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I am El Bastardo Attorney At Law and former Mexican wrestling legend please ask me for any legal advise I work cheap and can get …
Poems
Susan Adele Wiggins Dec 2018
THE WHORE WAR CANTOS
Susan Adele Wiggins
Dec 2018
I.
One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.
So I asked who she was.
‘A professional,’
That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten
there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and
oh, by the way, they worked.
Once I became aware,
I saw these women everywhere.
And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex
II.
She had a printer engrave a calling card
that featured a bird of paradise
borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern
and,
under it,
Alex’s Aviary,
Beautiful and Exotic birds.
A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:
pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes
and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.
Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled
the quintessential California girl
That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.
III.
The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,
as these things always are.
One of her girls took up with a rotter,
the couple had a fight,
he went to the police,
the police had an undercover detective visit
(who just happened to be an attractive woman)
and ask to work for her,
she all but embraced her
—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence
to charge her with two counts of pandering
and one of pimping.
For Alex, who is fifty-six
and has a heart condition and diabetes,
the stakes may be high.
A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.
For the forces of law and order,
the stakes may be higher.
Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena
every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.
And the revelations this might produce
—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen
by making girls available to them,
—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information
in exchange for their blind eye to her activities
—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.
For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,
for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends
and for a handful of movie and television executives
who have no idea they are dating or
married to former Alex girls,
the stakes are highest of all.
IV.
Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.
In her head are the ****** secrets
of many of the city’s most important men,
to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.
If she decides to warble,
either at her trial or in a book,
her song will shatter more than glass.
V.
A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,
There were supposed to have been ten people there,
but only four came.
One of them was a short woman
who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.
When I arrived, the table was set for two.
I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,
but she knew the important facts of my situation:
I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man
and doing the legal work myself
to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.
Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,
slender, flat-chested woman
—and I don’t have any.
It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.
There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,
sometimes in Europe.
The men will be elegant,
you’ll have your own room
—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.
And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.
VI.
The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette
didn’t think it was right for her.
Alex handed her a business card
and suggested that she think about it.
To her surprise, she did
—for an entire week.
This was 1978, and $20,000 then
was like $40,000 now,
I knew it was hooking,
but Alex had never mentioned ***.
Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.
VII.
I was born in Manila
to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,
and when I was twelve
a Japanese soldier came into our house
with his bayonet pointed at us,
ready to do us in.
He locked us in and set the house on fire.
I haven’t been scared by much since that.
My mother always struck me as goofy,
so I jumped on a bus and ran away,
I got off in Oakland,
saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,
and went in.
I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.
I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.
But I didn’t care.
It felt safe.
And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts
—in linen, in crystal.
A new priest arrived.
He was unpleasant,
so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,
still a teenager,
married a scientist.
We separated eight years later,
he took our two sons to another state
threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.
Keep them I said and hung up.
It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct
—though I don’t,
I just hate to be manipulated.
My second husband,
an alcoholic,
had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly
—I never knew for sure—
had a big career in the underworld
as a contract killer.
Years before we got serious,
he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,
She and her friends were so elegant
that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.
They were so fancy,
so smart
—and they knew incredible people,
like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day
just writing $5,000 checks to girls.
VIII.
I was a florist.
We got to talking.
She was a madam from England
who wanted to sell her book and go home.
I bought it for $5,000.
My husband thought it was cute.
Now you’re getting your feet wet.
Three months later,
he died.
After eleven years of marriage,
just like that.
And of the names in the book
it turned out
that half of the men were also dead.
When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.
IX.
It was like a lunch party you or I would give,
Great food Alex had cooked herself.
Major giggles with old pals.
And then,
instead of chocolate After Eight,
she served three women After Three
This man has seen a bit of life
beyond Los Angeles,
so I asked him how Alex’s stable
compared with that of Madam Claude,
the legendary Parisian procuress.
Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,
A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual
—you could take her to the opera
and she’d understand it.
He told me that when she was 40
she looked at herself in the mirror
and said
Disgusting.
People over 40
should not have ***.
But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It
even when she was young.
Besides, she saw all the street business
go to the tall,
beautiful girls.
She thought that she never had a chance
competing against them.
Instead,
she would take their money by managing them.
X.
Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.
It was before the pill;
Girls weren’t giving it away.
Claude specialized in
failed models and actresses,
ones who just missed the cut.
But just because they failed
in those impossible professions
didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,
fabulous.
Like Avis
in those days,
those girls tried harder.
Her place was off the Champs,
just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.
Once I met her,
I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.
XI.
We took the lift
and Claude greeted us at the door.
My impression was that of the director
of an haute couture house,
very subdued,
beige and gray, very little makeup.
She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,
Whiskey,
Cognac.
There was no maid.
We made small talk for 15 minutes.
How was the weekend?
What’s the weather like in Deauville?
Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’
She always used ‘jeunes filles.’
This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.
She left and soon returned
with two very tall
jeunes filles,
One was blonde.
This is Eva from Austria.
She’s here studying painting.
And a brunette,
very different,
but also very fine.
This is Claudia from Germany.
She’s a dancer.
She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.
I gave my English guest first choice.
He picked the blonde.
And wasn’t disappointed.
Each bedroom had its own bidet.
There was some nice
polite conversation, and then
It was slightly formal,
but it was high-quality.
He paid Claude
200 francs,
not to the girls
In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.
Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis
could be had for 40 francs
so you can see the premium.
Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.
You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.
XII.
A lot of them
were models at
Christian Dior
or other couture houses.
She liked Scandinavians.
That was the look then
—cold, tall, perfect.
It was cheap for the quality.
They all used her.
The best people wanted
the best women.
Elementary supply and demand.
XIII.
She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.
She showed it to me and Rubi.
She was proud she had survived.
We talked about the camp for hours.
It was even more fascinating than the girls.
She was Jewish
I’m certain of that.
She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators
at the camp who herded
their fellow Jews
into the gas chambers.
That was the greatest betrayal in her life.
XIV.
She was this sad,
lonely little woman.
Later, Patrick told me who she was.
I was bowled over.
It was like meeting Al Capone.
I met two of the girls
who worked for her.
One was what you would expect
Tall
Blonde
Model.
But the other looked like a Rat
Then one night
she came out
all dressed up,
I didn’t even recognize her.
She was even better than the first girl.
Claude liked to transform women like that.
That was her art.
It was very odd,
my cousin told me.
There was not much furniture
and an awful lot of telephones.
“Allô oui,”
XV.
I had so many lunches
with Claude at Ma Maison
She was vicious.
One day,
Margaux Hemingway,
at the height of her beauty, walked by.
Une bonne
—the French for maid
was how Claude cut her dead.
She reduced
the entire world
to rich men wanting *** and
poor women wanting money.
She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone
and say,
When I met her
she was called
Marlene
and she had a hideous nose
and now she’s a princess.
Or she’d see someone and say
Let’s see if she kisses me or not.
It was like
I made her,
and I can destroy her.
She was obsessed
with “fixing” people
—with Saint Laurent clothes,
with Cartier watches,
with Winston jewels,
with Vuitton luggage,
with plastic surgeons.
XVI.
Her prison number was
888
which was good luck in China
but not in California.
‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat
Even in jail, she was always working,
always recruiting stunning women.
She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate
and gave her Robert Evans’s number
as the first person she should call
when she was released.
XVII.
Never have *** on the first date.
XVIII.
There will always be prostitution,
The prostitution of misery.
And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.
They will both go on forever.
“Allô oui,”
It was so exciting to hear a millionaire
or a head of state ask,
in a little boy’s voice,
for the one thing
that only you could provide
It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate
--it's mostly dialogue.
She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.
The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!
XIX.
She was like a slave driver in the American South
Once she took a *******,
the makeover put the girl in debt,
because Claude paid all the bills to
Dior,
Vuitton,
to the hairdressers,
to the doctors,
and the girls had to work to pay them off.
It was ****** indentured servitude.
My Swans.
It reached the point
where if you walked into a room
in London
or Rome
as much as Paris
because the girls were transportable,
and saw a girl who was
better-dressed,
better-looking,
and more distinguished than the others
you presumed
it was a girl from Claude.
It was, without doubt,
the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.
**.
The girl had to be
exactly what was needed
so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.
