Rat Pack Party Girl: From Prostitute to Women’s Advocate

by McCormick, Jane

  Afterwards we stopped for a drink. Then we returned to his apartment where he began to toss a salad and sauté portabella mushrooms. Soon afterwards, Ted came home.

  Ted was a thirty-year-old real estate hustler. He was a clean-cut guy who wore glasses and had a proper business personality. He greeted me with a firm hand shake. Then he turned to Curly and kissed him on the cheek while he snatched a slice of cucumber out of the salad bowl. I was impressed with Curly’s good taste in men because I would have never guessed that he was a gay man if I’d seen him walking on the street. Ted went into the bedroom and returned in a comfortable sweat suit. He rushed to the liquor cabinet to shake us up a martini on the rocks.

  Spending the evening with these two men had restored my being and I looked forward to tomorrow night’s gala.

  The next morning Curly gave me some money to get my hair done and I spent the rest of the afternoon putting on my nails and makeup. When five o’clock rolled around the guys began to get dressed in their rented black pin-striped suits. It was so fun to be a part of this new adventure and they were excited to have a lady to escort to dinner at the Gay Ball.

  When we arrived at the Coliseum Annex a valet parked the car and I held on to Curly’s and Ted’s arms as they escorted me down the red carpet. We felt like movie stars as our pictures were taken at the entrance. Inside the ballroom the tables were covered with white silk tablecloths highlighted with black napkins, shiny silverware, and crystal glassware. The room glowed in soft shimmering light and the people inside were happy to share one of the first openly gay celebrations held in Chicago.

  It was a formal event and everyone who attended was dressed for the occasion. Openly and unafraid, some of the fem men wore makeup and dressed in women’s evening gowns while some of the butch women slicked their hair down and dressed in hip huggers with a wide belt and bell bottoms. It was the first time that I saw more cross dressing than I’d ever seen before and I wondered if the cops were going to raid the party. All in all, more than a thousand people filled the room and when the five-piece band got onto the stage, the dance floor filled with a gay happy harmony.

  Belle and Connie were sitting at a table with all of their friends from Indiana. I walked back to their tables and was glad to see them all dressed for the evening.

  As the night went on I continued to talk to anyone who came close to me and eventually returned to Curly’s table. Then a gal named Sally came over to our table and asked me to dance. She was stylishly dressed in a navy blue slack suit with a white silky scarf tied around her neck to accent her blond hair and blue eyes. She held my hand as I stood up from my chair and together we walked to the crowded dance floor

  Afterwards Sally asked me to come out to the bar in the lobby and she bought me a drink and introduced me to two of her girlfriends. Barb was an athletic woman who looked straight into my eyes when she shook my hand and Sharon was a couple inches shorter than me and she seemed to be the shyer and more feminine of the three. I hung around with these girls for the rest of the night as we danced and exchanged stories and phone numbers.

  When midnight arrived the band revved up the songs and everyone in the ballroom moved to the dance floor when they sang “You’re my Soul and Inspiration” by the Righteous Brothers. That sentimentally got the whole crowd united and when the song finished, small groups gathered together discussing where they could meet to party on some more. Curly went out to get the car and he drove us over to one of his buddy’s houses. About twenty men joined the party and I had a blast with my gay boys. It was nice being around men who never tried to hustle me for sex. It was the greatest feeling in the world, and I loved it!

  The next morning, I called Sally and asked her if she wanted to get together for a drink. She sounded happy to hear from me and asked me to come over to their apartment near Lake Michigan. I called a cab and got ready to be picked up at noon. When I got there Sally called the liquor store and had a bottle of vodka delivered and she mixed us a couple of screwdrivers.

  Their two bedroom apartment had posters of The University of Chicago all around the living room. She explained that the phoenix on the poster, the official mascot of the University, was a mythical bird that is born anew from its own ashes. I pondered the meaning of this and began to feel some sense of connection to this fictional creature.

