It’s 3AM and the Lollipop is empty, except for a few regulars. Everyone’s feeling good and it’s like this morning never happened. Piper’s sitting up on the bar, chain smoking Newports and laughing about something Chief’s saying; Myron’s in the back with a new dancer who believes him when he says he can make her a star, and me and Max are huddled across the bar trading insults. It’s what passes for flirting between us and I’m so into this game, I didn’t notice the Big Man come in; I don’t even know he’s in the bar until I hear the tap tap tapping of his diamond pinkie ring on the bar.
“Amaretto sour”, he says and smiles directly at me.
Everything stops, frozen. Then the floor falls away. White noise floods in, fills my ears. I’m deaf. I can’t hear the jukebox, the conversations. People are moving again, their lips move but I don’t hear anything.
This morning, as he was leaving, he told me that he loved me, that he’d never really hurt me, that he’d be there, watching over me for the rest of my life. That’s what I hear. Over and over. “I ain’t going anyplace, baby. I’ll be watching you, for the rest of your life.”
Everyone is far away. I am trapped in the wrong end of a telescope. Trapped in the silence. In the white noise. In the rest of my life. I’m trapped.
I don’t know where I am.
It’s not real.
He’s not really here.
He wouldn’t.
I can’t.
“I told you I can’t stay away from you, you’re my girl. ” He reaches out, stroking my face with the back of his hand. I step back, staring. I still cannot find my voice. “How ’bout that drink, now?” The Big Man smiles as he pulls out a cigarette, tamps it lightly on the bar. “Gimme a light, girl.”
I smell singed hair. I smell burnt flesh.
I grab a bottle of vodka and just walk away. I don’t say anything, don’t make eye contact, not with anyone, but I see him in the mirrors. There are mirrors everywhere, on every wall. I cannot not see him. He’s spun around, arms stretched out on either side of him, resting on the bar, leaning back. He owns everything.
For this minute, at least, he owns every piece of me.
My vodka keeps me safe, it is my vaccine, it is my shield, it is my bullet proof vest. My vodka is my body guard, my sword, my rosary.
“You’re mine now, girl,” he says from his spot at the bar. His voice reverberates off the narrow walls of the staircase, surrounding me, smothering me.
Vodka is my armor, I shall not be in want.
I reach the bottom step, crack open the bottle and crawl inside.
It guides me downstairs to the basement, it restores my soul.
Curled up on the cold cement floor next to the lockers, I try to listen to the muffled voices and footsteps from upstairs. The vodka helps stop the shaking, the little epileptic like spasms.
and I shall dwell in the house of the Vodka.
forever.
Half the bottle is gone by the time Piper sits down on the floor next to me and takes a swig. Big Maxie stands in the shadows on the wooden staircase watching both of us.
He loves us. I know he does, in his own way. We’re his A-Team, his moneymakers. He just stands in the shadows and watches.
“Is he still here, Piper?” I hand her the bottle.
“He’s gone. Maxie 86′d him for a couple of weeks.” She takes a swig and passes it back. “What happened J? Did he do this to you?”
~~~~~
You know, you don’t think this kind of thing happens to girls like you. This kind of thing happens to stupid girls, new girls, young girls, girls with no…affliation. Not you.
You have Huntsberry. You have the Ice Man. You have affiliations. He’d showed you where his baby daughter lived. You’d met his friends. Everyone had seen you out together. So when you said he could sleep on your couch instead of driving back to Jersey, you thought you were being nice.
You tell how you woke up when he was already halfway up in the loft bed. You don’t mention how you and your mom get matching robes for Christmas every year and he was wearing the red robe you got last year, the one with the hood. How seeing him in that robe made everything seem okay and not okay at the same time.
You tell how you right away figure he’s too big to fight off, too big to kill with the skinning knife you keep wedged between the mattress and the wall ever since you threw Red Wolf out. You say how you thought he would just fuck you and leave and that that was better than him beating you senseless, then fucking you and leaving. You remember thinking you need to get a bigger knife, a thicker blade.
You tell how you couldn’t breath with his weight on top of you. How you lay in bed after, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of him dressing, calling his baby daughter, getting his things together, getting ready to leave. You lay there staring at the ceiling, listening and waiting for the sound of the door closing behind him.
Then he starts yelling about the diamond pinkie ring you stole, he drags you out of bed. You know you didn’t steal anything and you thought he’d leave, but he isn’t. He isn’t leaving. He isn’t leaving without the ring he says, his girls sold good pussy to pay for that ring, he says, good pussy and your pussy ain’t shit, bitch and throws you against the wall.
You don’t remember getting dressed up. Or when he tied your wrists and ankles with the mens neckties you had hanging on the ladder to the loft, each one a romantic souvenir of some man whose name you’ve forgotten.
You tell how he shoved his fist in your ass looking for his ring, how he made you shit and piss in front of him, dragging you from room to room because your ankles were tied together so you couldn’t walk, couldn’t run away.
You tell about the cigarettes, the smell of burning flesh; the lit matches flicked at your hair, the smell of singed hair.
You tell how it went on for hour after hour. Two hours, three, four, more than that. It went on until it was over. You tell how the ring was in his cigarette case the whole time, how it was all a game, a turn out.
You tell how he untied you, kissed you gently on the lips, told you he loved you and left.
You don’t say anything about how even after he was gone and the door was closed you couldn’t move, couldn’t get up to lock the door after him and even if you could, what was the point, really? You don’t say if you cried or not, cause what’s the point, really?
You simply polish off the last of that bottle of vodka and say “That’s what I get for trusting someone.”
“That’s what you get for hanging around with niggers” Maxie mumbles as he turns, walks up the stairs and leaves the two of you on the floor.
It was the last time any one of us mentioned it.
This entry was written by , posted on February 14, 2010 at 11:50 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, pimps, rape, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
flickr photo courtesy of nasrulekram
“J? I know it’s early, but…”
9 AM. I’d only just crawled into the loft bed when the phone rang; I was still playing solitaire, obsessively. I play three games, every night. I have to win, or lose, three in a row before I’m allowed to sleep. I was so wired even if I could get the cards to work right…but Laurie? She was never up this early, or this late, depending on which side of life you’re looking at it from.
“What’s wrong Lo?”
“Your friend. The guy…from last night? His car wouldn’t start, he said. He just wanted to use the phone. I thought, I thought you were still with him, out in the car… but you’re home. And, and he’s here…and… waiting for the tow truck, I guess, and I know it’s…I thought you could come back and…
“Lo? Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“No.”
“Scared?
“No. Maybe..yes.”
“Sit tight, I’m on my way. Say whatever you think you need to say to make him happy. He’s crazy Lo, you understand? Crazy. But, he’s just fucking with your head. He’ll leave with me, so, really, no worries, okay? He’s watching you talk on the phone with me, isn’t he?”
“Uh huh.”
Every time we go out, me and the Big Man, we stop at the diner on Eighth Ave, across from Piper’s building and around the corner from Possible 20. P20 is supposed to be a jazz joint, but it’s really just one more pimp bar. Piper’s building is crawling with pimps, too. My neighborhood has junkies, hers has got a pimp infestation. A pimpfestation. Anyway, the Big Man gets me broiled lobster with melted butter and a baked potato. To go.
