Rubber Balls and Liquor by Gilbert Gottfried Read Free Book Online Page A

regular Mr. Fix-It. He could break open walls, rewire an electrical system and repair the plumbing. Sometimes he did these things in our neighbors’ apartments, and he’d have to work very quickly, before the police showed up.
    At this point, most readers are probably asking themselves, “Gee, Gilbert, with a hands-on, take-charge father like that, how did you turn out to be such a pussy?”
    Well, I have my mother to thank, if you must know. Or, to blame—not that she was in any way responsible, but I learned early on that someone has to take the blame for every shortcoming or failing in your life, and if you can’t blame a Jewish mother then who can you blame? And, as long as we’re pointing fingers, there was quite a lot I could hold against my mother. At a time when most women got married and kept house, my mother actually went to college and earned her degree. Then she got married and kept house. She raised me and my two older sisters in a cramped apartment, directly over my father’s hardware store, and every once in a while she would remind us she had a college degree.
    Now readers are probably saying, “Oh gee, Gilbert. Let me rephrase the question. With a hands-on, take-charge father like that, and a strong, independent woman for a mother, how did you turn out to be such a fucking pussy?”
    Another good question, I must admit. And here again, I have no good answer, but that won’t keep me from distracting you with an irrelevant aside. Here goes: back then, when my parents were young and just starting out, you didn’t have an option to be a pussy.
    (Note to filmmakers: perhaps it’s time to permanently retire the phrase “Failure is not an option,” unless you happen to be making a movie about a census taker who takes his job way too seriously, in which case the phrase could be reasonably made to apply.)
    (A follow-up note to filmmakers: “Not on my watch!” is another tired line that should be banned from all future productions, and as long as I’m on it let’s make it against the law in Hollywood for a character to recognize that he or she is an unusual situation and to remark that they’re not in Kansas anymore.)
    Back to me and my plain, nonpussy existence: there were no Mommy & Me groups, no playdates, no DVDs like Baby Einstein, which as far as I know give you valuable tips on how to be … well, a baby Einstein. For that, in my day, we just went to our snake oil salesman.
    We kids were left on our own a lot. We learned to amuse ourselves, which in my case turned out to pay dividends in the jerking off department, where I soon demonstrated a certain degree of proficiency. My parents were too busy to chase after us. That, or they couldn’t be bothered. Or maybe their interests lay elsewhere. My father was always downstairs, working, but I never saw any customers in his store. For all his expertise, for all his nuts and bolts, for all his abilities with a hammer and screwdriver … every time I went in there, the place was empty. I don’t know why he even had locks on the doors, other than to advertise the fact that he sold them inside. You could have had a girl lying next to an open cash register with her legs hanging open and no one would have walked into that store, which was called “Gilbert’s Father’s Hardware Store,” because even then my family was cashing in on my name—although, looking back, having a girl with her legs open lying next to the cash register would have been a useful accessory for my developing skills as a world-class masturbator.
    My father wasn’t much of a businessman, but he could sniff an opportunity. Literally. For a while when I was growing up, young people in New York City were into sniffing glue. Nowadays, kids experiment with all kinds of illegal drugs, but in my day all it took was a tube of model airplane glue to get high. It was a much more wholesome brand