  As we sipped on our drinks Sally explained that the three of them were college students, and her major was in psychology. I’d never met a college student before and her college pride reminded me of the military traditions that were pounded into me for the honor of our country.

  Then she went into the bedroom and returned with a bottle of pills. She took two out of the bottle and gave one to me and said, “Take this then drink a cup of coffee with it. It’ll make you feel good!”

  “What is it?” I asked, looking surprised.

  “It’s a black beauty and it’ll get you higher than a kite,” she explained.

  “I’m already as high as a kite. I’m on Ambar’s #2,” I said.

  Sally looked at me funny and said, “What are those?”

  “I get them from a doctor. They’re the strongest diet pills you can take and they’ll get you high as Cooter Brown! Hell, I never ate, never slept, and never got drunk because Ambar’s #2 kept me up all night long.”

  “Wow! I get my black beauties and pot from a guy on campus. I don’t like diet pills because they make me too jittery and hyper. I like more of a mellow high and that’s what I get from taking black beauties.”

  “Shit, that’s an amphetamine,” I said, shaking my head, “I can’t deal with a mellow high because I worked the Las Vegas Strip and I had to be up and perky with all those millionaires standing at the craps tables all night long.”

  “Oh my God Jane, that’s horrible!” Sally curiously looked at me, “Janie, were you a prostitute?”

  “Hell yeah, I was the best in Vegas. I got myself messed up in that and I couldn’t get out of it because of the money.”

  I decided to take a chance and swallow the black pill because I wanted to fit in and it was a pill that I had never taken, a new experience. I followed it with a cup of coffee and then made another drink. Minutes later I could feel the high kick in and we were both flying high and laughing at everything around us. Then we took two more black beauties and both of us passed out.

  Five hours later, Barb’s energy bounced into the room. She was wearing a pair of maroon athletic sweats. Without hesitation she joined us in the living room and rolled us a hooter. Barb was a confident blond majoring in physical education and she loved to party.

  Then around five o’clock Sharon came in dressed in navy hip huggers, a pink frilly blouse, and the four of us sat around, laughed, smoked and drank some more. She was a business major who spoke with a southern drawl, pronouncing her words through her nose more often than I did, saying pin instead of pen.

  I went on to tell the girls about Paul Henning, the American television producer and writer for the CBS sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. I met him in the Stardust Casino cocktail lounge in 1961 after he’d heard me talking to a pit boss at a table. After the pit boss left, Paul, a well-dressed, fifty-year-old-man, asked me if he could join me for a drink. We causally talked about how much he loved coming to Vegas then, after a couple of highballs, he said, “You sure look and sound like the ‘Elly May’ I’m writing about. Especially after you’ve had a few drinks. Then your hillbilly twang really comes out. I really think you can pull off the character that I’ve created for The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom!”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve heard it all before!” I laughed, thinking about how Sam Snead asked me to come to his room and see his etchings.

  Paul smiled seriously saying, “No really, I would like you to come up to my room and read a few ‘Elly May’ lines for me”

  “No, no, no, I’ve heard that line before and I know guys like you who want to get something for free once they get me into their room.”

  “Jesus Christ you were really st
upid to pass that deal up!” Sally said.

  “Yes I sure was and I’ve been regretting it ever since because now that I’ve seen The Beverly Hillbillies, I can see what Paul was talking about because Ely May looks and acts just like me! I really screwed up that deal.”

  “Ah Jane wow, that’s a bummer!”

  “Yeah I know, and he said I’d be sorry after I’d seen Donna Douglas, who looks like me and sounds like me playing ‘Ely May.’ Shit, I’d be a famous actress and wouldn’t be sitting here with you girls right now, wondering where I’m going to get my next trick for money!”

  “Here I had a real job offer and didn’t know it!”

  Then Sharon said, “Let’s take a car ride.”

