Читать книгу Renegade at Heart - Lorenzo Lamas - Страница 8

THREE YEARS AFTER I develop a close relationship with Dad, my whole world comes crashing down again when Mom announces in late spring of 1966, “We are moving to New York to live with Alexis.”

I am slack-jawed, speechless over the news, and cannot believe this is happening. Not now, not at this critical time in my youth, not when Dad and I have bonded and become so close. It is a very painful time for me, as I dearly miss the daily contact I had with my father and the relationship we had built together.

Home for most of the year now becomes Alexis’s beautiful Fifth Avenue two-story townhouse, easily worth two or three million dollars. In the summer, home is his spectacular chateau in France.

Everything that follows Mom’s announcement is such a whirlwind that I barely get a chance to feel settled. In May of that year, I finish school, and then we fly to New York. Soon after, Mom ushers Carole and me onto a passenger liner bound for Europe to spend three months with Alexis, Sandra, and Sasha at the chateau in France. Sandra, Sasha, and I spend our summer vacation there like one big, happy family. I’m an eight-year-old kid getting my first taste of vineyard life, never knowing someday I will star in a television show about one.

The vineyards are sprawling and majestic, with grapes succulent to the touch and vines of strong, healthy stock. Most days a cloudless blue sky makes the perfect backdrop. The whole operation is so impressive. I remember watching with amazement as Monsieur Godin, one of Alexis’s workers, makes wine barrels by hand. With his huge Popeye-like arms and hands, Godin cuts the wood, sands it, and fastens steel bands around both sides to form the barrels. He has worked with his hands his whole life and has absolutely no body fat, even though he’s a man in his fifties. I find being around him nothing short of inspiring.

But then there’s New York. I have spent my whole life in California, doing just about whatever I want, when I want. Living in New York is rough most of the time. It is all so depressing—the dreary, rainy, cold climate, the claustrophobic lifestyle of the city, the regimented school environment—everything. I am simply miserable. And the whole time I never see my father. The longer that goes on, the harder things become for me. I feel a tremendous loss in my life without him and the daily personal contact we once had.

Further compounding my frustration is a house servant who comes as part of the package with Mom’s marriage to Alexis. Madame Lasaire is an angry, overweight, gray-haired old French woman. She moves in with us in California even before we relocate to New York. She and Emmy butt heads immediately and never get along. As a result, Mom unfairly fires Emmy, which breaks my heart.

Madame is no Emmy. It is absolutely horrible living with her. Anytime something goes wrong, she blames me. For some reason, she has it in for me; I am not sure why. But then one simple incident brings Mom to her senses: It’s the night Madame makes lamb chops with string beans for dinner.

I love the lamb chops but hate the string beans. That night I merely pick at them with my fork, lift them up, look at them, put them down, but never eat them. In her thick French accent, the wardenlike Madame says, “You will eat those string beans or sit here all night.”

I choose the latter. I sit there, past my bedtime, until finally I fall asleep with my head on the kitchen table. There is no way I am going to eat those string beans. Anytime my eyes flutter open I still see them; the mere sight makes me sick to my stomach.

I wake up at two in the morning and sneak off to bed. Later that morning, I get up and go into the kitchen with my sister, Carole, to have breakfast and then get ready for school. There on the kitchen table are those damn string beans, sitting cold and limp on my plate. They have not moved from the very spot where Madame left them.

Suddenly, as if she has a GPS tracker on me, the tough-as-nails Madame appears out of nowhere. “You will eat those string beans,” she commands firmly.

The sight of them makes me want to puke. “They’re gross and cold,” I tell her flatly. “I am not going to eat them.”

Madame snaps back, “You will not have breakfast until you eat those string beans.”

“No, I won’t.”

The string beans and I have a staring match. Finally, I skip breakfast and go to school. That afternoon when I get home, the string beans—by now a cold, shriveled lump of green something—are still there on my plate. Madame pounces: “You will eat those string beans for dinner, then!”

“I will not eat those string beans”—I pause and look down at the mangy lump—“or whatever you call them.”

Later, Carole is eating her dinner, and I have my string beans sitting in front of me, which I am not eating. I stubbornly refuse and go to bed. The next morning, I walk into the kitchen, and they are still there, on the same plate, now beyond recognition. Madame keeps insisting, “You will eat your string beans.”

I stand firm. “I will not. They are disgusting.”

Unruffled, Madame says, “You will eat these string beans or you will not eat another meal!”

“Fine, I’m not eating.”

Mom, who never gets up before ten o’clock, rises early that morning because she is on deadline for a project. She walks into the kitchen after hearing the commotion. She peers down at the putrid mass of green on the kitchen table and asks, “Lorenzo, what in God’s name is that on your plate?”

I look up and explain, “Well, these are string beans from two nights ago that Madame Lasaire wants me to eat.”

Mom goes, “What!” She then turns to Madame and asks, “Madame Lasaire, what is going on?”

