Before leaving I refreshed my lips with red-hot lipstick and sprayed my body with Davinci perfume. Now I looked, smelled and felt like a million-dollar woman again! With that in mind, I walked out of the house with my head held high and proud, sure that I would make some decent money again!
I pulled up in the back parking lot of the Rainbow Club around 8 P.M. and parked my T-Bird next to the back door. A white buff doorman was at the entrance and he eyed me up and opened the steel door so I could pass through to this crazy job I was about to do. The room was filled with men of all ages. The dance floor was in the center of the room and it had a silver disco ball that hung from the ceiling.
On the dance floor I could see a young blond woman with a shoe string laced bikini bottom wearing white crotch-high leather boots with six-inch heels and pointed toes. Her seductive dancing etiquette captured the men’s attention as she bent over to receive George Washington bills into the front of her gold Lamoure satin spaghetti strap top.
I walked down the stairs behind the stage to the dressing room and put my belongings in a locker. As I sat down at a makeup mirror, I wondered why I was doing this. Johnny always told me that I’d never have anything if I was gay, but I thought I’d try to play the straight roll to earn some cash.
In a few minutes the manager of the bar came down to ask me if I was ready to go on. Without a thought I smiled at him and eagerly replied, “Yes,” hiding my nervous tension like I’d seen Frank do many times before he’d gone on stage. I critiqued myself in the mirror, raised my head up and turned briskly to march up the stairway, passing the go-go girl I was replacing.
She was wearing a brightly patterned short pullover disco dress with bell sleeves, a long matching headband and earrings, and six-inch heeled white boots. Right then, I knew I was different than the rest of the girls—more experienced with my makeup and looking much sexier. I wanted to keep all the guys’ eyes on me so I would get all the money.
When I got to the top of the stairs I took a deep breath before walking through the door towards the end of the stage where I’d be dancing. Go-go dancing was simple for me and I didn’t have to do any strip tease acts. When I got to the top of the stage “Sugar Sugar” by The Archies blared out, “Sugar Sugar, dah dah dah dah, you are my candy girl and you got me wanting you…” I instantly started dancing, and bent over to accept the cash into my bra. The disc jockey continued to play popular pop songs from the 60s and we danced in half-hour segments. Afterwards we put a cover over our body and served cocktails to men who tried to get a “free feel” when we delivered their drinks. But the owner didn’t allow any touching of the girls or they’d be escorted out by the bouncer. At the end of my six-hour shift, I’d made over three hundred dollars, but it wasn’t even close to the money I used to make in ten minutes in Vegas.
When I got home my feet were killing me so Jean massaged them and made me a screwdriver. We partied until the sun came up. I felt good that I was making enough money to pay the rent, but was upset that Jean didn’t have a job.
On a Saturday night two weeks later, Jean dropped me off at work around 8 P.M. and around midnight she returned with four gay girlfriends to watch me dance. The five bull dykes sat at a table in the middle of the room and ordered drinks from Bobbi, who was one of the other dancers. I was so embarrassed to see them watching me on stage while I bumped and grinded for money, and they whistled and clapped their hands like horny men.
When I got off the stage I had to take my turn serving drinks. The girls acted like they all knew me, smiling, laughing and saying, “Hi Janie,” blowing my cover as a straight chick. With a tray full of drinks and trying to stay poised, I stopped by their table and looked at Jean and said, “Get the hell out of here.” I could see she’d been drinking and smoking weed which made me even more furious.
“We’re just here to have a little fun Jane,” she smiled.
With fire in my eyes I leaned over and angrily said, “What are you trying to do, sell me to your girlfriends?”
My brain was rushing, thinking that these girls were just as bad as the men with their tongues hanging out as they looked at my body. I was hoping that the gay girls would have been more caring and loving and hoped they wouldn’t think like dirty men. Then I realized that women had sexual fantasies too.
I was upset that Jean thought it was okay to bring those dykes in here while I was trying to play “the straight role” to earn money. But finally, Jean and the girls finished their drinks and left.
Taking a deep breath, I took an order from two guys at a nearby table and walked to the service bar and ordered their drinks.
Bobbi approached me and said, “Do you know those dykes?” She looked at me strangely, “They seemed to know who you were!”
I swallowed a big gulp, dying inside because I didn’t want them to think I was gay and I nonchalantly said, “I met the one girl at a beauty shop and she asked me where I worked!”
She looked at me strangely.
I looked back and shrugged my shoulders and said, “How did I know they’d show up to watch me dance?”
After I said that, Bobbi looked at me without another thought and we went on about our business.
After the bar closed at 2 A.M., I walked down to the end of the block where Jean was waiting for me. My car was filled with smoke and smelled like booze. As soon as we were far enough away from the bar, I gave her hell!
“It made me sick to my stomach that you thought it was okay to watch me dance for those sick bastards, and then to see you looking, laughing and lusting at me the same way. You’re just as sick as they are! What the hell is wrong with you?”
Jean never said a word as she drove.
“It’s bad enough to have the men staring at my ass and tits. I don’t need this shit from you, and those girls are not my friend’s anyway.
Jean kept her eyes on the road.
