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.
“Jesus, JJ. What the hell…?” Piper flips her hair away from her face and drags me into the light for a better look at my face.
“I’m fine, Pipes. Forget it.” I just want to get behind the bar, to get a drink, to work, to forget this happened.
“What? Are you crazy? J, you should really have someone look at that. What happened, baby? Does it hurt bad? Sit. I’ma make you a drink…Maxie said you had an accident?”
“Maxie says, this ain’t a freakin’ tea party. That’s what Maxie says.” How a big man like Max slips in and out of a room unnoticed is beyond me. But he does. You never notice him come in, and you never see him leave. “Behind the bar, both of youse.”
“Max,” Piper cracks a fresh bottle of Smirnoff for me and flashes her best St. Louis smile for him, “just let her sit for a minute. I can handle everything for a while. Don’t I always get you every last dollar and send ‘em to the bank for more?” She giggles at him, pushes a rocks glass full of vodka in front of me and heads towards the back room. She touches my hair as she passes, just a brief touch, a second, and for that one single second, I think, I’m safe now, and then it’s gone.
Maxie slides onto the stool next to me and looks at my empty glass. I’d swallowed it in one gulp.
“Here, kid. Ya look worse’n usual. You could use another.” He pushes the bottle towards me. I can always use another, I think. “Now, spill it,” he says.
I pour my own drink, skip the ice, and look up slowly into those watery Bassett hound eyes. I wish he could just make me his, look after me, protect me, make it all go away.
“What’re you my boyfriend now, Max? My father? What? Leave me alone, OK?” Finishing my cocktail in one swallow again, I get up to go behind the bar, still holding that bottle of vodka in my other hand. My bottle of vodka. The only thing that’s making me feel safe at the moment, my vodka.
Max grabs my free arm and pulls me towards him. “You want me to be your daddy? You’d like that wouldn’t you? Not that I give a shit,” I can feel his belly press against me, his stubble tearing at my cheek, his voice rumbles about my face and ears. “But tell me, who hit ya?” He pops bar nuts into his mouth and waits for my answer.
“Nobody, Max. I told you, I fell is all. It was an accident. Lemme go, you’re hurting me. You’re gonna leave a bruise. I gotta set up the bar.”
“I’m gonna leave a bruise? Take a look at yourself.” He flicks his head in the direction of the mirror behind the bar, but he doesn’t let go. “Do ya know the guy?”
“It was an accident.”
“Do I know the guy?”
“An accident Max, it’s nothin’.”
“Fine,” pushing me away, “You wanna protect some piece’a shit, then maybe you asked for it. Maybe you got what you deserved.” He spits on the floor and walks into the back room, still popping nuts into his mouth.
What could I say? How could I explain any of it? I invited him in. I’d offered to let him sleep on the couch. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought I was untouchable. Safe. I thought I had Nigger JJ on my side. I thought I had the Ice Man. I thought we were friends. I thought…
Glad to be alone and busy, I start setting up the bar.
Idiot work for an idiot girl.
I fill the tiny champagne bottles with ginger ale, screw the tops back on and tuck a new bottle of Smirnoff away under my cash register. I was sure Myron watered down the booze. Piper thought so, too. We set aside a fresh bottle every night. Tonight I wanted one all to myself.
“Take a look at yourself,” he’d said.
I don’t do that, look at myself. Not my whole self. Just the bits and pieces I absolutely have to. One eye at a time, or just my mouth. But I don’t ever look at my whole face in a mirror.
“Take a look at yourself,” he’d said.
I look up into the mirrored wall opposite the bar, behind the tiny platform the girls danced on. I see my reflection standing behind the bar, my body from the waist up, but I can’t see my head at all. I am the headless barmaid.
The clinking of quarters in the jukebox brings me out of my reverie. Customers. It’s Showtime.
This entry was written by , posted on February 8, 2010 at 6:47 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, drinking, Lollipop Lounge, 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.
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.
The sun sets behind me as we roll onto 46th Street, past guitar stores and half a dozen Brazilian restaurants and bars that make this single block into “Little Brazil.” Routing through my bag, through clothes, makeup, shoes and everything else I drag around everyday, I find my last softly crumpled fiver and hand it to the Paki cabbie. It’s always my last fiver as I roll into work. Doesn’t matter if I worked last night or I’m at the tail end of a five day run. Either way, the cabbie gets the last bill. But, as long as I have enough to get to work, it’s all good.
I pull open the heavy glass door to the hallway. Directly ahead of me, stairs lead to a cute little apartment with a two sets of French doors– one separating the living room and bedroom, the other leading out to the tiny terrace overlooking the Church of St. Mary the Virgin across the street, and Myron’s newest bar, the Lollipop Lounge, below. It’s very sweet and very French and Myron’s been trying to talk me into renting it. I’d save on cab fare, he says. But I’d one flight up from the bar, I think. No more screening calls or calling in ‘home in bed with the flu’ when I’m really home in bed with Mr. Just Got Home from Prison or Mr. On His Way to the Crazyhouse. They’d be knocking on my door all day and night to use the phone or the bed, for a quickie or to crash, using the whole place for making deals, cutting things up. I’d be the goddamned back room.
