boyoutabrooklyn

The West Palm Beach Story

Vintage postcard of West Palm Beach — **As if…**

1988. West Palm Beach, Florida – a hateful shithole where the theater has imprisoned me and the rest of the cast in a retirement home hi-rise that overlooks the Greyhound Bus station. We are in sub-tropical Florida but our rooms have no air-conditioning. So, to avoid heat prostration, we are forced to keep our windows open and eat bus-exhaust 24/7. Meanwhile, our fellow residents sit staring into space while drooling prune juice down their T-shirts that proclaim “Sexy Grandma” and “Over What Hill?”

"Sexy Grandma" t-shirt — **Minus the prune juice stains**

West Palm. Did I mention it’s a hateful shithole populated by hateful rednecks, hateful New York Jews and hateful Haitian junkies? Did I mention the hateful Haitian junkies have AIDS? I’m warned before embarking on a drive across the Everglades not to stop in Belle Glade – the Haitian capital of Florida and the AIDS and felony capital of America.

West Palm Beach is, not to put too fine a point on it, a hateful shithole. And, a hateful shithole drowning in a drug-fueled crime wave. Make that crime tsunami. Muggings and burglaries do abound. So, to protect its vulnerable residents, the retirement home hi-rise hires Rottweiler’s to patrol its halls after 10 PM. One Rottweiler per floor.

Snarling Rottweiler — **Our friendly Security Guard**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Brooklyn Boys and Cowboys

Pistol Pete the Oklahoma State University mascot — That moustache sure looks
Italian to me!

This Brooklyn Boy has always had a strong affinity for Oklahoma – the Broadway musical, the college football team and the Okie cowboy in the movie Mighty Joe Young. As a wee tot, I would rise at dawn to watch the Oklahoma televangelist Oral Roberts sweat, shout and heal hillbilly hernias – “In the name of Jesus, HEAL!” My soft spot for all things Okie may have a genetic component. My great Uncle Ugo had fallen in love with the promise of Oklahoma and moved there in the 1920s. How’s this for a coincidence – I discovered that Ben Johnson who played the Okie cowboy in Mighty Joe Young was from the town where Uncle Ugo settled – Pawhuska. In family photos, there is tiny Ugo, right out of Dago Central Casting, standing on Main Street amongst the Oklahoma cowboys and Osage Indians. And, he is smiling. He is home.

Vintage postcard of Osage Indian chief, Pawhuska, Oklahoma — **One of Uncle Ugo’s friends?**

I’d been ridiculed for my Brooklyn accent at a summer camp in nearby New Jersey. What must those cowboys and Indians have made of a greaseball barber & fiddle-maker from far-off Brooklyn? But, maybe his fiddle making bought Ugo acceptance and, I hope, friendship. Yup, Uncle Ugo made violins for country musicians. Then he caught some disease that my mother was sure was syphilis but wasn’t. My man-hating mother was convinced that any and every male illness was due to illicit and even licit sexual intercourse and the only solution was prolonged, painful punishment for said intercourse. She actually liked Ugo but even he could not escape her censure. Poor Ugo returned to Brooklyn to die. I like to think that his fiddles are still being played and that I’ve heard them. Maybe one of his instruments was used by my favorite Western Swing band – Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. It’s possible because despite their name they were based in Oklahoma.

Album cover of Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys — **The Beatles of Western Swing**

Oklahoma City Looks Oh So Pretty!

Vintage postcard of Oklahoma City — **The scene of the attempted seduction**

The specialty of the house in Oklahoma’s City’s best diner is brains-and-eggs. (The diner’s original owner had bashed his wife’s brains out with a hammer. Brains-and-eggs had been on the menu prior to the uxoricide in question and there they remained.) But, it seems that only Oklahoma City’s minuscule hipster-community is alive to the irony of this situation – “Hey, let’s get stoned and go for brains-and-eggs.” And, that’s exactly the line I use on Miss Oklahoma. She’d been in the Miss America pageant and we are acting together and she is gorgeous and I want to fuck her. It’s a guy thing.

Now, here’s my plan. We’ll feast on brains-and-eggs then I’ll feast on her.

Simple. A guy thing.

