My Life, a Four Letter Word

by Dolores DeLuce

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no pimp. No one is following us,” I protested.

  “Well, we’ll just wait here and see,” he growled.

  “Please don’t hurt me, please, I have a kid,” I whimpered.

  He tore off my blouse and used it to tie my arms behind my back, then pushed me through the bucket seats onto the floor in the back of my car. I could have screamed, but there was no one to hear me, and nowhere to run. He left me lying on the floor of my car while he drove around until it got dark. For over a half hour, my mind sank to the darkest places. I envisioned headlines in my hometown paper, “Local Girl Found Slain in Los Angeles Harbor–Stabbed Forty Times.” I tried to lift my head to see where he was going, but every time I did, his fist met my skull.

  Finally he found an isolated location and parked. He climbed between the bucket seats onto the back seat. I could hear a dog barking in the distance, but heard no other signs of life. He tore down my jeans and was on me, hell bent on making me pay for all the bitches who ever did him wrong. As his rage penetrated me, my nostrils filled with the overwhelming smell of beer, stale cigarettes and blood. My jeans were around my ankles and he was anally raping me, repeatedly banging my head into the ashtray. All I could see was the face of my little girl, so sweet and innocent, waiting for me at Ida’s house. If I died, who would love and protect her? In the middle of the horror, I heard a tiny still voice within me, praying for the first time since I had left the Church. “Hail Mary Mother of God, please help me!” In that moment I made a bargain with the Virgin Mary that if she got me out of this alive, I would mend my ways.

  He finally climaxed. It felt like he left all his demons inside of me. As he dismounted my bruised body, he began to transition back into the same pathetic drunk I had met at bar. He was scared now and babbling like an idiot as he drove my car erratically back toward Papa’s. “I know you’re going to call the police on me,” he mumbled.

  “Are you kidding? What cop is going to believe me? I’m a whore,” I said. When we were within two blocks of the club, at a red light he jumped out and ran like a thief into the night. I moved behind the wheel and headed for the Long Beach freeway, toward home and my daughter. It didn’t even occur to me to go back to Papa’s to get help or report the rape. I was amazingly calm, oddly elated to be alive. I found a pay phone and called Ida the sitter and told her I had a flat and that I was on my way back home. Ida said she would bring Viva to my house and put her to bed and wait for me there. I believed that my bargaining with the Virgin Mary had given me another chance, and that I needed to make some serious changes in my life.

  When I got home, I found Doran, Dorsey and Eric all out for the night, and Ida nodding in front of my TV. I was grateful not to have to explain my fresh bruises to Ida, who headed out the door half asleep in the dim light from my TV. I went into Viva’s room and saw my blissful child sound asleep. Grateful to be alone, I got into a hot bath to soak away the beating. Even though I wanted Eric out of my house, he had not yet moved, but was desperately trying to hold on to our facade of a marriage. After my bath, I climbed into Viva’s bed and fell asleep holding her close. I didn’t tell anyone what happened to me until the next day, and even then I made light of the situation, playing the tough girl, as if it was just a bad trick on a hard night at work. I buried the terror and went on with my days as if nothing much had happened.

  Only two days later, after a day at the beach, I put Viva down for a nap. Suddenly Eric was at my side acting romantic. I was so accustomed to never saying no, I gave myself to him even though I was not in the mood. I had taken a quarter hit of acid earlier, and as soon as Eric got on top of me, I looked up at him and literally saw the face of the devil. I pushed him off, and right then and there, told him the marriage was over and he had two weeks to move out.

  Post traumatic stress was not a term I was familiar with, but that’s what I must have been suffering because the next day, when I was back at work and stepped up on that stage and began to dance, I started to see horrible images of men attacking and killing me. I didn’t even wait for my shift to end before I got off the stage and quit. Quitting nude dancing and Eric all at once was the first step toward a major shift in my life. In the next few weeks, I saw very little of Eric. When he was around, his energy was dark and scary since he knew his days were numbered. One of my friends, Rob Weise, moved in temporarily to lend protection. Rob was tall and handsome and I shared my bed with his warm fuzzy body to keep Eric out. Rob was a heavy partier like the rest of my crowd, but he had a more mature rational sense than most. One day, while I was tweaked on acid and trying to clean house while complaining about all the freeloaders, he said, “You know girl, you really need to stop taking drugs.”

