part of Slaughter On 14th Street
--A Novel Poem--
Alice Olds-Ellingson
One time I actually did get knocked out. I’d picked up a rather unpleasant man to take me to the John Lee Hooker concert at the Starry Night Club in Portland. Hooker was hot. I Danced like an inferno. Who cared about my date. At the end of this blast from hell, Hooker said he wanted to meet the girl who was such a hot dancer. One of the stage hands told me. I was thrilled. But, because I, too, was a hooker, I wanted to watch out for myself. Sure enough, I went with the whole band in their portable RV bus&we ended up at some rather seedy motel in S.E. Portland. Hooker sat on the bed&offered me a chicken wing. From Colonel Sanders. He’d already eaten the other good pieces. It was 2:00 in the morning and I was starving--all that dancing, you see. So, whatever Hooker wanted from me (!) I was not going to give before I was fed properly. Such effrontery for a hot groupie, don cha know. But, I’d figured HE was MY groupie at the age of 65 that he was. So, the low-man on totem pole, the handsome black drummer, took “pity” on me to go out for a bite to eat. He took me to the Lyons all-nite restaurant where I started to feel like I was going to be grabbed by unknown hands&couldn’t eat. He suggested we get drinks in the bar. Miraculously it was still open, for some reason. We ordered Spanish Coffees&it took almost half an hour to get them at the table. I had one. They are strong, but I was a two-fisted drinker&could ordinarily handle several Spanish Coffees.
Not this time. The man drove me home&asked if he could have sex. I really was too tired&uninterested; I told him no. He took me home, all right; I shut and locked the door with him on the OUTside&went to bed immediately. I remembered nothing&suddenly it was 11:30 A.M.&I noticed I had a lot of dried sperm on my skin down around my pussy. Good god, did the whole band come for me after I was drugged by the micky in my Spanish Coffee? Couldn’t they let me stay conscious instead of taking me all unconscious? Had the manager of the building been conned into letting the boys IN!??!?
Actually, the only skill I had was in out-drinking all the Johns. That was easy. Johns don’t drink. Johns don’t smoke. Johns appear to have no eccentricities out of a pathetic dire need to fuck. They live in a nebulous world where pussy&tits are boss. They love to pay you because they know they are too inferior to get it for free. Also, the business arrangement would obviate any other demands on the man’s emotions or his marriage to his boring wife. I was beautiful as I have copiously told you before&I had no problems like gumming them to death. I liked sex. Great to do something you LIKE for the bucks!
Lucky me (sarcasm here), I had Johns who stole my costumes&ran away without paying me for the sex I gave them. They probably wanted to dress up like GIRLS, doncha know. Since prostitutes are non-humans to the cops, I got raped with no recourse to the law. Prostitutes SHOULD be mistreated according to some cops. One time I was kidnaped by two con artists&taken against my will down to Roseburg, Oregon. They had promised me 200 bucks for the night&all the sex they wanted plus they would give me a trailer down at the sisters house. Well, I spent the night&did a few tricks with one of them&I had to pay for the motel&in the morning I paid again. I went to the bathroom knowing my purse was vulnerable in the bedroom. Not only did I get nothing, but they skipped out with all my cash&left me with dimes&a check book. The cab to the bus station would take a check, thank god, the bus was waiting for me&they’d take a check. I had to go without lunch&it was a 6 hour trip back to Portland. Oh, the promises of Johns go up in smoke! Girls in my line of work never learn this. Girls are the most hopeless romantics on the face of the Earth. Girls in the Life, that is.
Yes, I was then beautiful with no problems of gumming anyone to death. I just wanted to be independent in the same town as all the Washington Park Hackers. I didn’t want to call my father up and ask for a loan. My Dad would always cut me off without a dime or a kotex. “Use newspapers!” he’d say.
