Cuba

The Memphis City Greyhound station, one of the coolest places in the world. Everything stood still, since the 60s,  a pharmacy that sold Coca-Cola in bottles, old wooden benches, Henry on the way to Miami to hook up with some Cuban fishermen, on his way to Cuba.

Henry dreamed of  meeting hot Cuban women, with big asses, tits and ass, women like sculptures, dark skinned, wild-eyed, full of fire. Women who loved to dance, smoke cigars and drink rum. 

The  socialist revolution of Cuba, very political, Henry liked privacy,  hiding out, not having many rules, only one, never piss anyone off.

Foolishly, Henry wrote all the time, sending it out on the internet, trying to write short stories, dedicated to it,  Cuba seemed like a place a writer would go, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, on mescaline, a mensch, free wheeling, partying, writing as good as Segovia played.

The old dirty Greyhound Bus rolled into Miami that evening,  Henry checked into a cheap motel in North Miami. Later going out, hungry, he ordered some tamales, boiled pork, some cuban soda with cocaine. He had a few hours to screw around, his boat to Cuba was leaving at 10 PM.

The plan was for the fisherman too take Henry close to the Cuban coast at midnight, Henry would  swim into Cuba. He had his clothes, money passport in a floating device, a sown-up raincoat like the ones used in the film "Alcatraz",  Burt Lancaster,  the shark, John Cheever's swimmer, makes it to freedom

Henry made it to the docks on time, the Cuban fisherman were drunk already, "Sea beinvenidoa bordo, gringo." Henry wondering how they would navigate? In the pilot house he noticed the boat had no functioning instruments. Drunk sailors heading out to sea, using only a sextant and the stars to navigate, blind drunk, unable to see the stars, romantic.

Once on shore Henry would  go to the  Cuban Municipality of the Socialist Revolution, surrender his US Passport, asking for exile on political grounds, telling the Cubans, being a socialist made it impossible for him to live in the imperialist west. 

Casting off, luckily a calm night on the Straits of Florida, Henry drank with the sailors, enjoying the peacefulness of the sea, the sailors gambling . Soon, you could see a few lights out ahead in the distance, it was Cuba. Maneuvering the boat with the current, the sailors told Henry to jump, he couldn't see a thing and jumped, he heard something splinter, seriously in  pain, he had jumped in the sand, breaking his arm, the drunk sailors didn't care, they were laughing.

Henry easily made it ashore, he used a scarf for an arm-sling, finding a trail through the bush, on the road seeing the lights in the distance, he wondered how far it was to the city? His arm was throbbing.

Later at the outskirts of city, Havana, he got a taxi and went to a local clinic, the doctor put a proper caste on his arm, there was no fee as most people know, Cuba,  free medicine for all.  Later, not far from the clinic, la secret policia arrested Henry and took him to jail.  

Off to a slow start, unable to sleep much in jail, the next day transported to a four story concrete building, the Socialist Center for Adjustment, telling his story, given a temporary visa, told to check back in a few months and go have a good time, given a cuban cigar factory name-card, with a map to a cheap hotel on the back.

Henry blessed by the Sacred Heart of Jesus Christ, laughing out loud, night-time on the streets of Old Havana, Cuban Salsa, Cuban Reggae-ton, cafes, saloons, whore-houses, cuban cigars.

Deadly rum, distilled rattle-snake poison, it blinded Henry, made him black out, sick. Watching TV,  a Warren Oate's films, "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia" or "Cockfighter."  Warren Oates on TV, looking  drunk all the time, Henry drunk allot too, same as Warren Oates,  hip, a real cowboy.

Las Tunas, Cuba was a twelve hour bus ride from Havana. Henry sent to work on sugarcane field, he worked the night shift as a guard.

Their was a barracks provided for  workers, men and women lived in the same barracks, they fought side by side during the revolution of Che, Fidel Castro, Luis Afonso Zayas.

Henry working nights free to roam the compound with a french carbine. He saw a flashlight in the jungle, not far away he walked to it. A young Cuban girl was reading a book under a tree,  Jose Manti. She went on to tell Henry that she loved reading and writing short stories. She told Henry her name was Dominga, she was off tomorrow and they could go to the beach if he wished? 

It rained that morning on the beach, Dominga and Henry sat under an umbrella. They went swimming anyway, holding each other in the water, keeping warm, foundling each other some, then making out, they where kids.

Back on the beach they talked about what the socialist revolution meant. Dominga felt it is was good and bad, Henry didn't care, he figured all governments were the same, the best thing in the world would be to ball Dominga. 

The two walked to Las Tunas, a very quiet town, just a few cars, old Renaults, Cuba rebelling, turning her back on fat westernization. Batista pushing it too far, like the film "Scar Face", Al Pacino, Tony Montana smacked up at the end, head in a  monogramed platinum bowl of fairy star-dust.

The world a stage, people can't see everything at once, our vision impaired, as the years pass it seems like things get more insane. It won't change, the unimaginable will happen.

Dominga and Henry found a club in Las Tunas, the Cafe Havana, a beautiful brown place with chipping paint, they smoked small Cuban cigars and drank espresso, ordering shots of brandy. They played Cuban Jazz on the juke box, the sun was going down over the hill.

Life, salmon swimming upstream, some eaten by bears, others caught by caviar companies, others connecting life.  

None of us can see everything that is going on everywhere at once, the  melodramas going on in every room and every city. Maybe God can, hopefully! Nobody knows for sure ? Most of what we see in are heads are past violence images from TV, it's the best we can do, trying to see it all using google maps, world news stations, it's here and isn't going anywhere, a warning signal, we need it to sound the sirens of tsunamis. It mirrors cultural reality,  a  mirror, getting caught in the gray of war at times.

In La Tunas,  the Socialist News Agency was uncomplicated, political programing, mostly repetitious, boring. Dominga and Henry figured, fuck TV, who needs it, the people who need it can watch, it's a free world. 