Madame pushes out her chest proudly. “Well, Miss Dahl, your son is not eating his string beans. So he will not eat another thing until he finishes his string beans.”

After two days of not eating, I am so famished that even those godawful string beans are starting to look good. But bless her heart, my mom, for once in my life, sticks up for me. “Madame Lasaire, how dare you!” says Mom, outraged. “You will absolutely fix my son his breakfast, and you will never again make him eat food he does not want to finish. Is that understood?”

I cannot believe it. My sister cannot believe it. Never have we ever heard Mom raise her voice—ever. I keep looking at Mom and Madame Lasaire as they stare at each other without saying another word.

Taking a deep breath, Madame Lasaire explodes, “Well, I never!” She takes the plate, string beans and all, throws it into the trash, and storms out of the kitchen.

Mom smiles as she looks at me. “Well, I guess your mother is going to make you breakfast this morning.”

I am so excited and thinking, “Yeah, thanks, Mom.”

She makes me French toast. It is still the best French toast I have ever had. After that, I wish Mom would make breakfast more often. And she does, at least until she hires a replacement for Madame Lasaire.

But the series of nannies Mom hires to look after my sister and me cannot compensate for the void in my life left by Emmy, my father, and my California friends. Most days, I feel all alone and more frustrated than ever.

Mom never really addresses my pent-up anger and frustration. We never really talk about it. Instead, that fall she enrolls me in the fourth grade at Trinity School, an Episcopalian private school in Manhattan. It has a strict dress code: gray slacks, a blue blazer with the school crest on the pocket, a white button shirt, and a tie—every day. I am sure my mother hopes the change of environment will be good for me.

For some reason, Trinity does not bus students from the east side of town, where we are, to its campus, which is on the west side. In the morning, I either ride my bike to school or take the public bus, using the bus pass Mom has purchased for me. Getting there by bus is not easy. In fact, it takes two buses—catching the first near Seventy-eighth and Park Avenue and riding it down Fifth Avenue and then transferring to another bus that goes cross-town to school. But to get from the first bus to the second, I have to walk across Central Park, then a haven for heroin addicts and homeless people. These were the days when John Lindsay was mayor of New York, and you could not walk anywhere and feel safe. Even Forty-second Street and Times Square looked nothing like it does today. Back then X-rated movie houses dominated the real estate, and drug dealers peddled their wares on virtually every corner.

One morning, as I—a straitlaced, clean-cut, well-dressed eight-year-old—am walking my usual route across Central Park to catch the second bus, four older black kids suddenly jump me from behind. They push me and roll me to the ground, rough me up, kick me a couple of times, and pick me clean.

“What do we have in here, rich white boy?” the grungy leader says as he rifles through my wallet and plucks out ten bucks cash. “This all you are carrying?”

I stammer, “It’s all I have.”

After he and his gang of hoods work me over some more, they rip my bus pass from my shirt pocket, snatch my Samsonite briefcase from the ground, and run off. (Trinity required every student to have either a leather or Samsonite briefcase.) I am so scared I do not know what in the hell has just happened. Later I do: I just experienced my first New York mugging.

I hustle on foot to school, with grass stains on my trousers and the top two buttons missing from my shirt. My teacher immediately sends me to the principal’s office for being late. I tell the principal why. Looking at me down the bridge of his nose from behind his glasses, he says calmly, “Okay, you should go home and tell your mom what happened. You should either take a cab to school from now on, or your mother should find some other way to get you here.”

Obviously, it is not safe for me to cross Central Park. I will get mugged again—or something worse—if I do. I go home and tell Mom what happened.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” she says in a motherly tone. “Are you all right, darling?”

“Yeah, I’m okay, Mom.”

I have a fat lip, so Mom says, “Let’s put some ice on that.”

I figure Mom has me covered. Tomorrow, she will give me cab fare to take a taxi to school. Seeing how badly beat up I am, there is no way she will put me on a bus again.

The next morning, I get up and have breakfast—a bowl of cereal. Mom comes into the kitchen and chirps enthusiastically, “It’s a new day!”

“Yeah, it is. Can I have cab fare to go to school?”

“Oh, no, honey,” Mom says. “You’re going to have to take the bus.”

Mom’s lack of understanding flabbergasts me. “Mom.” I pause. “That’s how I got mugged in the first place. You have to give me money for cab fare.”

Here we are talking about the safety of her flesh-and-blood son, but Mom classically says, “Oh, it’s not going to happen again. Today’s a new day. It’s a new beginning.”

I plead with her. “But what if those kids are still there?”

Mom says emphatically, “They are not going to be there, honey, because they know what they did was wrong.”

Mom’s words are stunning. “Give me a break!” I sigh.

In her usual chirpy voice, Mom says, “Off you go now.” She ushers me to the front door to get my replacement briefcase and sees me off.

