How to Talk Dirty and Influence People Page 8

  In a moment my thoughts were interrupted by a beautiful “nun,” complete in her habit, white starched headpiece, cross around her neck, gold wedding band and all. I was so excited that I offered her a 2000-franc tip if she would just sit and talk to me in her broken English; that was a twist—a nun confessing to me. I was fascinated with her description of the operation. Some of her stories made my hair stand on end. But she really threw me into a laughing fit when she told me that a large percentage of her customers were priests. It’s true that my philosophy is antiorganized religion but I am not making this up.

  She told me that she’d had a few rabbis, too.

  3. The Nursery. This was a sunny little room with small furniture, and an actual crib, with animal pictures and Mother Goose characters painted on the walls. There were all sorts of toys, a rocking horse, a music box, and lots of dolls. The girl was dressed in a little starched white organdy dress, and she acted as if she were no more than 12 years old. One of the musicians, who was her fiancé, told me later that she made more money than all the other girls put together. Especially in tips from men who got gratification from ripping the clothes off her, literally tearing her outer and undergarments to shreds. Of course it put a lot of physical strain on her because most of these men demanded that she struggle, for they desired not the sexual act so much as the illusion that they were violating her.

  4. The Torture Chamber. Again, macabre though I be, I am not making this up. If this were a production of the Grand Guignol it would have in the program, “Sets and costumes by the Marquis de Sade.” The walls were blood red and adorned with whips and instruments of torture of all descriptions. There were pictures of men and women in every conceivable pose of suffering and debasement. A record played the Danse Macabre. When the girl entered, made up in a satanic manner, wearing a long black Dracula cape, I really shuddered. She bolted the door. She meant business! How could I tell her I was only window-shopping?

  She took off the cape purposefully. Underneath she wore only brief black panties and a push-’em-up bra, arm-length leather gloves, and what looked like hip-length leather-laced stockings with spike heels that were easily six-inches high. She walked toward me and menaced me with a riding crop, raised it over her head and screamed something in French, baring her sharp white teeth. Just as in nearly every other delicate situation in my life, I began to laugh. She got quite insulted and threw me out.

  I had laughed myself right out of a beating.

  What do you suppose would happen to a nonconformist in an American cathouse?

  Chapter Ten

  When I talk on the stage, people often have the impression that I make up things as I go along. This isn’t true. I know a lot of things I want to say; I’m just not sure exactly when I will say them. This process of allowing one subject spontaneously to associate itself with another is equivalent to James Joyce’s stream of consciousness.

  I think one develops a style like that from talking to oneself. I don’t actually talk to myself out loud—“Hello, Lenny, how are you today?”—rather, it’s a form of thinking. And out at sea you have a lot of time to think. All day and all night I would think about all kinds of things.

  Sometimes I would talk out loud up on the bow, where tons of water actually bend the shield plate. You would never figure water to be so hard that it could bend steel, but I’ve seen it happen.

  In the spring, however, the Atlantic Ocean is very pleasant, and the trip isn’t so bad. The first land you sight is a thrilling experience. I must have played Columbus hundreds of times. It was really fun, standing those bow watches all alone.

  I always felt that the Azores were going to sink, because on the map they’re just a bunch of little dots. And everything that’s on the Azores is shipped in. There was even a Turkish seaman who had gotten an attack of appendicitis on board his ship, and they had let him off at the Azores, where we picked him up.

  He bunked with Caleb and me. He had a little leather bag in which he kept all his worldly possessions. He didn’t speak any English, but when he sat down on the bunk, I tried to communicate with him anyway, asking him what had happened to him, although we already knew.

  People are the same the world over. Just like an old lady from the Bronx, he proudly showed us his appendix scar.

  I gave him two candy bars which he devoured immediately, and Caleb gave him soap and a towel. He scowled at us, and I guessed that probably in his country a towel and soap meant only one thing—that you were in need of same. I tried to explain in sign language. I sniffed him and smiled, in order to show that we all have towels and soap to keep in our lockers if and when we need them.

