Free Mr. S by George Jacobs Page A

in L.A., for a gift of an engraved notebook because she had said something about wanting to become a writer. When it came to women, and to his friends, Mr. S was the most thoughtful man I ever met. He didn’t miss a thing. The girl barely touched her meal, but, when Mr. S told me I could leave for the evening and she was still there, I knew all our military operations for this romantic D-day had not been in vain. The morning, or rather afternoon after, I accidentally ran into Mr. S as he was coming out of the shower. Stark naked. It was the first time I had seen him au naturel , and it looked so unnatural, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out, “My God, that thing’s so big you must rub olive oil on it!” He turned beet red, then broke out laughing. “I bet somebody had a good time last night,” I went on. He grinned that big conquest grin and said, “About time I got lucky.”
    Whenever Mr. S would be impressed or amazed or shocked by something, he would exclaim to me, “Holy mackerel, Kingfish!” quoting his favorite radio and TV show, Amos ’n’ Andy. He got off imitating a black dialect. He wasn’t doing it because I was black, though he liked the fact that I understood the genuine article. He’d do Amos and Andy imitations with all his friends, so it made me feel like one of the guys. And he liked telling black jokes. “What’s long and hard on a black man?” “The third grade.” Or “Why are blacks sexually obsessed?” “If you had pubic hair on your head, you’d be sexually obsessed, too.” Or one of the corny ones he inexplicably fixated on, “What’s black in a tree?” “A branch manager.” If he told any of this shit today, he would be sued for racial harassment. But not then. He’d tell these stupid jokes to Sammy Davis Jr. the same way he’d tell them to Humphrey Bogart, and pretty much the same way he’d tell them to me. Being black was never discussed, nor did it seemto be considered. He never used the “n” word, except to complain that someone like Sam Spiegel was “treating him like a nigger.” He would use it as an adjective of oppression, but never as an oppressive label. He wouldn’t stand for that. He saw himself as a member of an oppressed minority and had total empathy for anyone who was similarly situated. Where race was concerned, the man was color blind, even if today he’d be viewed as criminally insensitive. Whatever he was doing came from the heart. A year or two later, when he’d sometimes call me “Spook,” I took it as a brotherly nickname, not a racial epithet. Everybody in the Rat Pack had a “ratty” nickname, and now so did I. I thought I had “arrived.”
    Mr. S didn’t keep many secrets from me. I had to deal with all his inadequacies. The biggest one was his hair. Every morning after he shampooed, I’d have to spray hair coloring on the ever-expanding bald spot on the back of his scalp. Like Humphrey Bogart, who had the same hair problem, Sinatra would never go out without this cover-up, and without one of his trademark hats, though he’d only wear one of the many custom hairpieces made for him by Max Factor when he was shooting a film or performing at a show. His other main point of self-consciousness was the entire left side of his face, from his ear down to his neck. When he was born, it was a difficult delivery. The doctor had to use forceps, which scarred and deformed Sinatra’s face and punctured his eardrum. The latter injury had kept him out of the service in World War II, while the former deformation forced him to personally apply makeup over the rough, cratered scars every day of his life. It was funny watching Mr. Tough Guy pat his face with this little powder puff, but I didn’t dare tease him. Mr. S wasn’t vain about his appearance; he was embarrassed.
    The thing that bothered Mr. S the very most may have been his lack of education. He felt bad that he had never gone to college and was a flop in high school. He wasn’t