“Don’t ever do that again, damn it!”
After the fifteen-minute ride, I calmed down somewhat and both of us went into the house. We had a couple of drinks and went to bed. She held me in her arms and said she was so excited to see her woman on stage she wanted the other girls to see me also. But I did not like that at all. It was not something I expected from a gay woman, but I learned that some gay women think like men do. She just wanted to share her girlfriend’s good- looking body.
The next day I quit that sick job and we told the friends and my girls that I had to go to Florida for a job. Since we were headed to Florida, we decided to go through Kentucky where Jean’s parents lived
Jean and I drove to Pikeville, Kentucky where Jean had grown up. Pikeville had a population of one thousand people. We drove my T-Bird to her parents’ house in the “holler,” which was basically a row of houses sitting alongside a dirt road in a mountain valley. Their two-bedroom shack was nestled into the back of a mountain that had a river running straight out from their back porch. I couldn’t believe how primitive they were. If they needed water, they’d fetch it with a bucket, and their bathroom was a two-hole outhouse.
One night, Jean and I went to the local bar. At the end of the night, a rude drunk jerk started hitting on me.
Aggravated with his sexual requests I told him, “If you want to get a blow job, put a hinge in your neck and suck it yourself.” Everyone at my table laughed their butts off and he just left the bar.
About twenty minutes later I told Jean that we better get back to her mom’s. When we walked out of the bar the man came over to us with a gun in his hand, “What are you, a damn queer or what?”
We stopped and looked at him standing with his gun.
He said, “You know what we do to queers in Kentucky?” Suddenly he raised the gun and Jean jumped up on his arm and when the gun went off, the bullet hit the ground.
“See, you were lucky she saved your life you fucking queer!” Then he turned around and walked to his car and drove away.
She looked at me and shrugged her shoulders and said, “Wow that was a close ca
ll.”
I was shaking in my shoes and said, “What’s with the guys around here?”
“There are a bunch of rednecks around here,” Jean said.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said. We got into my car and drove to her mom’s house. We went right to bed and she held me close all night long.
The next day Jean’s brother and his friend asked if we would drive them to Tennessee, just over the state border to get some beer. So off we went in my car to the borderline about half an hour away to a liquor store. Each of them bought a case of beer and I got a bottle of scotch and put it all the trunk of the car.
On the way back across the state line Jean says, “Let’s go to our old hangout and start a big bonfire. We can sit on the rocks around the fire pit we made a year ago.”
“Sounds like fun to me,” I said. The boys agreed.
When got to the bonfire pit there were big rocks to sit on and a stack of old car tires. So they grabbed a tire, threw gas on it and lit it on fire. That damn tire burned a long time and smoked like hell! We went through the beer like it was water. We were talking about my times in Vegas and how Jean and I met. Then I said, “We better get back!”
Bobby said, “I’ll drive because I know the way better.”
“Cool, here’s the keys,” I said. Jean and I got a cold beer and got in the back seat.
Jean put her arm around my shoulder and gave me a kiss on the cheek and asked, “Are you having fun now?”
“Oh you bet I am honey,” I told her.
After about ten miles of driving down the two-lane highway, Bobby suddenly shouted, “Oh shit, there’s a cop!”
As we flew by him sitting on the side of the road, the cop car pulled out from the side dirt road after us with his flashing blazing lights and blaring siren.
“Oh shit,” I said, “Pull over on the side of the road!”
Bobby looked over his shoulder at me yelling, “I’m not stopping. I can out run them ass holes in this T-Bird!”
I frantically turned and looked at Jean and demanded, “Tell your brother to stop the car now!”
Jean reached over the top of the car seat touching his shoulder and told him to stop but he just floored the gas and continued to speed down the road with the cop car racing right after us. I knew I was in deep shit, and was scared. I prayed that he didn’t crash my car and kill us.
Then he took a sharp right over some railroad tracks and stopped the car. Both of the boys jumped out and ran up a hill and into the darkness of someone’s front yard.
I was shaking in my high-heels as the middle-aged cop came to the back window and opened up the front door and said, “Get out and put your hands behind you. You are going to jail!”
I thought to myself, “Oh my God! I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. After all I was a class act. At least I used to be one! Now here I was in Pikeville, Kentucky, in the back seat of my T-Bird with my “square-butch” gay girlfriend, her “honky-tonk-hick” brother and his dorky buck-toothed buddy who ditched us. Now I was about to spend a long cold night in jail. Standing along the side of the road with my hands cuffed behind my back I asked, “What are you going to do with my car?”
“I’m going to take the distributor cap off and leave the car here!” he said.
I looked at him strangely concerned for my property as he ushered the two of us into the back seat of the squad car.
“Don’t worry lady. No one will be able to start it!” With my distributor cap in the trunk he took the two of us to jail.
We were photographed, fingerprinted and placed in one of the two jail cells that had a metal seat to sit on. I was so upset that I threw up in the jail bathroom. I’ll never forget how horrible that was for me, to have found myself in this disgusting situation because I was in love with a woman that was a hillbilly from Kentucky.
After the night in jail, they walked us over to the court room in the jailhouse.
