‘Hey jesus your Lordship give me a couple of quid, will ya. Not only don’t I have any pockets I forgot I don’t have any fucking pants on.’ His Lordship suppressing another spasm of laughter and fumblingly selecting two brand new crisp bills from a large black sealskin wallet. The porter looking from the masked black face with the deep voiced American male accent, to that of the blondly aristocratic mirth contorted countenance of his Lordship who hands the two pounds to Schultz who hands it to the head bowing porter.
‘Well thank you. Thank you. Very much obliged. Er, madam.’ Porter walking off down the platform turning around to look back. Schultz raising his hand to wave. Train doors slamming. A first class passenger taking off his spectacles urgently wiping them and putting them back on to frown out the train window.
‘Good god Schultz you’ve put that poor porter in a state of shock.’ ‘Hey what’s wrong I gave him two whole fucking quid.’
‘Well in actual fact you gave him my two quid. But you also gave him a good look at your legs which are like a gorilla’s.’
The porter increasing his departing speed and turning around once again to suddenly walk smack into a pillar, knocking off his cap, and reeling backwards holding the side of his head. As Schultz doubled up, struggles laughing in his flowing skirts to pull himself up into the train. His Lordship oscillating in another spasm of mirth limps away to the next carriage down the platform.
Schultz aseat on his bed in the locked compartment of XI4, his head dress and mask off, dabbing tissues to remove the black greasepaint on his face. A whistle outside. The train lurching into movement. A soft click clack of the wheels. Just stretch back down a second on my bed. What a day. What a week. And at final last. Deliverance. Jesus my balls, even bandaged as they are, are feeling better already with the fresh air flowing around them. After the first laugh I’ve had in about a century. Just in the nick of time when you begin to wonder if life even for five seconds will stop being a struggle. Christ what peaceful bliss. To be on a train. And not know where in the fucking hell I’m going. Except to Edinburgh. Maybe I should jerk off. And reduce the pressure even further. After another full day. At least I won’t know until tomorrow if Magillacurdy has pissed on the footlights, or worse, socked somebody into the orchestra pit as he usually does when he’s celebrating. Except for my present bonanza income I sometimes wonder if I’m really suited to a show biz way of life. Never once had I ever been able to call anyone darling. And I’m never fucking well ever going to call anyone darling, either. But boy one or two guys passing me in the train station tonight were nearly on the verge of calling me endearments. Jesus this is dangerous. I’m beginning to like being in drag. Amazing how it suits me. I could have been a femme fatale in a harem. Holy shit how did I ever end up like this. Had to be cut out of my new pants. Then I’m in striped pyjamas and now I’m in silk robes. Boy transvestism is giving me an insight. Of how the theatre must have first got in my blood, before I ever even knew what a proscenium stage was.
Schultz taking off his sari. Washing his face and lifting the top of the wicker picnic hamper. Taking out a thermos of hot coffee and pouring a cup. Opening the flask of brandy and filling the snifter glass a quarter full, that Jorricks has carefully wrapped in tissue and polished gleaming. Two linen napkins. Two pieces of marzipan. And holy living and breathing shit. Look at this. Just look at it. He even has caviare, pate and smoked oysters in here. And not only brandy but Armagnac too. Jesus what the fuck would I ever do without him. Everything he touches he leaves perfect. Everything he plans has a built in contingency for a gorgeous cornucopia. Jesus all I have to do now is lie back here with the sleeping towns and villages of England flashing by. And remembering how fucking young I was when I first got a taste of loving the sight of tits. Try as I do I can’t remember my own mother’s but boy I remember other udders. Where I had a hole made down in our basement lingerie store, to see the ladies’ dressing booth which took my father, sweat pouring off his face, two weeks to build. Because every time he hit one of the nails too hard which was supposed to hold the whole thing together, the whole fucking thing fell down on his balding head, raising lumps on his skull and dust all over the place and merchandise. Jesus he was a pathetic sight, my poor fucking father. Before it was made a public health hazard to try on underwear, he did everything unsanitary short of murder to make a dollar. Struggling with my mother tooth and nail making sacrifices to pay the dentist’s bills to straighten my buck teeth. He darned my socks, cut my hair, mended my shoes which then got polished with banana skins. With his dreams of branching out into dresses and being like the biggest department store in New York, he even had the linguistic audacity to say he was a couturier. But it was me he put all afternoon standing out in the street like they did in the Judengasse in Vienna, enticing the customers in and it was me who had to shake the debris off the lingerie merchandise and make it fit to sell again. But boy from the business we did in falsies, the young hero Schultz, was learning about women. That