I played a little the role of Pygmalion.
There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.
It consisted
at the start
of the physical aspect
“surgical intervention”
to give this way of being
that was different from other girls.
Often they had to be transformed
into dream creatures
because at the start
they were not at all
Often I had to teach them how to dress.
Often they needed help
to repair
what nature had given them
which was not so beautiful.
At first they had to be tall,
with pretty gestures,
good manners.
I had lots of noses done,
chins,
teeth,
*******.
There was a lot to do.
Eight times out of ten
I had to teach them how to behave in society.
There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,
and they needed to have conversation.
I insisted they learn to speak English,
read
certain books.
I interrogated them on what they read.
It wasn’t easy.
Each time something wasn’t working,
I was obliged to say so.
You were very demanding?
I was ferocious.
It’s difficult
to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s
without looking
ill at ease
when they’ve never been there,
to go into an airport,
to go to the Ritz,
or the Crillon
or the Dorchester.
To find yourself
in front of a king,
three princes,
four ministers,
and five ambassadors at an official dinner.
There were the wives of those people!
Day after day
one had to explain,
explain again,
start again.
It took about two years.
There would always be a man
who would then say of her,
‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”
XXI.
A New York publisher who visited
the Palace Hotel
in Saint Moritz
in the early seventies told me,
I met a whole bunch of them there.
They were lovely.
The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.
I remember it being said
Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.
You asked them where they came from and they all said
Neuilly.
Claude liked girls from good families.
More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.
I have known,
because of what I did,
some exceptional and fascinating men.
I’ve known some exceptional women too,
but that was less interesting
because I made them myself.
Ah, this question of the handbag.
You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.
Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.
XXII.
She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.
That was a difficult moment
When they arrived they were very shy,
a bit frightened.
At the beginning when I take a look,
it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette
and the gestures are pretty.
Then there was a disagreeable moment.
I said,
I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,
but I have to ask you to get undressed,
because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.
Believe me, I was embarrassed,
just as they were,
but it had to be done,
not out of voyeurism, not at all
—I don’t like les dames horizontales.
It was very funny
because there were always two reactions.
A young girl,
very sure of herself,
very beautiful,
très bien,
would say
Yes,
Get up, and get undressed.
There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.
There were those who
would start timidly
to take off their dress
and I would say
I knew already.
The rest is not sadism, but nearly.
I knew what I was going to find.
I would say,
Maybe you should take off your bra,
and I knew it wasn’t going to be
beautiful.
Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.
No problem.
There were damages that could be mended.
There were some ******* that could be redone,
some not
Sometimes it can be deceptive,
you know,
you see a pretty girl,
a pretty face,
all elegant and slim,
well dressed,
and when you see her naked
it is a catastrophe.
I could judge their physical qualities,
I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,
but I didn’t know how she was in bed.
So I had some boys,
good friends,
who told me exactly.
I would ring them up and say,
There’s a new one.
And afterwards they’d ring back and say,
Not bad,
Could be better, or
Nulle.
Or,
on the contrary,
She’s perfect.
And I would sometimes have to tell the girls
what they didn’t know.
A pleasant assignment?
No.
They paid.
XXIII.
Often at the beginning
they had an ami de coeur
in other words,
oh,
a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,
someone in the cinema,
an actor, not very well known.
As time went by
It became difficult
because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.
The fact of physically changing,
becoming prettier,
changing mentally to live with millionaires,
produced a certain imbalance
between them
and the little boyfriend
who had not evolved
and had stayed in his milieu.
At the end of a certain time
she would say,
I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?
And they would break up by themselves.
Remember,
this was instant elevation.
For most of them it was a dream existence,
provided they liked the ***,
and those that didn’t never lasted long.
A lot of the clients were young,
and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.
They would buy you presents,
take you on trips.
XXIV.
For me, *** was something very accessoire
I think after a certain age
there are certain spectacles one should not give to others
Now I have a penchant for solitude.
Love, it’s a complete destroyer,
It’s impossible,
a horror,
l’angoisse.
It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.
I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.
He was jealous too.
We broke plates over each other’s heads;
we became jealous about each other’s pasts.
I said one day
It’s finished.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:
Break my legs,
give me scarlet fever,
an attack of TB, but never that.
Not that.
XXV.
I called her into my office
Let us not exaggerate,
I sent her away.
She came back looking for employment,
but was fired again, this time for drugs.
She made menacing phone calls.
Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.
She shot three bullets
I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment
He did very padded things.
I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.
The bullet
—merci, Monsieur Courrèges
—stuck in the padding.
I was thrown forward onto the telephone.
I had one thought which went through my head:
I will die like Kennedy.
I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.
The second bullet went through my hand.
I have two dead fingers.
It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.
In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet
because she was very tall
and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.
XXVI.
There were men
who could decapitate,
****, and bomb their rivals
who would be frightened of me.
I would ask them how was the girl,
and they’d say
Not bad
and then
But I’m not complaining.
I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.
Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.
But I’ve known them all.
I had them all
here.
She will take many state secrets with her.
XXVI.
I don’t like ugly people
probably because when I was young
I wasn’t beautiful at all.
I was ugly and I suffered for it,
although not to the point of obsession.
Now that I’m an old woman,
I’m not so bad.
And that’s why
I’ve always been surrounded by people
Who
were
beautiful.
And the best way to have beautiful people around me
was to make them.
I made them very pretty.
XXVII.
I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you
‘advice,’
She spares you Nothing.
She makes a list of what she wants done,
and she really gets into it
I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.
She gives you names of people who do good facials.
She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.
She’s put off by anything flashy,
and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,
in front of an audience,
You look like a cheap *****!
I used to wear what I wanted when I went out
then change in the car into a frumpy sweater
when I went to give her the money she’d always go,
Oh, you look beautiful!
Marry your boyfriend,
It’s better than going to prison.
When you go out with her,
she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.
And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.
It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month
and say they need rent money.
She wants to see you do well.
We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,
what he liked,
the names of the girls he’d seen,
and how long he’d been with them.
And I only hired girls who had another career
—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous
and beautiful-and-interesting,
they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.
These men wanted to talk.
If they spent two hours with a girl,
they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.
I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.
XXVIII.
That was my big idea
Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing
but to make sure that nobody
mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.
And I kept my roster fresh.
This was not a business where you peddle your ***,
get exploited,
and then are cast off.
I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.
I let the men know:
no violence,
no costumes,
no fudge-packing.
And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:
Two and a half years and you’re burned out.
Save your money.
This is like a hangar
—you come in, refuel, and take off.
It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.
This buys the singing lessons,
the dancing lessons,
the glossies.
This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.
It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.
XXIX.
To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.
Une femme terrible.
She despised men and women alike.
Men were wallets. Women were holes.
By the 80s,
if you were a brunette,
the sky was the limit.
The Saudis
They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,
ignore them all evening while they
chatted,
ate,
and played cards,
and then, around midnight,
take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.
They’d order women up like pizza.
Since my second husband died,
I only met one man who was right for me,
He was a sheikh.
I visited him in Europe
twenty-eight times
in the five years I knew him
and I never slept with him.
He’d say
I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,
but he introduced me
by phone
to all his powerful friends.
When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.
That’s why I never went out
he would have been disappointed.
***.
Listen to me
This is a woman’s business.
When a woman does it, it’s fun
there’s a giggle in it
when a man’s involved,
he’s ******,
he’s a ****.
He may know how to keep girls in line,
and he may make money,
but he doesn’t know what I do.
I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.
She’s young,
She’s pleasant,
She can do things
she can certainly make love.
She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.
The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.
An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.
Pina Colapinto
A petite call girl,
who once slid between the sheets of royalty,
a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.
They really dolled her up
She looks great.
Never!
What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’
XXXI.
Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.
Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery
We all held her hand when they took her off the life support
This was the passing of a legend.
Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.
She was one of the richest women on earth.
The world came to her.
She never had to leave the house.
She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.
It's like losing a friend
In all the years we played cat and mouse,
she never once tried to corrupt me.
We had a lot of fun.
To those who knew her
she was as constant
as she was colorful
always ready with a good tidbit of gossip
and a gourmet lunch for two.
She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,
from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,
surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,
which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.
XXXII.
She stole my business,
my books,
my girls,
my guys.
