I’m here for the money I say. For the first time my body is an asset. The white guys don’t notice me, but the black guys, the brothers, pimps and players, they do. They tip. They want me, want me to want them. I want their money. But outside of turning tricks, here in the go-go bars the real money, the long green is on stage.
The dancers are glamorous, so far beyond what I can even hope for. (My mother will one day say I wasn’t burdened by having to be pretty. She had always been, after all, the pretty one.) They’re the dime everything turns on. Barmaids, like me, we keep the booze moving. Booze loosens a man’s wallet and care-free is care-less.
Men come to watch, to talk, to sit with, to forget their own lives. Some come to make money, like the owners and managers who don’t seem to like any us. We’re just a means to the money and they hate that we get paid just for having tits and ass. The men who drink here hate us for having tits and ass too, hate us for making them weak with wanting. They just don’t know it, yet.
Only the punch drunk bouncers, old pugs with no where else to go, only pimps and thieves take us out in public. Everyone else wants ass, or head or bragging rights and that’s as far as it goes.
I don’t want anyone to marry me, anyway. Men don’t marry girls like me.
I have nothing to lose.
I borrow a g-string. A cheesy scratchy blue number. A small triangle of coarse material that shimmers, barely, held together, barely, with three strips of black elastic. Someone else’s cooch stain taunts me as I change in the bathroom. I cover what I can with this swatch of blue and march out into the bar, pubic hair exploding from all sides.
Center stage, teetering on heels borrowed from Lisa for luck, I dance around and everyone watches. Everyone. Suddenly, I’m that woman men want to touch, to own, to be with, my body is buzzing. My nipples are hard, my skin jumping with electricity, my mouth dry, the world spins faster and faster. I’m free. I’m powerful, there’s a big red S on my chest. I’m out of control, out of my body. My shattered reflection dances with me, two of me, three of me, dozens of me jump from mirror to mirror, jerking, spinning, twirling in a trance of pounding disco. Smiling back at myself, I’m the pretty one now.
Fuck that shit. I’m beautiful.
I matter. And I’m the only thing in the world that matters. I’m untouchable.
Ralphie throws a brick through the plate glass window of my world. “Let’s see some floor work! Pretend you’re on top”, he barks.
I’m 17.
I’ve never been on top.
The spell is broken, I’m slammed back into my skin, just a chubby girl in someone else’s shoes doing naked push ups on stage. Everyone is watching.
Ralphie never asked me to dance again.
I never want to be in my skin again. Ever.
dirtygirl wonders: If you only had two choices, would you rather be the center of attention, or be completely invisible? Why? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 16, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, dirty boys, dirty money, pimps, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
JJ the pimp, my JJ, wants me to be a lady, to have some real class. So we go to nice places, not like Tad’s Steak House, which is what passed for nice growing up. I’m learning how to talk to maître d’s & sommeliers, to get respect & service in return. We order fine wines. Honestly though, I don’t get beyond white is chilled & red isn’t.
I go through the motions of letting a wine breath without knowing why, or caring for that matter. If I play my part well, I can be silly and get Perrier Jouet just for the flowers. I don’t know if it’s better than Cristal or Moet, but it’s better than the crap champagne we hustle at work, I know that much. I order Stolichnaya because I like the way the word feels in my mouth, but really, I’m happy to drink Georgi and when no one is looking I swallow the crap champagne at work instead of spitting it out.
JJ says there’s a fine line between sleazy and sexy and teaching me to walk that line is an uphill battle.
I’ve discovered charming, but can’t master demure. I’m better with funny or tough but he says there’s no money in funny and tough is for street girls. I mingle when we’re out, drinking enough Stolichnaya (chilled or not, I don’t care) to shut the voices up when they start to blabber, everyone knows, everyone knows you’re a fake, you’re just a kid, just a chubby kid from the asshole of Long Island. When the voices start, I don’t care if the bottle has flowers or a skull and cross bones, as long as it’s there.