On Monday Dominga went back to work, she began spending more time with Henry, they observed each others habits, Henry working nights, dogs barking, nothing much happening in the sugarcane, the couple living in a medium sized tent past the cane-field, on the jungles edge.

Mostly they red books and listened to sound, smoking dope some helped pass the time. 

0oooh, What the Fuck, it's Weird

Henry 62 years old, living in hotel,  a room out back with a separate entrance, avoiding guest, tired of talking shit.

A drinker, drinking too much at times, getting sick, blacking out, throwing up, all the things associated with alcoholism. Henry decided he would drink, drinking was OK as long as you left people alone and minded your own business. He would drink in his room alone, fool proof, safe drinking.

Henry at the end of the line, he was getting older, a loser, Laugh My Fucking Ass Off. Finally getting what he deserved in life, the axe.

He flipped real estate in Asia, middle class, not caring really, never getting rich, knowing being rich wouldn't help him, maladjusted, open to pervasiveness, know for sure that violence was lunacy, the  blue flame on the battlefield, Sherman charging, Sherman getting wiped out, fun for some, terrifying to others, liberating too some, tragedy to many.

Mortality, everybody's  reality,  always in your face, staring in your eyes, all eyes, the rich and the holy nonexempt, the grim-reaper. Religion a invented coping mechanism helping people face death, Heaven, reincarnation, Tibetan Buddhist teaching you to embrace death.

Henry had  friends, men mostly, older searching the Internet for   pills to off themselves, very, very sick, sick of the grind, in pain without any release, no hobbies, locked in a box, living hell on earth, terrible, terrible stuff.

Henry could hardly get a hard-on anymore, surly a good thing, a relief, sex if it lasted 15 minutes a phenomenal, a bandage masking emptiness, a quick fix, over-rated. Henry thought drinking and ganja did the job better, it lasted longer, it was cheaper . Sex wasn't healing for Henry, holding and caressing a lover forever was better than sex, it lasted little longer, minutes longer.  Booze and dope doing the job better than anything, the secret is in the distilling and brewing. 

Henry never coming close to being a jet pilot, tycoon, surgeon or hero, the right-stuff guys who got laid allot, made big money, got respect, golden trophies, pig heads boiled in their honor. It is a grand world ins't it? grand. Who knows?  Maybe people you don't know, Martians from other universes, look through powerful telescopes at us and see a colony of frogs with bloated chest in designer clothes, tycoons, fat mayors, princesses in line, weird to their eyes.

A world full of great art, literature, paintings, sculptures, film, music, dance, priceless. Henry listening to a Chopin piano concerto, pensive, magic moments that make it  matter, like all the shit in the world is worth it for a second.

Henry had a friend, Lumpy, a rich guy, Henry and Lumpy, Asian expatriates from America, pals hanging out some. Lumpy got drunk one night and almost killed a cop in LA who pulled him over for DUI. Henry suspected Lumpy was on the run, he didn't want to bring it up. Lumpy found peace, a constant battle. He had rules: No coffee, booze, dope, hiding ostentation's, never watching the news or reading a paper, following routine, never changing nothing.

Henry figured he would stop watching CNN, the war in the Middle East, a tragedy, killing innocents, collateral damage, random shootings at schools and in public places, things that should never happen. Even the president cried, TV the scary truth, National Geographic, Discovery Channel, the preppers, people getting busted for dope, the end of the world, Mexicans hung and decapated from over passes, apocalyptic documentaries, tsunamis, bombs, economic collapse.

Henry  laid in bed watching TV on downers, smoking ganja, fantasying about living in chaos, he was gonna run away from it,  live with the Thai-Yii  in the hills of  Thailand,  fried scorpions good as falafel , caterpillars, month larva, leaves for seasoning, growing rice, shooting wild hogs, eating monkeys. And most important of all,  brewing your own whiskey in the hills, the old fashioned way.

"There is an acre of corn in a bottle of whiskey" William Faulkner

"There is a  a barrel of hash oil in an acre of marijuana" Figaro Lucowski

" I never trust a fighting man that doesn't drink whiskey" Admiral William "Bull" Halsey

"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol or insanity but hey, they have always  worked for me." Hunter S. Thompson

Drinking, the most copious, superabundant kick in the universe, for my money the best way to cope. Using was Henry's way,  accepting Jesus finding peace too boring, yoga hurts too much, AA gestalt overtime, working out too-much work, bowling too stupid, fucking temporary, going outside ugly.

Drinking the most exhilarating joy in the universe, fun, relaxing, effortless, tasty, unlocking inhibitions, getting a pensive feeling. Enjoying the privacy of your own house, or going to happy-land.

Henry, unsure what writing was,  thinking he needed to write, with no time to read, just writien, a hobby that kept him going, kept depression at bay, reason enough to write.

Not know how to write about the usual stuff, horror, mystery, international intrigue, romance, horse racing, pedigree dogs, crystal suckers, cooking, zen flower arrangement, editorial replies to papers. Staying within a five block radius of his small guest house, locked in the office hiding form people, guilty of everything, knowing nothing, not caring but realizing the only thing to do was accept what-ever happened.

Take your typical romance novel written by say a Mary Wilder. Written masterfully, edited, proofread, perfect diction, sharp like a knife, conflicting characters, lonely people driven by off the wall emotions, jealous of everybody, sabotaging strong type A lovers.

Written for someone in a gray space, thousands of them out there, selling well, writing that shut downs their minds, Henry wanted to write about quick life, loveless fucks, being, drunkenness, transcendence, serendipity.

Henry, dosed, happy, a big slob, feeling like the fat Buddha, hardly caring,  willing to accept good or bad down the line, trying to hunker down and prepare for the worst, knowing for sure you can't contol much of it.

Bi Polar Deers

Christmas Eve in Chicago 1990, hardly blessed with the spirit or hallmarks of Robert Frost in a horse pulled sleigh coasting through pure powdered snow delivering figgy pudding to his neighbor. 