Piper doesn’t want him in her apartment, P20 closes at 4am and he won’t let me eat in the car.
My girls worked hard to pay for this car, he says. You can’t be disrespecting them with that fish stank, spilling butter on my leather. Lots of good ass got sold to pay for that white leather and not a dollar’a that come from you.
So, I wait till we get to 366 or Harry Brooklyn’s or some other afterhours where I sit in a dark corner and eat lobster with my hands while he sits at the poker table.
We never just stay at the diner and eat like regular people.
366 is around the corner from Laurie’s apartment. I thought, just once, it would be nice to not eat in the dark. And she always has wine. We did line after line of the Big Man’s coke, washing it down with wine stolen from the Italian restaurant where she worked.
I meant to be generous, to pay her back for taking care of me. That’s what I meant to do. But once again, I’d brought crazy into Lola’s house. She had no business getting involved with Havasha. Lola was strictly a good girl. She was strictly Long Island Jewish. She didn’t know what to do with a crazy man, what to do when they turned on you. H fractured her cheekbone. You’d think she’d of learned after that, that my boys were out of her league. She should not be allowing them any one of them into her house if they weren’t with me.
Havasha’s crazy couldn’t hold a candle to the Big Man’s.
I was at her door before she could hang up the phone.
The door is unlocked. He’s sitting in a chair across from her; quietly crushing cigarettes into the bare skin of his chest and watching her reaction. One after another. He lights one, takes a few puffs, staring at her, then grinds it into the festering sore in the center of his chest.
His name was Michael and Sammy and JJ. He had other names, I couldn’t know them all, didn’t know if any were real. He was a big man, about six five and somewhere between 280 and 300 lbs. Maybe not. Maybe he’s just grown in my memories.
But he was big and I shoulda seen it coming.
Just another pimp doing just another pimp job. In the antiseptic halls of my intellect I know he didn’t have the right. But deep inside, in the darkness that hides my heart and soul, I know they were right.
I got what I deserved.
This entry was written by , posted on February 2, 2010 at 12:38 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Chelsea, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime, pimps, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
What the hell, I thought, looking at Junior laying there on the floor rubbing himself, and remembering how he’d needed a firm tongue up his ass that one night, pussy can’t taste any worse than all the other things I’ve put in my mouth. I got off the couch and walked into the bedroom.
“Hey. Hello? Bored out here…” I sat at the end of the bed playing with Joey’s toes, working my hands up his leg, I took a deep hit off the joint in my hands and passed it over to him.
Joey looked at Piper for permission. She smiled and nodded. I kicked my shoes off.
“Do her first.” He locked eyes with me, like he was watching for my reaction, like we were the only two people in the room, and this was the only room in the world. Like there wasn’t a room full of men a few feet away, watching and listening. He locked eyes with me while he held the joint to Piper’s lips with one hand and started pulling on her nipples with the other. Getting them hard again. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you Piper-cub?” he said to her, all the while, looking at me.
“You don’t have to if …,” I was half way up her leg before she finished the sentence, “you don’t want to, JJ.”
We do everything together. Sex’ll be just one more thing. Like the princess she always wanted to be, Piper lays back and lets me do all the work. I run my hands up her short muscular legs. She’s so tiny, I can reach her whole body from wherever I am. My fingers reach into her pubic hair, naturally blond and softer than mine. My thumb finds her button and rolls it around gently. I slide my body up one side of her. Joey watches from the other side.
Her breasts are larger than mine, soft and pink and the nipples look sore. I put one hand on each and feel their weight, their silkiness, brushing my thumb across one nipple, gently. She lets out a little gasp and I lower my head to take it into my mouth. Turning it over with my tongue, flicking it around, nibbling only a teeny bit. Joey takes my hand and slides it back down between her legs. Piper inhales the smoke from the joint, moving her hips up to meet my hand. I feel around, tentatively at first, now bolder, parting her warm lips with my fingers. She starts to rock with me. I move my mouth to hers and take her tongue inside me. She tastes of pot and Joey’s Two Shoes’ semen.
“Fuck her, fuck her hard.” His mouth is right at my ear, his breath damp and a little sour. My finger is deep inside her, probing. I open my eyes and see Joey stroking himself as he watches us.
I slip a second finger inside her and pump. She rides my hand and we kiss. Sucking each others tongues and ears and necks. Her hands find my tits and pulls at my nipples.
“Eat her pussy,” he murmured, pushing my head down, shoving me off of her face.
Men are crude, but I wasn’t in a position to be offended by anyone’s choice of language.
I glided down between her legs and like that, the magic was gone. It’d been kinda fun. The coke and the vodka, the porn and Piper, not having to be at work. It was all fine. Fun even, until I found myself face to face with another woman’s chocha. Wet and red and smelly from being in a leotard all day and fucked all night.
And I remembered the audience in the living room. There was no way out of this; I’d never live down the humiliation if I chickened out now. I dove in and licked and sucked and prodded and nibbled like I thought I’d like it done to me, if I actually liked having it done to me, which I didn’t. I heard the glass crack of an amyl nitrate ampule and felt, more than heard, Piper suck the pungent odor in. Her body tensed, all of her contracting, then releasing.
Joey cracked another ampule, for me. I inhaled deeply and reached out for his cock. Sucking his cock. He’s kissing her. The audience cheering. The world spinning. My head expanding until it almost explodes. And contracting too fast. The amyl nitrate. My heart racing. Please, please, don’t let my heart explode. Everyone’s watching. I kinda like Eddie, but I don’t know how to talk to the nice guys….
The effect fades as quickly as it came and I worry about how I look to others.
Is my hair is messed up? Is my makeup smeared?
Do I look fat from this angle?
How I looked was like a whore.
Piper would always be the good girl. I was always the whore. It was never going to change.
That night in Little Italy when she walked into Stevie G’s restuarant, drunk? When she pulled a gun out of her pink leather clutch–the one that matched her pumps–and held it the head of the idiot bartender who wouldn’t serve her because she was already insanely drunk?
That was my fault.
Myron called me at home, angry. “Go fix this!” he says
“He’s an idiot Myron. Just tell him to give ‘er a fucking drink,” I say, “and she’ll put the gun away.”
“Fix it. You fucked this up, you need to go down and fix it.” Myron says, and slams the phone down. When I get there, everybody, except Piper, looks a little tense. The bartender is ghost white, standing frozen in a corner of the behind the bar.
“I knew you’d come,” she says, smiling, slowly batting her eyes at me. “They won’t give me a drink, J. I just want a little drink is all.” She hands me the gun–I don’t even have to ask. I order two vodkas from the idiot bartender, one for her, one for me.
When anyone else tells this story, anyone but me or Piper, I’m the one they’re mad at.
When Piper disappeared on a three day drunk, surfacing in some sleazy spade bar on 133rd Street, that was my fault too. When she got so fucked on ‘Ludes she kept sliding off the chair? My fault.
She was everybody’s darling, no matter what. She lived in a fancy doorman building on 55th Street and 8th Avenue. It didn’t matter that the building was chock full of pimps. I lived in a run down tenement in the East Village. It didn’t matter that half the tenants had been born in that building. No matter what, I was trash. It’d been like that since we met at the Butterfly.