JJ starts to teach me the truths about men. What they think they want, what they really want. He says check the way a man dresses, walks, speaks, even the way he sits matters. This part is easy. Daddy was a con man at heart and long before Times Square, my father was teaching me how to size a person up with a glance. Did a man’s shoes need resoling? Missing buttons? Shirts frayed at the collar or cuffs? Nails manicured or ragged? Was there a ring of pale skin where a wedding band should be? What does he drink and how quickly or slowly? I need this edge to win, to get men to part with their cash. If you’re not pretty, you have to be smarter. This is all vital if I’m going to work for JJ. I’ve seen Sharon’s life. I want what she has and I want it with JJ. I don’t need any vintage Greta Garbo underwear, but I want that sleep ’til noon cash business is nobody’s business kinda business. I want to be fancy & desirable.
I want to feel wanted.
No one at home asks about the hours and hours I’m out of the house. They think I’m working the lunch shift in a restaurant in the city. No one asks much anyway, but life is easier with a lie. The lies I tell my family makes it easier for them to sleep. The lies I tell men make it easier for them to like me.
I don’t tell anyone the truth. I’m not even all the sure what it is.
dirtygirl wonders: What exactly is classy? Is it the way you dress, the way you act, something you’re born with? Is that whole Eliza Dolittle transformation even possible? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 13, 2009 at 7:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, dirty boys, dirty money, JJ Huntsberry, partners in crime, pimps, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’ve arrived. Robbie’s is the largest topless bar in New York City, maybe in the world. There are fifteen cash registers making a horseshoe around three stages. Bottles & bottles of glittering gem toned liquids, sequins, feathers, balloons, mirrors, streamers. Broadway, jammed with cars, taxis, police sirens, sidewalks overflowing, the world screams outside our door and Levittown is a million lifetimes away. Times Square is neon, flash and glitter, crowds and then more neon. As long as I don’t mind working in a skimpy leotard (I don’t), smile big (I do) and charge high prices for short drinks, I have a job where I make more cash money in one day than I did in a week at an office job. No taxes. No paperwork. No bullshit.
Okay, a little bullshit.
The other girls are mostly friendly, mostly glamorous. There’s one, older, maybe even thirty, with dyed jet black hair. She’s covered in tattoos and calls herself Raven. Everybody’s got at least two names. One for here and another for real life. Raven takes me under her wing and teaches me to mix drinks. Rye & Ginger. 7 & 7. Scotch & Soda. White men’s drinks, she says. The brothers, the pimps, they go for fancy drinks involving cocktail shakers and milk, like Grasshoppers. Milk drinks are a pain. You have to clean the shaker & change the rinse sink water each time. But pimps tip better. Raven tells me to start thinking what name I’m gonna use, that I can’t use my own. You use your own name, she says, anyone can find you.
Lisa used to be a Rockette. Her tits are famous. One was on the cover of High Times, covered in chocolate syrup, her nipple the cherry on top. She brought in a copy for everyone to see. Lisa does tricks, like dancing while standing on her head. She’s teaching me how to suck a long neck Budweiser off and make it come. Guys love that trick.
The guys are okay, mostly my father’s age. Mostly white. The brothers sit with me or Raven, the other girls don’t want them around. I don’t mind, they tip, they’re friendly. There’s one in particular.
His name is Jasus. J. Huntsberry.
JJ was there from day one with his sleepy gray eyes hiding behind gold wire rimmed glasses and that velvet voice you need to lean in to hear. He is the color of dusty pecans. Dark blue suits, tailored. Leather shoes, handmade. He’s a subtle suggestion, a gentle mood. JJ’s silence screams next to the flashy moves and garish peacock colors of other pimps. When he’s here, I feel cared for, looked after. Safe from the reaches of other pimps and street daddies looking to turn out the new fish.
I need a name, I take his. And so, here, I’m “little JJ”. Together we’re black JJ & white JJ. Big JJ & Little JJ. JJ the pimp & JJ the girl.
