“Well, JJ, you look pretty pleased with yourself.” Piper hands me a vodka & seven and leans back against the bar smiling like she knows what happened upstairs. She probably does, the Quarterback is not that good with secrets and besides, you can smell it on me. Myron closes out my register, ka-ching, almost seven grand tonight.
Tonight, I’m the golden child.
“Yeah. Look at ‘er.” Myron’s on the second count of my money before bagging it up. “One night. One night she brings in money instead of spending the whole, the whole, fucking night snorting coke, sucking down my liquor–my liquor–or creaming over some toothless loser…”
“Howie’s not a loser.”
Piper practically chokes on her drink. She looks up, “But, he is toothless, J.”
It’s true. I can’t argue that fact. He’s sweet, and fun, but there isn’t a single tooth in his mouth. I shrug, and go back to my vodka and seven.
“…creaming over some toothless LOSER and she thinks she’s the fucking queen.” He talks about me like I’m not here. At least he’s not trying to make me cry. That game only gets played when nothing’s going on. Some guys do crossword puzzles or scrape the dirt out from under their fingernails to kill time. Myron tries to make me cry. Some days it works. Some days I just look at him, with his little paunch and tinted avaitors–the posterboy for mid-life crisis and male pattern baldness. The reason he knows this business so well is that he’s a trick at heart, and I’ve got things I can learn from him. So when I can, I let it slide.
“Fuck you, Myron.” From my perch on top of the bar, I reach one leg out and poke him playfully in the belly with my foot. “I did good. I did good, didn’t I Max?” I don’t know why, but I’ve really got a thing for Big Maxie. He’s Jackie Gleason fat. Not adorable Honeymooners Jackie Gleason, but Minnesota Fats Jackie. Cold. Smart. With a face like a big ashy bulldog. Maxie says mean things and has never given me a second look. I’m kinda crazy about him.
“Yeah, you did good JJ. Don’t let it go to your head,“ bouncing his trigger finger against my temple. “You pull like this every night, then you got something. This,” he waves his hand around, ala Ralph Kramden, “was luck.”
“You’re sweet on me, ain’tcha Maxie.” I smile, take a drag off my cigarette and lay down stretching out on the bar, a satisfied kitten.
He slides a beefy hand from the middle of my back down to my ass, gives it a fast and painful spank and shoves me off the bar.
“Hey!” I hit the floor, ass first – thankful this once for my ample ass padding, cigarette still in hand. He smiles at me over the bar, turns and walks upstairs to make sure everyone has cleared out of VIP.
Maxie likes me. He’s like an eight year old boy pulling pigtails.
“So’d you suck his dick, JJ?”
“Shit Myron, don’t be an idiot. Suck his dick. Jeez. Me and Carrie up there, if anyone was gonna suck his dick, who’d you think it’d be?”
“So, the answer is yes, you did suck his dick.”
“Fuck off, Myron.”
The upstairs hallway is littered with dancers and floor girls sprawled across the floor waiting for the payout, waiting to go home. I step over a few on my way to the bathroom to change out of my sticky bar clothes. Bridget is applying yet another layer of a thick federal penitentiary orange lipstick that matches her hair. The smears and stains on her hands and around her mouth reveal just how much work her mouth has done tonight.
“Your hands, Bridge,” I point, reminding her to wash them. Bridget’s blowjobs are second only to Carrie’s, but Bridget’s are more, well, hands on. She says they can’t tell in the dark, that friction is friction and skin is skin and as long as everything is warm, wet and firm and there’s a mouth on one end it doesn’t matter if there’s a hand in the middle. Everyone goes home happy and she doesn’t have to deal with the whole gag reflex thing. That’s Bridget’s secret. I don’t know Carrie’s. Well, to be truthful, I guess I know a little bit more now than I did when the night started.
Piper, still pristine in her white leotard and ever present Newport, her hair still perfect, sits on the sink. Leaning against the mirror, she crosses one leg discreetly over the other and looks me up and down. I smooth down my skirt and check myself; lavender grey button down rayon blouse, matching knee length wool cigarette skirt, stockings and low-heeled grey pumps. If I’m wearing a straight office chick’s clothes, I can pass for a regular broad out in the world.
“I don’t know J, I’m not saying you are, but you still look like a whore to me. 
Not that there’s anything wrong with that mind you, but now you just look like a whore who mugged a straight broad for her clothes.” She hops off the vanity, tosses her cigarette into the toilet and flounces out the door. I look at myself again. She’s right. Fuck. She’s always right. No matter how much I clean up the outsides, my insides keep oozing through. I unbutton enough to expose my cleavage, reach in and rearrange my boobs for full effect, toss the pumps in the garbage in favor of my spikes, add another layer of lipstick and mascara, and head down the stairs.
It’s almost five a.m. by the time we settle onto the Brasserie’s red leather banquettes and start ordering– shrimp cocktail, pâté de foie gras, Perrier-Jouet, steaks. Me, Myron, Piper, Big Maxie, and Little Maxie – you’d think we hadn’t eaten for a week. The Quarterback and Nicky Fireplug broke off somewhere. I think the Fireplug’s got a wife somewhere in Queens. It’s almost dawn and the Brasserie isn’t full or even technically open, but men in dark suits and darker pasts drink cognac and smoke thick cigars alongside flawlessly dressed women in thin heels and flamboyant creatures of the night–
–each one of us getting rid of the money as fast as we made it.
courtesy scott fraser
This entry was written by , posted on December 17, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, dirty money, partners in crime, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Carrie scoots under one arm, I slip under the other and we walk the suit up the stairs. He’s got his arms draped around our shoulders, Carrie’s left tit in one hand, my right tit in his other. I make a mental note to keep an eyeball out for Billie and Loretta. They’re like a couple of newlyweds, or, more accurately, bitches in heat. Call it what you will, it’s hard to keep them apart and they’ve laid claim to a little corner of carpet in the hallway that leads to the upstairs lounge. I’ve tripped over them more than once, curled in to each other, head to hole, buried up to their respective ears in the others cooch. But tonight, with this heavy drunken load on our shoulders, it’d be easier not to have to two-step over that particular lesbian love-fest.