The elder judge said, “There’s no drinking in this county and you went across the border and brought liquor into our county and you gave liquor to two minors.”
After paying the $300 fine, we both walked out of the police station and found my T-Bird parked around the corner. The windshield had been shot-up with bullet holes and more bullet holes were on the side door of the driver’s side. I was furious. I decided I was going to make the city pay for the damages.
We drove back to Jean’s house and told her parents what had happened. A few hours later her brother showed up. I was so mad I wanted to kill him.
He told us that the two of them watched the cops remove the distributor cap before they took us to jail. The two of them hiked over to the nearest house and stole the distributor cap off a truck that was parked in the driveway and they put it in the T-Bird. When they started to drive away, they saw the cop car and two cops bent over the hood of the car with guns in their hands. As soon as they’d crossed the tracks the two cops started shooting at them. Five bullet holes were head high in my windshield and as they tried to avoid being killed, they turned the car into a side road and another bullet hit the window.
“I think they were going to kill us if we didn’t stop!” her brother explained.
After that fiasco, I was so mad I told Jean I was going to Florida to see some of my tricks and make some damn money. I was not going to live in some damn Kentucky hillbilly state or live in some damn holler in Kentucky.
I packed up my bags and she threw her stuff into the truck of the T-Bird and away we went. On the way out of town I stopped by the mayor’s house and pounded on his door. I was going to demand that the city pay for my car’s damages. But no one answered the door. So I just got the hell out of that town.
A few days later I crossed the Florida State line and got out of the car and did a dance and sang a song. I was so happy to be in Florida. We drove to Miami and I got a newspaper and found us an apartment.
It would be several weeks before Jean ever started looking for a job, so I had to turn tricks to get the money to fix my car, pay the rent, food, electricity and phone while she sat around the apartment and cooked and cleaned all day.
Jean Burke, my butch lover, was happy with me going to see my high-roller tricks, so I believe that she was just as bad as Johnny. She was just not hitting me, yet, or breaking my bones. She was much softer of a lover to me than Johnny.
If I cried she would hold me tight and tell me that everything would be okay. When I was sad, she shared my sadness. She never said, “Shut up you damn bitch,” like Johnny did to me. She was a great friend and loved me very much. But I wanted her to work, to at least share the bills with me.
Finally she got a job at a tobacco shop for four hours a day five days a week, but she never made enough money to cover her fair share of our expenses. But she loved to party with my money! And of course I gave her my money because I thought that was what I was supposed to do for the person I loved.
Chapter 25
Fontainebleau, Bimini Island and Pikeville Jail
When I opened the newspaper one morning, I saw that Frank Sinatra was appearing at the Fontainebleau. I picked up the phone and called him.
“What are you doing in Miami?” Frank asked. He was very surprised to hear my voice. “Get your butt up here!”
I got in the elevator and went up to his room. Frank greeted me with a big hug. We caught up on what had been going on in our lives, since we hadn’t seen each other for a couple of years. After a few drinks and some hot sex, he said, “They’re having a 65th birthday party for Count Basie over at the Tower on Biscayne Boulevard. Why don’t you go with me?”
“It’ll be nice to see him again. I’ll meet you over there later,” I told him.
Frank gave me some money and I went to Headhunters and had my hair done and bought a beautiful evening dress for the party.
I met Frank that evening and while we had a drink, he waved to Phyllis Diller, who came over to talk. He introduced me to her and she looked at my hair and said, “Darling, I se
e you have my old hair!”
Phyllis Diller was a long-time comedian who always had her hair out of place when she performed on stage, and she held a long cigarette holder while she joked about her husband Fang and their relationship.
My hair do, on the other hand, didn’t have a hair out of place!
Phyllis was a hoot! I watched her float all over the room, screaming and screeching at the top of her lungs, having a grand old time.
Later, Frank came back to where I was standing and asked me, “Do you know any other broads who could come up to my suite to party?”
“Yes, I know a real cute gal named Holly. She’s young and a lot of fun.”
“Good, go call her right now and tell me when she’ll be ready. I’ll go back to the hotel and you two can meet me up there.”
I went to the lobby and called Holly from the house phone. I left the party and picked her up at the local club where I met her a few nights before and drove to Fontainebleau.
Holly was a twenty-four years-old, five-foot-six, perfectly figured blond knockout. She had innocent blue eyes, round high-cheeks and dimples that accented her outgoing white smile. Her shoestring tight-knit shirt accented her bare firm breasts. A short skirt and high white boots finished her off. When she got into my car I could tell that she was an absolute nervous wreck about meeting Frank Sinatra.
Holly wasn’t used to tricking big name celebs, and to be on the way to meet Frank Sinatra was really too much for her.
“Honey, Frank is just like every other man. He just wants to get it on, get off and get it over with,” I explained as I drove.
When we got to Fontainebleau the valet parked my car and I called Frank from the lobby phone. As we rode the elevator and walked down the hall to his room, I thought about the first time I’d met him. I was with Annette Lane, who showed me the ropes. Now I had taken over Annette Lane’s role, calming Holly’s nerves and showing her what to do.
Rat Pack Party Girl: From Prostitute to Women’s Advocate Page 25