Times Square – Boy Outa Brooklyn

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.

__________________________

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

Bump and Grind

Super-star striptease dancer Tempest Storm — Tempest Storm in her prime.
And, that’s a whole heckuva lotta prime.

“Angel” is another Southern Belle come to Times Square. The strip club MC tells us so when he announces – “Put your hands together and give a big New York welcome to this Sweet Peach from Georgia – Angel.” Enter a very bruised peach with a tubercular cough and emerald green teeth. She might just meet the age requirement for removing her garments in public for the delectation of paying male customers. When she places a small square of rug on the stage and lies down upon it to spread her legs and show us her vaginal cavity, her cough continues unabated. Cough. Anal and vaginal sphincters contract. Relax. Cough. Contract.

So, this is what it’s like to be a gynecologist,think I.

Before you condemn me, hear me out. I haven’t come to this den of debauchery to see Angel or her anal contractions or anyone else and their anal contractions. God as my witness, I am here as a student of theatrical history. To be precise, it is my especial interest in the performance technique of the ecdysiast that has drawn me to see an all-too-rare appearance by the legendary practitioner of that art – Miss Tiffany West. Tiffany is quite rightly the headliner. I am here to see her twirl tasseled pasties in opposite directions on her humongous jugs, do a “bump and grind” to the classic stripper tune Night Train and exit Stage Right. I am neither interested in nor prepared for the opening acts – especially Angel’s opening.

The show comprises the aforementioned “Angel of the Anal Contractions” and a Live Sexxx team – Missy and Major Motion. Missy is a light-skinned, high-buttocked Negress. Major Motion is a sullen, dark-skinned Mandingo who sports a penis the size of my Rocky Colavito model Louisville Slugger. I suspect that Major Motion is his stage name. Missy enters to an anonymous disco vamp. Then the Major enters and then the Major enters Missy. I mean, they proceed to make the “Beast with Two Backs” not five feet from my astonished eyes.

What do they do for an encore?

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

Come and meet those dancing feet!

Peep Show performers in the 1970s on 42nd Street, Times Square, NY — **Our neighbors on 42nd Street**

That’s why in 1974 New York and with hopeful hearts,my acting group dared to move into a rat’s nest flanked by porn shops. The customers of those shops received blowjobs for five bucks in the alley behind our theater. Those blowjobs were administered by Black trannies who resembled New York Giants linebackers dressed in hot pants and halter-tops. Our actresses had it extra-tough getting to and from our new home. They had to maneuver through pickpockets, pill-poppers and pimps while enduring wolf-whistles from Elvis Presley look-a-like diesel-dikes. If the actresses skirted the well-lit but obnoxious 42^nd Street, they were easy prey on the dark and un-policed 41^stand 43^rdStreets.

Black-trannie prostitute in NYC — **All yours for $5**

When we compared travel-tips, we discovered that we had independently stumbled onto the same survival strategy. To avoid being maimed, mugged or murdered, we acted nuts. The primal animal in us instinctively knew that predators didn’t eat sick prey. So, we acted sick. We walked down 42^ndstreet talking to ourselves and to Jesus. We laughed hysterically at everything and at nothing. We cried out to the Mayor and the Martians. We limped. We played retarded. Under serious threat, we had cerebral palsy.

It worked.

Carrie was a year dead by the time we discovered this survival ruse. It might have saved her life.

Times Square Baptism

The classic stripper - Lily Christine aka - "The Cat Girl" — **Sex-education instructor in 1950s Brooklyn**

When we climbed out of the Times Square subway station, I was mesmerized. I’d been to Coney Island plenty, but this was something else again, something electrifying. It was the lights – up and down and all around, lights neon, fluorescent and incandescent, lights all moving, all colors and all ablaze – even in daylight; lights that outshined the sun. The billboards were alive – a gigantic man blew smoke rings while Mister Peanut tipped his hat. I didn’t know it then but I had been rubbing shoulders with Diane Arbus and Bettie Page, both working in that 1956 Times Square world – a world of bustling strangers. A world of men in hats. Women with handbags. A world that smelled of Howard Johnson, Orange Julius, Nedick’s, popcorn and pussy. I was six and I could smell it; six and I could feel it; six and I could taste it. Times Square was a dirty dangerous place. And, I loved it.

Mr. Peanut neon sign in Times Square, New York — **My mentor – Mr. Peanut**

Elvis blasted from the music stores and frigid winds blasted from the air-conditioned theater lobbies. I passed a newsstand and an excited man shouted “Extra!” I passed a doorway and a crazy man shouted “Cocksucker!” I heard the shuffle, scuffle and beat of the footfalls. I heard the horns, hollers and bleats of the cabbies – “Ya got wheels! Use ’em, Mac!” I saw my first “Street Corner Messiah.” He wore a sandwich board and was very worried about God. I was transfixed by him. I wanted to ask him why he was so worried but I was pulled away.

Ripley's Believe It or Not Odditorium in Times Square, New York — **A history lesson in Times Square**

It was the bestest birthday party ever. We saw the Torture Chamber in Ripley’s Believe It or Not“ Odditorium.” Then we visited Hubert’s Museum – a freak show in a 42^nd Street basement. It was even spookier and sexier than Ripley’s! We gaped at Hubert’s Cowboy Giant, midget, flea circus and Congo Witch Doctor. We gawped at Princess Sahloo and her sluggish snake. I determined that I would live in Hubert’s Museum as barker, caretaker and flea-wrangler. I would befriend the Witch Doctor, play pinochle with the midget and milk the snake.

Hubert's Museum and freak show on 42nd street in New York — **Oh, for a time machine!**