they care more about the size of their tits than they do about anything else. If they’re small they want them big. If they’re big they want them a better shape. And let me tell you the pairs of tits I’ve seen that no brassiere in a million years could ever make look good again, were legion. I even studied the anatomy of the tit in the library. How their contours hung was my absolute obsession. Until I developed a serious interest in asses. And who knows, christ maybe my mother elbowed me in the jaw off the nipple, Rabbi. Because tits and later asses gave me my driving force to get into show biz. When I went to the Old Howard burlesque in Boston for the first time, hollering, hey take it off, I thought christ some guy’s making money hiring girls to do this. I was amazed to see the distinctly better quality, albeit low slung pairs of tits prancing and bouncing around on the stage. From being a long time bargain basement amateur I became overnight a sophisticated mammary expert. To be a one day big time impresario, I knew I needed to keep my eye in training. Until holy shit I got caught. Right at the most crucial time of my father’s business expansion. When he was opening another branch and left me after school minding the store. And out of the blue, like a breeze of fresh beautiful country air down in that stale fume farted atmosphere, with the worst ones laid by my fat gluttonous cousin Saul, this girl comes in who was really a lady. After weeks and weeks of a long stream of hags that I nearly no longer even bothered to watch. She was not only the best looking girl ever to come into our store but she even wore beautiful delicate perfume. My cousin Saul, being apprenticed to the lingerie trade because his father a second rate tailor was nearly as poor as us, and who I asked to mind the cash register while I was being a peeping tom, went into an apoplectic trance trembling all over. Jesus come to think of it, he was a business disaster. Even though I was only a fucking kid, I was already good at business. Knew how to take inventory, even buy stock. Maybe that was what my father was grooming me for and opening another store. He also said he would show his brother Isadore. Instead of a path, my father was going to finally one day have a driveway up to his front door. But Uncle Werb used to say to him, Herbie, no, whatever you do don’t tie up money buying a house. Go instead rent an apartment on a high floor, it’s cheaper and then no one can shoot you while you’re mowing your lawn. Jesus Uncle Werb was a genius. And as a joke would say to me hello Sigmund, soon as your father has three stores you’ll be mister merchant prince. O christ I got to stop thinking. But what delicious coffee. And exquisite brandy. Which makes the whole fucking saga of my father’s struggle just too sadistically pathetic. But that day when I leave the little fat fucker Saul at the cash register. And it was even worse when finally every one of the relations thought we were headed for the big time. Shit come to think of it maybe we really were. But that little cunning fucker my cousin Saul said that my father was all cash flow and no profit and that he’d believe the success when my father could afford a new hat. And that shrewd little fat assed bastard when he made his bar mitzvah you’d think he’d just been made King of Israel. And the w
ay he clutched even an old fashioned nickel in his clammy hand. Choking the Indian on the coin to death. Anyway I wait for the all clear and I leave Saul minding the cash register. O jesus. She’s in there in the changing booth. I’m shaking like Saul is as I go tiptoeing into the adjoining dressing booth. And start staring through the partition wall. Confronting what was for me for the first time ever, true physical beauty. Her fucking blue gorgeous eyes like my own, which I and nobody else in my family had. And which every time Uncle Werb would look at me, he’d say to my poor father. Herbie he’s going to grow up into a goy. Maybe I was always a Jewish fucking misfit from the start because every relative my father had has ever since held my gorgeous blue eyes against me. And it was the first time I ever knew that someone you could call patrician could ever come down our fucking dingy eighteen steps, no it was seventeen after we took away the step over the bump of the pipe which went right across the front entrance and over which two customers tripped and sued us. I even already had my first fight of the day up on the street with the big bellied grocery store neighbour off whose outside stall Saul stole fruit and who tore down our sign we always stuck up next to our doorway entrance. This big bully bastard right while I was nailing it back, pulled me over right on my ass. Jesus I was so furious when I got up that I kicked him square in the balls. He crawled back in his store and got a gun and shot at me. The hours spent battling over a couple of square feet we sneaked of his space to advertise, with this next door fucker and my father belly to belly on the sidewalk in front of this guy’s over ripe bananas threatening with his fists in my father’s face. An old lady passing by shook her walking stick at them and called it a Jew fight, with the grocery store owner an Italian. And that girl, whom I’ve remembered ever since with her long gleaming black hair hanging down over the little velvet collar of her black coat.