  Sharon went and got a cigar box out of one of the bedrooms and the four of us went outside. She told us to wait there while she went to get a car. Minutes later she drove up with a Chevy Malibu.

  “Let’s swing, sang, swung,” she’d say and we’d all laugh and jump into the car. She’d drive us around the city while we drank and sang to the music on the radio. It was so crazy. A few hours later we returned to the apartment and she dropped us off at the front door and Sharon came back up with her cigar box.

  Laughing at her I asked, “What do you have in that cigar box anyway?”

  “Keys,” she said.

  “Keys for what?” I asked laughing.

  “My box is full of car keys. I steal people’s car keys and when I want to go for a ride I take my box of keys and go around the neighborhood and find a car that fits the key. I borrow the car for a while and when I’m done, I put it back where I found it,” she laughed. “The funny thing is, people never know I took it!”

  I stayed over and slept on the couch that night but the next morning I went back to Curly’s. I had a good time but I thought Sharon was a little crazy and she could have gotten us all thrown in jail for stealing that car.

  A few days passed and I decided that I needed to make some money so I could buy a car and some more black beauties. So I dressed up in my nicest dress and shoes and took a cab to the Hyatt Regency Hotel near the lake. I walked into the lounge, sat down at a table and ordered myself a drink. A salesman at the bar sent a drink over to my table and then he asked if he could join me. He looked familiar so I smiled, accepted the drink and invited him to sit down with me.

  While taking a sip from my drink, I realized that I knew him from Las Vegas. After finishing our cocktail he asked me to come to his room. I told him that it would cost him big money, and he said no problem. When we got to his room he gave me five hundred dollars, and I gave him five-hundred dollars of fun, and then we went back downstairs and had dinner. After dinner we danced and drank and afterwards I stayed the night with him, and he gave me another five hundred dollars.

  The next day I took a cab back to Curly’s and pulled out my black book from Vegas and called a few of my regular “johns” in Chicago. It made me crazy having to resort back to turning tricks with guys because I wanted to be with women instead. Within minutes I was able to set up four johns a day and after a couple of weeks, I had six thousand dollars in my pocket.

  Curly and Ted couldn’t believe my fast earnings. Curly knew what I was doing again but he enjoyed me treating him for a change. The next day I took the both of them out on the town for letting me stay with them. Later on, Curly took me out to a used car lot and I paid cash for a 1959 white Ford T-Bird.

  Later that afternoon I drove over to see Sally and the girls. They couldn’t believe their eyes when I drove up in my T-Bird. I knew one thing for sure: I wasn’t going to leave my keys around for Sharon to steal it. Also, I never told them how I got the money because they would have thought I was the scum of the earth being with men for money.

  After a couple of months of taking black beauties, I felt like I was getting hooked on them. I never ate and I was down to a size four. One night the four of us went out to the “all girls” gay bar and I passed out. When I woke up the bar owners had me sitting up in the back room and they were pouring milk down my throat. This was the second time that someone saved me from an overdose. The girls said the milk would counteract the black beauties and that I’d be fine. I had no idea how bad those pills were for me until I passed out from them. Right after that I started feeling upset with myself.

  Then one afternoon I went over to see the girls and when I walked into apartment I could see that the bathroom door was slightly open. When I looked inside I saw Sharon slouched over on the toilet seat. She had a tourniquet around her upper arm and she was shooting up heroin. I knew then that I didn’t need to keep hanging around these people. To avoid eye contact with Sharon and the other girls, I walked over to the window and looked out across the parking lot and saw someone wiping off a car at a car wash.

  I said, “Who’s that”?

  Sally came to the window and she looked to see who I was looking at. After looking for a few minutes I said, “Is that a girl or a guy?”

  Sally said, “Oh that’s a gay girl. Jean’s a fun gal! Do you want to meet her?”

  “Oh yes I do,” I said taking a deep breath. As we looked out the window, I thought she was so butch-looking and so hot! I wanted to see what it was like to be with a real butch woman. One that looked like a young guy! She had very dark brown hair, a wonderful smile and nice body. Then I said, “I want to meet her now!”