I had a good run.
My creatures.
Make Mommy happy
Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.
She was, how can I say it,
classy.
When she first hired me
she thought I was too young to take her case.
I was 43.
I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.
She was right.
XXXIII.
I was fond of Heidi
But she has a streak that is so vindictive.
If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.
XXXIV.
I was born and raised in L.A.
My dad was a famous pediatrician.
When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.
I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings
pretty early,
and I think that she met some people
who sort of took all her potential
and gave it a sharp turn
She knew nothing.
She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.
Alex and I had a very intense relationship;
I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,
so she was abusive and loving at the same time.
Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did
but it's like this:
What took her years to build,
I built in one.
The high end is the high end,
and no one has a higher end than me.
In this business, no one steals clients.
There's just better service.
XXXV.
You were not allowed to have long hair
You were not allowed to be too pretty
You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous
Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.
And then she loses the business
XXXVI.
I was pursued because
come on
in our lifetime,
we will never see another girl of my age
who lived the way I did,
who did what I did so quickly,
I made so many enemies.
Some people had been in this line of business
for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,
and I came in and cornered the market.
Men don't like that.
Women don't like that.
No one liked it.
I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.
I was doing this 500-hour drug class
and one day the teacher showed us this video,
called something like Make It Happen.
Usually in class I would bring a notebook
and write a letter to my brother or my journal,
but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention
and I understood everything she said.
It hit me and it changed me a lot.
It made me feel,
Accept yourself for who you are.
I saw a deeper meaning in it
but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!
XXXVII.
Hello, Gina!
You movie star!
Yes you are!
Gina G!
Hello my friend,
Hello my friend,
Hello my movie star,
Ruby! Ruby Boobie!
Braaawk!
Except so many women say,
Come on, Heidi
you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.
It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,
and I'll make it really nice,
like the Beverly Hills Hotel
It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.
The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.
Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.
I said, Joe! What are you doing?
You gotta get, like,
a garter belt and encase it in something
and write,
This belonged to Suzette Whatever,
who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.
Get, like, some weird tools and write,
These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,
you know what I mean?
Just make some **** up!
So I came out here to do some research
And then I realized,
What am I doing?
I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.
I can do this.
When I was doing my research, in three months
I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre
to 50 thousand an acre,
and then it was going for 70K!
It's urban sprawl
—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.
Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,
prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.
XXXVIII.
The truth is
deep down inside,
I just can't do business with him
He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents
and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.
It's not my style at all.
Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?
It was different at my age when I
at least...come on, I lived really well.
I was 22,
25 at the time?
It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want
to deal with all that *******
—the girls and blah blah blah.
But the money was really good.
I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind
if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.
It's hard-core; how I live;
It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me
It's hard to get anything done because
It’s so time-consuming.
I feel like they're good luck though....
I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,
I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life
and nothing I do will ever work again.
Guys kind of are a hindrance to me
Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.
But a man is not a priority in my life.
I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.
XXXIX.
I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9
And soon all the parents in the neighborhood
wanted me to watch over their children.
Even then I had an innate business sense.
I started farming out my friends
to meet the demand.
My mother showered me with love and my father,
a pediatrician,
would ask me at the dinner table,
What did you learn today?
I ran my neighborhood.
I just pick up a hustle really easily,
I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.
Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina
in a transparent muu muu.
We hit it off.
I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.
It's in and out,
over and out.
Do you think some big-time producer
or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?
Columbia Pictures executive says:
I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.
Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.
I hope I'm on it.
If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough
for people to gossip about me.
That's right ladies and gentlemen.
I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!
If you live out here,
you've got to hate people.
You've got to be pretty antisocial
How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?
That's Fred.
He's digging to China.
You look good.
Yeah, you too.
It's coming along here.
Yeah, it is.
I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?
That's mine, man! That's all me.
Really?
I thought there was a lot between us.
No. We're neighbors.
He's a cute guy
He's entertaining.
See, I kind of did do something shady to him.
I thought my property went all the way back
and butted up against his.
But there was one lot between us right there.
He said he was buying it,
but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,
So I went and called the broker and said,
I'm an all-cash buyer.
So I really bought it out from under him.
But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.
Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice
All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out
and it'll be a nice area.
They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.
Like this guy here,
someone needs to **** him.
I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world
He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.
It's just, people are destroying it.
I’m looking into green building options
I don't want anything polluting,
I want a huge auditorium,
but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!
Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.
There were over 300 birds in there!
That lady,
She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,
which is a huge job.
She called me once at 3:30 in the morning
Come over here and help me feed this baby!
Some baby parrot.
And I ran over there in my pajamas
—I knew there was something else wrong
and she was like
Get me my oxygen!
Get me this, get me that.
I called my dad; he was like,
I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.
They ended up getting a helicopter.
And they were taking her away
in the wind with her IV and blood and everything
and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.
And she dies the next day.
She was just a super-duper person.
XL.
I relate to the lifestyle she had before,
Now, I'm just a citizen.
I'm clean,
I'm sober,
I'm married,
I work at Wal-Mart.
I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes
and we relate.
I got out in 2000,
so I've been sending her money for seven years
She was…whatever.
Girlfriend?
Yeah, maybe.
But ***, I tried like two times,
and I'm just not gay.
She gets out in about eight or nine months
and I told her I would get her a house.
But nowhere near me.
I didn't touch her,
but I'd be, like...
a funny story:
I told her,
Don't you ever ******* think
about contacting me in the real world.
I'm not a lesbian.
Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,
or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'
So I Googled her name,
and she has this huge company.
Huge!
She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.
So I called her and I go,
Not bad.
She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'
I go, '****, I should've called you more names
you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.
XLI.
No person shall be employed by the licensee
who has ever been convicted of
a felony involving moral turpitude
But I qualify,
I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.
Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.
You've got to be hustling.
Nighttime is really enchanting here
It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is
I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.
Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said
people can adjust to anything.
I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,
and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.
We had done those drug addiction shows together
Dr. Drew.
Afterward we were friendly
and he'd call me every now and then.
He'd act like he had his stuff together.
But it was all a lie.
Everything is a lie.
I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.
He was just such a mess.
So out of it.
He stole money from my purse.
He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.
He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.
This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,
He told me that’s his favorite actress.
Better than Meryl Streep.
XLII.
The cops could see
why these women were taking over trade.
Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.
The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.
One thing they are not is lazy.
In the USSR
they grew up with no religion, no morality.
Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.
In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.
That’s why it’s exploding here.
What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.
These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.
They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.
The madam who organized this raid
was making $4 million a year,
laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City
These are brutal people.
They are all backstabbers.
They’re entrepreneurs.
They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.
For them, that’s the American dream.
XLIII.
If you’re not into something,
don’t be into it
But,
if you want to take some whipped cream,
put it between your toes,
have your dog licking it up and,
at the same time,
have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,
then that’s fine.
That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.
She was my best friend then
and I consider her one of my best friends now,
because when I was going through Riker’s
and everyone abandoned me,
including my boyfriend,
I was hysterical,
crying,
and she was the one that was there.
And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,
that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of
loyalty, respect, and love for her.
And if she’s going to prison for eight years
—that’s what she’s sentenced for
—I’ll go there,
and I’ll go there every week,
for eight years.
That’s the type of person I am.
One night at the Troubadour I spotted this extraordinary girl.
So I asked who she was.
‘A professional,’
That was my introduction that on a scale of one to ten
there were women who were fifteens—beautiful, bright, witty, and
oh, by the way, they worked.
Once I became aware,
I saw these women everywhere.
And I came to learn that most of them were connected to Alex
II.
She had a printer engrave a calling card
that featured a bird of paradise
borrowed from a Tiffany silver pattern
and,
under it,
Alex’s Aviary,
Beautiful and Exotic birds.
A few were women you’d see lunching at Le Dôme:
pampered arm pieces with expensive tastes
and a hint of a delicious but remote sexuality.
Many more were fresh-faced, athletic, tanned, freckled
the quintessential California girl
That you’d take for sorority queens or future BMW owners.
III.
The mechanism of Alex’s sudden notoriety is byzantine,
as these things always are.
