A Lotus Grows in the Mud (10 page)

Nobody ever loved a dog as much as I loved my little Lambchop, who accompanied me to California and helped me through my early troubled years of success. (Author’s Collection)

“G
oldie? Is that Goldie? This is Max down at the Stage Deli. Your dad’s been on the telephone again. He said to call you and get you down here and eat some blintzes.”

I laugh and climb out of bed, the phone still in my hand. “Okay, Max.” I giggle. “I’m on my way. Thanks, honey.”

Gee, I love my dad. He seems to know just when to pick me up with a call to Max, or by sending twenty bucks in the mail. This is perfect, because the Stage Deli is around the corner from my new apartment and just down the street from Herman, my newfound go-go agent, whom I have to go and see today.

I take a shower and throw on some jeans and a T-shirt. I run to the Stage Deli for coffee and blintzes. Stuffing my face, I sit there happily contemplating my new life away from Needle Park. I share a great apartment now with four roommates, all of them dancers, in a brand-new building on Eighth Avenue. It is right next to Jilly’s Bar, the hangout of Frank Sinatra and his friends, and just around the corner from Broadway. I feel one step closer to my dream just by living there.

“Thanks, Max,” I say, kissing him on the cheek and grabbing my dance bag. Running from the deli, I skip up the three flights of stairs to Herman’s office and push open the door. Herman is a tall, dark, handsome showbiz agent, and he handles all kinds of third-class acts, everything from the Dancing Waters to the Catskills, and even an act with a singing dog.

Slamming down the telephone and looking up at me, he smiles. “Hey, Goldie, looking good. Come on in and take a seat.”

“Herman, you got anything for me?” I say hopefully. “I gotta pay my rent next week.”

“No luck on Broadway, little girl?”

“Almost…I auditioned for
On a Clear Day
and I got down to the last ten, but I was too short.”

“Well, you’re not too short for me. Let me see what we got here.” Flicking through his Rolodex, he asks, “What about Dudes ’n’ Dolls?”

“Herman, I’m working there already. Friday nights. And by the way, the pedestal is so high I get vertigo each time I go up there. Can’t you get me something closer to the ground?”

“No problem, honey. Your wish is my command. We’ve always got the Entre Nous.”

“Again? I already did the Entre Nous. I quit because the guy wanted me to have a drink with Huntington Hartford.”

“You sure you don’t want to go topless?”

“What, with these?” I laugh, pointing at the two fried eggs on my chest. “No, I don’t do topless, Herman. I’m a trained dancer.”

“You could double your money,” he reminds me.

“Top on,” I state flatly.

“Okay, okay. How about modeling? I’m a friend of the woman who runs the Candy Jones modeling agency. You should maybe go and get some test shots done for hair commercials, because, you know what, Goldie, you got great hair.”

“Yeah, great, Herman, thanks anyway, but I did that already.” I sigh, swallowing the memory. I went to that place after my car accident, you know, when I lost my job at the World’s Fair. The photographer invited me into the darkroom and attacked me. When I finally pushed him off, he told me I’d never make it anyway because I wasn’t pretty enough. “No,” I tell him. “No more test photographers…So, you don’t have anything for me, then?”

“I dunno, kid,” he says, shuffling some papers on his desk. “Have you tried out for the Copacabana?”

“Yes. I had to dance in a cage, but they fired me because I was too
skinny. That was the night I got molested on a subway by those two guys on the way home and ended up asking a doctor who was on the train to walk off with me.”

“Oh, poor kid.”

“I know, I know. So, Herman, what do you have? Because all I’m doing at the moment apart from Dudes ’n’ Dolls is the supper theater out at Danbury, Connecticut, once a month. I go on between a comedian and a belly dancer.”

“Have you ever danced at the Peppermint Box?”

“The Peppermint Box?” I cry, sitting on the edge of my seat. “You mean in Midtown? I was there the night of my accident!”

“Er, no, honey. That’s the Peppermint Lounge. The Peppermint Box is in Jersey.”

