Tales of Times Square: Expanded Edition (5 page)

In a few minutes she will make a lonely retreat to her hotel room. She’ll remove her sparkles in the bathtub, same as every night on the road, then receive a blabbering phone call from an agent, an old-timer who never gets her any work. She does it all herself.

An old titmouse of a man stands behind the Polaroids, nibbling all his fingernails. “This is my crazy face,” says Raven, sticking out her tongue and crossing her eyes. The little gent buckles into a spasm of admiring laughter, his eyes all aglaze. You could barely hear him rasp, under his breath... “What a dame!”

Uncle Lou’s Scrapbook

Lou Amber bought his photo album on sale at Woolworth’s a few years ago to accommodate some Polaroids. The album now holds over seventy snapshots and glossies, all signed with lipstick kisses and true love. A limo driver by day, Lou is a regular old duke at the Melody Burlesk—one of their up-and-coming resident uncles, a young pup of fifty-one. He’s a sad-eyed fan of the porn starlets and a soft-spoken barroom confidant to the Mardi Gras gals. Raven De La Croix, whom he greets in a stretch limousine at the airport whenever she plays New York, is the only stripper he drives for free. Some of the other chauffeurs might mistake her for Lou’s girlfriend, but Lou considers himself “part of her family.” He’s not looking to show off, and keeps the photo album as a private shrine to porn queens who’ve come to think of him affectionately as “Uncle Lou.” And he really does want merely to
uncle
the girls, although, “If I’m attracted to one, and she wants to make the big scene with me, and she’s a consenting adult—I won’t turn her down.”

The first entry in Lou’s scrapbook is Raven’s poster of
The Lost Empire
. Publicity stills and Polaroids from each of her New York engagements show her arm in arm with a smiling Uncle Lou outside Bernard’s and in the Melody lobby. They age together. Polaroids of Hyapatia Lee occupy the next two pages, the Indian squaw leaning fully against her admirer at the opening of
The Young Like It Hot
, her New York debut. “The first time I was just a paying customer who came in and posed for a five-dollar shot,” says Lou. “She’s like a little Raven.”

“Thanks for cumming,” reads Lee’s inscription on the top photo.

“I came back to the theater a second time and brought her a little bottle of perfume shaped like the Eiffel Tower. Then I came back a third time, when she stripped at Show World, and she remembered me from the perfume.” Pictures from his third visit show a stark naked Hyapatia Lee with her tongue jammed down Uncle Lou’s throat and her hand upon his crotch. Another shot has Uncle Lou returning the gesture, copping a generous helping of boob and vage. “I’ll always remember my favorite New Yorker,” says Lee’s third inscription. Known for quenching a flaming dildo between her legs, Lee couldn’t perform the gimmick due to strict Fire Department regulations at Show World.

On the next page comes Marilyn Chambers’ glossy from the opening of
Insatiable,
inscribed “Lou—Love and all my hot, wet licks.” Then comes Seka, naked on Lou’s lap at the Melody, and being carried off, Clark Gable style. Uncle Lou raises the plastic covering from the page. “The advantage of this book is that you can lift ‘em out and put ‘em back. People can put their fingers on ‘em and not spoil the picture.” The back of Seka’s snapshot, dated 2-2-80, when she set the all-time attendance record for the Melody, says “Much love and happiness.” At that time porn queens charged $3 a Polaroid; within four years they’ve risen to $5, sometimes $7.

Lou acquired a glossy of Constance Money that she emblazoned with a slutty lipstick smack, during the opening of
A Taste of Money
. Kelly Nichols, who Lou chauffeured to the 1983 Erotic Film Awards, writes “Love and lust to a fan who cares” on her lofty publicity still. “It’s very hard to meet these girls for the first time when you’re a spectator,” says Lou. The next nude portrait is a star who lets no man paw her for photos: “To Lou—Love, Annette Haven. 5-30-82.”

“She was in the lobby of the Pussycat when High School Memories opened. I stopped over a few times and spoke with her. She’s very intelligent and personable. I understand she went to college and excelled in physics. It was a little hard to chat with five guys surrounding her at once, so I sent a letter. If I express my sentiments through a personal note, they sometimes respond.” Untouchable Annette sent Lou a solicitation for her newsletter, which he ordered for “only ten dollars.” Two or three issues came out. She also sent the humorless black-and-white study of herself in his album. Haven’s penmanship is the finest in the scrapbook.

