Brooklyn

Ahm, and listen, I've been up here for a while and I don't know how many out there noticed, but I do not have what you call a 'stock theatrical sun tan', I'm redheaded, and fairskinned and when I go to the beach, I don't tan, I stroke. I never used to go to the beach, 'cause I come from Brooklyn, we only had Coney Island, which was an awful beach, though there was rumours during the war, that enemy submarines, German subs came into the bathing area at Coney Island, and they were destroyed by the pollution. And the only time I bathed was with Mrs. Allen, I guess, my wife, the dread Mrs. Allen. Honeymooning, I was fabulous, you would have adored me. I was on waterskis, stripped to the waist, skiing fast across the top of the surf, my hair back, I oiled my muscle. It was really... holding on with one hand, waterskiing, very great, my wife was in the boat ahead of me, rowing frantically. I got a very bad burn, really, I was thinking, when I was a kid, I was ashamed of having red hair, 'cause I lived in a tough section, I lived in a sub-basement walk-down, ah, under street level, janitor-style, ah, the janitor, that had the apartment during the depression, had some stocks, the market crashed, and he was wiped out, he tried to kill himself by jumping out the window and UP unto street level. I was the sensitive kid, poet. There were tough kids in my class, there was a kid in my class named Floyd. Floyd used to sit in the dumb row in school, y'know. Vegetable mentality, y'know. I made friends with him years later when we got older, I removed a thorn from his paw. Once, I was on my way for my violin lesson when I was a kid, and I'm walking past the pool room, and Floyd and all of his friends are out, y'know, they're swiping hubcaps, in Brooklyn, from moving cars, which is really...amazing. And I walk past him, and he yells out to me, "Hey, Red!". I was a cocky kid. Put down my violin. I go up to him. I said "My name is not Red. If you want me, call me by my regular name, It's Master Heywood Allen". I spent that winter in a wheelchair. A team of doctors laboured to remove a violin. Lucky it wasn't a cello.