“In Jersey? Oh, come on. How much does it pay?”

“Thirty-five dollars; thirty for you and five for me.”

“How am I going to get to Jersey for thirty dollars?”

“You take the Greyhound bus. It stops right outside. It’s just across the river on Palisades Highway. And, I’ll tell you what. I’ll come and pick you up.”

“You will?”

“Sure. You’re my favorite go-go girl. Consider yourself booked.”

I dash home and tip the contents of my dance bag out onto my bed. I sew up the holes in my fishnet stockings. Some of the gold fringe on my trusty go-go dress has come undone, so I spend the next day stitching it back onto the black leotard that comes up high over my hip bones. I double fringe the top of my leotard so it really shimmies. By the time I am done, I am starving. I am always hungry. I lick a spoonful of honey from the jar I carry with me wherever I go so that I can have a quick hit of energy.

The following night, I take the Greyhound across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey. Befriending the driver, whose name is Sam, I ask him to let me know when to get off. Sitting right behind him, knitting some new leg warmers and chatting away, I try not to notice how bleak the area is getting.

Just when we reach the middle of nowhere, in an area of industrial nothingness, Sam tells me, “Okay, Goldie, this is your stop!”

Disappointment sucks the air from my body. The Peppermint Box is nothing more than a fifth-rate truck stop, slumped by the side of the road like Deidre the junkie. Eight eighteen-wheelers are parked right outside.

As I lug my dance bag off the bus, I hear its doors slam shut behind me as Sam pulls it away. Too late to get back on.

Pushing open the creaky door of the bar with its diamond window, I am hit by a wall of heat, cigarette smoke, sweat and stale beer. “That’s Amore” belts out of an old jukebox to my left. The room is dank and dirty, littered with chairs and tables. At the bar stand a few indifferent truckers, in denim and work boots, being served by a butch-looking woman who stares at me as if I have just landed from Mars.

Hitching my dance bag high onto my shoulder, I approach the bar.

“Excuse me, my name is Goldie,” I say.

“And?” says the woman bartender.

“The go-go dancer.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“I’d like to see the boss.”

“Merv!” she yells at a thousand decibels. A fat, middle-aged man with a ruddy face and a cigarette stuck to his bottom lip staggers out from behind the bar.

“The dancer’s here.”

“Oh. Okay. This way.” He shuffles along in front of me, leading me into a back room. I look around nervously, wondering if I should just take off.

I smell the bathrooms before I reach them. They haven’t been cleaned in years. “This is where you change,” he says, flinging open the peeling door. I stare at the brown-stained toilet bowl and almost retch.

“In here?” I ask, piteously.

“Unless you want to do it in full view of all the guys,” he smirks.

Breathing through my mouth, trying not to look too closely at the walls, I wriggle as quickly as I can into my tights and outfit, making sure nothing accidentally touches the floor. Peeping through the door, I step
out nervously in my spiked heels, fringed leotard and fishnet stockings. Only a couple of men even bother to look up from their beer.

There is no stage and no clear space on the sticky floor to dance. Spotting the owner at one of the tables, a bottle of scotch and a smeared whisky glass in his hand, I ask, “Excuse me, where do I dance?”

“Pick a table,” he says, waving a hand expansively.

“A table?”

Looking around, I try to find one that is less rickety or at least less filthy than the others. Using a chair to get up, I place my leg on a few to test their sturdiness. Several fail the test, and I move on until I find a square, three-legged table that will just about take my weight.

“That’s Amore” finishes playing and is followed by “Volare.” Then “Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime” comes on. It seems to be on a loop. Great, the only man in the bar who can be bothered to put a quarter in the jukebox is a Dean Martin freak. Perfect. How in the world am I supposed to dance to this? I improvise as best I can. Thirty bucks is thirty bucks, after all. Whenever I take a break, someone yells from the bar, “Hey, put another quarter in and make her dance!”

