Much to do About Less than Nothing
Short stories by Jeffrey Geez Glavick
May 2018
-"The Blind Pig"
A sunny as usual day on Daytona Beach, I am catching some rays along with the rest of the staff from Daytona Beaches first and at the time ( 1970) only Topless Go Go Bar- Formerly a shot and beer joint open from 10. am. To 2. am. The clientele, Florida crackers, not the proud Floridian cracker that is generally known to be a long time Floridian with a proud heritage of frontiersman ship, but the Urban/Jeff dictionary definition of cracker, the dude and dudette down the road living in that trailer decorated on the exterior as if it was an American Flag, and on the inside suffice to say that the interior put the word shag in carpeting, most of these crackers openly carried holstered legal handguns----a ticky tacky tricky cracker double barrel place
The dancers are scattered around the beach, most of them out cold from the Quaaludes they take everyday at highest noon to enhance the coloring and the shading of their extra pale yellow, night scene bodies and to put their restless minds at ease, my part time employment task, is to for obvious reasons, is to every few hours get them facing the sun in a different direction, then grease them up by applying variable amounts of Hawaiian Tropic protective cream to their exposed skin, as sun burnt and in pain Go- Go dancers are a No-No, so as the sun is setting , my buddy Jimmy and I round them up, get them to the motels ( your thinking seedy?) they sort of live in, give them a few hours to wake up, then pick them up for the nights bacchanal.
We come armed- with high energy boosters in the form of little red pills.
Jimmy and I ( it took two) are in charge of their scheduling of and low energy high energy diet- I had suggested vitamins and some organic stuff, but they preferred, actually insisted on the ludes and the reds. Never once late for work, but we did have to pull a few of them out of the surf every now and then, and once those reds kicked in while dancing? difficult to get them off stage, Jimmy invented a vaudeville hook type instrument, made from an old mop handle to assist with de-staging them from de- stage. Jimmy had the move perfected, hook them not at the ankles but at mid thigh or risk injuring them, the Blind Pig's employee health policy was in the mail,I wouldn't say they feared the hook on the end of the pole, but they did respect it, some seemed to enjoy it, some dodged it, and not to brag, it may have ushered in the artful tart form of pole dancing.
I give Jimmy all the credit on this, unless there are royalties coming someday?
The owner of the joint is Cadillac Jack, who swore he was nicknamed, and justly so, even when he was driving a Chevy, Chevy no more, Cadillac had a Cadillac, and A German wife, Inge, a one two team that will never be seen again, that is another story-
Anyway, CJ and Inge are in charge of costuming once the girls are delivered for work, in those days dancers had to wear pasties to abide by the law, different time in America, obviously. In the kitchen there was a special bulletin board with the names of that nights scheduled dancers and the corresponding pasties they were to wear, different sized tips for different sized tits, very important for the hardly working Daytona Beach's Sheriffs deputies spent most of their night shift trying to see if we were breaking the mandatory pastie law-
The dancer I remember most vividly was a gal who called herself Rose “Royce”, quite attractive except for one little thing, on her to be exposed chest stomach area was a very ugly scar, it came from being shot while on stage in a bar in New Orleans, ( or so she said ) not to be deterred CJ had a black light installed over the dance stage, and every night would paint Roses scar in iridescent paint, because luckily the scar resembled a tree with outstretched bare branches, CJ had an artistic side to him, as did Rose.
Another favorite was a daytime school teacher at the local grade school whose stage name was Snake Woman, which I assume you can guess was well chosen. Her prop was her Boa Constrictor, or rather Boa Constrictor's , as she always kept a backup snake in her car while working, maybe it was a union thing. My Brooklyn friend Vinny found that out the hard way, new to town he had struck up a rapport with at the time snake less snake woman during her break, a romance blossomed so they went out to her car to put a stamp on that emotion, it was over quick, as her back up act wrapped himself around Vinny's chest and so on, tough Brooklyn guy no longer, he was never the same person.
Many dancers, hence many stories, but to be concise my favorite dancers name aka handle I cannot remember, but for Brevity's sake let us call her Venus , another act if act is a proper word for it, let us call it a performance,I will never forget.
She was a short spunky little blonde from Tennessee. She was a very sensual dancer on all her stage appearances during the night, but her specialty came at the end of the night, she was always the last dancer of the night, and CJ would get on stage with her and using a bullhorn would ask if anyone in the crowd ( not really proper to call them an audience) had a silver dollar?
CJ made sure someone always did, then that shill or maybe not, depending, would come up to the stage with the silver dollar coin, the slow sexy dance music would start, CJ would ask the silver dollar volunteer to ever so gently hold that silver dollar between his thumb and forefinger underneath whats her faces gyrating hips, slowly she would hover herself over that shiny silver dollar, and then 'Poof” as if by magic, she would use her you know what to clasp it and take it from between the dudes fingers!it was if that coin had disappeared into thin air, yet all witnesses to this act, knew it had not.
Now you say impossible? Well believe me once you have seen this maneuver, you never ever forget it, you remember everything about it, willingly or unwillingly.
Years later in Thailand I viewed different versions of this act, you have not seen it all until you see a Bangkok Ping Pong show, or in my case The Blind Pigs Silver Dollar Show as well, but once is quite enough!
This be true. Keeping it short. The Blind Pig![blindpig.jpg]