  He wrote his name in Turkish for us, and we wrote our names in English for him. It seemed to be turning out like a Richard Halliburton story.

  But then he opened his little bag and offered us something. I didn’t know what the hell it was. It looked like bunches of strips of leather. I asked Caleb if he knew what it was, and he said maybe it was some sort of “good-luck leather.” He took a piece and pushed it toward my face, and I pantomimed to the Turk: “Should we eat it?”—and then it dawned upon him that we didn’t know what it was.

  He gestured for a knife and a cigarette. He took the cigarette and opened it up, dumping the tobacco out on the bench; then he started chopping up the leather and the cigarette tobacco, until he had it evenly mixed. He took a pipe from his bag, filled it, and lit it. Oh that was it—some sort of religious ritual like the Indians have on first meeting—a peace pipe.

  The tobacco was rather strong, and we passed it around several times, but when the pipe came to me the fifth time, for no apparent reason Caleb looked hysterically funny to me, and I started to laugh, and Caleb started to laugh, until we were carrying on like a couple of damned idiots.

  “Oh, my God, this son of a bitch has us smoking hashish!”

  As soon as I got the word out, he nodded and laughed, too. We smoked some more, and when it came time to go on watch, the relief man came and said, “Time to go topside,” and I thought that was the funniest goddamned thing I’d ever heard in my whole life.

  We laughed so hard that it scared the relief man, and he went away and didn’t bother us anymore.

  Within a week I could communicate perfectly with Sabu (the name I’d christened him). I made Harpo Marx look slow. I’m sure Vincent Price would have been honored to have me on his team on the TV version of charades.

  No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn’t make Sabu believe that it was against the law on American ships to smoke dope. He wanted to know why, and I honestly couldn’t tell him. He asked me what I used to get high, I told him whiskey, and he was horrified.

  Since then, I’ve learned that Moslems do not drink. But they sure smoke a lot of that lovelorn. It’s based on their religious-health laws. Imagine that: religious laws to smoke dope. But here’s the capper: They’re right. Alcohol is a caustic that destroys tissues which cannot be rebuilt. It is toxic, and damages one of the most important organs in the body—one that cannot repair itself or be repaired—the liver. Whereas, for example, no form of cannabis sativa (the hemp plant from which marijuana is made) destroys any body tissue or harms the organs in any manner.

  This is a fact that can be verified by any chemistry professor of any university in the United States. Nevertheless, the possession of marijuana is a crime:

  PUBLIC DEFENDER: Your Honor, I make a motion that the prosecution’s statement, “Was involved and did encourage others to partake in this immoral degenerate practice” be stricken from the record. The word “immoral” is entirely subjective and not specific.

  JUDGE: Objection overruled. Existing statutes give this word, in the context used, legal credence. Can counselor refer to an existing statute that labels marijuana users as moralists?

  PUBLIC DEFENDER: Which moralists are we using as criteria? Sherman Adams? Earl Long? Jimmy Walker? Or does the court refer to the moralists who violated Federal law—segregationists, traitorous anarchists th
at have given ambiguity to the aphorism, “Of the people, by the people, for the people. . . .” Or the moralist who flouted Federal law—the bootleg coffers flowing with billions, illegal whiskey drunk by millions. A moral standard that gives mass criminal rebellion absolution? In the realm of this subject, the Defense requests that the six men on this jury be disqualified on the grounds of unfitness.

  JUDGE: Can the Public Defender qualify this charge?

  PUBLIC DEFENDER: The Defense submits these qualitative and quantitative documents in answer to the Court’s query.

  JUDGE: (Reading the documents aloud.) “. . . And these six jurors have sworn in the presence of a notary that their daily alcoholic consumption, martinis for lunch and manhattans before dinner, totals an average of a half-pint per day. Jurist also stated motivations for drinking: ‘Gives me a lift.’ ‘Need a boost once in a while.’ ‘After a frustrating day at the office a couple of belts lift me out of the dumps.’” I fail to see the merit in your plea to disqualify. What is your point, succinctly?

