Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (17 page)

B Girls – poem by Jackie Curtis

G-girls are by no means to be confused with B girls!

But what could make so vast a difference between such

lonely initials?

The Hollywood Horizon stretched out in front of us

offers a simple palm tree to start with.

So it is with the B girl.

One high ball to get her in a movie star mood.

And then she is identified at once by the loneliest

initials ever strung together on one string of

B girl beads. …

The B girl is or WAS a basic type of bar room boarder

bordering on boozey bursts of the cash register

to remind her

in her bleached out bourbon bender

it is time to beg the boys for a brand

new batch of 100 proof hootch to heave down the hatch.

The blisters of her backless mules begin to bring

the B girl to an alcoholic so-exhisting coherency.

Bothering these brawny bachelors with blatant wedding bands

to buy her one more bloody mary.

The beating of her bongo brains breathes

Benzedrine into bathroom walls

where the B girl can decipher her fate.

A frenzy sewer fumes

and faulty toilet fixtures

where strains of a nickel’s drop into the jukebox bucket

only brings Miss B a bleary eye.

And an earful of what was once a royal flush is only now

a quarter to three

and no one’s in the place except for Miss B.

Very B, this Girl.

Not a BAD sort

just a bouncing

maraschino cherry of a ball buster

mesmerized by that sleazy swizzle stick.

The B Girl’s calling card is a cognac drenched coaster

that spells out for her what no first grade text book ever could

ALL GONE GIRL.

The B Girl is an endless commodity of

comic strip

straphanging

horseplaying

pushpins

from one end of the bar to the other.

The B’s have cold knees

they snort

they sniff

they even sneeze.

Friendless frails in flapping fringe

found long lost near a beer barrel

cramped

like creatures who kick

to keep moving.

Watered down

their spirits pass,

chit and chat

an eye

of someone

YES It’s him.

The handsome stranger

swooning over “B”

His kind of woman.

His kind of promise

to continue

could result in risking

cash sales

for water and world war one whiskey

by order of the management

The B girl does a round

with not one word in her defense

lapping up the liquids

reeling from the fracas

Other B girls squint and totter

what’s the matter?

Someone’s got her.

So, the swinging doors fly creak free

the clattering clack of class lacking heels

parading poorly past the pieman

on her way to where?

Searching the air for fiery fumes

of fabled Fleischmann’s feathering her drunken nest

slitted skirt insures a spring and a swing

to her gait

after all men

that IS the thing.

Down the beer stained trodden hall of hate

B girl’s from her impure past forget to wave

and fly fast

Her sweat streaked bar stool

that stung her calves and thighs to sleep

have found another lazy Susan

plucked and plastered

like a willow planted firm she’ll weep.

The men

make time

the clock has told of ticking trips to tense amour

kindred spirits shut the door

Love is strange

the poets say

but B girls rhyme from day to day

striped halters draped on dames

in dreams of drambuie

draining the billfolds of the buckskin badmen

breaking the B girl’s arm

before asking for her cherry.

So many makeshift hearts of

rock and rye

precede a reply of

“Only an olive”

obliterating firing facts of

realities rifles

when the B Girl announces that her

cherry has been chewed

out by champion cheap-skates

who drag her through bar room after bar room

and setting no bail.

Like a semi-precious prisoner

Her last mile consists of not an electric chair

but a park bench

plenty available for the B Girl’s bottom line.

The same bottom line signed

so many spritzers of lime ago.

More yellow than green by now

Miss B begins to wander

washed up

from saloon to supermarket.

Our B Girl’s dream of walking down an aisle come true

only in an A & P

with a shopping cart by her shabby side.

Side by Side.

And she ain’t got a barrel of money

but even a B girl’s gotta eat

and so brilliantly versed in the art of deception

our chowsy frau plays tricks on suspecting eyes

proving to check out counters once again

that the B girl can at times be thought of

as no better than a common thief.

Especially when apprehended, as our heroine was

is and always will be.

The eternal spiritual virgin

at the last minute

and at the missing mercy of some man

haunting her heart’s

only normally employed regions.

Pumping her in, pumping her out.

this gorilla’s bride, so to speak.

Like a stranded jazz singer

searching for the proverb

searching for the proverbial lost chord

so prone to the suddenly and responsive striking.

Only the cactus casts shadows that cool the sand

which is still and stretches far out into an effortless

night nature mature

and a habitual repeat performance

employing the desert’s vast supply of the four winds

if only she could make a wish

make a wish

to abandon the four winds for four roses

so quietly invisible to her naked B Girl’s roving eye.

On and off again, water faucet fumbling at the tap

that B Girls look to like farmers look

to the red harvest moon

for promises of fulfilling fertile earth’s promise

to sprint up a bounty of multiplying tables

so serenely set

and ripe for reaping hands

whose seeds have been sown.

Horns and blind men

wheels of a fast, fast car.

Occasional streamers of headlight

Underneath it all

there she lies

trapped like a fox in the South

during a most precipitous festivity.

But still her threadbare throat

remains parched as the dunes in a daring desert

movie blaze beneath blowing torrents

of too much hurricane

and only occasional musical comedy

mirages

of the MGM Lion and Mickey Mouse

re-enacting an Aesop’s fable.

And as if all life were not one gold plated hell of a

cheap charm bracelet to begin with

the B Girl is faced with the Motel alleyways

that lie to her weaknesses.

Sentimental arms spread heavenward ever grasping

that hallowed home made jam and jelly.

Our B Girl is being followed.

