Times Square – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Crap Christmas #3

Okay. Ready? Here’s the final installment in this mirth-killing series about Yuletide disasters.

When we last saw our hero, (That would be me.) he was slinking home to Brooklyn after debasing himself in a Times Square porn movie house on Christmas Eve! I have entitled this cautionary tale –

Christmas In Queens

**Yes, people actually choose to live here.**

Remember how mean old Scrooge wakes on Christmas morn a man transformed? Remember how nasty old Ebenezer dances a merrie jig and sends a boy to buy a turkey? Not on this Christmas morn. Not in Brooklyn. I awake to the single worst toothache since Cicero’s oration against Catiline. It drives a spike into my head with every beat of my heart.

Ever try to find a dentist on Christmas Day? Don’t bother. Even Jewish dentists don’t work on Christmas. They want Christians who have been dumped by their bitch girlfriends on Christmas Eve to suffer. Bastards. Desperate for pain-relief, I swallow every pill I find in the medicine cabinet, including the unlabeled ones.

Is this my cat’s de-worming pill? Aw, fuck it.

Then, it hits me.

Oh, Christ, I gotta go sing for Ralphie’s fuckin’ mother in fuckin’ Queens!

My friend Ralphie will pay me one hundred dollars in cash to go to his mother’s house on Christmas afternoon and sing her a surprise Christmas song. I would rather have South American fire ants shoved up my ass but I need that money. God, do I need that money! So, heartache or not, toothache or not, I have to haul my sorry ass out to the sorry-ass end of Queens. No one goes to Queens. Ever. Why would they? I’m not even sure it’s open on Christmas.

Then my damn actor’s integrity kicks in and I determine to give this old gal a rousing “plum pudding” carol sing. It’s not her fault that “Lana the Cunt” dumped me or that Jewish dentists are getting revenge on me for centuries of the Blood Libel. So, I practice my song with a tape-recorder and even pack my pitch pipe. I put on my best “Dickensian” garb – a stovepipe hat stolen from a Victorian play and a scarf wrapped around my neck just as I’d seen carolers do in every production of A Christmas Carol. Then, with my tooth throbbing to an excruciatingly painful Tito Puente beat, I head for Queens – wherever the fuck that is.

**Actual photo taken in Queens, NY in 1981. Honest.**

It is cold. It is very cold. Oh, I almost forgot to tell you, it is very, very, cold. The subway is running slowly. Very, very, very slowly. I just miss a train and wait on the unheated platform for one hour. (Throbbing tooth.) I just miss a bus and wait on the unheated street for another hour. (Throbbing tooth.) It begins to snow. It is getting dark. (Throbbing tooth.) It takes me four hours to reach my destination.

Why does Queens exist?

My frostbitten fingers ring the doorbell and a sweet old woman answers.

“Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas! I have a special song for you from Ralphie!” I tweet through chattering, throbbing teeth. My scarf is now wound around my head Victorian-toothache-style. Mom lets me step into the vestibule where I whip out my pitch pipe and sing I’ll Be Home or Christmas. But, why haven’t I seen this coming? I am teleported back to the California 7-11. By the miracle of bi-location, I am sobbing next to the Taco melted-cheese dispenser in Oxnard while sobbing in a vestibule in the ass-end of Queens before an embarrassed, confused and frightened old woman. I get through the song and wipe my nose while mentally evaluating my vibrato. (Once an actor…) Mom invites me in for cake and coffee.

“Oh, no, thank you. I have several other stops to make. I don’t want to be late and disappoint anyone. Ho, ho, ho! Merry Christmas!”

The return journey is colder, snowier, slower. It takes me five hours to get back home. I eat a can of tuna fish for Christmas dinner, carefully avoiding my throbbing tooth. That’s all the food in the house. A can of tuna. I then bounce off the walls until dawn with toothache and heartache my only companions.

___________________________

To my long suffering readers –

I wish you a very Merry Christmas and an even better New Year!

_________________________

Available as a paperback and eBook here and here and as an eBook here

Crap Christmas #2

Told ya I’d be back with another installment of my seemingly endless memories of disastrous Christmases past. This time we grab the Red Eye and jet from LA to NYC for yet more Yuletide misery. Enjoy!

O HOLY NIGHT

One year after being dumped by Monica I’m back in New York. Another Christmas Eve. Another girlfriend. Another dumping. This time – Lana. Something about me having no money and being a loser. She has a point. I am once again gainfully employed as a full-time starving actor – fucking adorable but broke. Not what Lana has in mind so –

“Merry Christmas, you’re dumped.”