Nope. I pass. Not even for French doors. Not even for two sets of them.
I ignore the stairs, turning left and pushing open the door to the Lollipop.
I’d expected music loud enough to drown your sorrows, rumbling out of the old style jukebox. But there’s only some general mumbling and subdued laughter, clinking of glasses and ice, shuffling of bar stools and feet. The mediocrity of real life normally drowned out by blaring and repetitive disco beats.
“What the fuck…,” the carpet crunches as I step inside. “Jeez Louise.”
“Nice, right?” Piper laughs, leaning against a train wreck of multicolored plastic rubble and mechanical gizmos. She takes a drag of her Newport and pats what’s left of the jukebox with a perfectly manicured hand. Lights limp and sputter sporadically–yellow, red, blue, and glaring white through the broken plastic. Cracked 45’s and colored shards of thick plastic litter the floor.
It’s bad.
Myron loved his jukebox; I’m genuinely surprised he let this happen. Last time they’d all jumped to her defense, as if she were some fragile Southern belle. It was a sticky summer night in Times Square, one of those nights so hot the garbage starts cooking up into a stink stew. A muscle bound base-head wandered in, his eyes spinning, his body slick with sweat. He wasn’t interested in drinking, or naked women. But he fell in love with the flashing lights of that jukebox. He stood over her, watching her lights flicker and dance, for 20 minutes.
Maybe he was there an hour, I wasn’t paying too much attention. But I remember his arms, thick and strong, and the way he gripped each side of the jukebox firmly, the way you do a woman’s hips when you’re taking her from behind. He had a beautiful prison body, that perfection you get from lots of free time in the yard. After a while, I guess the flashing lights flipped a switch in his brain-stem. He leaned back, still clutching the box. Pushing his pelvis against the jukebox and dropping his head back, he let loose with a howl. It was primitive, boy oh boy, something that came from the very bottom of his beat-up Chuck Taylors. He howled again, curled back in toward the box and proceeded to lift it straight up, every muscle straining. I watched from the bar, waiting for the muscles of his arms to just…pop.
Big Maxie grabbed the wooden baseball bat from behind the bar and walked over slowly, dangling it out of sight just behind his thick leg. He stood with the bat swinging softly behind him like a metronome and talked the kid down, talked him into putting the jukebox tenderly back down on the floor. I know it’s easy to be calm when you’re holding a baseball bat, but if that kid could lift a full size jukebox straight up, there’s no telling what damage he could do to a man, even a bulldog like Big Max. But the basehead put the box down, and him and Maxie talked, drank and smoked a little while Myron sat at the bar, still shelling pistachio nuts and popping them one at a time into his mouth. His eyes’d never left his prized possession as Maxie talked the kid down and you could tell, he’d sit there and watch just the same if Maxie had to bash the kids head open to get him to put the jukebox back down. Myron watched, shelled and popped until the kid was gone, and that’s all that was worth remembering of that night.
So I wondered, what the hell could have happened here? The box was a goner; there was no repairing it, nothing worth saving except maybe a shard of blue plastic for sentimental reasons. It looked like it had been at the bad end of real old-fashioned beat down.
“What the fuck, Pipes?”
“Chief shot it,” she says. I look at her; she shrugs her shoulders and laughs. “I don’t know JJ, he was sitting at the end of the bar same as always, whispering his crazy Chief shit, then he pulls out a pistol and shoots the thing. Bang. Bang. Bang. Three times.” She takes another drag off the Newport. “He said it made a threatening move at ‘im.”
Chief is crazy, but not so’s you could tell by looking at him. Tall and balding, with a dark bushy mustache and glasses, he looks like an accountant. An annoying accountant, but still, he looked harmless. Chief’s brand of crazy was the kind you’d never see coming.
“Piper…?” I turn and hold my hands out, ala Carol Merrill on ‘Let’s Make a Deal’. This was more than three bullets worth of damage.
“Well, Myron & Max were outside, they come running in. Max looks at the box, looks up at Chief, looks at the box, then back at Chief again. Chief’s still standing there with the gun in his hand, he looks at them and says,” Piper starts to giggle, slightly insanely, “JJ, he looks at them and says, ‘It made a threatening move’. Max comes over to the bar, all pissed off, you know how he is, and grabs the bat. ‘It made a move on ya?’ he says. ‘Yeah, it made a move Maxie, I hadda do it, it made a move,’ Chief says. So, they all went after it. They took turns with the bat, Little Maxie’s in there with a car jack. I don’t know where the crowbar came from. Max, Chief, little Max, even Myron. Everybody. Hadda be done I guess – after all JJ,” she shrugs and starts to walk away, “it made the first move.” She laughs, heading behind the bar.
“Shit, I miss all the good stuff,…”
“That’s what you get for going home, J…”
“I’m thinking maybe I move upstairs.” I shake my head. I love this job. You never know what’s going to happen. I mean, really, everyone knows Chief is dangerous, so who’d expect a single unarmed jukebox would be the one that would try and take him out.
