Howie Mandel - Heres the Deal: Dont Touch Me

I was devastated. I was humiliated. And I was probably finished, both professionally and personally. Those thoughts were racing around my head just minutes after doing Howard Sterns radio show.This is not a joke, nor did it feel funny. It was sometime in the late 1990s, and I was in the middle of a national press tour. Either I was promoting my dream come true, a nationally syndicated daytime talk show, The Howie Mandel Show , or it might have been right on the heels of its cancellation, when I wanted people to know I was still out there, hopefully funny, and available for work. I cant remember the date or exactly what happened, but I will never forget my feelings.I had been in the business for twenty years as a stand-up comedian, actor, and now host, so I pretty much knew what to expect from these interviews. Most people ask the same soft-ball questions.But Howard Stern is a different animal. His show is about entertainment and controversy, sometimes at the expense of his guests. Even Steven Spielberg might have to sit between two midgets and a hooker and participate in Howards circus while hes trying to plug his Holocaust movie. You must bring your A-game and be prepared to roll with whatever is thrown your way.Howard Sterns setup is unlike any other. Normally, you just sit face-to-face with the host and answer questions and focus on being informative and entertaining. But on Howards show, anyone can chime in at any time from anyplace in the room. Robin, a lovely young lady who has been his sidekick since he started in radio, sits in a glass booth off to the side. Fred, a longtime staple of Sterns show, usually sits someplace behind you. At that time, Jackie the Joke Man, who either provided comedic input verbally or passed along material to Howard, was also there. This was the regular irregularity of this show. Now add to this a guest whose name I cannot remember. I would have preferred two midgets and a hooker, because this interview would prove to be far more dangerous. It was tough enough as it was because of Howards setup.The mystery guest was wearing a T-shirt and loosely fitting sweatpants. Howard was playing a game where listeners had to guess this guests special talent. I immediately became a radio show contestant, and I too had to join the guessing game. Being able to see him wasnt an advantage.After many, many calls and repeated clues from Howard, nobody had guessed correctly. Finally, Howard revealed this guys special talent. The man stood up, loosened his sweatpants, and dropped them to his knees. It was like going to a show where the curtain is dropped and the main attraction is revealed. He had a huge penis, the likes of which I have never seen.I dont know how to describe what I saw. You hear of men with large penises. The best way to describe this was a large penis with a small man on the end.With Howard calling the play-by-play, the guy began doing tricks with his member. He wrapped his penis around his leg clockwise and tied it into something of a knot. This guy was an amazing talent. I have no idea where he is today, but hes probably hugenot as far as success goes, but wherever he is, hes huge.The whole event was so Howard. He presents the biggest, craziest penis ever seenon radio.I was awash with different emotions. The first was jealousy. That was followed quickly by discomfort. Im not a homophobe, but there is nothing more disconcerting than a man sitting next to you playing with his penis. I was supposed to be there promoting myself, but I felt as though I were sitting on a two a.m. train back to Brooklynnot that Ive been on a two a.m. train to Brooklyn, nor would I expect the man next to me to be playing with his penis, but I dont have any other point of reference for this experience.When the penis manipulator finished his tricks, Howard said goodbye. The guy zipped up and headed toward the door. As a little boy, I had been taught to wash my hands after going to the bathroom, even if I had touched nothing but my own penis. This guy I had been sitting next to didnt piss, but I promise you he touched his penis. Wait, Im thinking, where are the hand wipes? As any person would, he grabbed the knob, pulled the door open, and was gone. He might have been gone, but in my mind, there was so much more of him still in the room than needed to be.Now that he had left, it was my time to shine. My job would be to chime in from time to time with some witty repartee. That being said, I dont believe my repartee was witty, if even existent. My entire focus was on that doorknob that I knew I would have to handle.As Howard went on, I felt like Charlie Brown in Peanuts when the teacher speaks and all Charlie hears is Waw, waw, waw. All I could think about was how I was going to get through the door without touching the knob.The next thing I seem to remember hearing is Howard thanking me for stopping by. In fact, if you listen to a tape of the broadcast, it may not be anything like this. Im just telling you what was going on in my head.After the goodbyes and thank-yous, I headed toward the door. When I reached the threshold, I very casually, and as naturally as I could, asked, Can somebody open the door for me? I dont want to touch the knob because the guy had his penis all over his hands, and his hands touched the door. I didnt think it would be an issue.But Howard wanted me to open the door myself.I didnt want to. He had touched his penis and then he touched the doorknob.This back-and-forth lasted through the commercial break, and soon we were back live on the air. Howard announced that Howie Mandel wouldnt touch the doorknob because it had penis residue on it, and the drama escalated.I stood there for what seemed like an eternity. Though I wasnt physically trapped, I was mentally trapped. At this moment, nothing else existed for me but this problem. I had no awareness that this back-and-forth was being broadcast nationally. I was making no effort to be funny or entertaining. I just wanted to get out of that room, so I lifted the veil of funny and went to honesty.I said something to the effect of: The joke is over, I cannot touch this door. As much as I imagine this is entertaining, this is real. Its something that I cope with and talk to a therapist about. Its a real issue, and its part of a bigger condition called OCD. Obsessive-compulsive