Loafers on her feet, which is why I treasure mine. Even her voice asking Saul if we had anything in silk was beautiful to my ears. Musical as if laughter might any second erupt. Jesus now that I know what I know about life she must have been a little down on her luck. O god here I am propped on the pillows, the towns and stations flying by the window outside and I’m sipping this wonderful brandy and drinking coffee and making even in this night alone as much as my father made in a whole month. And recalling one of the most traumatic days of my life. I must have really fallen in love. And holy shit just like Louella in her calm beautiful way, with the merest trace of a smile. The calm beautiful way she asked about her size. The fucking number I shall remember for all time. Thirty four. Thirty four. Just like the train wheels click clacking on the track. Thirty four. Jesus I might have been seeing for the first time, Louella. Who is a thirty six. O god. I’m abreacting. After all the fucking stress of this past day. And I could get off the train in Edinburgh in the morning and may have to go into purdah again with people jeering me as I come out of the station. I nearly used to get down on my knees to beg for publicity but never did I not want it so much as I do at this time. When there was the time that I could think of nothing but. Maybe an obsession comes with every stage of life. And when mine was tits, it was tits morning noon and night. And until I became highly selective I was ready to rip up sweaters or tear open blouses and jump on and kiss the nipples of nearly every customer under eighty who came into the store. Holy shit, how hard up can you get. Jesus let me tell you, you can get plenty. Till it even gets explosive. Whoosh. Blam. Kaboom. Like a rocket over the Eiffel Tower. But the lady in the black coat brought discrimination and artistic standards into my love life. I was already shaking like a leaf as I waited till she was in the dressing booth. Ready to nip into my peep hole through the partition wall where I disguised it behind a sign, which I printed in big capitals PLEASE TURN OFF THE LIGHT. Then when I finally put the small printed word fucking in front of the word light, for the first time people would turn it off. Shows you how rude words help get attention. She took off her black coat with the little velvet collar. She had on a lace blouse and a string of what I swear must have been thousands of dollars worth of real pearls. My eyeballs only eighteen inches away, I nearly fainted with the simple beauty of the lace of her blouse at her throat. I didn’t know that people like this even existed who smiled serenely and spoke gently. Never mind sniffing the most beautifully delicate of perfumes that not even our stale basement fart fumed air could destroy. Although correct that. Farts Saul laid corroded the light fixtures on the ceiling. And nearly broke the blades of the extractor fan. But her perfume I’ve searched the world for since, and there’s not a trace of resemblance in even one of the two hundred bottles my black cloud wife owns. Through the peep hole I could just catch sight of a book, which said Wellesley College on it which was on top of her black handbag. It was pure genuine leather. Let me tell you, not only in ladies’ tits but in ladies’ accessories. I could always tell best quality. As were her loafers and stockings. The other thing I knew then, was about fabric. And she didn’t have one single speck of rayon on her. Shit too, come to think of it, before I was even twelve, from Uncle Werb I nearly knew as much about pearls as I knew about diamonds. From pink Strombees as I liked to call them, to black Pinctada. Shit when you think of what I was taught by Uncle Werb, I was really educated about garments, jewellery and gems. And I should be on my way to Antwerp instead of Edinburgh. In school I was even selling shoelaces, belts and ties at a discount to classmates. Jesus my whole life up to that moment of that blue eyed girl in the black coat had been merchandising. I only wish Uncle Werb could have taught me something about the English upper class. Maybe that’s why when this lady walked into my ghetto life every fucking thing in my psyche was changed forever. Shit, right here, right now, I’m practically an aristocrat just like his Lordship. Sailing a hundred miles an hour north on the train. Jesus, I am an aristocrat. If you miss out the degradation of my mother and father and go back to the fucking big wigs we were in Prague. And then zoom back to me right here in this compartment. I got a butler. I got a fifteen room townhouse in the best part of Belgravia. I got three gorgeous pet pigeons. And soon I’ll have a body guard. But back in that dressing booth I was awe stricken. I nearly didn’t know no longer as I watched out of that peep hole that I had a hard on. I guess because then all day long I had a hard on even the whole time when I made my bar mitzvah. I used to pray it wouldn’t happen. And the harder each time I prayed, up it would come as stiff and harder than a steel fence post. The end poking right out of my short pants. Especially right at the time I was being introduced to relatives. O jesus the crushing ignominy that can come out of carnal enthusiasm. Hey folks, this is our good boy Sigmund who minds the store now after school with his cousin Saul. And folks please excuse his prick sticking out. Christ if I stop to think and shit tonight I’m thinking. And I guess I’m still in merchandising and minding the store. Only now I’m in the world of full blown treachery, minding egomaniacal stars. Going through scripts with a bunch of hack writers whining about the integrity of their work. When the integrity is a ticket that gets sold to something that doesn’t bore you shitless. I can take the prima donna choreographers, and designers who think they know what the lyrics ought to say, but the worst of the business are the mister smooth smart ass directors in leather coats, getting down on their haunches as if all time show biz profound philosophical thunderbolts were going to come blasting out their ass. But that day down the store I was witnessing my first production with a solo incredible performance that that little fucker Saul knew was giving me the thrill of a lifetime and just to ruin my exquisite pleasure he was coughing and clearing his throat and ringing the bell on the cash register. And there’s no doubt about it that the only thing that can stop people fucking up your life is money and getting really really rich. Till of course an endless mob of fuckers then try to prise it out of your clutches. But finding Louella is like finding again the girl of my dreams. Who became that girl that day down the bargain basement of my father’s lingerie store, with her beautiful hands and the way she unbuttoned her coat. O ch