I scoot up onto the bar stool next to Chief for my standard pre-shift double Vodka, with just enough Seven-Up for bubbles. I’ll drink through the whole night, but I like one to start the night out right, for luck. The boys are all busy talking, rehashing the fight, who did what to the box, how it got what it deserved, and on and on. Chief leans over. He smells warm, of scotch and cigarettes, his lips soft to my ear, his mustache rough against the curve of my earlobe, “Tickle your ass with a feather,” he whispers.
“What? Say what, Chief?” I turn to my friend, this crazy man, this jukebox killer, and smile.
“I said, ‘How’s the weather?’” He signals for Piper to top off my drink.
The jukebox never should’ve made the first move.
This entry was written by , posted on December 31, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1981, Lollipop Lounge, 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 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.
“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.
So, you say you want to be alone with your party doll? You say you want to get away from it all? Away from the booths, the poles, the barmaids, the mirrors, the bouncers and managers, away from the unwashed masses who come here to try and staunch the flow of lonely, away from the religious zealots willing to pay for keys to non-existent hotel rooms? You say you want to get away from the freakshow and be alone with the girl of your wet-dreams?
Well, my friend, you’ve come to the right place. We accept all major credit cards.
“Ronnie?” I’ve got him by the tie, to keep him from flopping off the barstool. “Look at me, Ronnie.” I smack him lightly on the cheek a few times.
Everyone else has come and gone, but this suit’s been here for hours. His mouth is hanging open and his eyes are at half mast as he tries to focus on me. I’ve sent him upstairs with three different girls already, each time with the same unopened jeroboam of crap champagne and one of my killer speed-rack Georgi vodka martinis in a highball glass. Each time I run his card for a thousand dollars. Eight hundred dollars for the bottle, two hundred dollar tip for me. Whatever cash deal he cuts with the girls is their business. The credit card charges show up as a steak restaurant, the irony of which is not lost on us. A piece of meat by any other name…would never taste as sweet.
“Ronnie!” I’m loud and all up in his face, trying to make myself heard through the vodka haze and over the music.
“You’re losing him, JJ. Better give’m a blast.” Piper’s cleaning up the bar, my section as well as hers, getting ready to close up for the night. She smiles as she watches me struggle. She’s right about the blast too, of course she is. I take the vial of coke from her, come around the bar and slide onto the seat next to him.
“Ronnie,” softer now, my mouth right up against his ear, he reaches out and cups my breast in his hand and begins kneading it. “Here sweetie, inhale for me.”
I do not like sharing cocaine. I do not even like sharing your cocaine, but this is a necessary investment.
I pinch one nostril closed while I hold the tiny coke spoon up to the other, cradling his head with my other hand. He inhales, gently. I slide the spoon almost inside his nostril. “Quick now, baby, inhale again,” he does, “That’s it, there you go. C’mon baby, let the good times roll.”
The suit leans back in the chair and you can see the cocaine start to work, sobering him up just enough so he’s intelligible, but not so much that he’s no longer pliable. Not so much that he realizes how little he’s gotten for how much he’s spent. There’s a delicate balance that has to be respected, like mixing nitro-glycerin. Or making a chocolate souffle.
“Ronnie.” He looks at me, smiling slowly. “I’m gonna need my tit back now, baby.” He looks down, apparently confused as to how my boob wound up in his hand. He squooshes it like a wad of play-doh, and leans in for a sloppy kiss—he stinks of vermouth and cigarettes and sweat–and misses my mouth, resting his head on my shoulder.
“Gimme a blow-job. None-a these bishes will gimme a blow-job.” His head lolls to the side. “Willyousuckmydick?”
Piper laughs, grinding her cigarette out as she turns to make herself a fresh vodka. Myron shakes his head in disbelief, but never takes his eyes of the suit. I’ve run up over three grand for the house from this fish alone. I’ve wrenched eight hundred dollars in tips, plus my ten percent bottle commission, that’s another three hundred plus—means I’ve cracked a grand in tips and commission for the night. I’m finally making Winks money goddammit. I’m so fucking tired of hearing about how great it was and what an jerk I was for walking out.
It’s twenty minutes to closing; I need a new girl—the fish is drunk enough that I can recycle the bottle of champagne, but not girls. Three girls, three thousand dollars, and this poor john hasn’t even gotten far enough to get his own hand into his pants to pull on his limp dick.
Truth is, if he really wanted his dick sucked, if any of them really wanted what they say they want, they’d go two doors down to the Luxor Baths for a $10 “happy ending”, or pick up one of the street girls. But, after you’ve spent a couple of hundred dollars and no one’s even looked at your pud, no less pulled it, and you stay? You may as well admit that what you’re really looking for is the company and the fantasy.
I’ve got twenty minutes left to try and whack that gold card one last time. Over his shoulder I spot Carrie, smoking a cigarette, picking at her cuticles and leaning against the stage. I catch her eye with a nod and she snake-walks over, slides an arm around his neck, looks him right in the eyes and smiles. Hell, if he wants his dick sucked, she’s the one to do it. She’s the gypsy, the blow-job queen.
The suit looks from her to me, and back again, confused. We’re both tall, with short red hair, long faces and a certain rock and roll edge. “You sisters?”
Bingo.
“Yes,” I say, slipping his gold American Express card out of his wallet– I like to think of myself as a modern day gold miner. Myron rings it up, Piper packs the same unopened bottle of champagne and another vodka martini into the ice bucket. “Yes we are, Ronnie. We’re sisters….”
