Episode 9 ❤️🩹 1975 : The Lady Really Is A Tramp
Learning how to be a lady, from the pimp I wanted to work for
Stop! Click the pretty little heart ❤️ above and make my day. Take another second and drop an imaginary quarter in the free jukebox below.
If you’re enjoying this each week, celebrate lucky essay #13 with a 50% discount on an annual subscription, available, you guessed it, for the next 13 days only!
Introducing Jasus J Huntsberry
JJ the pimp, my JJ (not my pimp, not yet), wants me to be more ladylike, have some real class, know how to act in public, in nice places. Tad’s Steak House—a cafeteria-style chain complete with red lunch tray, flame-broiled steaks, garlic bread and a baked potato with sour cream & chives —was all I knew about a special night out, it’s where we’d go as a family.1
JJ takes me to nicer places.
2025
This is the point where I want to tell you, and have, many times, that he was taking me to fancy places where I learned to talk to maître d’s & sommeliers, to get respect & service in return. That we ordered fine wines.
But there are a lot of black spots in my memory. Blinks. Like, I’d blink and days would disappear. I’ll tell you more, just not right now.2
When it came to wine, drinking alone at home, I stuck with Mateus and Lancer’s Rose because I liked pinkness and the bottles made me feel fancy. I’ve never learned—or cared—much about wine beyond white should be chilled & red served at room temperature.
I’m sure there was a nice restaurant in there somewhere. There were plenty of nice restaurants over the years I was in Times Square, but those came later. There was the kind of fancy diner, on the corner of 8th Avenue and 52nd Street, fancy because I could order broiled lobster.
In a few years from this moment, I’d come to think of that diner as the rape diner—I still do whenever I pass that corner, even though the diner has changed hands a dozen times over the years.
But we’re not there yet. That’s not going to happen for a few years.
Sexy or Sleazy?
More is better. More expensive is more better.
I can go through the motions of letting a wine breathe without knowing why, or caring. If I play my part well, I can be silly and order Perrier-Jouët because I like the flowers painted on the bottle. I don’t know if it’s any better than Cristal or Moët, but it’s better by miles than the crap champagne we hustle at work, which half the time isn’t even champagne anymore, just a screw-top nip bottle that’s been refilled over & over with soda-gun ginger ale until the label starts to wear off from being kept “on ice.”
I order Stolichnaya because I like how Russian sounds coming out of my mouth—
I like the sound of most Eastern European languages and accents, they way they feel in my mouth and to my ears—full and rich, I feel connected by languages of my ancestors, my people, my wandering Eastern European Jews: Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Yiddish. I learn very little, but my pronunciation is perfect. Dosvedanya. Paskudnyak. Putz ala mein dupa3 . I was easily swayed by a thick Eastern European accent, maybe I still am. There was a Romanian, Milan Radunovich, who barely spoke English. I spoke no Romanian, it didn’t matter. And when the Albanians showed up…but again, I’m getting ahead of the story. We’re not there yet.
—but I’m happy to drink Georgi Vodka, which is meant to sound Russian, but it’s New York low end speed rack stuff. And when no one is looking, I’ll actually swallow the crap champagne at work instead of letting it dribble into a “spit glass” like we’re supposed to.
JJ says there’s a fine line between sleazy and sexy and that teaching me to walk that line is an uphill battle.
2025
I was a girl who liked shiny things, I still am. He tried sanding down my rough edges, but I’d never become familiar with fine wine or haute cuisine; I’d drink whatever and as much as was within arm’s reach. I was raised on TV dinners and tuna casseroles, and even if we ate in fancy lobster diners, the wine still came out of a box.
Some of his lessons took. He was a gentle man, and treated everyone with dignity, never raised his voice, didn’t engage, no matter the provocation. We eventually lost touch, but when I found out he’d died in 2011, it didn’t surprise me at all to find an obituary listing him as Bishop Jasus Huntsberry. Maybe he’d just added “Bishop” to his name—the way we do, the way we did, changing names and stories whenever we had to—but I like to believe he’d actually become a preacher.
