I’ve been a failure since the day I turned twelve years old—the day my mom put me in an acting class being held in a house across the cul-de-sac.

That an acting class opened up directly across the street was just one of many creepy things that began around my twelfth birthday. That a retired child star—one of the few black members of Our Gang, I can’t say which one—had moved across the street from our house and was now reluctantly offering acting instruction to kids was odd. But it wasn’t terribly abnormal for the northern corner of the San Fernando Valley, where mid-level Hollywood people of all sorts lived like affluent insurance men.

The dad from Teen Wolf resided two houses down. I went to a bit of middle school with Candace Cameron. Paul from the Wonder Years was a year ahead of me at my Hebrew School. The guy who played Urkel once came into the movie theater I worked out wearing purple shoes and matching shorts. Life was star-studded.

Besides, much stranger things were happening in my life.

My mom, who was constantly on the verge of losing our house to debt and creditors and everyone else she owed money to, had recently hit the mother lode. And her good fortune had come from the most unlikely place possible: The bill collecting industry.

It was a rule in our house never to answer the phone unless the caller used the secret ring code—one half-ring followed by about thirty seconds of silence then a real ring. Our relatives adhered to the formula, and because of this my mother’s wine sipping was rarely interrupted by nagging requests to pay this or that.

Somehow—maybe they’d gotten a tip from a relative or just dumb luck—one bill collector cracked the code exactly thirty days before I turned twelve.

My mother emptied the last of her box of wine into her glass and sat down to take the call. Within seconds she was erupting in righteous indignation, which was followed strangely by giggles. And the giggles lasted a while, longer than her wine. When she finally put down the phone, she muted the television and said, “That was the most pleasant conversation I’ve had in a trimester.”

She spent the next week trying to track down the charming bill collector. The agency he worked for was unwilling to release any of his personal details since death threats were more common than repayments. Eventually, my mother volunteered to repay a May Company charge of nearly a thousand dollars in exchange for the information. Within two weeks, she was engaged to Norm, the mysterious bill collector. And as soon as they were engaged, my mother said that Dr. Laura would approve of his moving into our home, which he did.

Norm worked from home and woke at three-thirty Pacific Time every morning to begin harassing the debtors on the East Coast. He would then resume sleeping at nine o’clock until one PM when his calls would begin again. Whatever he was doing was fine with my mom. In just weeks, Norm had repaid every debt we had and ordered ON TV, which was cable TV during the end of the Cold War. But the fact that I was still awake in the early evening hours when Norm had to get back to sleep if he was to be fresh for his morning persecution was the only flaw in her new paradise. The only solution was to get me out of the house until 9 PM. And that’s where the acting class came in.

Norm and I didn’t really get along. He needed me to be quiet unless I was talking about sports, which I didn’t. But the acting class was my birthday gift, and I acted appreciative as I could. Norm didn’t seem too impressed. “After a few months of classes, we can do this whole scene again,” he said. I learned later that it was $25 a lesson, four nights a week. This was the mid 80s so that would be like $26.80 in today’s money or something.

There were five of us in the class. Our teacher/ neighbor wore overalls and work boots for every class. Well into his 70s but still possessing his infamously, inappropriate babyface, conducted the class military style, often speaking directly into our faces. Joe—I’ll call him Joe—refused to take questions or for us to even mention his Our Gang days. I figured it was PTSD from the abuses of the Truant Police. Instead he spent most of his time walking in circles, tapping a yardstick on the garage floor and spouting theory. “Acting isn’t acting. It’s being,” and shit like that. Then right before we left he’d have us stand at attention and he’d critique our posture, shape and facial expression. He told me, nearly every time, to stop wearing glasses and to stop looking as if I was trying to poop out a whole ham. Candice and her sister Robin, my large next door neighbors, had to “unpuff the cheeks,” which I think was his way of suggesting they lose weight. The twins from down the street were told to put their chins up and smile less.

The twins were the first to become successful. They booked a gum commercial, then an Afterschool Special in which they were both abused by a horny uncle who moved home when the circus went out of business. Candice and Robin didn’t book any real work, but they started working as extras almost every day. That meant they got to miss real school, do three hours of worksheets and eat snacks from the paddy wagon for free all day long. My mom didn’t think about the prospect of me actually working until the rest of the neighborhood began to appear on TV. Then I had to start auditioning every day. She became obsessed with it. Because of Norm she no longer needed to worry about her day job. She called in sick most days to drive me over the hill to sit in a waiting room for two hours and then spend four minutes reading a line of dialogue. I didn’t get shit. I didn’t even get a callback, which was the first step in getting shit. After a month of that, my mother volunteered me to do extra work just to get on a set.