“You’re a great lover,” says Juliet Anderson’s inscription to the balding Lou.

“But we never made the big scene,” he confesses. “Maybe they get vibes that you’d be a great lover, so they put it down.” The only lecherous Uncle Lou face is the shot in which he’s cupping Annie Sprinkle’s bazooms. “Annie encourages that type of behavior,” says modest Lou of the golden shower poetess, whose autograph appears in Day-Glo pink.

“They’re basically good kids, they just come from a bad situation,” Uncle Lou says of these nieces. “The difference between me and some of the other guys is, I don’t look at them for what they are, but for what they can be. People fall into three categories: those that make things happen, those that watch things happen, and those that wonder, ‘What happened?’ The girls in the middle category that can get to the first category are the ones I get involved with, the ones with potential. In a symbolic sense, in the way pimps turn girls out, I try to turn them in.”

In the middle of his scrapbook is a coquettish Veronica Hart from her first Show World gig, in the summer of 1981. The newly-wed-mother-to-be hams it up, legs in the air, boobs out, and tongue in Lou’s mouth. The Polaroid concession was handled by her teenage brother. Next comes the baton-twirling face of Desiree Cousteau, whose nay-nays are uncle-handled by then-mustachioed Lou at the Melody. The five Polaroids were taken by her husband,
Mr.
Desiree Cousteau. “I understand she’s retired from films, going to school in Atlanta,” Lou narrates.

“Most guys have this image of porno stars, they see the glitter, costumes, and makeup, they think they’re untouchable. After you get to know ‘em, you don’t look at ‘em as sex images, you relate to ‘em as everyday people—you get to the nitty-gritty of their everyday problems. Many of these girls never got asked to the senior prom.”

The last shot in the book is an out-of-focus though clearly nervous and fully clothed Kandi Barbour at her first Melody appearance. It is also Lou’s earliest snapshot.

“Most of the porn stars I’ve gotten to know had a problem with their fathers or stepfathers. In some cases sexual, in some a communication or emotional problem where they weren’t able to relate normally. Most of these girls have been innocent victims of adversity, broken by a fate beyond their control. This brings back my childhood. I lost my parents at an early age, and I grew up in an orphanage from the age of eight to eighteen. A good orphanage, up in Yonkers. We, as young kids, were also innocent victims of adversity. Fortunately, we had people that cared about us, that raised funds and were able to help us establish self-esteem and a positive outlook. Each of the fellas that stayed through high school was instilled with some of the executive director’s qualities. He made each boy feel like a son. To me, it’s a natural continuity of the principles he gave us. These girls have been either abused, molested, or put down at an early age. Consequently, it’s hard for them to get out of that syndrome. Perhaps, in some way, I trigger a positive response.

“I don’t come on in a sexual way, I don’t force myself on anybody, I lay back. They can let their hair down and not be under any pressure. If a girl wants to do something with me, she does it ‘cause she wants to, not because she’s obligated.”

And how often does this happen, where Uncle Lou becomes a daddy-o?

“Let me put it this way: A gentleman never tells.”

Season’s Greetings from Long Jean Silver

During the break between her eight and eleven o’clock performances at the Avon 7, I took Long Jean Silver to Bernard’s for a couple of cheeseburgers and stiff drinks. The gig coincided with 1982’s first serious snowfall, and a wholesome, Christmas spirit had fallen upon 48th Street, in the upper Square. A horse and buggy trotted by the Pussycat Cinema, outside which jolly pedestrians were molding snowballs. Long Jean Silver didn’t go for it.

“I hate this shit,” she said, clutching my arm.

“A little tighter,” I suggested, taking advantage and further remarking that it felt like she was holding
me
up.

“Does it really feel that way?” she whispered, steering us out into traffic as the light changed to green.

Long Jean Silver probably never got to frolic in the snow, skate, or make snowmen when she was a little girl, which wasn’t all that long ago. Now, at Bernard’s when she removes her new coat—made from “about ten foxes”—she’s frightfully gorgeous and I’m tempted to choke on my Adam’s apple. She says she needs to join a health spa, tone up her ass and belly. Claims she never exercises and eats like a pig, even though she’s in smashing condition. She’s got fluffy dirty-blond hair and a majorette face that once earned her extra tips from tricks who thought she was a nice girl and should give up hooking.