Everybody loved Piper.
She had Myron, Joey Two Shoes, the Fat Man and me.
I just had her.
We never talked about
that night.
This entry was written by , posted on January 25, 2010 at 3:18 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, partners in crime, wiseguys. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Junior’s is the first face I see when we get to Joey’s. We lived together.
No, that’s not exactly true. Junior lived on my couch. Briefly.
Having Junior there was like waking up to fresh flowers every day – nice to look at the first day or two, but that’s about all and after a week it’s just a vase full of dirty water and dying organic matter. He’s on the rug, watching dog porn and rubbing himself –nothing’s changed, it’s pretty much all he did when we lived together he lived on my couch. In a little while he’ll head to the bathroom, jerk off into a towel and hang the towel back on the rack.
That part drove me crazy. Getting out of the shower, grabbing a towel and… “Junior! You motherfucker! Get me a clean fucking towel!”
We’d been together. Once. Before he moved in.
Thing was, cocaine makes men feel like sexual giants, like they can fuck all night. Okay, maybe they can, but not in any way I’ve ever found satisfying. There always needs to be something “extra” in the mix. Like a single girl and the usual holes are not enough and sex becomes something devised by Rube Goldberg rather than Mother Nature. You need extra hands, extra stimulation and sometimes you need an extra person or two. Junior’d needed me to do all the work, follow instructions, move this here, put that there, left, right, inside out, upside down, tongue here, okay, okay, now, now, wait, now…okay.
Sometimes, once is more than enough. But, he was still pretty, goddamn it, and he was connected. So I’d let him stay. On the couch.
Two Shoes and Trigger the Greek bookie hovered over the pile coke on the table. The more the Greek sniffed, the worse the spasms in his leg got. Hence, the nickname. Tonight, he was threatening to wear a hole in the carpet. There were two actors, A. was famous–but just for the moment, Eddie was not, a few unidentified wiseguys on the couch and a few unidentified guns on the table.
Piper brought the bottles into the kitchen and mixed us a couple of drinks. Vodka. Ice.And a splash of Seven-Up for color.
“Here,” I dropped the bullets between the guns, “we took ‘em off a cop at work.”
Joey looked up from his cocaine. “Five?”
Piper grabbed him by the arm, laughing and pulling him into the bedroom. “Stop it now. Come with me Daddy and let me tell you what a bad, bad girl I’ve been.”
I made drinks for the boys, settled next to Eddie on the couch, and to the background TV sounds of girls giving head to German Shepherds and horses, we watched through the open door as they undressed each other and made love, laughed, smoked, slept, got high, fucked some more. From our spots in the living room we watched them and we laughed, got high, smoked, slept, got high and laughed some more.
I liked Eddie. He was sweet and handsome. He paid attention to me like I was a regular girl. But, he was no one, going no where. Eddie’s only juice was being friends with Joey.
And the only way to Joey, was going to be through Piper.
This entry was written by , posted on January 21, 2010 at 1:23 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, partners in crime, porn, wiseguys. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
…………… (a little mood music)…
“Hurry up,” he grumbles counting the money in my register, “Two Shoes is waiting.” I shake my generous butt at Myron and smile over my shoulder as I flounce out of the bar and into the back room.
Piper and Carl are sprawled across one of the loveseats. The Lollipop “private lounge” is pitch black except for the high school stoner/head shop black lights. White clothing gleams, dental caps radiate pale blue, lipsticks glow bright orange and hair dye shines with a dull greenish hue, but black things, like Carl, are nearly invisible.
I don’t need to see to know there’s a loaded gun between Carl’s legs. Piper would be stroking it, saying oh baby, it’s so big, it’s so hard, pushing the gun up against the flaccid penis in his pant, the cock that never got hard. Sometimes he’d rub his “cock” over your face or your nipples. It made him harder, he said. He liked for you to stroke his cold metal “cock”, to push your tits up on him, whispering into his ear how big and black and hard he was, how you wanted it inside of you, tearing you apart, pushing, deeper & deeper. He wanted you to do that until the soft piece of flesh inside his pants exploded, leaving a small stain on his dark pants.
Piper & I trade on and off with Carl. He’s a good tipper, easy to work and a vice cop. Carl has the good drugs, all the time.
“Hey Carlos, my man, what up?” I drop down onto the couch besides him. He has a joint in my mouth before my ass hits the cushion.
That meant they were finished. The stain was already there. It was the way it went, part of the ritual, first the cocaine, then the “sex”, then the pot and a coupla drinks.
I don’t really like pot. The better it is, the more I hate the way it makes me feel. But, sometimes doing stuff I don’t like is just easier than saying No.
“Mmm. All the pretty white girls,” he mumbles into my hair, reaching inside my top to fondle my breasts. I take a couple of tokes as my eyes adjust to the darkness, and look down at Carl as he plays with my tits. I hear a sharp metallic click.
“You need help up front J, or you just need a break?” Then, a small quick series of clicks. “Carl, here. Your turn.” Click.
“Myron says we’re going up to Joey’s.” The clicks again. “What the hell is that?”
“Here, baby girl, your turn,” Carl slurs as he places his service revolver in my hand and nestles his face against my chest. “It’s OK – Piper took the bullets.” He holds up a handful of bullets, takes the gun back and puts it up to my neck, wedging it up under my jawbone, pointing up to my brain, the long way. Click.
“One of these days they’re gonna cut you loose on a psych Carl, you know that don’cha? You’re gonna be out on your pension, living in a locked ward, shuffling around in paper happy face slippers, spending your days playing dominos with the wet brains and waiting for the nurses to bring you your meds. You be lucky if you don’t wind up with electro-shock and a bite stick.” I take the bullets away from him with one hand, push the gun away from my neck, grab Piper by the wrist and stand up.
He smiles and lays down on the couch, “But you’ll always love me, won’t I?”
“Always, Carl. You sleep a while now, I’ll send someone back for you later, before your shift is over.”
Piper and I leave Carl to sleep it off and head down the stairs, back into our street clothes. Little Maxie’s taken our place behind the bar. There’s a hundred-dollar bill stuck to his forehead with spit, a stunt usually reserved for the afterhours. It cracked him up, the way the girls reacted to him then. We grab the booze–Black Label and champagne for the boys, Smirnoff for us–and a cab uptown. There’s a party at Joey Two Shoes’. Well, there will be when we get there.
Leaning back, I open my hand. “Pipes? Honey? If you took all the bullets outta the gun, how come I only got five here in my hand? Doesn’t that gun hold six?”
She just bats her eyes at me, tosses her hair over her shoulder and starts to laugh.
“Jee-sus,” I reach over, crack open a bottle of vodka and take a swig, “you’re gonna get me killed one day, Piper, you seriously gonna get me killed. Maybe I’d be better off in a locked ward.”
“Maybe, J, but it’s a helluva ride till then, ain’t it? It’s a helluva ride.”
courtesy of esc.ape
This entry was written by , posted on January 18, 2010 at 11:27 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, Lollipop Lounge, partners in crime. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
It was still early when the pay phone rang. Not even midnight yet, but the tiny joint was packed. Every couch and cubicle in the backroom was full, so were the eight bar stools and all the chairs surrounding the stage. Frat boys leaned against the new jukebox, a few more leaned across the bar, trying to talk me into leaving with them.
