by Joshua Braff
“Awburn, come here.”
“Yes, but he had a question.”
“And what’s your name, honey?”
“Dot.”
“What’s the question?”
“He wanted to know if you were related by blood.”
“Sit together over here and Leo, you stand here. Give me the camera. Where’s the on button?”
“I’m her brother. I’m her real brother. Please tell me where she is.”
“What is it that you want from them?”
“What did you say?”
“I’m wondering what you want from them.”
“They’re my mother and sister. They’re my family, what do you mean, what do I want from them?”
“You work in a theater, David. Yes? A theater where?”
“Now, Awburn, I want it to start out like you’re friends but you’re mad at each other.”
“What difference does that make? I’m asking you a favor.”
“Say something like, ‘Hey, why are you late?’ and then slap her on the arm. Yeah, like that, not hard, you’re friends but you’re a little angry . . . Good.”
“Try Kingsford.”
“Kingsford? Okay. Where in Kingsford. Yussi? Hey! Yussi?” He’s gone. I slam the phone and the receiver slips and crashes to the floor.
“What’re you doing?” Ira says. He’s on his back with the camera perched on his stomach. I walk past Leo and the whores and down the stairs. In the toy store I call my father’s room at the hospital. No one picks up. The phone is right next to his bed but just rings and rings. Ira’s on the stairs. “Come over here for a second,” he says, so I hang up and run out of the theater and keep building up speed to Broadway, where I turn right and just tear ass through the maze of people and their blips of words and I’m able to run for blocks and blocks without the slightest thought of stopping because the human body is a remarkable machine that’s controlled by billions of nerves and brain cells and I use them to see my mother’s face in the scatter of my view and to smash my fist into Yussi’s big-ass shnoz.
When I stop I can’t catch my breath so I sit on a fire hydrant and watch myself die in the reflection of an OTB window. I hate my mother. I hate my mother for hating me. Tell yourself I’m not here, just pretend I’m not here and you’ll be sure to find redemption, you bitch. I walk into the phone booth and call the hospital again. Brandi picks up.
“Hi, get over here.”
“What? What happened?”
“Deb’s here.”
“What?”
“She’s here. Debra’s here. Get over here.”
The hospital security won’t let me up until someone in the room picks up the phone. Six rings, seven rings, and Brandi says, “Hello?”
When I walk in Brandi’s standing with a nurse. And sitting there, next to my sleeping father, is the girl in black with long brown hair. And I am good in my heart and lungs and can taste a breeze of relief that I am no longer in this freefall alone. She’s here, with me, just as she was on the beach. I want you to come home, David. I clap my hands as I approach her and Brandi and the nurse both shhhush me. Debra sees me and smiles but pulls her chair closer to my dad.
“May it be your will,” she says softly, “my God and God of my fathers, to grant that he lie down in peace . . . and that he rise up in peace. Let not his thoughts upset him, nor evil dreams, nor sinful fancies. May my family ever be perfect in your sight. Grant him light, lest he sleep the sleep of death; for it is you who gives light to the eyes. Blessed are you, O Lord, whose majesty gives light to the whole world. Shema Yisr’ael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Here O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Baruch Shem Kavod Malchuso Laolam Vaed. Blessed be the name of the glory of His kingdom forever and ever.”
The room is silent. Brandi and the nurse both have their heads lowered. May my family ever be perfect in your sight.
“David,” someone whispers from the door, and when I look I see my mother. My stomach rips with nervousness as I move toward her, trying to gage her mood in her eyes. I am vulnerable, I know, a child again as I lean into her. She puts her hands on my shoulders and pulls me close. I kiss her cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ll come home, Mom. I just want to come home.”
Three, four, five seconds of silence and she pulls away from the embrace. I remember her eyelids. The blinking. The subtle shaking of her head. No. And I know what it means. I’ve been to the compound. I’ve seen how families deal with this. Rabbi Neihardt would say it is not a dismissal of me. But more an acceptance of God and his reasoning. It comes from the fourth of Iyar in the Hebrew year 5751 when a rabbi told his congregant that a messiah would come and one day redeem all those Jews who’d believed that his arrival was imminent. This process would be called the Final Redemption. So it’s not about love this time. Or even maternal obligation. It’s about the coming of the messiah. It’s about the completion of a third holy temple in Jerusalem. It’s about the ingathering of the exiles of Israel. And it’s about being redeemed in the eyes of Hashem.