Without my bus pass, it costs me fifty cents to get to school that day. Mom soon buys me a new pass so I can take the bus to school every day, just like before. But from then on, so I do not look like such a douche bag and such an easy target, I carry my jacket and tie in my briefcase and pull my shirttail out over my slacks before walking across Central Park. My plan works brilliantly for about three months. Then another group of kids chases after me. I run so fast my legs feel as if they are gliding on air. I make it to the bus stop ahead of them. Fortunately, the bus is already there waiting for me to board. The driver—a big, imposing man who looks like a defensive lineman for the New York Jets who eats quarterbacks for breakfast—draws open the door. He spots the kids running up after me; he stands up, cracks his knuckles, and shouts at them in a deep, booming voice: “You kids go on, now! You leave this boy alone! Go on, now!”

The boys take one look at the hulk-like figure standing before them and scatter. Catching my breath, I hop on board and thank the driver as he returns to his seat. “Thanks so much,” I pant. “I was mugged here about three months ago.”

“No problem,” he snaps back, “just get on the bus.”

LIKE MY MOTHER’S PREVIOUS HUSBAND, Christian, Alexis never fully replaces my father. Much like my mother, Alexis is far too busy to be a parent, even to his own daughters. Dad and I are cut from the same cloth, from the same bloodline, and in my mind, no man ever comes close to his grandeur or ever will. Dad is not halfway around the world like he was when I was much younger, yet it feels that way most days, since I never see him.

In early 1968, Mom ends her marriage to Alexis, on good terms, after a separation. We continue to live in his Manhattan townhouse, and she and Alexis remain “good friends.” Occasionally, they catch dinner together when he is town.

Even without Alexis in the picture, my frustration with my mom and living in New York starts to boil over. In fifth grade, I become this hard-to-manage eight-going-on-nine-year-old kid with no real compass, no real direction, mad at my mom and the world for everything that is wrong in my life. Finally, I lose control. I act out in frustration to get attention. One day, my classmate Nick Cassini and I take some M-80s to school, slip them in the locker room below and . . . well, you know what happens when you light a cherry bomb on a school property. The principal expels us both.

Mom tries to smooth things over with the principal, but to no avail. After that, she transfers me to another private school, the Dalton School on New York City’s Upper East Side, for the remainder of my fifth-grade year. It’s hard for me to talk to my mom about my feelings, since I don’t think she will understand them anyway. So I simply bury them for the time being and stay out of trouble.

I finish out the school year, but for me, the summer of 1968 cannot come soon enough. I am so thrilled; I am spending my summer vacation with Dad! He invites me to join him on location in Almería, Spain, where he is filming 100 Rifles, a 20th Century Fox western costarring Raquel Welch and Burt Reynolds and directed by Tom Gries. Dad flies me from New York and picks me up at the airport in Barcelona. Esther is also there, and it is like a family reunion. We pick up right where we left off. Dad and I laugh and joke. Dad tells more tall tales, offers more words of wisdom, and I again nod. As always, Esther is like a soul mom to me. She really takes the time to understand me and talk to me. I feel right at home again.

Dad and Esther and the entire cast are staying at a beautiful resort hotel in the city, complete with a spectacular swimming pool. I have an absolute ball swimming every day with Gries’s kids, Jon and Cary. When on the set, we play games, including cowboys and Indians, because that is what the movie is about. One day, my black mustachioed father, in costume as General Verdugo, the career-minded military man he plays in the film, sees us playing and says, “Hey, amigo, why don’t you take your friends to the wardrobe trailer, get yourself some cowboy and Indian outfits, and we’ll put you in the scene.”

We walk over to wardrobe and I tell the wardrobe lady what my father said. Before we know it, we are dressed in authentic cowboy and Indian outfits. The wardrobe lady even fits me with a just-above-the-shoulder black wig for effect. Just as Dad says, I appear in the scene with him. It is not a speaking role; I am just an extra. And Dad is nothing but affirming with me.

“Hey, amigo, you make a pretty good Indian,” he says with a smile.

“Ah, Dad.” I’m self-conscious.

“But we have to do something about that wig!”

In the blink of an eye, it’s over. My first on-camera appearance as an uncredited Indian boy. Not a very promising start to a film career, even though becoming an actor like my father is the furthest thing from my mind at this point.

Burt Reynolds is not yet the number-one male box-office star; it’s still four years before his now-famous nude centerfold on a bearskin rug, no less, in Cosmopolitan magazine. On the set, Burt is always very nice to me and calls me “kid.” One afternoon during a break in filming, he teaches me how to throw a stage punch. We are fooling around and he says, “Hey, kid, come here.”

I walk over.

“Let me see you throw a punch,” he says. “I know your dad boxes, but can you throw a punch?”

Burt holds up his hand. I throw a punch as hard as I can. “That’s pretty good, kid. Throw another one.”

I throw another punch, harder than the first. Burt shakes his hand a little, blows on it, and smiles. Then he says, “Would you like to know how to throw a movie punch?”