At last, a regular guy walks in wearing a suit. Relief floods me. I smile across at him and he smiles back. Once he has a beer, he turns around and really stares at me. Being the consummate performer, I really do my stuff for him, despite the appalling soundtrack.

The guy takes a seat at one of the tables and looks up at me with sympathetic eyes. I glance back at him and half smile. I twirl around and do a little move, but when I turn again he has pulled out his penis and is jerking off right in front of me.

Letting out a small cry, my knees buckle from under me. I collapse to the tabletop. This is about all my body and spirit can take. I sit there staring at him incredulously. You too? I want to scream. I can’t take any more. Nobody else notices or even cares.

Seeing my reaction, the man quickly puts himself away and scurries out like a weasel. I remain slumped on the table, quivering miserably. Beyond tears, I crawl off, every ounce of air knocked out of me. Grabbing a towel and draping it over my shoulders, I stagger to the bar. Where’s Herman? He should be here by now.

“What time is it?” I ask the bartender.

Looking at her watch, she replies, “Almost one.”

“One? But I’m waiting for my go-go agent. Oh, shoot! I guess he’s not coming. Okay, so now I guess I need to get home. Where’s my money?”

“I dunno.” She swigs from a beer bottle.

“Well, where’s the owner?”

“He passed out hours ago.”

“But I haven’t been paid!”

She shrugs her shoulders.

I sigh. “Just tell me when the next Greyhound bus is so I can go home.”

The woman laughs in my face—a big, wide-open laugh. “There’s no Greyhound bus at this time of night, honey.”

“No bus? But how will I get home?”

“Take your pick,” she says, waving her arm at the handful of truck drivers left in the bar. “Or,” she says, leaning over the bar conspiratorially, “if you want to go party, I could close this joint and you could come home with me.”

My heart can’t sink any lower. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes, I think, recoiling physically. “No thanks,” I say. “I’ll take my chances with this lot. I just want to go home.”

Too afraid to think what might happen to me if I don’t get a ride, I walk slowly around the bar, starting my search. Sizing up the unsavory characters propping up the bar, I spot a few who look slightly less like rapists than the others.

“Could you please take me home?” I ask them. “I need to get back to Fifty-second and Eighth Avenue.”

Most of them shake their heads, but two drivers, who share the driving, agree. “We’ll finish our beer,” they grunt, “and then we’ll give you a ride.”

My heart in my mouth, I pick my way to the restroom and change back into my ordinary clothes, no longer caring how filthy the place is. Sitting back down at the table I was dancing on, my head in my hands, I wait for a signal, half afraid they might change their minds.

“I hope you know what the hell you’re doing, Goldie Jeanne,” I whisper to myself.

In no time at all, these two big men nod at me and I follow them outside. My blood is pumping so hard around my veins it is making me breathless. Looking around the parking lot, there is one vehicle that dominates it, an eighteen-wheeler Mack truck that is bigger than the Peppermint Box.

“Is that it?” I ask, my mouth open.

“Jump on in.”

Before I know it, I’m sitting high up in its enormous cab, bouncing back to Manhattan between these two big men in complete silence. As our giant truck trundles along the highway, we cross the bridge to Manhattan and see New York in all its glory, lit like a stage set. It is the same skyline I entered not so long ago, full of all my hopes and dreams. Now it fills me with a strange sense of foreboding and fear.

You know, Goldie, maybe it’s time to chuck in the towel, I tell myself. Go back home. Open a dance school. Get married and be happy. There is no future for you here.

T
he following morning, a chilly day in November, I am picking up my go-go outfit at the dry cleaner’s. As usual, I am chatting away with Eddie, who runs it, Maria from across the street and to a couple of unknown customers. I guess Mom was right—I’ve never known a stranger.

Waving good-bye to Eddie and backing my way out of the store, I literally run into two people walking by on the sidewalk. I drop my bag, and, after I pick it up, I come face-to-face with two adorable-looking young men.

“Oh, excuse me, I’m sorry,” I say.

“That’s okay,” they reply with a smile, looking me up and down. “What you got in the bag?”