By the way, my brother is just as bad as Dad--only without finesse. One time I needed a hundred dollars for the rent (Dad had again cut me off). Over the phone he turned me down flat&said “Why don’t you panhandle?” That seemed cruel then but panhandling doesn’t scare me much anymore. Even though I’m crippled. You’d think I WANTED to be the black sheep at this point in August of ‘93. Oh, the homeless! Oh, the beggars! Don’t they need a nice, independent life? From my comfortable bedroom I can so imagine the good life of a prostitute or beggar. I once knew a panhandler in San Francisco who DID have almost the life of Reilly. She said she made about $15,000 a year just sitting on a blanket&appealing to the crowds with her scrawny kitten that she always--for sympathy--would have with her on the blanket. She was really a very nice woman. Great personality. Very interesting rap.
Anyway, my brother was my earliest John. So, you understand that he detests me. Back in 1963 we went together to the Big Apple&slept in the same bed. Let’s pretend your boy friend is not around, he’d implied. Let’s just lay here beside each other in this cock-roach infested apartment (which we were borrowing from a writer friend of mine). Let’s pretend we are both asleep while we are fantasizing about each other. When the boy friend comes to visit us here, let’s pretend we are both fast asleep. Oh, Lewis. I did not fuck you, did I? Did you knock me out like I was a load of potatoes? Wouldn’t be surprised though now he calls me disgusting&he’s become a married prude.
Not a tennis date, my brother. But, a success despite it. He won swimming championships and wives. He always flirted outrageously with me until he married his second wife. I don’t know. He just dried up with her.&how fiercely he protects his right to act like a perfect creep toward me. It’s as if I were a poison to him now. He’s so opinionated you’d think he was the writer of the family. He thinks he knows everything. Poetry will never make it&your work about the family is unprintable. You don’t respect our privacy. Some things should be left alone¬ written about. You’re too old to be writing about your parents. Besides you have no philosophy. I told him Shakespeare wrote plays about families. And, Shakespeare is good enough for me. Nevertheless, he would terrorize me. You had to have been there when he was insulting me. The tone of his voice is as though he were speaking to a dog, a dirty dog.
I’ll never forget the time years ago when Lewis&I had a date. Just like he was my lover, he took me to the best restaurant in town, showed off his new Gold Card (he was making $90,000 a year as a business evaluator) and took me dancing at a night club. At that time he was just visiting. His home was in Canada--where he’d skeedaddled when the Viet Nam War was getting scary. You remember all those draft dodgers? Well, Lewis was a serious one. I was proud of him. On this night at the Last Hurrah! night club, he danced only with me although all the girls came up to him to ask him to dance. He is a hunk of a looker. I can’t lose the memory of how he rose from his chair for me after I got through with the powder room. No man had ever been that polite to me before.
I propositioned Lewis that night--and he got out of it. He said he just couldn’t handle incest with his big sister. Oh, yeah? How about the time he raped my sister, Helen? She was only ten&he was old enough to know better. (Guess he liked younger women back then. Now his wife id 6 years older than he.) It all adds up to twinkling eyes, flicked wrists, and gumming them to death. How do you wean yourself from being such a bitch or bastard as all of us in our family were? I’m not very nice myself--as I’m sure you’ve already figured out. I’m a whining, bellicose cur.
My sister was the first to go stark naked crazy out of doors. When she had her nervous breakdown at the tender age of 14, both Lewis&I were off doing careers&college. She was left home alone with the newspaper- reading parents. They don’t even talk at the dinner table except for “pass the salt.” So she quietly went mad in her attic bedroom where she started to hear voices telling her to put blue or purple dye in her hair&run, run, run away&make funny squiggles on the mashed potatoes in her school lunchroom--all over the floor. Dad played tennis. Mom put Helen away in the asylum like a good, mean social worker who rejects loving her daughters. She always puts me away. I should say she USED to put me away--before her debilitating Alzeimer’s. Now, she’s worried Daddy&I will put HER away. Which we don’t.&she is so much work to care for with her temperamental outbursts&stink which she will not wash. BATH to her is a four-letter swearword.