One of her girls took up with a rotter,
the couple had a fight,
he went to the police,
the police had an undercover detective visit
(who just happened to be an attractive woman)
and ask to work for her,
she all but embraced her
—and by April of 1988 the district attorney had enough evidence
to charge her with two counts of pandering
and one of pimping.
For Alex, who is fifty-six
and has a heart condition and diabetes,
the stakes may be high.
A conviction carries the guarantee of incarceration.
For the forces of law and order,
the stakes may be higher.
Alex has let it be known that she will subpoena
every cop she’s ever met to testify at her trial.
And the revelations this might produce
—perhaps that Alex compromised policemen
by making girls available to them,
—perhaps that Alex had a deal with the police to provide information
in exchange for their blind eye to her activities
—could be hugely embarrassing to the police and the district attorney.
For Alex’s socially correct clients and friends,
for the socially correct wives of her clients and friends
and for a handful of movie and television executives
who have no idea they are dating or
married to former Alex girls,
the stakes are highest of all.
IV.
Alex’s black book is said to be a catalogue of
Le Tout Los Angeles.
In her head are the ****** secrets
of many of the city’s most important men,
to say nothing of visiting businessmen and Arab princes.
If she decides to warble,
either at her trial or in a book,
her song will shatter more than glass.
V.
A decade ago, I went to lunch at Ma Maison,
There were supposed to have been ten people there,
but only four came.
One of them was a short woman
who called me a few days later and invited me to lunch.
When I arrived, the table was set for two.
I didn’t know who Alex was or what she did,
but she knew the important facts of my situation:
I was getting divorced from a very wealthy man
and doing the legal work myself
to avail lawyers who wanted to get a big settlement for me.
Occasionally, she said, I get a call for a tall, dark-haired,
slender, flat-chested woman
—and I don’t have any.
It wouldn’t be a frequent thing.
There’d be weekends away, sometimes in Palm Springs,
sometimes in Europe.
The men will be elegant,
you’ll have your own room
—there would be no outward signs of impropriety.
And you’d get $10,000 to $20,000 for a weekend.
VI.
The tall, slender, flat-chested brunette
didn’t think it was right for her.
Alex handed her a business card
and suggested that she think about it.
To her surprise, she did
—for an entire week.
This was 1978, and $20,000 then
was like $40,000 now,
I knew it was hooking,
but Alex had never mentioned ***.
Our whole conversation seemed to be about something else.
VII.
I was born in Manila
to a Spanish-Filipina mother and German father,
and when I was twelve
a Japanese soldier came into our house
with his bayonet pointed at us,
ready to do us in.
He locked us in and set the house on fire.
I haven’t been scared by much since that.
My mother always struck me as goofy,
so I jumped on a bus and ran away,
I got off in Oakland,
saw a help-wanted sign on a parish house,
and went in.
I got $200 a month for taking care of four priests.
I spent all the money on pastries for the parish house.
But I didn’t care.
It felt safe.
And the priests sparked my interest in the domestic arts
—in linen, in crystal.
A new priest arrived.
He was unpleasant,
so on a vacation in Los Angeles I took a pedestrian job,
still a teenager,
married a scientist.
We separated eight years later,
he took our two sons to another state
threatened to keep them if I didn’t agree to a divorce.
Keep them I said and hung up.
It’s not that I don’t have a maternal instinct
—though I don’t,
I just hate to be manipulated.
My second husband,
an alcoholic,
had Frank Sinatra blue eyes, and possibly
—I never knew for sure—
had a big career in the underworld
as a contract killer.
Years before we got serious,
he was going out with a famous L.A. ******,
She and her friends were so elegant
that I started spending time with them in beauty salons.
They were so fancy,
so smart
—and they knew incredible people,
like the millionaire who sat in his suite all day
just writing $5,000 checks to girls.
VIII.
I was a florist.
We got to talking.
She was a madam from England
who wanted to sell her book and go home.
I bought it for $5,000.
My husband thought it was cute.
Now you’re getting your feet wet.
Three months later,
he died.
After eleven years of marriage,
just like that.
And of the names in the book
it turned out
that half of the men were also dead.
When I began the men were old and the women were ugly.
IX.
It was like a lunch party you or I would give,
Great food Alex had cooked herself.
Major giggles with old pals.
And then,
instead of chocolate After Eight,
she served three women After Three
This man has seen a bit of life
beyond Los Angeles,
so I asked him how Alex’s stable
compared with that of Madam Claude,
the legendary Parisian procuress.
Oh, these aren’t at all like Claude’s girls,
A Claude girl was perfectly dressed and multilingual
—you could take her to the opera
and she’d understand it.
He told me that when she was 40
she looked at herself in the mirror
and said
Disgusting.
People over 40
should not have ***.
But She Was Clear That She Never Liked It
even when she was young.
Besides, she saw all the street business
go to the tall,
beautiful girls.
She thought that she never had a chance
competing against them.
Instead,
she would take their money by managing them.
X.
Going to a ****** was not looked down upon then.
It was before the pill;
Girls weren’t giving it away.
Claude specialized in
failed models and actresses,
ones who just missed the cut.
But just because they failed
in those impossible professions
didn’t mean they weren’t beautiful,
fabulous.
Like Avis
in those days,
those girls tried harder.
Her place was off the Champs,
just above a branch of the Rothschild bank, where I had an account.
Once I met her,
I was constantly making withdrawals and heading upstairs.
XI.
We took the lift
and Claude greeted us at the door.
My impression was that of the director
of an haute couture house,
very subdued,
beige and gray, very little makeup.
She took us into a lounge and made us drinks,
Whiskey,
Cognac.
There was no maid.
We made small talk for 15 minutes.
How was the weekend?
What’s the weather like in Deauville?
Then she made the segue. ‘I understand you’d like to see some jeunes filles?’
She always used ‘jeunes filles.’
This was Claude’s polite way of saying 18 to 25.
She left and soon returned
with two very tall
jeunes filles,
One was blonde.
This is Eva from Austria.
She’s here studying painting.
And a brunette,
very different,
but also very fine.
This is Claudia from Germany.
She’s a dancer.
She took the girls back into the apartment and returned by herself.
I gave my English guest first choice.
He picked the blonde.
And wasn’t disappointed.
Each bedroom had its own bidet.
There was some nice
polite conversation, and then
It was slightly formal,
but it was high-quality.
He paid Claude
200 francs,
not to the girls
In 1965, 200 francs was about $40.
Pretty girls on Rue Saint-Denis
could be had for 40 francs
so you can see the premium.
Still, it wasn’t out of reach for mere mortals.
You didn’t have to be J. Paul Getty.
XII.
A lot of them
were models at
Christian Dior
or other couture houses.
She liked Scandinavians.
That was the look then
—cold, tall, perfect.
It was cheap for the quality.
They all used her.
The best people wanted
the best women.
Elementary supply and demand.
XIII.
She had a camp number tattooed on her wrist. I saw it.
She showed it to me and Rubi.
She was proud she had survived.
We talked about the camp for hours.
It was even more fascinating than the girls.
She was Jewish
I’m certain of that.
She was horrified at the Jewish collaborators
at the camp who herded
their fellow Jews
into the gas chambers.
That was the greatest betrayal in her life.
XIV.
She was this sad,
lonely little woman.
Later, Patrick told me who she was.
I was bowled over.
It was like meeting Al Capone.
I met two of the girls
who worked for her.
One was what you would expect
Tall
Blonde
Model.
But the other looked like a Rat
Then one night
she came out
all dressed up,
I didn’t even recognize her.
She was even better than the first girl.
Claude liked to transform women like that.
That was her art.
It was very odd,
my cousin told me.
There was not much furniture
and an awful lot of telephones.
“Allô oui,”
XV.
I had so many lunches
with Claude at Ma Maison
She was vicious.
One day,
Margaux Hemingway,
at the height of her beauty, walked by.
Une bonne
—the French for maid
was how Claude cut her dead.
She reduced
the entire world
to rich men wanting *** and
poor women wanting money.
She’d love to page through Vogue and see someone
and say,
When I met her
she was called
Marlene
and she had a hideous nose
and now she’s a princess.
Or she’d see someone and say
Let’s see if she kisses me or not.
It was like
I made her,
and I can destroy her.
She was obsessed
with “fixing” people
—with Saint Laurent clothes,
with Cartier watches,
with Winston jewels,
with Vuitton luggage,
with plastic surgeons.