Myron and Maxie wandered around making sure everybody was drinking & everybody was paying. Some nights they’d practically give the place away, but when it got busy, they got greedy and the unspoken rule was nobody leaves while there’s still money in their pockets.
I barely heard the pay phone ring over the noise of the music, the laughter and the cash register.
Big Maxie hung up and went into a huddle with Myron. They walked over to the bar, and Maxie squeezed past me. “I got the bar. Go. Go get Piper.” Maxie tossed his head towards the lounge in the back of the Lollipop and pushed me out from behind the register.
I stood there smiling.
Myron shoved me towards the back room. “Go, you little slut, you got a delivery. Now. What are you waiting for?”
Legally, the Butterfly and the Lollipop were Myron’s joints. There was Winks and the Cookie Jar too, but that was before me. They’d been such a huge moneymakers everyone thought it’d never end. It was the 70s, fans and feathers were gone, there was a whole new breed of dancers and a whole kind of money. Guys crammed in to get a peek of pink and girls went home with a thousand bucks a day, clean. No tricks, no handjobs, no hustle. Myron rolled naked over a bed of cash, all his girls were happy and all their girlie habits fed.
When the liquor authorities started making rules about small spaces, booze and cooze, girls went back to wearing the g-strings they’d dropped. The novelty of the bars wore off. Furs, cars, condos, diamonds, cocaine, heroin; Myron’s girls had expensive habits. Suddenly he was deep in a hole of a different color.
Enter Joey Two Shoes. Shoes was in the Butterfly. And he was in the Lollipop.
When it was time to pay, Piper and I brought champagne, Johnnie Walker Black Label and each other. There was always a crowd watching porn and dipping into the mound of cocaine in the center of the table, no matter when we got there. The pile of coke never got smaller and there were never any other girls there.
I wanted a drink, a blow and Joey Two Shoes. He was handsome and mean. I wanted him to want me. He wanted Piper. Piper just wanted to be loved.
“Go, you little slut, you got a package to deliver. Now. What are you waiting for?” He was annoyed. Shoes almost always called when the joint was packed. Never when we were sitting around with nothing to do.
“I’m just imagining the two of you, working the bar in leotards and heels.” When we left, there wouldn’t be enough girls to go around. It killed them to miss even a dollar.
Myron wasn’t always a paunchy middle aged bar owner, in hock up to his neck, trying to hold the interest of underaged dancers with presents and drugs and lies. He used to be was a suit. Not a straight suit, but a suit nonetheless.
Myron was a shyster, a lawyer. Past tense. That’s why Mulberry Street hung around, he’d been their lawyer. Louie the Ice Man, Jimmy Peanuts, Rocky, Crazy Jimmy, BooHoo, Chief, Harry Brooklyn, Eddie Bug Eyes, Jack the Jew. Myron was a man who believed in going that extra mile in search of the holy grail, the fast and easy buck. If you rolled snake eyes and had to go directly to Jail? Myron stepped up to pass GO and collect two hundred dollars, even if he wasn’t exactly entitled to it.
Disbarred, but not imprisoned, he changed his name, scraped some money together and went into the always profitable business of tits and ass. In the beginning, everything he touched turned to gold. Then came the girls, the cocaine, the state liquor authority, the excess, the huge, huge debt–and Joey Two Shoes.
But Myron is a dealmaker, with an eye for a scam and a nose for a sucker. He always knew who he owed, how much and what they’d settle for.
He put a brown paper bag on the bar. Two bottles of Johnny Black and two bottles of not the worst champagne. “Go, get Piper, pack up and start moving. Shoes ain’t gonna wait all night.”
This entry was written by , posted on January 14, 2010 at 8:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Butterfly, dirty boys, partners in crime, The, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
January 1981
The Butterfly is gone. Myron set up a new place for us called the Lollipop Lounge.
I got into a scene with Piper and Joey Two Shoes. We’re pretty good friends now. Me and Piper, not me and Shoes. He’s a loan shark or something.
Junior moved in, but he’s sleeping on the couch, so I guess we’re not a thing. We did a thing, but we’re not a thing. Piper said he’d been indicted for murder 9 times. He admits to three of them–the indictments, not the murders.
So, that’s who I spend all my time with now. Killers, loan sharks, coke dealers. But mostly well-dressed. The well dressed underbelly.
So, that’s who I am now. High class slime.
February
Mommy came in yesterday – to yell mostly. She thinks this job and this lifestyle are bad for me. I’m sure she’s right, but even when I had a respectable job I was with people she didn’t like in places she worried about. So, nothing’s really changed. Except now I make more money.
February
Mommy wants to know how I see myself in the future. I don’t know. I’m past my expiration date, like a quart of soured milk. Maybe I could marry Louie the Ice Man or someone…
??
May
It’s been months. Past events are starting to fuzz. Details lost. A little unstable. Lots of lonely. Worked 20 days in a row. Some jerk driving me home from one of the Jersey gigs tried to pull into a motel. Hadda jump out. $25 cab ride back to town.
The Big Man stayed at my house. Raped me. Said I stole his ring, but I didn’t. Tied me up and gagged me with pantyhose and neckties anyway. Maxie 86′d him from the Lollipop for two weeks. Two weeks?
Construction on Myron’s after-hours club halted. Sleeping with BooHoos guy, Roman. I think he’s a bookmaker or something.
Phone number changed to unlisted. Contact lenses. Money in the bank. Roaches in the house.
Still drinking.
I want to be left alone with someone else.
To be naturally beautiful when I wake up.
To have 2 days off a week.
There’s a car sitting across from me with a guy watching me and jerking off. I wish they’d all go away.
Rich man
Poor man
Beggar man
Thief
Knights of Decadence
Daze of Grief
Woke up on the couch, the door unbolted. There’s a puddle of water in the center of the floor and a chair in the middle of that. I know who I came home with and that we fucked but after that…who knows? I hate everyone from the Deuce I meet.
Fancy dressers
Smooth talkers
snakes in the grass
sweet kisses
endless praises
just for a simple piece of ass.
The streets seem less and less friendly – or maybe it’s just me.
Same places
different faces
different places
with the same faces
round and round she goes
down and down she goes
nothing changes
and it’s never the same
This entry was written by , posted on January 11, 2010 at 7:35 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, dirty boys, drinking, Lollipop Lounge, lonliness, New Jersey, rape. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I left Times Square and its business of naked and boozy in the mid 80s, but like a ballplayer past his prime with just one shining season – I still live there. It was the most vibrant time of my life.
I kept records of everything–diaries, journals, calendars and phone books going back to 4th grade. Everything except the ten years that were Times Square; almost none of those records survived. Maybe they never even existed. According to Social Security one of those missing years I earned a total of $8 on the books. Eight dollars? I was off the grid before I even knew it existed.
Having no records and an unreliable vodka soaked memory, I sometimes doubt what I think I know. Then they invented the Internet and filled it full of everything–facts, locations, dates, newspaper stories. I found out that Louie the Ice Man had been a big deal wiseguy, a really big deal. And he’d come home from prison this year. Home, just a ten minute drive from where I am today. Thirty years from where I was.