It’s not easy maneuvering the staircase, but we finally drop into a soft blood orange velour couch. The room is all red shadows and a slight chemical scent; it has all the romance of a photographer’s darkroom. It’s dark enough to miss the worn fabric on the couches, stained with souvenirs of previous visitors; dark enough to overlook the threadbare carpet, a wig gone slightly askew, or the smeared makeup of a long night. And there’s just enough light to tell a single from a fifty.
Perpetual twilight makes you ignorant of time and place. Add booze– and as far as I’m concerned, adding booze improves any given situation–and you’re disoriented, your guard is down, your judgment impaired. It’s the same for Times Square as for Vegas. The difference is scale, sure, but the theory is the same. Hope, booze, sex & fantasy. Illusion and sleight of hand.
Chinese screens separate the couches from each other so each “lounge” feels private, but really you’re sitting in a giant mirrored room with four or five little enclaves and a former high school football player roaming around making sure none of it gets out of hand. Quarterback Jack or Nicky Fireplug are supposed to make sure everything’s safe and legal, so the Billie & Loretta chow down outside? That’s not supposed to happen, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, and you can’t blame the boys for watching the show.
Some of the Butterfly girls sell keys to non-existent hotel room with the promise of future satiation; some stall for time till the next bottle hustle; others take advantage of the privacy selling a little of this or that. Last week I’d sold a second bottle to customer slurping away at a girl’s pussy like it was chocolate ice cream. She was perched on the couch back, legs spread, comfortably resting against the mirrored wall, already holding the cash. Reaching over his head, she handed me what I needed and what I wanted on top of that. I pulled the unopened bottle out of the bucket and then put it right back in. Tucking my tip into my leotard, I left and let them finish their business. It’s a win-win strategy.
Officially, that kind of stuff doesn’t happen. Unofficially, for the right price, everybody gets what they want. Upstairs is the illusion of privacy, an illusion of intimacy, an illusion of desirability and popularity. It’s all illusion.
Tonight’s illusion is that for five thousand dollars, Ronnie the Suit will finally get his dick wet. The illusion is we’re hot sisters, desperate to get our hands and our mouths on his solid gold dick. The reality is while not solid gold, it is the dick that laid the gold American Express card. That single unopened bottle of champagne cost him a total of five thousand dollars and between the foot of the stairs and the upstairs couch, Carrie’s managed to make her cash deal with him. I’m not so good at the back room transaction action. Given a choice, I’d rather pick a pocket than offer an honest trade – but what I’ve brought in from this suit alone totals just over thirteen hundred dollars for the night, I’m satisfied.
Ronnie is seated between us and he pulls us closer to him, closer to each other.
You gotta use what your mama gave you, so I tuck my legs under me and sit up, bringing my breasts up to eye level. For the record, even in my leotard, I have terrific tits. Let me revise that – I have good breasts, but I have terrific nipples. They’re as big as the last joint of your pinkie, and persistently erect. I can hang things from them, necklaces, ribbons, ties, you name it. If it hangs, it can be hung from my nipples. They are my only trick. Carrie, who actually has perfect breasts, upturned and firm, matches my pose and faces me. Mirror images facing each other over a drunken suit; we slowly lean towards each other. The suit has his hand between my legs, playing with my cooch through my red leotard; just for the fun of it, I fondle his semi-hard dick through the soft gabardine of his pants. As we lean into each other, Carrie reaches out and slides her hand inside the tight spandex of my leotard, thumbing my nipple roughly. We rise up on our knees, our bodies pressed against each other over the suit, his hand busy tugging at my cooch, then sliding back and caressing the cheeks of my ass.
In the dark, we find each other’s mouths and kiss. Slowly. Deeply. I am kissing the mouth that launched a thousand hard-ons, the best blowjob mouth in the bar, and I understand why. Her tongue, strong and warm, pries its way into the deep recesses of my mouth, making me want more, urging me on.
I wouldn’t do this in the daylight, kiss a girl. I’m just not that way. Or maybe I am, because I like it, I’m into it. I want to kiss her, touch her, feel her touching me. And I never have to admit that, because I’m being paid to be here. Well, in a manner of speaking, because actually, I haven’t made a cash deal with Ronnie. I’m not getting any extra for this show.
Out of the corner of my eye, reflected in the mirror, I see the Quarterback watching us.
Tonight is a good night to die. I’ve made enough money to pay 6 months rent, I’m kissing a beautiful woman and being watched by two men. The one with enough money to have paid for this show is getting me off with his hands; the other–thick, young and muscular–I simply enjoy performing for.
And there it is. I’m enjoying this. Enjoying their hands on me, enjoying being watched, enjoying the suits weakness. In the daylight, in the civilian world, there’s shame and labels and stigma about all this. Here, well, here no one thinks twice. I can do anything I want in the dark, I can let you do anything to me. So, it’s more than fantasy and illusion. It’s permission.
“Last call!” the Quarterback cries out, ready to hustle the suit out of the bar.