Doing four shows a day for a week at the Avon 7 is tiring. The shows she likes, but the three-hour intervals bore her silly: “I wish they’d let me work Mardi Gras at the Melody in between.” Mostly, though, she just wishes she could get a new apartment, lie around with her dog, watch TV, fuck—things of that nature. She has to do this porn stuff to make money, and frankly, she hates it.

For the time being, nevertheless, Jeanie says she’d like to drop the “Long” from her title—to make a clean break, I assume, from namesake Long John Silver, the peg-legged pirate. Likewise, she’ll try to play down the stump, which first brought her fame as a special
Cheri
magazine centerfold five years ago.

“Please don’t show any pictures of it. I don’t want that as my image anymore.... Well, maybe just one.”

Do booking agents stipulate that she flash the leg?

“No. I still like to freak people out. But I only do it for a minute onstage, at the end.”

Jeanie Silver was raised on an Arizona air force base, and in small, dry towns across that state. Her stepdad is a colonel in the armed forces. She tells me he builds missiles.

“Nuclear ones?”

“Yeah. He may get a job at the Pentagon, in which case I’ll quit porn. I don’t wanna get kidnapped.” The lore of Jean’s early years, in a nutshell, goes something like this: She was born with a missing fibula, so doctors amputated the bottom of her leg. Coming home from her twelfth birthday party, she was raped and beaten by five blacks who jumped her in the park. Only one balked when he saw the leg. She learned to walk and dance quite normally on an artificial attachment, even enough to become a professional house burglar. She entered reform school at fifteen, came out a pross, studied child psychology and hitchhiked like mad until ending up happily ever after as a “porn star” in New York.

She pushes a half-eaten cheeseburger aside and starts pouring freshly melted wax from Bernard’s candles on her hands. As it hardens, she becomes entranced by the sensation, pouring even more into her hands. Several gals from the Melody Burlesk stop by the table to inquire how she’s doing “around the block.”

“It sucks,” says Jeanie, without looking up or bidding them farewell as they pat her on the back and leave. “All right, so I’m strange,” she says, looking up at me lopsidedly, breaking a long silence. Then she retreats back to the wax, molding something with quiet determination. She has a glazed look, like a beautiful blond disturbed child. She’s molding a snowman, a one-armed fellow.

The Avon 7 is packed for the late show, rows of horny heads watching
Mistress Electra
, a new film starring the “Unforgiving” Long Jean Silver. The dressing room is a long walk from the stage and it’s falling apart. The pink paint is peeling, there are gashes in the walls, and stacks of marquee letters are stored to one side. A sign is posted for the benefit of the “Live Love Teams”:
ALL TEAMS: PLEASE
!!
KEEP THIS AREA CLEAN. USE THE GARBAGE CANS
. DON’T BE A PIG.

“This gets my vote for worst dressing room,” says Jeanie.

The object of her feigned aggression on tonight’s program is one David Christopher, Submissive. The theater rented him from Mistress Candice for the week.

“I don’t pay for slaves,” Jeanie explains.

David is fiddling with his shackles on the bench and assures Jean that he killed some more cockroaches, not to worry. It wasn’t easy, considering his own cockroach-like position in life as a pro submissive. But then, he assures me he’s appeared in over a hundred regular porn flicks, and remains baffled as to why he hasn’t reached star status.

“What you’ll see tonight isn’t hardcore S&M. I’m into
sensual dominance.
Worshiping. Not receiving pain. Have you ever seen Jeanie as a dominant? She’s awfully good.”

“This isn’t my real gig,” says Jeanie. “Next week I’m going to Rhode Island and Pittsburgh to just strip.”

I suggest what she does in little theaters like this around the country is a continuation of American vaudeville, but Jeanie’s built-in shit-detector won’t buy it. David, however, does.

“Long Jean is the first major porn star that the Avon has ever booked,” he asserts. “I may have done over a hundred films myself, but they haven’t caught on to me yet.... Have you ever seen the movie
Long Jean Silver?
” he asks. “It’s a classic!”

Haven’t seen it, I say.

“You’re lucky,” says naked Jeanie, putting on leg warmers. “I hated it.”

I ask which, if any, of her films she likes.

“None of them. They all suck... except maybe
House of Sin
. I usually hate working, but I liked
House of Sin
because all I had to do was
watch
sex—and get head from Honey Stevens.”