  “Who are you to talk? “ I said.

  “You have a kid to protect, I don’t,” he scolded. Initially I was offended by his remark, but I knew he was right. That week he played my bodyguard and helped me dismiss the free loading crashers, and made Eric so uncomfortable he finally packed and left for good.

  20. DRUG CURE

  I began to wonder why I attracted psychotic, violent men. Despite Dad’s occasional rage, he was not a violent man and I never witnessed any physical abuse toward women in my family. Growing up with my dad and a drama queen for a mother, I had plenty of material to fill hours on a shrink’s couch, but our family didn’t believe in therapy. Once, when I suggested to Dad that he might want to consider getting Mom some professional help after a nervous breakdown brought on by a tiny scratch on the refrigerator door, Dad responded with, “What-a-ya, crazy? There’s nothing wrong with your mother, it’s just her nerves.”

  The question of my frequent collision with violent men still begged for an answer, so just a few weeks after being raped, I dropped a tab of acid and went to see the doctor. In this case, it was Doctor John and The Night Trippers appearing at the Troubadour. Acid was cheaper than an hour on the couch, much more fun, and gave me keen insights that may have taken years of analysis to yield.

  This particular night of gaiety was just what the doctor ordered. The evening started when Dr. John himself helped me and my posse sneak in at the backstage door after I told him I knew Wally, his go-go dancer, a former Cockette from San Francisco. It was a star-studded night in the small venue. John Lennon and Bonnie Raitt sat just a few tables away from our party, and later they joined Dr. John and other musicians on the stage for a final jam.

  Even though I was tripping, I noticed Lennon so stoned that he could barely stand up without the help of Bonnie and a few other musicians. I could tell he was high on heroin, too, by the color of his dark, murky-green aura. This was the same drab aura I read on a friend who only days before had attempted suicide. Seeing auras was another benefit of taking LSD. Except for Lennon’s and my suicidal friend’s auras, most of the auras I saw were beautiful violet light colors that I often saw around Doran, my roommate who was, I believed, an angel disguised as a pot dealer.

  I fretted over John Lennon’s condition that night, but failed to take heed of my own drug use as I followed my merry gang of boys to a downtown bar that Dorsey had heard about, a throwback to a ’50s hard-core S&M scene for the after-party. Spring Street in downtown L.A. in 1972 was a frightening neighborhood. The LAPD patrolled the streets on foot in twos to protect themselves. So there I was, flying high with ruby-red lips and big hair, balancing on six-inch platforms, wrapped in a Dorothy Lamour print sarong, when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the doorman of this infamous gay glory hole. He pointed to a sign overhead, “No Women Allowed.” I indignantly informed the skinny bow-tied gentleman, “There is no gay bar from New York City to San Francisco that has ever not welcomed me.” Acting like Bette Midler on Quaaludes, I pushed and strutted right past him and buried myself among the big, bulbous, leather-clad men at the crowded bar while my friends were left in my dust to deal with the doorman.

  I saw instantly that this was a serious cruise scene, nothing like the light gay world I kn
ew and loved. When the doorman and my friends caught up to me and began to insist I leave, I defiantly argued that I was going nowhere since I had just ordered a drink, which was a complete lie since the bartender had refused to even look in my direction. I raised my voice over the loud hum and told the doorman in no uncertain terms, “Your rules are archaic and besides, these two gentlemen seated to my right and left don’t mind my being here one bit.” I had sandwiched myself between two humongous, muscled gorillas, one black and one white, a massive pair of salt-and-pepper shakers.

  They both turned and looked at me for the first time. Pepper growled, “Bitch, get your girly white ass out of here right now.”

  And his partner added, “I’d listen if you know what’s good for you.”

  Their threats were so loaded with venom that I felt my bowels loosen. That night I learned the meaning of a new big word for hate—”misogyny.” In all my days of cavorting with homosexuals, I had never expected to see such loathing of women coming at me full force in what I thought was a gay bar.