For now, everyone steers clear and leaves us alone.
dirtygirl wants to know: What makes you feel safe in the world, okay in your own skin? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 9, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, JJ Huntsberry, Levittown, pimps, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I wasn’t a pretty girl. Growing up in Levittown, I was a cute kid, sure, but by the time I was in sixth grade it was over and I knew it. There’s a photo, a group shot of all of us kids just come back from caroling, crowded into someone’s mother’s kitchen having hot chocolate. All the other girls look like regular happy kids. Me, my hair is going in every different direction looking like I cut it myself, which I probably did. I’m wearing black octagon framed glasses and clenching my teeth, straining directly into the camera — all my teeth show and my gums. I look….maniacal, but it was what I thought a smile was supposed to look like. I had no idea how to be in my own skin. I was a chubby, wierd kid with no idea how to fit in, what it meant to be a girl, how to make other people like me. To top it off, I looked like a middle aged school teacher most of my life. At least that’s what I saw when I looked in the mirror.
Robbie’s Mardi Gras changed all of that. The first time I was pretty, it was behind the bar at Robbies.
I was seventeen years old and there was a line of middle aged men at my bar that wanted my attention. They saw me, not the chubby weird kid I saw, and they wanted me to see them.
The first time I was beautiful, really beautiful, I was on stage, in a borrowed g-string, a scratchy glittery piece of blue fabric held together by two strips of black sewing elastic with someone else’s pussy stains on the crotch. Probably more than one someone.
The women around me were gorgeous and glamourous. Cocktails were served in sparkling stem glasses. Everything glittered. The music was loud, there were mirrors everywhere and I was pretty. For the very first time.
I knew then, I was never going to leave.
dirtygirl wants to know:…about the first time you felt desirable. Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 6, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, Levittown, lonliness, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Life might’ve been different if Frankie hadn’t killed himself, if Cowboy hadn’t left town, if I hadn’t gotten fired. I’d have a ham sammich if I had some ham, if I had some bread.
But Frankie died and I don’t think it took three days before we started calling him Dead Frankie. So, I woulda been Mrs. Dead Frankie if we’d managed to get it together before he managed to fall apart.
The police called me in the office to tell Frankie was dead. That’s not the kind of thing you should be telling a person over the phone, ‘hey girlie, your fiancee killed himself so you better start making other plans’. Really, that’s the kind of thing you should tell a person face to face. I said, when you tell his moms, tell her to her face. Then I ripped the phone outta the wall and threw it across the room.
The ripping the phone out of the wall, the howling and flipping over of furniture – they can say that’s why they fired me, but really, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was time. I wasn’t cut out to be a file clerk.
Cowboy was my best friend, my back door man, which was all he could be. He’s out of commission with the Clap most of the time. I guess it all got to be too much for him, the funeral, the Clap, the whole downtown hustler thing. We went up to Port Authority and I put him on a bus back to wherever it was he called home.
Suddenly, I am unemployed and extraordinarily single having gone from a boyfriend and a fiancee to nothing. The ad in the back of the Village Voice said “BARMAID – NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY”. I have that, no experience, and plenty of it.
I’d had dreams of being a criminal lawyer, not a $90 a week file clerk. That’s what the law firm was paying me before they fired me. That was before taxes. My first day behind the bar at Robbies Mardi Gras I made $85 in cash. No taxes. No paperwork. No experience necessary.
Yeah. That’ll work. I’m not going anywhere for a while….
dirtygirl wonders:
Can men and women be friends if they’re attracted to each other? Can you be “just friends” with someone you’re having sex with?
Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 2, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, death, dirty boys, dirty money, hustlers, love, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The ad in the back of the Village Voice said ‘BARMAID – EXPERIENCE PREFERRED’. What I saw was no experience necessary and I was all that and almost eighteen. I’d been in topless bars before, small places out in Long Island, but nothing that prepared me for the Mardi Gras.
The double glass doors opened onto an insanity of mirrored walls, lights, sequins and more mirrors. I’m busy staring, mouth hanging open, trying to take it all in and I feel someone staring — at me. He had a face made from the soft sweat stained leather of an old catcher’s mitt, and I’d swear I’d seen that face in a hundred gangster movies. He says his name is Ralphie. I tell him mine.
“‘S’a boy’s name. Ya mudder wanna boy’n get stuck wit chu?” Snort. “We’ll come up wi’sumpin’. You a dancer or bartender?”