XVI.
Her prison number was
888
which was good luck in China
but not in California.
‘Ocho ocho ocho,’ she liked to repeat
Even in jail, she was always working,
always recruiting stunning women.
She had a beautiful Mexican cellmate
and gave her Robert Evans’s number
as the first person she should call
when she was released.
XVII.
Never have *** on the first date.
XVIII.
There will always be prostitution,
The prostitution of misery.
And the prostitution of bourgeois luxury.
They will both go on forever.
“Allô oui,”
It was so exciting to hear a millionaire
or a head of state ask,
in a little boy’s voice,
for the one thing
that only you could provide
It's not how beautiful you are, it's how you relate
--it's mostly dialogue.
She was tiny, blond, perfectly coiffed and Chanel-clad.
The French Woman: The Arab Prince, the Japanese Diplomat, the Greek Tycoon, the C.I.A. Bureau Chief — She Possessed Them All!
XIX.
She was like a slave driver in the American South
Once she took a *******,
the makeover put the girl in debt,
because Claude paid all the bills to
Dior,
Vuitton,
to the hairdressers,
to the doctors,
and the girls had to work to pay them off.
It was ****** indentured servitude.
My Swans.
It reached the point
where if you walked into a room
in London
or Rome
as much as Paris
because the girls were transportable,
and saw a girl who was
better-dressed,
better-looking,
and more distinguished than the others
you presumed
it was a girl from Claude.
It was, without doubt,
the finest *** operation ever run in the history of mankind.
**.
The girl had to be
exactly what was needed
so I had to teach her everything she didn’t know.
I played a little the role of Pygmalion.
There were basic things that absolutely had to be done.
It consisted
at the start
of the physical aspect
“surgical intervention”
to give this way of being
that was different from other girls.
Often they had to be transformed
into dream creatures
because at the start
they were not at all
Often I had to teach them how to dress.
Often they needed help
to repair
what nature had given them
which was not so beautiful.
At first they had to be tall,
with pretty gestures,
good manners.
I had lots of noses done,
chins,
teeth,
*******.
There was a lot to do.
Eight times out of ten
I had to teach them how to behave in society.
There were official dinners, suppers, weekends,
and they needed to have conversation.
I insisted they learn to speak English,
read
certain books.
I interrogated them on what they read.
It wasn’t easy.
Each time something wasn’t working,
I was obliged to say so.
You were very demanding?
I was ferocious.
It’s difficult
to teach a girl how to walk into Maxim’s
without looking
ill at ease
when they’ve never been there,
to go into an airport,
to go to the Ritz,
or the Crillon
or the Dorchester.
To find yourself
in front of a king,
three princes,
four ministers,
and five ambassadors at an official dinner.
There were the wives of those people!
Day after day
one had to explain,
explain again,
start again.
It took about two years.
There would always be a man
who would then say of her,
‘But she’s absolutely exceptional. What is that girl doing here?’ ”
XXI.
A New York publisher who visited
the Palace Hotel
in Saint Moritz
in the early seventies told me,
I met a whole bunch of them there.
They were lovely.
The johns wanted everyone to know who they were.
I remember it being said
Giovanni’s Madame Claude girl is going to be there.
You asked them where they came from and they all said
Neuilly.
Claude liked girls from good families.
More to the point she had invented their backgrounds.
I have known,
because of what I did,
some exceptional and fascinating men.
I’ve known some exceptional women too,
but that was less interesting
because I made them myself.
Ah, this question of the handbag.
You would be amazed by how much dust accumulates.
Or how often women’s shoe heels are scuffed.
XXII.
She would examine their teeth and finally she would make them undress.
That was a difficult moment
When they arrived they were very shy,
a bit frightened.
At the beginning when I take a look,
it’s a question of seeing if the silhouette
and the gestures are pretty.
Then there was a disagreeable moment.
I said,
I’m sorry about this unpleasantness,
but I have to ask you to get undressed,
because I can’t talk about you unless I see you.
Believe me, I was embarrassed,
just as they were,
but it had to be done,
not out of voyeurism, not at all
—I don’t like les dames horizontales.
It was very funny
because there were always two reactions.
A young girl,
very sure of herself,
very beautiful,
très bien,
would say
Yes,
Get up, and get undressed.
There was nothing to hide, everything was perfect.
There were those who
would start timidly
to take off their dress
and I would say
I knew already.
The rest is not sadism, but nearly.
I knew what I was going to find.
I would say,
Maybe you should take off your bra,
and I knew it wasn’t going to be
beautiful.
Because otherwise she would have taken it off easily.
No problem.
There were damages that could be mended.
There were some ******* that could be redone,
some not
Sometimes it can be deceptive,
you know,
you see a pretty girl,
a pretty face,
all elegant and slim,
well dressed,
and when you see her naked
it is a catastrophe.
I could judge their physical qualities,
I could judge if she was pretty, intelligent, and cultivated,
but I didn’t know how she was in bed.
So I had some boys,
good friends,
who told me exactly.
I would ring them up and say,
There’s a new one.
And afterwards they’d ring back and say,
Not bad,
Could be better, or
Nulle.
Or,
on the contrary,
She’s perfect.
And I would sometimes have to tell the girls
what they didn’t know.
A pleasant assignment?
No.
They paid.
XXIII.
Often at the beginning
they had an ami de coeur
in other words,
oh,
a journalist, a photographer, a type like that,
someone in the cinema,
an actor, not very well known.
As time went by
It became difficult
because they didn’t have a lot of time for him.
The fact of physically changing,
becoming prettier,
changing mentally to live with millionaires,
produced a certain imbalance
between them
and the little boyfriend
who had not evolved
and had stayed in his milieu.
At the end of a certain time
she would say,
I’m so much better than him. Why am I with this boy?
And they would break up by themselves.
Remember,
this was instant elevation.
For most of them it was a dream existence,
provided they liked the ***,
and those that didn’t never lasted long.
A lot of the clients were young,
and didn’t treat them like tarts but like someone from their own class.
They would buy you presents,
take you on trips.
XXIV.
For me, *** was something very accessoire
I think after a certain age
there are certain spectacles one should not give to others
Now I have a penchant for solitude.
Love, it’s a complete destroyer,
It’s impossible,
a horror,
l’angoisse.
It’s the only time in my life I was jealous.
I’m not a jealous person, but I was épouvantable.
He was jealous too.
We broke plates over each other’s heads;
we became jealous about each other’s pasts.
I said one day
It’s finished.
Sometimes I look at myself in the mirror and say:
Break my legs,
give me scarlet fever,
an attack of TB, but never that.
Not that.
XXV.
I called her into my office
Let us not exaggerate,
I sent her away.
She came back looking for employment,
but was fired again, this time for drugs.
She made menacing phone calls.
Then she arrived at the Rue de Boulainvilliers with a gun.
She shot three bullets
I was dressed in the fashion of Courrèges at this moment
He did very padded things.
I had a padded dress with a little jacket on top.
The bullet
—merci, Monsieur Courrèges
—stuck in the padding.
I was thrown forward onto the telephone.
I had one thought which went through my head:
I will die like Kennedy.
I turned round and put my hand up in a reflex.
The second bullet went through my hand.
I have two dead fingers.
It’s most useful for removing bottle tops.
In the corridor I was saved from the third bullet
because she was very tall
and I am quite petite, so it passed over my head.
XXVI.
There were men
who could decapitate,
****, and bomb their rivals
who would be frightened of me.
I would ask them how was the girl,
and they’d say
Not bad
and then
But I’m not complaining.
I was a little sadistic to them sometimes.
Some women have known powerful men because they’re their lover.
But I’ve known them all.
I had them all
here.
She will take many state secrets with her.
XXVI.
I don’t like ugly people
probably because when I was young
I wasn’t beautiful at all.
I was ugly and I suffered for it,
although not to the point of obsession.
Now that I’m an old woman,
I’m not so bad.
And that’s why
I’ve always been surrounded by people
Who
were
beautiful.
And the best way to have beautiful people around me
was to make them.
I made them very pretty.
XXVII.
I wouldn’t call what Alex gives you
‘advice,’
She spares you Nothing.
She makes a list of what she wants done,
and she really gets into it
I mean, she wants you to get your arms waxed.