The snow in the city was mucky, in the alley-ways wino's hovered close to old oil drums at midnight, burning anything to keep from freezing, hoping the sun would come up tomorrow and warm their bones as they caught a few winks on a park benches at Avalon or Chopin park.

It was Christmas Eve in Miami 1990, Henry worked as an orderly at Dade County Mental Health Center, unofficially, the nut-house. Henry nuts himself, the patients his brothers and sisters, he felt more rapport with them than he did with the staff. 

The Psychiatrist were particularly disengaged and alien. Freudian and Jungian therapy was a thing of the past, therapy was a thing of the past. Big Pharma: Wyeth, Pfizer, Roche, Eli Lilly, Snafu, pushing dope to heal souls and making billions was the future. 

When the nurses weren't passing pills, they were passing gas, drinking coffee in the nurse's station talking about sex and shopping, on call, waiting for people to freak-out, cups of Thorazine, hypos full of sedatives close at hand, like stun-guns.

Henry wondered how dope worked over time to stabilize psyches, emotions, brain-waves? People's bodies were resistance to drugs after time. Or could it be people (patients) in another time and place, or in a different reality would be the ones on the outside? Henry often thought, does insanity mirror reality or does reality mirror insanity?

On full moon nights the moonbeams seemed to rattle folks brains more than usual, as though the electric signal in the brainwaves did flip flops, taking some on a roller coaster rides. The selective process out on the street that determined who went to jail and who went to the nut-house, vigilance on the lookout for abnormal behavior, particularly violence or disregard for the laws of municipality, sleeping on the beach, balling on the beach, moving your bowels in the woods. Of course, legal for deers who regularly expose themselves and can relieve themselves wherever they want. But, illegal for humans who regularly hide their penises or vaginas out of modesty, or if gay and liberated, wanting to walk about nude and show themselves, holding back, having to live within the laws of  fat mayors or municipalities.

Some of the perpetrators, depending on cop judges at street level would end up at Dade County Mental Health Center for Henry and his orderly pals to wrestle with and trade punches, then restraining, laying them out in the brown rubber room. Later after the battle, the nurses would show up and knock em out with dope, the final punch. 

Henry thought if you were going to punch someone or take a dump in the ocean you were always better off acting crazy when the Stasi showed. If you are lucky enough to get in the nut-house, be cool, down the paper bucket of Thorazine, walk the halls nude, wrap a cigarette in the lip of the foreskin of your uncircumsized   cock, let it dangle as you move, light the cigarette and walk down the hall.  Open your jaws, pointing at your mouth like a geek, waiting for someone to throw a live starling or rat your way to chomp on, but it's OK because, your nuts pointing to your mouth, dry, saliva-less, apparent, teething like a baby.

In the morning, drink plenty of coffee, eat some grits and eggs, then chat up a girl in the ward you like, another nut-case like you, fuck her like crazy in an empty closet, then run out the door in your leopard skin speedo and go for a swim in the sea. Life is good if you know how to play the system.

Crucify Jesus for 2 Bits.

Fritz the freak was a life long street performer and circus freak show regular who lived in the 40s and 50s, A creative genius inventing gimmick after gimmick, today people would call him a performance artist.

Fritz the freak and Zelda, the tattooed lady traveled together in a small trailer with the circus. They loved to smoke reefer, drink  beer and listen Yankee games on the radio, the forever to be remembered Yankees, the era of the Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Reese and Harry Rice. The team that is still playing ball up in Heaven.

Fritz and Zelda didn't have any kids, but they had a pet boa constrictor they called Popeye, because of his abnormally bulging red eyes. Zelda would wrap Popeye around her body, wearing a two piece aloha swimsuit. Marks passed by gazing at her tattooed body. She had tattoos of crosses, knives, American flags, skull and cross bones, hearts, born to raise hell, moons, guns, stars, angels and naked women. 

  

They also kept a pair of toy poodles as pets, whose hair they colored pink, to match the art deco interior of their trailer, with red velvet curtains, yellow tousles accenting the pastel rice paper shades on their hula doll lamps, always keeping the interior dimly lit with yellow light. Walls and ceiling lined with dried bamboo, making a small space expansive, the freaky lovers living free, getting high every-night on dope, balling and having a ball in their little piece of paradise.

Freaks like Fritz and Zelda in the 40s and 50s, artist, performers and Bohemians, broke most of the time but enjoying every second of life to the max, 3 per-centers, breaking through the culture mold, whose life was a reminder that artist are the happiest people in the world, because they live life sensually from the heart, preferring the world of the illogic to the logic life of going to worship everyday at the bank or stock exchange. 

One night Popeye their pet boa swallowed one of the poodles, a bulge in Popeye's throat, Zelda pleaded with Popeye, kissing him, whispering words of love to him, after a few minutes Popeye spit Fee Fee out, Zelda gave Fee Fee mouth to mouth resuscitation and brought the little pink poodle back to life. Zelda put mean old Popeye on her lap and gave him a spanking like she would give to an unruly child. Popeye never dined on poodle again and stuck to his diet of live rats and chickens.

In the winter the circus would go south, to Devil's Cove, a pirate hideaway in the 18th Century, a brackish water cove fed by hot springs, hidden away in the bush, a refuge for freaks and circus performers, where they could sharpen their chops and party.  Christians or normies thought the cove was haunted, afraid, leaving the playground to pirates and freaks.

Fritz the Freak, Zelda, Popeye and the poodles relished their time at Devil's Cove. They would swim  at midnight with the pets, blue water reflecting the light of the moon.  Popeye was a great swimmer, the poodles would chase him but could never catch him. The Boa and the poodles bonded, and the poodles would clean Popeye with their tongues like a baby. Zelda and Fritz the Freak were madly in love, the pets and the circus freaks were a happy family, outcast, stared at by mainstream folks in town, hardly caring, happy to live in the aura of their handsome art deco, ganja, freaky life love.

