Memoir – Page 13 – Boy Outa Brooklyn

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.

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
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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
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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?

The Russians Are Coming!

An Actor Prepares by Constantin Stanislavski — **The Bible of bad acting.**

Acting has always attracted the delightful but also the dim, the desperate and the deranged. ‘Twas ever thus. My parents were delightful, stage-struck, Italian kids from Brooklyn when they met in a Manhattan acting school in the 1930s. It was a time when the New York theater was crawling with Russian émigrés all of whom claimed to have been former members of Constantine Stanislavski’s renowned Moscow Art Theater. Stanislavski invented “Method Acting” and every one of the Russo-invaders claimed to have been his mentor – “And, I told Constantine he vas wrong about the emotive mimetic.” Manhattan sheltered more of these borscht bullshitters than the number of baby-boom bullshitters who claim to have seen Jimi at Woodstock.

And, every Boris and Svetlana ran an École de Théâtre in a drafty loft on Delancey Street or a Temple of the Dramatic Arts ensconced in a dank basement on Bleecker. One teacher would dampen the wooden floor of her studio with a garden hose then turn up the heat, thereby creating a steam-room. Her students disrobed and lay down on the floor to do esoteric Siberian breathing exercises. “It is imperative to open and breathe through all the orifices of the body at once.”

Racy stuff for then and total bullshit for always.

Russian actress and method acting teacher, Maria Ouspenskaya. — **Open your bodily orifices, or else!**

Boy Out 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
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The Wild One

Tony Unbatz, the top punk on my block, is known to be, as his Italian nickname implies, crazy – “batz.” He’ll do anything on a dare and more without one. He’s a skinny kid with a nose bigger than he is. He weighs at most a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet and since he’s drenched in beer that’s what he weighs tonight. Tony dresses like Marlon Brando in The Wild One – motorcycle jacket, boots and garrison belt. And, like all the Juvenile Delinquents in 1950s America, he apes Brando’s schtick – “Don’t bug me coz I’m a sullen, sensitive, tough-but-tender, misunderstood punk-poet.” The juvenile delinquents of Brooklyn even try to mimic Brando’s Southern accent from The Wild One. When Beatlemania hits Brooklyn, the punk-poets of that era attempt a Liverpool accent, “Toydy toyd and toyd meets the Moysey.” Brooklyn rock bands have to pretend to be English to get gigs and so they name themselves – The Churchills, The Cuppa Tease and The Chamber Pots.

AD for a Beatles wig circa 1964 — **Just like the real thing…sort of**

Obsessive Compulsive Memory Disorder

Vintage ad for memory improvement — **What’s past is prologue**

I have Obsessive Compulsive Memory Disorder. I can’t escape the past. I don’t want to escape the past. I am drawn to it. I want to live in it. I do live in it. An edge of cobblestone peeking through the pavement, an ancient painted sign flaking on the side of a building, a patch of wallpaper revealed by the swing of the wrecker’s ball propels me back to the New York of Boss Tweed, Babe Ruth or the Mad Bomber. I can stare into snowy Green-Wood Cemetery at night meditating on the tombstones and conjure a horse-drawn Currier and Ives sleigh with harness bells jangling. I see the horses’ frozen breath flaring from their nostrils; hear their hooves striking the frozen Brooklyn earth. It is 1845 and I am there.

Currier and Ives painting of a horse drawn sleigh ride. — **That’s me at the reins.**

Streetlight Serenade

1950s juvenile delinguents — **Better than the Vienna Boys Choir**

I’m pitching pennies against a wall of the corner grocery store just like I see the big boys do. It’s a form of urban horseshoes. I have no idea what the rules are and have only one penny to pitch but I try my best to look tough and cool. I am six. The big boys are sixteen and hanging out on the corner as they always do on summer nights.

They gather under the streetlight and serenade the block with “Earth Angel” and other doo-wop dirges. This is Brooklyn’s answer to the bel canto street singing of Naples. Figures. Most of these punks are second-generation Napolitano. Rico has a sweet tenor voice so he sings lead. And, despite his polio leg-braces, he plays stickball with the gang. They brag about how far he can hit a ball – “I’m tellin’ ya Rico hit da ball three sewers.”

My friends and I are too young to witness the serious nighttime “rumbles” between the local gangs – The Bishops, The Undertakers, The South Brooklyn Boys and The Testors. (They sniff Testorsbrand airplane glue to get high.) But, the following morning, we scavenge their battle scenes in search of bloody souvenirs – chains, bats, pipes, teeth, spent shells even a loaded zip gun. Its barrel is a car aerial attached to a plank with a sliding bolt and rubber bands as primitive trigger-mechanism. We fire it in a basement where it explodes nearly blinding us all. We decide to leave the heavy artillery to the big boys.

Boys pointing toy guns at camera — **Juvenile Delinquents in training.**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memory Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn — Available as a paperback and eBook
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And as an eBook here
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The Brooklyn Boys vs. The Boy Scouts

Norman Rockwell painting of a nice Boy Scout — **Not in my troop**

We are a blue-collar Scout troop without a full uniform between us – more Bowery Boys than Baden Powell. We don’t buy our gear at the official Boy Scout store which is strictly for fagateers but at the Army surplus stores on Canal Street. Who cares if our canteens leak and our hatchets shatter? They are what General Patton’s soldiers used and that’s all that matters.

Only once is our tough-guy veneer pierced. It is when we encounter a disfigured boy who pitches his tent right next to ours at a Boy Scout Jamboree. The merit badge sash he wears across his torso contains more badges than our troop has won in its entire history. He is also an Eagle Scout and a member of the Order of The Arrow. This is like being a Green Beret and a Navy Seal. He is tall and well built. But, atop his perfectly formed body sits the most deformed head and face I have ever seen. His skull is squashed, elongated and lopsided. His features are randomly stuck onto the front of it like the plastic ears, mouth and nose of a Mr. Potato Head – a Mr. Potato Head who has been dropped from a great height. He has one misshapen ear on top of his skull and another down near his chin so that his glasses hang on his face in a vertical rather than horizontal line. His eyes, nose, and mouth are not much more than holes. Imagine the face of Charles Laughton in The Hunchback of Notre Dame drawn by Picasso then put through a wood chipper.

The Bowery Boys Meet the Monsters — **We weren’t as tough as we pretended to be.**

Attack of the Blessed Virgin Mary

“Catholics also believe that the Blessed Virgin appears to mere mortals in various times, places and languages. The most famous Marian apparitions, not counting her many miraculous appearances on moldy pizza, dried toast and wet cardboard, are –

Our Lady of Lourdes (France)
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Mexico)
Our Lady of Fatima (Portugal)
Our Lady of Bayside (Queens)

“Like the Little Green Men who pilot flying saucers, Mary appears only to illiterate, poverty-stricken, scrofula-ridden peasants who sleep with their livestock. Hence, her appearance in Queens. There is a theory that the BVM is, in fact, the occupant of a UFO misinterpreted by Catholic shepherds in the only way that makes sense to them – ‘Hey, Esteban, look, up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane. It’s the Virgin Mary.’

Movie poster of Invasion of the Saucer Men

BVM or BEM – coincidence? You decide.

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