I started to fantasize about being back with Louie. I’m older, and not as cute, but maybe just a little something something to pay the bills while I write about the days when I’d do just about anything to pay the rent. I remembered Louie as sweet. And generous.
I became obsessed with the Ice Man all over again.
If I’d known how big he was, would I have taken more advantage? Probably not. I just wanted to drink and be loved and being with him made me feel wanted. If that was as close to love as I could get, that was okay by me.
He wasn’t mean. He didn’t make me cry. He never hit me. He called me to tell me he was going to prison, instead of just disappearing. He didn’t have to do that, he could’ve just left.
I found court papers, deeds and addresses online.
I showed up at his house a few weeks ago. It’s a little too close to the roar and grime of the highway, the building, slightly run down, the neighborhood, less than inviting. I’d imagined a brownstone or a private home with a lawn. And a gate. Even though I’d been looking at photos of this street for a week on Google Maps, staring at the front of this building. I recognized the air conditioners and the vertical blinds. Still, I expected the photos to be wrong, I expected something…better. There are no names on any of the three buzzers.
I buzz all three bells and stand in the center of the driveway. Totally unprepared and naked in a whole new way. With no makeup, an over-sized thermal t-shirt, sweatpants, sneakers and three extra decades. Decades. This is not my most alluring outfit.
A thirtysomething pokes his head out the third floor window. Yeah? he says. I’m looking for Louie the Ice Man, I say. Only I use Louie’s real name. I don’t say Ice Man.
Is that okay? Yelling out his name on the street like that? What am I thinking? I never would have done that 30 years ago. I knew better then.
Thirtysomething says the Ice Man lives on the second floor.
An small woman in a bathrobe peeks through the curtains at the second floor window. She’s old. I wonder, Is he living with his mother since he came home from prison? Then I remember the thirty years. Louie was in his 50′s then, he’s in his 80s now. His mother, I’m sure, is dead. This is either his sister. Or his wife. Either way, she was young and pretty once. Either way, I’m not welcome. She shoos me away with her hand, clutching her bathrobe closed with the other and never opening the window.
I consider leaving a note in the mailbox. Hi, remember me? I gave you blowjobs 30 years ago, surely you remember? Just stopped by to see how you’ve been. What? I don’t want to start giving random blowjobs again. I didn’t have the energy to dress up like someone’s goumdada back then, and even less so now. What is there to talk about when what I remember is how he liked it when wore my glasses while I sucked his cock. I didn’t want to know that I have a nicer apartment than he does, or maybe this is a decoy apartment. And just like that, without even seeing him, already I’m making excuses the way I made excuses for them all back then.
I get back in my car. I wish him well. He was what I’d needed then to make myself feel safe, but the old lady who shooed me away is right.
I don’t belong here anymore.
This entry was written by , posted on December 25, 2009 at 12:52 am, filed under the diary and tagged 2009, dirty boys, Times Square, wiseguys. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
courtesy Miss Loisy
I was never really beautiful, or classy, never learned to play the girly girl. I’m not the kind of girl men want to protect.
A guy once told me I was the perfect mistress. I understood all the rules, I never balked, I never asked for more. I don’t know how true that is, but what I have always been, what I still am, is a stand up broad–meaning a) I know how to keep my mouth shut and b) I know when to keep my mouth shut.
For me and the Ice Man, it was all about my mouth. I kept my mouth open when we were alone – and closed when we weren’t. Louie the Ice Man made sure I had “cab fare,” even though I’d never asked for a dime. He paid me to keep his secret, but I’d've done it for free just to say I was with him.
I’d been keeping secrets since I was a kid. My own as well as the various & sundries who’d wandered in and out of my private places while I was still too young to know that not everything was my fault. That some times don’t tell anyone, absolutely anyone, promise? is exactly when you should run screaming it down the street for everyone to hear. Immediately. Loudly. Repeatedly. But after you’ve kept that first secret, how do you not keep the next one? They pile up, crushing your insides, not leaving room for anything else until they’re piled so high, you simply cannot see out anymore.
Everybody at the Butterfly knew if you were looking for a top-flight blowjob, Carrie’s mouth was the place to park your penis. We looked enough alike to pass for sisters, and even though she was the prettier sister, it wasn’t her looks that got all the attention. All the visiting dignitaries–wiseguys, loansharks, hit men, fences–everyone wanted to take a turn at bat in the dark warmth that was Carrie’s mouth.
I’d picked up a few tips from Bridget, even though she swore to Myron she never gave blowjobs. Looked him straight in the face at the end of the night waiting for the payout, Florida orange lipstick smeared across her face and hands and swear she was a good girl. She was a good girl. A very good girl. Carrie was in it for the fame and adulation, but Bridget expected cash.
As far as Bridget was concerned the trick to a good blowjob, or at the very least, an easier one, is a little sleight of hand. A good spit covered hand.
They think they can tell the diff, she says, they wanna say they got the deep throat offa ya, but in the dark, wet and warm, is wet and warm, baby. You wrap a wet hand nice and firm around his cock and you’re in control, baby. And that’s the thing. If he wants to control everything, let’m give himself a freakin’ hand job. You get yourself a firm grip on that cock, you got time to do the ‘finesse,’ ya know? Like focus on the head, the ridge, and do some tongue tricks that that particular cock will appreciate a lot more than just being rammed down your throat until you gag. A blowjob is all about the hand, baby, it’s all about the hand.
Bridget made bank with the customers, but the visiting dignitaries–wiseguys, loansharks, hit men, fences–they all wanted to take a turn at bat in the dark warmth that was Carrie’s mouth.
So, when the Ice Man chose me, I felt like I’d arrived. I was finally all I ever wanted to be. A mobster’s moll. A gangster’s gal. I may not’ve been Miss America, but at least I was Miss Congeniality. The Ice Man chose me over Carrie. She could have the fame, Bridget could have the money, I had the power. I was the one he took out in public.
Public. Public consisted of every fabulous, famous and infamous fag bar in town. He owned some, other mobsters apparently owned the others. If his mob buddies owned anything but titty bars and gay bars, I certainly didn’t know about it. We drank at glittering piano bars with elegant men who toasted those glamorous women with something extra tucked between their legs. Wherever we went, by midnight, everyone needed a bit of a shave.
But, let’s get one thing straight, there are no fag wise-guys. Fags don’t need blowjob queens, at least not of the girl variety.
Blowjobs in the car, in the back room of this gay bar or that gay bar, whenever he wanted it, my mouth was there. Whatever made him happy and moved things along so I could get back to the cocaine and vodka was okay by me. I kept a secret we never discussed. My cock-hungry reputation squashed any suspicions. The money guaranteed my loyalty and made me feel kept inside of used. We made each other legit.
We were co-dependent before the it was popular.
The thing I wanted in a man was some element that would keep everyone else away. Crazy, violent, huge, unpredictable, powerful, rich, respected, feared. It didn’t matter. As long as being tagged by him meant that everyone else would steer clear. Given a choice, I’d pick the biggest bad in the room. The world was unsafe and while I couldn’t get a powerful man to care about me or for me the way Piper could, I could remain in his orbit, his aura, take his strength by proxy and make myself safe that way.
