Free American Prince by Tony Curtis

well as I should have, perhaps I haven’t achieved enough success. It may not make sense, but when I’m in a funk there’s no room for logical thoughts, only that heavy feeling of unbearable sadness.
    Objectively, you might say I did just fine in life, but when I’m feeling depressed that just doesn’t seem good enough. And to be honest, I never was interested in just doing okay. All my adult life I wanted to be the best. Or at least to do my best. If you aren’t doing your best, if you aren’t trying as hard as you possibly can, why bother? I’ve never had much patience for people who were loaded with talent but didn’t give it their all. I still don’t understand that. If anything, I was an overachiever. I took the talent that I had and made the most of it. And even when the deep blues come over me, I take comfort in that thought.

    O ne afternoon after I’d been playing stickball, I went into our apartment to clean up. I went into the kitchen and I could see that my mother was very agitated. I wasn’t sure what the trouble was.
    “Come with me,” she said in a fury. I had no idea where she was going.
    We went out of our house and over to Southern Boulevard, where there were three theaters, a Loews, an RKO, and another small art house. I didn’t dare ask my mother where we were going or why. We walked to the front of the Loews and waited. All of a sudden, I saw my mother stiffen.
    Coming out of the theater was my father, and it looked like he was with a redheaded woman. Could have been, anyway. I didn’t know who she was, and I was giving him the benefit of the doubt. But when my father saw my mother standing there, he went white. He saw I was there too, and maybe that embarrassed him even more. The girl stopped too, so I suppose they had been together.
    My mother started to bawl out my father in Hungarian, calling him a “good-for-nothing bum.” He didn’t say anything. This beautiful red-haired woman stepped forward between my mother and father, and she said, “Don’t hold your breath for a nickel’s worth.” With that, she turned around and walked briskly away. My mother didn’t know what to do. She kept shouting at my father, and then she looked around, realized where she was, and stopped. To this day I don’t know what the red-haired lady’s comment meant, but I assume she was saying she wasn’t going to be part of any marital showdown.
    My father walked past her and came up to me, and both of us walked home. My mother came in about ten minutes later. I don’t know what they said to each other, because I got the hell out of there. After that things were tense around the house, but not much worse than usual.

    W hen I was in my early teens I used to take one of my roller skates and put an orange crate across it, and I’d sit in it and ride down hills in the Bronx. I could pick up a lot of speed, and I shifted my weight so I could steer it. I got very good at it. Then one day I dipped a little too close to the ground and I scraped the middle finger of my left hand. It didn’t hurt much, but it created a blood blister, which became infected.
    The next day it was festering, and a couple of days later it really hurt like crazy. My hand was swollen, I felt a lot of pain under my armpit, and I was dizzy. My mother took me the three blocks to East Bronx Hospital’s free clinic. A young doctor looked at my finger, and without saying a word he pricked it with a needle. I didn’t feel a thing.
    He said to me, “You’ve got a serious infection here. Hey, you’re a good-looking kid.” That washed away my anxiety. He added, “Take advantage of it. Don’t neglect your life like you’ve neglected your finger.”
    It was the first time anyone had told me that I was good-looking, or that I should make something of my life. But both thoughts stayed with me. I think I’ve always been vain, but this is when I first became fully aware of it. I soon grew very fond of my thick, luxuriant head of hair,