Memoir – Page 9 – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Janitor in a Whore House

Vintage pulp cover for The Orgy Inspector — **I wonder if he doubles on sax?**

I am to stand guard at the entrance to the Mat Room – a small room with a wrestling mat on the floor and… well… that’s all. I guess if the sophisticates in attendance aren’t in the mood to “party down” of an evening they can hold a tag-team match. But, I must enforce the strict “couples only” policy; namely – if one-half of a couple leaves the Mat Room the other must follow. This is to avoid an unbalanced male/female ratio of swingers. However, Mat Room etiquette does allow for consensual gangbangs. So, I will be janitor, bouncer and Poet-In-Residence in this bordello. No problemo. My resumé attests to the fact that I am man enough for all three jobs.

Orgy in an on-premises swing club — **Wait a minute, you’re my wife!**

I will also be tasked with tidying up the “Adam and Eve Rooms.” These airless closets are barely large enough to hold a mattress, an ashtray on the mattress and a bare, red light bulb hanging over the mattress. Once Adam and Eve have left their closet Eden and retired to the disco to feast on the sumptuous buffet nightly, it will be my appointed task to squeeze into the cramped closet, squeeze a clean sheet onto the mattress and squeeze a few squirts of Air-Wick into the now funky air to restore its paradisiacal aroma. Oops. Almost forgot. Have to empty the ashtray.

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

Bottled-Water Pimp

Bottle of Evian water — **America’s magical elixir of choice in the 1980s**

In the 1980s, Evian was the #1 bottled water in New York. #2 wasn’t even close. But, #2’s new Sales Manager was determined to kick Evian’s ass – maybe since Evian had just fired his ass. I was hired as one of his ass-kickers. My job was to visit delis and bodegas all over Manhattan and persuade the owners to give #2 more shelf-space. (In the retail food racket, shelf-space is the name of the game!)

In every store I visited, the enormity of my task became apparent. Evian bottles were prominently displayed at eye-level on the shelves while my brand wasn’t.

Oh, wait, here they are, way down here at back-breaking, floor level.

My brand’s bottles were buried down in the cockroach graveyard.

There is no more stomach-turning sight in a food store than flies and roaches pushing up daisies. A Londoner asked me why I always washed the top of soda cans before opening them. “Ah, the survival behavior of a native New Yorker,” I explained. “You see, cockroaches lay their eggs on can tops – don’t ask me why – and their eggs roll into that small depression around the can top. If I swallow a roach egg, it will grow inside me like the Alien. I have never seen a cockroach in my many years in London but I still wash my can tops.”

Evian was a big moneymaker for the storeowners and #2 was a big waste of time. How welcome do you think I was on a scorching summer day? How much time do you think they wanted to devote to my tedious survey questions when they had a long line of impatient joggers waiting to pay for their Evian?

Male strippers I have blown, er… I mean known!

My agent finally found my phone number and told me he had a friend who managed the leading male strip show of the era – The Plantagenets. Its current Master of Ceremonies had lost his voice (as had every previous MC) due to the impossible task of screaming over the screaming women in attendance. But, this MC gig had definite merits –

Very good money
Very good money – in cash
Only four shows a week
Late show times so I could do a play and then do the strip show – not that I had any hopes of being in a play

Problem was that after one night of non-stop screaming I’d have no vocal cords to do a play with for the rest of my natural life. Another problem was that The Plantagenets’ show was crap. But, the main problem was that the MC had to not only scream but also scream whilst on roller skates and scream stinko jokes like –

“Ladies, our next gorgeous hunk of man is a Jewish butcher’s son from Brooklyn and believe me that meat is all kosher!”
“Girls, this Italian Stallion says his favorite pastime is playing hide the salami.”

But, I was hungry for a bit of salami myself, kosher or otherwise, so I agreed to catch the show. I immediately realized that the women had whipped themselves into a lather before the first man had unzipped his first zipper. And, that lather had nothing to do with what was happening on stage. And, what was happening on stage was surprisingly tame – no full nudity, just a succession of oiled men with fake tans wearing dumb costumes, dancing awkwardly and stripping clumsily. (Imagine the Village People spazzing around in their jocks.)

Women pawing a male stripper — **Women at male strip shows get touchier than Joe Biden at a Girl Scout jamboree.**

Naïve me later learned that the real action happened backstage where desperate women paid for the privilege of blowing the strippers. (In our still coarser age, young ladies don’t bother to retire backstage to get “up close and personal” with their favorite danseurs érotiques.They blow the strippers right on stage in front of their cheering girlfriends.)

Etiquette for the Sexual Degenerate

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

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.

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.

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.