I hold up my hand towards him, index finger urgently raised. Not yet, God no, I think, I’m almost there. Our bodies grind against each other, hungry; I clutch Carrie around the waist, holding her tight to me, cupping her head in my other hand. She pulls at my nipple as the suit tugs at the lips of my snatch. I feel the Quarterback standing over the three of us watching as both Carrie and the suit work to get me off, and the Quarterback’s blatant voyeurism raises the bar, making the whole thing even steamier. The suit grinds his hand against my swollen puss, pulling the material to the side as he does. A thick musk rises off me, enveloping us. Carrie’s body, pressed hard against me vibrates with her own sexual excitement as I cup her breast, roll it in the palm of my hand, she lets out a little noise, a small gasp for air letting me know she’s as ready to explode as I am.
I slide my hand down between her legs, her pussy is moist through her leotard, I massage and push against her cunt—and the suit suddenly slips two fingers deep inside me and starts to pump them in and out.
“Shit. Last call,” the Quarterback’s voice catches in his throat.
The suit drives his fingers into me, Carrie tweaks my nipple and Quarterback Jack watches. Carrie slips her mouth down and bites me on the neck, hard, and I explode, dripping my juices onto the suit’s hand, grinding urgently down, impaling myself on his fingers, pulling Carrie tighter to me as my body spasms in orgasm and looking into the footballer’s eyes in the mirror.
“Last call.” Last call, indeed.
This entry was written by , posted on December 14, 2009 at 10:39 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, dirty money, partners in crime, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I walk in moonlight, my breasts full and plump, my ass soft and round, hips rolling seductively as I near the bed. My face a blank mask as I look down at him, thinking about what? The car? The money? The task at hand?
Floyd lies naked, an island of flesh lit by garish street lights. He does his best to spread his legs open, to expose himself more. The sheer mass of his stomach eclipses everything in the room. His chubby fingers grab at my dark curly pubic hair and he shoves a thumb inside of me (Audible gasp. Mine. I cannot tell if it’s pleasure, surprise or horror.) His thumb probes deeper, twirling around.
“Suck my cock.” His voice has lost its whininess. He pulls his thumb out of me and shoves me towards the foot of the bed. The thumb, shiny with my juice, he sticks in his mouth and suckles on.
When a man’s pound of flesh is surrounded by four hundred more pounds of flesh, well… finding it alone is work. Tucked inside the folds of those massive thighs, deep beneath the crevice below his belly, I root through his flesh like a pig after truffles. Holding his belly up with an elbow, his thigh away with a hand, I find my prey. No bigger than a thumb or a pale breakfast sausage, I take him in my mouth. Sucking him, stroking him slowly, making him harder, squeezing and pulling, rubbing my breasts while he peeks around his belly to watch me.
I’m getting us both ready.
He lays there, unable to move, a giant overturned turtle, a great sea mammal washed ashore, stranded and at my mercy. My juices are flowing. I’m wet, I’m wet, I’m so wet. I touch myself, separate the damp hairs, the pink outer lips, open myself up and rise up. I close my eyes and mount him as best I can.
“Suck this,” I command, slapping his hand away from his mouth and sticking my fingers, slick with my own juices, in.
I ride him, leaning forward as he grabs my tits, pulling painfully at my nipples. I grip his round arms and ride him, forgetting about his rash, his size, his lack of size. I ride and pump and thrust and grind. I moan and curse and Oh baby, and yes, yes, yes as he comes inside me. I ride him some more, pulling on my own nipples now, rubbing my clit up against his big firm belly, bringing myself to climax. I stroke his big round belly and when I feel him shrinking, I contract inside and try to hold that little sausage a bit longer.
And I think about where I will go in the cute blue Pinto I will buy with his money.
My money.
The money was the real reason I was there, I told myself. Yet, even describing it now, my juices flow and my puss tightens. His flesh repulses me, but having a man want me so badly he’ll pay what I ask, makes me wild. Opens me up inside. To be in charge. To be in control. To be paid.
He’d already washed my scent off and squeezed back into his brown polyester slacks when I realized no money’d changed hands yet. No crisp bills waited quietly on the night stand like in the movies.
“Floyd, uh…you’re leaving?” He stood at the doorway to the lighted bathroom. A gargantuan silhouette, his huge polyester behind reflected in the mirror.
“Yeah. I gotta see what kind of damage those boys did tonight. Keep the room. I paid for the night.” He struggled into the matching sportcoat, patted me on the head, checked his pockets, tossed the room key onto the bed and headed towards the door.
“I don’t wanna stay here all night. We talked about money Floyd… What about the money?” I snatched up my clothes, pulling my panties on without washing him off of me. A little bit of liquid Floyd runs down my leg.
“Lookit kiddo, I don’t have the money with me…”
“What do you mean, you don’t have the money? The cab, the room…?”
I came here to get paid, to turn a trick.
“That’s about all I had, I don’t carry cash. Look, are you okay? D’ya need cab fare?”
Cab fare you mammoth pig? I need three hundred and twenty five dollars. I need your head on a platter. I need my FUCKING MONEY I scream in my head.
“OK? OK? I’m not OK,” screaming out loud, pounding the bed. “What about my money? You said you’d pay me three…”
It’s not a trick if you don’t get paid.
“Hey,” he interrupted. His fat hand on my still naked shoulder, “d’ya think I’m trying to cheat you?” And it is, it’s exactly what I think, but I don’t say anything. “Whad’jew want me to do, tell the guys with the guns ‘Wait, don’t shoot nobody yet. Lemme get money outta the safe to give to my girl?’ ”
“But I thought….I thought you had money with you…”
STUPID, STUPID STUPID. STUPID BITCH
“No, kid,” he said softly, like you do with a child. “You stop by the club tomorrow night and we’ll straighten everything out. OK?”