A hot, steaming platter of brains and eggs — **And, they taste worse than they look!**

Miss Oklahoma and I slide into one of the diner’s red Naugahyde booths and order platters of the house special. As we wait, we watch oil wildcatters and cow wranglers chow down at the counter. They are having a hard time keeping their dangling lariats out of their brains-and-eggs. This is when Miss Oklahoma tells me about her husband’s wiener. It is small. Teeny-weeny small. Shame. He is a Tom Selleck look-a-like and a successful doctor. But, a doctor who is playing “hide the teeny-weeny wiener” with his tramp of a nurse. Things are going swimmingly, think I. It’s always a good sign when a woman has a big appetite and her husband has a teeny-weeny wiener.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park at Coney Island, Brooklyn. — Available as a paperback and eBook amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here
https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Elvis in Indy

Ad for '76 after shave lotion - Bicentennial kitsch — **Aqua Velva for patriots!**

And, this being America’s Bicentennial Summer, Tiny accents her décor with all manner of “1776” memorabilia. She has, in fact, decorated her apartment entirely from late-night TV commercials. True, I don’t spy any paintings from the “Vincent Price Fine Art Collection” – available only at Sears – but I feel sure that a Popeil Pocket Fisherman and Veg-O-Matic lurk in the closet. Everything that can be encased in clear plastic slipcovers is so encased. And, Tiny’s place smells like the burrow of the chain-smoker she is. It doesn’t help that her windows are painted shut.

Dressed in a floral print housedress and with the two remaining hairs on her head wound around curlers, Tiny leads me into her bedroom. She gets down on all fours to reach her collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles stored far under the marital bed. In order to reach the bottles furthest away, Tiny is forced to hike her dress up and arch her back. Thus, she presents to me like a mandrill in heat. Realizing her compromising position, she coyly glances back over her shoulder and, using her most girlish voice purrs, “Now don’t you get no ideas, Buster. I love my husband.” It is a Herculean struggle but somehow, I resist the urge to bury my cock balls-deep in her pert ass.

Souvenir book of Elvis Presley in Harum Scarum. — **The Sheik… er, I mean the King!**

Her collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles is a wonder to behold. Here are a dozen bottles, containing a variety of spirits, molded to evoke the figure of “The King” at various stages of his career. Here is “Sun Studio Elvis,” young, blond and full of jism, the bottle filled with Jack Daniels. Here is “Harum Scarum Elvis” attired in Sheik garb and filled with Hennessey. Here is “Aloha from Hawaii Elvis” complete with detachable lei and filled with Kahlua. And, Tiny’s favorite, “Viva Las Vegas Elvis” karate-kicking in a white cape and filled with Drambuie. Little do I know as I admire Tiny’s collection of commemorative Elvis Presley liquor bottles that “The King” has but one year to live.

Nympho at the Wheel

Paperback cover of Nympho Librarian by Les Tucker — **She drove a mean stick, too!**

It’s the Bicentennial Summer of 1976 and I’m touring Indiana schools in a children’s play. But, this is a kid’s play that adults enjoy because we manage to secrete more double-entendre smut into it than would seem humanly possible. The kids are too busy laughing to catch the jokes that sail over their heads. One outraged teacher threatens to report us to the Indiana Board of Secreted Smut but the rest shake their heads in amused admiration.

“How the hell did you do that?” they giggle.

“Do what?” we deadpan.

We traverse the highways and byways of the Hoosier State in a dilapidated VW bus driven by our tour manager – a nymphomaniac from the producer’s office in Indianapolis. We don’t know she is a nympho back in Indy. There she is a prim, hair-in-bun, librarian type. But, once Indianapolis disappears in her rear-view mirror, Sweet Bleeding Christ this chick turns savage. She porks her way through the stage-crew and when that fails to slake her libidinous thirst she darn near porks her way across the state – bell hops, soda jerks, grease monkeys, school principals, school janitors, school crossing guards, the Taco Bell Employee of the Month – if it’s in pants, she porks it. The woman is insatiable. One night we have to call the Kokomo fire department to hose her off a motel balcony from which she is dangling naked. Once rescued, she porks the fireman. She is nothing if not resolute. She is nothing if not nuts. We ship her back to Indianapolis packed in ice.

Paperback cover of The Nymphomaniac by Jeffrey Williams — **Pity the poor actors she tormented.**

Dining with Zulus

Movie poster for Zulu starring Michael Caine

I do my best to avoid Doris and Daddy but one night he corners me while I’m eating “sausage and mash” in the kitchen. No sooner have I casually mentioned that one of my favorite war films is Zulu than Daddy’s drooping regimental mustache springs to attention and he is off, seizing the opportunity to re-fight the entire Anglo-Zulu War on my plate. I am more trapped than Michael Caine at Rorke’s Drift –

Painting of the Battle of Isandhlwana — **My sausage didn’t have a prayer!**

“Let’s say your mashed potatoes are the British encampment near Isandlwanda here… mmm… perhaps that’s a bit too much potato… there, that’s better… your sausage… here… represents the Zulu army under command of Ntshingwayo kaMahole Khoza… an untenable position I’m sure you will agree… now your broccoli…”

Haunted Swindon

Comic fortune tellers with crystal ball — **I see a room full of suckers.**

Ah, Swindon! Picture Newark, New Jersey with an English accent but minus the charm. That’s Swindon. Worse, when I am there in 1990, everything in Swindon is shut on Sunday – my one day off. Well, everything but the Spiritualist Church. So, I go. The Reverend in charge is a flaming fruit who goes into trance, contacts a spirit of the departed and then asks his geriatric English audience, “Can anyone claim a George?” (Or Ethel, Victoria or Alfred.) Believe it or not, every Sunday someone in this gray congregation can claim a dearly departed so-named. Then, George, Ethel, Victoria or Alfred, speaking in a sepulchral voice through Reverend Fruit, assures the claimant that all is well with them beyond-the-veil in Summerland. The Swindon faithful swallow this bilge and fill the collection plate with “Love Gifts.”