Helen married a Case. His name is case&he IS a case. Viet Nam War mental casualty. Can’t work for a living. Helen, after 16 years his wife--both on Welfare--Helen has finally gotten a good office job with the Red Cross&has moved to Arizona for the better air (Rick’s asthma acts up in Eugene, Oregon, where they used to live&where they raised rabbits&hybrid pigeons to let fly from wedding parties. They are homing pigeons, you see. He gets 50 bucks per wedding, but how many weddings can you DO in such a small town?) Rick is still a case, I guess. What with his paranoia about the family gumming to deaths! It isn’t paranoia, I guess. Anymore. We all gum them to death&Mother used to be the worst tennis match in town. She would throw hot scrambled eggs in my face on my 40th birthday because I said she made them too brown. BROWN&I was supposed to eat them no matter what. Another time when I was laid up because of foot surgery&living with them back in 1982-83 she threatened to throw a large, blue dish in my face when I asked her if she was busy&if not would she watch how I could DANCE even in my casts! Well, I had to enlist dad to get me out of the fire&over to the local bar&lounge. I was not going to stay in that house with that mad woman. What she’d been mad about then was that she was VERY busy making dinner for that bitch, Alice&the audacity of her asking if I was busy&the gall of this Alice creep wanting Mom to watch a DANCE show! At this time, I asked Dad why he didn’t DIVORCE this temperamental harridan. He THREW me out of the car. How dare I say anything against his wife, his saint? How he loves her&how he maligns me. He absolutely tears me to shreds verbally--never hits me. But, I can do no right&mother can do no wrong. (God, I’m such a carper.) At the bar for the evening, I came close to panic. I was surgicalized 3 times for my bunions&my feet never will escort me to the ballroom or to the office in high heels. Yes, I suffered. There were also three mental breakdowns in San Francisco alone. Living in an environment like my parents home would not help ANYBODY get sane. No one could stand it, not even Debbie, the housekeeper, who has the thankless chore of changing Mother’s diapers&giving her baths.
Yes, the “game” started breaking up while I was down in San Francisco. Thinking of my mother as a shrew was bad enough. Now, with Alzeimer’s she was behaving like a Medusa. But, with some good sense of humor, which makes her a match for my twinkling Daddy. Dad, too, was cruel, but no other tennis player like him.
But now it’s 1993, I’ve been published to the tune of zero cents an hour, but I’ve been published. Daddy has no respect for poetry; anything that doesn’t make HIM richer he wouldn’t be interested in. And, Alice was a drug on HIS market, for sure. I’ve moved back into this insane asylum house with Mom in the later mess of Alzeimer’s&Dad with his paranoid knees. This house is on 14th Street. The Slaughter is what is done to the daughter. Both my brother, Lewis, and Dad are so close I can spit in their eyes. I mean Lewis&his wife Darlene have moved 5 blocks away from us so they can get their “helpful” two cents worth into our affairs. Dad is better at sadism than Lewis, but Lewis is only 47 years old. Plenty of time to perfect his act. He has told me that if I don’t shape up, I could find myself out on the street--probably a cripple’s worst nightmare. Lewis&Dad have both called me disgusting to my face--no lower insult in the world for a woman. They have trouble with their libidos, I think. A sexy family member has to be dealt with in cruel ways. Dad just finds me boring. He’ll pointedly raise up his book (he could be reading anything--much inferior to what I write) to his blocked-out face if I want to talk to him. He will always shut me out, letting me know how dull he finds my conversation or femininity. A FEMinist? These guys are Machiavellian. Woman IS something to put down.&woman as outspoken as me must be crucified. Or, something.
Just as I put these last pages into the copier, Dad has to say “Who would be interested in THIS book?” I shot back at him--the masses. Of course, he sounded doubtful. Nothing I do could possibly be appreciated by ANYone other than Alice Olds-Ellingson.
To make this story really complete, I can’t do without telling you about my three disastrous foot surgeries. After the David Wisdom surgery in Oregon, I could not move the joints of my toes. So, I walked with pain when I wore high heels. I had “corrective” surgery where they treated hammer toes&put pins in my baby toes; I was really unable to walk with grace. But, after my grand mal epileptic seizure (when the Devil saved my ass!)I couldn’t walk except by slamming the feet down on the pavement--flat footed. The irony was that I had gross motor ability disharmony--I could not balance, I could not put weight on one foot, balance,&put weight on the other foot--without holding onto something. Everything which was on automatic had to be put on the conscious side of my brain. I was the only woman I ever knew who would fall down in bed! Making the bed takes three hands--two for the making of it&one for balance. Impossible. I have to have a housekeeper. That’s what my damn parents are counting on. So that I won’t leave them&their Debbie the cheery maid, housekeeper, nursing assistant&friend.