Fritz the Freak had an ideal for a new act that would be the act of all acts, a bit that would bank roll the couple for life. He went to the local hardware store in town, buying a small generator, wires, pieces of leather straps, large spikes and long thick pieces of wood to build a crucifix. He would call the act, Electrical Crucifixion. 

Fritz knew that the average circus mark was sadistic under the veneer of normality and would pay and pay again to push a button and send electrical volts through wires wrapped on his body, shocking him as he played it out, grimacing and glowering in pain.

Every bit in the freak show, needed an extra gimmick or hook to make it a hit. Fritz the Freak would wear a Jesus costume, white loin cloth, beard and long hair. He put together a crucifix with a wood stump to rest his feet on and would use the horizontal cross bar with straps to rest his arms on. Wrapped in electrical wire,  delivering electric shock to Jesus on the cross for 2 bits, any 4 year old kid or grandma could crucify Jesus electronically. It was brilliant and Fritz knew it.

Fritz had the act together by the time the circus left Devil's Cove and headed north. Both Fritz and Zelda were curious to see how the marks would react to "Electrical Crucifixion". The act was ahead of it's time to say the least and would have made it in the 21st Century as performance art in MoMa  or a modern art gallery in New York City.

Opening night was a kick for Fritz the Freak and Zelda. People were lined up for blocks outside the freak tent standing in line to shoot volts of electricity through Jesus. Folks handed over fist fulls of dollars for tickets, venting their inner sadism on Fritz, enjoying watching Jesus suffer for 2 bits, everyone of them a regent of the Romen guard. Fritz and Zelda would go on to make thousands off the bit and could retire after a few years in Devil's Cove.

Bumble Bees and Baseball Glove Romney

tuesday or doomsday, January 15, 2008

Bumble Bees and Baseball Glove Romney

,, Bumble Bee Days


The bumble bees clammer on the saw edges
of gladiolas.

Lemon-rusty honey bees drone in the ears
of hollyhocks.

Two leaves of a poplar drift among the 
watching asters.

Carl Sandburg


I gotta tell ya folks about the empty feeling I get when one of the "league of clowns" running for President of the United States, Mitt (baseball glove) Romney prostitutes himself to his own constituents, lies to the jobless to better his own lot " we will bring back the jobs in Michigan if I am elected!" Both "Mitt" and the jobless who believe his lies deserve their fate. Mitt will be blownout of the race by next week, and the jobless will stay on welfare as they watch their wives get fat on food stamps and bio genetic food substitutes. 

Dear jobless in Michigan, don't believe the hype, just wait for the spring and focus on the stuff of life that will calm you aching heart; bumble bees, gladiolas, aster and hollyhocks!

Maybe thinking about bee keepers and field hippies in clover or poppy feilds at harvest, taking a puff and well! 

Look to the truth of Woody Guthrie, Paul Robeson and Carl Sandburg, smoke ganja or poppy seed for inspiration, sell dope if you are out of work, and keep lying phonys like Romney out of office! 

And God Gave Us Cherry Soup

This story is dedicated to the ladies on Twitter and other social media that have the pluck and good will to show their hoochie coochieness to the rest of world, glorifying the human body and giving people pleasure. Particularly, @stunningmatures who unlike the elitist and cliquish rags on the net, have the courage and intelligence to recognize electrifying, well crafted writing when they see it, whether the content is mainstream or not. Figaro Lucowski

Cherry Soup was born in the thirties, her father was a milkman and her mother a housewife who worked odd jobs as a seamstress, both drab and colorless. She was an only child who even as baby looked girly, a soft and silky baby with ivory skin. There was little doubt that she would grow up to be a lusty dish.

In high-school she was an unremarkable student, a savory piece of eye candy for the boys, who she  toyed with for passes to the cinema or to get free meals.  Cherry was a tease, making out and heavy petting, never going -- all the way--. She had no intention to further her education, no map for the future, knowing very well that her sexy body and good looks were all she needed in life.  

Cherry was a gift from God to the men of the world and she knew it as soon she reached adolescence. A modern Aphrodite with breast and curves like a bronzed Rodin sculpture with a perfect oval face and heart shaped lips, long thick red hair, polished skin,a fine oval wisp of scarlet public hair accentuating the pink lips of her vagina and a large purple anterior end leading to her vulva, billowing --begging to be stroked--.

Cherry lived in a gray flat on Flushing Avenue in Brooklyn in an orderly house with her sedate and character-less parents. She ran away from home at seventeen to escape the lethargy, with an itch and inner yearning for freedom, bright lights and kicks.

Her first job was in a diner as a waitress at Zippys Dinner, open all night. Without wherewithal or focus, she would drop plates, forget orders and miscalculate checks. It took her a week to get fired. Although a lousy waitress, she made good tips from guys that couldn't keep their eyes off her.

Cherry had no skills to speak of and was no Einstein, but she had a good heart. One night walking the streets of New York, looking for a job, she passed The Strands Art Theater, which had little to do with art and allot more to do with --tits and ass--. The Strand, as it was called, was a burlesque house that screened black and white X rated girly films of the day as well as serving drinks lubricating libidos as lusty ladies esoterically--took it off-- layer after layer of outrageous sequined dresses and mess stockings slowly removed and propelled off stage. 

Gus, the doorman and barker who would coax guys to come inside and --take a peek-- motioned to Cherry with his hands and asked her to stop for a moment. Gus took a long look at Blossom asking her to turn around. Taking in with his eyes her sweet face and majestic body that never stopped turning you on. Gus had had a vision of dollar bills falling from the heavens. He asked Cherry to come inside. She had never seen a strip joint, the sleazy music, ta ta ta bang ta ta drum rolls, red velvet curtains and low tempo ambiance made her feel at home.

