Ever since, I have thought about the Wide World Photo assignments as my dad and Willoughby going out on first dates.
“Ha’yah, mule,” Jason would say as I lugged the Profoto pack and light stands. The equipment weighed fifty pounds.
Often I’d get out of balance and crouch so the floor held the burden. Jason would shift the straps and secretly kiss my neck.
This was on the way to shoot things like an animatronic gorilla, the world’s largest algae library, a magic trick distributor, the inside of a wind turbine, and the undefeated cookie champions of the Iowa state fair.
Photograph by Jason
I don’t know how long Willy’s scam went on, but I know how it ended. An accounting agency sent a check meant for World Wide worth $21,000 to Wide World’s address, and Willy cashed it. World Wide found out.
Caught, Willy said he would give the money back and then sell them Wide World’s Yellow Pages listing.
World Wide said Willy would give the money AND listing back. So he gave both back, and that was that.
Willy was in more than one way an artist. He used to sing at nightclubs.
I wish I could say more, but my dad never went to see Willy sing. That was a separate life. Their life was Morton Street.
A neighborhood guy named Roscoe gave my dad an old safe. The kind you drop on someone in a silent comedy. We still have this safe. Me and my twin sister’s first passports are kept in it.
Roscoe had the safe for fifty years but didn’t know the combination.
Willy had a friend that was a safecracker.
The safecracker comes. He sees the safe and right off says the last number of this kind is always 17, then zippy-dippy he opens the safe faster than my dad can open it to this day.
Willy had an assortment of friends like that. People who could get you guns. People who could get you drugs. He liked running with dangerous people but had a theory he lived by: Don’t sit next to people like that. Someone might come to shoot them, miss, and get you instead.
The main perk of being a super is not paying rent.
Willy lived in an illegal apartment in the basement of his building.
It wasn’t a free ride. Willy worked. He swept the halls, took care of boilers and rats. He was mechanically gifted, with a full set of tools and a never-ending list of requests.
If there was a plumbing problem Willy knew when it was an easy fix and when it was time to call Garboli’s.
Garboli was a drunk mess, and he was expensive. But he was better than Two Time Ralph, who no matter what he fixed would need to come back again. Plus Garboli had a plumber named Chris. A thin, sweet guy, Chris would ride over on his bike as soon as you called. There was another good plumber that worked for Garboli named Philip.
Willy and my dad always hoped to get Chris, but were happy as long as Garboli himself didn’t show up.
The basement apartment had its own entrance and was sort of hidden. Willy would let people use it as a tryst spot for secret love affairs.
One morning Willy woke up and found a gun dropped in his window. He took it apart and dumped it in the river.
Memphis was a friend you didn’t sit next to. Willy never let him near my dad. If Willy was talking to Memphis my dad circled the block.
Memphis wouldn’t drop a gun in Willy’s window if he wanted it back.
But one of Memphis’s lackeys would. When the kid came looking for the gun Willy chewed him out.
Fucking shit. You don’t dump no gun in my house without telling me.
When Willy told this story to my father it was long, lyrical, and involved two women. Nuances like that are now lost to time.
Willy never had to pay for drinks; he would just sing a set at a club or be treated by someone. And he didn’t pay for other things, because people owed him for the use of his love nest. He learned to survive in the city like an Indian lives off the land.
“The nutrients of New York City are in the fringe people.” I was brought up to believe this, and that the definition of a fringe person was Willoughby.
Willy was born in St. Louis. His mother had tried to abort him and ran off as soon as she could. He was raised by his dad, who worked for the railroad.
As a kid Willy got a lot of shit for being light-skinned. An ungodly amount. I think his dad was black and his mom was a mix. There must have been some Irish, because he had red hair. I can’t confirm this, because I only knew him with gray tiny curls. But he would tell me about getting the crap kicked out of him. He must have looked pretty freaky, because as a person Willy was the least contentious human on the planet.
A blind woman named Annie lived in Willy’s building. Annie baked these fluffy muffins. She always gave a few to Willy because he helped her out and because he loved them.
One day Willy is over at her apartment. She is baking the muffins and measures out the ingredients. There are hundreds of bugs and weevils crawling in not just the flour but the sugar, too.
He never told Annie about the bugs. He just continued to eat the muffins. And he loved the muffins just the same.
But when pushed, Willy would get tough. His father had taught him to fight back.
Willy didn’t know where to begin.
There were so many kids that beat him up.
Start with the biggest, scariest one, was his father’s advice.
A boy named Arvell was twice anyone’s size. One day Willy walks by Arvell and baits him into a fight. As soon as Arvell swings, Willy hits him in the shin with a copper pipe.
Willy didn’t win the pipe fight. But he won the war: no one bothered him after that. For the rest of his life he didn’t take crap from anyone.
He taught it to my dad, and he taught it to me: Stand up to that cocksucking bully. No shit if you lose. As long as it ain’t a free ride, that motherfucker, all those motherfuckers, will let you be.
Later Arvell and Willy became friends, and that made double sure no one messed with him.
When he moved to New York, Willy brought a wife. She was beautiful, but a compulsive gambler who would fuck other guys, and eventually did too much coke. I never met her. I never met any of Willy’s ladies. Separate life.
Willoughby loved pussy. There is nothing more in this wide world he loved more than pussy. It is just a fact.
My dad told me Willy once had a girl over. The girl and Willy had lots of sex and drinks. And he gave her his television set.
When Willy wanted to get laid he gave everything away. He had an expression:
When I’m hard I’m soft and when I’m soft I’m hard.
And it was true, because the next day Willy went and got the television back.
WOLF’S LAIR
Parking costs ten zloty. We are in the middle of nowhere.
When I was 11 my whole family drove to Dollywood, Dolly Parton’s theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.
We sang “Dolly Parton is the best. She’s got mountains on her chest” the whole way there.
It was far.
Finally a roller coaster peeked out from hickory trees. “We’re glad you’re here!” a sign proclaimed.