It is my happy fate to live in Brooklyn and London neighborhoods where Jehovah’s Witnesses train their doorbell-ringing missionaries. They are almost always Black. Imagine the delight of a pair of young, Witness trainees when, far from slamming the door in their faces, the nice White man invites them in for a chat. A long chat. A very long chat. Imagine their chagrin to discover that the nice White man knows more about their religion than they do. Imagine the trainees running and screaming from the suddenly crazed White man when he dons a pair of red, light-up, devil horns and asks them to abandon Jehovah and become Sam Butera’s Witnesses.
My un-Holy Trinity of dark influences draws me to a Christian healing service in London lead by the American televangelist Morris Cerullo. He is a Danny DeVito look-a-like, only shorter. I am one of a handful of White faces inside the cavernous convention center and, by the time I arrive, the Black congregants are already in full orgiastic swing. African women in their thousands, dressed in their Easter finery, are cumming like freight trains. Lemme tell ya, when Jesus jumps on their asses, these Afro-babes can sho’ nuff shake dat thang – “Oh yes, yes. Ohhh, Sweet Jesus. YESSSS, MY LAWD, AYYEEEE!” And, Morris hasn’t even hit the stage yet. Then he hits and the roof comes off. The women are rolling around on the floor barking like dogs and scrambling after their dislodged Easter bonnets. Hilarious and horrifying.
The Twisted Trifecta of sex, salvation and stoop traps me in a London basement where I narrowly escape being sacrificed in a Black Mass. And, as often happens with all things Satanic, it begins so innocently…
I’m browsing in an occult bookshop and fall into flirtatious conversation about Sex Magick with the shapely owner – “So, have I got this right, the High Priest penetrates the virgin anally from behind while intoning the Lord’s Prayer backward?” (I’m shameless sometimes.) Prunella, the proprietress, is an odd and oddly interesting broad – double-barrel name, double-D rack and a double degree from Oxford in Wolfsbane and the Early Films of George Zucco. Not a bad looking babe aside from classically bad English teeth. (This is actually not seen much anymore. The Brits now have very good teeth but very fat asses due to their uncanny ability to assimilate the worst of American culture.)
The Rosicrucians are those mail-order mystics who promise to teach you the “Wisdom of the Ancients” in weekly installments. (Sirhan Sirhan, Robert Kennedy’s assassin, was a Rosicrucian and look what all that ancient wisdom did for him!) I first meet The Rosicrucians in comic books. Their ads about seeing into the future are next to ads for x-ray glasses for seeing through women’s clothes. The Rosicrucians claim to go all the way back to Ancient Egypt but actually only go all the way back to San Jose.
The Master with his finger on the pulse of something or other.
No doubt about it – my un-Holy Trinity of stimuli makes me the man I am today – the man who voluntarily takes the Scientology Personality Test on each side of the Atlantic and thereby experiences a telling example of the vast cultural divide between Britain and America.
In London, unattractive Scientology losers strong-arm passers-by into a grimy storefront.
In Hollywood, attractive Scientology losers seduce passers-by into a glitzy headquarters.
Desperation vs. Décolletage
But, I’m a walk-in. No need to strong-arm or seduce me. Heck, I’d follow this aging Hollywood-blonde with ginormous silicone-wazoos anywhere. Yes, I confess that twice I take the Scientology Personality Test. I ruminate mightily over the questions and answer them honestly. Yet, twice, I fail.
Q. Are you comfortable in the presence of children?
A. Only if they are restrained, unarmed or deceased.
Q. Do you enjoy sex?
A. Not if it involves people, pelicans or potato salad.
A few years after my exposure to photographs of kinky sex, I become addicted to visual depictions of violence. Every Thursday night I get my twenty-five cents allowance and hot-foot it to Rocco’s Candy Store to buy the latest comic books. I have no interest in sissy stuff like Archie or Richie Rich. I crave Tales from the Crypt and Vault of Horror. Actually, what I really crave are the skin mags on the top shelves. I crane my neck to see them until Rocco suggests that I leave his establishment, “Get da fuck outa here kid before I tell ya muddah.” I then hunker down on a stoop under a streetlight and read. So strong is my desire to escape the din and dysfunction in my home that I sit on the stoop even on winter nights.
Ah, alone in my study at last. All I need are my pipe and slippers.
Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn Better than Disneyland
I am seven and in Coney Island’s Steeplechase Park – a magical relic of a Victorian amusement park. I’m lost in a dark hallway and I’m ascared. I must have taken a wrong turn getting off the Shoot-the-Chute.