For however long we would last, he could have all the glittering fag bar nights he wanted and still be a man because he had me, and I could breathe a bit because I had him.
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2009 at 12:56 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, dirty boys, Times Square, wiseguys. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
3 naked ladies talk about their view from the stages and laps of the 70′s, 80′s, 90′s and today.
For as a long as there’s been music, women have danced for the entertainment and titillation of men. Scheherazade. Minsky’s Burlesque. Cage dancing go-go girls in the psychedelic 60′s. Times Square strippers, pole dancers and lap dancers. Women dance….Men watch.
Naked Ladies get around! Look for the 3 Naked Ladies and a new topic every Wednesday on laurishaw.com, or thedirtygirldiaries.com
This week, former New York City madam LZ Hansen sits in with the Naked Ladies….
Lauri Shaw: Some of my “regulars” were kind of irregular. I had this retired cop, told me that he’d lost his stomach for law enforcement after he’d killed a man. Looking in my eyes all intense and unblinking when he said it. For all I know, he made it up — he was always trying to get me to “open up” to him in return. He also did the whole “I’ll take you away from all this” rundown.
Jodi Sh. Doff: At the Lollipop we had this heavy drinking, heavy drugging black plainclothes cop who’d take me and my bff Patty to the back room. He liked us to play with his real live, loaded gun and ladies, I don’t know my ass from a safety. He’d rub it on us or watch us “stroke” it while he stroked himself. It’s a wonder no one got shot.
LS: No shit! Did your bouncers / managers know?
JshD: You could get away with anything there. One night, one of the “boys” shot the jukebox. He said it made a threatening move!
LZ Hansen: I had this guy who’d come to the whore house to see me three times a day, always wearing the same dirty Yankee jacket. He didn’t have a lot of money but he blew it all on me. He’d hang out for hours talking or fetching us snacks. He was a nice guy and we took advantage of that. Turned out he was living in his car! It’s sad, he deserved better. I think we were his only friends. But, I made $50,00 alone in a year from him.
JshD: Oh, yeah, for me that would have been Bubbles. We called him Bubbles even to his face. It was very emasculating, I imagine. Bubbles was every girl’s dinner date — he never tried anything and we all took advantage. Looking back, he was just a sweet guy with no social skills. But I could always count on a free dinner with Bubbles. If I needed to make my drink quota, he’d buy even when he didn’t want to drink with me.
LZH: Bubbles…poor man. But those are the types who attach themselves to us, they want to be part of our lives. And we want their money.
JshD: Look, we all know, there’s Us, and then there’s Them. David worked at the racetrack, claimed he was doping horses and thought that made him “down”. Civilians who tried to be part of the crowd, I hated them. I’d take everything I could and teach them a lesson. Very long story short – David thought we’d get married–I could barely kiss him without retching. By the end of the scam, he’d lost his license in NY and Jersey. I didn’t get as much cash as I’d wanted, but I made my point. He never came back.
LS: BDSM Guy had been clean & sober for 20 years until he met me. He lived for power games and kept trying to up the ante– “I’m gonna be your master, I’ll make you fuck me one day, blah, blah… ” I refused to be around him unless he got me high. He was a regular at Dangerous Curves so I didn’t see him after I quit. But a year later, I walk out of the Carousel Club one freezing winter night and find BDSM Guy lurking next to my car. I started yelling and when he looked up, he had blow caked all over his mustache. I may have been responsible for his relapse…
LZH: Did the dancers worry about stalkers?
LS: Thankfully, it didn’t happen as much as you’d expect.
LZH: One of my weirdest was this handsome young man who confessed he was in love with his sister. Afterwards, he asked if he could tell me something. I thought, haven’t you said enough? He said he’d been having sex with his sister and wanted to marry her, but she was engaged and wanted nothing to do with him any more. Then he said “And you look so much like her,” and begged me to date him outside of work.
JshD: That’s a little creepy. You never know how much is in their head and how much is real. Whether you’re saving someone else by indulging their fantasies or stoking the fires of their insanity.
LZH: I know. We all know how some clients lie. But I believed this guy, he was so broken up over his sister. He thought that I’d jump at the chance to date him. He came to see me every month, always begging me to date him, saying I looked like her! If he’d had money I could have hustled him, but he was broke.
LS: At least he wasn’t dangerous, right? I had this guy get obsessed with me after I’d danced for him once at the Harmony. Afterwards, I’d see him around the East Village following me down the street staring at me, looking haunted, while I was walking with my boyfriend. He acted like a jilted lover. He was scary.
LZH: Thinking about sick clients reminds me of Dr. B. (You know who you are.) We met in a massage joint opposite Carnegie Hall in 1987. He’d book 8 hrs to sit & stare at me. We had sex, but really quick. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse–he’d support me & my $300/day heroin/coke habit (that eventually went up to $1000/day). He put me up in the Chelsea Hotel and was my ‘sugar daddy’.
He gave me everything — a house, car, a business. I never understood what he really wanted with me, but he was a doctor, an OB GYN!- a junkies dream. I stopped sleeping with him & made him sleep on the couch. Then I moved my real boyfriend, who I’d actually just married, into our house. Dr. B almost lost his license after giving me a years worth of Hydrocodone scripts.
Finally, after four years, I fled with my new husband, my cat, and the clothes on my back.
This entry was written by , posted on November 18, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty boys, dirty money, drugs, strippers. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The floor drops beneath my feet. The music spins itself into a thousand hysterical screaming banshees. The world falls away until there’s nothing but the men and their guns coming down the stairs in slow motion. Slowly. Slower. Silent. I notice the small bits. Shoes and the quiet way they walk in them. The one who wears no socks, his skin is the color of cinnamon and his shoes just a shade darker. One wears an avocado colored knit suit with hand stitching around the pockets and buttonholes. The buttons are brown and look like some kind of polished stone. The lights from the dance floor play on the dark oily metal of the guns and blue and white dots dance over everything, reflecting off the mirrored ball. Off their manicured, buffed nails.
I’m trapped in a series of close-ups. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t see their faces even though they’re right in front of me, only a dozen stair steps away, searching the floor with their dark eyes. I do not see a single face and I don’t think they notice me.
And then I feel Floyd’s chubby fingers bite sharply into the soft flesh of my upper arm. I drop my drink as he drags me away, wasting vodka as it soaks silently into the carpet. He pushes me ahead of him. The music is back and suddenly I panic. Everyone else is still dancing. And drinking. No one else seems to have noticed them yet.
And then we’re in the back. We’re up the stairs. Out on the sidewalk. Seconds only. Floyd throws me into a yellow cab and stuffs himself in beside me. I hear the first shots exploding like Chinese fire crackers in February as the car door slams closed.
“Drive. The Consulate Hotel. West 49th Street”, he says to the cabbie.
“Relax, J. It’s over,” he says to me as he drops a bloated pink hairless hand onto my leg and looks at me, the question in his eyes.
I owe him big time now, I think to myself. I don’t say anything. How bad can it be? He’s not mean. And I really do owe him now. I should be grateful. I should at least say thank you. I probably owe him my life I think.
“I need three hundred and twenty five dollars,” is what I say.
