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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.
Mateuš Conrad Apr 2019
before i begin, a pre-scriptum...
         in my hand, this minute?
                   what a rare delight...
the Beauties of Sterne:
                                with some account of his life...
printed for J. Walker,
published by J. Walker, Paternoster Row &
   J. Harris, St. Paul's Church Yard...
London... 1811!
    and being a big "fan boy" of the fiction
that a bibliophile might have an adventure:
Roman Polanski's the Ninth Gate...
   now, for a book that's... 208 years old?!
it's not in bad shape... sure...
the hardcover is missing by a half...
but all the text is intact...
              obviously colouring of the pages...
but hey... i'm not a museum...
             the book is still fiddled with...
ha ha, the opening page with a picture
reads as follows:
   there are worse occupations in this world,
than feeling a woman's pulse...
perhaps a quote about... insensibility?
   it reads as follows:
       it is the fate of mankind, too often,
to insensible of what they may enjoy at
the easiest rate (sermon XLII)...
   besides, lucky for me youtube continues
to glitch from time to time...
    now looking more in line with channels
than individual artists...
   notably? Harakiri Diat (channel)...
eh... :wumpscut, the soft machine,
demdike stare, vomito *****, feindflug
weren't enough...
          turns out... there's more...
beyond penta, matutero and GloOMy
PhAntOM... well, please, allow me:
   filmmaker - the love market,
              la ***** bianca - demian...
hell... if you want to venture into the past?
i know one band that freaked out
my ex-girlfriend... gong - flying teapot...
or that song by greenskeepers, lotion...
               i thought i'd never see someone
become freaked out about music...
curios and also highly curious, yes...
but freaked out?
                 primitive knot - puritan...
demolition group - you better...
          1986 Yugoslav minimal electro...
Bruce Roach - Gut...
              and as it turns out...
    i look from this corner of the internet and find
absolutely no need to delve into
the dark web... install Tor...
           if you really want to...
  you'll find all you need... but you need
to sift through a bibliography of a book prior
to... it's all here... this sort of material
has an inbuilt filter... it filters out
             mainstream consumers of content...
i should know...
    3 websites that banned me,
1 suspended me...
                   i crossed the threshold...
    normie poetic: outcast *****...
           yet i still sometimes happened to chance
upon a will...
           lao che - soundtrack (the whole album
is decent) -
              


.i once heard it was based upon the following maxims: bogatemu wszystko wolno (the rich are allowed anything), siła razy gwałt (force multiplied by ****)... well... over the years, that much was true... but then i conjured a reply: nie wszystko wolno bogatemu (not everything is given an allowance to be expressed by the rich) and wola odiąć gwałt (will, having substracted ****): otherwise it's still wola razy gwałt (will, multiplied by ****).

****, i only just "woke" up from
this game,
you know that game...
oh i'm pretty sure you know it...
it's called
   pass the jew along...
   rudolf höss
      cited, among the list:
ibrahim ibn yaqub,
         radhanites (there's a surd
H in there, rad-'anites)
    casimir III...
esp. the latter...
           so.. give the current h'americans,
we're still playing the globalist
nomad game of: juggling the jews,
yes, no, maybe?
so my mother tended to
two old jewish women,
because, just "because"
their sons were active in
the "economics" of passing law
and techno-literacy?
oh... right... i "see"...
                            i... "see"...
in defence, of the "neglected" ones...
makes perfect sense,
de facto 51,
                  area 51 was always
a propaganda convert term
for Israel, rather than some area
bound to Nevada, wansn't it?
wasn't it?
                      ask me again
one year from now,
did we live peacefully among the jews?
they'll tell you the joke...
didn't the jews shoot,
with riffles,
   with bent barrels / sights
aiming at themselves rather
than the nazis?
       no, no soap jokes when
it comes to yews...
the yids...
      everyone in poland just
wondered: why so pacified?
        so blatant in walking into
an inferno?
                      you know...
it took Poland longer to surrender,
while being attacked by both
the Germans and the Russians,
than it took for the Fwench
to be attacked by the sole effort
of the Germans?
    funny... that...
                               i truly admire
some nazis, for their ingenuity...
notably? erwin rommel...
   lothar von arnauld de la periè(re)...
(subtle, i give you that one,
per-y'eh...
                 'old 'ack 'old 'ck
   h-b-h-b,
                                    rein in...
otherwise perié... ergo without
                                           the -re)...
michael wittmann...
and i'm a ******...
      **** me...
they didn't bomb paris,
might as well state:
they also didn't bomb
  marienburg or most of danzig...
Warsaw? taken down,
levelled, brick by brick,
        until no brick stood on brick...
              what?!
i thought the western capitalist-ico
communist insurgents
wanted target practice?
          i thought these people
wanted nazis, no?
          i'll admit... tiki torches?
you must have never looked
at european football hooligans...
tiki torches?!
you having a bbq?
            never heard of flares?        
- mind you...
you know what's worse beside
beind ridiculed?
having your intelligence
insulted...
i.e. do i look like someone
who managed to ****
your mother with a *******
harmonica,
or, am i, bound to the responsibility,
of your parents playing
the irresponsibility card,
attempting to convey a child
into existence aged circa 50
circa 45,
and what comes out is
an autistic cucumber?!
    **** me...
try giving ****** lessons
to circa 50 year olds;
and now the paradox...
   "i'm" the "schizophrenic"...
cool cool, coolio...
     i'll just hide in that "harem's"
worth of a brothel with
the prostitutes who tell
me they get s.t.d. checks on
a regular basis, o.k.?
_____