  PUBLIC DEFENDER: One cannot cast the first stone—if already stoned.

  (Dissolve to interior of jury room and new set of jurors.)

  FIRST WOMAN: You know, I was thinking, that Public Defender was right. A crutch is a crutch no matter if it is made of wood or aluminum.

  SECOND WOMAN: A couple of those jurors gave me the creeps anyway. That one with the thick fingers looked like a real moron.

  THIRD WOMAN: And the other one with those sneaky eyes. I can always tell a person’s character by his eyes.

  FIRST WOMAN: To serve on a jury in a civil case is easy, but when you’re dealing with drug addicts it’s rough. This damned jury duty has me a nervous wreck. I had to take five sleeping pills to get some rest last night. You build up a tolerance to the damned things so quickly. I feel miserable today. I’m really dragging.

  SECOND WOMAN: Here, take one of these Dexies.

  FIRST WOMAN: What are they for?

  SECOND WOMAN: They’re amphetamine, Dexedrine Spansules. My doctor gave them to me for depression and fatigue. They really give you a lift. I take them all the time except when it’s “that time of the month”—then I take Demerol.

  THIRD WOMAN: (Rummaging through her purse and producing a handful of pills.) Do you know what these red-and-white ones are? My neighbor’s doctor gave them to her to try out. They’re supposed to be for nerves. Better than Miltowns.

  SECOND WOMAN: Oh, these are Deprols. Umm, no, wait a minute, I think they’re phenobarbs.

  (An elderly woman juror, silent until now, turns and speaks.)

  ELDERLY WOMAN: Come on, ladies. We need a verdict. What are we going to do with this man?

  FIRST WOMAN: Oh, yes—the dope addict. How does a person sink that low?

  So I do not understand the moral condemnation of marijuana, not only because of its nontoxic, nonaddicting effects as contrasted with those of alcohol, but also because, in my opinion, caffeine in coffee, amphetamine, as well as all tranquilizers—from Miltown to aspirin to nicotine in cigarettes—are crutches for people who can face life better with drugs than without.

  Part of the responsibility for our indiscriminate use of drugs is the doctors’. How often does a patient say to his doctor, “Doc, I have this cold coming on—can’t you give me a shot?” And the doctor does, although the patient might just as easily get over the cold without it. One of the reasons for this is that the doctor realizes that most people do not feel that they’ve gotten their money’s worth if they haven’t gotten “a shot.”

  But the doctor also knows that constant inappropriate usage of penicillin and aureomycin and other antibiotics is breeding strains of bacteria that are resistant to these drugs, so that not only will their protective qualities be lost in the future if ever they are desperately needed, but more and more people are suffering from dreadful drug “reactions”—swelling, itching, and sometimes even death. And every day the ads and the TV commercials bombard us with new things to swallow so we can take the modern way to normal regularity—things to drink, chew, gargle, stick into ourselves. It’s Nature’s way . . .

  Surprisingly enough, there are actually psychotics in high public places that have been reported to have sympathetic feelings concerning the stiff penalties received by the marijuana users and narcotics offenders. Judging from the newspapers and movies, one would believe that drug users are sick, emotionally immature, degenerates, psychos, unstable. They are not right in the head. They are weirdos. So, I would assume, they belong in jail with all the other crazy people.

  Or do you believe all that crap about mental-health programs? I mean, you don’t actually believe there are crazy people, do you? You don’t actually believe people are emotionally unstable, do you? A person is only bad because he wants to be. You can do anything you want. Anything. You can memorize 12,000,000 different telephone books—all the names inside them.

