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.
The hungry was making me dizzy. So was the not being able to breathe. Yesterdays comfortable pants had somehow disappeared between the Porkpie and here. I peeled off the tight corduroy jeans and lay down. Just for a second. Just to get my head together.
I woke up drenched in sunlight and alone. Lightfoot hadn’t come back, but Jane Pauley was yakking it up. Good Morning America. I’m not part of that America. This is not part of that America.
Rolling over, I grabbed the phone, with no idea who one calls when one finds oneself stranded in a cheap roadside motel in New Jersey. Answer me that Jane Pauley, answer me that. Who do you call when this happens to you? It doesn’t, does it? This kind of thing doesn’t happen to Jane Pauley. I dialed “0″ to ask for an outside line. My folks didn’t need to know I’d fucked up, again, the very next day. Red Wolf was gone. I’d call Lightfoot, yell a little. Sorry, the voice says, no outside calls.
Shit. I remembered a payphone downstairs in the parking lot but, the door is locked, from the outside. Shit. Shit. Shitshitshitshitshit.
I stood in front of the big window in a T-shirt and panties watching New Jersey Transit buses pick up suits, on their way to work in New York. Every five minutes or so, another bus. I pull a pair of black spandex pants out of my dance bag. They’re not mine but they’re comfortable. That kind of thing happened all the time. My things disappeared, someone else’s show up in their place. What happened during the blinks, after a while, the not knowing just became part of who I was. I wiggle into them, bang on the wall and pace the room. After a few minutes, a skinny guy shows up at the door, a little bit fidgety, kinda dodgy. I’ve never seen him before, this nervous little Negro sweatball in cheap polyester pants the color of camel shit, high waisted, like that might make him look taller.
“You Lockey?” He nods.
“You’re supposed to stay and wait for Doug.” Lockey says, shifting from side to side.
“I waited.” I pick up the phone. “How come I can’t call out?”
“I’dunno.” He flinches, like he thinks I might throw the phone. I hadn’t thought of it, but I might, I just might.
“The door was locked…”
“Didn’t want no one to bother ya.”
“…from the outside.”
“Yeah, yeah, okay. In case you, like, walk in your sleep or sumpin’.” Lockey’s shuffling like he’s got dog shit on the bottoms of his shoes. He’s the posterchild for “someone get me the fuck out of here”, like I’ve got some contagious disease. He’s scared of me, but he’s probably more scared of Lightfoot.
“I’m hungry,” and I need a drink, I think to myself, and a way outta here. “Can you get me something from the diner across the street?”
Lockey lights up, relieved. This is something he can do, an easy out, no more questions he doesn’t have the answers to. I heard him lock my door from the outside. Motherfucker. He’s got the key, of course he does. I watched him go down the stairs. I’m locked in, I say into the phone, to the stranger on the other end. Yes ma’am, Mr. Doug has the key. You have to wait for him, the phone says back to me.
I put the phone down, stuff my new corduroy jeans into my dance bag and sling it over my shoulder.
I try to be stupid only a little bit of the time.
I watch Lockey crossing the parking lot, the highway, dodging cars, headed towards the diner. I turn to see what’s up the highway. Lockey opens the diner door and goes in.
Taking a deep breath, I close my eyes, turn my head & heave the chair through the big plate glass window over the desk. I’m half way down the stairs before heads start popping up to see who made the big noise. I’m just stepping onto a bus as Lockey comes running out of the diner after me. From my window seat I watch him as we pull away; first throw down the food he had bought for me, eggs, toast, homefries, coffee–damn it, I was hungry–then run back across the highway yelling at the old man who ran out of the office – the disembodied voice on the phone. Both of them flapping their arms, hopping and squawking at each other, two crazed chickens in the parking lot. Spittle flying as they yelled at each other and pointed from the room upstairs to the retreating bus.
I settle back in the upholstered seats, breathe in the cool conditioned air, close my eyes and feel the adrenaline still pulsing through my muscles. I just want to go home and sleep. And I could really use a drink.
This entry was written by , posted on September 17, 2009 at 10:25 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, New Jersey, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Skin tight. Not exactly eating pants and all I was thinking about was food.