what am i to add to this?
not much, is there...
was the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald
ever great?!
  how satisfying it is to be unable
to please the crowd....
words, after all, are not bread...
how one wishes
for an anathema rather than
a martyr's embrace...
            one begins to imagine...
then one loses interest...
then...
                    peering through
the eye of a needle
watching a camel walk through...
one spots something outside
the realm of the metaphorical miracle...
do i have to?
      what if i remain to this side
of the eye of the needle?
what riches do i have that i cling to...
books & music...
does that make me rich?
what are the sort of riches where either
people plunder readily (music),
or do not engage with to begin
with?
who are ready to read...
i can claim to be a book thief...
i stole two books from my high school
library... the quran and the scarlet &
the black by stendhal...
            "stole"... i extended their
licance of being borrowed...
how am i rich: if my riches are the riches
no one would want to steal?!
i am rich... though...
               but i am rich in a both
materialistic / non-materialistic paradox
frame...
                what i own no one wants to
steal! why steal a first cheap edition
of a dickens' novel if you're not going
to read it!
              
       **** **** ****.... if they were such
philistines... when blitzing London,
why did st. paul's remain intact?
   "coinicidence"? i don't think so...
and why did they steal all those
art-works? again, "coincidence"?

                    they were people:
i find it uncomfortable to suit them up
in transcendence,
to be: epitome evil...
  to be the übermensch...
                   they loved art as much
as they loved being the antithesis
of the golden horde: gucci, dolce & gabbana
zz top: well dressed men...

     nazis loved art and fashion,
by far the best dressed army in the world
and history...

   ol' herman and otto came back
from the eastern front to a scared wife and mother...
people! they weren't mythical creatures...
the nazis can hardly become
chimeras as they become in the minds
of pseudo-communists of the western lands...

they are hardly the epitome of evil,
i know the 21st century narrative
deems them: "the perfect example"...
come on... they're not evil embodied
with not subsequent examples to be given
to... historical capitalism of evil:
there's always someone waiting,
some group of people to stage
a competition libra... and they will...
overcome the nazis...
it's only a question of ingenuity /
imagination...
           gas chambers was only industrial...
it will become personal in the years to come...
methodologically trained cultured
barbarians woken from a slumber...

the nazis were not: philistines...
   in no defence: didn't they speed up the creation
of the state of israel?
   didn't they? **** uncle:
   lavrentiy pavlovich Beria is going to state
the matters differently?
like hell he is...

        my family also suffered in that war...
sure, not in a concentration camp:
but on the front...
             there's even a joke that my
grandfather remembers:
the jews were shooting with bent nozzles
of riffles...
   as he also remembers two ss-men
who he asked for sweets,
and they would give them to him,
he'd as them: herr! bitte bon-bon!
   sweets so sweet that he would have
to rinse his hands under water
to unglue them from the sickly in-between...
how all the insurgent soviet soldiers
were teenagers and preferred to
sleep in pigstys and among the goats
in the hay...