It is 4:15 a.m. Accompanied by a navy blue

blanket up above.

Warm and woozy

she travels twisted toward the soda pop machine

chewing her Technicolor red lips

wishing for a miracle

could this attention from behind

merit her attention span

which is geared to a bottle filled with bubbles?

Any bubbles will do.

In her human condition those voices tell her

to humiliate herself further

and be grateful to God for a sign.

No it is not neon

She is being paged

by hand

grabbed by the rump.

It was all coming back to her.

That area the strange grasp was exploring

was once married to marshmallow soft cushioney security

in strictly dishonorable surroundings.

Slurping sleeping powders in cheese flavored champagne

from Tunisia

But a B Girl travels in trespasser’s footsteps

so no doubt the incident occurring between the hungry hand

and the unsuspecting pair of victims (her buns)

secondary characters in a charming situation

where actually on her way to the soda pop machine

in a desert motel setting

where her course was diverted by steel trap fingers

frantically feeling

and grabbing at life.

Ah yes, she was still alive, she mustn’t forget.

In silent concession their private procession begins

at the closing door.

She’s open

receiving

fast love they’re achieving.

Both wining like greedy gamblers

carousel like rooms

existing upon driftwood porches

attached by pink picket fences

and dead, dim silhouettes

of sordid sunset scenes

slapping the world

outside the waiting window

who wants to win.

The B girl is no fool

she knows she must deposit the correct amount of change

if indeed any

so with the confidence of an Arista member

she makes to her sexual accoster for the fare

for this ride that the fizzy fake pop will take her careening on.

Drunk enough to bring dangerous destiny

within his waiting foyer where his laymen’s loins once appeared

loyal and alive, now grinding with a scissor sharpener’s fervor.

Sparks begin to fly

as far as where Miss B has been biting clouds

of very close chummy dust.

Having been in more accommodating situations with lovers

she sloughs it off

but in point of fact is totally aware of what this

lurid tongue

was traveling to find to find land in her jungle of rain.

Yes, her jungles were storming the gates

the tigers ever burning bright

drizzling then flooding

mere mortals monsoon

and on the paper plate of an end table

was blaring a second hand plastic portable radio

what was that song again

oh yeah

she remembers

C’est magnifique

And it was

—Jackie Curtis © 1985 The Estate of Jackie Curtis

Laura de Coppet

When I finished my book on the art dealers, I called different people to ask them to give quotes for the dust jacket, and one of the people I called was Andy Warhol. But Andy said I don’t really have anything to say, why don’t you get someone to come up with something clever and just put my name to it. And I said, “Really?” and he said that’s fine. And I said, well, Jackie Curtis is here – Andy said, “Perfect, have him do it.” I put the phone down and said, Curtis he wants you to do his quote. He said, “Oh Ducky, how perfect – we’ll start with ‘Gee’ – ‘Gee, it’s all here – the truth behind the art, the art behind the truth. A book for grownups about the art world – Andy Warhol” and everybody thinks it’s Andy Warhol’s quote, but it isn’t – it’s Jackie Curtis’s.

Paul Ambrose

Jackie started his nightclub act at a club called “Reno Sweeny’s” and eventually he and Holly Woodlawn did one together called
Cabaret in the Sky
at the old Huntington Hartford building, the New York Cultural Center at Columbus Circle. Curtis openings were really special; everyone pulled themselves together and dressed to the nines for them. I remember silent movie star Hope Hampton showing up with an entourage – you’ve never seen more pink wrinkled flesh and diamonds in your life, she was the blondest thing I had ever seen.

Holly Woodlawn

My favorite time working with Curtis was
Cabaret in the Sky: an Evening with Holly Woodlawn and Jackie Curtis
at the New York Cultural Center at Columbus Circle. Everyone thought that Jackie and I hated each other so we developed this funny introduction. Jackie would perform her set first, and then introduce me by just stopping in the middle of her last number. She would sing the first few bars of “Stairway to the Stars” then she would suddenly stop in mid-phrase and slam her hand angrily down on the top of the Steinway grand yelling “Stop the music! Stop the music!” There was stunned silence in the audience, and then Jackie would say “you know I really don’t mind being the warm-up act for that Latin from Manhattan, Holly Woodlawn, but you should know we’ve got her locked upstairs in a cold rubber room …,” the audience just loved it. Of course we didn’t hate each other. Curtis and I were sisters; we were girlfriends – cut from the same cloth. Cabaret in the Sky was a tremendous success and we wound up every show by singing a duet of “Just in Time” with our arms around each other. It was the most amazing and wonderful time, the most pleasure I have ever had performing with anyone.

Andrew Amic-Angelo

I will never forget the summer night in 1974 I was in the audience for Jackie’s performance of
Cabaret in the Sky
. That particular night for some reason there was a large group of leather men in the audience. Maybe it was some motorcycle club. There were at least four or five tables of maybe twenty men in all in leather seated right up front. They had the whole regalia, leather chaps, pants, vests, and leather jackets with chains, leather caps and boots. And this was unusual. And after Jackie performed one number, “I Enjoy Being a Girl” there wasn’t much reaction from these leather guys to this particular number and Jackie walked downstage and right up to one of the tables and said, “You guys are so quiet. What are you, an oil painting?” And then he turned and headed offstage saying, “Looks to me like there’s a lot of Old Masters out there tonight.” The entire audience was on the floor. And that was entirely spontaneous, witty and apropos. It gives you an idea of what a brilliant performer and artist Jackie Curtis was.