“OK, Jodi, three hundred and twenty five dollars it is then.” He smiles at me, rubbing that pink hand up and down my thigh. Abu Ben Taxi Driver is looking at us, at me, in the rear view mirror. Listening in. Deciding what I am. What Floyd is. The vodka from my last drink rises back up my throat and tastes awful and I wish I had more.
JJ’ll be proud when I drive into the city in the car I bought with the money from my first trick. How bad can it be, really? Okay, so he’s big. Fat. Instead of thinking about fucking one hugely fat middle aged man I imagine it will be like making it with two big beefy boys and that’s not a bad thought.
In the hotel room, the lights are out, but the blinds are open. The room’s lit romantically by a full moon above and the street lights below. Floyd lies naked across the bed, a great white beached sperm whale. His skin iridescent in the moonlight, broken only by an archipelago of eczema that dots his massive body, the likely source of the medicinal aura that floats around him.
I stand at the bathroom door, my clothes at my feet, trying to imagine the feel of his skin and the texture of that rash.
I leave my body. My heart and soul float across the room and settle sadly into a wing chair in the corner to watch. A sick voyeuristic pleasure makes it impossible to tear myself away, the same way you slow down on the highway to eyeball that car crash and take a moment to be grateful it wasn’t you. But it is me, and I watch myself, struck speechless by what I’m capable of.
There is barely any room for me on the bed.
This is not at all like getting wild with two beefy boys.
This entry was written by , posted on November 16, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1978, Bon Soir, dirty boys, dirty money, drinking, drugs, Greenwich Village, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I stepped out of the Bon Soir, into a night damp and gamy with exhaust, sweat and blood, tripping over the body sprawled in front of the door. I didn’t know his name, but I’d seen him around the club. This didn’t exactly seem like the best time for introductions. He wasn’t paying much attention to me anyway, he was pretty intent on trying to keep his insides inside. Someone had blown away a lot of his outsides. He was slumped against the doorway, just staring down to where his navel was when he had one, trying to figure out what had happened, how to make it go away and how all those intestines had ever managed to fit inside him to begin with.
The coke wars had started and they weren’t going away.
Just what is the proper etiquette when you see your first gunshot wound? Your first drug war casualty? I’m a runner by nature. When things don’t make sense, when you get too close, when you love me too much, when everything gets too too, I keep moving, I run. It’s what I know. So, I stepped over the bleeding boy and hailed a cab.
There was a lot of coke going through the Bon Soir – a lot of coke meant a lot of coke dealers. The quickest way to increase the profit margin of any concern is to eliminate competition. The boy who lost his stomach was the first casualty I saw.
Two days later two small Latinas glided down the stairs, scanning the joint. Small girls with dark hair and lean muscular arms. Eyes shining in the darkness. Each with a pistol in her hand. Each with a purpose.
I don’t know much,
if I did, I wouldn’tve come back after the night of the bleeding boy.
But I know enough
not to get between
predator and prey.
I nodded at Floyd, holder of the key to the service entrance. He pushed me ahead of him, his fat hand wedged between my shoulder blades, pushing me into the back room, past cases of beer and cartons of cigarettes. We were already on the street when we heard the first gun shot. Pop. Small and distant, like the crack of whip. Muffled by the cement walls, the loud music and the night.
“Okay Superman,” I linked my arm through his as we walked away from the madness into the dark,”Where to now?”
“The Plaza. I’ll take you to the Plaza. I’ll pay you, we’ll order room service. I’ll….”
He was sweating from climbing the stairs, from the fear, from the excitement. Fuck that, he was always sweating because he was a Sweaty. Fat. Man. The standing offer was three hundred dollars. I wanted to be a whore. I wanted money for sex. If Sharon could do it, so could I. But, good God. Floyd? I owed him for getting me out the back, but I didn’t think I owed him that big.
“...take care of you. I’ll….” A police car rushed passed us, cutting him off. Sirens and lights flashing and screaming, the wrong way on a one way street. It jumped the curb in front of the club. Pop. Pop. Two more shots downstairs. Barely audible now, we turned the corner. He wiped his face with a handkerchief and stood waiting for me to answer.
“Let’s just get some breakfast for now, OK, Floyd?” I took the handkerchief and gently dabbed the sweat off his forehead, around his upper lip and steered him in the direction of the Waverly Diner.
I took a few days off to think things over. The idea of turning a trick turned me on, like being on stage for the first time. Men wanting me enough to pay me. Begging to be able to give me money for something as simple as pussy. It’s not like all the sex I was having was always fun. I didn’t like fucking Short anymore, but I did. I would make JJ so proud of me, prove to him I had the right stuff. But Floyd …?
I’d been looking at a little blue Ford Pinto a kid on my block was selling for $325. I’d only need to come up with another $25. I could manage that.
Nah. Forget it. Bad idea.
There was no way I could fuck the Fat Man.
I let go of the idea and just hung with the boys. Night came, and with night, the Bon Soir and barely listening to Floyd drone on about who cares what as long as he keeps buying; watching Shortrun run his game on some other chick, some little PR chick with her hair dyed blonde.
I keep an eyeball on the staircase over my cocktail, in case someone cute shows up to rescue me from this boredom. Even one of the drag queens would be better than being trapped by this human wall of flesh because truthfully, I’m not sure there’s enough vodka in the bar to make the Fat Man even vaguely interesting for much longer.
The double doors at the top of the stairs open out into the night. A crowd of guys I don’t know slowly fill the doorway. Latinos. Too well dressed for the Bon Soir. Italian suits, soft leather shoes, well groomed. Close shaven.
They start down the stairs one at a time.
Surveying the dance floor,
they walk
soundlessly,
slowly,
carefully
down the red carpeted stairs.
Uzi’s hanging loosely at their sides.
This entry was written by , posted on November 12, 2009 at 5:27 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1978, Bon Soir, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Greenwich Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The Bon Soir was just a small bar around the corner and down a flight of stairs from the park. Dark and hot, it usually smelled of brandy, sweat and marijuana. The men, too, who crowded the bar–dark, hot and sweaty, smelling of brandy and marijuana. Everyone had an angle. Drug dealers, burglars, thieves, hustlers. Most of them small time. Penny ante chain snatchers, mid level coke dealers and street corner pot sellers. I ran into old lovers, drag queens I’d known and loved and hustlers from the Chalice. A little slice of Heaven, that’s what the Bon Soir was. And except for Floyd, I was the only pink in the drink.
I bounced there, first with the boys that brung me.
And then, after a while, with whoever was buying.
The only white girl floating on an endless river of brown boys. Warm dusky bodies surrounding me, feeding me vodka, touching me, dancing me. Strong arms and firm thighs. Red and gold lights glinted off Jheri curl juice activated curls. Moisture trickled down valleys made by rippling abdominals. I rode waves of dark lips and pink tongues, my nostrils waiting to be filled with cocaine, music pounding in my ears, the pulse of the night throbbing deep inside me, deep inside me, deep, deep inside.
Shortrun was always more interested in selling coke than in fucking me. I was interested in staying stoned and fucking anybody. Except Floyd.