how did the nazis become mythological
i will never understand,
at uni i had a **** history teacher,
canadian, she really liked my essay
on napoleon... how he was a great
strategist...
akin to?  

   erwin rommel wasn't a ****...
erwin rommel was, erwin rommel...
a great strategist...
        am i supposed to thrive in this
current year of polarized *******?
it's the current topic,
i can't escape it,
  sure, i'd love to have a Wordsworth
moment, lurking in me,
or an anna akhmatova breakthough...
instead?! i'm given this sort of *******
on a platter,
  and all that's missing are the wedges
of lemon and the eager oysters to
be gulped down... lucky me!

no, i don't like how the nazis are misrepresented
as both the übermenschen:
these mythological epitomes of evil
(no greater evil is to come? really?!)
and at the same time
as philistines: they stole art,
they ensured that critically cultural
documents of architecture were left
undisturbed... st. paul's cathedral...

         it's not like some otto or moritz
didn't come back home to a wife
and children... no...
he came back to the shadow cult
of the ******* hanging over him...

you know what the most haunting experience
i have ever experienced was?
Ypres... world war I site...
visiting a german cemetary...
compared to the allies cemetary?
**** me, what a meagre sight!
           the allies were burried with marked
graves, each man to his own cross...
the german burial ground?!
  mass graves....
eh: one marker: 200 bodies in one pit...
                 and here's the 21st century with
games about shooting: zee nat'zees...

   just visit the world war I cemetaries...
the ally cemetaries? square miles...
each man with his white cross...
german cemetaries? as mass graves go...
one marker per 200+ troops...
so... not that much space required...
less: bombast!
               pride & prejudice /
   pomp & circumstance...
   which the english speaking world is...
of the latter convenience to suit the narrative.

to reiterate...
   as a ******... the whole german fetish
isn't my kind of gig...
what with my grandmother being born
on the front... given opiates at an early
age so she would not cry and allow
the soldiers to locate her and my gread-grandparents...
but...
   they were the best dressed army in
the history of warfare...
they were not philistines and they certainly
weren't the mongolian golden horde...
i.e. they stole art, notably jewish artwork...
and if a luftwaffe squadron were to drop
a bomb on st. paul's? they'd probably
be shot...
  after all... Posen wasn't destroyed,
Breslau wasn't destroyed...
        Danzig wasn't destroyed...
Cracow wasn't destroyed...
             o.k., half of Warsaw was,
but we know why that happened
(or at least i do... idealist students who
thought they could fight the enemy
with slingshots and air-pistols)...
why? the Germans were simply thinking:
oh... we'll just be moving back...
i once explained it to myself...
they weren't exactly some mythological
grand evil template...
so i started thinking about them as:
Hans von Seeckt...
  or Otto Hertz...
              or some other german random
soldier...
      well... you should travel to Ypres,
Belgium... and visit a German cemetary
from war world I... then visit
the allies graveyard...
       each soldier, individually buried...
with his pwetty pwetty weißkreuz -
mostly named...
                 now visit a german cemetary...
mass.... graves...
                they just dumped them,
heaped them...
                        to me they were people...
you can't exactly reason with a mythological
evil - an archeological evil,
   an archetypical evil...
          for an archetypical evil?
try the nuclear family...
                         ******... that sort of thing...
child abuse... too many actors
were involved in this story,
too many mistakes, too many naive blunders...
evil on this scale is easily diluted...
which is why it's taught as history,
in schools...
   no one will teach children about...
oh... say... the Wiener Blut scenario...
   Josef Fritzl...
                    i'm pretty sure this will not be
taught in a history class...
                or... the H. H. Holmes Hotel story...
but it might become a jack the ripper
tourist-fetish... might it not? well, it already is.
dianne moritz Apr 2019
Mother’s Weeping Willow
by Dianne Moritz

Mother carefully snipped
a small, green cutting
from a friend’s lush yard,
set it to root in an old jam jar
on our kitchen window sill.

Us kids were intrigued,
as fragile shoots spouted,
buds of leaves unfurled,
like baby fists, opening
to streaming sunlight.

Sometime later, Mother
carried an elfin sapling
outside to our backyard,
placed it in the warm,
rich, fertile Iowa soil.

We watched in wonder,
watered & tended the tiny
tree, doubtful it would
survive the scorching
summers, harsh winters.