  Sally took me down the stairs of her apartment building and walked me across the street to the gas station and car wash. I walked around the corner of the building and there she was looking right into my eyes.

  Sally said, “Hi Jean, this is Jane Harvey.”

  Jean just stood there and stared at me, looking me up and down. I could tell she liked what she was looking at and I liked what I was looking at also.

  “Where are you from?” she asked smiling.

  “I’m from California via Vegas,” I said.

  “Do you want to come over after I get off of work and have a drink?” she asked.

  I was excited to be going to the apartment of a girl that looked like a cute guy, with a nice ass. Oh, it was the first time I was really meeting a butch. I really thought she was hot. I always wanted to be with a butch-looking woman. I was not attracted to fems.

  She looked just like a young boy. I was for some reason attracted to her, but people stared at her sometimes because she was so butch-looking. That night we went out drinking, played pool, danced and had a lot of fun with all the gay girls in the bar. She had a gentle touch, unlike men, and after a week she told me she wanted me to be her girl.

  After dating Jean for a few weeks, I told her how much I missed not having big money like I was used to make in Las Vegas.

  “Oh baby, don’t do that!” she said.

  “I’m not living like a poor chick. I’m used to having lots of money and beautiful clothes and having my hair done every day. I want to get out of Chicago and go to California.”

  I returned to Curly and Ted’s apartment. I packed my bags and told them that I was going back to California for a bit, and then maybe I’d return to Vegas. They were both sorry to see me go but they were happy that Jean was going with me. I loved Curly and was happy to see that he was content with his life in Chicago.

  A few days later, we crossed the California State line and I got out of the car and did a dance and sang a song. We drove to Orange County and I got a newspaper and found us a pay-by-the-week apartment. Afterwards, I was hired as a nurse’s aid at a nursing home. Changing diapers wasn’t easy but at least the people were very grateful having me help them and it was one of my inner most passions to help take care of people. I had been a nurse for many years, which is where the passion was ignited. And in some twisted way, being a prostitute for all those years had taught me how to take care of people—albeit it in a different kind of way.

  However, I’d become frustrated with Jean because she never even tried to find a job. Jean continued to let me pay for everything. But no matter what, I loved her and I’d never leave
her out in the street with nothing because I knew how devastating desertion was.

  Chapter 23

  Sybil Brand

  After working at the Chapman Care Center for two weeks, I learned that helping the elderly could be brutal work.

  One day one of my lady customers hauled off and hit me in the head with a bed pan. I never knew how strong these old ladies could be until that happened. The nurse told me that the drugs they were taking could cause a reaction, and some of the people on the floor had Alzheimer’s disease and they could, without any reason, become very violent. I always had a great deal of respect for the nurses who cared for them because they had to be unimaginably patient to do this kind of job.

  One Saturday in September I decided to go back to the Happy Hour on Harbor and Garden Grove Boulevard to see if Shelby, who left me high and dry in Indiana, was around. When we walked into the bar that night, I gave Jean some cash to order us drinks. As I stood near the end of the bar, I scoped the room and saw Shelby standing near the pool tables in the back room.

  My mind raced as I observed her little butch look, but I knew she was a gay girl mixed up in prostitution. I didn’t like two-faced people, much less someone who tries to put on a front that’s fake. I couldn’t believe that I’d fallen for her in the first place. I had to learn a lesson the hard way: that some lesbian women liked to screw around with my brain. Looks were deceiving and I knew now that she was nothing but a two-faced bitch.

  I was never like that. I never fooled people by dressing up to look like something that I was not. I never promised to do something that I wouldn’t do, and I never left anyone cold in the street knowing they were homeless. I might have done a lot of unworthy tasks as a prostitute, but I was respected by the high-rollers and I despised Shelby for what she’d done to me.