On top of everything, I have to take a medicine for my moods, Mellaril, which disrupts balance. After all, it affects my central nervous system. You see why I think I’ve been cursed by the Devil? Whatever I take for my equilibrium physically has a downside for me with what I take for my mental condition.
My Daddy, he has gotten older this week&seems to know now there won’t be forever for him to quarrel with me, he was joyful to me yesterday. I mean he actually played a game of cards with me, not too cutthroat,&I was proud of my own ability to count the fifteen two, fifteen four, fifteen six&a run of three for nine, I beat him, like I gummed him to death which he used to do to both Lewis&myself at any old ping pong match, he’d always play with his left hand&we could get no points, how wonderful to beat both kids roundly when they were both under ten-years-old, we learned fast to stay away from Dad at the card table, but I was beating him now when he was almost 80, he seems to be a bit confused by the pegging of the cribbage hands, he IS losing it, I turn my head so he doesn’t see my tears,&I take his points, too, which he misses here&there. Oh, Dad, what am I to do when you don’t wake up some day soon? I mean I’ve hated him for years, he is SO touchy, has no insight that he can dish it out¬ let me dish it back, he has driven me up walls of despair&fury, he has taken joy in baiting me, but yesterday I masturbated&the whole world came like magic, Daddy must have turned into my orgasm, he was flirting with me all day, incest is something he wouldn’t admit he’d like to try, like when I flashed my angry tits at him once or twice, he was stunned&called me disgusting, guess I was, he’d like to try incest, he had me going all day with lust for him, what great blue eyes he has, he uses them to show the proudest button-popping for his poet daughter, oh, don’t stop, Daddy, let’s make love before we’re both all gone....I dream about making love to him as the green swirling curtains of the bed dream about making love to us both, strange dream, but Daddy sure could be a lover....Mom had thought so endlessly&she was downstairs in their bedroom, you couldn’t hear him at all, but Mom was laughing so coyly&disgusting to my teenage ears that I’d have to put the pillow over my ears to shut it out, guess I was jealous....
Back in 1976, just before I moved to Portland, Mother came to visit me in Washington, D.C.--after she&Dad had fled to their “retirement” in Beaverton, Oregon. She, a case herself, was a caseworker, attending a social worker’s convention. I was crazy, I’d tried suicide. But, here she was, wanting free sleeping quarters. At that time, I had a job with Bank America or something to do with ticker tape&transference of millions from Africa, the Middle East, England, Australia. I had to be at work at 9:00 A.M. of course--and here was Mother! I had a high-level bunk bed, there was so little space; Mother stretched out on the floor in her sleeping bag&proceeded to talk preciously all night. Sleep&me are enemies most of the time, but what with her yakking all night, I couldn’t get enough ZZZZ’s to work at the much-needed job. She took me to dinner at a restaurant in my neighborhood&wrote me a check for $14.95--but I needed three hundred for the rent. Oh, no. She was not going to pay for THAT. She wasn’t a JOHN. I’d only tried to commit suicide a couple weeks back so she should have understood with BIG CHECKS. I was too sick to make all the money to pay my rather cheap rent. I’d had an eviction notice anyway but I thought if only my mother, who is using me for her discounts, if only my mother would help me out financially. Boy, was I glad when this tedious bitch got Alzeimer’s!! She would be far less an effective bitch after that. Which is the truth. Now, when I am living with her&Dad, she can’t really hold forth with me. When she threatens to hit me with her cane, I treat it as upset, but I warn her, if she DOES hit me I’ll slam her to the floor. I think she believes me so far. So far, she only threatens. Once she threatened so effectively that I fell against the door&she scratched me irreparably on my stomach&left a scar. Yes, from now on, I will not fear her. All she has to do is threaten me when I play my radio loud&I will scream at her that I am an adult, unlike herself,&will go on listening to the music&SINGING on TOP of it. Hit me, Mom. Or go back to bed. She goes back to bed. I win with my bitchy self against the Empress of China.