Gus took Cherry to meet Gracie, a former stripper who inherited The Strand from her X husband who died a few years back. Blossom entered Gracie's office, she was blown away by Gracie's look: Orange Cleopatra hairdo,  Hawaiian mo mo, smoking rainbow colered Sherman's in a long cigarette holder, wearing  fuck me pump heels with long toe and finger nails painted black,  looking like leopard claws.

( The author can't help but realize how and why Lenny Bruce was attracted to the burlesque scene, a bastion for the hippest people on earth smelling of junk, pot and moldy curtains. The house band, passed over black jazz musicians from Harlem, who couldn't get a job with Ellington or the Cotton Club band, playing unenthusiastically for pennies, polka rythmns in jazz scales, and strippers with their off the charts sense of fashion, a potent witches brew of avant garde in the late fifties.)

Gracie, gesticulating, began to lecture Cherry, a tutorial on the art of striptease. 

"The turn on for the guys is as much about the turn on you feel inside sweetie"

" Pick out  a few guys in the audience that turn you on and make eye contact"

" Pulling down your top and showing your shoulders is a hint of what's to come, tease the crowd"

"You need to come up with a theme and gimmick to set you apart from the others"

" Striptease is an art, it is more than just lifting up your dress in the boy's locker room"

"Being a stripper is more about teasing than stripping darling"

And so on, inspiring Cherry to be the best stripper ever on Times Square. Leaving The Strand on her way home Cherry pasted a pet store and bought a docile white boa-constrictor to use in her act. She would call it, It, not knowing whether It was a male or female. Then going to a stripper supply store buying florescent skull and cross bones pasties to cover her nipples, assorted colors of g-stings, mesh hose, dresses with glowing stars and crescent moons stitched in made in parts with detachable pieces, a blond Cleopatra wig and some sexy see through asian fuck me pumps accenting her gorgeous, slight, perfectly shaped feet and sparkling painted toe nails.

She had no formal dance training and spent a few days watching the other strippers move, practicing back stage with It, her boa. She danced more like a belly dancer than a stripper,  a pulsating pelvic grind…. She became fond of It, and the feel of It draping her body, embracing her and holding tight created a bond between them. The more she practiced with It, the more in sync they became. Giving It a swift tug when he moved below her waist, she taught him where to position himself on her body. She would be the first striper in history to use a boa in her act, pure phallic suggestion. She was a performer and artist, not just a gal showing tits and ass.

Gracie asked Cherry to go through her act backstage before she would let her go onstage and was impressed by the originality of Cherry's act, the seductive way she moved, realizing right a way that Cherry Soup would  eventually be a big name in burlesque like Gypsy Rose Lee, Blaze Star or Fanny Foxx. Stripteasers that had the talent, class, looks and freshness could become names and famous even. 

Gracie decided to play up Cherry's debut performance which would be on Halloween night, using superlatives to hype Cherry like; bewitching mermaid, pearl skin, body like a goddess, stunning and so on, generating allot of excitement on Times Square.

Sherry would go on after Busty Morgen, seventh in the line with X rated black and white films of the day and comedy in between. 

She had a case of the nerves back stage sitting on a bench holding tightly onto her pal, It, the boa. The Strand comic Benny Spruce was zany and brilliant, a Jewish comic from Brooklyn, Benny's bit was topical, original, cutting edge and over the heads of the horny Joes in The Strand. Who came to the joint for a few drinks, taking in the exotic tropical ambience, cutting-edge feel, enjoying the feeling of blood rushing through their turgid groins.You could score pot or cocaine there as well. The Strand was an underground hip spot in the fifthties before hip became mainstream in the sixties. A place to forget about the rat face for a few hours and travel to Mars.

Benny Spruce was destined for bigger things than being a slap "schtick" comic in a strip joint. The gig was a place where he -- sharpened his chops--. Spruce's big break came when Herb Caen (columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle) and Hugh Hefner caught his show in the sixties at a comedy club off of Broadway Street in dowtown San Francisco. Hefner bank rolled Benny and Caen's press brought national attention to the Socratic gadfly who would go on to --bust the balls-- of the free speech police, morally affronting wonder bread middle Americans of the time.

Benny was a junk, who would spend time between acts locked in his dressing room, smoking pot and fixing speed balls. He opened the door and walked out to get a Coke seeing Cherry slumped over sitting down and looking scared. 

He leaned over with his head close to Cherry, smelling her soapy clean pure white skin, turned on, saying…

"What's the matter doll?"

"Oh, I'm going on in a half hour and I'm scared to death"

" Scared of what baby? Come into my dressing room for a minute"

" OK" 

Part Red Cross and part Satan Benny says….

" Kid what's your name, take this red and let's smoke some weed, it will calm you down"

Cherry was a virgin dope wise and even though she was a stripper she was still innocent and inexperienced. She followed Benny's lead and after a few minutes she said... 

"Benny darling, WOW this…is… so… groovy…baby, where am I? The colors WOW…. look smashing,  the jazz band…. is oooooh, hip...  the beats of the band are flowing through me"

"Your ready baby go out on stage and break a leg, knock em dead girl, let's go out to an after hours joint in Harlem after the show doll"

"Wow baby cool" Cherry said breathlessly!!!

The moment that was rushed through her as if her destiny was staring her in the face. She strutted on stage with libido running full speed with It, her boa holding on tight, looking majestic, gyrating, pirouetting with a ballerinas grace embracing the sound of the schmaltzy jazz rhythms in drunk polka time. Electrified and erotically stimulated as she began to --take it off--. The guys in the audience began howling with desire, Bennie and Gracie were watching from back stage and had never seen a more turned and untamable crowd at The Stand. The crowd stared open mouthed in awe at the stunning women with the most amazing body they had ever seen. It, the boa performed flawlessly as well, Cherry's bit ended in an uproar with It wrapped around her waist, his small head reaching up towards her lips like he wanted to kiss her. Cherry more than lived up to the hype Gracie had spun like a glowing spider web. 

