walked down the hall. This entailed their swinging their asses wildly from side to side. Which I find interesting, given that Mark and I ended up blowing each other on a ski trip a year later. I hope Mark is married now, and I hope he and his wife are reading this together.

Despite the constant slings and arrows, I remained determined to win people over, and, in my overly dramatic, narcissistic super-gay way, I decided the best way to do it:

I was going to sing "Corner of the Sky" from "Pippin" in front of the entire school at morning meeting.

Did you know William Katt from "The Greatest American Hero"
starred in "Pippin" on Broadway? Now you do.
Look, I'm not going to deny I was a fucked up little kid. I had absolutely no social skills. I sat in my room all night listening to the cast albums of "Evita" and "Sweeney Todd," for God's sake.

But there was method to my madness. Students often got up at morning meeting to play an instrument, recite a poem or act out a skit. I knew I could sing well, and I knew that on some level, even in a shark tank like Newark Academy, people had respect for those with talent.

Plus, I thought (and this is the really sad part), if they would just listen to these lyrics come out of my mouth, they'd understand everything about me:

Everything has its season
Everything has its time
Show me a reason, and I'll soon show you a rhyme
Cats fit on the window sill
Children fit in the snow
Why do I feel I don't fit in anywhere I go?
Rivers belong where they can ramble
Eagles belong where they can fly
I've got to be... where my spirit can run free
Gotta find my corner of the sky
Word soon got out about my morning meeting plans. The entire grade was abuzz, fueled by my infamous "Rock of Ages" performance in gym class. "You're going to make a huge ass of yourself, Sank" became a familiar refrain. The anticipation grew to such a fevered pitch that the night before my big day, my advisor, Miss Belyea, called my parents.

"I don't think he should do it," she told my mom. "I think it's only going to make things harder for him."

My mom agreed and tried to get me to change my mind. But it was too late. If I backed out now, everyone would know I was chicken. And in any situation, I've always chosen the riskier option.

Dr. Strand, the headmaster (a dear man who I hope is still alive and well), finished his morning announcements and then introduced me.

"We have a special treat this morning," he said. "One of our youngest students, Adam Sank, is going to sing for us."

With legs shaking, I took the stage. It hadn't occurred to me to ask anyone to accompany me on the piano, so it was just me up there, singing a capella, facing about 800 students and faculty.

I began about three keys too high:
Everything has its season
Everything has its time
Show me a reason...
My voice had cracked, horribly.
Show me a reason...

Nope, too high.

"Excuse me," I said. I could hear people twittering.

Then I began again, in a more comfortable key.
Everything has its season
Everything has its time...
This time I got through it. I hit all the notes. My voice swelled on the last chorus, and I went up the octave on the final note, just as William Katt had done on the record.

People clapped and cheered. I bowed. It was over.

If this were a young adult's novel or an episode of "The Brady Bunch," the story would end with my being carried on the shoulders of throngs of adoring kids, chanting, "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow."
Well, that didn't happen. But there was, after my big song, a perceptible shift in the way I was treated at NA. People still thought I was a faggy lunatic, and I still didn't have a lot of friends. But there was a grudging respect for me, if not for the fact that I could sing, then for the fact that I had had the balls to get up in front of the entire school and sing a Broadway show tune.

I learned that day that no matter how hard it is being me sometimes, it's easier than not being me.

It's been 24 years since then, and I still try to remember that every day.

Homo out. ♥

Come see me host the Electro Shock Therapy Comedy Hour this Sunday, April 20, when my special guests will be Laurie Kilmartin, Mike Gaffney, Vicki Ferentinos and Tom Ragu.
Details on my web site.