When she rises like smog, my powerful mother, like smog sticks to her from her many sleeps, it is her unknown day or night. She chants the hour as it reads on some clock convenient only to her eyes and says I am Doris. I am here. I don’t like her. I am here. WHAT IS GOING ON? I do not understand. Her brow worries the confusion, the sweat. She is ghost-cold. Her voice is wee whining. It is as incessant with her pains as her turning about a room increases its slow-down. She wants to hit you. She is afraid of snakes, but she is one. Her hisses tell how terrible is her wrath how terrible is her fear of this disease she has as good as any Alzeimer’s. What is left of her fierce power is the turning. The turning off of lights one by one when she always comes in. Turning off the lights, her main focus. Or a frightening snap-shut of cupboard doors via cane. If the butter has been put in the freezer, she has been there. She will sit alone for hours in her plastic-covered yellow chair. She will pee&sometimes dribble some shit. Our rugs are filthy. They bear the stains of Motherhood. She will sit in the yellow chair if only a TV is flicked on for her dazed perusal. In this chair, her mussed-grey head juts up as a wound to surprise you out of your boisterousness. How quiet are her veins, her hands lying fallow in the lap. She bends down as if inventing it. Sees it. Fetches a considerable speck, nudging it with the pointed cane, fetches it closer&closer to her chair so that with glee she can grasp it for its place in the pile of other specks. She will wheedle you to fetch the tiny drink, the mite-like meal on a thousand-year-old tray, rusty. You must enjoin her with the poetry caught like the clap of child hands as she drowns her baby eyes in the aeon of jumping birds in a roof puddle across the street. She has commanded you to look through her picture window at the wind, the clouds, the everyday birch tree--no, THAT one THERE--you can’t see it, that’s MY birch tree--she owns everything out there without resonance. Her long, long stayings. Presently she will ask you to explain these glowing eyes on the back fence, you will try to see for her for hours and of course they are just light reflections. It gets dark on this over there for so many hours. Could be anytime you won’t know her at all. Or, know only a hiss&grimace.
REvlon, I was a Revlon hair color model, I was too fat, they thought I was too fat, how I wanted to sue them for putting me on stage, the International Beauty Show, how terrified I was up on stage with a trillion eyes on me, the performer was a male beautician, he cut my hair, my modeling hair, into a Vidal Sassoon Geometrical short shrift job, I could feel my hair going, I could see how much his scissors snipped onto the floor, EEEEEK! I wouldn’t ever work as a model again, with this butch job, I’d had long hair, for Christsake, now I looked too weird for stocking or lingerie jobs, but I was too fat anyway, I’d LOSE THE WEIGHT, but Revlon who did all my hair-coloring for free if I did two beauty shows a year, I mean Revlon cut me off at the pass, they did it in a terse letter, god, they told me they wouldn’t be needing my services any longer, I hadn’t sued before they fired me, I was fat. I was fat&blonde&broke. How could I play for my own upkeep? My sugar daddy was broke. He gave me only a pittance for cakes. True sugar daddy. I was so depressed, I got in touch with my husband a mechanical lover inducted into the army. I needed him for my diet. He would be a lot more refreshing than my middle-aged keeper. What a lion needs, anyway, is a more benevolent keeper. Someone with dough, preferable, but someone who could make me feel so good, I could go out&face the Money Machine Card of my own upkeep.
Other people I would have liked to sue but was too chicken or broke to sponsor a fucking lawyer: John Cinelli, plastic surgeon, who crucified my breasts with a hack job but did a brilliant make-over (with no warning to me) of my privates. He, it seemed, had put a penis inside my vagina--or it feels like it’s there--& redirected my urethral opening. I hadn’t paid him upfront. I was at his mercy. After his surgery, I was so sick with anemia&brown discharge from the vagina (who knows how many sick men he had fucking me when I was unconscious?) I could not get well enough to joylessly dance for a living. I languished in my apartment with pain&schizophrenia. Fear of the marketplace, let alone fear of poverty because I was too crazy to get ANY kind of job. Thanks, John.