rist after a day like this I’ll never sleep tonight. Take one more helping of coffee and another dollop of brandy. What the fuck is wrong with me I should lose my fucking temper in public. I could be criminally prosecuted for uttering an obscenity to the whole population of England. And be for all time forbidden to meet the Queen or mingle with other members of the Royal Family. Who christ almighty I must say I really want to meet. Sipping champagne elbow to elbow in the Royal retiring room of the theatre. They’re the kind of people who don’t have to go rummaging around down basements of lingerie stores. Maybe I should stay in purdah and meet them with a masked face which no one can recognize. It was my white hands and legs on a black face that the porter saw that made him walk into a pillar on the station. Shit why don’t I go into the first barber I see, have all my hair cut off, be shaved bald. Put on a wig and become a tall blue eyed transvestite. Holy shit, then Jorricks and I would really make a pair. Christ, the train is rocking and swaying, and we’re going flying through stations drinking brandy, and quaffing coffee like at hundreds of miles a fucking hour. Can’t even read the signs. I like it. Thank god his Lordship is on this train because when we stop at the last stop in the morning I’m going to be the most worried fucking man in Scotland. That’s one thing about his Lordship. The guy has the most astonishing good sense and advice which maybe he never has to apply to himself having so much god damn money and possessions that jesus he couldn’t even count if he started counting till the end of his days. But he says when he gets up to give his advice in the House of Lords that everybody falls asleep. But what I want to know is what the fuck does he do for fucking. Right on that couch in his library you could blissfully screw yourself out of your mind. When with shotguns, polo mallets, fishing rods, riding boots and hats there and all over the office, he’s all the time off fishing, shooting or foxhunting. Shit. Come to think of it, ask me what the fuck do I do for fucking. Except for a blow job months have gone by in celibacy. And with as much money as I’m making it’s a crime and a shame that some lovely doll and I are not in ecstasy with each other. O jesus don’t let me sink down into the depths. Life yet is going to be good. I’m still only really making peanuts when soon any day now I’ll be making coconuts. When I beat these pair of fucking guys with the silver spoons, and sell the film rights and record album of the show. They’ll be taught a fucking lesson that I got taught every five minutes fighting my way in and out and up from the ghetto gutter. But jesus Rabbi. It’s the next twenty four hours that I got to worry about. My mortgage on the house. They could call it in or something after what I said on the TV. Sigmund have another jolt of brandy and relax, they can’t do that to you. Remember one thing about England, if you went to the right school had the right mother and father and the right accent and inherited the right amount of money to pay the right lawyers, you can expect and be damn sure to get fair minded justice from a fair minded jury and a fair minded judge. Rabbi for Christ’s sake you forgot I’m from parents with Yiddish accents and graduated from a no account high school and went to a no account college and come from a no account part of America no one has even heard of. And I was until tonight moving right up the social ladder. And fucking well nearly am at the last rung right at the top. So Sigmund listen, it’s time to stop climbing. Hey wait a minute Rabbi. I haven’t cashed in yet. I could call up anyone prominent in London and invite them to a party and they’d come running. Sigmund never forget that after they smash back your vintages and eat the food how fast guests leave dishes to wash and forget you and what you fed them even faster. Touche Rabbi. Then shit, I should just drink my fucking wonderful brandy and coffee and not think about anything else but fucking again the woman I love. Now Sigmund you’re talking sensible providing she lets you like your mother let your father. O jesus Rabbi. I can’t imagine my father ever screwing my mother. Or my mother ever laying on her back for my father. Sigmund how do you know they didn’t do conceiving you, some fancy fucking. Because Rabbi when my mother wasn’t nagging my father she was sneering that he wasn’t as rich as his brother Isadore. They consistently enjoyed a nice sour silence together all their lives. But Sigmund they had dirty pictures and literature in a dresser drawer. Yeah Rabbi, jesus when I found those I got a surprise. I showed them to Saul who went apoplectic and started putting his clammy hands three miles up the dress of another twelve year old cousin whose father beat the shit out of him for his trouble. O jesus it gives me the willies, just remembering back then to my father’s lingerie store devoted to the proposition that erotic underwear could get women somewhere. Imagine my father even tried to patent some of the apparel. He even designed to feature a satin striped red and black bra and G string called the Temptress. What that gorgeous woman who undid her blouse, and who only must have still been no more than just coming into her prime of full womanhood was doing in our sleazy store I’ll never know. When those first two buttons on each lace encrusted sleeve cuff became undone I nearly died. Only before in samples had I ever seen such exquisite lace. And boy I knew my lace. That on her blouse collar and cuffs was Italian eighteenth century. The warp and weft of that fucking embroidery. Point de Venise a reseau. One of the most delicate of all laces. Stuff like that my father should have been importing. He did once try to feature as a piece de resistance bras and G strings they made in a convent up in the Austrian mountains that even a queen would have been proud of. But at the price they wouldn’t sell. Only did our customers care about the provocative features of the garment and didn’t give a fuck about quality. Every time we tried to up market we always plummeted down nearly out of business. O jesus, the simple thoughtful gifts of lace I used to bring to give the black cloud. She