Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (42 page)

Gina may have once married The Great Pornographer, but Jordan didn’t pick his dad.

“I was the greatest father, took him all over, filled him with love,” says Goldstein, nearing tears. “I gave up my twenty-five-year friendship with Hefner ‘cause he would not let Jordan come to movie night at the [Playboy] Mansion. On the radio I’ve mentioned my son graduated Harvard Law School and how proud I was. I said, Jordan, if I were a surgeon, an entrepreneur, if I worked for Enron, you wouldn’t worry about me being proud of you. I
kvell
at your success. Most people graduate college and law school owing hundreds of thousands of dollars. You have $300,000 in the bank. I spent $700,000 on Georgetown, on your tutoring, on Horace Mann School in the Bronx. Aren’t I entitled to be proud? I went to Georgetown, I met the president, Father Donovan. We shared Cuban cigars. I always acted appropriate for the moment. I’m not Larry Flynt. It’s in my will, Jordan can never enter my business, my world.”

Goldstein kept
Screw
out of Jordan’s reach when he was a small child. I once saw Al hide a wayward copy of
Playboy
on the banister at his 61st Street townhouse when Jordan was a toddler. Al shows a photo of himself, the picture of propriety with Harvard officials and Jordan. The education was paid for through a million tricks by prostitutes who advertise in
Screw.

“I am so proud that he would travel the high road. The road I traveled, people are always surprised I could string together a sentence. We’re in the porno world, we’re never taken seriously. But his turning on me, wishing me dead... I thought Gina was responsible for that, that’s why I called her a cunt.”

A loud, interruptive voice cuts through Goldstein’s campfire story. Enter Professor Irwin Cory. The geriatric comedian was a master of malapropism and double talk. An old Lefty, he joins the meeting, fuming about being rejected by the Communist Party in 1941. He curses “those
rats”
Burl Ives, Karl Maiden and Elia Kazan, who squealed to the House Committee on Un-American Activities. “Indians never went to war at the command of captains or kings,” intones Corey. “There isn’t the word war in their vocabulary, nor the word warrior, or brave or chief or squaw, which is a vulgar expression. It means cunt. The Idaho Indians wanted that word taken out of any place that’s named like Squaw Valley—change it to Cunt Valley.”

“You know why I love you, Irwin?” says Goldstein. “You make me look sane. Will you come to court as a character witness?”

“Oh, yeah, I’ll be there,” says Corey, composing himself. “I’m a character that cannot be improved upon.”

“Good,” says Goldstein. “Your fucking courage to talk about the Vietnam War that got you banned from Johnny Carson and Letterman is why I will always love you.”

Corey’s voice rises to an abrasive scream, oblivious to all in the room, as he rails against the Catholic Church owning Yankee Stadium.

“Irwin Corey, you are a fuckin’ hero,” interrupts Al, trying to shut him up. “Will you absorb the praise and leave? You can’t.”

Goldstein heads to his private office while Corey lectures out of control to the
Screw
art department. “He’s too disruptive, I can’t handle him.” There’s only one other man as crazy as Corey—Al “Grandpa Munster” Lewis. “When they’re together I run out of the room,” says Al.

A man of the people, Goldstein’s New York taxi cab hack license is posted on his office wall. He’s kept it up to date since the ’60s. Now and then, Goldstein claims, he hits the streets behind the wheel of a cab when he feels a need to stay down to earth. Plato’s Retreat founder Larry Levinson ended up driving one, and so have a few male porn stars past their prime.

Though he claims he’s just an old Jew who smokes cigars, he’s got girls waiting in every city. Recent snapshots on the wall attest to this. He shares his primary residence in Florida with B-movie scream queen Linnea Quigley. An eleven-foot hand sculpture in the backyard gives the finger to passing boats on the intracoastal waterway there. In Amsterdam, there’s “Happy Hooker” Xaviera Hollander (“She’s too old to do much but eat gefilte fish and take drugs with me”). In L.A., there’s Katherine, an alumnus of “Hollywood Madam” Heidi Fleiss. He’s dated her for six years, “though I know she’s still gonna hook.” Here at the office, he’s having an affair with a twenty-seven-year-old knockout East Indian chick.

But the shocking news is that his number one bitch has become Jean-Marc—who suddenly appears through a swinging trap window in the wall by Goldstein’s desk—right there in case of trouble. The Frenchman is Goldstein’s bodyguard, flunkie... and Gal Friday. Jean-Marc’s loyalty to Al has nothing to do with money. Al has proclaimed himself bisexual, getting it on with the Frenchman. He prefers him to some women.