Myron coughs, loudly, reminding me that last call is only ten minutes away…
This entry was written by , posted on December 10, 2009 at 11:04 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, drinking, drugs, johns, partners in crime, 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’m leaning on the bar sipping Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry, watching Sherry Cigarette blow smoke rings out her cooch. My cash register slows down when she’s on stage. No one is leaning over to chat me up once she lights that first cigarette. I don’t blame them. You really do want to give her your full attention. Even I forget about sipping my drink for a while when she’s working. It’s like cruising by just after a head-on collision on the Interstate. I don’t want to stare, but I can’t help myself.
They’re perfect. One after another, gently poofing out her snatch, perfectly symmetrical little white rings. Okay, not exactly perfect, or really all that symmetrical, but it’s smoke and it’s coming out of her god-damned vagina fer chrissakes. Piper’s watching too, from her spot behind the bar. Every time Sherry pops one out of her cooch, Piper pops a matching one of her own the old fashioned way, from her mouth. She catches my eye and winks. It’s like they’re singing in harmony. I take a drag off my own Marlboro and try to join in the smoke ring chorus. Nada. Nope. Nothing. Not without tapping my cheek with my finger, so I give her credit. Apparently I can’t even make my mouth do some of the things Sherry’s cooch can do.
I love being ringside at the Times Square freakshow. My father worked the burlesque houses and the carnival side shows. I was raised for this, I think to myself. I love being part of something untouchable, part of the crew, something citizens only get to gawk at from the outside, while I get to be inside. Okay, so I can’t do tricks. I can’t blow smoke rings out of my snatch, but still, I can’t imagine ever wanting to be anywhere else. Like that old joke about the man who’s job is sweeping up behind the elephants in the circus? He stinks so bad because of all the elephant shit he has no friends, gets no action. “Why not quit?” someone asks. “What,” says the man, “and leave show business?” I love it here like that. Just like that, elephant shit stink and all.
Last week, Myron brought in Bambi Woods, the infamous Debbie of “Debbie does Dallas” fame, to start working the bar. Customers think they like her because they’ve seen the movie. Even if they haven’t, they say they did. Either way she’s a porn star, they say. And? So? So she can fuck with a camera running, so what? we say. Get your ass on stage and do your thing like Sherry Cigarette or Patrice, but we don’t need another barmaid because that’s what I’m doing here, we say. She won’t last here much longer. Not because I don’t like her, which I don’t, but Myron could care less what I think. It’s pretty evident he keeps me around because he likes to make me cry. But, Piper doesn’t care for her either. Piper operates with a smile and a soft touch so except for telling me, she keeps that pretty much to herself while I scream and swing my metaphorical bat wildly. You will not be surprised when I tell you she get’s more flies with honey than I do with my baseball bat.
We’re friends now. We have things in common, like Vodka, girls we dislike–like Bambi, and girls we feel sorry for–like Patrice. Not sorry in that way that you want to pick up a stray kitten and take it home and feed it warm milk, or sorry in any way that makes you want to do nice things for someone. Sorry in that way when you look at someone and see how they’re wearing their broken and crazy on the outside, and you’re sorry for them because you know, you know the world is going to run them over–and you want to give them wide enough berth so that truck doesn’t hit you at the same time. That kind of sorry.
You can watch from the bar or get a ringside seat for the Vegas glitz and dazzle of Patrice. Each outfit more elaborate than the last, each headdress towering higher, with longer feathers, more sparkle and shine, she glides down our little stage, raised only one foot off the ground, her head held high, beauty queen smile plastered on her face, arms out, diaphanous glistening chiffon wings lofting behind her. What the Butterfly lacks in runway, Patrice creates in her mind as she struts the perimeter of the tiny stage on her way to Vegas celebrity. She is our very own Peggy Sawyer, waiting in the wings to be plucked from obscurity and Ruby Keelered to fortune and fame.
But, this is not Damon Runyon’s Broadway with its flamboyant criminals and wide-eyed chorines. This is my Times Square–dark and gritty the way God meant it to be. Every city needs a place tourists are afraid to go, a place they’re drawn to by that very fear. This is our Times Square. This is home.
Every night they come. Incredible shrinking men, the suicidally sad come to drown their misery, Hasidim slip in unnoticed to snag some shiksa tit, a battalion of lonely marrieds, brash cugines in gold chains and tight pants. They pack the bar each night, here for comfort or conquest, but not for costumes. No Virginia, this is not Busby Berkley’s 42nd Street anymore where small town girls find love, happiness and Dick Powell. Patrice makes some dollars here and there, tips from new meat who think there may be something more to her show. Her husband, picks her up at 4am–the end of each night; he helps pay for costumes that cost more than she will ever make in a night here. He brings their eight-year-old son, long past his bed-time, and carefully, methodically, the little boy packs each costume and headdress so as not to loosen even one of mommy’s precious sequins.
If I had a husband…wait a minute. I did. Nevermind.
This entry was written by , posted on December 7, 2009 at 1:03 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, drinking, 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.