“Sure,” I say.

I cannot believe it: Burt Reynolds is going to teach me how to throw a movie punch!

“Okay now, kid, instead of punching straight into my hand,” he says, “I want you to arc your punch like a windmill. Punch your punch, and come around wide.”

I do it a few times.

“Great, kid, great! Let me show you how this works.”

Burt demonstrates it for me, using me as the guy he’s going to punch. “You’re going to do that same thing. You’re going to bring your punch around and come within a foot in front of my face with that nice swing that you did.”

I do exactly what Burt tells me. Soon as I cross his face, he jerks his head back.

“Wow!” I shout. “That looked so real!”

“That’s right, kid. You just learned how to throw your first movie punch.”

Burt walks off with me. “You just might have a future in this business,” he says jokingly and slaps me on the back.

Fast-forward eight years: I am sitting in a movie theater, now as a nineteen-year-old, watching Burt in his latest feature, Smokey and the Bandit. There is a huge knock-down, drag-out movie fight scene with his costar Jerry Reed, where the two of them bust through one set after another while fighting off their adversaries. I become a ten-year-old kid again and think, “Wow, I learned from the master!”

On the set, Dad also pals around with costar Hans Gudegast (who later changes his name to Eric Braeden and becomes famous on the daytime soap opera The Young and the Restless). Hans and my father have many things in common and become very close. Hans is a great soccer player, and Dad loves the sport. So between setups on the set, they fool around with the soccer ball, passing it back and forth. At times they draw quite a crowd. Hans, an excellent boxer in school, and Dad, a former welterweight, love to chat about boxing. After Dad and Esther move to Beverly Hills, he often has Hans and his lovely wife, Dale, over for a home-cooked meal. Other times, Hans and Dad head off to the Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles to catch the fights. They are just the best of buds.

It is such a blast being with Dad and Esther in Spain. Every night, we have dinner on the patio. What a life! Burt, Raquel, Hans, and other members of the cast often join us. They laugh and tell jokes. As a kid, I struggle to keep up with their intellect and humor. As the evenings grow late, I struggle to stay awake, but every night without fail, the candles on the table lull me to sleep. To this day, I cannot sit at a table and look at a candle for longer than five minutes before falling asleep.

Ever since she starred two years earlier in the British fantasy movie One Million Years B.C., there has been no hotter actress—or no hotter woman, for that matter—on the planet than Raquel Welch. And this ten-year-old immediately takes notice of her. I have a monster crush on her from the moment I meet her. Anytime I am around her, I cannot take my eyes off her. She is drop-dead gorgeous, and everybody on the set is taken by her. If I manage to stay awake through dinner, I make a point to walk up to her, say good night, and stand there. She always starts it off.

“Well, good night!” she says, brightly.

“Good night,” I say, softly.

Raquel, smiling, tries again. “Good night!”

I just stand there, my feet firmly planted. “Good night,” I repeat.

Finally, Raquel starts to giggle. “Ahhhh, you want a hug, don’t you?”

I nod.

Raquel walks over and gives me a big hug. I repeat the same trick every night, and it works like a charm. If I ever see Raquel again, I guarantee I am going to stand there and wait for my hug!

When it all ends, I am so sad and upset to have to go back to New York and my life there. I only wish I could stay in Spain and never leave. At the airport, I feel like the four-year-old I was when I visited Dad and Esther that summer in Italy. But saying goodbye is different this time; it’s even worse. I can tell Dad understands how hard all of this is on me. As we hug, tears well up in our eyes. I am unable to muster the words, but Dad does: “Love you, Son. We’ll be together again, very soon. I promise.”

Dad lets go as I choke back tears. We embrace one last time. Regaining his composure, he then points to my plane. “You better be going, amigo. Your plane is waiting.”

I take one last look at him and Esther. Esther reaches over, hugs me, and says, “Lorenzo, don’t worry, your father and I will always love you.”

I nod. “Me, too.”

The afterglow of my summer vacation with Dad and Esther burns bright during the days, weeks, and even months ahead. On the plane ride home, I feel certain that if things are going to change this time, it will be because they will see to make sure it does. Until then, I remain hopeful and continue to pray that it will happen soon, and we will never be separated again.

The following year, my wish comes true. Mom moves us back to California and enrolls me at Paul Revere Junior High in Brentwood to start seventh grade in the fall. Coming from a New York private school, I place very high on my scholastic achievement test and am allowed to skip sixth grade.

I really love being back. I am eleven years old and living the dream again—seeing my friends, going to the beach, playing in the street until dark.

During the three years we lived on the East Coast, Mom rented out our Pacific Palisades home to Don Knotts, best known as Deputy Barney Fife on television’s The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. After returning, Mom is furious when she walks into her bedroom and sees a huge blob-like stain on the fancy fabric of her bed’s headboard.

“Mom,” I ask, stunned, “what is that?”