This operation was done in 1969--just after the S.D.S. made their manic requests known to Columbia University etc. I didn’t remember this&got involved with some lit courses at Columbia. (When I went back for a check-up at Cinelli’s office he said you never know how the patient will turn out after a breast implant--good thing that you’re going back to graduate school instead of doing that whoring go-go dancing--you must have wanted that breast job for yourself and your self-esteem!) The professor of my Romantic Lit course told me that summer when I was mostly in a stupor--well, you’re going to have to grow up, Kids. The Romantics were all just searching for the perfect Orgasm. Forget your undergraduate years when you studied Keats&Shelley. Shelley got it all the time, but KEATS? He could never even get LAID, let alone have the Perfect Orgasm! A blonde in the class got the point. Asked the (handsome) teacher to come down to the library stacks with her to find all the proof! I took all the books the Prof had in his valise. I’d be god damned if I was going down to the stacks with him. But, this Prof was retaliating to the student administration takeover&the sexual revolution. He was not about to teach us anything TRUE about the Romantics. So, I took his books on the subject, fled, canceled out of his course, removed myself from this political arena&went home--just to be sicker&more paranoid until I was evicted out to the streets for non-payment of rent.Meanwhile, I’d gotten a hot-shot VIP broker to invest a few in me. He of course had to fuck me for this&when I saw these “Go-Go_ stocks were of cheap medical establishments--They were investing in a company which wanted to do a full-scale physical from a central MACHINE--they were investing AGAINST it--so, since I didn’t like anything about it--I wanted out of the market. This made the VIP very paranoid. He came over to my apt.&fucked me unconscious. He had been RUINED by me--he had personally invested GREAT money in this stock--or against it-- however Go-Go stocks were supposed to GO.
My mind was under helium. I put on my satin costume. Mick Jagger arrived. I mean, I thought he arrived, along with Keith Richards&Boy George&Mark Knofler of the Dire Straits. I went face down on the bed. Mick was fucking me from the front&Keith was fucking me from the rear. Boy George was sipping my clitoris. Mark was a stand-by. Mick was very enthralled when I suggested we were on a fishing trip. I would pause for catching minnows&Mick got more&more excited. Whenever I paused in the thrusting, for whatever reason, Mick would get more excited. When they all left, my costume was ruined. I had my own come all over. Mick would continue to haunt me until finally years later Keith “arrived.” He did not want to chance taking me to lunch. So, this animal appearance proceeded to hack me off. My “curtains were cheap” my “clothes were unsuitable,” he was not going to have anything to do with me and the horrible cheap outfits I modeled for him. Meanwhile, the young manager of the building came on to me with his grass&his marked-by-mole penis. He was introduced to Keith, but could see nothing. He saw me naked&wanted to screw me. “Keith” crawled out to the kitchen&disappeared. Scott&I lay side-by-side nude in bed&did nothing. Eventually, he picked up his pipe and went home.
People were dying left&right, I was in the hospital, it was encouraging, people should be dying, I was parked out by the door of the hospital, I could hear the pulse of the deaths in the hospital, I could watch the T.V., showed me not breathing anymore, I was dead, Satan was reading the news on the TV, he looked like Fred Flintstone but with a George Gobel flat top, the air was liquid. Satan said I was going to lose him as the television had been sold to an opium den in Hong Kong. Satan’s voice was ordinary. The prayers I chanted were all about that bastard Jesus Christ, Satan wanted me to say that he could “save” me, he didn’t like saving people, but here I was watching his T.V. show, he ought to let Alice pour herself over the entire continent with her body stating in one place, just pour herself all over 4th Street, it’s alive, she’s alive, good, she’s breathing again, she’s paralyzed, her surgical feet are screaming, she can’t get out of the Cancer Ward, she’d just flown in after a splitting shaken day with Death, she had brain damage from not breathing, she had tongue damage from Satan’s curse, oh that Devil, he would not let Jesus into hell--not even one loophole of Him on vacation slides in hell. My best prayer was when I said Satan would sip the magnolia blossoms from my taut teen-age breasts. Of course, having a climax ever again was out of the question.
But, I was slowly beating Satan. I could masturbate&come, I eventually met some men--such as they were--& had me some fucking in 1993. Got the clap from it, too. These guys did not use a rubber. I thought they were clean but I imagine that returning-from-San Francisco Jerry gave me the clap. He was so filthy&scruffy he looked like a garbage wreck....