With JJ, I felt charmed and charming. At after-hours bars or other strip clubs, he’d liked to watch me mingle, and I did, safe in the knowledge we’d leave together and that he’d never let anyone hurt me. With him at my side, I felt like my feet were finally on solid ground, like I had choices in life that wouldn’t leave me crumpled up at the kitchen table crying into my hands. I wasn’t going to fall into the love, marriage, baby trap like my mother had.
What Do Men Really Want?
It’s a struggle, but I understand the value of silence, how men like me better if I let them choose the fine foods or the good wines. But I’m never gonna get the hang of demure. I’m better with funny or tough, but there’s no money in funny and tough is for streetgirls.
I’m drinking enough Stolichnaya to shut the voices up when they start to blabber—
Everyone knows. Everyone knows you’re a fake, you’re just a kid, just a chubby kid from the asshole of Long Island.
—When the voices start, it doesn’t matter if a bottle has flowers or a skull and cross bones, as long as it’s there, in my hand.
I start to see the a difference between what men think they want, what they really want—each man is unique, but most of them don’t know what they’re looking for. It’s almost always about power, either they want it, or they want you to take it away from them. A good whore has to figure that out and take him there.
Another day’s lesson: Clock how the guy dresses, walks, talks, even the way he sits.
I know that stuff already. This part is easy.
Daddy was a con man at heart and long before Times Square, I was learning to size someone up with a glance. Shoes need resoling? Missing buttons? Shirts frayed at the collar or cuffs? Nails manicured or ragged? Is there a ring of pale skin where a wedding band should be? What does he drink, how fast or slow, or is he just letting it sit there as the ice melts?
2025
My father never really read tea leaves, or palms, or crystal balls—he read people. Watching for a dilated pupil, the sheen of sweat on an upper lip, a nervous tic, unconscious movement of the eyes or the fingers, a tiny turn of the head. You’ve heard that everyone has a tell—it’s that thing you do that you don’t know you do, that you can’t not do because you’re not even aware of it. The thing that gives you away.
I watch people all the time, I’d study them, analyze, try to figure out who they are, what their story is by the way they dressed, walked, spoke, and yes, how they sat—legs open, or crossed; arms folded across the chest? Is he facing you directly, or sideways? Like an FBI profiler, an undercover officer infiltrating a cartel, or any con from three-card monte to a multilevel long con—clothing, haircut, nervous tics—to succeed, to be really good, you need to notice all of it and file it away in a mental filing cabinet. Note and file, note and file. Compile enough data and a portrait starts to emerge.
Then toss the bait and wait for the tell.
Let them taste it, run with it until they’re hooked, really hooked. And then reel them in, subtly shifting the game—my story—as needed.
Con games are pure story, the skill is in knowing which one to tell, who to tell it to, and how to tell it. Poker. Life. The Life. The best storyteller always wins.
Know What’s Expected
I need an edge to win, to get men to be easy with the cash. If you’re not pretty, you have to be smart. I’m smart. I have to get this if I’m ever going to work for JJ. I’ve seen Sharon’s life and I want it.
I don’t need any dead movie star panties, but I want that sleep ’til noon cash business is nobody’s business kinda business.
I want to be fancy & desirable.
I want to feel wanted.
Life’s easier when you know what’s expected of you.
Robbie’s Mardi Gras expects me to be sexy, so I am.
My parents don’t expect me to work in a strip club, but they don’t ask about the hours and hours I’m out of the house. I lie—they think I’m working a lunch shift in a restaurant. No one asks much anyway, but life is easier with a good lie.
2025
People believe what they want to believe, but the easiest lies to swallow are the ones closest to the truth.
When he said that, my father was trying to teach me how gypsy scams and con games worked. The beauty of many of his life lessons were that they transferred easily and were applicable in all kind of situations.
He said, “If you don’t know where your next meal is coming from, work in a restaurant.” Good advice, a go-to when I was broke, it transferred easily to my version: If you don’t know where your next drink is coming from, get a job in a bar. That would eventually became more of a mantra.