“Well, Mr. Knotts apparently uses hair pomade.” With his Brylcreem or whatever, ol’ Barney used more than “a little dab’ll do ya,” staining the headboard beyond repair.

Shortly after we move back, a television producer woos Mom and sweeps her off her feet. He is Rounseville W. Schaum, chairman of Western Video Industries, Inc. She is now forty; he is three years younger. In early December 1969, she quickly marries him in a ceremony performed by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale at Marble Collegiate Church in New York. He is her fifth husband (his nickname is “Skip”), and two years later they have a son, Rounseville Andreas. Skip seems like a nice fellow but so did Alexis, and before him, Christian, so I never get too comfortable with the idea of him sticking around for long either. Of course, none of those other husbands could ever measure up to my father. In my mind, he is irreplaceable.

My friends all have their own mini-trail bikes, so I have to have one of my own, specifically the new Honda Z50 Mini Trail. I wash cars, mow lawns, and save money, but never enough to buy one. A minibike is on every kid’s shopping list. Finally, I wear my mom out and she says, “Lorenzo, if you have good marks and good behavior, you will get a minibike.”

One day, Skip pulls his flashy white Mercedes into the driveway and pops open the trunk. “Your mother asked me to get this for you,” he says.

Skip pulls it out for me. There it is, right before my eyes, my dream machine. Just as Skip is saying, “Your mother wants you to wear a helmet,” daredevil me hops on and tears off. Before Skip can finish his sentence, I am roaring around the driveway with it. The feeling I have riding it is hard to describe in mere words, but let me try: the roar and vibration of the engine, the sense of freedom and adventure, the thrill and excitement, the speed and danger, the wind in my face. And I am not even out of the driveway yet! Having that bike unleashes a monster inside me. I know from that moment I am a biker at heart.

But the coolest thing about being back in California is being near Dad again. I see him three or four times a week when he picks me up from school. On December 31, 1969, Dad and Esther finally marry after being together eight years. It just happens to be the same month Mom and Skip tie the knot. Esther lives in total submission to my father—right down to honoring his wishes that her children can never live with them. In return, she is faithful and a good life partner who rarely challenges him, unless it concerns something really worth fighting over.

While my own mom is more detached and aloof, Esther is more mothering; she’s how a mother should be, and I develop a close maternal relationship with her. I help her clean the kitchen, fold the laundry, and do the chores. Without fail, Dad picks me up from school; we hang out and have dinner together. Esther usually makes two dinners. The first is for the three of us; she serves at five thirty or six. The second one she takes later to her children, who live in Santa Monica with their father. After she gets back, Dad takes me home.

As dysfunctional as my life is, things settle into a nice routine. The pieces are finally falling into place. For the first time in a very long time, with Dad and Esther in my life, I start to feel part of a real family again. We are doing the kinds of stuff a regular family does. Everything is perfect—for now.

Any chance I get, I ride my Honda bike in and around the neighborhood. It is the closest thing to a motorcycle I have. On weekends, with more free time, I love to explore. One Saturday, I bike up the fire trail to the park near Will Rogers Beach. The terrain is rocky, rugged, and unspoiled, but I manage. Pumping the pedals as hard as I can, I get a strong headwind as I start to descend. Coming down the trail into the parking lot, I suddenly lose control at the bottom of the hill. With my bike carrying a bit of speed, the front wheel washes out and the bike buckles from under me. I land face-first, sliding on my stomach and knees across the hard black asphalt. Ouch!

I lie there in a daze until I realize what happened. With its misshapen frame and bent handlebars, my bike looks like an oversized pretzel. I feel fortunate that is the worst of the damage—until I stand up. My bloodied face has numerous cuts and scrapes and my elbows are bleeding. Then I look down to discover a huge gash across my knee with a large flap of skin folded over the gash. It has not yet started to bleed. When I pull up the flap, I can see the tendon and bone in my knee. I realize this cannot be good, even though I feel no pain at this point. Very quickly, my knee starts bleeding profusely. Within a minute, the whole bottom of my jeans is soaked in blood.

I am a mile from home. There are no cell phones then, not even a pay phone close by. I have no idea if my leg is going to work to get me home, but I give it a shot. I straighten the handlebars on my bike and hop back on. The pain is excruciating as I pedal a little with my injured leg. I pedal and coast, pedal and coast, and pedal and coast the whole way. It takes me twenty minutes, but I make it.

I walk through the front door into the entry hall, then the living room, and about twenty more feet to the dining room. Mom is busy working there on her astrology forecasts and her latest astrology book. I hobble into the dining room and stand there, bleeding all over the floor. I look at Mom and wait a second to see if she notices. She is so buried in her work, I finally say something like, “Hey, Mom, I’m sorry I’m getting blood on your floor.”

Mom snaps her ahead around. She looks me in the face, then up and down, and screams, “Oh, my God, Lorenzo!”