My mother lowers her head and swipes at her nose. I can see the scalp of her sheitel, the flesh-colored netting.
“I want you to stay here,” she says, facing the room. “I want you to take care of your father. You’re a man now.”
I, King David, see flashes of silver go by her face, her hair. I hear Brandi’s voice inside the room, and the nurse walks out, with a grin to my mother. I, King David, see the blur of rage that’s been trapped inside my head. I reach out my hand, clutch the bangs of the sheitel, and swipe it from her scalp. And I run with it, a game of keep-away, down the hall toward the elevator. I hear her footsteps before I see her and she grabs it back from my hand. Her face is from a dream, a horror show. There is no doubt that a murder has occurred. I did it. I am the one, the killer.
“Leave me to my life!” she says through her tears, and the only thing left to do is run away, like the child I am. The elevator is open when I get there and a little boy stands next to a woman.
“Hi,” he says to me.
Does your mother love you? Does she?
“Hi,” the boy says again.
I, King David, look down at him as he points to the bend in his arm. “They took my blood,” he says, and I look up at the lit numbers of floors above the door.
. . . 6 . . . 5 . . .
I’ll come home, Mom. I’ll come home.
“Mister?”
4 . . . 3 . . .
“Yes?” I say.
“My blood was in a tube,” the boy says. “They took it from my arm.”
Part III
1977
Two Years Later
THE PEEP SHOW EXPRESS
– JULY 1977–
It was Ricky Jacoby, an ex–water heater mechanic from Long Island who brought the art of looping porn films to Times Square in the late fifties. Jacoby managed a cigarette machine route in the Bronx and stumbled onto a warehouse of unused nick-elodeon film projectors. He bought twelve of them for twenty dollars apiece and by the spring of 1960, a snowball of stag films could be found in any of twenty theaters on the strip. The New York Times reports that there are over two thousand film peep machines in New York today. But the advent of videotape recording and the remarkable leap in Betamax sales has forced theater owners to reinvent themselves. Rhino’s, the End Up, Stinky’s Review, and the Plow have all closed their peep windows this month for lack of token sales. The Imperial, Killowatt, the Exotic Circus and Show World are all shooting movies in-house and saving themselves the costs of buying and shipping from California. Show World owner Roger Pines dropped his cover charge, gives you five bucks worth of free tokens, and is selling walnut brownies in his lobby for a dollar. Killowatt, a theater that’s been busted twice since last June owing to Office of Midtown Enforcement and Bella Abzug pressures, just put in a Gang Bang room that features a twenty-by-thirty-five-foot waterbed. And over at the Imperial, the “homemade” porn is more than slightly grainy but features a twenty-
one-year-old blonde sensation named Tiki Nightly—in booths 3, 5, 9, and 12—who has an insatiable interest in devouring whatever cock slinger they’ve booked for the day. Each girl cast in an Imperial film is contracted to dance on the main stage for two weeks after her film premieres. Watch her movies, watch her live, pay for a lap dance and she’ll sign a glossy. After that, head off to the obligatory toy store, the Sixty-Niner Diner, where Imperial owner Arbus’s son, David, has hung dozens of Times Square–themed photographs on the walls. An actual museum inside a dildo shop. The night I was there, Tiki Nightly, Candy Appler, Veronica Saint James, and the Malaysian dominatrix “O,” could all be seen on stage, thrilling the Imperial faithful. And for a finale, the legendary and still sultry burlesque queen Brandi Lady did a fetish act that was PG at best but wonderfully nostalgic.
The prognosticators say the peep show is dwindling, that in less than ten years every home in America will have a Betamax machine and every theater here will be quarantined for detonation. Keep up the good fight, you Kings of the Great White Way. They haven’t won yet.