She strode down the stairs and into the bar, a flock of toady girls behind her–not a single one of them worth remembering. But Piper, well, Piper was a star. Picture Doris Day. Her sweet smile, her All-American good looks. Now, picture Doris drunk, but not a hair out of place, blood on her hands and a twelve-gauge shotgun held causally out of sight behind her poodle skirt, still smiling.
I’d had very few girlfriends growing up, but when I did we were the girls most likely to be separated by teachers, the girls your parents won’t let you hang out with, the ones mothers warned their sons about and fathers offered rides to. But, Piper scared me. She could squash me with a look if she noticed me
She was short and solid, with broad shoulders and a thick waist, corn fed like a gym teacher. She wore white leotards & pumps, gold jewlery and pulled her shining blonde hair into a flawless bouncing ponytail. Faint traces of coral lipstick stained the filter of the ever present Newport dangling from impeccably manicured fingers. You’d think she was Miss Missouri, Miss Bible Belt or even Miss Family Values. Next to Piper, I was a metaphorical third runner-up Miss New York Subway. Miss Subway Token Booth or Miss Vaguely Urine Smelling Subway Platform. You get the picture.
Piper’d come from that part of America west of the Hudson River where there were no Jews, and Klu Klux Klan rallies are an acceptable after-school activity. While I was smoking pot, drinking beers and making out with Donnie Cacamis under the bleachers in the suburbs of Long Island, Piper was riding in the back of Bubba’s pick-up, rolling through the black ghettos of St.Louis, blonde hair thrashing in the wind, shooting up cars, windows, and mailboxes.
That was before Times Square, where her blond hair, tough skin and razor charm would be put to better use.
Joey Two Shoes bought her her own club and then they’d partied it into the ground. She was that kind of girl you bought things for. Big things.
The fat man in her life got her a suite in the UN Plaza hotel paid for by donations from his “Feed the Hungry Children” fund. Other than him, Piper was the only “child” being fed. Her fat man scammed the fat of the land and Piper siphoned the fat off Ellsworth and into her own pocket.
And she was Myron’s special girl, they’d been together since the standing room only days of Winks and the Cookie Jar, when money rained down from the ceiling, enough to wipe your ass with, if that’s what rocked your boat. Or, that’s what they said.
I’d missed the Cookie Jar entirely, and stupidly stumbled out of Winks after half a shift and a single whiff of someone else’s cooch. Bottomless before the Alcohol and Beverage Commission (ABC) started making all the rules, the nightly take for a Winks barmaid in the late 70s was at least a grand. A few months working for Myron at the Butterfly and I learned that cooch smelled like money.
I was finally catching on. I’d found my Fagin and my Artful Dodger, but by now the ABC had thrown on a lot of rules about distance and coverage and no matter how you sliced it, the really wild days were gone. There’d be an occasional big fish, but now you had to work three days to pull in a grand instead of just one.
It was unlikely that we would ever get along, me and Piper. I was the kind of girl men locked in motel rooms, she was the kind of girl men bought hotels for. I was disheveled even in just my leotard and Piper’d never left the house with so much as lipstick on her teeth or a chipped nail.
She was beautiful. I was broken. The kind that extends all the way down to your soul, the kind that you know no one anywhere can ever fix, but you never stop trying to patch that soul-hole up with something or someone, cause things keep slipping out through the hole, sanity, boundaries, faster and faster, dignity, principles, memories, everything oozes out the hole, so you try and fill it with a frenzied mélange of cocaine, boys, vodka, more anything, money, hurry up now, more boys, bright lights, hurry, sex, drugs, anything to make me dizzy so I don’t mind the slippage, don’t notice what I’m losing, don’t know I’m losing anything.
Piper had that same broken.
I wanted to be her best friend. She was everything I wasn’t.
And she was everything I was.
This entry was written by , posted on December 3, 2009 at 1:08 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, 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.
courtesy jasper goodall
Inside, I’m standing there with my skirt lifted up to my waist. Outside, an iconic stained glass butterfly on the wall stands two stories high, gossamer, delicate and encased in a thick cocoon of grime and graffiti.
Inside the Butterfly a chubby twenty-something wise-guy wanna-be draped in brown polyester and gold chains is propped up on bar stool by the cash register, his feet dangling. Nicky Fireplug gives me a quick once over, like I’m a used car, and kicks my metaphorical tires.
“Ya got good legs?” he asks me. Nothing about experience or previous employment. Just, “Ya, got good legs?”
I hoisted my skirt up to my waist. Because I do. I got good legs.
That’s what got me the job, the good legs. And the fact that I’m willing to lift my skirt for a total stranger whose feet don’t reach the ground when he sits on a bar stool. I didn’t care about my legs. Or his. I needed a job. One where I could drink and no one would bother me about it. And these were my job skills: a big ass, thick thighs, muscular calves, delicate ankles and a total lack of shame, or pride - whatever. Either way, it wasn’t exactly a skill set I put on a resume. This was no worse than some and better than answering phones at the whorehouse. The Butterfly gave me access to a fully stocked bar. The whorehouse, did not.
Sometimes, it is just that simple.