“Oh yeah? Fuck you! I’ve been given a free ticket to a Broadway show – so there.”

Lana is a model. A beautiful model. With perfect lips. Succulent lips. Dreams are made of such lips. If you don’t believe me just ask the radio station that has chosen Lana’s lips as its new logo currently splashed over every available space in New York City. Walls. Billboards. The sides of buses. Trains. Taxis. As I hurry to the theater, her luscious lips confront me at every turn. In Times Square, Lana’s lips, luminously captured in neon light, tower above me. I am almost hit by a cab decorated with Lana’s lips as I run to touch those very same lips that adorn the back of a bus. Her lips smile at me, seduce me, invite and entice me. Then they chase me down the street taunting, “Loser, loser, loser” until I escape them by ducking into the theater lobby.

When I settle into my seat, I realize that I’ve seen this play before. With Lana. (Choke. Sniffle.) So, there I am contemplating throwing myself off the balcony and thinking – Well, at least I’ll crush some Jews. I am surrounded by Jews. Who else goes to the theater on Christmas Eve? But, overtaken by the spirit of the season, I decide to live and let live. I imagine these theater-loving Hebrews bustling home to enjoy their Chanukah bushes and to drink Christian baby-blood. As I leave the theater a heavy snow is blanketing yesterday’s filthy white pile. The Jefferson Airplane’s lyric comes to me –

City streets in the dead of winter,

Stop your mind with dirty snow.

But, my mind won’t stop. It zooms. I am in my thirties. I’ve limped back to New York after failing in L.A. – limped back for a second dose of the same medicine. A glutton for punishment. No money. No food. No job. No woman. No hope. Walking in Times Square on Christmas Eve with nothing and no one waiting for me at home. Not even a Chanukah Bush. Again, I become Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. I lean into the biting wind and trudge through the heaping snow, not in Bedford Falls but in Midtown Manhattan searching for a smile, a break. Searching for my life. It was here a minute ago. Crazed, I search for warmth in passing faces but they hurry away. I press my nose against restaurant windows ’til frightened diners have the waiter tap on the glass and chase the bum away. Then I see the brightly flashing lights ahead. Red and green. Not a Christmas tree but the marquee of a porn theater. A sin-pit of the lowest sort.

**Hmmnnn…perfect. Dump me on Christmas Eve, will ya? Fine. I’ll wallow in it. What’s the movie? “Snowblowers.” Ah, a seasonal theme. Perfect again.**

I buy my ticket comforted by the thought that I will have the Snowblowers all to my lonesome. Enter theater and… the place is packed. Jammed. I have trouble finding a seat. Who knew there were this many sad, lonely, desperate losers in New York on Christmas Eve? But, maybe they’re just killing time ‘til Midnight Mass.

Snowblowers is neither Christmas In Connecticut nor The Miracle On 34th Street. In fact, the movie is so out-of-focus and out-of-sync that it’s difficult to discern who is doing what to what part of whom. I think the plot involves flabby-assed actresses performing a variety of sex acts while on skis with hairy-assed actors also on skis. I worry the performers risk frostbite on their asses, whether flabby or hairy.

Divertimento on Porn Etiquette

In those golden days of yesteryear, there were strict codes of conduct in porn theaters and dirty bookstores. In the latter, it was thought rude to pick up a porn magazine immediately after another sticky-fingered voyeur had put it down. The girl in that magazine was still his girl. It was best to let some time pass and allow the couple to come to terms with their recent break-up. Then you were free to paw over Teenage Enema Bandits.

In porn cinemas, as in all cinemas, it was held inconsiderate, threatening and sexually provocative to sit right next to, directly in front of or (worse) directly behind someone when there were other seats available. It pains me to report that some lost souls went to porn theaters expressly to jack-off or to be jacked-off. I was never among their number. My preference was to sit far apart, all the better to enjoy the mise en scène. And, to avoid being hit by recklessly extruded seminal fluid.

Porn theaters, like strip-shows, were remarkably somber affairs. The men hunkered down to watch and/or wank in silence. No chitchat. No popcorn passing. Definitely no eye contact. You didn’t want to risk being recognized.

“Murray, what the hell are you doing here?”

Furthermore, a wisp too much eye-contact with the flaming Black fairies who walked up and down the center aisle, licking their lips while looking into laps, might suggest you were happy to let them get a lip-lock on your love-monkey. No. And again, no! Eyes straight ahead.

fine

In the middle of Snowblowers just as the star blower is fellating her shivering co-star on a toboggan, I become aware of a commotion at the end of my aisle. A suburban daddy is awkwardly climbing and tripping his way over the masturbating men while loaded down with his Christmas treasures. He is juggling bags from Saks, Macy’s and Bloomingdales.