I met Jason Bateman on the first show I was on—a Disney Sunday Night Movie. He’d impressed me as Derrick on Silver Spoons where he played an 80s Eddie Haskell with a bit of depth. And he was nice to me, which was something I wasn’t used to. I walked across a courtyard on an episode of Highway to Heaven and shook Michael Landon’s hand, twice. I was in a school hallway as a very old Robert Mitchum consoled Jenny Lewis, the queen of the girl childstars from my era who is now a successful and significant songwriter. But none of this let me feel like anything other than a complete loser. I was just atmosphere, and I knew my place.

I still went to acting class where Joe was staging an abridged version of Jean-Paul Satre’s No Exit. I wasn’t allowed to wear my glasses, and when I had to say the line, “Hell is other people.” I meant it.

Then came my close-up: I’d gotten the call to report to a temple in Brentwood to be a background Jew for an episode of Quantum Leap where Sam, played by Scott Bakula, was transported into the body of a Cantor. I was a huge fan of the show, since it dabbled in History—following in the footsteps of the amazing Voyagers with Jon Eric Hexum, which had been canceled years before. As a twelve-year old, I mourned the loss of Voyagers in much the way a child might mourn the passing of a hamster or Dumbledore.

Surrounded by a wealth of Jewy children, I felt right at home. I could talk about things other than sports. Someone always had a tissue in their pocket for the explicit purpose of cleaning glasses. It was scheduled to be a four-day shoot, and I was in heaven, or a Jew’s version of heaven, which I’m not sure there is. My mom was too. Dean Stockwell had chatted her up and offered her his director chair for her to watch the shoot. Things couldn’t have been better.

Then an Assistant Director, everyone on a set seems to be an Assistant Director, came into the schoolroom to ask, “Was anyone told they’re playing the boyfriend?”

Every boy shook his head.

The Director was flustered. “OK, boys. Stand up.”

We all did.

“OK. Take off your glasses.”

We all did. I tried to not look as if I was pooping out a whole ham.

“You,” the Director said, pointing right at me. Joe was right. All I had to do was take off my glasses. I was whisked out of the room and led to the girl who was playing the Bat Mitzvah girl. They said we looked cute together, and it was on. From that point, I wasn’t an extra anymore. I didn’t have any lines, but I had a character name “Michael Kornbloom.” I was led around. I ate lunch with Dean and Scott and we talked about things other than sports.

I danced with my Bat Mitzvah girl for nearly an hour as they got the shot from every angle. When the show aired a few months later, it was agreed that I looked better without glasses and contacts came into my life. But by then it didn’t matter. My acting career was over.

I tried to be an extra one more time—on an episode of Growing Pains. I was back in the pack. When I tried to talk to Kirk Cameron to tell him I knew his sister, I was whisked away by a nearly convulsing assistant director. The only good part of the day was that I got to spend the afternoon riding bikes around Universal Studios with Alan Thicke’s son, Robin, who is also a well-known singer now. But it was little compensation for the realization I was in the middle of: I was an extra. I wasn’t necessary. I could be anyone.

I told my mom I was done with acting. She told me I wasn’t. But I went in my room and wouldn’t come out. So she dragged me to Joe’s class saying that we’d already paid for the week.

When Joe saw my placid frown, he pulled me aside.

I told him that I didn’t want to act anymore. I wanted to just be myself from then on.

He nodded at me and whispered a knowing, “Otay.”

He gave me tuition for the week in cash and I took it home to my mother. She threw it to the ground and told me to go to my room. Which was just fine.

I have issues with fame and acting and how impressed everyone—especially me—is impressed by anyone who has a bit of fame.

For a while I couldn’t stand hearing people speak about anything gossipy about famous people without freaking out a bit. In the mid 90s when people would bring up OJ, I would usually respond, “Why don’t you go fuck Ron Goldman’s corpse in the ass?” To which most people would respond, “I meant orange juice.”

But I’m better now, I think. I watch a show like The Two Coreys and see two grown men who as kids achieved success beyond the hopes of even my mother. One is a complete and utter drug addict, the other is an emaciated, style obsessed prig with a wife who can’t wait to get naked in public.

I don’t feel like I’m better than them. But I do know who I am. I’m a loser, and I get a little better at it each and every day.

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