threw them out in the garbage. Then I bought a beautiful stainless steel egg whisk and colander I spent hours deliberating over in the store. These she threw right fucking at me and screamed your uncle is in the diamond business you stupid fucker don’t you have enough brains to bring me something I really want like diamonds. And O my god, there’s no one in the world who wears determination on her face the way she does. Unless for that little know all fucker Saul, who was determined that day I wouldn’t have an orgasm. With my bare hands I could have killed him. Speaking out loud he was to a new customer that both the dressing booths were occupied, but that he would go check. The fucker knowing I was right in there already going out of my mind. First over the lace and now over her beautiful Venetian tits. He had me sweating that any second he was going to pull open the flimsy door. The fucking thing had already come loose on its hinges and was already ready to collapse in dust. Real unwarped pine doors for genuine privacy and shop lifting, that was the other wonderful stroke of up market genius invention of my father’s which were constantly erupting out of his merchandising dreams of grandeur. Plus calling brassieres, under bodices. Hey pop, I'd tell him, get wise, no matter how high class the name of the merchandise they stuff the stuff into their handbags. And pop would put out both upturned palms in front of my face and say Sigmund, suspicion in a store can ruin business. And if we had public curtains like department stores in New York we’d still have shop lifting. Jesus you wonder how with an unsuccessful father with all his flopperoo efforts, you learn about wholesale and retail in the first place. And that’s how the fuck I was learning. Just me left, after my infant dead brother and infant dead sister at the very fucking bottom of nowhere to carry on the glory of the family name. And now my mother and father on the verge of retirement. Shit maybe after all they made out all right. Until of course their gaskets blow with my recent publicity. But back then even my fucking fat assed cousin Saul with his slicked back hair parted in the middle resented we owned two stores. While the little fucker was being paid by the hour mostly practising expelling gas in a bang from his intestine. I worked a week without a penny. And boy that day was he resenting the wonderful joy I was having in the booth. But as each new thing happens. You think you’ve learned. And then another new thing you never expected fucking happens. If not in your face then behind your back. And then whammo slammo. And s
uddenly you’re back to learning again after the new fucking surprise has jumped on you. But I’ve learned one god damn thing that goes a long way towards providing wholesale contentment. And that is where the best bloody place is to be in all the world. In elegant comfort chewing a marzipan out of golden wrappers, sipping pale old brandy, drinking coffee and lighting up a havana cigar. While flying faster than a pigeon to where you don’t know where the fuck you’re going except that it’s on a train to a place called Scotland. Who the fuck needs tranquillizers. Holy shit. I need them. In an equal mixture of hashish, women, cocaine and heroin. But at least tonight I can get by with a glass of the best brandy and a cup of delicious coffee. O christ her pearly white skin when the lady started taking off this blouse. Never did I want to kiss a tit so much. Just to have my lips there touching on that flesh as beautiful as the smile on her face upon which I also wanted to crush my mouth. Holy shit for her I would become what every woman really wants. A slave and doormat for life. Wipe your feet on me honey. Throw kitchen utensils back in my face. Jesus that’s what does it, you get desperate for a fuck, then by money consuming exhausting beguilements, you get one. Then as soon as you begin looking for another one, you’re a tongue hanging out victim of even more money consumption. For her I’d be a victim, tongue, prick and all hanging out. I thought with a twinge of conscience, I shouldn’t be like doing this, peeping, invading her privacy. But that was the whole fucking cliff hanging thrill. You didn’t know what gorgeous curve of beauty you were going to see next. Instead of what I’d been seeing before. Nothing but new garter belts being shop lifted for the old. And some lady tickling her nipples erect so she could see what they looked like encircled in the daring bra my father called Erotic Exposure. If my father didn’t win any prizes for originality he sure won them for unrelenting effort. And he would have killed me if he ever caught me ruining his business jerking off peeking at all the customers undressing. Hey shit we just then flew through an enormous station. Jesus maybe now in my life more than ever I should adapt to the money saving and emotionally less aggravating exercise of masturbation. Like the first ten rows of the stalls do with the guys pulling away under their raincoats enjoying themselves. Jesus money pouring in lets you do some really crystal clear thinking. Holy shit. Bing bang. The bells of the pinball machine of my life are ringing. And that’s how it happened. My exact first moment ever in show biz. When Saul says hey Siggy you mind the cash register and let me see for twenty seconds. I said Saul it’s my peep hole and this is my father’s store and it will cost you a quarter for three minutes to watch. It was the first time I had the little fucker. But would you believe it he spent a whole fucking hour trying to chisel the fee down to fifteen cents at a nickel a minute. Then the little bow tied fucker wanted it in writing and an agreement signed and the nickel rate in perpetuity. Later I had to look the fucking word up in the dictionary. It said endless time. Shit I was crazy to agree in writing. Which has now made me read every agreement ten times frontwards, twice backwards and three times between the lines before I sign it. The little fucker Saul was, after short changing enough customers, having an endless gorgeous time while I ended up minding the cash register. Then that little fucking bastard sublet the agreement to neighbourhood kids at three times the rate and was telling me to go fuck myself when I tried to renegotiate and charge him a flat fee of ten bucks per day for multiple admissions. Which he insisted he get for two dollars fifty. Christ with another couple of booths we could have been making more than my father made out of his store. But then I stood