Barbra Streisand: Obsession of a Redblooded American Boy

I have finally recognized that my preteen obsession with Barbra Streisand is the key to understanding why I am such a regular guy.

Like all boys, I wanted to be just like my mother. But the Oedipal overtones were too much, so I transferred this natural inclination onto someone famous with a ballpark resemblance to my mom: Barbra Streisand.

I’m not proud of it, but I was a Cub Scout. One of the requirements for becoming a Webelo was getting a diva to visit the troop, so I made a few calls and got my idol to come by.

My parents had a copy of The Barbra Streisand Album, her debut. They had had it for 20 years, and it was in absolutely pristine condition. I come from a musical family, and we kids were encouraged to sing and play instruments like the guitar. The guitar outgrew my hands so I played flute in the marching band in high school.

I’ll just repeat that: I played the flute in the high-school marching band.

Anyway, because we were musical no one minded, that I know of — especially not my dad — when I would descend into the basement on a perfect spring day, put on the big headphones, and sit on the floor in front of the entertainment center and sing along with Barbra!

In due time I saw some of her TV specials and movies and took note of how she acted, so then I could act out her extravagantly dramatic hand gestures and facial expressions, too. Even though this was all totally normal, I felt a natural bashfulness the way any young dude would, and when some family member came down the stairs I would quickly turn around and stop singing and emoting.

It wasn’t long before I started collecting Streisandiana. It was just like collecting baseball cards, really. I wanted to own every one of her albums, of which she had about 30 out at that time. Memorize the state capitals at school, memorize the titles of all Barbra Streisand albums and films at home.

The stores weren’t giving the records away, so I needed money. I also wanted every book about her, and every photo ever taken of her, every magazine article, just… everything. Kids are so hopeful; I thought that it was possible to collect everything.

I raked leaves, shoveled snow and mowed lawns, among other odd jobs, to earn the bucks for my Streisand memorabilia addiction.

My dad would drive me to all the local flea markets, used-book stores and Hollywood memorabilia expos that weren’t reachable by bike or foot. I would spend hours among musty piles of magazines scanning the pages for mentions of Barbra Streisand. Looking back, my dad was really extraordinarily patient with his little Barbra-Streisand-fan son. I guess he figured “boys will be boys.”

I filled my closet with my Barbra Streisand collection, and decorated my room in Barbra Streisand memorabilia. I spent about $1,000 over three years, which was no small sum when you earned $5 to shovel someone’s walk or $10 to mow their lawn.

I joined several Barbra Streisand fan clubs, and received their newsletters. It was as exciting as being picked for the baseball team when a newsletter would arrive in the mailbox! I also had the distinction of being the youngest member, which the older guys would point out in their Streisand-oriented letters to me.

Younger than all of them put together, I mean.

No matter how old we were, we all gasped in awe that one time someone in the club went through Barbra Streisand’s garbage in Brentwood and found some crumpled-up notes in her handwriting, which they then Xeroxed and reproduced in the newsletter. One said, “Ask H. about ‘f**k’”—apparently a question she had for Herbert Ross about a profanity in the script for Funny Lady.

Funny how nowadays when I see Barbra Streisand somewhere, I feel nothing. But when I was 12! Here I am sitting on my bed writing a poem about BARBRA STREISAND. Notice how the walls of my room are covered with her face and even her name in big bubble letters.

With one fan-club membership, you got little gold stickers that said “People who need BARBRA STREISAND are the luckiest people in the world!!” How true! I wanted to take them to school to swap with the other guys. Maybe recruit some members.

Over the course of this obsession with a famous diva, which most 12-year-old boys experience, I went through all the normal phases. I went through my What’s Up, Doc? phase, where I wanted to grow my hair long and dye it honey-blond, get a tan, wear a floppy hat and pursue someone like Ryan O’Neal around San Francisco. I had a costume party and dressed up like Harpo Marx, just like Barbra’s character did in The Way We Were. And of course I went through my Yentl phase, where I wanted to be a girl who must dress as a boy to attend yeshiva school in what is now Poland.
Then, like all boys, I outgrew my Streisand obsession and moved on to worship Marlene Dietrich instead.

In sum, I’ve always been so ordinary it’s depressing.

PS:
This post is dedicated to the all the members of the Barbra Streisand Fan Club in the Sky. Shalom.