Sarah
THE JUNKIES AND FORTY-POUND PROSTITUTES are all in bad moods. I stopped a fistfight this week by pointing my camera at the two skeletons involved. The gaunt seem to soften when they think they’re being discovered. The pictures are violent and blurred but are poetic somehow. I think they’re good. Leo booked me a job at Show World today. The heat in the film studio above the stage must be near 110 degrees, and I have every window open I can find. The guy who meets me is a dwarf named Gary. He says I was mentioned in an article in some smut magazine and I feign disinterest.
“The Peep Show Express,” he says as he finds it and reads aloud. “‘Where Imperial owner Arbus’s son, David, has hung dozens of Times Square–themed photographs on the walls. An actual museum inside a dildo shop.’
“You’re famous,” he says.
The cover of the Peep Show Express is a picture of a girl in pigtails with an unpeeled banana deep inside her mouth. It’s not Life but it’s still a review. I take my Rolleiflex out of the bag and Gary says, “What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“I thought you was shootin’ film today,” he says.
“Film? No. I shoot stills.”
“You fuckin’ kidding me? The couple I got came all the way from Philly.”
Gary goes into a huff for a while and then leaves. The toilet flushes and I can hear the people he hired in the bathroom, laughing their asses off. Gary comes back two minutes later with a lit joint and offers me some. I take a tiny hit and hand it back.
“More?” he says.
“No. Thanks.”
“So Leo says you fucked up last week at Jo Jo’s loft. What happened?”
I stare at Gary as he sucks on the spleef. Every two-and-a-quarter-inch negative I printed came out blank and now Leo’s telling this guy about it. A four hour day and not one penny for it. Dud film.
“It won’t happen again.”
I lift the camera and point it at him. Click. “See? Sounds good right.”
“What do I know?” he says, patting it down. “Just don’t leave me hangin’.”
The toilet flushes again, and the bathroom door opens. The couple is a Korean girl and a white guy with sunken cheeks and wrists like twigs. I can see him right now, hoovering the hell out of a mound of cocaine on the sink. When he comes out he offers me some on the tip of a key. I tell him I’m already stoned.
“Let’s do this,” he screams, and in seconds I’m on one knee with my forehead way too close to his ass. I’m going to hell. Yuck. Jesus. At least the camera’s firing well. BJ, doggy, sixty-nine, and a couple of “unusuals” because the coke fiend says he can blow himself.
“I just shoot hetero,” I tell him, and he assures me, “There’s nothin’ homo about it.”
On his back he flips up and over and yes, with his head and neck quivering to the goal, he does it, gets it in his mouth.
“Wow!” Gary says. “Shoot it, David, shoot.”
Click.
The guy pulls his face off his wang and sort of pumps his fist. Gary claps and the girl throws her boyfriend a towel. Done.
I CAN ONLY smile in front the air conditioner at the next one. The crisp air is like snowfall on my face, my eyelids. The guy I meet is new and has the same brown shoes as me. The second I take out the Rolleiflex he tells me he prefers 35mm for his “rag.” Luckily I have my Nikon and I load it just as the girl arrives. She looks Israeli but could be Italian, a brunette with green eyes and olive skin. The guy he hired is a marine, in for fleet week. He does a ton of pushups right in front of us before greasing up his pecs with some butter spray. When I tell him I’m ready, he’s fatigued and sweaty and rubbing the butter stuff on his balls. “I need a minute,” he tells us.
While he beats off in the corner, the girl and I talk about the huge antiporn rally the day before on Forty-second Street. I watched from across the street and thought I was about to see someone get killed. A woman who looked like Peppermint Patty threw a brick at the front glass window of the Raven and the bouncer on duty went nuts and started swinging an aluminum bat at her head. Peppermint P was tough, though, just picked up a bullhorn and screamed into the guy’s face, “PORN IS THE SEXUALIZED SUBORDINATION OF WOMEN,” until the cops arrived in and arrested them both.
The marine says he’s ready and, although he’s naked and out of breath, looks ready to storm Normandy. The Israeli girl takes off her robe and climbs up on the rented chopper. I aim the Nikon at her and she lifts her butt as high as she can.
Click.