At that moment, I pass out. My stepdad Skip happens to walk in. He rips the belt from his trousers, makes a makeshift tourniquet, and puts it around my leg to slow the bleeding. They immediately call for an ambulance.

I come to when the paramedics are loading me into the ambulance to take me to the emergency room at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica. I remember asking the ambulance driver, “Can you turn on the siren?” just before passing out again.

In the ER, I wake up to see my jeans cut off and a pretty nurse standing over me, flushing chunks of asphalt out of the wound on my leg. She’s holding what looks like a nailbrush and shoving it up near my shin bone to remove all the asphalt that’s packed down in there. Fortunately, my tendons are okay. The only serious damage is to one of my main leg arteries, which is why there is so much blood.

Mom later tells me what the ambulance driver said to her as the paramedics loaded me into the ambulance: “Miss Dahl, I have never seen a leg as badly damaged as your son’s—one that’s still attached, anyway.”

Had it not been for my stepfather Skip, I might not be here today to tell the story. He really saved my life by putting that tourniquet around my leg. I owe him more than mere words can say.

While we were living in New York, Mom got me a dog—a soft, floppy-eared, short-legged beagle I name George. I guess Mom hopes having the responsibility will settle me down. I love George like a best friend immediately, and he becomes a great companion for me. He is four years old by the time we move back to our California home in Villa Grove. He loves to run and play in the large backyard and enjoy all that open space, unlike in Manhattan, where the closest thing to grass is the nearest public park. George especially enjoys taking off into the Santa Monica Mountains for a day, but he always returns. Except for one day, when he doesn’t. I whistle and call his name. I go searching for him. I stand out back, hoping for him to suddenly appear. Days go by; George never returns. Most likely, coyotes got him. I am just heartbroken. I miss him so much.

Every passing day, my life feels empty without him. I do nothing but mope around most days. Finally, Mom calls Emmy’s stepsister Evelyn, a breeder who shows miniature poodles in dog shows, and says, “Can we find Lorenzo another dog?”

Evelyn is happy to oblige. “I’ll take him with me to the next show,” she says, “and we’ll find him a new dog.”

I love going to the shows with Evelyn and her son, Jeff, who sometimes shows their poodles along with her. At one show, after Evelyn and Jeff introduce me to a breeder of Great Danes, I fall in love with a crazy fawn-colored puppy and bring him home. Mom has a fit. “Holy smokes,” she says, “look at the size of his feet. He’s going to be huge!”

“Yeah, Mom,” I explain. “He’s a Great Dane.”

“Couldn’t you have found a smaller dog?”

“No, I really wanted him.”

I just love Caesar—that’s the name I give him—his expressive face and eyes, his friendly and energetic personality, and his strength and elegance. We instantly become best buds. As Caesar grows, Evelyn takes me along with her to dog shows where I show him in breed and win several blue ribbons.

At six o’clock on the morning of February 9, 1971, I am getting ready for school in my room when I suddenly feel a sharp jolt and then a rumbling under my feet. It intensifies with each second and grows louder, like a locomotive speeding through my room. My whole room starts to rock and sway. My bed begins to shake. My books fall from their shelf, while my toy Batman collection starts doing the mambo on my desk. It is an earthquake—and not an ordinary one. This feels like a major tremor. Caesar immediately dives under my bed. Meanwhile, my stepdad Skip rushes into my room.

“Lorenzo,” he orders as the ground beneath us shakes violently, “we have to get out of the house right now!”

My room has a door to the backyard. I tell Skip, “Okay, cool!”

I grab Caesar’s leash and attach it to his collar but cannot get him to move out from under my bed. He is trembling and shaking and will not budge.

I shout, “Caesar, come! Caesar, come!”

Caesar is unresponsive. He is a year old now and weighs about one hundred pounds. With all my might, I keep trying to pull him out as I hear Mom scream, “Everybody out!”

My family runs out the front door of the house as everything around them shakes and rattles out of control. As the force of the quake builds to a crescendo, I finally pull Caesar out by the collar instead of the leash. Like a wild horse, he races out my door into the backyard, pulling me along with him. After coming to a quick stop, we end up on the grass. The tremor finally subsides, and the ground stops rumbling and shaking. At that moment Skip comes into the backyard and demands, “Where were you?”

I point to the ground on which I stand. “Right here.”

Skip is clearly agitated. “I told you to come out the front door.”

“I never heard that,” I explain. “I had a door and just went out the door.”

Long story short, everybody is safe. The only serious damage is to a sliding-glass patio door that shattered. As it turns out, the earthquake is a magnitude 6.6 centered in the San Fernando–Sylmar region of Los Angeles and felt throughout Southern California and into western Arizona and southern Nevada. Aftershocks occur for several months, but the original quake causes widespread damage to many older buildings in nearby Beverly Hills and the surrounding suburbs of Burbank and Glendale. Because of structural damage to highway overpasses, roads, and bridges, and concerns over more aftershocks in the area, schools close for the day, including mine. I am oblivious to it all. With no school, my friends Bill and Dave and I go hiking up the Santa Monica Mountains for the day. Only later do I discover just how lucky we really are.