I took a baby sip of the vodka, unzipped and took a grown up sip. I peed, trying for a little bit of extra room. I hate peeing when I’m drinking. I paid for the booze, I want to hang on to it, to keep it inside doing its dirtywork as long as possible. It’s mine, mine, mine, mine–even when someone else is paying. But, sometimes, like it or not, I have to pee.
Doug was on the pay phone when I came out. I pirouetted once or twice through the crowd for audience reaction–pimps are notorious appreciators of a good pirouette–landing in front of him just as he hung up.
“Now? Dinner…?”
“We gonna get Donna Rose first, she’s coming with us, you don’t mind, right little girl?”
I stomped an imaginary foot. “Ack! Stop that.“ Smiling, he threw his arm around my waist, lifted me off the ground and spun me around planting a soft kiss on my cheek. “I don’t give a shit who comes, I’m starved. I’m ready to pass out.”
I did mind, though. Donna Rose was a dancer and from the first day we hadn’t spoken outside of what was absolutely necessary. She acted like she was better than me, that’s why I didn’t like her. I had no idea why she didn’t like me. When the Caddy pulled away from Guys for the second time that day, I was in the back seat, alone. Donna Rose rode shotgun next to Lightfoot. I’d been replaced by the pretty girl. I was not liking her just a little bit more than before.
When I was little the pretty one was my mom. I was never pretty enough. I was never going to be. That shit makes me go just a teensy bit blind, like a blackout without the fun of the booze or a long slow motion blink. It feels like a split second, but I close my eyes in one place and when I open them again, everything’s changed and I have no idea what happened between then and now.
I blinked while we were still in the Porkpie. Then again when I found myself in the back seat. When I finished, we were somewhere in Jersey, some highway, some anonymous roadside motel. Lightfoot had the car door open and was helping me out of the backseat. I hadn’t been paying attention. I was busy being hungry, angry, tired. Busy feeling sorry for myself. In other words, I blinked. I’d lost entire days that way.
“Look, it’s getting late. I’ma get you a room, little one. You sleep here, safe and sound. We’ll have all day tomorrow. Then I take you home’n make sure your old man ain’t hanging around. Make sure no one can bother you.”
“So, wait. What? What happened to dinner? I gotta eat.” It was dark for the second time since I ate last. Thirty-six hours since I’d put something other than vodka and Newports in my stomach. I hate menthols. “Take me home, Doug. Take me back to the city, anyplace. I’ll find my own way. I’m so fucking tired.”
Radio Rover 2007
“You’ll go upstairs. Donna lives a few minutes from here.”
She sat in the front seat, still wearing her sunglasses even though it’d gotten dark. Smoking. Not looking at me, like I’d never even existed.
Doug kept talking and moving me along. “I’ll drop her off and be right back for you. We’ll get a big dinner. Steak, lobster, anything at all my girl wants. We can bring it back to the room if you want.”
We were halfway up the stairs before I even noticed. Blink. I was so tired. He unlocked the door. Double bed, color TV, fake oil painting, stiff white towels and a single glass wrapped in wax paper, coarse carpet and that whiff of mildew. Not the Bates Motel, but not the Waldorf either. The picture window overlooked the parking lot, the highway and a diner across the street. All I saw was Donna looking up as she flicked her cigarette out the window of the Caddy.
“If you need anything, Lockey – you remember Lockey? He’s right next door, just knock on the wall.” Lightfoot tossed my dance bag down on the bed–I’d forgotten I had that with me–and flipped the TV on.
Come and knock on our door / We’ve been waiting for you
Where the kisses are hers and hers and his / Three’s company too.
Irony is usually lost on me.
“Twenty minutes. Thirty tops. Relax, freshen up and I’ll be back before you know it.” Doug bent down and kissed me on the lips.
I stood in the middle of room watching as he closed the door behind him. Watched through the window as he got back in the Caddy. Watched as they pulled out of the parking lot.
I had no idea who Lockey was. I had no idea where I was.
This entry was written by , posted on September 14, 2009 at 9:18 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1979, blink, Guys & Dolls, lonliness, New Jersey, pimps. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