But we learned that Old
Mother Nature is shrewd,
and by summer’s end
our tree grew four feet,
as tall as me, and thrived.

How we loved that willow!
We’d hide beneath its boughs,
to read, nap, and daydream,
a safe haven, our spot
to plot our next adventure.

Mother’s Weeping Willow
is gone now, chopped down
for firewood; yet, it remains,
in memory, a testament to
life’s transient beauty….

HAPPY EARTH DAY!
dianne moritz May 2019
IT’S COME TO THIS                                                                                              
by Dianne Moritz

Once
she sipped daiquiris
by the pool
high above Hollywood
gazing down at the vista.
Eucalyptus
shade cooled
her soft, tanned skin
as she kissed his lips
under the California sun.
There
he made promises
to love her forever
and ever and ever
until the twelfth of never.
Today
she lives in the east
writing... remembering
dreams of long ago
when now was all
everything she wanted to know.
dianne moritz May 2019
INSTRUCTIONS TO A CAMERA*
By Dianne Moritz

Find good light,
perfect angles.
Blur your focus,
soften scars,
furrows of frowns,
deep crow’s feet.
Catch a dazzling
twinkle of mischief
in sunlit eyes, bright
smile on pouty lips.
Pause a moment.
Ready…
set...
click your shutter.

Published in “Today’s Little Ditty” May 23, 2019
FROM A POETRY PROMPT
dianne moritz Apr 2019
By Dianne Moritz

I could write the saddest poem.
War, terror, famine, bone-chilling
Cold seeping in through the cracks.

I see the saddest poem: words spilling
From your mouth, smooth as lies,
Those empty promises never kept.

Yes, I could write the saddest poem,
But for this - one lone bloom
Brightens the barren winter bush.
This poem was published in The Drabble last Sunday, April 7, 2019
dianne moritz May 2019
Cowboys and Indians
by Dianne Moritz

We ambushed enemies,
killed and maimed,
releasing aggression
in childhood games.
dianne moritz Apr 2019
By Dianne Moritz

I could write the saddest poem.
War, terror, famine, bone-chilling
Cold seeping in through the cracks.

I see the saddest poem: words spilling
From your mouth, smooth as lies,
Those empty promises never kept.

Yes, I could write the saddest poem,
But for this - one lone bloom
Brightens the barren winter bush.
This poem was published in The Drabble today with a lovely photograph.
dianne moritz Apr 2019
DEER CROSSING
by Dianne Moritz

Driving along Deerfield,
north to North Haven,
headlights catch glints
of a deer's eyes. He stops.
Leaps of freedom freeze
there in the brush.

On a return trip home,
one brown carcass lies
graveled on the shoulder,
****** head bent back,
mouth open, calling
warnings to the woods.
dianne moritz Apr 2019
JUST ANOTHER NIGHT OF COUNTRY DANCING                                                                
by Dianne Moritz

They come dressed like real dudes:
faded levis, tooled leather boots, silver
concha belts, hair slicked back under
cowboy hats, raring to Boot Scootin’ Boogie.

They sashay over, heels clacking on the wax
tongue-n-groove, offer out a callused hand,
swing you through the rowdy crowd, singing “Achy,
Breaky Heart,” confident they’ll soon break yours.

They lock you in a fierce embrace, glance down,
ask: So how’ve you been?, all the while checking
out the competition, lazy and loose with *****.
Shuffling left, instead of right, they stumble,

stomp your toes, clumsy with the latest dance
craze, then twirl you under their sweaty armpits,
sultry  air around heavy with  greasy smells:
French fries, onions, barbecue, burgers, beer.

They yammer on about themselves, casually blowing
lion-breath into your smiling face, as you plot your escape
to coincide with the guitar’s last twang, secretly
praying a tall, handsome stranger two-steps into view.
dianne moritz Apr 2019
LETTING GO
by Dianne Moritz

Do you spit out words
as you might a bite of bruised apple?
Do you say: Today my dog died?  
Do you tell how you watched the light
fade from her soulful eyes,
nothing left but bones and soft fur?
Should you mention you cried out,
wanting to **** the messenger?  
Oh, how this longing hurts, sometimes
believing, hoping she will amble back
home, tail thumping, cold nose pressed
against your lonely hand....

— The End —