Later, during my eighth-grade year at Paul Revere Junior High School, I start running around with a bunch of crazy guys doing those crazy things eighth graders do. I’m trying to be part of the in-crowd, to be “one of the boys.” Some stunts we pull I know are dead wrong, but I do them anyway, so the kids will say, “Hey, Lorenzo’s crazy. He’s okay.”

The leader of the group comes up with a stunt sure to get everybody’s attention: set the school lockers on fire. I go along with the idea. It sounds cool. Everything goes as planned. Except for the part where they catch us and expel us, including yours truly—overall the third school to give me the boot. Mom finally steps in to put an end to my shenanigans.

“You’re going to military school,” she announces.

“Military school? What’s that?” I ask, dreading the answer.

“You’ll see,” she says.

As long as I can still see Dad and my friends, I figure everything will be okay. I love everything about California, especially its glorious sunshine, sandy beaches, majestic mountains, and, yes, all its pretty girls (although they do not yet know I exist). I simply can’t imagine living anywhere else. It is home. My father, my friends, and everything familiar to me are there. Mom, of course, has other ideas. She enrolls me in a school as far away from my father and my friends and California and as close to her as possible: Admiral Farragut Academy, an all-boys military school, in New Jersey.

Mom ships me off to the academy before moving back to New York to promote her cosmetic company, Arlene Dahl Enterprises, with its new line of wigs she’ll market through Sears Roebuck and its Manhattan advertising agency, Kenyon & Eckhart. She and Skip take the whole family to live there—my sister, Carole, and little stepbrother, Steven—while sending me off to Farragut. Before I leave, Mom tells me, “You have to give Caesar away.”

I am too heartsick to do it myself. Mom calls Evelyn, and she finds a home for him. It is not as bad as I fear. I know the people who are taking him because I see them at the dog shows all the time and have a crush on their daughter. Mom is heartened by that fact. “Oh, he’s going to a nice home, Lorenzo,” she says happily. “Evelyn tells me you even like one of those people.”

“Yeah, Mom,” I confess, “but that’s not the point. Caesar’s my dog. Can’t you keep him so I can see him when I come home?”

Once again, Mom never puts herself in my shoes. “We’re so busy, Lorenzo,” she says. “We can’t possibly keep him.”

I never feel as if Mom puts my needs before hers, and this latest incident only deepens that feeling. I have so much trouble saying goodbye to Caesar the day the people come for him. I give him a long, hard hug as tears well up in my eyes. Then I give him a simple command: “Go, Caesar.”

Caesar goes to his new owners. As they exit out the front door, he stops, lingers for a second, and looks back at me one last time. Working through my tears, I find the strength to command him one final time, “Go, Caesar, now.” The big lug turns and lumbers out the door as I collapse on the floor, crying my eyes out. To this day, I can see his furrowed brow creasing his forehead and that puzzled look in his deep-set brown eyes as I bid him goodbye. I still choke up just thinking about him.

The following day, Esther drives me to Los Angeles International Airport. Fighting back tears, I gulp hard as we say goodbye and I board the 747 bound for New York. Seconds after, the airplane cabin door closes shut. It is like a jail cell slamming in my face. The only thing missing is the standard-issue prison jumpsuit, because that’s what I feel like, a prisoner.

New Jersey seems like the end of the world to me—and is. I loathe it as much as I did New York when Mom moved us there before. I hate every minute and am just heartsick over not seeing Dad and my friends. Most of all, I am angry with Mom for sending me there, for keeping me from my father and my friends, and for moving us away from them now for the second time. My inner radar, however, tells me, “Lorenzo, get your shit together.” I know that I am a young man in need of saving regardless of how deeply upset I feel.

It is no small task to grow up in the shadow of a famous father. From his larger-than-life persona to his grand presence as an actor, he has big shoes to fill. At times, as a boy, I think I will never measure up. Entering the academy is no different. I am this overweight, out-of-shape, chunky twelve-year-old kid who looks more like Buddy Hackett’s son than Fernando Lamas’s. What’s more, I’m hardly what you’d consider a jock. My father, on the other hand, is this giant of a man in tip-top athletic shape, someone who can do just about anything physically.

Military school is the hardest thing I have ever experienced. Nothing but guys, bunk beds, lots of marching, and no girls (not even one!). It all seems so extreme. I just want to go back to California.

Yet even though the disciplined environment is grating, eventually I come to appreciate it. In the end, it is all good for me. The lessons I learn there have a lasting impression on me.