firm. And shit I did everything to convince him he was missing the best show in town. I even groaned out loud in the booth which made the lady I was peeping at jump out of hers and bang with her fists on my door. Then a woman called a cop when two kids at a dollar a piece in the booth broke out laughing. And the fat little fucker Saul never budged. I ended up offering again a whole day’s viewing at a dollar. He went straight down to fifty cents. At which I said Saul go get fucked and forget it. Holy shit I guess I killed a lot of deals like that in my life trying to extract the last penny. But what the little fucker had already begun doing was to say he had diarrhoea and would disappear into the storeroom where he’d drilled two holes through the nearly impenetrable concrete wall and was renting out and watching now in the dressing booth for nothing. He and kids he rented to were even now able to watch me watching. When I stopped him subletting, a whole gang of Irish kids were waiting to waylay us after we closed the store. Saul put on a pair of thick eye glasses he kept handy for such occasions and pleaded a heart condition. I got beat up. He ran. Christ, outside now it’s snowing, streaking past the windows and coming down under a flash of a street lamp. But jesus I’ll never forget that day of the blue eyed girl in the black coat. Thank god she came in when I had the store room at last locked. I wouldn’t have sold him even two seconds at ten dollars a second to watch that lovely woman undress. And unlike the highway robbery salaries I’m paying to a production now, I was watching that beautiful creature for nothing. Not only the cheapest but the best solo cast I ever had. All happening right back there in Rhode Island. My father always so vehemently denied the state was founded as a refuge for misfits and malcontents. He would say Sigmund, give gratitude that here where we live puts food in your mouth and shoes on your feet. Holy jeez and then with shoes on my feet I got my dreams of grandeur when one day I took a trip to Newport. And saw these fucking marble palaces built overlooking the sea. And I found out what being rich was. And the dirty looks you got looking as if you didn’t belong going down the street. The police even stopped me to ask what I was doing there. I said I was dreaming of being rich. They didn’t think it was funny and told me to go dream back where I came from. I don’t give a fuck what anybody says but nobody is ever going to stop Sigmund Franz Schultz again. But what a fatal moment in my life. That I should be afflicted forever after not only with worshipping big houses but with adoring elegance in a woman. And when her tits came blazing in front of my blue eyes. After all the unappetizingly distorted pairs I’d seen. I couldn’t believe the beautiful way she watched her own in the mirror, small and delicate, but big enough to be gorgeous. Hello Rabbi Low. Are you listening. Sigmund let me tell you, my ears have been burning all night and you should be ashamed. And please for all rabbis’ sake, don’t continue about tits. Your pal Al was right who said you should be stopped fucking until you settle down to a steady diet of the same girl. No wonder watching ladies undress you grew up horny and trying to screw everything looking screwable you see and getting hard ons in front of aunts uncles and cousins. If you were a rabbi in your grave you would be now sending it up through the coffin lid and knocking over your tombstone with it. But Rabbi, horniness has got to be chronic while eighty percent of women going by on the street are not ready for a fast fuck when asked. So to get laid once you got to ask five. And you could get your jaw broke three times. Sigmund in my day it could get you a spear up the roozel four times. So Rabbi that’s what I’m saying imagine the risk to get laid just once a week for a month you got to ask twenty. Leaving in most months twenty six days of celibacy. Well Sigmund, in such days you can take a psychological rest and hold your breath you didn’t catch the venereal plague. Rabbi thank you. And don’t worry, those fuckers Binky and Basil already scared me enough with that affliction. So in the past a fucking opportunity came my way for every four times I got slapped in the face, and I didn’t care then about the rest who told me to go fuck myself. But Sigmund according to the first principles of phallic philosophy, only twice in a fifty year lifetime does a woman come along who makes up for fucking everybody else. And Rabbi down my father’s store was that one other woman besides Louella who on that beautiful day on the eve before Rosh Hashanah when business was slow and when Saul the little fucker was making unnecessary noises with the cash register. Jesus that little fucker had unbelievable nerve, not hesitating to ruin my father’s business reputation cheating the customers and pocketing the change. That’s one thing now I know, don’t ever put
the sons of relatives in charge of the cash register. Rabbi Low that’s how the catastrophe happened. Right in the middle of while I’m watching the girl of my dreams he astronomically short changes a customer who was size forty eight who comes red faced insane with being gypped storming back into the store. I have to, because of the noise of the shouting, peek out to see what’s going on. Saul is arguing. Like a human abacus he is counting on his fingers. He is gesticulating like you never saw. Like he has five hands waving in the air and all the fingers on three of them are pointing to the sign on the wall behind his ear. The lady’s shaking one single fist. Saul’s shouting at the lady please read the sign, which says count your change, no refunds or redeeming of merchandise. And the one thing I know is that Saul already has the lady’s change slipped down into the cuff of his pants. It’s not his fucking store. It’s not his ass in a sling. He should worry. He could always go apprentice to be a third rate tailor like his father. But my father would disown me for disobeying his first commandment in business. Always satisfy an unsatisfied customer, even when they’re stealing or wiping their feet in the merchandise. Remember they could become honest decent citizens with money to spend again one day. And I’m fucking well there at the peep hole hanging on the edge of an orgasm. When the short changed woman takes the merchandise out of her bag, grabs with one hand Saul by his greasy hair lotion drenched hair and yanks a pink pair of bloomers that had gone out of style years ago, right down over