Guys & Dolls had felt like your Italian Nonna’s house with the overly bright living room where everything’s encased in plastic, red flocking or gold paint and the uncles are hiding downstairs making homemade wine and homemade bombs. The Butterfly was more like that aging aunt the family whispered about. The one whose clothes were a little dingy, outdated and wrong for whatever occasion she managed to show up for, who reeked of after-dinner sherry, even at breakfast, the one who used to be beautiful. The bar curved around in a question mark, punctuating the unspoken query–just what are you doing here? Worn booths made S curves around two or three small raised stages with poles, and another low stage stood just past the bar.
The Butterfly was dark and brooding, all nappy red velour and red lights–a warm menstruating cooch, if your cooch came equipped with brass poles and mirrors.
The hustle was the same. Twenty bucks gets you ten minutes of cheap champagne and company at the bar. If twenty will get you ten at the bar, forty would get you twenty in a booth, eighty got you thirty upstairs… and the beat goes on.
Personally, I don’t even like good champagne, thanks for asking, but you can buy me a $20 glass of Harvey’s Bristol Cream Sherry. In a few months I will have polished off all the Harvey’s, as well as the Frangelica, the Sambuca, Anisette, and any other sweet thing I can find. Nicky Fireplug won’t order any more. He knows it’s only me and pimps that drink that stuff. He knows it’s really all me because they’ve figured out what the other two joints could not–how to discourage pimps, which is easier than you’d think when you fill the place with mobsters. The boss orders thin gold bottles of fugazy Harvey’s and You better be happy with that you little slut, because that’s all you’re getting. You’ll drink that and charge the same as for the good stuff.
I’ve found a home. I begin to assemble a family. At 24 I’m already that aunt the family whispers about. Both families….
This entry was written by , posted on November 30, 2009 at 11:04 am, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, drinking, Times Square. 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, globe-trotting glamour-gal, Kelly Hayworth stops in to chat with the Naked Ladies….
Jodi Sh. Doff: In the 70s & 80s I danced on stage and hustled drinks on the floor. There was a difference in the feelings of security & power. I felt safer, emotionally, on stage with that distance from the customer. Lauri, you worked laps as well as poles yes?
Lauri Shaw:I sure did. The amount of contact and privacy varied from club to club.
Some lap dances were more like table dances –both feet on the floor at all times and you faced the customer.
In others, you could straddle the customer backwards or forwards, rub your knee in his crotch, he could touch anywhere but your tits, ass or crotch. You essentially dry-humped the guy and often right out in the open. I hated that, but as with everything else, you get used to it.
Some clubs had special rooms for lap dances, wall dances…
JshD: Dry humping against a wall? Guys never get past high school do they…
LS:... or couch dances –they were only semi-private, but away from the main floor. The VIP rooms, though, were usually just you and the customer, one-on-one.
JshD: And once again I’m grateful I got out before lap dancing caught on. It’s one thing to be alone in a VIP room negotiating whatever, knowing the bouncer was just the other side of the door and I didn’t have to do anything. Sometimes I did. Sometimes I didn’t, but no one had the right to expect contact like they do with a lap dance…
LS: You never HAD to do anything. You set your own limits, but they had to be similar to the other girls’ limits, or you wouldn’t make money. So I guess it felt a lot like “had to.”
Kelly Hayworth: Well, I’m a career-long dive-bar dancer–my Tokyo club was the size of a living room. Many Tokyo clubs are hostess-like, there’s more emphasis on making commission on drinks than on stage shows.
JshD: Hustling drinks always made me feel like a beggar. I don’t mind taking my clothes off, or drinking with anyone who offers, but all that “Hi honey, wanna buy me a drink” shit was just depressing. I had to have some booze or dry goods first to work the floor…
LS: I don’t think that’s easy for anyone. I had to be a little tipsy myself, otherwise if someone was rude to me, I’d be rude right back. A bad exchange with a customer could mess up my whole night…you get off to a wrong start and don’t make any money.
KH: Yeah, I only drank at the clubs when I had to sell dances and/or drinks. Some of the London pubs were stage only, so no problem.
Only a couple of girls danced on “stage”–(a wobbly pole in the centre of the room that collapsed with my friend upside down on it)–and only once or twice a night. You’d dance one song–half twirling around the pole, the other half going to each customer and demanding a tip. The smallest Japanese bill is worth almost $10 American, so it was worth doing the stage. We laughed if an American came in and tried to give us a dollar bill.
LS: I knew some girls who had danced in Japan, all tall with big tits. I heard the money was great but that if you were petite like me, don’t bother–you wouldn’t be exotic in Japan. So I never even thought about going.
KH: Tokyo changed massively while I worked there on and off from ‘98 to ‘07. In the beginning it was about being blonde for the Japanese guys, but nowadays it’s all foreign businessmen–British and American–so blonde means nothing. They’re looking for Japanese girls.
In London it was fully nude walking around the pub floor for a song, going up to each customer–giving everyone attention. You wouldn’t think so but, it’s actually where I felt safest. We never got too close–there was something like a three foot rule and absolutely no contact–and guys never pushed it. They were conditioned to just look. Also, you got the tips before the show–every customer has to put one Pound minimum in your glass.