“Uh, bartender?”
“Can ya mix drinks?” I shake my head no. “Can ya open a bottly beer, little girl?” When he talks, only one side of his face moves, one side of his mouth, so’s if I was standing on the other side I wouldn’t know it was him talking at all. I’m mesmerized, by him, by the whole huge glittering place. It’s like being inside of a Christmas ornament. Ralphie bends down to look me in the face, like I’m the town idiot, or a small child. I feel like both, but opening beer bottles, here was something I had plenty of experience with. I shake my head enthusiastically up and down. Yes, I shake, struck speechless
“Good. Now, can ya close ya mout ‘n folly me?”
I close my mouth and folly.
dirtygirl wants to know:
Have you ever stepped through the looking glass? What was the first time you found yourself someplace you had no reference at all for and what the hell were you doing there in the first place? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on June 29, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, Robbies Mardi Gras, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Everyone turned up & tricked out for the funeral. Cindy and her man BamBam from the Bronx Savage Lords, Geronimo, Candy, Cowboy, Sharon, Fat Phyllis, Terry the Moose and all the pretty boys. It was the first time I’d seen any of them in the daylight. There’s something to be said for the kindness of moonlight and mirrored balls. I’m sure they were thinking the same about me.
One of Candy’s johns, a little Truman Capote looking thing, drove us out to the funeral home. Frankie’s mother and sisters introduced me to two or three other people who were also engaged to him, and another couple he’d already married. I met the jealous ex-girlfriend who was always banging on the apartment door because, she said, it was her apartment and she wasn’t his ex-anything. We’d shared the same lover and the same vaginal infection. Both were over for us now. She introduced me to more people who were engaged to him and others he’d married, some he only lived with. Half of them were younger women, the men were mostly older.
Standing graveside as they lowered the coffin into what would remain an unmarked grave, an aging blonde drag queen named Sunshine in a tasteful black lace dress & veil handed me a plain white envelope and offered me a ride home. She drove a big convertible with soft white leather seats, and a blazing cherry red paint job that matched her lipstick exactly.
I crawled into the back seat, tucked myself into a corner. Horse Faced Linda climbed in next to me and started to cry. Linda was neither engaged nor married to Dead Frankie, but had the dubious horror of being the woman whose bed he chose to kill himself in. She was the only one there I hated & I was the only one she spoke to. She wept and babbled into my ear the entire drive home.
I caught the blonde’s eye in the rear view mirror. Her veil lifted, the wind sent her Nice n’ Easy Honey hair flying around her head, catching in the fine stubble on her chin. She watched as I opened the envelope. I thumbed through the nude Polaroids inside. Two front view and one rear view. With matching wallet sized copies. They’re the only pictures I’ve ever had of Frankie. She smiled into the mirror, lipstick smears on her crooked teeth. I leaned back, opened a small vial of butyl nitrate, amyl’s cheap & easy sister, and watched the sun pulse as it slid out of view. The sounds of the road, of blood rushing through my veins, through my head, to my heart, drowned out Linda’s equine weeping next to me. The wind caught the tangles of my hair now, and beat me into oblivion as I inhaled a little more of the butyl.
He’d been about to turn twenty. I was seventeen. Overwhelmed by lonely, with fears and shames we couldn’t name–we hunted for somewhere safe, dark and distant.
It was a good day to die.
Todays question for my readers: What do you do in your life today to ease stress, how do you deal with sadness or loneliness? Do you have someone to talk to, do you meditate, go running, drink till oblivion? How do you handle that?
This entry was written by , posted on June 25, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, death, dirty boys, hustlers, johns, love, The Chalice. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Wednesday afternoon Frankie called and canceled our Thursday Central Park plans. Thursday morning, the phone on my desk rang again.
“This is the Police Department. Do you know a Frank Stewart, Ma’am?”
Yes. I did. I do. Why are police calling me?
“He overdosed on drugs, Ma’am.”
No. That’s not right, I say into the phone. A thousand tiny feet of hysteria starting to dance inside me. Funny sounds come out of me. I know that only because heads are turning. Ears are perking.