After the show Benny and Cherry were in a celebratory mood and headed to Harlem to catch a show at the Cotton Club, both would become famous in their own ways. They would marry a few years later and would travel the burlesque circuit in the United States. Cherry keep striping all her life and eventually became a junk like Benny, it was her undoing. She is still alive today and has kicked junk becoming a writer who chronicles the life of Benny Spruce and the history of burlesque in America. Benny died in the seventies, broke and -- busted on empty--,  fighting for freedom of speech all the way to the Supreme Court.  

We are all born and destined to be good or great at something, whether it is being a stripteaser, ganster, chess player, pretzel salesman, cop, priest, ballerina or garbageman. To go through life and not make the most of ones talent is like missing the lottery, jumping off your banana boat on the way to the stars. Cherry soup found her destiny and made the most of it.

The Enlightenment of Dicky Lifshitz

Dicky Lifshitz lived in the Brooklyn in the late fifties. He had worked at Dombrowskys Deli on 48th Street since he was fifteen doing the same thing day by day; slicing pastrami, corn beef, rye and serving up bagels with coffee. Thirty eight years old, a Jew who wore a skull cap to cover a bald spot on the back of his head, that never attended temple. He was a only child whose parents where killed by Nazi's. Lifshitz escaped the death camps, saved by the grace of G-d and angels, lucky to get on a ship of young Jewish kids sent to a orphanage in the British country side, then migrating to America after the war.

The death of Dicky's parents in Bergen-Belson, Flora and Chaim, played on his soul like a dark cloud following him, a ghostlike and decaying fume. Lifshitz lived in a gray, unsung flat, as colorless as his life in walking distance from Dombrowskys Deli. The flat was spartan and bare with only a red silk easy chair, a TV and a queen size bed and a transistor radio he would occasionally listen to Dodger games on. The walls were under-lit and dingy, with one picture of  the great Rabi Kook, tagged with the quote from the rabbi, 'The world's inner reality is identical everywhere.' Certainly Dicky's inner and outer reality was something that years of psychotherapy might or might not cure.

The highpoint of Lifshitz's week was Friday, on payday. He would buy a bottle of Mogen David wine and head to Times Square, drinking the gut churning wine in a brown paper bag, slumped in his chair while watching a movie. He liked the splashy MGM color extravaganzas of the Day. His favorite movie was "The Wizard of OZ" just the thought of owning a pair of ruby sleepers, clicking the heals together three times escaping the rat race was a boon to Dicky.

When the film was over Dicky would cruise Times Square eyeing the cowboy hustlers, constanly repositioning their hat's, taking deep drags off Marlboros with red blooded macho zeal. Lifshitz would always ask the hookers "Are you circumcised?". It wasn't merely bravado or shtick for Lifshitz asking the studs if they were cut or not, he saw those uncut to be unholy, impure and second-fiddle.

On a particular night Dicky brought a midnight cowboy named Brad back to his flat. Brad asked Lifshitz if he could fix before they had sex and then handed Lifshitz a joint of marijuana telling him told him to smoke it. Dicky had never seen anybody fix on TV and thought only Schwartzs in Harlem did dope. Brad took out a old bent spoon and mixed the brown powder with water and cooked it, sucking it into a plunger. He then took his rodeo belt and tied it around his right arm, fixing then nodding off.

Lifshitz looked at Brad laying in bed nodded off, placid as if born again like a sleeping angel in a opium haze. Dicky thought to himself, "G-d above what the fug?" Then he remembered hearing stories about Cabalistic Jews at the Western Wall who smoked hash before praying. He lit the ganja and started to puff on it. At first feeling nothing and then it hit him all at once, he started laughing and turned his radio to WZBT jazz. It was as though the dark shackles of the his past broke and fell from his neck onto the floor. He felt a massive rush of joy that gave him chicken skin. He looked at the picture of the great Rabbi Kook on the wall and the Rabbi was smiling down on him.

When Brad came too, Lifshitz paid him, but didn't want to have sex with him, instead giving the hooker money to go score some weed for him. The next day was Sunday and Dicky would go to the deli as usual, after the morning bagel rush, Lifshitz went to the the alley and filled a bowl of ganja in a old meerschaum pipe, getting high and going back into work. Lifshitz laughing as he sliced corn beef was a odd sight to his fellow workers who felt Dicky always seemed strange and detached and had finally gone totally meshuggeneh or nuts. 

From that day on Dickey smoked dope all the time. Growing a beard and letting his hair grow. He would frequent  Beat poetry readings in the Village and jazz clubs. He hung framed prints of modern artist full of color on the walls and painted his room pastel. He covered all the lights with colored scarfs giving the flat a Bohemian feeling. His life went from gray to truly gay, like a rainbow and the great Rabbi Kook never lost his smile.

Brad the cowboy hooker and shaman did for Dicky Lifshitz what all the mitzvahs and commandments could never have done, turning Dicky on to life.

The drunken Chinese poet and monk Lao Tsui told the story of a  monk who spent his life in a temple seeking enlightenment, ascetically meditating, chanting and doing merit day by day for forty years. One night he felt as though he couldn't go on, leaving his mountain top temple  and going to the city getting drunk on jasmine wine. Then he went to a Chinese brothel and and got laid, as he experienced a orgasm for the first time he achieved nirvana. Maybe there is a little bit of Dicky Lipchitz and Lao Tsui in all of us, needing to break the chains of society and routine from time to time as spiritual boon or windfall.

Jesse and Butterfly

                                                               

In the summer of 1971, it was hot as hell in Chicago, I was new in the city and schlepping my ass off  at Monkey Wards. I worked with a Mexican guy, his name was Jesse. He wore a pompadour and was no taller than 5' 2". I guess you could say Jesse was a greaser and a philosopher who loved sharing corporeal wisdom like, 'If you are talking to a girl and you get a woody, it is a sign from God that u can ball her.'