I’m such a stupid bitch.
I nod silently and sit quietly watching us in the mirror as he kisses me goodbye.
Silent, I watch the door close after his fat polyester ass.
Silent, I sit as my heart and soul walk over and rejoin me, a little thinner now, a little paler.
Silent, I finish dressing and head down to the subway and back home. I have just enough money for the subway, I’ll panhandle the rest at Penn Station for the train ticket back to Long Island, to my parents house.
Maybe it didn’t happen that way at all.
Maybe it was just a dirty little room and I was just too scared or too stupid to ask for the money.
Maybe I was just a chubby girl having sex with a huge fat man and expecting him to keep his word.
Maybe there was nothing sensual about it at all.
Maybe it was just sad.
Stupid bitch.
The next night back at the Bon Soir yellow crime scene police banners criss-cross the doors. I scoot under and creep down the dark stairs to investigate. To find Floyd and get my money.
The dance floor is empty. The bodies are gone, but last night, the police say when I ask, last night was just crazy. A pile of bodies on the floor. They closed the club for good. There were no witnesses. Not a single bartender or manager or anyone who had seen anything. They couldn’t find Floyd either.
JJ forgot to teach me the first lesson of whoring. Get the money up front.
This entry was written by , posted on November 19, 2009 at 8:22 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1978, Bon Soir, dirty money, Greenwich Village, johns, whores. 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.
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, Antonia Crane rants along with the Naked Ladies….
Jodi Sh. Doff: I’ve been on the phone with a friend I used to dance with. She never could make the transition to the straight world. Eventually we all get too old or too fed up to do the work, then what? She’s struggling with possible eviction.
Lauri Shaw:I was terrified that would happen to me. I tried to quit stripping dozens of times, kept running out of money and going back.
Antonia Crane: After throwing money around for over ten years, I managed to pay the tuition I owed Mills College and finish my BA. I needed $7,800. With determination and the strong will that only another stripper can understand, that year, I saved 10k. A girlfriend had a fledgling accounting business. She took at least $300/week and invested it for me.
JshD: I was $8000 in debt when I got out. I hadn’t been anyplace. I had no jewelry, no investments, no real estate and no more education than when I’d started ten years earlier.
LS: The money got spent so fast! And the amount I “needed” to retire kept growing.
AC: I traveled to India and took a trip to Prague, so I certainly didn’t stop spending. I’ve quit dancing a hundred times, had many careers, but I still have no clue how to live paycheck to paycheck.
JShD: I would’ve stayed till the bitter end, but I fell in love. With a hustler. Neither one of us wanted the other to work anymore, but I’d been there ten years. How the fuck was I going to get a straight job?
LS: I wasn’t qualified to do ANYTHING. That’s why I’d started stripping in the first place.
AC: I was qualified to do lots of things, but where can you make as much as an average CA attorney — untaxed cash — plus make your own schedule and perform?
LS: I’d leave for a month, try to find another gig. I took the proofreading course advertised in the back of the Village Voice.
JshD: I concocted a make-believe company called MG Entertainment where I claimed I’d worked for the last ten years. I applied for a receptionist’s job at High Times Magazine and said I could type 35 wpm — I couldn’t type at all. I’m hesitant to even call that my first straight job, it was nothing but drug related content. But it was the perfect stepping stone.
LS: I tried selling coupons on the street. “Excuse me! Question about your hair!” I lasted four hours. I’d told the hiring manager the truth about my work history. So when I went to quit, he asked, “Don’t you think you can make money with your clothes on?” He was being nasty. I just shrugged. “No.”
JshD: A few months into the job, the girl who’d hired me said she knew I lied about all those office skills, but she liked me, so she didn’t care. I don’t think I could’ve gotten away with that anyplace else but High Times.
LS: I used a fake company name too — a boyfriend pretended I worked for him. It still pops up on credit checks.
JshD: I was lucky. Once I got High Times under my belt, no one looked any further back. Times were different — no background investigation, credit checks, personal references. I kept MG Entertainment on my resume for a few years until I had enough distance to let it drop off naturally.
LS: A regular customer of mine got me a job bartending. The drunks were as difficult as any strip club customers, for a fraction of the kill. I didn’t see the point. I quit and went on the road, stripping in any state that would hire me.
AC: I also became a bartender. I made good money, but I wasn’t as young or fast as the other girls in L.A.: out-of-work models and actresses who had an “in” for the good bartending gigs.
LS: By 1999, it was nearly impossible to make money in NYC if you weren’t a top-shelf girl. Quality-of-life laws closed clubs, scared off customers. I drove across state lines regularly. New Jersey, Connecticut. Competition was stiffer than I’d ever seen it. My earnings dwindled.
I didn’t have money for college, but I had enough for audio school. I took time off from dancing, expecting I’d go back part-time after I finished the course. I never did.
AC: Dancing supports my writing. I have a memoir and a novel, a screenplay. But I don’t want to be one of those 45-year old strippers with a screenplay, so I’m hustling.
LS: I lived off savings…
JshD: No savings. Not a dime when I left. Nothing but debt…
LS: … took unpaid internships. Eventually I landed a job managing a recording studio, but it took two years. By then I was broke.
AC: I’ve started doing “massage.” This is the most efficient use of my time. The clubs are too lame in L.A. The economy too anemic, the regulars too much work. I don’t do GFE — I guess I’m old school.
LS: I hate to say this, but I’ve never made decent money at any “straight job.” After I danced, I was almost as shit-poor as before I started. Music journalism was as lean a career as studio management. If I didn’t have a husband, I’d have gone back a long time ago. I think about it all the time.