“Excuse me, Merry Christmas. Oops, scuse me, please. Merry Christmas. I’m terribly sorry to trouble you but could I possibly sneak past. Merry Christmas.” And, he is off to catch the last train to Westchester. The erotic mood destroyed, I let Mr. Westchester run interference for me through the aisle-fairies and follow him out into the blizzard.

Lights get turned off even on the Great White Way and much of Midtown is now dark. Lana’s neon lips are a grey ghost drained of all erotic power. I tramp downtown as far as the Village where, ashamed and ascared, I grab a bagel and the subway and make for Brooklyn. I make for home.

__________________________

I’ll Be Dead For Christmas

A few years back, I posted a story about the pure hell of working for the US Post Office at Christmas. At this most blessed time of year when generosity flows so abundantly, it would be niggardly of me not to share it with you yet again. For first time readers, it is an early Christmas present from me to you.

So… here for your reading pleasure is a link to Christmas In Hell.

**Heh, Heh, Heh…er, I mean, Ho, Ho, Ho.**

https://boyoutabrooklyn.com/2019/09/09/christmas-in-hell/

________________________________

Roadmap to Blog Outa Brooklyn

Thanks for visiting my blog. It is a sampler of my murder-memoir Boy Outa Brooklyn. The best way to enjoy it is to start at the first post and read chronologically. I hope you’ll find it both hilarious and horrifying.

I will also be posting about the best books, movies and songs about Brooklyn. And, sharing my practical and off-beat travel tips. If you enjoy my blog, please follow me. Hover your mouse in the lower right corner of the screen and a pop-up box will appear. Enter your email address and you’ll never miss one of my posts. Your address will not be sold or shared and you won’t be pestered with any sales cons.

Welcome to my Brooklyn,

Jack Antonio

Available as an eBook here

And as paperback and eBook here

amazon.com

and amazon.co.uk

BROOKLYN BOOKS #2

Dead Black man on the floor in New York City in the early 20th century.

The Thomas Boyle Trilogy

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn (1985)

Post-Mortem Effects (1987)

Brooklyn Three (1991)

Thomas F. Boyle — Why do the best “tough-guy” writers always look like Geography teachers?

The late Thomas Boyle was a Pennsylvania kid who spent part of his childhood in Brooklyn. (That makes him an Honorary Brooklyn Boy in my opinion.) He graduated from Cornell, earned his doctorate at NYU and taught at Brooklyn College for many years. Some book review sites confuse him with the more famous T.C. Boyle the author of many brilliant novels including The Road to Wellville – set in a 19th century health-spa and Drop City – set in an Alaskan hippie commune.

Our Thomas Boyle’s last book (published in 1990 in the midst of his crime trilogy) was Black Swine in the Sewers of Hampstead – a study of Victorian crime fiction. It sounds like the Sherlock Holmes mystery Conan Doyle forgot to write! I’ve added it to my “must read” list.

Only the Dead Know Brooklyn by Thomas Boyle.

Any fan of gumshoe fiction will enjoy Boyle’s modern yet faithful reworking of the much-loved archetypes and plot devices of that often hackneyed genre.

Anyone who knows the geography of Brooklyn will get an extra kick out of Boyle’s locales. His hard-boiled tales follow Detective Frank DeSales as he chases bad guys down hidden alleys in Red Hook, across garbage strewn vacant lots in Williamsburgh and even onto the hallowed ground of Green-Wood Cemetery.

If you like Lawrence Block’s ex-cop now “private dick” Matt Scudder, you’ll feel right at home with Thomas Boyle’s active duty detective Frank DeSales. They are brothers from another mother.

New York Police with dead body on subway platform. — “On the job”

I can’t find any movies or TV shows based on this trilogy which is a shame and surprising. For decades now, “All things Brooklyn” have been all the rage. Go know!

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder-memoir by Jack Antonio — Available as an eBook here
and as a paperback and eBook
amazon.com
amazon.co.uk

BROOKLYN BOOKS #1

Vintage postcard of the 9th street branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. — **My discovery of Brooklyn literature began here. In fact, I still have an overdue book from this branch. Hey, I remember that car!**

Any list of famous writers from Brooklyn would fill a decent sized phone book. And any list of books set in Brooklyn would be almost as large. I’ve read plenty of both but there are many more I’ve missed. So, the posts I’ll be making about Brooklyn books will be far from a definitive list. Think of them as tips from your friendly Brooklyn librarian.

