Up Against the Wall

It was just a facade

I put my best face forward—on the side of a six-story building.

In the 1980’s, the Nick at Nite billboard dominated the corner of Canal Street and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, a busy intersection at the entrance of the Holland Tunnel. I worked at Nickelodeon/Nick at Nite at the time, and was asked to pose after an image of the original subject—Ronald Reagan—could not be licensed.

Reagan, of course, had begun his career as a movie star and TV personality, in hits like “Bedtime for Bonzo,” with a chimp co-star pre-dating Clint Eastwood’s dirty and hairy orangutan pal in “Every Which Way But Loose” by 27 years.

Reagan, who played a psychology professor in the film, said in an interview while Governor of California that the movie was based on “the type of experiments they’ve been doing at Duke University”—to raise a chimp as you would a human baby, in order to see how far it would progress in intelligence before being outsmarted by an actual baby. (I couldn’t locate that research, but did come across a Duke study entitled, “Bonobos Prefer Jerks.”)

Years later, punk rock band The Ramones released the song, “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” in response to President Reagan’s visit to a cemetery in Bitburg, Germany to mark the 40th anniversary of V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe. Forty-nine members of the Waffen SS, a combat arm of the Nazi Schutzstaffel, were buried there after committing atrocities against American prisoners of war. It was what today would be termed, “bad optics.”

Not for Regan. They "were victims, just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps," he explained, ecumenically.

I had to sit for the photo that would ultimately be drawn and painted on the building’s brickwork. The shoot took place at a downtown Manhattan loft where makeup was applied, not to my face, but to my hand, given that it was the focal point of the image.

From the framed photos on the walls, it dawned on me that this was the same studio that photographed models for “Rockshots,” a line of greeting cards which seemed to specialize in two subjects: half-dressed gay men handling tools on loan from the Works Progress Administration, and morbidly obese Black women, their Volkswagon-sized breasts tumbling proudly out of too-small boudoir outfits.

They also published a line of greeting cards featuring leather-clad John Waters film star Edith Massey, recreating holiday traditions like flogging Santa Claus with a cat o' nine tails. Safe word: Rudolph!

The cards celebrated a kind of mutant DEI, 1980s-style, that nowadays would trigger a federal civil rights investigation, or cause the Shoebox Greetings section at Target to burst into flames.

It was here, surrounded by these images, that my face was committed to film and later drawn on the side of a building. My index finger, yards long, would be a beacon not unlike the flame held by the Statue of Liberty, reminding drivers destined for Jersey City or Hoboken to cherish their freedom to watch old black and white television shows.

I remember walking down to the neighborhood to take a gander at the finished product. I brought a friend, and knew exactly which corner we’d turn to reveal the billboard in all of its glory.

“It doesn’t look like you,” she said.

© 2022 David Potorti

I had to agree; it was more caricature than representation, suggesting that the photo taken was the beginning, not the end, of a process helped along by the keen eye of an artist. One thing was undeniable: I had been given Reagan’s hair.

Still, it was impressive, something to show out-of-town guests after breakfast at the nearby Royal Canadian Pancake House on Hudson Street, which served pizza-sized pancakes in threes, 90 percent of which went uneaten because you couldn’t possibly eat three pizza-sized pancakes. There seemed to be a hundred flavors, and just as many gaping children in attendance.

Royal Canadian Pancake House. Credit: David Greif

Although I brainstormed how to capitalize on the situation—maybe a dating ad that read, “SWM with 20-foot head on side of building seeks SWF with similar-sized head”—I have to admit being a little embarrassed about the whole thing. Angelyne, the pneumatically-endowed woman who was famous for being famous, was far less embarrassed about slapping her snackholders on billboards all over Hollywood, and to much better effect.

After leaving the city, I’d visit my face on return trips for several years, always surprised it was still there. On one visit, I noticed that it was marred after being hit by a can of red paint. The tide was beginning to turn.

I was promised $1 for my sitting, which was never paid.

Angelyne would never have settled for that.

© 2022 David Potorti