AC: I now have an MFA and dance in New Orleans to pay my rent. I still have “massage” clients. I don’t spend money like I used to. It’s about survival now.
I knew women who managed to ensnare moneyed men, and not only quit dancing or escort, but never have to get a job. I’m not saying that’s wrong, but it’s not my style — I’m not interested in a “sugar daddy.” I’m struggling the only way I know how, doing what I’m great at. I guess I’m stubborn. I’d LOVE to quit with money in the bank — that’s why I’m flying back and forth from L.A. to New Orleans. Wish me luck.
This entry was written by , posted on November 11, 2009 at 6:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty money, strippers. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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, $pread magazine online or thedirtygirldiaries.com
Lauri Shaw: In 1997, I averaged $2200/week, four nights. Good hustlers could make $1000/night. Never mind what they promised the customers or did in the back rooms — we’re only talking about money, right? The money was there.
Jodi Sh. Doff: Barmaids made $15/shift in ’75. I’d been making $80/wk in an office and suddenly $85/day in tips, plus shift pay, just being behind the bar in a leotard! When I left in ’84 dancers made $75/shift, plus tips & commission, but rent was only $200/month and cigarettes, less than a dollar. Two shifts a week was more than enough to make crazy money.
Rachel Aimee: Unfortunately those days are over. Money is still better than your average office job, and really good hustlers or girls at high end clubs can make a LOT, but there are also girls struggling to make $50 or $60 for an eight hour shift. And even those clubs charge the dancers to work now! The introduction of house fees has been an awful development in the industry.
LS: Every club I worked in charged a house fee or tip out. Topless clubs made money off house fees and the bar, so they didn’t take a cut of your dances. In nude clubs, house fees were low ($15 – $35) but then they’d take a large percentage from your sales: 50 – 75% of your lap dances, drinks, and champagne room money.
RA: Some of the high end clubs charge $300 a night! I can’t imagine having to do fifteen dances just to break even. I’ve worked at semi-upscale clubs that charged $100 a night — I spent the whole night in a panic, terrified of going home in debt to the club.
JshD: I love that I worked before house fees, tip outs or fines. You showed up and got paid. The options were make money or make more money. Even on a slow night you left with cash. I averaged $150-$300/night and was never expected to give anyone bribe money. My best night was bartending at a club called the Butterfly. Barmaids hustled the same as dancers. I sold one guy the same bottle so many times I lost count. He spent $5000 that night on half a dozen girls, finally, at 3:45am, he went upstairs with me and a girl who looked just like me–we played off the sister angle. Five minutes into that bottle it was last call and they hustled everyone out. I left that night, 1983ish, with $1000 in commissions & tips.
RA: Damn, I wish I could go back in time and work in the 80s!
LS: On top of house fees, tipping the DJ was mandatory. And more than minimum, or he’d cut your throat next time. Cashiers tried stealing. They’d run someone’s card, then swear to your face you’d never been in the VIP room with him. They say they made “mistakes” while cashing you out. I always stood my ground and got my money, but it was not a pleasant working environment.
JshD: Dancers and barmaids got commission on drinks, bottles, shift pay and tips. All the clubs had multiple girls on stage–the DJs just tried to keep things moving. Places like the Mardi Gras, the largest topless bar at the time, there were half a dozen girls on stage at the same time, but if you could get someone to buy you a drink, you could come down.
LS: You faced social consequences if you didn’t tip everyone. The bouncers wanted a cut. The champagne hostess expected one. Bartenders, waitresses… even the janitor had his hand out, refused to do his job unless the girls tipped him. Every night, cabbies waited outside — they expected you to double the meter. Costume ladies sat in the dressing room like vultures. Absolutely everyone got a piece of us.
RA: That stuff still goes on. At my club, the tip out is low and I don’t get hustled to tip out managers or anyone because I’ve been there a long time, but I know other girls do, especially if they’re new or the manager doesn’t like them.
LS: We made our money asking men for large tips — up front — on everything. A $20 dance was really $40. If you got your tips, you could do very well. But on a slow night, you took whatever you could get. The house made more than you did, which was the best case scenario. Worst case, you went home broke and owed money.
JshD: I was an awful hustler, just awful, and even so, I was making rent any night I worked. We paid for our costumes and you did your best to get a tip for the barmaid or the waitress, but that’s it.
RA: The stigma around dancing really fuels the clubs’ ability to charge house fees. Dancers exaggerate how much money they make, because we have to justify doing a job that most people think is degrading. It’s more difficult to justify stripping for the amount of money you could make bartending or working an office job, so we play up the good nights and play down the bad ones. When everyone thinks we’re making hundreds of dollars every night, nobody really believes it’s a big deal for us to tip out $100 or so for the privilege of making that money. It takes a lot of courage to say “I paid $100 of my own money to spend eight hours grinding against strange men and had to go to the ATM to take out money to get home.”
This entry was written by , posted on September 16, 2009 at 9:17 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty money, strippers, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I had that nice sleepy feeling you get after really good sex with someone you barely know. Except I knew him and we hadn’t had sex. Lightfoot was on the phone making deals from his king sized bed, arranging things that needed arranging. I lay cuddled into one arm smoking cigarettes, drinking cold beer, picking imaginary lint off his spotless cowboy shirt and trying not to think about the night before. Or about being broke. About being bruised. And unemployed. Again.
