Michael Savage's homophobic rants against what he calls "anal rights" were foreshadowed by the 1986 book "Maximum Immunity." In it, Weiner glommed onto some of the wilder ideas about AIDS that were circulating at the time. He called for mandatory nationwide AIDS testing and suggested using massive doses of vitamin C to slow down and even reverse the disease's progress. When he was done suggesting cures, he looked for scapegoats. He demanded that gays "accept the blame" for the rise of AIDS, then grumbled, "Those who practice orgiastic sex, with many partners, and use street drugs are not likely to respond to reason."
"Maximum Immunity" also hinted that its author was dealing with some heavy issues of his own. In one passage, Weiner wrote about his decision to take up jogging so that he might avoid his father's untimely fate. Everything went well until he started hearing things. "An inner 'voice' began to demand, 'Stop ... I can't take this anymore.'" he wrote. Fearing a "nervous collapse," Weiner traded his running shoes for a bike and soothed his jangled nerves by curling up on the sofa with a mug of passionflower herbal tea and ingesting "megadoses" of vitamins. Feeling much better, he concluded: "I learned to calm the inner debate that had threatened to drown me in madness!"
Such extreme mood swings are regular occurrences on "The Savage Nation." Even the phrase "I can't take this anymore!" (usually shouted at full volume) has become a Savage catchphrase. James Hilliard, who produced "The Savage Nation" at KSFO for nearly three years in the late 1990s, says that talk radio provided Savage with an outlet for his unpredictable temperament. As he recalls, "The show was really driven by Michael's mood. At times, he could be very quiet, mellow, low-key, and then be a maniac on the air."
This maniacal tendency, and the roiling emotions that fueled it, were laid bare in "Vital Signs," Michael Weiner's first and only book of fiction, published in 1983. A collection of confessional, stream-of-consciousness stories, it follows the exploits of Samuel Trueblood, who just happens to be a 40-ish New York Jew, an herbalist and writer with a tumultuous personal life, a substantial assortment of inner demons and a bit of a Napoleon complex. "I am physically not tall, but my eyes burn with fire," he states. "Two black fires of Hell." Trueblood narrates a series of misadventures, from procuring an illegal backroom abortion for his fiancée to beating the stuffing out of an abusive cop.
Trueblood describes his life as one long search for inner peace. He blames much of his discontent on his "childhood beneath tyranny," during which he was cowed by his bullying father. Trueblood describes how his father mocked him with "brutal jokes and chides, 'gentle' kidding: 'You're not a fag, are you Sam?' the little man would say each time the boy dared wear a colorful shirt or flashy trousers." Unable to shake his dead father's disapproving influence, the adult Samuel is tortured by feelings of weakness and inadequacy. "I am filled with fears," he admits, "nearly all the time feeling I am about to become totally insane."
Even after moving to mellow Marin County, becoming a successful herbalist and starting a family, Trueblood remains plagued by his "underlying sadness." Not even trusty passionfruit tea can bring him off this bummer. In one passage, he almost loses it in front of his wife and two young children:
"Inner voice screaming at me for years, first rational, then crazy, telling me to do mad things. Every form of relief tried, painting, psychotherapy, running, diet, vitamins, etc., etc. Almost uncontrollable now. Impulses to stab children, strangers, wife, self with scissors."
Eventually, Trueblood seeks solace in chasing skirts. (Though he admits to being drawn to "masculine beauty," he confides that "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks.") While his wife stays home with the kids, he beds a young "cockswell" with a "dykish haircut" and skin "[s]ofter than that Northern Indian prostitute in Fiji whose covering was as soft as that of my own penis." And so it goes for another 50 pages.
No doubt the anti-abortion, anti-gay, pro-family Michael Savage would disapprove of such a perverted excuse for literature, with all its gratuitous references to illegal abortions, repressed homosexuality and shameless philandering. But it's impossible not to notice the similarity between Trueblood, the tormented seeker, and Savage, a man whose "inner voice" precipitated an existential crisis over jogging. Neeli Cherkovski says that the chapter in "Vital Signs" about Trueblood's father is based on Weiner's own life, recalling that he went with the author back to the Bronx to see the site of his father's store. But Cherkovski won't speculate about the rest. "I think he [Weiner] is a person who had a lot of wild experiences," Cherkovski says. "He tested a lot of waters." Even the book's dedication, to Weiner's wife, suggests that he wasn't making everything up: "Who would listen to such tales and live with he who lived them but she, the unshakably faithful Janet."
Next page: A deepening love affair with the sound of his own voice