Show business memoir – Page 13

The Curse of Christine Keeler

Poster for Hammer horror film - The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) — Classic *monstah pitchah*

The Curse of Frankenstein jump started my interest in all things English, especially English knockers. Puerto Rican girls were sexy but I expected them to be since they wore hot socks and had hair on their cha-chas from birth. English girls were sexy coz they weren’t supposed to be but especially coz they talked good. The fact that a woman could speak like the Queen and fuck like a spic drove me and my friends crazy.

Our obsession reached fever pitch with the Christine Keeler scandal in 1963. We were still sitting on the stoop but were now sitting atop fully descended testicles. We loitered there at night waiting for the next day’s tabloids to be delivered to Rocco’s Candy Store. We smelled the headlines coming over the Brooklyn Bridge then raced each other down the block to get our hands on the photos of Christine and her sidekick Mandy Rice-Davies. These two young women – English women, actually DID IT and didn’t think it was matter for Confession. We punched each other black and blue in debates about which of the pair was sexier. Most of us chose Mandy coz she was a blonde. No lie – no movie or documentary ever came close to capturing the level of interest the Profumo affair held for the pubescent boys of Brooklyn.

Mandy Rice Davies and Christine Keeler — *Doity* English girls who DID IT

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

The Curse of Hammer Horror Honeydews

Yutte Stensgaard in Lust for a Vampire (1971) — **Hammer Horror Honeydews**

In 1957, the year I made my First Communion, the Devil popped up on my shoulder at the movies as I watched the English “monstha pitchah” The Curse of Frankenstein. He jabbed me and whispered, “Pssstt. Hey, kid, check out da bazooms on dat babe sittin’ next ta ya!” I turned my head and saw a teenage honey “making out” with her pimply boyfriend. He was rounding Second Base and heading for Third. She was squirming around inside a tight, low-cut blouse. She had long black hair all the way down her back. None on top of her head. Just all the way down her back. (Sorry – Brooklyn joke. I couldn’t resist.) Her lush black ringlets cascaded to her shoulders. She had gold hoop earrings and insolent, red lips. She might easily have been Puerto Rican. And, damn, I’d left the mozzarella at home! This torrid teen may have been spoken for but thanks to her heaving-honeydews and the heaving-Hammer-honeydews on the screen, I was one randy seven-year-old packing a pocket-rocket.

Possibly Lysette Anthony in Hammer horror film — **Another near occasion of *sinematic* sin.**

Bendover in Wendover

Wendover, Nevada aka Bendover. — **Beautiful downtown, Wendover aka Bendover, Nevada**

By 1984, thanks to AIDS, the no-holds-barred striptease and live-sex shows of the ’70s are gone. I get a primer on the new rules in a desert dump called Wendover, Nevada. You’ll find it a few desolate hours West of Salt Lake City, Utah across the Bonneville Salt Flats. I’m acting in a play in Salt Lake and drive over one night to lose some money.

Wendover, aka Bendover, consists of three crappy casinos smack dab in the middle of the Devil’s rectum. The card dealers don’t even bother to shave. And, they are women! And, they are pimps!

“What the fuck are ya doin’ down here playin’ poker? Go spend your money upstairs. We got some good-lookin’ ladies up there. Anything you want, they’ll do it. Through that door. Mention my name, Cookie.”

I could strike a match on Cookie’s beard.

Tropic of Éclair

Parisian street walkers — **Parisian “Ladies of the Evening” and afternoon and morning and…**

1984. I’m in Paris for the first time and having coffee with an American ex-pat lawyer. I timidly begin to ask him if he knows how…

“Stop,” he says, pulling out his yellow legal pad. “You wanna know how to approach a French prostitute. You guys are all the same. Don’t tell me, you read Henry Miller.”

“Uh, yes, but I not only read him, I feel a deep and abiding…”

“Yeah, right, so here’s what you do…”

And, he writes down the appropriate phrases that will signal to a “working girl” that I’m not a diaper-wearing, ax-murderer. Great. With legal paper folded in my pocket, I set off for the Rue St. Denis. It’s where the girls hang out and I do mean, “hang out.” They have so few clothes on there’s nothin’ left to hang in. They drift about the Rue lounging in doorways and smoking in that French way that makes all other smokers look like sissies. If you can’t find what you want on the Rue St. Denis you must be blind. In fact, I see a blind hooker with her guide dog. Who knows? Maybe Rover turns tricks, too. The Rue is the set of Irma La Douce in Technicolor and Smell-O-Vision – more kinds of prostitutes than Heinz has beans. Black. White. Yellow. Red. Fat. Skinny. Short. Tall. Nurse. Nanny. Housewife. Harlot. Granny. Girl Scout. Honest to God, I see a Granny-Girl Scout in handcuffs! The variety makes me dizzy. The ambiance scares the merde out of me.

Sex workers in Paris — **Girls trying to earn an honest crust.**

Can I get a witness?

Street preacher with "end of the world" sign. — **A Jehovah’s Witness sitting down on the job.**

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.

Jack Chick comic book. — **A Christian message of love and forgiveness.**

Boy Outa Brooklyn a murder memoir by Jack Antonio
Image: The smiling face of Steeplechase 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

Doctor Jesus

Televangelist and Christian healer, Morris Cerrullo. — **Danny DeVito’s evil twin.**

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.

Star of stage and screen Danny DeVito. — **Morris Cerrullo’s evil twin.**

I Escaped the Luciferian Lipstick-Lesbo of London

Maila Nurmi aka Vampira — **Vampira in full vampiric flow**

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 great horror movie villain George Zucco. — **George Zucco in full mesmeric flow**

Confessions of a Dianetics Drop-out

L. Ron Hubbard demonstrates his invention the E-Meter. — **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.

Stoop of Horror

Vintage horror comic book cover as read on the stoops of Brooklyn. — **Classic stoop reading material**

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.

Attack of the Killer Dwarf

Souvenir postcard from Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn. — 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.

Shoot-the-chute at Steeplechase Park in Coney Island, Brooklyn

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.

I get the fuck outathere.