But, Lightfoot had things that needed taking care of. We headed back into the city for a some drinks and some business. The Porkpie looks like any sleazy Times Square bar, with windows so dirty you can’t see in from the outside, lights so low you can barely see in from the inside. But the Pie operated as the unofficial pimp union hall. They hung out, traded secrets, perfected their game, bragged and showed off new stock. It was the place to size up the competition, make alliances, trade stock, kill time. Just a short dark bar with a worn green felt pool table and a bank of black pay phones, the Porkpie was the place to go if you were looking for a new pimp. Or had a bone to pick with an old one. Every man there had girls on the street.
Every woman there was a whore.
Except me.
Baby pimps hung around the thin edges, worn copies of Iceberg Slim’s bible sticking out of their back pockets, soft, from handling. Kids with nothing more than attitude, the dream, an ill-fitting three piece suit, some hair relaxer and a stupid girlfriend, trying to learn by observation and eavesdropping, hanging around hoping to sweep up crumbs, bits of wisdom and experience from the Sweet Daddys and Gorilla pimps. They’d all seen Superfly a dozen times or more. The Porkpie offered a sort of apprenticeship program.
A few vodkas in, the swag man shows up rolling a 7th Avenue clothing rack piled with dresses, g-strings, gold chains, rings and frilly things that had fallen of the back of a truck somewhere. Doug hands me another vodka & a pair of rust corduroy jeans that match his shirt. We’re going to look like one of those ridiculous couples that coordinate their outfits. But we’re not a couple, really. I was married, I had a husband I wasn’t really available up until yesterday. He’s trying to cheer me up. The vodka cheers me up. Always.
“It’s almost eight, Doug. I’m hungry. Didn’t I hear something about buying me dinner earlier?”
“Relax, little girl.” He ran his hand over my ass.
“I thought we were gonna drop the little girl thing.” He smiled at me.
God, he looks good.
“What’s the rush? If you still had a job, you just be closing up now.”
“Yeah. But I don’t have a job, or any money and if I did still have a job I woulda ordered something to eat during my shift.”
He slipped his hand down my ass, to the space between my legs and gave me a gentle push. “Go try those on for me, then I’ll feed you.”
“Doug…”
“Go on, little girl, I want the boys here to see how good my girl can look. They gonna eat their hearts out.”
I was sore and cranky from the beating I took from Red Wolf. Was that only yesterday? There was a nice strawberry bruise on my right cheek. I wasn’t sure a pair of pants was going to make me look good. Really, I needed food. Sleep. More Vodka.
I went into the bathroom to change.
I took the glass of vodka with me.
Nothing really ever changes.
This entry was written by , posted on September 10, 2009 at 7:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty money, pimps, Times Square, whores. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Arms fly from every direction. Someone is screaming. Someone is growling, barking. A rabid animal. My brain shuts down, the floor drops away, time freezes.
There is only Wolf, who has lost his mind, running at me, throwing punches. There are only fists and anger. And me. Crouched in a corner on the metal cot that is was Nada’s bed. I don’t remember jumping up here. Where the fuck is Nada? He wouldn’t be like this if there were witnesses. He’d be sweet, he’d be singing if she was here.
I was an idiot to throw her out.
Nada Tokay, if you can hear me, I fucked up.
I fucked up.
I really fucked up.
He towers over me, one hand holding the Holy Bible, the other a fist. Frantic twists of red hair crawl out from beneath the beret, sweatpaste themselves to his face. In the eye I can see, the one without the patch? No one is there.
“The Devil’s got your soul. I will save you,” he proclaims. I can’t take my eyes off the Bible, sweet Jesus, here it comes, he swings it at me like a bat. Whack.
Direct hit. Right side. Cheekbone, eye, ear.
“What the fuck? Wolf? What the fuck are you doing?” Whack.
Direct hit. Same side.
Sirens scream in my right ear, so loud I can’t hear him on that side anymore. I watch his lips move, afraid to expose the other side, the other ear.
“I’ll save your soul,” he whispers close to my face. “Satan’s in you, you whore. I can cast him out. I can make you free.” Louder now, he stands erect again, it’s building, “I am your Savior, I am your Redemption.”
There’s a crash of cymbals.
He swings again.
This time I dodge.
He’s quicker most of the time, most of his punches will find their mark, but twice he misses & ends up punching the wall behind me. It’s brick, his knuckles are bruised, bleeding. He doesn’t feel it. We’re way past drunk, we’re in the neighborhood of insane now.
Think. Think dammit.
Whack.
I curl into a ball, protecting my soft and tenders.
Wolf hits me with the Bible, again. And again. And again.
He tells me he loves me, again. And again. And again.
He says he’ll free me from Satan even if he has to kill me to do it.
That’s how much he loves me is, he says.
If he doesn’t kill me, I’ll cut his throat while he sleeps, I think to myself.
“Devil money” he mumbles pulling out handfuls of tens & twenties from my bag. He marches to the bathroom with all the money I have, all we have in the world, and flushes four hundred dollars down the toilet. Two months rent.
I don’t feel anything.
That’s not true, I hate him. But I’m past pain and fear.
There are only his fists, that Bible and me.
There’s only me and my need to survive long enough to kill him.
“These belong to the Devil, too.” Wolf picks up my grandmother’s kitchen shears, the ones I use for cutting through chicken bones, & holds it up to my credit cards.
I can make more money.
My bruises will heal.
Keep your fucking hands off my plastic.
I throw myself at him, grabbing at the credit cards & the chicken shears.
He said he loved me enough to kill me.
He said he loved me.
This entry was written by , posted on August 27, 2009 at 12:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, East Village, Guys & Dolls, love. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Guys & Dolls isn’t at all like the old Mardi Gras, except for the naked girls, the champagne hustle and the wise-guy wannabe manager.