Saul’s head. He starts screaming for me. Can you imagine, he wants help. And from me who he hates and resents with a vengeance. Jesus what a yellow little son of a bitch he could be in the face of physical violence. But boy did he have the fucking courage of his clauses when he was hiding behind a contract. But right now he’s scared shitless and can’t see from under the bloomers which got entangled around his neck and over his big white ears. But he knows right where the fire alarm is, breaks the glass and gives it a yank. The woman tries to grab a fistful of cash out of the register to compensate herself. Saul slams it closed on her fingers. She screams even louder. Holy shit. I’m looking through the crack of the door of the dressing booth, and trying to slip out of the fucking flimsy booth without making a sound. The automatic sprinkler system is already sprinkling water from the ceiling. I jump out, going bananas at the sight of the water ruination of all the lingerie. And wouldn’t my coat get caught on a nail my father left working loose and sticking from the partition. I was a foot beyond the door already travelling as fast as this train tonight, and moving towards the sound of Saul who still under the bloomers now thinks he’s seriously being murdered. Everything was slow motion in my mind except the water spraying down on us. I could feel the coat tighten on my shoulders. It couldn’t have made that much noise but it was like the biggest thunderclap in my life and the end forever of my youth. The whole fucking two rickety dressing booths collapsed. The walls slamming flat on the floor raising a cloud of dust and seven years bad luck with two big and two small mirrors smashing. The booth collapsed around her, this wonderful elegant lady now naked to the waist standing there, watching me. While I was stunned immovable and couldn’t no matter what was happening to Saul and my father’s business’s future, galvanize myself to fit my engorged prick back into my pants. It was just too long and the pants even with buttons on the fly were too tight. But the cruellest blow maybe even of my entire life, and let me tell you there were some real real cruel blows, was the horrified blushing red look on her face. The mortification still creeps up and all over me to this moment. And to this day I still get a hard on in a crisis. I even paid a fortune to two psychologists till I went to a psychiatrist who finally said, Mr Schultz, I’m going to send you an enormous bill, but I’m also going to tell you what to do about your erection. Go home out of this office and count your inches, we should all be so blessed to get hard ons that size at such times of extreme worry. My two little gorgeous girls. Jesus when they grow up what a mortifying fucking scrapbook they could make out of their father’s life. Broken mirrors, collapsed dressing booths, hysterical customers. And that day on the eve of Rosh Hashanah you wouldn’t think we could be doing more than desultory business, but two more customers came down into the store, saw the sprinkler system on without a sign of smoke or flames and turned on their heels to run back up the stairs. Thinking of course they had walked into the middle of a rape and robbery. And Rabbi, believe me. It was nothing but the purest of pure beauty when her tits came blazoning in front of my blue eyes. O jesus Rabbi. Are you still listening. Sigmund, let me tell you, out of a thousand voices talking to me at the same time, I hear you the loudest. And believe me it sounds like a shambles in the lingerie store and an ill omened way to start the new year. It was worse Rabbi. And even on a train fleeing in the night to Scotland I feel I haven’t lived it down yet. Maybe that mortification lies behind why I am where I am buried under such a huge pile of unholy shit. O god Rabbi Low this story breaks my fucking heart. Sigmund, for a change a broken heart will do you good and is always mended if you didn’t throw all the pieces away. Rabbi. I’m on my way to a funeral. To death in the highlands. I might even hear pipe and drum music that I love. Even had pipers and drummers in a show. A dozen of them came into the office for auditions and I nearly got blown out of the place. The critics attacked the act like you wouldn’t believe, because I had a troupe of marching nude girls they said it was an insult to Scotland. I was giving the public what I thought it wanted. And it did. Only the fucking critics are always like that. They don’t want the public to have what they want. Fuck it. I finally won. Against all the odds. OK Rabbi Low I’ll tell you further what happened. Even the racial question blew up down in the store and nearly put my poor fucking henpecked hard slaving father out of business. In less than a minute later, never did I feel more Jewish than when, down the fucking stairs came two paunchy Irish motorcycle policemen. Guns drawn. And jesus that sent the lady who got short changed into a new and even more violent paroxysm of accusation against Saul. Such a sacrilege in my father’s store who spent his whole life building up decent customer relationships and starting out in business with a selection of garments in a big box. Demonstrating the lingerie at front doors let me tell you, is a delicate matter. As often as not between sales he got the shit kicked out of him. And going to a back door is worse. Where my father was nearly killed by a ditch digging dago husband right in the middle of innocently taking the wife’s chest measurement. My father was always predicting one day he would go up market with his own store to where women would come who didn’t always speak Yiddish and broken English. And jesus the broken nose he got on that dago’s back porch really made him go where what to him then was up market. Only all he could was go down a sleazy basement. And now here was this elegant lady with her nice spoken words. She was still there even forgetting she was minus the upper part of her clothes because she nearly got killed when I pulled the whole rickety booth down and buried her blouse and handbag. Saul out from underneath the bloomers is screaming blue and worse murder. Jesus I’ll give that little bastard that. The smart little fucker in his striped bow tie could really scream, just like he could argue you all over the place. There we were, the two of us confronting the customers who ran out to come back as witnesses. As usual in my terror and with the special stimulation of this lady I had an unbelievably long hard on. Doing everything desperate with my brain to make it go down. I spotted the fucking woman who pulled the bloomers over Saul’s head, with a fourteen dollar negligee off a counter she was maybe now ready to stick in her bag. By her shrewish pasty face I recognized her. She was a constant bargain hunter in our store. And it was a miracle anyone could ever get away with short changing her. Soon as we reduced below wholesale cost she bought. We could never get proof but she must have been running a resale business somewhere. Even one or two shop lifted fourteen dollar undergarments in those days were enough to bankrupt my father. Fucking Saul whose merchandise it wasn’t didn’t bother to challenge her taking property, as the police, jesus, with their revolvers