I open a door and I’m in the employees’ locker room. Right before me sits a dwarf-clown in whiteface but only halfway into his Pagliacci costume. Baggy clown-pants below. Guinea T-shirt on top. He is smoking and reading The Daily News. He sports a popular tattoo – a black panther climbing up his forearm and drawing drops of red blood with its claws. The dwarf-clown gives me a genuinely malevolent look – not one of those stagey, evil dwarf-clown looks so popular in modern horror-movies. This dwarf-clown hates being a dwarf. Hates being a clown. Hates being the same size as this seven-year-old punk standing before him. Hates me. “Get the fuck outahere,” he rasps.
That same year, I see the freak show at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus held in the old Madison Square Garden where Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson, Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano and Rocky Marciano fight. It’s where Emile Griffith from the Virgin Islands kills the Cuban Benny “Kid” Paret. At the weigh-in, Benny calls Emile a “maricon” – that’s spic-talk for faggot. In Round 12, Paret is out on his feet but trapped in a corner and held up by the ropes. The homosexual Griffith shows no mercy. Remember what I told you about our dusky brothers not liking each other? Remember what I told you about boxing promoters feasting on that hatred? The Garden reeks of that bloody history. And, with the circus in town, it reeks of lion piss and elephant dung. (Henry Miller, like me a Brooklyn boy, wanted an English language that reeked of lion piss and elephant dung. I doubt Henry ever smelled them in combination. The stench stung my eyeballs and melted the enamel from my teeth!)
The Ringling freak show features sword-swallowers, snake-handlers, fire-eaters, bullwhip-crackers, knife-throwers, fat men, skinny men, rubber men, a family of albino midgets and the star of the show – Johann K. Petursson, the Icelandic Giant – the Tallest Man in the World. Johann is no sissy giant, no puny, pituitary-gland pussy he. Johann is a true giant – 8’ 8” tall and brawny with a bear pelt draped over his shoulder.
Johann wears a tall Viking helmet with horns as tribute to his forebears and to make himself look even taller. My father buys me one of Johann’s green plastic rings as souvenir. The giant places it on his finger for a moment as consecration. I can fit all five of my five-year-old fingers inside it. I still have that ring.
Facsimile = an ancient, dusty, wax model floating in a filthy jar filled with formaldehyde
Coney Island is where I see my first freak show. I am five and my father holds me up to see the stage. Outside the tent, a painted banner depicts a ferocious man with a head shaped like a ten-foot-wide light bulb. But, inside the tent, the meek, sickly man on-stage has only a slightly swollen head. He drives a nail up his nose to try and compensate for his disappointing deformity. My father explains that the man has a disease and the show is a gyp. There is also a woman on-stage who has dry, scaly skin. Outside she is depicted crawling through a swamp on all fours – a woman’s head on the body of an alligator. But, inside – no such luck. Another gyp.
When we climbed out of the Times Square subway station, I was mesmerized. I’d been to Coney Island plenty, but this was something else again, something electrifying. It was the lights – up and down and all around, lights neon, fluorescent and incandescent, lights all moving, all colors and all ablaze – even in daylight; lights that outshined the sun. The billboards were alive – a gigantic man blew smoke rings while Mister Peanut tipped his hat. I didn’t know it then but I had been rubbing shoulders with Diane Arbus and Bettie Page, both working in that 1956 Times Square world – a world of bustling strangers. A world of men in hats. Women with handbags. A world that smelled of Howard Johnson, Orange Julius, Nedick’s, popcorn and pussy. I was six and I could smell it; six and I could feel it; six and I could taste it. Times Square was a dirty dangerous place. And, I loved it.
My mentor – Mr. Peanut
Elvis blasted from the music stores and frigid winds blasted from the air-conditioned theater lobbies. I passed a newsstand and an excited man shouted “Extra!” I passed a doorway and a crazy man shouted “Cocksucker!” I heard the shuffle, scuffle and beat of the footfalls. I heard the horns, hollers and bleats of the cabbies – “Ya got wheels! Use ’em, Mac!” I saw my first “Street Corner Messiah.” He wore a sandwich board and was very worried about God. I was transfixed by him. I wanted to ask him why he was so worried but I was pulled away.
A history lesson in Times Square
It was the bestest birthday party ever. We saw the Torture Chamber in Ripley’s Believe It or Not“ Odditorium.” Then we visited Hubert’s Museum – a freak show in a 42nd Street basement. It was even spookier and sexier than Ripley’s! We gaped at Hubert’s Cowboy Giant, midget, flea circus and Congo Witch Doctor. We gawped at Princess Sahloo and her sluggish snake. I determined that I would live in Hubert’s Museum as barker, caretaker and flea-wrangler. I would befriend the Witch Doctor, play pinochle with the midget and milk the snake.
Boy Outa Brooklyn 