disorder.That admission was a major event in my life. The fact that I had told Howard Stern that I have a serious mental issue and see a therapist for it may not seem like anything to you, the reader, but this was a big hammer that landed for me. It was like revealing my darkest secret.I remember feeling heart palpitations, a shortness of breath, and an anxiety attack coming on, which is why my memory of the story is somewhat clouded. I could not touch that doorknob. Truthfully, I dont know what Howard was saying. I do know that I told him what I was suffering from was real. I do know that I was panicked. I do know that I wasnt in the mode to entertain. And I do know that it didnt feel good.As serious as all this was to me, Im sure it meant nothing to him. I dont believe that anybody in the room felt they were witnessing something of great consequence. Even so, many times when Im being serious like that, people dont realize that I am being serious. In comedy, nobody can hear you scream.Finally, somebody opened the door and let me out of the studio. As the door closed behind me, a real sense of devastation came over me. If there is a palpable feeling to devastation, that was it. I had just told the world that Im a nutcase.My mind was racing. What are the consequences of talking about this? First and foremost, I said something that was personally embarrassing and would be embarrassing to my wife and children, who have no interest in being in the public eye, least of all as a relative to a mental case. Are people not going to hire me? Every show costs millions of dollars and employs hundreds of people. Why would the producers risk putting someone at the helm who has mental issues?I know this sounds crazyno pun intendedbut you have to realize that I was born in 1955 in Toronto, Canada, and having mental health issues and going to a psychiatrist was not the norm. Society has always attached a stigma to mental health issues, and Im very much a part of that culture. Outwardly, I seemed to be striving and functioning, but my mental health was not something I talked about publicly. It was certainly not something I talked about on a comedy radio show. If I was going to discuss such a serious subject, it would be with my family, my friends, or my therapist. And maybe if I talked about it publicly, I would do it eleven years later in a book. But not on The Howard Stern Show. I was truly devastated. I walked down the hall, and it was very dark. It probably wasnt, but it felt dark. Then I got into the elevator. The door closed, and it was even darker. The elevator went down, which was such a great metaphor for how I was feeling. In my mind, everybody was calling everybody else and saying, Did you hear Howards show? Howie Mandels a mental case. My kids were already being ridiculed. My wife was holed up in the house. At USA Today , they were stopping the presses. CNN had a breaking news flash. The world was coming to a halt to absorb this news.I walked out of the elevator and through the front door onto the street into a teeming mass of humanity known as Manhattan. Even though I felt I was standing amidst millions of people, I had never felt more alone. My head was hung. I didnt want to make eye contact with anyone.I heard a voice. I kept looking down at the sidewalk, and I saw a pair of feet in my periphery. A mans voice said, Youre Howie Mandel.My heart sank. I thought, This is it. This is the precipice of devastation, and Im about to go over it. Without looking up, I revealed shamefully, Yep.I just heard you on Howard, he said excitedly.You didAre you really a germaphobe?This random guy on the streets of New York was about to begin the public ridiculing that I had brought upon myself. Yes, I mumbled.And youve got OCD , he continued.And now I was descending closer to hell than I ever imagined. Running into traffic to get away from this guy was starting to look like the only option. Yes, I do, I confided.There was a long pause. And then came the two most dramatic words that I have ever heard. They were the words that changed my life and probably are the reason I am writing this book. He said, Me too.He walked away and left me standing with those two words in my head. That was the first time I realized that there was at least one other person who shared my pain. Ive always had people around me who help me and take care of me, but they dont share in my personal misery. Nobody is inside my head. But there was one guy on the streets of Manhattan who shared what Im feeling. I was not alone.The walk out of Howards studio, down that hall and into the elevator, and onto the streets of Manhattan was one of the darkest trips of my life, because I didnt know what I had done or what would happen next. But in the days, weeks, months, and years after that guy said, Me too, I found there were countless others. People contacted me to tell me they have OCD and that theyre working through it in therapy. They would ask me to tape a message to their son so he knew that he wasnt alone. They would thank me for talking about OCD publicly. As much comfort as I feel in knowing that Im not alone, they took comfort in knowing that there is somebody else who suffers as they do.Without knowing it, I had done myself a service. To date, Im not aware that revealing my OCD or discussing it has ever cost me a job. OCD has cost me peace in my own head, which it does constantly. Theres nothing I can do about thatthough talking about it and writing about it is a deterrent from sitting quietly and letting myself sink into that hole.It was the one moment when I publicly revealed the most intimate part of who I am. In this business, people always think they know you. In my career, this feeling has been fractured because my persona has always been so different. Ive been the wacky guy who put the rubber glove on his head as a comedian. Ive been the voice on Bobbys World to five-year-olds and their parents, who werent the same people who knew me from comedy. Ive been an upstart intern on St. Elsewhere , which was a highly acclaimed prime-time drama in the 1980s. Ive been the empathetic game-show host on Deal or No Deal and the prankster on Howie Do It. But as big a fan as you might be of any of those personas, each one contains only a small piece of me. The closest to who I am each and every day is the person who couldnt escape from Howard Sterns studio.