pointing, thought I was the criminal by the guilty evidence of my prick. Not to mention the horrendous expression of horror on my face. The short changed woman is now shouting she was robbed waving her receipt pointing at Saul who shrugs his shoulders and backed up by the twelve private elocution lessons he’d already taken, points to me with his immortal words ‘he’s the one who’s involved’. To that little bastard I used to say, what are you putting on that accent for Saul. And he’d say, it’s for when I get out of the ghetto, people who talk good can get some place plus they don’t sound like they will chisel you. Well shit at that moment we were still in the ghetto and Saul had chiselled the shouting lady and the police were saying to me keep your hands up. My fucking hands were up, and I said my prick being up too, was a medical condition I took treatment for. But I was so incensed at Saul that for the first time my prick started to go down and the police gave me permission to stick it back in my pants. The short changed woman is still shaking a fist at Saul even while she is getting soaked under the sprinkler. But gracefully, swiftly the elegant wonderful fucking lady had grabbed up a purple negligee with red spots to shield herself. Her beautiful blue eyes are there in her head watching me, a fucking peeping tom she must have known was only an eyeful away the other side of the partition in the dressing booth. I started to do the worst thing as the shambles descended. Talk about weathering storms in show biz, my immortal words were pretty fucking simple. Hey, I kept saying, I didn’t do nothing. Hey, you always said as a sign of genuine surprise. Hey. And to this day I’m still saying it. Only if I didn’t have my prick out I could have nonchalantly taken control of the whole situation and started to accuse everybody else. But a hard on makes it impossible to start accusing someone else of something. Ever since when I was just a tiny kid, these Irish guys the motorcycle cops were always my heroes. It was always what I wanted to be looking really fucking tough wearing sunglasses and shiny leather leggings and jumping up on those bikes like they were rockets, revving the engine, voom, voom. I thought those guys were kings of the world, going a hundred miles an hour along the highway. And here I was waiting every second in front of them for the lady’s finger to point at me and say I was a peeping tom peeping at her. My heart thumping in my chest I thought would explode. Jesus when you’re little, big adults can scare the shit out of you by just standing there staring at you. That’s all I ever remember any fucking neighbour ever did. Pointing their fingers and growling their accusations. Until I’d squirt a water pistol full of indelible ink in their faces. Saul said to the motorcycle cops he was a prodigy on the violin. The police didn’t know what the fuck that was being a prodigy but they thought since that was what Saul was it would be easier to arrest me. And jesus they had their fucking handcuffs out now and just looking around the store for the wrists to put them on. Especially mine with my hands trembling on the ends of them. In fact one of the police was coming right over to me, looking at me as I stood terrified speechless. The cop then looking at the undressed customer and then at the pulled down dressing booth. Then to the lady he says, ‘What did he do to you ma’am.’ Everything in my past life went by in slow motion even including Uncle Werb who was always scurrying somewhere in a hurry. It was like two centuries went past instead of two seconds waiting for her to answer. And from the lady with the pale blue veins on her pale white skin I heard these beautiful words, ‘No officer, that young man was most helpfully assisting me.’ God I think it is whatever since has let me overcome the depressing despair I feel at the treachery I automatically expect from everybody and automatically then get as soon as I trust them. Her blazing blue kindly sympathetic eyes there forgiving me. And I couldn’t even in front of Saul stop my tears. She explained to the police how it was all an accident. Even the short changed customer with her fingers maimed by Saul calmed down at the sound of her voice. And Saul who in the melee of the collapsed dressing booths now had the pink bloomers off his head clutching in his fingers, also had his mouth gaping wide open. Plus I noticed a roll of bills fall out of his sleeve onto the floor. Rabbi Low are you listening. I heard, Sigmund. Over brandy and coffee it’s a nice story. But the pair of you were a nice disgrace to young Jewish gentlemen. And in front of someone who must have been a beautiful person. Maybe that’s why for the rest of your life, with binoculars you’re a peeping tom. Expecting the person you’re watching to be glad you’re watching. Holy jeez Rabbi. Your remark is giving me more than just a little sudden sober reflection. Maybe I am a voyeur. But I watched Louella through binoculars because I am also convicted in love. Nor do I ever want to blot my copy book with real nice elegant people. Whoever the fuck they are these days. And let me further confess. That when I was growing up tall dark handsome like I am with my own blazing blue eyes, down a dark side street on the way home from the store a bunch of dirty Irish micks jumped on me so they could kick the shit out of a Jew. And I convinced them I was Irish. Hey don’t worry Sigmund. After the dumb way you’ve been behaving all your life, that’s a good identity for you to assume. You think so. Yes Sigmund I think so. Well thanks a bunch Rabbi. That better be then all the news I tell you tonight. Wait a second before you sign off, Sigmund. Tell me did Saul give back to the other lady her money he short changed. No Rabbi, he kept it. OK Sigmund I just wanted to know.