No denying it, the Minsky Brothers had thought of everything, everything which would remind one of the things one wanted to escape. They knew how to trot out everything that was worn and faded, including the very lice in your brains—and they rubbed this concoction under your nose like a shitty rag. They were enterprising, no doubt about it. Probably Leftwingers too, even though contributing to the support of the Catholic Church next door. They were Unitarians, in the practical sense. Big hearted, open-minded purveyors of entertainment for the poor at heart. Not a doubt about it. I'm sure they went to the Turkish Baths every night (after counting the money), and perhaps to the synagogue too, when there was time for it.
To get back to Cleo. It was Cleo this night again, as it had been in the past. She would appear twice, once before the intermission and a second time at the end of the show.
Neither Marcelle nor Mona had ever been to a burlesk before; they were on the qui vive from start to finish. The comedians appealed to them; it was a line of filth they were unprepared for. Yeoman work they do, the comedians. All they need are a pair of baggy trousers, a piss-pot, a telephone or a hat rack to create the illusion of a world in which the Unconscious rules supreme. Every burlesk comedian, if he is worth his salt, has something of the heroic in him. At every performance he slays the censor who stands like a ghost on the threshold of the subliminal self. He not only slays him alive for us, but he pisses on him and mortifies the flesh. Anyway, Cleo! By the time Cleo appears everybody is ready to jerk off. (Not like in India where a rich nabob buys up a half dozen rows of seats in order to masturbate in peace.) Here everybody gets to work under his hat. A condensed milk orgy. Semen flows as freely as gasoline. Even a blind man would know that there's nothing but cunt in sight. The amazing thing it that there is never a stampede. Now and then some one goes home and cuts his balls off with a rusty razor, but these little exploits you never read about in the newspapers.
One of the things that made Cleo's dance fascinating was the little pom-pom she wore in the center of her girdle—planted right over her rose-bush. It served to keep your eyes riveted to the spot. She could rotate it like a pin-wheel or make it jump and quiver with little electric spasms. Sometimes it would subside with little gasps, like a swan coming to rest after a deep orgasm. Sometimes it acted saucy and impudent, sometimes it was sullen and morose. It seemed to be part of her, a little ball of fluff that had grown out of her Mons Venus. Possibly she had acquired it in an Algerian whore-house, from a French sailor. It was tantalizing, especially to the sixteen-years olds who had still to know what it feels like to make a grab for a woman's bush.
What her face was like I hardly remember any more. I have a faint recollection that her nose was retrousse. One would never recognize her with her clothes on, that's a cinch. You concentrated on the torso, in the center of which was a huge painted navel the color of carmine. It was like a hungry mouth, this navel. Like the mouth of a fish suddenly stricken with paralysis. I'm sure her cunt wasn't half as exciting to look at. It was probably a pale bluish sliver of meat that a dog wouldn't even bother to sniff. She was alive in her mid-riff, in that sinuous fleshy pear which domed out from under the chest bones. The torso reminded me always of those dressmaker's model whose thighs end in a framework of umbrella ribs. As a child I used to love to run my hand over the umbilical swell. It was heavenly to the touch. And the fact that there were no arms or legs to the model enhanced the bulging beauty of the torso. Sometimes there was no wickerwork below—just a truncated figure with a little collar of a neck which was always painted a shiny black. They were the intriguing ones, the lovable ones. One night in a side show I came upon a live one, just like the sewing machine models at home. She moved about on the platform with her hands, as if she were treading water. I got real close to her and engaged her in conversation. She had a head, of course, and it was rather a pretty one, something like the wax images you see in hairdressing establishments in the chic quarters of a big city. I learned that she was from Vienna; she had been born without legs. But I'm getting off the track.... The thing that fascinated me about her was that she had that same voluptuous swell, that pear-like ripple and bulge. I stood by her platform a long time just to survey her from all angles. It was amazing how close her legs had been pared off. Just another slice off her and she would have been minus a twat. The more I studied her the more tempted I was to push her over. I could imagine my arms around her cute little waist, imagine myself picking her up, slinging her under my arm and making off with her to ravish her in a vacant lot.
During the intermission, while the girls went to the lavatory to see dear old mother, Ned and I stood on the iron stairway which adorns the exterior of the theatre. From the upper tiers one could look into the homes across the street, where the dear old mothers fret and stew like angry roaches. Cosy little flats they are, if you have a strong stomach and a taste for the ultra-violet dreams of Chagall. Food and bedding are the dominant motifs. Sometimes they blend indiscriminately and the father who has been selling matches all day with tubercular frenzy finds himself eating the mattress. Among the poor only that which takes hours to prepare is served. The gourmet loves to eat in a restaurant which is odorous; the poor man gets sick to the stomach when he climbs the stairs and gets a whiff of what's coming to him. The rich man loves to walk the dog around the block—to work up a mild appetite. The poor man looks at the sick bitch lying under the tubs and feels that it would be an act of mercy to kick it in the guts. Nothing gives him an appetite. He is hungry, perpetually hungry for the things he craves. Even a breath of fresh air is a luxury. But then he's not a dog, and so nobody takes him out for an airing, alas and alack. I've seen the poor blighters leaning out of the window on their elbows, their heads hanging in their hands like Jack-o'-Lanterns: it doesn't take a mind-reader to know what they're thinking about. Now and then a row of tenements is demolished in order to open up ventilating holes. Passing these blank areas, spaced like missing teeth, I've often imagined the poor, bleeding blighters to be still hanging there on the window-sills, the houses torn down but they themselves suspended in mid-air, propped up by their own grief and misery, like torpid blimps defying the law of gravitation. Who notices these airy spectres? Who gives a fuck whether they're suspended in the air or buried six feet deep? The show is the thing, as Shakespeare says. Twice a day, Sundays included, the show goes on. If it's short of provender you are, why stew a pair of old socks. The Minsky Brothers are dedicated to giving entertainment. Hershey Almond Bars are always on tap, good before or after you jerk off. A new show every week—with the same about old cast and the same old jokes. What would really be a catastrophe for the Minsky gents would be for Cleo to be stricken with a double hernia. Or to get pregnant. Hard to say which would be worse. She could have lockjaw or enteritis or claustrophobia, and it wouldn't matter a damn. She could even survive the menopause. Or rather, the Minskys could. But hernia, that would be like death— irrevocable.
What went on in Ned's mind during this brief intermission I could only conjecture. «Pretty horrible, isn't it?» he remarked, chiming in with some observation I had made. He said it with a detachment that would have done credit to a scion of Park Avenue. Nothing anyone could do about it, is what he meant. At twenty-five he had been the art director in an advertising concern; that was five or six years ago. Since then he had been on the rocks, but adversity had in no way altered his views about life. It had merely confirmed his basic notion that poverty was something to be avoided. With a good break he would once again be on top, dictating to those whom he was now fawning upon.