And so, the lie of waitressing in a midtown restaurant explained my hours and the cash.
My father had great stories—motorcycles, leather jackets, married girlfriends, “jail bait” girlfriends, working at carnivals, burlesque houses, gypsy tea rooms, sleeping in cars at art school. I didn’t know if I’d ever measure up; he was a tough act to follow. But, I was starting my own collection of stories. I was wanted to better him, even if I was keeping it a secret at the time.
If I’d had a car, I’d have had a bumper sticker that said: My Topless Bar Can Beat Up My Daddy’s Burlesque House.
I imagined he’d secretly be proud if he knew what I was doing. The inside of Daddy’d be proud. The outside’d be angry, because knowing would make my mother cry, and she’d blame him. She blamed him for all my left turns, and there’d already been a considerable list by the time I opened the double glass doors to Robbies Mardi Gras: the running away (x4), the bad boys (I’d lost count), the shoplifting (and teaching that fine art to the daughter of the school board president), and the drinking and the drugs.
When I finally tell her about the go-go bars, she’ll cry, and blame him for that as well. But that won’t happen for a few more years.
Truth & Lies
The lies I tell my family make it easier for them to sleep.
The lies I tell strange men make it easier for them to like me.
I don’t tell anyone the truth. I’m not even all that sure what it is.
What is class? Can you put lipstick on a pig and call it classy? Is it something you have to be born with, like the ability to roll your tongue?
13 will get you 50 - percent off a paid subscription, that is.
Yeah, this is Episode #9, but it’s also the 13th essay, so for the next 13 days, (through March 20th), you can become a paid subscriber and support the work you’ve enjoyed reading at 50% off the cost of an annual subscription.
Still Want More?
About sex, sexwork, crime & criminals? Times Square, addiction, alcoholism and recovery? Here are some great titles—and a few anthologies that include my stories—at my shop on Bookshop.org. It’s one more way you can be an ally to this newsletter. ❤️🩹
Substack Reads for Sex, Sexwork ,and Crime
- a triple crown: Sexwork, Feminism, life in the woods in Alaska; - is a living breathing Burlesque and Sex Work Encyclopedia; - we met through sex writing, but she’s so much more; - formerly Susie Sexpert, erotica, feminism & fierce intersect; - Sex Advice for Seniors;
- true crime;
- crime and crime soundtracks,
- the business of sex;
- sexworker perspectives on everything.
If you liked this, don’t keep it to yourself, tell someone!
If you enjoy this every week, celebrate lucky essay #13 with a 50% discount on an annual subscription, available, you guessed it, for the next 13 days only!
If you really like this, I also write about life today - the long goodbye, dementia caregiving for my 95-year-old mother. Just a few decades of sobriety trying not to lose my mind as she loses hers.
Don’t forget to tip the pretty bartender!
A full dinner the year I was born, 1957, was $1.09. By 1989 you could still get an entree for 2.99. Fancy Schmancy dining.
Next week, March 14, 2025, I’ll tell you about the Blinks. A balm for survivors. The body lives through trauma; the brain goes full armadillo. Maybe there’s no memory of the thing at all, or maybe shredded mismatched bits & pieces.
Dosvedanya: Goodbye (Russian).
Paskudnyak: Shitbag (Russian).
Putzela mein dupa: Kiss and/or Talk to my ass (Polish).
These are my best attempts at phonetic spellings. Also for the first 55 years of my life, I understood paskudnyak to be the equivalent of “sweetie,” “honey,” or the ever present Yiddish, “ketzele” because it was my mother’s pet name for me. By the time I found out what it really meant (in Yiddish: a disgusting, contemptible person; an insult saved for the most odious people), she was too far into dementia to as; I assume that’s what she was called as a little child, and that she assumed the same.
Always love (and a little bit fear) your stories. You know how to take me to another time and place. And lifestyle. Happy to go along for the ride.
thanks for the shout! Classy is a costume, much like gender. Some people commit to the bit more than others. (But I'm like the personification of a Hometown Buffet so what do I know :)