JShD: I guess there’s some modicum of British propriety– I can’t imagine that in NYC. Visions of drunken frat boys grabbing ass and tit as you moved through the crowd. I need personal space. A lot of clubs had a raised stage behind the bar because of an ABC Buffer zone law that specified if you served booze, you needed 6 ft. between topless dancers and customers. Looking down on my customers from that distance gave me a feeling of control and power I really liked.
KH: Ha! I don’t know about British propriety! These were tiny pubs out in the country, a Friday night in Leicester Square would’ve been very different.
LS: Yeah, I live in the UK these days. Propriety my ass. They can afford to behave themselves in the strip clubs because if they want more, they can go to a legal brothel here.
KH: Tokyo and London felt more powerful onstage than the US. Maybe because it was more confrontational–like by walking up to the customers I’m demanding their attention and tips–in the States I felt like I had to hope that maybe they would tip.
LS: The girls I danced with on stage in Manhattan used to kick drinks on customers who were really offensive and / or refused to tip.
KH: Also, since there isn’t a continuous show, like the States, dancers aren’t “background”, we got direct attention. I certainly feel more powerful when I have attention, it can be crushing to have no one come up to your stage–or worse, get up and leave when you come on! I mean, we are getting naked, they shouldn’t take us for granted, right?!
JshD: Makes sense. Girls on stage are competing with the girls on the floor for the attention and dollars of the mooks at the bar. It’s set up so the bar wins, not the girls.
This entry was written by , posted on November 25, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged London, strippers, Times Square, Tokyo. 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: I was a 19-year-old barmaid in Yonkers, NY at this crappy dive topless place, City Lights…
Jodi Sh. Doff: Legal drinking age was 21 in NY by then, so you were flying under the radar…
LS: I fell in with one of the dancers, who dragged me along to her shift at Runway 69 in Times Square. I couldn’t believe it — nobody danced, they all just crouched in front of the men, showed cooch, and got paid. The girls got a kick out of me. I was trying to be streetwise, like I saw this shit every day.
JshD: My first cooch sighting freaked me out. I was a cocktail waitress in a joint called Winks. I’m not sure I even finished my first shift!
LS: I wasn’t fooling anyone either, but they decided to dress me up and turn me out. My friend thought it was a riot. Before I knew it, I was wearing someone else’s dress, and shoes two sizes too big. They pushed me right out on that stage. I was terrified, but I was determined to follow through, because I was being dared.
It was truly horrific. I didn’t know how to dance. Three customers walked away the minute they saw me. I didn’t dare let go of the pole, I knew I’d wipe out. I was up there for three songs and the only tip I got was from a guy who said, “I’m only giving you this dollar ’cause I feel sorry for you.” If there was ever a moment in my life I wanted to die of shame, that was it.
Rachel Aimee: I wasn’t even thinking about money when I auditioned. One guy held out a 5 pound note but I was too scared to get close enough to take it.
LS: When I came off stage, the manager was laughing his ass off in the corner. He told me I was hired. Later I found out they didn’t even have auditions at Runway. I’d been an elaborate practical joke for the whole staff. In the end, though, I had the last laugh–I stayed for the rest of the shift and made $300 in just a few hours.
RA: I started when I was 23 and living in London back in 2003. I was so naïve I took a stripping class before I auditioned–I thought I actually had to be able to dance! What a waste of money—we learned all these old burlesque moves…
LS: Oh, that stuff is so hot now, the revival of old school burlesque. Jo Boobs, The World Famous Bob, The Pontani Sisters…
RA: …but completely irrelevant once I saw how real strippers danced. I started at a little club called Boulevard in Soho. It was one of the few clubs that was stage dancing only. I thought tabledancing meant dancing on a table, which I was sure I couldn’t do in heels, and I was afraid of lapdancing because of the contact—as I said, I was very naïve back then.
LS: What made you even think of stripping, then?
RA: I was a total cliche–a gender studies major interested in the feminist debates about whether stripping was empowering or degrading and figured I’d see for myself! (Of course, I soon realized it was just a damn convenient way to pay the rent.) I had an elaborate audition outfit which included a skirt, button down shirt, stockings, and even a cardigan…
JshD: A cardigan? That’s classic!
RA: The dancers just laughed at me. I had no idea most girls went out there in a bikini or minidress. They tried to get me to at least lose the cardigan but I almost started crying, saying I had to wear the outfit I’d practiced in or I’d forget my routine! After that they left me alone, but they teased me about it for months after I got hired.
JshD: I was still living at home when I got fired from my job as a file clerk. The ad in the back of the Village Voice said, “barmaid, no experience necessary”. I had no experience, so I was eminently qualified.
RA: It’s funny how many strippers start as bartenders, or at least intended to…
JshD: Bartending really was a “gateway drug” for me. The Mardi Gras was the largest topless bar in the city, with three stages, a dozen cash registers and Jake La Motta as a bouncer. Total big time. Me & my no experience made more in one day than I had in a week at the office.
It didn’t take long before I auditioned as a dancer. I was already the girl who ripped her clothes off in public when she drank. I realized recently that I wasn’t a stripper who drank, I was a drunk who stripped. What I wasn’t, was a girl who ever felt pretty. The glamor of the bars and their willingness to pay for what I was already doing for free held a lot of allure. I borrowed a nasty g-string, just a scratchy swatch of fabric and a pair of borrowed heels as well, and suddenly I was the center of the world, lights flashed, everything switched from black & white to Technicolor and I was beautiful.