  So off I skipped into the night with my entourage in tow. The rumor of my feminine appearance inside the bar had already reached the streets and when I came outside I was greeted by a small gang of drag queens and trannies cheering my brave feminist action.

  “You go girl!” “How’d you do it, girl?” the ragtag queens hollered.

  “They don’t let me in there—and I still have my dick,” a tranny added.

  I laughed and waved to the girls and then spotted two patrol officers and marched up to them to make a citizen’s complaint about the bar’s discrimination practices. The cops took one look into my dilated pupils and one said, “Young lady, you are lucky you got out of there alive, don’t you know we have one or two stabbings in there every weekend. I suggest you do your slumming in a safer part of town.”

  As I walked back to my car, I felt the accumulated emotions of what I had endured only weeks before and now this added assault by hateful homosexuals. This was a rude awakening. Up until this night I thought all homosexuals loved and adored women. They were the only men who made me feel safe. Darkness engulfed me as I chugged along the streets of Dante’s Downtown Inferno when out of the blue an invisible energy field fell over me like a misty rain. Along with this protective shield came a voice from within and a message saying, “Fear not, there is nothing in this world that will ever harm you again.” The voice was not the looming voice of a perceived God but only my own voice, a small voice from within, and it continued to inform me with authority. “The rape you endured was karma for a past life transgression and your rapist was someone you had harmed in another lifetime. Now the slate is clean.”

  I was raised Catholic to believe in sin and punishment—heaven and hell—but this idea of karma from a past life was something new to consider. At this point in my life, I did not follow any religion or spiritual teaching, unless you call taking psychedelics and Hippie-ism a religion. I questioned this inner voice that was speaking louder and more clearly than ever before, and in this visceral shield of awareness, the answers to my questions began to make sense. I had reached a new plateau in consciousness, but it took almost a decade later to understand its full implications. I was twenty-seven, the same age as Janice Joplin, Jimmy Hendricks and Jim Morrison were when they bit the dust. But unlike them, by some Grace, I had survived what astrologers call my Saturn Return. Saturn, the planet of restriction that rules my sun sign Capricorn, takes thirty years to complete its cycle around the Sun. According to the astrological theory, when approaching the thirtieth year mark, around twenty-seven, many experience great adversity, and how one handles it will affect the next thirty years of their life—that’s if they survive.

  ACT II

  THEN CAME THE FAIR

  21. BORN DIVA

  That same year of my Saturn return, I met two film stars, Jane Fonda, a descendant of Hollywood royalty, and Divine, an overweight queen from Baltimore who became the world’s most infamous drag queen after eating dog shit in John Waters’ film, Pink Flamingos. Both of these “politically incorrect” showgirls were instrumental in pointing me in a new direction.

  When I told a few of the dykes on Chi-Chi Beach about my near-fatal rape, the story spread like wildfires fanned by the Santa Ana winds. Overnight I became the cause célèbre of male-dominated oppression. One of the more radical lesbians put me in touch with Donna Deitch, an up-and-coming feminist filmmaker. She was looking for interesting women with a story for her graduate thesis, a film titled, Woman to Woman: a Documentary about Hookers, Housewives and Other Mothers, and I had earned all three subtitles for her film. Donna jumped at the chance to make me one of her film’s main subjects. Even though I had already quit my nude dancing job, she persuaded me to get permission from the owner of Papa’s to use the club as a location for my scenes in the movie.

  Woman to Woman opens with a shot of me dancing naked in front of the lunchtime clientele. In a review of this film, The Harvard Crimson wrote, “Dolores Deluxe—a working girl—wiggles her way down the runway wearing nothing but a large pair of earrings and a big smile.” That was me, the happy hooker dancing my way through an unseemly situation. In another scene, Donna encouraged me to lead a feminist rap session with a few of my fellow dancers. Backstage, wearing a stretchy tube top revealing my ample décolletage, I discussed the occupational hazards of my profession while gesturing with my hands adorned with rings on every finger. As I added my own soundtrack from the jingling bracelets up to my elbows, a reflection in the mirror behind me reveals the rathole backstage with boas hanging on hooks and two of my coworkers. Laura, a severely impaired narcotic addict, is having great difficulty holding open her double false lashed eyelids as she slurs her contempt for our boss, while Pam, a simple gal, who was still dancing naked despite her sixth month baby bump, is nodding in agreement. I had come to L.A. with a vague ambition to be an actress and lost my way, but there I was, starring in a movie.