All freshmen at the academy, including me, are classified as “plebes,” the lowest class in the U.S. Naval Academy, actually no rank at all. All incoming freshmen are required to take the Marine Corps physical fitness test. It’s a series of drills designed to teach self-discipline and maintain a high level of physical fitness, all pillars of “the Marine Corps way of life.” Standard dress is green-on-green T-shirts, shorts, socks, and running shoes. No deviation. The test is composed of three events: pull-ups, abdominal crunches, and a three-mile run, all conducted in a single session.

Most of the guys run rings around me. They do the pull-ups, the crunches, and the three-mile run with ease, unlike the aforementioned overweight, out-of-shape, chunky twelve-year-old who looks like Buddy Hackett’s son. I fail the test miserably. I cannot do a single pull-up. I cannot do a crunch (does a Nestlé’s Crunch count?). I am so down on myself sitting at my locker afterward I want to quit. Suddenly, I feel this presence and look up. It is Stan Slaby, the coach who administered the test.

“Hey, Lamas,” he says, “what’s going on? Why the long face?”

“Coach,” I confess, “I just feel horrible, you know. I can’t do a push-up or a pull-up.”

What the coach says are just plain, simple words, but the fact they come from someone who has probably seen a thousand kids in my situation throughout the years means more to me than he can know. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he says gruffly, “and get on a team.”

After that, Coach mentors me. My junior year I get on a team as he suggests—well, three teams: first track, then wrestling, and then swimming. In a few years, I have a much different image of myself. Coach is a big reason for that.

Another guy I look up to back then is my company commander, Tom Coffey. Like Coach, he pushes me to be better than I am and, most important, to lead through my actions.

“Lamas, if you are ever lucky to become an officer of your own company,” he barks at me as if he is giving an order, “don’t take your privilege for granted. Don’t treat anybody less than you would want yourself treated. The best way to lead is to be an example for the others to follow.”

“Yes, sir!”

During my four years at the academy, I really buckle down. I abide by the school’s rigid rules of forced responsibility; I take things more seriously. Until attending the academy, I admit cracking the books or studying hard never turned me on. But now I study hard and my grades reflect it. I possess a keen interest in animals and nature, and so I set my sights on going to vet school after I graduate. My goal is to become a veterinarian and work with animals for the rest of my life.

I earn varsity letters in track, wrestling, swimming, and football after honing my athletic skills, and become more confident in my abilities and in myself. Taking notice of my exemplary behavior and results, the academy promotes me to battalion staff second lieutenant; I’m in charge of 250 cadets.

Even Esther notices my amazing transformation during one of my summer breaks back in California. “Military school is the best thing for you,” she says.

Esther, of course, is right. Because of that experience, I am a much different person today—more disciplined, more focused. And I’m grateful to Mom for stepping in when she did.

Who are you calling chunky now?

During summer breaks in California, I’m like a regular kid again and enjoy quality time with Dad. We go to soccer games, swim in the ocean, and hang out together a lot. My first summer home I work as a gas station attendant to earn extra money. It is not something I would recommend on a long-term basis, but it works for me. To my friends’ amusement, I would say, “I have a job with the Royal Dutch Shell Group.” It sounds better than saying, “I work at the Shell station in Brentwood.”

The summer of my junior year with Dad and Esther, I land a job as a lifeguard at the Jonathan Club, a prestigious private Santa Monica beach club that’s been in existence since the late 1920s. Dad gets me a car through Bucky Norris, his well-connected friend and former minister-turned-insurance-salesman and longtime drinking buddy at the Cock’n Bull. It’s the first time I drive legally on the streets of California as a licensed driver: a smoking, brand-new, kick-ass-under-the-hood Ford Falcon. Between lifeguarding a bevy of hot-looking babes and driving that beauty around, I feel like the coolest guy on the planet. After getting the Falcon, I end up calling my first childhood crush, Laurie. It feels like forever since we last saw each other. I get her number from Emmy and dial it. She answers on the first ring. After exchanging pleasantries, I ask, “I’m working today at the beach until five or six tonight; can I come by and see you?”

After a slight pause, Laurie says, “What do you think, silly?”

That means “yes” in my book. I pick up Laurie on time in my fancy Ford Falcon. She is instantly impressed as I whisk her off on our date. She has the same beautiful bright red hair and sweet smile I remember. It is so great to see her. Like me, she is entering senior year that fall. We catch up on things, relive old times, and end the night with a kiss. It is as if no time has passed, even though our lives are totally opposites—with me living on the East Coast, and her on the West. We stay in touch after that even though our lives go in separate directions.

Not until I start lifeguarding do I really begin to think seriously about girls. Being overweight as a kid had affected how I saw myself. I doubted any female could be attracted to me. That changes after I get in the best shape of my teenage life and work as a lifeguard. Suddenly bikini-clad girls are swooning over me and coming up to me for no other reason than to ask, “What time is it?” I am too naïve to realize they are coming on to me. Never in my wildest dreams do I imagine they are there because they are interested in knowing me—yes, me, the kid with the chunky past.