Aleister Crowley - Satanist, Black Magician, mountaineer, chess master — **Aleister Crowley the *fruitiest* of English fruitcakes**

Reverend Fruit approaches me one week curious as to what brings someone to his church who is still breathing unaided by a portable oxygen tank. I think he also suspects that I’m on to him. I mention that I had almost claimed the spirit George who had “come through” in the service because I had a dearly departed Uncle George. “Silly,” he lisps while giving me an affectionate, limp-wristed slap on the shoulder “you should have so done.” Then, while shaking hands, he tickles my palm with his middle finger. Summerland in Swindon.

Stains on the Casting Couch

Cover of Picturegoer magazine July 14, 1956 — **It was an old story in Mary Pickford’s day!**

This is the seamy, sordid, demeaning crap they don’t teach in any Temple of the Dramatic Arts. And, actresses have it much harder than actors. There are more of them chasing fewer roles in fewer castable years. The casting-couch offers them a horizontal method of climbing up to stardom. As long ago as the silent film era, the saying among the liver-lipped movie-moguls was: “Don’t cast ’til you see the whites of their thighs.” And, that’s how so many of the ambitious, naïve, venal, vulnerable women who are drawn to show business become damaged goods. Many of them develop a carapace of iron. But, look closely and you can tell from the way they carry themselves and smoke their cigarettes that they are anguished creatures. You see them at movie premiers working as escorts for powerful industry trolls. You see written in the thought bubble above their expensively coiffured heads, “It wasn’t meant to be this way.” Tough broads. Walking wounded.

The Perils of Show Business - Picturegoer magazine July 14, 1956 — Every bus, plane and train heading for NYC and L.A.
was/is loaded with casting couch fodder.

One of Manhattan’s top socialites says to me as we look over a glittering crowd at a charity gala, “There’s a lot of midnight-money in this room.” The room teems with failed actress/model/beauty queens and their troglodyte husbands – their former tricks. Midnight-money. Great phrase.

What’s my motivation?

Rajneesh aka Osho — **“Please to be giving me a stack of $100 bills this high.”**

Method Acting teachers are seen as gurus and they embrace this mantle: “I am the great Father Figure, Witch-Doctor, Shrink, the Font of All Wisdom, the Repository of All Knowledge, the Giver of Pleasure and Pain.” No surprise their schools become personality cults. No surprise these cults are especially attractive to young women who have little self-esteem and big “Daddy” issues. The Guru demands that the student emotes at all times. The student is not having a successful scene if the student is not having a nervous breakdown – even if the scene is from Mary Poppins. Simply put – “If you ain’t crying, you ain’t acting.”

Julie Andrews as Mary Poppins — **Oh, daddy, take my money and then take me.**

One Guru held his entire class captive for two days because one student had not prepared a scene. Two days. No food. No phone calls. No talking. Limited toilet breaks. Very limited. Meanwhile, across town, a revered female Guru sent her students out to pick up strangers in bars and have sex with them – in the midst of the AIDS epidemic. And, people fought to get into these classes.

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park, Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk
And as an eBook here https://books2read.com/The-Boy-Outa-Brooklyn

Acting Teacher Expose

Paperback cover of Teacher's Pet by Mark Clements — **Another “method” of opening actor’s orifices**

In the 1980s, after a young actress accused her acting teacher of raping her, the dam burst. Former students from as far back as the 1950s reported similar attacks by Professor Pervowitz. He had been an acclaimed teacher and a predatory sadist for decades. He had run weekly ads in The Village Voice. Taught major stars. And, you had to hand it to Pervowitz, he had a psychologically brilliant M.O. He would tell the actor or actress in his sights that they were a genius. But, to prevent jealousy, their “genius” had to remain secret from the other students. Pervowitz was willing to give the budding genius private coaching… ssshhh… to open you up… ssshhh… you are a genius but you are emotionally blocked. I know how to unblock you… ssshhh… now take your clothes off, kneel at my feet and masturbate while repeating – I am your bitch-slut-cunt.”

And, they did it. Many geniuses did it. Male and female did it they – for decades.

Paperback cover of The Professor and the Co-Ed — The hunter and the prey.
But, which is which?