RA: It’s amazing how being on stage for the first time makes you feel like that, even if you’ve never had any kind of aspirations to be a performer.
JshD: It was great…until the manager yelled “Let’s see some floor work! Pretend you’re on top.” I was 17! I’d never been on top. So there I was, a chubby teenager doing naked push ups in front of strangers.
RA: Floor work killed me when I first started–my knees were so bruised and scratched up I couldn’t kneel or bend my knees for at least a month.
JshD: That manager never asked me to dance again, but I was sold. Those few minutes sealed the deal for me.
This entry was written by , posted on October 7, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged strippers, Times Square. 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
Jodi Sh. Doff: I was always either in the clubs or after hours. I never met regular people, I was always fishing in polluted waters. Everyone in my life was shady. My guys were loan-sharks, bookies, bikers, gangsters. Anyone I slept with for free was my “boyfriend.” But truthfully, I slept with a lot of men who didn’t think twice about me.
Lauri Shaw: I had a DJ thing for a while. They didn’t even need to be all that attractive, just charismatic. Bouncers were standoffish (and usually too burly. At the time, I liked my guys corpse-thin). The managers and owners treated us like property. If I was going to screw around with anyone in the business, a DJ seemed like the best choice.
Rachel Aimee: I’ve never dated customers or anyone in the business, not on any kind of principle but because I act like a different person at work and couldn’t imagine how I would relate to someone I met at work if I saw them outside the club. Also, I found that the only customers I liked enough to consider dating were too cool to think a stripper would want to date them so they never asked!
JshD: Occasionally, for someone special, my heart opened along with my legs. There were two guys who weren’t in the business. Gabe was a comic book artist, slightly shady, insane and kinky in ways I liked. Hank was a handsome troubled drunk—him I wanted to save. I was crazy about them both. I couldn’t imagine dating a real civilian. Civilians made assumptions about who I was that weren’t necessarily wrong, but I hated the presumption and condescension. That slick act just made me want to rip you off.
LS: I didn’t go near the slick guys unless I was working, but that’s not to say my head was screwed on straight. I had horrendous taste in men. Dancing did not help. I picked some phenomenal creeps and losers on my own time, simply because they didn’t behave like the average customer. It probably goes without saying that my self-esteem left a lot to be desired.
RA: So many strippers have problems dating because most people—not just men—who date strippers either want them to quit the business…
JshD: Oh God, save us from the Captain Save-A-Hos of the world!
RA: …or want to take their money, or both. I know it’s a stereotype but I’ve seen it again and again in the relationships of women I’ve worked with. Dancers hustle all night then go home to a guy or girl who makes them feel guilty about how they’re paying the bills but doesn’t have a problem with spending their money.
JshD: That was my husband! Abusive, even violent at times, over the work. But he didn’t get a job so I could stop and had no problem with me paying the bills. Obviously, that was a very short marriage. When I fell in love, L.U.V., it was a hustler named Bear who worked at O’Neals, a gay bar in Times Square. We thought we were Bonnie & Clyde, but we more Sid & Nancy. We were so in love, neither one wanted the other to work anymore. He’s what finally got me out of the business.
RA: I’ve seen lots of dancers quit the business for partners but, they usually come back when the relationship goes bad.
LS: I knew this girl who had a deal with her hubby and never went near those back rooms. She was the hardest working stripper I’ve ever seen—she did 25 lap dances a night while everyone else was taking their shoes off in the VIP. On any given night, two thirds of the girls were making twice as much as she did. Yet, she had a great attitude. She must have been married to an awesome guy.
JshD: I’m amazed when I hear about married dancers. You have to have your guard up when you’re working or they’ll eat you alive. How do you open your heart in your life and close it in the clubs? I can’t turn it on and off like a light switch.
RA: I know plenty of women who have been married for 10 or 20 years and dancing that whole time. It’s just how they support their families. I don’t know if hearts have much to do with it after a while.
JshD: 30 years later I still struggle with keeping an open heart.
LS: I felt that way too. I solved it by deciding intimacy was to be avoided at all costs. It took me ages to unwind from that mindset. And my libido was the first casualty. I was barely out of my teens, my hormones were climbing the walls 24-7. Stripping solved that problem. Within a year of becoming a stripper, my sex drive was in a coma.
JshD: Oh, I rarely had sex for pleasure. Except for those three guys, it was mostly a currency, a power struggle or a way to kill time.
RA: I’ve always put up really strict boundaries between work and “real life,” mostly for the sake of my sanity. I don’t even take customers’ numbers to ask them to come and see me at work because I can’t handle the emotional labor it takes to keep the hustle up outside of work. It’s a trade off though: the girls who really make money are the ones who throw themselves into the hustle.
Editors Note: Gabe, my crazy comic book artist is saving kittehs out in Indiana. If you can adopt one, great. If you can’t please donate a buck or two.
http://www.powerslamcollectibles.com/PowerslamPowerpussycats.html
This entry was written by , posted on September 23, 2009 at 9:00 am, filed under three naked ladies and tagged dirty boys, strippers, Times Square. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
onlythejodi