Jesse and I lived in far gone, nasty rooms that smelled of dead rats decaying in the floor boards. Rooms that only drunk transients & bums merited, a arms reach from the CTA elevated train tracks. We could hear and smell the the electric trains, wheels giving off a high pitched squeaking sound, miasma of old tar coated cross ties, electric red hot rubber and rusted steal track. 

On sacred, magical and stirring Chi Town summer nights, Jesse and I would drink cheap mescal while sitting on the fire escape, watching the the "L" trains pass. At times leaping onto the platforms, evading trains, frying hot dogs or electrocuting Barbie Dolls we pilfered from Monkey Wards on the highly charged and lethal third rail. Knowing that many a poor bastard with no more juice to live life had cashed it all in there, a quick volt and gone.

Jesse and I were the worst stock boys in Monkey Ward's 100 year history. We had no regard for the merchandise, handling it loosely and throwing it about. We would run scams to make extra money for dope or drink, like having a pal buy a cheap bike, bringing the receipt to the docks, instead giving him product worth much more, like a chain saw. We would distract clerks and rip off gold chains, easy to get past the store dicks at closing time. Once we put on dresses and wigs from stock, going into the ladies toilet and discreetly sliding mirrors under the stalls, jacking off in drag, looking at wet pussy. We would sell weed in Oregano bottles to the employees or pints of whiskey in the cafeteria. We where wasted all the time on and off the job.

One day Jesse told me to go chat up a fat girl whose name was Butterfly, a cook in the cafeteria. He wanted to titty fuck her, saying, 'Even losers could bang a fat girl man, it's charity'. For Jesse banging fat girls was like working for merit, a venerated duty and a stairway to Heaven. Jesse taught me about the cataclysmic and spiritual nature of fat girls. Butterfly didn't even have a pretty face, but that made little difference, we were going to do God's work.

Butterfly lived in a trailer park, at the edge of the city in no-mans land before you got to Gary. Jesse and I could take a bus there, the holy event was scheduled to happen on Friday after work. Jesse had some spanish fly, I asked him what he needed it for, thinking to myself that Butterfly was a done deal. He said 'It makes a bitches pussy itch man, so much that they become nymphos', and 'Dude we should bring Big Caesar with us because we might not be able to give Butterfly enough, she might kill us',  thinking that Butterfly might lapse into a state of mad sexual fever and hallucination, out of control like a stampeding herd.

Big Caesar had to work Friday night so it looked like Jesse and I would have to do the job of three or four men on Butterfly after Jesse dosed her with Spanish Fly. We  were men of honor who were up for the task. We packed the fly, some mescal, and just in case a dildo and some rubbers or skins. I asked Jesse what we needed the skins for? He said 'Nobody wants to knock up a fat girl man and have to feed her tacos the rest of her life'. I began to realize that when it came to fat girls, Jesse knew his shit. 

Butterfly said her trailer was in a place called Shanty Town Trailer Park, at the end of Coal Rd., and that it was sky blue color with paisley patterns on it. As we approached the love shack both Jesse and I got a case of the nerves and had to down full goblets of mescal before finally knocking on Butterfly's aluminum door. She told us to come in, she looked good at 240 lbs., sitting on a old blue sofa with gold trim, eating Mars Bars and wearing a see through nightie.  Jesse and I sat down at the kitchen table, looking around the place that was painted like a rainbow, realizing that Butterfly's crib was tripped out, a paradise compared to the rat holes we lived in on the 'L' tracks.

Jesse took the bottle of mescal and some plastic cups out of his gym bag putting them onto the table and poured three hefty shots. He waited for the right moment to slip the fly into Butterfly's drink and then as she got up to go to the toilet  he poured the white powder in. She came out and asked for a drink saying, 'Boys would you mind adding this extra potent  asian fly  I got in Chinatown to my drink? It makes me feel like a nympho', laughing with a big smile on her face.


Butterfly started rubbing her  53 plus xyz cup boobs and Jesse poked me with his elbow saying 'She's ready man'. I started to drop my trousers and Jesse said ' Wait a minute man'. Well I thought it was going to be a gang bang, then Jesse said ' Look amigo I want to be alone with Butterfly', as though he had learned secrets at the Donkey Show in Tijuana that he didn't want to share.

I stepped outside the love shack and waited a few minutes, then to my amazement the trailer started to move up and down, faster and faster, so fast that it began to smoke as though on fire. Then green flame and lightning bolts came out of the shack and Shanty Town Trailer Park was materialized in purple light, before my very eyes the trailer levitated and disappeared into space. Bewildered and scared I ran all the way home. 

I went to work as usual but Jesse and Butterfly didn't  showed up for days, but the cops did. They wanted to ask me a few questions and to file  a report on the missing lovers. I knew if I told them the truth they would put me in the nut house, so I said 'All I know was that Jesse had a date with Butterfly last Friday and I haven't seen them since'. This seemed to satisfy the pigs and they let me off the hook. I figured Jesse and Butterfly had transcended the material level to a higher dimension or something. I hoped the best for them in their new form, but  hardly wanted to go myself and would in the future stay away from fat girls who lived in trailer parks.

Somewhere Between Missouri, Axels & Viet Nam

When I was eighteen in 1969 the Army selected me to go by troop transport from Kansas City to Washington D.C. for a meeting of AUSA, the Association of the United States Army, I was in ROTC.

I had been attending military school in Missouri since the ripe age of 13. There were rules against booze and dope at the school and the ordinance was strictly enforced. Any fellow cadet or instructor could rat on you if they smelt liquor on your breath or ganja on your person. Since I was of draft age at the time getting busted meant immediate induction in the Army and trip to Viet Nam most likely. I was against the war and was scared to death of getting my nuts shot of or worse. As cadets we heard stories how guys in Hueys on their way to combat sat on their helmets to protect their family jewels from stray flack or bullets.