It would be remiss of me not to begin with the very first “Brooklyn” book I ever read. (Hell, it was the very first book I ever read cover-to-cover!) And, I’ve reread it many times since – most recently last Tuesday. In fact, it’s the overdue book mentioned above – overdue for over 60 years! If you haven’t read it then all I can say is, “I pity you!”

The book cover of The Phil Rizzuto Story by Milton J. Shapiro. — **The life & loves, wit & wisdom, trials & tribulations of the inimitable “Scooter” – Hall of Fame Yankee shortstop and broadcaster. And, it goes without saying quintessential Brooklyn Boy.**

“Psssst, hey kid, ya wanna read a really doity book?”

The book cover of Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr.

As you drive into Brooklyn across the Brooklyn Bridge a large sign looms up at you. It screams, “Last Exit to Brooklyn.” If a driver doesn’t take that exit they are taken onto the Gowanus Expressway and thence over the neighborhood of Sunset Park where the spectacularly downbeat novel Last Exit to Brooklyn is set. In the 1950s, the period of the novel, that sign should have screamed, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”

The Brooklyn Queens Expressway beneath Brooklyn Heights.

In the 50s, the waterfront of Sunset Park was a land of perpetual night – a slum rotting in fetid shadow beneath the elevated Gowanus Expressway. The Mafia had killed the docks, Robert Moses had killed Sunset Park by cutting it in two with his hideous highway and the Dodgers had killed Brooklyn by moving to L.A.

Hubert Selby Jr. knew this coz he was a Brooklyn boy born right next door to Sunset Park in Bay Ridge.

Vintage photo of Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. — **Industry City – another flop by Robert Moses & FDR. It’s now a gentrified flea market. Hey, I remember *those* cars, too.**

Selby’s book consists of inter-locking tales of losers, junkies, sadists, pimps, hookers and trannies who fight for scraps in a nightmare world of gangs and gang-bangs.

1950s male transvestite — **Vying for the title of *Miss* Gowanus Expressway**

I was raised in the 1950s just a few blocks away from this world. I even swam in the public pool there. But, I knew better than to venture into the Terra Incognita below the highway. Many years later, I met a Yorkshireman who had lived in a sleaze-bag hotel in Sunset Park during WW2. He was outfitting ships to British standards that had been built in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. He told me that the whole area was full of crap games, gyp-joints and whorehouses all making a fortune from the servicemen and dock workers.

1940s workers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. — **They all hadda get drunk and they all hadda get laid.**

WW2 female mechanics at Brooklyn Army Terminal. — **They all hadda get drunk and they all… Hey, dig those crazy saddle shoes!**

In the 1980s, I would spend pointless, penniless weekends meandering around Brooklyn by bike. I was drawn to the derelict and rotting factories of Industry City that lined the waterfront in Sunset Park. I thought, “Damn, this would make a great film set.” And, that’s exactly where, a few years later, much of the movie of Last Exit to Brooklyn was filmed.

Industry City and Bush terminal in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — **In the 80s, it was just me, my bike and tumbleweeds.**

That film is good but doesn’t capture the daring style and outrageous vitality of Selby’s prose. Plus, by 1989, much of the shock value of his book’s subject matter had been lost. But, when it was first published in 1964, Last Exit to Brooklyn was an outrage and banned in several countries. I haven’t been impressed by Selby’s other work but anyone interested in the lower depths of Brooklyn life and the heights of “outsider” American literature should read Last Exit to Brooklyn.

Cartoon male face with tongue and eyes protruding,

In 1965, I read it as a 15-year-old while working as a messenger in Times Square. The guy who sold it to me could have been arrested. I made sure that its instantly recognizable cover was always visible sticking out of my back pocket as I made deliveries. And, I made sure that same cover was visible as I read Last Exit to Brooklyn on the subway. I didn’t live in a artist’s garret in Greenwich Village but it was fun to pretend that I did.

Hell in Hell’s Kitchen

Vintage movie poster for Hell's Kitchen — **The scene of the crime**

I told the cop who was interrogating me that a few days after seeing Carrie walk through Needle Park in a trance, I learned that she and her roommate’s possessions had been stolen. They had packed their car for the move from tenement, roach-infested Hell’s Kitchen to toney, roach-infested Brooklyn Heights. But, they’d committed a cardinal sin. They had loaded their car full of their stuff. I imagined a portable TV with a mouse-ear aerial wrapped in aluminum foil sitting on the back seat next to a hair dryer with the cord wound around it. I saw a bag of hair curlers. I saw Earth Shoes, sandals, magazines. I saw hangers. Everything they owned safely stowed and ready for transit, the girls laughed up the stoop, through the vestibule and up the five tenement flights to check they’d left nothing behind.

