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.
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Posted December 7, 2009 at 1:03 pm, filed under the diary and tagged 1980, Butterfly, drinking, partners in crime, Times Square. Bookmark this post. Follow any comments @ RSS feed for this post.