Floyd owned the bar and bribed me with drink tickets. He counted on eventually getting me drunk enough that I’d let him fuck me, which was really not such an unreasonable expectation, all things considered. I flirted and drank his booze until I got bored, at which point I tottered off to find someone lean and hard and brown. Which Floyd was not.
Floyd was white. Very.
And fat. Very very.
He’d bought the bar with money from his days as a professional wrestler.
Those were the old days.
Now, he weighed in at 457 lbs.
No shit.
457.
Everything about him was repulsive. His neediness. The faint medicinal odor that lay under all the other odors he dragged around with him: flop sweat, polyester, cheap cologne. The pinkness of his skin. Powdery and dry like an old man’s. Soft skin, pale, puffy and stretched to its limit. Especially his hands. His hands were bloated like a balloon in the Thanksgiving day parade.
I hated everything about him.
Except the booze. I stayed for the booze, ignoring the method to his madness, turning down his offers of money.
I didn’t have what it took to be a good whore. I gave it away to anyone I was attracted to for free. I didn’t want to sleep with guys I wasn’t attracted to for money. And I would put up with endless drivel just to get a drink.
This entry was written by , posted on November 9, 2009 at 7:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1978, Bon Soir, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Greenwich Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
January 1978 Sunday
Hung at the Earle with Jesse then split for the Bon Soir. The fat manager, Floyd, about 40, laid his rap on me all night. Bought me one drink. Ace’s brother Timmy just got outta the joint. Bought me one drink.
Shortrun and Brother Joey showed up at 3:30AM. Short bought me one drink around 5 AM. Short and the Joeys dropped me off at the hotel on 86th Street. I woke up alone at 8 AM. The dude at the desk volunteered to take Short’s place. Fuck you desk dude. Called the Earle – Charlie Frontdesk said Short was there. I went back downtown, banged on some doors. Went for breakfast. Came back. Banged some more. Found Jesse around 9 AM so I went there, watched TV and nodded.
I woke up at noon – someone else was banging on the door. Brother Joey with a load of coke. We smoked some hash. Big Papo came down. Did more blow and smoked more hash. Jesse and Joey went to cruise the streets to do some business. I split with Big Papo to the Village Plaza Hotel to do some credit card business. We did some more blow. People came and went. I moved over to the bed. People stopped coming. Soon we were making love.
I used to be scared of Big Papo. Not anymore.
When I got downstairs, Jesse was in the lobby – I walked him to the Limelight at Sheridan Square and went to La Crepe to use the bathroom there to wash up and change clothes.
Friday
I got to the Bon Soir around 11 PM. Floyd gave me two extra drink tickets. Black Joey got me very stoned. I forget what else happened.
Tuesday
Me, Shortrun and Black Joey go over to the Village Plaza for a room. The clerk wants $12 and Short only wants to pay $10. We get to a room – no bath, no sink – fucking delightful. Joey passes out on the floor from all the Seconals. I make the bed with sheets the clerk gave me. They don’t look clean.
Short and me start to fool around but I’m not into it. I start to give him head and his fucking cock is leaving bits of dirt in my mouth – I want to throw up. I push him away. He crawls on top of me. I don’t even want to kiss him. He bangs me anyway for a while, then tries to ram it up my ass. He bangs me a few more times and decides he needs to rest.
As soon as he fell asleep I got dressed and split. I’m done with him. I left him a note. I wonder if he can read?
I’d like to say I was there because they were my friends. Truth was, I stayed for the drugs and the excitement. Bullet wounds and scars were medals and ribbons of honor. Disappearing for days became acceptable. Lies were a way of life.
I’d tried to be faithful to Shortrun. Even while I was fucking Big Papo, even while coordinated our stories about where we’d been during the last few hours, I thought I was faithful to him. I really did.
When I wasn’t in the Earle fucking or watching the boys bag up, I was in the park with them while they sold pot and coke. Nights, we were all in the Bon Soir.
This entry was written by , posted on November 5, 2009 at 8:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged Bon Soir, dirty boys, drinking, drugs, Greenwich Village. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Cindy and Geronimo walked me the three blocks from the Chalice to the corner of Waverly & MacDougal. That particular corner of Washington Square Park where you could find One Armed Jesse selling product strapped to the petrified bicep of his withered arm. Cops never looked up the sleeve of his dashiki, that shriveled stump where an arm should be freaked them out. Jesse brought me to the Hotel Earle, the two Joeys, Black & Brother, and the two Papos, Big & Little who everybody just called Shortrun, on account of he was short even for a Puerto Rican.
I was Short’s girl. I towered over him by four or five inches, except when I wore sneakers and he picked his Afro out, then, well, we were okay. Being with him meant I was welcome at the Hotel Earle where fresh dime bags were bagged in Big Papo’s room. They could keep an eye on their corner of the park from his window as they worked. Papo was massive, dark and handsome, full of scars shaped like knife fights and bullet holes. When he looked at me I imagined the braille of them writing stories on my skin.
I was Short’s girl, I wasn’t selling coke, I wasn’t buying coke, I’d never even tried coke. I had no business in Big Papo’s room. Not to look out the window, not to bag up, not to try to get a taste. I waited for Shortrun somewhere else, in someone else’s room, with Jesse or one of the Joeys. I waited in safe rooms where men watched out for me, which is different than watching every move I make.
“Hey J,” I was sleeping, curled up like a cat, or a fetus, in a chair in someone’s room. “Inhale, little sis.” Short’s brother Joey. His voice warm, comforting and moist in my ear. Brother Joey held the corner of a matchbook piled with fluffy white cocaine under my nose.
I did as I was told. There were heavenly trumpets. Electricity tingled from the back of my nose, encompassing my entire skull, traveling down each individual hair on my head, finding its way across my breasts, around my nipples, down my belly, into my puss where it lit up each individual lip, inner and outer, tightened the curl on each pubic hair and then, then, with the second bump, someone turned up the voltage. I couldn’t sit still, couldn’t just stay in the room. I was awake. I was one hundred and ten percent awake and my brain, my heart, my skin, my skin, my skin, the voices were going one hundred and ten miles an hour.
Shortrun had a wife. Maybe a daughter. No one would say for sure. He stayed at the Earle or at the York and there was an apartment. Someplace. It was all very vague. He was younger than me, only 17. And he was, well, he was short and he wasn’t around very often. He wasn’t around enough. He wasn’t here now. I needed to be someone to be here. Now.
Big Papo, on the other hand, was here, right there across the hall. He was there with his scars, his dark eyes and his little cocaine factory. Location, location, location.
We sat on his bed talking and testing product. We lay at right angles. We lay parallel. We lay on top of each other. And after we’d finished fucking he swore it would be our secret, swore he’d never tell Short. He did. Of course.
I didn’t care. In the time that lapsed between that first corner of a matchbook and putting my pants back on I’d totally forgotten why I’d been waiting for Shortrun at all. I’d forgotten everything except the feel of the coke going up my nose, the taste of the drip at the back of my throat, the excitement of his scars brushing my skin. I’d forget about Big Papo soon enough too. All that mattered was I’d found the way to be more alive, more beautiful, more awake than anyone had ever imagined possible.
This entry was written by , posted on November 2, 2009 at 9:36 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty boys, drugs, Greenwich Village, The Chalice. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