She gives you names of people who do good facials.
She tells you what to buy at Neiman Marcus.
She’s put off by anything flashy,
and if you don’t dress conservatively, she’s got no problem telling you,
in front of an audience,
You look like a cheap *****!
I used to wear what I wanted when I went out
then change in the car into a frumpy sweater
when I went to give her the money she’d always go,
Oh, you look beautiful!
Marry your boyfriend,
It’s better than going to prison.
When you go out with her,
she’ll buy you a present; she’s incredibly generous that way.
And she’ll always tell you to save money and get out.
It’s frustrating to her when girls call at the end of the month
and say they need rent money.
She wants to see you do well.
We had a schedule, with cards that indicated a client’s name,
what he liked,
the names of the girls he’d seen,
and how long he’d been with them.
And I only hired girls who had another career
—if my clients had a choice between drop-dead-gorgeous
and beautiful-and-interesting,
they’d tend to take beautiful-and-interesting.
These men wanted to talk.
If they spent two hours with a girl,
they usually spent only five or ten minutes in bed.
I get the feeling that in Los Angeles, men are more concerned with looks.
XXVIII.
That was my big idea
Not to expand the book by aggressive marketing
but to make sure that nobody
mistook my girls for run-of-the-mill hookers.
And I kept my roster fresh.
This was not a business where you peddle your ***,
get exploited,
and then are cast off.
I screen clients. I’ve never sent girls to weirdos.
I let the men know:
no violence,
no costumes,
no fudge-packing.
And I talked to my girls. I’d tell them:
Two and a half years and you’re burned out.
Save your money.
This is like a hangar
—you come in, refuel, and take off.
It’s not a vacation, it’s not a goof.
This buys the singing lessons,
the dancing lessons,
the glossies.
This is to help you pay for what your parents couldn’t provide.
It’s an honorable way station—a lot of stars did this.
XXIX.
To say someone was a Claude girl is an honour, not a slur.
Une femme terrible.
She despised men and women alike.
Men were wallets. Women were holes.
By the 80s,
if you were a brunette,
the sky was the limit.
The Saudis
They’d call for half a dozen of Alex’s finest,
ignore them all evening while they
chatted,
ate,
and played cards,
and then, around midnight,
take the women inside for a fast few minutes of ***.
They’d order women up like pizza.
Since my second husband died,
I only met one man who was right for me,
He was a sheikh.
I visited him in Europe
twenty-eight times
in the five years I knew him
and I never slept with him.
He’d say
I think you fly all the way here just to tease me,
but he introduced me
by phone
to all his powerful friends.
When I was in Los Angeles, he called me twice a day.
That’s why I never went out
he would have been disappointed.
***.
Listen to me
This is a woman’s business.
When a woman does it, it’s fun
there’s a giggle in it
when a man’s involved,
he’s ******,
he’s a ****.
He may know how to keep girls in line,
and he may make money,
but he doesn’t know what I do.
I tell guys: You’re getting a nice girl.
She’s young,
She’s pleasant,
She can do things
she can certainly make love.
She’s not a rocket scientist, but she’s everything else.
The world’s richest and most powerful men, the announcer teased.
An income “in the millions,” said the arresting officer.
Pina Colapinto
A petite call girl,
who once slid between the sheets of royalty,
a green-eyed blonde helped the police get the indictment.
They really dolled her up
She looks great.
Never!
What I told her was: ‘Wash that ******.’
XXXI.
Madam Alex died at 7 p.m.
Saturday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center,
where she had been in intensive care after recent open heart surgery
We all held her hand when they took her off the life support
This was the passing of a legend.
Because she was the mother superior of prostitution.
She was one of the richest women on earth.
The world came to her.
She never had to leave the house.
She was like Hugh Hefner in that way.
It's like losing a friend
In all the years we played cat and mouse,
she never once tried to corrupt me.
We had a lot of fun.
To those who knew her
she was as constant
as she was colorful
always ready with a good tidbit of gossip
and a gourmet lunch for two.
She entertained, even after her conviction on pandering charges,
from the comfy depths of her blue four-poster bed at her home near Doheny Drive,
surrounded by knickknacks and meowing cats,
which she fed fresh shrimp from blue china plates.
XXXII.
She stole my business,
my books,
my girls,
my guys.
I had a good run.
My creatures.
Make Mommy happy
Oh! He is the most enchanting cat that I have ever known.
She was, how can I say it,
classy.
When she first hired me
she thought I was too young to take her case.
I was 43.
I'm going to give you some gray hairs by the time this is over.
She was right.
XXXIII.
I was fond of Heidi
But she has a streak that is so vindictive.
If there is pure evil, it is Madame Alex.
XXXIV.
I was born and raised in L.A.
My dad was a famous pediatrician.
When he died, they donated a bench to him at the Griffith Park Observatory.
I think that Heidi wanted to try her wings
pretty early,
and I think that she met some people
who sort of took all her potential
and gave it a sharp turn
She knew nothing.
She was like a little parrot who repeated what she was supposed to say.
Alex and I had a very intense relationship;
I was kind of like the daughter she loved and hated,
so she was abusive and loving at the same time.
Look, I know Madam Alex was great at what she did
but it's like this:
What took her years to build,
I built in one.
The high end is the high end,
and no one has a higher end than me.
In this business, no one steals clients.
There's just better service.
XXXV.
You were not allowed to have long hair
You were not allowed to be too pretty
You were not allowed to wear too much makeup or be too glamorous
Because someone would fall in love with you and take you away.
And then she loses the business
XXXVI.
I was pursued because
come on
in our lifetime,
we will never see another girl of my age
who lived the way I did,
who did what I did so quickly,
I made so many enemies.
Some people had been in this line of business
for their whole lives, 30 or 40 years,
and I came in and cornered the market.
Men don't like that.
Women don't like that.
No one liked it.
I had this spiritual awakening watching an Oprah Winfrey video.
I was doing this 500-hour drug class
and one day the teacher showed us this video,
called something like Make It Happen.
Usually in class I would bring a notebook
and write a letter to my brother or my journal,
but all of a sudden this grabbed my attention
and I understood everything she said.
It hit me and it changed me a lot.
It made me feel,
Accept yourself for who you are.
I saw a deeper meaning in it
but who knows, I might have just been getting my period that day!
XXXVII.
Hello, Gina!
You movie star!
Yes you are!
Gina G!
Hello my friend,
Hello my friend,
Hello my movie star,
Ruby! Ruby Boobie!
Braaawk!
Except so many women say,
Come on, Heidi
you gotta do the brothel for us; don't let us down.
It would be kind of fun opening up an exclusive resort,
and I'll make it really nice,
like the Beverly Hills Hotel
It'll feel private; you'll have your own bungalow.
The only problem out here is the climate—it's so brutal.
Charles Manson was captured a half hour from Pahrump.
I said, Joe! What are you doing?
You gotta get, like,
a garter belt and encase it in something
and write,
This belonged to Suzette Whatever,
who entertained the Flying Tigers during World War II.
Get, like, some weird tools and write,
These were the first abortion tools in the brothel,
you know what I mean?
Just make some **** up!
So I came out here to do some research
And then I realized,
What am I doing?
I'm Heidi Fleiss. I don't need anyone.
I can do this.
When I was doing my research, in three months
I saw land go from 30 thousand an acre
to 50 thousand an acre,
and then it was going for 70K!
It's urban sprawl
—we're only one hour from Las Vegas.
Out here the casinos are only going to get bigger,
prostitution is legal, it's only getting better.
XXXVIII.
The truth is
deep down inside,
I just can't do business with him
He's the type of guy who buys Cup o' Noodles soup for three cents
and makes his hookers buy it back from him for $5.
It's not my style at all.
Who wants to be 75 and facing federal charges?
It was different at my age when I
at least...come on, I lived really well.
I was 22,
25 at the time?
It was fun then, but now I wouldn't want
to deal with all that *******
—the girls and blah blah blah.
But the money was really good.
I would've told someone they were out of their ******* mind
if they'd said in five years I'd be living with all these animals like this.
It's hard-core; how I live;
It's totally a nonfunctional atmosphere for me
It's hard to get anything done because
It’s so time-consuming.
I feel like they're good luck though....
