World War Two – Page 3 – Boy Outa Brooklyn

Radio Free India

Don and I were political junkies – he far Left, me far Right. He loved sparring with me and I loved being told that I was the only 19-year-old he’d ever met who could quote Calvin Coolidge. Since Don had worked as a newsman in Washington and New York, he was full of “what really happened” stories of major historical events. And, since he was gay, he gave me the lowdown on which celebrities and politicians of yesteryear had been on the downlow. He also clued me to the fact that homosexuality was endemic in the worlds of espionage and intelligence.

President Calvin Coolidge — **Calvin Coolidge – the greatest American President you never heard of**

Don was the annoying type who did The New York Times crossword puzzle in ink. No mistakes. He was a whizz at all word games. No surprise that during World War Two, he worked in the cryptography unit of the US Army. But, he didn’t spend much time code breaking. Turns out, Don could do a brilliant imitation of President Roosevelt that Army intelligence exploited.

FDR making a radio address — **FDR or Don? You decide.**

India was on the fence in World War Two because it wanted independence from the British Empire. It’s a little-known fact that a sizable Indian army fought for the Axis against Britain. But, the Indian people loved FDR. So, every day, Don read Allied propaganda to India over the radio doing his best impersonation of FDR. He never said that he was FDR but he sure sounded like him. The hope was that giving the Indians a daily dose of FDR’s smarmy, fireside-chat charm could turn the tide in the Allies’ favor. Even Don didn’t know if or how much this trick worked.

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

I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

The drag-artist, Charles Pierce as Mae West — **The comic-genius, Charles Pierce as Mae West**

DIVERTIMENTO ON DRAG

Allow me to expound on the subject of men performing in women’s clothing, aka Drag. More specifically, I wish to discuss the surprising and surprisingly potent erotic effect that Drag exerts on the female of the species. I am aware that some women dispute this fact but I can do no more than honestly recount my experiences as a female impersonator. So there.

In South Pacific, I played a World War Two sailor who entertains the troops by wearing a hula skirt, a bra fashioned out of two coconut halves and a mop for a wig. Not a sexy outfit. Or, so I thought until I got it on. It drove the women crazy. The chorus girls slinked up to me and whispered words in my ear that would have made a real sailor blush. The spinsterish theater secretaries were the worst. They cornered me and fondled my coconuts while hissing about what they were going to do to my tits and then to me. But, as soon as my coconuts came off, the erotic spell was broken. No coconuts = No dice.

Two coconuts — **Naked breasts… er, I mean, coconuts. Oh, hell, even I’m confused!**

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.**

Thirty Seconds Over Brooklyn

Spencer Tracy and Robert Mitchum in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo — The men of the stoop in their dreams.
(Movie poster for Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo)

Many of the stoop sages are veterans of World War Two. Joe Pinto lost an arm on Guadalcanal but still holds down two jobs. And, veterans or not, everyone on the stoop agrees that the Allies should have unleashed General George Patton. At the end of the war, Patton wanted to go clear across the steppes of Russia and clean out those commie creeps once and for all. But, Truman wouldn’t let him.

“That’s why they killed him,” grunts Joe Pinto while crushing a beer can with his one remaining hand. “You think Ike wasn’t in on it? Jeep accident my ass.”

Let’s say it’s another soft, summer night in 1955. Only lightning bugs and burning cigarettes illuminate the faces on the stoop as they agree, again – “We should have unleashed Patton.” Later, only flicker from TV screens illuminate their faces as they sit on their sofas watching Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. Again. And, sipping a beer, they murmur, again – “We should have unleashed Patton.” Their wives sipping beside them nod in agreement.

Unleash Patton!!!

General George S. Patton
“Patron Saint of the Stoop”

Between race riots and stoop jokes I am warned, “Kid, in your lifetime the mira-miras and jigs are gonna overrun America.” Those words rattle the core of my Brooklyn being. They make me ascared because I know that the men of the stoop are not only cops and cabbies and garbagemen. They are prophets. They are Jeremiahs. So, when the Masters talk, I listen. And, when they lower their voices to discuss anything doity, I pretend to be too busy gazing into Green-Wood Cemetery to listen. But, I listen. Extra hard.

The over-arching theme of their colloquies is the incontrovertible fact that Brooklyn and the world are well and truly fucked. The rot set in with World War Two. Joe McCarthy was right. We’d been betrayed by those Jews – the Rosenbergs, that fairy – Alger Hiss and those Jewish fairies in Hollywood. We’d fought on the wrong side in the war. Except for fightin’ the Japs. Those slant-eyed sneaks had it comin’.

“Kid, do you know those Jap bastards stuck a thin, glass tube up a soldier’s prick? Then they smashed down on his prick with a hammer. Thousands of glass shards got embedded in his dick. Think about it. The poor son of a bitch survived but whenever he takes a piss, two guys have to hold him.”