The Mardi Gras had Times Square written all over it. It was three stages of glitter, mirrors, lights & glamour. It was Ringling Bros & Barnum and Bailey – a three ring circus complete with costumes, stars and trained animal acts.
Guys & Dolls is more like the Beatty Cole circus. One small tent, a lot of in-breeding and just the one fly in the buttermilk. There’s only Lightfoot.
Like the old school Chinese restaurants, G&D has a small front bar, but all the action is in the back. I work the front bar. Behind me there’s an oversized round dining table type stage surrounded by chairs. Dinner. Family style.
When the girls do floor work (and now, watching it daily & having it occasionally, I know what Ralphie had wanted of me…) you’re close enough to know who shaves & who needs to. A thick red carpet covers the floor, the stairs, & the stage and despite the non-stop pounding dance music, it gives the club a soft menstrual quietness. In a style known as Early Guido, everything is flecked with gold–the flocked wallpaper, the marbling through mirrors, the banister of the spiral staircase…
The stairs get you to the “VIP lounge”. Well, the stairs & an $80 bottle.
The lounge is just a large room divided by thick velvet curtains and even more mirrors. Each section has a small couch (velour), a potted fern (fake) & a platform (small) meant to be a private stage. There’s an odd garage dampness and the odor of mildew & Jovan Musk.
There’s another scent, it’s subtle. The johns don’t notice it, but I do. Sweat layered over the Kiwi paste wax the Port Authority shine boys use. It’s the smell of the floor managers. I can smell Rocco’s spotters between the curtains & behind the two way mirrors. They make sure nothing really happens in the lounge, that nothing more than the champagne cork gets popped. Occasionally, a girl manages a quick handjob, if the money’s right, but mostly it’s all smoke & mirrors on premises until the time runs out – off premises, that’s another story.
But here, a guy goes upstairs with girl & a hard on, he returns fifteen minutes later with the same erection and he tries again. Sometimes with the same girl, sometimes with someone new. They act like it’s some kind of lottery or slot machine and they’re hoping to hit three cherries. Suckers buy lottery tickets and play the numbers. Suckers buy bottles of champagne, they live in an yin yang of hope & denial.
Leave ‘em wanting more, sell up or move on…
Wolf hates my job, but, really, I’m having a pretty good time. I make money off bottles bought for me (Okay, I don’t get a LOT of bottles– there are other much more naked, pretty girls around, girls like Toni Rose. Toni is a cross between My Little Pony and Twiggy, with her big eyes, long legs, little boy haircut and phenomenal tits. Another chick dances with a boa constrictor, putting its whole head in her mouth. I can’t compete with that kind of action. But it does happen.) & what’s in my cash register, tips, salary & whatever extra I can “find”. I kinda enjoy the endless stream of porno especially when the porn star’s in the house. Then it’s like being at a pep rally with all the hooting and cheering and go, go, go, ’til he gets to the money shot. It feel like home movies.
It feels like family.
I’m getting better at “finding” money. Generally anyone here who’s not a dancer, manager or pimp is money. Boyfriends, you never can tell. Some are on to the game, some are in a cash flow based “relationship”. Those guys are someone’s personal bank account. They’re also off limits.
General sitting at the bar dopey, lonely suckers are a free for all. Anyone can take a stab at what’s in their pockets : hustling drinks, taking tips, getting bottles or just reach out and take what you want. When a guy is drinking booze, watching titty, booty & poontang & trying to figure out how to get his hands on any of it, he’s pretty focused. If his mind’s on someone else’s panties, getting into his pockets is usually pretty easy. If he does notice, I slide over to his crotch as if that was where I was headed anyway, smile sweetly and what I hope is seductively.
I’m just giving him permission to believe what he already wants to believe.
Don’t look at me like that. It’s not just me, the dancers at my bar are doing the same thing. If I catch them, we split it in exchange for me not ratting them out management. Management would take it all. You know that they would.
Everything about this is chilly except Red Wolf’s attitude.
I could quit if he’d get a job. I tell him that.
I wouldn‘t quit though.
I don’t tell him that.
This entry was written by , posted on August 19, 2009 at 10:55 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, dirty boys, dirty money, Guys & Dolls, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I didn’t grow up in a house that said nigger. I knew people who did, of course. I grew up in Levittown where you can’t buy a house unless you promise never to sell to a non-white family. Seriously. Even so, in my a house we didn’t say things like kike, or spic or nigger.
“Jus’ give the niggers their drinks, take their money and walk. Ya spendin’ way too much time talkin’ to ‘em. I didn’t hire ya to talk to niggers.” Ralphie’s jowls vibrate as he yells at me, again.
The bosses were worried about their own pockets. Pimps don’t drop for the champagne hustle, they’ll sit on the same fancy drink for a whole shift. They don’t put money in the cash registers if they can help it. But I work for tips. The pimps were waving a lot of green at me, most days I go home with six times my shift pay in tips—that’s more in one day than I’d had in a week working a straight job. I wasn’t about to bite the hands that fed me, no matter what color.
“Well, Ralph, who you want I should talk to? I got no other customers. Switch me up. Put me on nights.”
“Then I got niggers at night. You know I ain’t putting you on nights. My ass is awready on a line causa you.” The Mardi Gras had a lot to lose. Days the risk wasn’t too bad, but there was like two, three, four times as much money at night. Putting a seventeen year old on a night shift was asking for trouble from the Vice Squad, from Public Morals, from the State Liquor Authority . I could lose their liquor license for them. No license, no money. I’d heard the speech every time I asked. Probably for the best.My family lie had me working the lunch shift at some restaurant. No one’d believe I was good enough to be offered a dinner crowd.