I do feel that if I ever get rid of them,
I will be jinxed and cursed the rest of my life
and nothing I do will ever work again.
Guys kind of are a hindrance to me
Certainly I have no problem getting laid or anything.
But a man is not a priority in my life.
I mean, it's crazy, but I really have fun with my parrots.
XXXIX.
I started a babysitting circle when I wasn't much older than 9
And soon all the parents in the neighborhood
wanted me to watch over their children.
Even then I had an innate business sense.
I started farming out my friends
to meet the demand.
My mother showered me with love and my father,
a pediatrician,
would ask me at the dinner table,
What did you learn today?
I ran my neighborhood.
I just pick up a hustle really easily,
I was a waitress and I met an older guy who looked like Santa Claus.
Alex was a 5' 3" bald-headed Filipina
in a transparent muu muu.
We hit it off.
I didn't know at the time that I was there to pay off the guy's gambling debt.
It's in and out,
over and out.
Do you think some big-time producer
or actor is going to go to the clubs and hustle?
Columbia Pictures executive says:
I haven’t done anything that should cause any concern.
Jeez, it's like the Nixon enemies list.
I hope I'm on it.
If I'm not, it means I must not be big enough
for people to gossip about me.
That's right ladies and gentlemen.
I am an alleged madam and that is a $25 *****!
If you live out here,
you've got to hate people.
You've got to be pretty antisocial
How you gonna come out here with only 86 people?
That's Fred.
He's digging to China.
You look good.
Yeah, you too.
It's coming along here.
Yeah, it is.
I wanted to buy that lot there, but I guess it's gone?
That's mine, man! That's all me.
Really?
I thought there was a lot between us.
No. We're neighbors.
He's a cute guy
He's entertaining.
See, I kind of did do something shady to him.
I thought my property went all the way back
and butted up against his.
But there was one lot between us right there.
He said he was buying it,
but I saw the 'For Sale' sign still up there,
So I went and called the broker and said,
I'm an all-cash buyer.
So I really bought it out from under him.
But he's got plenty of room, and I need the space for my parrots.
Pahrump will always be Pahrump, but Crystal is going to be nice
All you need are four or five fancy houses and it'll flush everyone out
and it'll be a nice area.
They're all kind of weird here, but these people will go.
Like this guy here,
someone needs to **** him.
I was just saying to my dad that these parrots are born to a really ******-up world
He goes, Heidi, no, no; the world is a beautiful garden.
It's just, people are destroying it.
I’m looking into green building options
I don't want anything polluting,
I want a huge auditorium,
but it'll be like a jungle where my birds can really fly!
Where they can really do what they're supposed to do.
There were over 300 birds in there!
That lady,
She ran the exotic-birds department for the Tropicana Hotel,
which is a huge job.
She called me once at 3:30 in the morning
Come over here and help me feed this baby!
Some baby parrot.
And I ran over there in my pajamas
—I knew there was something else wrong
and she was like
Get me my oxygen!
Get me this, get me that.
I called my dad; he was like,
I don't know, honey, you better call the paramedics.
They ended up getting a helicopter.
And they were taking her away
in the wind with her IV and blood and everything
and she goes, Heidi, you take care of my birds.
And she dies the next day.
She was just a super-duper person.
XL.
I relate to the lifestyle she had before,
Now, I'm just a citizen.
I'm clean,
I'm sober,
I'm married,
I work at Wal-Mart.
I'm proud to say I know her. I look into her eyes
and we relate.
I got out in 2000,
so I've been sending her money for seven years
She was…whatever.
Girlfriend?
Yeah, maybe.
But ***, I tried like two times,
and I'm just not gay.
She gets out in about eight or nine months
and I told her I would get her a house.
But nowhere near me.
I didn't touch her,
but I'd be, like...
a funny story:
I told her,
Don't you ever ******* think
about contacting me in the real world.
I'm not a lesbian.
Then about two years ago, I got an e-mail from her,
or she called me and said, 'Google my name.'
So I Googled her name,
and she has this huge company.
Huge!
She won, like, Woman of the Year awards.
So I called her and I go,
Not bad.
She goes, 'Well, I did all that because you called me a loser.'
I go, '****, I should've called you more names
you probably would've found the cure for cancer by now.
XLI.
No person shall be employed by the licensee
who has ever been convicted of
a felony involving moral turpitude
But I qualify,
I mean, big deal, so I'm a convicted felon.
Being in the *** industry, you can't be so squeaky-clean.
You've got to be hustling.
Nighttime is really enchanting here
It's like a whole 'nother world out here, it really is
I’m so far removed from my social life and old surroundings.
Who was it, Oscar Wilde, I think, who said
people can adjust to anything.
I was perfectly adjusted in the penitentiary,
and I was perfectly adjusted to living in a château in France.
We had done those drug addiction shows together
Dr. Drew.
Afterward we were friendly
and he'd call me every now and then.
He'd act like he had his stuff together.
But it was all a lie.
Everything is a lie.
I brought him to a Humane Society event at Paramount Studios last year.
He was just such a mess.
So out of it.
He stole money from my purse.
He's such a drug addict because he's so afraid of being fat.
He liked horse ****, though. He did like horse ****.
This one woman that would have *** with a horse on the internet,
He told me that’s his favorite actress.
Better than Meryl Streep.
XLII.
The cops could see
why these women were taking over trade.
Girls with these looks charged upwards of $500 an hour.
The Russians had undercut them with a bargain rate of $150 an hour.
One thing they are not is lazy.
In the USSR
they grew up with no religion, no morality.
Prostitution is not considered a bad thing.
In fact, it’s considered a great way to make money.
That’s why it’s exploding here.
What we saw was just a tip of the iceberg.
These girls didn’t come over here expecting to be nannies.
They knew exactly what they wanted and what they were getting into.
The madam who organized this raid
was making $4 million a year,
laundered through Russian-owned banks in New York City
These are brutal people.
They are all backstabbers.
They’re entrepreneurs.
They’re looking at $10,000 a month for turning tricks.
For them, that’s the American dream.
XLIII.
If you’re not into something,
don’t be into it
But,
if you want to take some whipped cream,
put it between your toes,
have your dog licking it up and,
at the same time,
have your girlfriend poke you in the eye,
then that’s fine.
That’s a little weird but we shouldn’t judge.
She was my best friend then
and I consider her one of my best friends now,
because when I was going through Riker’s
and everyone abandoned me,
including my boyfriend,
I was hysterical,
crying,
and she was the one that was there.
And, when somebody needed to step up to the plate,
that’s who did, and I have an immense amount of
loyalty, respect, and love for her.
And if she’s going to prison for eight years
—that’s what she’s sentenced for
—I’ll go there,
and I’ll go there every week,
for eight years.
That’s the type of person I am.
Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto Mar 2017
"Tortured"
Giuseppi Martino Buonaiuto
Mar 2017
“Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.”
George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)
Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.
Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.
Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.
1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?
The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.
And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.
How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)
I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.
Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Police-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man-death.html#ixzz1e34QnHtr
Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque
Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com
Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.
So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?
Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.
So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.
My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*
My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.
George Orwell, 1984* (published in 1949)
Which brings us, of course, to the subject of torture since 1949.
Come with me to the Casbah, Babaloo.
We begin in the 1950s with the French in North Africa,
****** baguettes in Algeria,
Couilles frits, anyone?
Electrodes wired to Mustapha’s *****.
And "Bigeard's Shrimps,” as the bodies were called,
Dumped over the Mediterranean from aircraft,
All things considered a je ne sais quoi,
Though Camus and Sartre gave it a whack.
Then the 1960s: the CIA dabbling in mind-control and LSD.
Later, a Phoenix Program,
Very secretive, sympathies with the Cong required,
Various elders selected,
The village disinfected,
**, **, ** and a bowl of Pho.
Apartheid anyone?
Thirty years of South African terror & torture.
Torment in the townships,
Shaka Zulu gold and diamonds,
De Beers in Swaziland swing.
1971: riots at Attica,
Prisoners abused and tortured,
Rockefeller’s overcrowded slammer,
An upstate New York katzenjammer,
Nelson’s finger on the trigger,
39 dead and counting,
But who’s counting?
