Читать книгу How to Talk Dirty and influence people - Lenny Bruce - Страница 11

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I was on the Luckenbach Line bound for Turkey, Greece, Marseilles, back to the Mediterranean I couldn’t wait to get out of a few years before.

Two ships performed the same function—transporting men and objects across the Atlantic from one place to another; one place was Pier 92 on New York’s West Side, the other was Marseilles—the two ships were the U.S.S. Brooklyn and the Samuel Brown. And I was on them both.

Samuel Brown might live in Brooklyn—but in Red Hook, not in Seagate. He alone could never attain the stature of all the individual little people in all the neighborhoods from Kensington and Bay Ridge to Bensonhurst and Coney Island who collectively make up the borough—rich, influential and powerful. That essentially is the difference between the merchant marine and the United States Navy. But though the merchant seaman commands less social esteem (there are no campaigns to write letters to the boys on tramp steamers and no USO shows at Christmastime), he makes more money and has an easier life, which are a pair of compensatory factors carrying no small weight.

Whereas in the Navy I scrubbed the decks aft of the 5th Division Fire Control Tower every morning—whether or not it was dirty—in the merchant marine the boatswain would say, “The deck around the forward hatch is getting mangy, Schneider. Grab some red lead and paint it.” That was the prevailing climate: If it’s dirty, paint it; if it’s broken, “deep-six” it. “Deep sixing,” although frowned upon by the ship’s owners, is quite a common practice. This is the procedure, one which you will never find elaborated upon by Jack London:

A 300-foot steel cable, used for mooring, has become frayed and is in need of repair. Rope splicing is comparatively simple, but cable is a combination of threaded steel and hemp, and when it breaks under the strain, the seven-strand splicing is a wicked job. You can’t work it properly with gloves, and without them, it is like trying to wrestle a barracuda.

I have struggled with four or five pretty husky guys, bending and twisting the hawser while it lashed around the deck as if it were alive. At the end of several hours our hands were so cut up that we looked as if we had butchered a cow in our blood-spattered Levi’s. Everybody goes through this. Once you’ve been through it you are automatically inducted into the “Deep-Six Club.” The initiation ceremony consists of simply throwing the cable into the ocean.

This fraternal rite cannot always be practiced in broad daylight without some sort of subterfuge, which usually comprises raising furious alarm in one part of the ship while the surplus goods are debarked over the side at another. In the Caribbean or anchored off Corsica, for instance, where the weather is warm and the water tepid, one Deep-Six Club member would volunteer to fall overboard. This was a drastic measure, to be sure, taken only when a whole set of lockers or bunks needed repainting.

“Waste not, want not” was not the merchant seaman’s motto, then. Only those excluded from membership—the captain, the purser, etc.—disapproved of the Deep-Six Club. This was because they remained on the ship, whereas, for the most part, seamen sign on for one voyage and quit. Very few re-sign for the same ship. This is one indication of the character of men in this area of work. Their attitudes and relationships, personal as well as toward their work, are of a temporary nature. You may form friendships of remarkable intimacy, sharing the details of each other’s lives, and then never see each other again.

I shared a compartment with two West Indian Negroes who were immaculate in their personal habits, and quite entertaining to listen to. They had a unique sound: “Mon, what de hell awr ye tawkin’ about? You don’t speek de king’s Hinglish!”

They were marvelous seamen, and one of them with whom I became very friendly, Caleb Chambers, had been all over the world 60 times. It never failed to amaze me that he was as much at home in North Africa, Casablanca or Gibraltar as he was in San Pedro, California. It really knocked me out to hear him give directions. I’ve traveled the States extensively, but my knowledge of places is extremely limited. I can tell you how to get from the Civic Center in Los Angeles to Hollywood and Highland Boulevard, or how to get from O’Hare Airport in Chicago to Mister Kelly’s on Rush Street, but so could Caleb.

He could also tell you how to get from the Medina in Casablanca to the Valleta in Malta, and advise you on the fastest, cheapest way to get there. But what really bugged me was that he was so familiar with everything everywhere that sometimes, when we would hit port, he wouldn’t even bother going ashore. Imagine docking in Istanbul and staying on ship!

I have been to about 30 different countries and I’m ashamed to admit that my knowledge of the sights, culture, art and customs is on a par with the limited perspective of any other sailor. In Lisbon, the only place I know is the American Bar and Madame Krashna’s. The same in Marseilles, Oran, Algiers, Izmir. The only place I know a little bit about is Libya. That’s because the whorehouses are off limits. If you get caught in one of them, a fine and a jail sentence are mandatory.

I am enough of a snob to not mind having a record for jewel theft, embezzling or safecracking; but doing time for getting caught in a whorehouse would really be humiliating.

This is a warped concept, I realize. We Americans have a negative attitude toward prostitution that is not shared by foreign peoples. Even the words “French brothel” sound exotic, nearly romantic, compared to “cathouse.” And they are more romantic. They cater to the imagination and the spirit as well as the body. Here, it’s disgustingly cut and dried.

In Marseilles, for example, there was a place called Madame Claridge’s that was delightful. They had an Arabian jazz trio, a bar and, of course, lots of girls. They charged admission, which I suppose you could call a “cover charge.” Many guys used to go there just to drink and absorb a part of culture few American men ever experience.

If a guy walks into an American bar with the thought of picking up a girl, he will get an audible, hostile rejection from at least 90 percent of the women he approaches. And a painful physical rejection from the boyfriends of some of the other 10 percent when they return from the men’s room. At Madame Claridge’s, however, if you had a neurotic imagination, you could pretend that you were walking into an American bar and that every girl you tapped (you had your choice of 20 or 30 beautiful ladies) was willing to go upstairs with you.

“It seems I can’t go into a bar anymore for an innocent glass of sherry without a dozen women begging me to take them to bed. I’m really devastating. All right, all right, if you insist, one at a time ...”

Their return English is always questioning, in the few broken phrases they know: “How much you got?” “Short time?” “All night?” “Costume show?”

The costume show is an institution that might well be studied by clinical psychologists. Although I assume none of these girls has ever read Krafft-Ebing, I am sure they are instinctively cognizant of the many erotic fetishes that men have and are willing to pay for in order to have them catered to.

The costume show cost 1000 francs extra, which in those days was about $20. This might seem expensive, but we were getting $10 a carton for cigarettes that we bought tax-free for about 50 cents a carton.

You had a choice of basic settings—rooms complete with the particular decor required by the girl in costume to play her part.

1. The Housewife Room. The room was decorated like a homey kitchen. The girl wore a white cotton dress, an apron, no make-up, her hair pulled back simply in a bun. I didn’t understand French, but since she had a complete routine memorized I called in a friend to translate for me. “Ah, Antoine, you naughty boy, you are late again. Tsk, tsk, tsk. You are making your poor mother gray with worry. Ah, quel dommage, you look disturbed, my son. Here, sit by Momma. There, that is better, no? See, I’ll massage your back. But don’t do anything naughty to me. Antoine! Antoine! What are you doing? I am your mother! In a moment I will have to ask you to stop ...”

2. The Seminary. This cost 2000 francs, but it was worth it. The room was a bare monastery cell with only a wooden table, some straight chairs and a straw pallet. Religious statues, pictures and candles were everywhere. The “towel girl” led me in and left me alone there, and as I looked about I was furious that when I would tell my friends in the States about it, they would think it was a lie. Not only that but they might have me committed. And I was at least as sane as the hundreds of men who visited this place seriously, men who we would consider decadent and degenerate, and more than that, in some twisted way, fanatically religious.

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

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

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

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

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

I had laughed myself right out of a beating.

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