Audrey Hepburn singing Moon River in Breakfast at Tiffany's — **Young actresses come to New York still see themselves this way**

I’ll bet they felt like they were in one of those “kooky girls come to New York” movies – My Sister Eileen or Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But, when they came back downstairs, their car was empty, the trunk wide-open like the maw of a hippopotamus. When I learned of this theft a dizzying dread crept up my spine. Did my hair stand on end? It may have. I know that I felt helpless against some deadly force, some irresistible undertow, some relentless riptide pulling Carrie under.

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

Etiquette for the Sexual Degenerate

1970s Times Square porn store — **A well-mannered devotee of the erotic arts**

sign for The Zoo Swingers Club in Times Square — **Only well-behaved swingers need apply**

In porn cinemas, as in all cinemas, it was held inconsiderate, threatening and sexually provocative to sit right next to, directly in front of or (worse) directly behind someone when there were other seats available. It pains me to report that some lost souls went to porn theaters expressly to jack-off or to be jacked-off. I was never among their number. My preference was to sit far apart, all the better to enjoy the mise en scène. And, to avoid being hit by recklessly extruded seminal fluid.

“Murray, what the hell are you doing here?”

Orgy in Times Square

The old New York Times building on W. 43rd st. NYC — **Oy, if only I had a nickel for every time I went into the old NY Times building.**

As a fifteen-year-old messenger in Times Square, I get a whiff of the newspaper game by making deliveries to the New York Times. I get to hang out in the newsroom – full of smoking men banging away at typewriters, and in the proofreading room – full of smoking men squinting away at galleys. The paper’s underground printing presses literally shake 43^rd Street when they run at full tilt. The pressmen come up to the street for air wearing admiral-style hats formed out of that day’s front page – a bit of old New York life that is gone forever.

I make regular deliveries to the offices of Broadway producers and to the apartments of gossip columnists where I get a flavor of “the business they call show” and the Public Relations racket. And, I see the ad campaigns unfold in Times Square for the blockbuster movies of that summer. Of course, I’m more interested in the brabusters of that summer. My pace slackens as I inch past the marquees for Orgy at Lil’s Place or Sinderella and the Golden Bra or the many nudist movies like Goldilocks and the Three Bares. I spend three months walking around midtown Manhattan with a perpetual teenage hard-on. No wonder I attract creepy, confusing attention from creepy, confusing men.

David Merrick - Broadway Producer — **David Merrick – he *was* Broadway in the 1960s and 1970s**

**Walter Winchell invented the gossip column and was still hanging on in ’65**

Dorothy Kilgallen - gossip columnist — The “female Winchell” – Dorothy Kilgallen.
She was about to spill the beans about the JFK assassination but committed suicide or was murdered. You decide.

Movie poster for Sinderella and the Golden Bra and Goldilocks and the Three Bares

Movie poster for The Orgy at Lil's Place — SEE the “Art” Class – go on…
you know you want to SEE it.

Mad Men at the Metropole

1960s go-go dancers — **Some guys have all the luck!**

We ad agency messengers fight for the uptown deliveries because they take us past the Metropole Bar. During the day, its doors are kept wide open so passers-by can watch the rock bands play but, more importantly, watch the caged and fringe-skirted go-go girls shake their money-makers. We gawkers must stand behind a yellow line on the sidewalk to let pedestrians pass. Tourist husbands pretend not to look as outraged wives pull them past this go-go Gomorrah. At night, the Metropole closes its doors and the girls go-go topless.

1960s topless go-go girl — **Alas, the doors were closed at night**

My favorite band of the summer is the Eggheads. They wear monk cowls and have their heads shaved like Friar Tuck. And, man, they put on a show that is clean outasite. (That meant “very entertaining” in 1965 parlance.) They and the go-go girls dance the Monkey, Frug, Swim, Jerk, Hitchhike and Watusi in perfectly synchronized moves. It is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I can tell from the way they look at each other that the “with-it” guys in the band are “making it” with the “swingin’ chicks” in the cages and I seriously consider taking up the bass.

Friar Tuck porcelain figureine — **No wonder he’s smiling!**