The CIA, back in the news in 1973,
Torture chambers under Chilean soccer stadiums,
And the Khmer Rouge:
Those Wacky Cambodians with skull racks.
And let us not forget the British,
With centuries of colonial experience behind them,
Occupy six counties in Northern Ireland.
Finally codify the imperial process,
The Five Techniques:
Sounds like a Motown group,
Satin smooth colored boys,
But more method than music:
(1) Wall-standing,
(2) Hooding,
(3) Subjection to noise,
(4) Sleep deprivation,
(5) No food and drink.
And there’s a bunch of horrible ****,
We still don’t know about the Argentine ***** War,
And other Mai Lai-like,
****-fest massacres in Vietnam.
How about torture since 1984?
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,
Come quickly,
(www.prematureejaculatorsanonymous.com)
To mind,
As do US-sponsored rendition facilities,
Spread throughout the NATO alliance.
And closer to home, it’s never a dull moment in the 5 Boroughs:
Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, The Bronx and Manhattan.
Take your pick from Giuliani’s Greatest Hits,
Rudy Kazootie’s campaign of law and order,
Not necessarily in that order.
More awful than lawful,
A bathroom plunger rammed up,
The Haitian voodoo ****** of Abner Louima,
While he be handcuffed at a Brooklyn station house.
Or, the NYPD partying like it was 1999.
When in fact, it was1999,
And a curious death it was for Amadou Diallo,
Would-be American citizen from The Republic of Guinea,
(No connection to Italy or Italians),
Abner & Amadou: a pair of cautionary tales,
Either/or reflecting standard procedure for the Po-Po,
Time and time again from coast to coast.
Either/or: poor Abner, no Haitian Papa Doc.
Poor Amadou, on his way home from night school,
When police squeeze off 41 rounds,
Most of them in his direction,
Hitting him 19 times.
Just the facts, ma’am:
Diallo had reached into his jacket.
A trigger-happy police officer yells “Gun.”
A jungle warfare quartet springs into action:
Shenzi, Banzai, Ed & Zazu,
Four equally trigger-happy colleagues,
Empty their weapons.
No gun was found on Diallo,
Only the wallet he tried to pull out,
Containing his Green Card,
4 U.S. dollar bills;
And a laminated,
Credit card-sized copy of the U.S. Bill of Rights.
(I just didn’t know when to quit, did I?
The wallet was there with Green Card and the bucks,
But I made up the part about the Bill of Rights,
Trying to add poetry to tragedy, as usual.)
I don’t have to say much about Rodney King (RIP).
You watched it on TV a hundred times,
And a picture’s worth a thousand words.
Or ten thousand or a million, I suppose.
“Can’t we all just get along?” asked Rodney Glen King.
Last but not least there’s Kelly Thomas (RIP),
Another incidence of police insanity,
It was July of 2011 in Fullerton, California.
Thomas, a 37-year-old homeless man,
Schizophrenic, but unarmed,
Beaten to death at a bus depot,
During an altercation with six Fullerton police officers.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2019225/Kelly-Thomas-Police-beat-taser-gentle-mentally-ill-homeless-man-death.html#ixzz1e34QnHtr
Mervyn Lazarus | Attorney | (www.mervlazarus.com) Police Brutality, Excessive Force and Jail Injury cases | California . . . Albuquerque
Jackie Chiles perfect attorney -YouTube, (www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpcEietIoxk) Nov 17, 2010 - 13 min - Uploaded by Kroeger22 All the scenes with Jackie Chiles from Seinfeld."Chiles is a parody of famed attorney Johnnie Cochran; both ... www.seinfeld.com
Perhaps the greatest torture of all,
Is that which artists subject us to.
Let us examine the case of Roberto Bolaño:
Roberto Bolaño, the great Chilean writer,
Tells a fabulous World War II story,
About a Spaniard--an Andalusian--
Fighting for the Germans against the Russians.
Captured by the Russians,
He is tortured for information.
The Spaniard speaks no Russian,
He knows only four words of German.
The Russian interrogators strap him into a chair,
Attach electrodes to his *****,
Attach pincers to his tongue.
The pain makes his eyes water.
He said--or rather shouts--the word coño.
It is Spanish for ****.
The pincers in his mouth,
Distort the expletive,
Which in his howling voice comes out as KUNST.
The Russian who knows German looks at him in puzzlement.
The Andalusian was yelling KUNST,
Yelling KUNST and crying in pain.
KUNST in German means art,
And that was what the bilingual Russian heard, KUNST.
“This ******* must be an artist or something.”
The torturers remove the pincers,
Along with a little piece of tongue,
And wait, momentarily hypnotized by the revelation:
The word ART had soothed the savage beasts.
So soothed, the savage beasts take a breather,
Waiting for some kind of signal.
Meanwhile, the Andalusian bleeds from the mouth,
Swallows his blood liberally mixed with saliva, and chokes.
The word coño,
Transformed into the word *KUNST,
Had saved his life.
It was dusk when he came out of the building.
Light stabbed at his eyes like midday sun.
So, it’s a fact that I love,
Truly love the simple blunt Anglo-Saxon expletive ****,
****: I pray that while I am being tortured some day,
I have the dignity to scream the word out loud.
And if I am screaming **** at the very end,
When my nervous system finally fails,
When I **** my pants,
When my pulmonic heart and lungs collapse,
Is that so bad?
Is that so wrong?
Do you realize that 1984 came--
Came and went, without any significant cultural hoopla?
The networks ignored it.
As did the cable pundits.
No significant comparative analysis between,
Orwell’s book 1984 and the year 1984,
Was broadcast electronically or publicized in print.
Steve Jobs got it, but as usual no one else did.
Mr. Jobs (RIP) did his best,
To mainstream its profound cultural relevance,
But ultimately failed,
Despite the $1.5 million he paid one of the networks,
To air a one minute nation-wide commercial,
During the 3rd Quarter,
Of Super Bowl XVIII,
January 22, 1984.
Despite Ridley Scott’s astonishing spell-binder,
His 60-second spot for The Macintosh 128K--
Still considered a watershed event,
And an advertising industry masterpiece,
…YouTube it and watch it. (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8ji0B98IMo).
See the hammer throwing athlete chick,
See her fling the sledge,
That huge sledgehammer,
Smash into Big Brother’s flat screen face.
Despite Jobs’ global presence,
Despite Steverino’s unfettered microphone access,
Whenever he felt an oraculation coming on,
Despite everything,
He was unable to move the powers that be,
To either hype the book or the prophecy come true.
So, what’s my point? I have two.
First, in April 1984 the estate of George Orwell,
And the television rights holder to the novel 1984,
Considered the edgy Jobs/Scott commercial to be,
A flagrant copyright infringement,
Sending a cease-and-desist letter to Apple Inc.
And the advertising agency that produced the spot: Chiat/Day Inc.
The commercial was never televised as a commercial after that.
Score: Lawyers 1, Artists 0.
My second point is that in November 2011,
The U.S. government argued before the U. S. Supreme Court,
That it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals,
Without first seeking a warrant.
In response, Justice Stephen Breyer (one of the sane ones),
Questioned what this means for a democratic society.
Referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four, Justice Breyer asked:
"If you win this case, then there is nothing,
To prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24/7,
The public movement of every citizen of the United States.
So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984 . . .”*
My third point,
(Yeah, I know I said two, but *******.)
My third point is that I’m just so ******* angry,
All the time, late and soon like Wordsworth,
(Was anyone more aptly named?)
I am angry about so many different things,
And every day that goes by I relate more and more,
To the thousands of Americans that occupied,
Zuccotti Park and Oakland,
And countless other venues,
Out into the streets.
Across the country.
Around the world.
I am humbled by their courage and perseverance.
Yet, I am afraid for them.
I am made paranoid by the scope and power,
Of the government,
Of the ruling class that controls it,
And the technology they allow us to embrace,
Technology’s sinister potential,
Now that more and more knowledge and information,
Has been digitized,
Existing only in cyberspace.
What frightens most is the realization,
That anyone with a word processor,
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
The scary part is—
Repeating myself for emphasis—
That anyone with a word processor
And access to the database could rewrite,
Any historical or legal document,
To fit the needs of a current agenda.
Does anyone out there give a ****?
Does anyone out there share my nightmare?
Do it to Julia.
Do it to Julia.