5. Livid Bouncer Wielding Baseball Bat
4. Peppermint Patty with Bullhorn
3. Tranny on Knees Kissing Sidewalk
2. Humidity + Heroin-Induced Fistfight
1. Israeli with Oiled Buttocks in Air (might be Italian)
Missionary, BJ, cunnilingus, doggy, sixty-nine—and the marine hurries to his feet to finish. Done. I load black and white for the last five minutes. Silver chopper spokes, the Confederate flag. A military uniform the color of snow. Suddenly my camera moans and locks before it rewinds. I try to fix it but it’s stubborn and just dead but we’re done anyway. I run out of there and catch a cab to Cohen Camera on Thirty-third. The place is packed so I take my camera down to the basement to the darkroom and see the owner, a lady named Dorine with a bluish goiter on her neck. In the pure dark, hunched in a corner, I hear her open the back of the thing. “Film snapped,” she says.
“Why? Fuck. Damn. Shit camera.”
I take it from her and race to the next job, in the village, but the subway’s slow, just putt-putting downtown. Leo arranged this one for me over a month ago, saying, “It’s an orgy shoot, the easiest money, just take pictures of everything and everyone.” I can’t stand orgy gigs, though. The smell of ten people fucking makes me want to puke. Men’s asses also make me sick. Going up and down for what seems like hours and the drone of the moaning, like a bunch of dying cows. Finally, the train arrives. I’m supposed to meet some guy Leo describes as a “four-hundred-pound dick with a blond afro and a cane.”
I see him—no cane but a cigar—waiting for me on the sidewalk. A Jewish giant with drooping breasts and a perm the color of piss.
“Had to cancel the orgy,” he says. “Couldn’t get enough people. But I got nine girls, all eighteen. What do you think?”
“Okay.”
“It’ll be a breeze, fast cash. Just shoot ’em standing there in their birthday suits. Think of the Rockettes but in the buff, right?
“Uh-huh.”
“I say we do a pyramid. I say we do a football huddle, maybe a bunny hop . . . if there’s time. See what I mean, kid?”
I nod, follow him up the elevator, and down a hallway toward the apartment. The girls are all in bathrobes and most are smoking. The windows behind them are huge and look out on a billboard for Christian radio.
“Line up, girls. He’s here. Robes off, cigs out. What’s with the pace? Wake up, he�
��s here.”
Some of them look younger than eighteen. I’m going straight to hell. I pull the Graflex out and shoot the girls, the billboard behind their heads. Click.
“Arm in arm,” the guy says. “Let’s start with arm in arm.”
From the left: little nose, one eyebrow, blond hair. Click. Green eyes, birth mark on neck, blond, fare, freckles. None of these people are eighteen.
“Why isn’t anyone smiling? I’m not paying you to look depressed. Ya want to be in magazines or what?”
The girls all push out smiles and stand with their shoulders back. The perm guy examines them and even touches one girl’s hair, draping it over her shoulders. Scumbag. Or should I say scumbags. Both of us.
The fourth girl from the right I recognize, her eyes, her mouth . . . I hold the camera on her and she knows me too. Her hands clasped in front of her, she steps out of line, away from the others.
“Where the hell are you going?” the perm guy says, but she runs into the bathroom and shuts the door.
“Hey, miss!” he calls, waddling toward the door. “You better get your ass out here.”
It’s her. My God. The palm reader with the hickey on her neck. Peter Rabbi’s mishbucha.
“Did you hear me in there?” he says.
“Stop!” I walk to the bathroom door. “Hi,” I call, knocking lightly. “I’m leaving.”
“What the fuck?”
“I know her.”
“So what?”
“So I’m leaving.”
“And what I do?”
“I’ll call Leo if you want. He booked this for me.”
“It’s too late now. Don’t be an asshole. I’m renting here.”
“Do you have a camera?”
“If I had a fuckin’ camera, I wouldn’t need you. First you’re late and now you’re leaving? What the fuck?”
“I’ve known her since she was—”
“You don’t have to pork her, just take her damn picture.”
“She’ll come out when I leave. Send her home and I’ll come back tomorrow.”