Oxnard Mon Amour

rundown mini trailer home. — **Home! Sweet home!**

While working in the security-guard game, I was living in a mini-trailer – let’s be kind and call it a “trailerette” – the scene of my tryst with the crippled, trainee-janitress Barbie. This trailerette was in the Wagons West Trailer Park right off Route 101 in Oxnard, California. When I say “right off,” I mean I could reach out the window and adjust the rear-view mirrors on passing cars. (It has been said that oxnard is something that comes out of a bull’s nose. I don’t know if that’s true but I can testify that Oxnard, California smells like something that comes out of a bull’s ass.)

Vintage postcard of giant strawberries — **Strawberries bigger than my trailerette.**

Strawberry fields surrounded Oxnard to the horizon. The fruit was grown under long strips of black plastic sheeting so the fields looked as if they had been wrapped in an enormous garbage-bag. But, in a certain light, those garbage bags were beautiful. They shimmered in the sun and radiated heat waves so that, at sunset, Oxnard was a mirage city afloat on a glistening, black-plastic lake.

Wagons West Trailer Park, an island in that lake, was infested with illegal immigrant Mexican families. Wetbacks. Like their Puerto Rican cousins in Brooklyn, they spent their days screaming the Mexican equivalent of “mira, mira,” blasting the Mexican equivalent of Tito Puente music and shoplifting. Wagons West had a swimming pool the size of a toilet bowl so the Mexicans used it as such. All in all, this wasn’t shaping up to be one of the more festive Yuletide seasons of my life. Besides, Christmas and Southern California didn’t go together. It was just plain wrong.

Have Beeper Will Travel

Hospital security guard — This could be me at the start of my graveyard shift
with beeper locked and loaded.

Like most New York actors who think a move West will magically revive their fortunes, I find the trajectory of my L.A. career to be somewhat less than meteoric. In fact, 1981 finds me working as a security guard in Happy Valley Hospital just outside Los Angeles. It sounds like a “funny farm” but it isn’t. You’re thinking of Camarillo State Hospital – the insane asylum that housed Charlie Parker and other jazz-junkies. That’s where Parker wrote his tune Relaxin’ At Camarillo.

Security guard sleeping on the job — This could be me in the *middle* of my graveyard shift
with beeper locked and loaded.

My job at Happy Valley entails walking around in a pretend-cop uniform to reassure people of something or other while carrying a clipboard, jiggling a few doorknobs and reading a few gauges. I have no idea what the fuck I’m reading but I tap the gauges with my pen, nod sagely and pretend to write something on my clipboard. I also have to raise and lower the American flag. This duty is taken seriously by the numb-nut who trains me to be his replacement. He’d been in the National Guard and knows a thing or two about flag raising and flag lowering and especially flag folding – “Now, do it agin and git the triangle-fold tight this time.” He is a Moron First Class.

Betrayal in Brooklyn

Brooklyn Dodgers - Gil Hodges, Johny Podres and Carl Furillo in 1955 — **We loved ’em and they left us**

The history of Brooklyn repeated itself. In 1957, ten years after integrating baseball with Jackie Robinson, the owner of the Dodgers abandoned Brooklyn for L.A. It was a devastating blow to the fans and it took Brooklyn decades to recover. The final straw for the owner was watching a Puerto Rican piss into a Coke bottle and throw it at a player on the field. He suddenly understood why the Whites who had fled Brooklyn for the suburbs no longer wanted to sit in the stands at his ballpark. The cover story for the Dodger’s move to L.A. was a dispute with New York about the location of a new stadium. The real reason was White flight.

Proposed domed stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers. — **There was talk of a domed stadium in downtown Brooklyn years before the Houston Astrodome.**

**Brooklyn’s vibrant, “new demographic” pissed all over the idea of a domed stadium.**

Newspaper front page abut Brooklyn Dodgers move to Los Angeles — **It took Brooklyn decades to regain its confidence and swagger.**

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!**

Daytime in a Nightclub

Crowds outside The Peppermint Lounge — **Suburbanites ready to shake their sacroiliacs**

I spend the clammy days delivering invoices and sample ads to midtown bars, eateries, niteries and the new style of sexy nightclubs called discotheques. Picture this scene straight out of Mike Hammer–

Sunny day. I go into a cave-like club where the chairs are on the tables, the janitor is sweeping up, the bartender is taking stock and a chanteuse is auditioning for the owner. He is seated alone, tie undone, sleeves rolled up, working on a highball and worrying over the receipts.

I live this scene in the world-famousPeppermint Lounge, “the Home of the Twist” – plus the Copacabana, Latin Quarter, Roundtable, Roseland, Arthur, Upstairs at the Downstairs, the Rat Fink Room and, my favorite, the Santa Claus Bar.

Joan Rivers preforming at Upstairs as the Downstairs in New York — **Joan Rivers – the Queen of Clubs**

Vintage ad for Jackie Kannon at The Rat Fink Room, NYC — **I probably delivered this ad**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder-memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: the smiling face of Steeplechase Park I 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