“Ralph, no one’s gonna tip me just for opening a bottle of beer and walking away. Who’my gonna talk to, huh? You?”
“I don’t pay you to talk to niggers.” He runs a thick hand through his hair, greying, slicked back and greasy, then across his mustache, also going grey. And now it’s greasy too.
“Well, who’re you paying to talk to ‘em, cause really, I’m perfect for it. C’mon Ralph. You barely fucking pay me at all. Fifteen bucks? C’mon. I get almost a hundred from them. I’m here to make money. Like everyone else. Do the math, Ralph. Do the fuck-ing math, seriously, what would you do?”
Ralphie stands, adjusting his pants and belt around his paunch, he stares down at me.
“Ya got a real smart mouth, kid. That don’t make ya real smart though. Ya like spendin’ so much time with these jungle bunny muthafuckas, spend ev’ry goddamn day ‘n night wit ‘em then. Getcha crap. Get outta here. Take ya nigger pimp witchoo.”
“So, no night shift?” I rush out the door, mouth still running. He’s this close to pulling his belt off and walloping me, I can see it in his eyes. I don’t know when to shut up,but I know when to duck.
JJ was a pimp, but he treated me with respect, unlike Ralph. He never cursed. He showed me how to survive in Times Square, how not to get eaten alive. I’d heard ugly stories, girls who were so far in they couldn’t find a way out. That wasn’t gonna happen to me.
“What’s happenin’ Little J?” he whispered. The music pounded me, louder than usual. JJ’s voice was like a hot knife through butter. He was the heat. He was the butter too.
Anger danced in my head, shattered my thoughts, sent them flying and crashing into the walls as I gathered my stuff from behind the bar. I bumped into Ralphie as he was closing out my register.
“I’m fired,” tossing my head at Ralphie, “for talkin’ to NNNIIIGGGERS,” loud enough for everyone to hear over the throbbing disco beat.
“Get da fuck outta here.” Ralphie shoved me roughly down the bar.
“Hey,” I turned, “my shift pay, Ralphie?” holding my hand out, smiling sweetly.
“You don’t work a full shift, you don’t get paid, that’s my math.” He smiled back at me and puffed his chest out.
“Fuck you Ralphie, I don’t need your stinkin fifteen dollars.”
We walked out of the darkness into the glaring afternoon sun on Broadway, both wearing our work clothes. JJ, quiet in his three piece bankers grey pin stripe suit and me, with smart mouth & my big ass bobbing along, in a leotard shiny and red as a fire truck, legs bare, a pair of heels and a very bad attitude. Times Square roared around us.
It was a long day. I was too tired to roar back.
dirtygirl wonders: Do you know when to shut up? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 23, 2009 at 8:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty money, JJ Huntsberry, Levittown, pimps, Robbies Mardi Gras. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
If you’re in the house, you’re on the bar, on stage or working the floor. On stage you’re untouchable, but on the floor you have to be pleasant, seductive. Tell him how handsome he is, how desirable, run your fingers down his arm, tell him what a piece of shit he is, say what ever it is he needs to hear, how you’ll leave your man for him if only if…as long as there is a glass of champagne in front of you. No drink and it’s just a smile tossed over your shoulder, an eyeful of your ass walking away. He can take that into the bathroom and jerk off. Or he can buy you a drink.
The drink is champagne even when it’s not. A $20 nip buys a short five minutes at the bar. More time means more money. The girls are friendly, time is fluid, the champagne endless.
Every champagne glass comes with a chaser, an empty frosted “spit” glass to dribble the champagne into after each sip.
Dancers spit, they don’t swallow.
Drunk girls are accidents waiting to happen. They wake up next to men they never meant to fuck. For free. Drunk girls get sent home, they’re not earners. And cheap champagne is the worst hangover ever. Trust me, I’m a drunk girl.
Most days though, I “restock” the bottles, taking the ones with good labels, that don’t look too battered, filling them with ginger ale from the soda gun and twisting the caps back on.
Twist tops. Classy.
I put one or two spit glasses aside, unwashed, for assholes. I leave some spit in there.
I do my best to work the champagne hustle, but everyday brings new displays of feathered hats, sherbert colored polyester pimp suits and matching patent leather and alligator shoes – orange, lime green or grape. Pimps don’t buy titty bar champagne. They buy Golden Cadillacs and Grasshoppers. Cocktails to match their outfits and coat their stomachs. Cocktails that need to be shaken. They come to see me shake, to see the new girl JJ Hunstberry is grooming. JJ is top dog, if someone can grab me away from him, I’d be a feather in their cap. No one knows he still sends me home untouched at the end of every day.
The pimp parade leaves less and less room for the middle class white guys–incredible shrinking men in white short-sleeved button downs and two dollar ties. The scotch & soda, gin & tonic boys. The ones who buy the champagne. Meal tickets are afraid of pimps.
The girls complain to management. The meal tickets complain to management. Management complains to me.
Ralphie’s got me in the office, again, in the middle of a shift. His jowls shake as he yells at me for the thirty-first time. “Jus’ give the niggas their fuckin’ drinks, take the money and walk away. Ya not here to talk to niggas.”
But no one else talks to me, I think…
I’d never gotten the hang of making friends in my old life either.
dirtygirl asks: Do we choose our friends, do they choose us or is it all just proximity and circumstance? Post your thoughts below. C’mon, talk dirty to me.
This entry was written by , posted on July 20, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1976, dirty money, JJ Huntsberry, 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’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.
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.