“My last wife, Patty, got a million,” says Goldstein. “I have no money. I’m living on Social Security.” Al tried to play Pygmalion to fourth wife Patty, “the Irish cleaning lady.” She kept right on working even after marriage. Al’s limousine took her to cleaning jobs, though the limo cost $40 an hour while she was making $8.

Goldstein’s now down to one elderly, part-time Jewish lady at the reception desk. Before he ever dreamed he would someday rely on Social Security, he employed four full-time secretaries. One for business appointments, one to take abusive dictation, and two to fill out daily mail-order catalog whims. He circled electronic
chotchkas
by the hundred—VCRs, CD players, model trains, calculators, solar-powered cigar lighters. His gold Mickey Mouse watch was studded with diamonds. A storage room at
Screw’s
14th Street headquarters was filled to capacity. His office still contains more gadgets than a gift shop. Only young girlfriends use the new $6,000 iPod at his desk. “I don’t even know how to use a computer,” he says. “I don’t wanna learn at my age, my mind is filled.”

Goldstein once published a magazine called
Gadget,
dedicated to his obsession with them (the party he was to throw at the
U.S.S. Intrepid
was for
Gadget’s
anniversary). For his sudden obsession with cigars, he created the first publication solely devoted to the subject. In 1981, he flew five members of the
Screw
staff down to Havana with him. The Ugly American personified, Al inquired toward every Cuban what he could buy or take. For the return trip, he stuffed each staffer’s suitcase with contraband cigars. After they squeaked through customs, Goldstein rifled through staffers’ luggage, scattering clothes at the baggage claim as he pulled out his precious cigars.

His humidor filled to capacity, Goldstein stuffed cigars into every crevice of his wine cellar. One weekend a white fungus attacked all of his Havanas. In a panic, he rushed in two specialists from Dunhill’s, wondering whether he should post an armed guard at the humidor. At editorial meetings, Goldstein discussed the logistics of sending us—his editorial staff—back to Cuba in a dinghy to smuggle another 10,000 Havanas. It would be cheaper than hiring mercenaries. Goldstein would await us at the Miami docks.

Goldstein has declared all of his noble ventures outside of
Screw
—
Gadget, Cigar, National Screw, Screw West, Sex Sense, Bitch, Gay, Death
and
Smut
—to be publishing failures. Only
Screw
has prospered, not having missed a week since 1968. Nearing 1,800 issues, Goldstein now believes the whole operation is in jeopardy of folding. He can’t meet the payroll for the first time, can’t even buy Deer Park for the water coolers, which are dried out like a desert. He’s given up space in the new offices on 24th Street.

“It’s my fault,” admits Goldstein, “I travel too much. I deserve everything I got, I didn’t manage the company. Right now I’m doing everything I can to keep from going out of business. If I go, nobody else is gonna be able to do it. It would just die.”

There is no contingency plan if Al dies. One idea is to pretend he’s alive, a Colonel Sanders with his cock out. Or sell his DNA like Ted Williams. Goldstein’s good friend Bob Guccione might have been interested in saving
Screw,
but he has throat cancer and his own magazine is sinking. There was once talk of Larry Flynt buying it. “But even Larry doesn’t have the insanity needed to helm
Screw,”
says Goldstein. “You need someone who’s filled with hatred. It’s not driven by love.”

Astro News in Brooklyn reports
Screw
is now selling only two copies each on 600 newsstands in New York. “That’s not possible,” says Goldstein. The circulation, at one time over 40,000, has now fallen to 5,000. Robert “DiBe” DiBernardo, the suave Gambino Family porn capo and Teamster liaison, was
Screw’s
longtime protector. Back in the day, nobody could muscle Goldstein. Then DiBe disappeared in 1986. Ten years later Sammy “The Bull” Gravano disclosed in his biography,
Underboss,
that his crew aced DiBe by order of John Gotti.

Mayor Giuliani closed all the whorehouses, once the bulk of
Screw’s
backpage ads. Free distribution of the
Village Voice
and
New York Press,
which began running the same ads once exclusive to
Screw,
cut deeply into circulation. And
Screw,
once piled high alongside the
New York Post
throughout the city, is now relegated to the back of the newsstand, due to Astro News.