  Or can you do anything you want? Do you perhaps believe in the existence of mental illness, but still feel that treatment for the mentally ill should be duplexed? Good nuts, the ones who blow up trains with 300 people or repeatedly try to kill themselves, should be sent to Bellevue or other institutions equipped with mental-health programs; but bad nuts, who try to kill themselves with heroin or other narcotics, should be sent to jail.

  After all, what’s the sense of sending a heroin addict to a hospital for intensified therapy and perhaps curing him in three years, when you can have him in and out of jail three times over a period of ten years? Then, the last time, you’ve got him for good!

  I don’t know about you, but I rather enjoy the way tax money is spent to arrest, indict, convict, imprison, parole, and then re-imprison these people. I’d just piss it away on beer, anyway.

  I must admit that, since a certain incident, I’ve never given a penny to mental health. I shan’t mention the city in which this occurred because I have no desire to cause any trouble for the individual involved (although, what with his being a genuine masochist, he might love the trouble). And certainly I have no moral judgment to bestow on him—which others certainly would, if they recognized him from my description.

  I discovered the truth about this guy through a friend of mine, this chick who was a hooker; the guy was one of her tricks. Anyway, this noffka told me about a trick who didn’t want anything but a good beating. He was willing to pay from $100 to $500, depending upon how ingenious and sadistic the amusement she devised for him was each evening.

  She described the guy in detail to me: his home, his personal appearance, right down—or up—to his toupee.

  Then, another hooker, who, I’m positive, didn’t know the first chick, told me about this same trick one night and said that he had asked her to bring her boyfriend along to help work him over. She was a little wary about asking her boyfriend to do this because he was a rather surly type and inclined, perhaps, to get a little carried away with his work, which was important to avoid, because this trick insisted that he was never to be hit above the shoulders. He was an important man and had to travel in respectable business circles, and couldn’t afford to have his scars seen in public.

  She asked me if I would accommodate her that evening and punch him around a bit. Somehow, I didn’t feel quite up to it—I don’t know, maybe I’m just a sissy—and I graciously declined her offer. I was sorry about it afterward, because the next day she saw me and complained that they hadn’t been paid because, sure enough, her boyfriend had gotten a little overexuberant and given the trick a black eye and a swollen jaw.

  Now here’s the capper, and I swear it is true. That afternoon there was a meeting of the heads of the mental-health campaign, and I had been asked to contribute my services as a performer to a fund-raising show they were organizing. I attended the meeting with the other acts, planning the billing and staging, and so forth, and we had to wait for about ten minutes for the president of the committee to arrive. I had met the gentleman before, a very imposing, robust businessman with a brusque good nature and a
toupee that nearly matched the graying hair at his temples.

  Till the moment he walked in, I had never connected him with that trick, nor would I have in a million years. But there he was, black eye, swollen jaw and all. It was like a cheap old Charlie Chan movie; the chief of police turns out to have committed the series of brutal murders.

  Immediately everyone displayed great concern over him. “What happened?” “You poor thing!” “Oh, my God, George, look at your eye!”

  He sat down wearily and told his tale:

  “I was coming out of the Plymouth House last night, about two in the morning, meeting with the board from the United Fund, you know, and in the parking lot there were these two chaps attacking a young girl. Well, I grabbed one of them and knocked him out and clipped the other one, when six more jumped out from behind a car. You see, it was a setup: the girl was in on it—part of the gang, I guess. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back. I mean I couldn’t handle them all.”

  “Were there any witnesses?” I asked.

  “No. At two o’clock in the morning, I might just as well have been alone in the jungle.”

  “Weren’t there any cops around?”

  “No. Isn’t that the damnedest thing, Len? It’s always that way—when you want a cop, you can’t find one. They’re too busy giving out tickets.”

  “Well,” piped up the inevitable cliché expert, “it’s a lucky thing you didn’t get killed.”

  “Yes,” he agreed philosophically, “I guess I am lucky, after all.”

  I thought to myself: He probably would love to get killed, if only somehow he would be able to live through it to enjoy it.