“He overdosed.”
Where is he? I need to know what hospital he’s at. I need to be there, to fix him, we fix each other when we’re broken. That’s the agreement. No one buys damaged goods. We fix each other. Where is he, I scream into the phone.
Everyone in my office has stopped working. They’re staring. I am desperate to find a pen. To be writing down a name of a hospital. To sit by his side. To stop screaming into the phone. To make sense of what the cop voice is saying.
“He overdosed.”
I tear the phone cord out of the wall, hold the dead receiver close and scream: STOP. SAYING. THAT.
I scream again, into the darkness that has swallowed me whole, hurling the phone across the room. We hit the wall at the same time, each shattering into a million sharp pieces.
There’s a thin line between here & hell. Sometimes the pain of living is more than you can stand. Frankie swallowed a bottle of Darvon, one of Triavil and one of Quaaludes, washed it down with two quarts of Budweiser, called me, then lay down to sleep in Brooklyn.
He immediately became known as Dead Frankie.
If he hadn’t killed himself I might never have met his family.
Todays question for my readers: Somedays it hurts too much to be alive, but what about the people you leave behind, the people you lock out? Or tell me about your first heartbreak, what was that all about?? Are you over it yet? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on June 22, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, dirty boys, drugs, suicide, The Chalice. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Everyone is on the game, everyone is following the money. The hustlers come for the money. The queens come for the hustlers. The whores come to relax. They can drink in peace and the queens fuss up a big production when they’re all dolled up.
Sharon’s a high class whore. An escort, she says. She wears satin pumps and vintage underwear she swears belonged to Greta Garbo. Garbo pussy stains, she says, See? She lifts her skirt and points. She’s a natural blonde, that’s what I see. Candy, a towering glamor-puss in red patent leather platforms works the dark night of the West Side Highway with her dick tucked neatly and discreetly between the cheeks of her perfect apple ass. You’d never know she was a he. Candy is a less than natural blonde, the furthest thing from a natural anything. Cindy’s an Irish bulldog. She’s been turning Delancey Street tricks with her mother since she was eight, on her own since she was eleven. Well, not totally on her own. Candy looks out for her and tries to teach her about makeup and other girlie things. Cindy’s thirteen.
Cowboy follows me home to Levittown like a hungry puppy. He followed my mother around after that. I don’t think he’s ever had a real mother. We have sex between his doses of the clap, so, not that often cause he has the clap most of the time. There’s usually only a few days or a week window before he’s got it again. I tend to the cuts and scrapes he gets when he has his epileptic seizures. We pretend they never happened, the cuts or the clap. Nobody buys damaged goods.
In this dark cavern, I wait nightly for whoever it is will need me to feel he’s a man, whoever I’ll need to make me feel like a woman.
An old queen named Hollywood Al slides up next to me & bets a dollar a drink I can’t finish 25 drinks in 25 minutes. Twenty-five Black Russians later, I win. Hours later, I wake up stuffed into a small alcove full of cleaning supplies–cramped, cold & clutching twenty-five worn singles covered in vomit & Kahlua. The string mop next to me reeks of disinfectant and vomit, probably mine.
Old queens like Al don’t appreciate me fucking the hustlers. I’m a distraction, an annoyance. The best they can do is get me drunk enough to get me out of the game for the night.
I found Frankie in the darkness of Christopher Street and fell in love. I work days at a law firm. He works nights hustling out of the bar. Somehow we find time to be together. He lives in a basement apartment with a toilet bowl in a closet. When we make love there, we’re hit by falling bits of plaster. And cockroaches. Central Park became our sanctuary from the night life, an escape from the darkness, from booze and sex for money. We lay on the rocks, cleansing ourselves in sunlight.
He’s turned my world upside down & suddenly I’m living in a Hallmark card full of cheap poetry.
Todays question for my readers: How ever did the disastrous story of star crossed lovers Romeo & Juliet become a romantic mythology? Tell me about your first love….Post your thoughts below, c’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on June 18, 2009 at 10:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1975, dirty boys, drugs, Greenwich Village, hustlers, Levittown, love, The Chalice, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