But John Gotti has recently died in prison, and his son and his brother are in jail. “So now I’m making my move with a new distributor,” Goldstein declares. “There’s still the name
Screw
and the name Al Goldstein. I could go out of business quietly, or go fighting. So I made it clear I’m taking over distribution. This coming week is the first issue I take over. Another Family in Baltimore said they’d like to take over distribution. Astro News made it clear to me this can’t happen, I’d be killed. I told Rick to go die. Rick left a message on my machine saying he’ll destroy me and
Screw.
Rick basically wants to put
Screw
out of business and replace it with other papers he distributes.”

The new distributor just paid twenty-five grand to take over distribution, and posted Al’s $25,000 bail—an excellent show of faith. They got him a new apartment in Manhattan. The magazine will take on a glossy cover, rise to $3.95, run a minimum 150 fuck photos per issue, and give a hefty new cut to each newsstand.

“If I’m found dead, beaten up, crippled or maimed,” Goldstein tells the detective at his side, “you go to Rick at Astro News. He’s behind it.”

Having Cops as friends doesn’t hurt. In the ’70s and ’80s, Al’s full-time bodyguard was a former NYPD vice squad cop who once busted hookers, as well as news dealers that sold
Screw
in the ’60s. If some rookie tried to ticket Al’s limo while idling in a No Parking zone, Flynn would shove his bearded face into their squad car and give them hell. Whenever the big debonair Irishman accompanied Al to 42nd Street, the black streetwalkers had a field day. “Hey John Flynn, whatcha doin’ John Flynn? You sho’ is hot, John Flynn. Suck yo’ dick, Officer Flynn?”

After years of faithful service to Milky Way Productions, the mother company of Goldstein’s empire, John Flynn walked out of the limo to make a phone call. He left the keys inside. When he returned, the limo was gone. Goldstein gave him two weeks to find the car, or retire. The car was never found.

“If this experiment with
Screw
fails,” says Goldstein, “I’m gonna try to kill myself in Pennsylvania. You don’t wanna kill yourself in New York, L.A., Chicago or Florida. I have a girlfriend, she’s thirty, a great cocksucker. She went to a nuthouse in Pennsylvania. She gets a dental plan, health insurance and $800 a month support there.

“But I can’t kill myself because Jordan owns a $1.2-million insurance policy on me. I got it as a gift to him when he graduated Georgetown. I don’t want him to have the joy of cashing in the policy.”

Al always said they’d have to fill up Yankee Stadium with suspects if he were killed. But he hasn’t been. Not yet. He’s outlived the anti-porn crusaders, the “evil puritans who loathe pleasure and want to deny it to everybody else,” as he’s described them.

“I’m not going to be everyone’s fucking piece of shit, I’m not everyone’s buttboy. I believe in the next year I’ll either die in the Tombs or Riker’s, where they said I’d leave in a pine box, or by an assassin’s bullet.”

To all the D.A.’s and judges, his family that turned against him, the Mafia threats and the system that killed Lenny Bruce, Al says: “I fuck you all. I dare you to try and stop me. You may kill me, but I won’t go quietly.”

And so The Great One ends his campfire discourse to enter the next room, where the new distributors await. Serious muscle from out of town. Men he does not want anyone at the office to meet. If it is to be his last weekend on earth, he will not go quietly.

(Screw
ceased publication as such in October 2003, after thirty-five years
.)

AFTERWORD

I Gave My Regards
To Broadway

Grand Luncheonette was condemned in 1997. This humble hot-grease frankfurter counter with a bullet-hole ridden window was the last 42nd Street storefront to close. You can still see it in movies like
Taxi Driver.
Metal gates shuttered every entrance on the Deuce. Grand’s owner, grilling hot dogs there for fifty-eight years, told reporters, “The oddest thing is when people come here to ask: ‘Where’s Times Square?’”

It may be an urban theme park fit for a eunuch, but Times Square is still astonishing. My six-year-old daughter, with little prompting from me, is awestruck. On every trip from Texas, she sits transfixed on my shoulders as we hit the old stomping grounds. She doesn’t feel nostalgia for bygone Playland arcades, nor does she mourn the Melody Burlesk. Toys ‘R Us, Hello Kitty and
The Lion King
suffice.

The last few porn stores on the Deuce—that’s 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues—were evicted in 1996. This block, where the dirtiest sex known to man was depicted, was finally castrated. “The symbolism cannot be underestimated,” said the president of the Times Square Business Improvement District, to the
Times.
“This sea change marks the end of a long, sad chapter.”