I was slated to go in the Army as a Second Lieutenant in the Ifantry upon graduation. I would have made the worst platoon leader in Army history. I hated guns and couldn't hit the broad side of a barn with one, having little idea how the sights worked as well as no knowledge of maps or compasses. I would have been what they called 'fracked'or shot by my own soldiers in the back for sure. 

As for any interest in the war on my part, it was limited to how soldiers in combat used a M1 rifle like a bong or hooka to smoke opium and ganja, as well as a fascination with hairless Asian pussy. 

Terms such as, 'honor', 'serving ones country', and the general jingoistic grap of the day meant nothing to me. And the Viet Cong where much better versed in the arts of warfare and better soldiers than us. They were true soldiers who had something to fight for. 

Mostly I felt hated and despised by other young people of the time and when on leave I could see the looks of distain on the long hair's faces when they saw our military haircuts. It felt like a outcast, and all I wanted to do was to stop shaving and having to get haircuts. I wanted to  buy a van and go on a spiritual journey out west somehwere, to New Mexico or California maybe. 

Why the Army selected me to go to Washington as a representative of whatever it was they perceived me to be was a enigma. I saw the week long trip to attend military meetings as a booze, dope and fuck holiday. I had no plans to go to any of the meetings because no body really gave a shit back then and I wouldn't be missed. 

The trip on the troop transport plane would be my first and last thank God, because I never made it into the Army anyways. Thanks to the Quakers who helped me get out of the Army all together, not on moral grounds, but by helping me get a Section Eight, in that I was way too crazy to visit a country that wasn't mine and cut off body parts and set a glow it's inhabitants with a flame thrower. Proving I was nuts was no chore because I was and still am mad as piss. 

I bought some acid from a fellow cadet and took a few doses before getting on the plane to D.C. I spent the hours in flight listening to the Grateful Dead and the Doors on a tape player with batteries, tripping my brains out. 

On arrival in DC we where transported by military buses to Myer-Henderson Hall, Fort Myer. I was still tripping my brains out and didn't even know what country I was in. When we reached the barracks I was assigned a bunk. I immediately stripped off my uniform and put on some jeans and a tie-die t-shirt with a Dead Head logos of a skull with dread locks on it, still wearing my military issue combat boots, I hitched a ride to Georgetown. 

I got a ride from a couple of red neck chicks in their 40s, who thought they where hippies, but were only impersonating hippies for the day, wearing moccasins and bell bottoms with funny floppy leather hats. I offered them some acid, but they didn't want any because they were basically boozers not head. They had a ice bucket of beer in the trunk of their old Chevy station wagon and.

They proceeded to give me a tour of such hot spots as the Washington Momument, calling it huge cement phallic symbol. Then going on to explain that it was a metaphor for the monumental ego of all the male politcians in Washington.

They dropped me off in Georgetown thank God because after I saw the big cock (Washington Monument) and got my cock sucked I wanted to ditch the dogs ASAP. 

I entered the first bar I could find in G-Town, the bar was the type of place that no self respecting frat member would go to drink. It was called 'Axels'. They served up shots of cheap whiskey and beer in mugs. Patrons where served peanuts, shelling them and throwing the shells on the floor.

Axel's was filled with bikers, clergymen, professors and poets. The conversation was something from another planet to me, jaded subject matter, speaking of Nietzsche as though they were in a lunatic asylum, nothing seemed to mean anything, and being nowhere on acid was where I was at, it was a good fit.

I was just another lunatic in Axels, lost in a jungle of existential superlatives as time seemed to disappear while "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Astral Week' flowed in color out of the Juke Box in rainbow waves. 

Axels in Georgetown was a far cry from Missouri, it was as though I 

was in Dorthy's house swirling in a tornado cloud as it landed on the planet OZ. I could hardly speak a word amongst the nothingness wizards, I felt as though I had eaten a bucket of Thorazine and could only stutter, spit and babble. 

I realized that Axels was beyond anything that I had ever experienced so I made my way back to Fort Meyers somehow, I missed the entire week of U.S. Army seminars. The education I got in Axels was something you couldn't pin down on a military map. I had plenty to take back with me to the academy and it had nothing to do with war or reality really. 

It was one of those intrinsic experiences that cant be explained or translated in words. It took me weeks to get back to earth, and the earth seemed like a new horizon full of potential. 

Years later I realized the experience could be sumed up as 'when you are ready for the teacher the teacher will appear and then you will disappear for awhile'.

to whatever it might be babe

to all the holy ones that line my jacket with your fur

to the summer rain in the fern covered forest 

to the crazy beats who died before the resurrection

to the moondog who barks out wisdom on marble

to the whore on 42nd street who makes with the cum

to the ones who never make it and just fade away

to the donkey show in tijuana for all the hard work

to the clown with the old head of lettuce in the circus

to the people who put on put over put in and pull out

to the racks of garlic bread at antonios in brooklyn 

to the junkies on the corner of lincoln in chinatown 

to the purple riders of the broken dawn out west 

to the freaks who don't give a shit and never will

to my fifth grade teacher in 1963 who sucked me off

to the sacred penis or legume that brings us joy

to  the hipster and freak who live in the vanguard

to big brown nipples on huge d cup tits full of milk

to liverwurst pastrami and corn beef sandwiches 

to blood that runs through you during a full moon 

to a 1000 and one things at a time coming forth

to all the things that keep bein what they are now

to any old thing to me you he them it that or other

to the scared and the profane now hear this  thanks

Like Yeah

like a song steaming steel ball blues

like a amsterdam whore w/ her heart of fire

like a bluebird singing a song in the breeze

like a stream of cum runnin down your mouth

like some bloody shit on your  unholy shoes

like a girl in the forest in a glittery gown

like the monk reading gospel from a stone

like some deadheads who are marching to war

like some truth blurred over loud speakers

like dropping and dropping tumbling over

like over and over tumbling into hell street

like me and me payin for the life i lived

like you know it was your fault too babe

like your fault you yours and yours bitch