  The all lesbian/feminist film crew became my new best friends and I was often invited to women’s political discussion groups. Cindy Fitzpatrick, the film’s musical director, invited me to an evening with Jane Fonda, following her tour of Vietnam. I was so excited to be in this gathering of women who were personally invited to meet Jane and view her slideshow. In her lecture, Jane told us a story about how the Vietnamese managed to get through their long imprisonment and occupation by sharing their art through song and poetry. In the middle of Jane’s lecture, I had what Oprah calls an aha moment. I realized that my childhood dream of becoming a performer had gotten lost, and instead of acting, I was acting out. Jane’s words and images not only helped me identify with the plight of the Vietnamese, but I could see that I had been in a prison of my own making. My exhibitionism on that seedy stage at Papa’s was just this poor gal’s way of looking for a creative outlet. I thought I was doing it for the money, but even in that degrading environment I took pride in the fact that I was a great natural dancer who’s only training had been those movies I saw in my childhood.

  22. DIVI

  During that same summer of 1972 I met Gil Robison, a photographer and student of the San Francisco Art Institute. Gil took Viva and me to San Francisco where I had the great fortune to meet the infamous Cockettes, a gender-bender underground theatre group. Gil brought me along on his assignments to photograph the Cockettes at the Palace Theatre for their new show opening, Vice Palace, starring the infamous Divine, already an underground heroine for her roles in the John Waters cult classics.

  When Divine took the stage in her foot-high bouffant wig that sat inches above a human’s natural hairline and her painted cat eyes, I immediately recognized her as my long lost alien mother. She commanded the stage as she vamped in a skin tight sequined gown trailed by a six-foot netted fishtail. Not that drugs were needed to enhance the splendor of these performers, but the small taste of acid I had had before the show seared the memory of Mink Stole, David Baker Jr., Scrumbly Koldewyn, and Paula Pucker and the Pioneers into
my brain for all eternity. I was completely blown away with every act that was a sendup to my Hollywood childhood fantasies. These players sparkled brighter than the glitter on stage and the stars in the heavens.

  Backstage, after the show, I was introduced to Divine. She instantly opened her arms and heart to me. As he/she wrapped me in her hug, I rested my head on her artificial breasts, an oversized brassiere stuffed with pellets. Her fake tits felt more natural than most of the silicone breast women have today, and Divine’s falsies eventually proved to be more nourishing than the formula my birth mother used to force-feed me.

  The next night I had the good fortune to be invited to a dinner party hosted by Scrumbly, the musical genius behind the Cockettes, where Divine was the guest of honor. Scrumbly, handsome with shoulder-length brown hair and a paternal personality, made me feel at home the moment I walked through his door. He was wearing pants he made from patched swatches of ’40s floral drapery prints that matched his drapes and slipcovers. His roommate, Janice Sukitis, was a witty New Yorker with an accent as thick as a Sicilian slice. She offered me a delicate floral bite as she nonchalantly passed hors d’oeuvres, in her birthday suit. Her straight, jet-black, waist-length hair was the only thing covering her as she aired out the worst case of flaring psoriasis I have ever seen. Her skin condition kept Divine and I from filling up on appetizers.

  When Janet finally put down the tray and sat next to us at the kitchen table, Divine whispered in my ear. “Thank God these chairs are made of vinyl. It’s easier to clean up that way.” She kept me in stitches all night.

  By the end of the night I was calling her Divi, as did her closest friends. Soon this cast of characters would become major players in my life. As bizarre as they appeared to the world outside their clique, I felt like I had found my true tribe. You would never know to look at them, but Scrumbly personified the good father, and Divine was to become a mother to me and Jan, my naughty little sister.