05- Lioness

 Journal Dec. 27, 1986


You should see her dance, strutting across the go-go dance floor with a flickering smile, more pal than object of sex, never totally tempting nor tame, but there like a lioness ready to leap, spouting truths about life and living, such as the football Giants and lessons on drink, always glaring at specific improprieties, telling two men at the bar what love really means.

“A million dollars?” she shouts. “You would give up your wife for a mere million dollars?”

The men, of course, are full of schemes on how to have their money and their love life, too, as if money and love were on the same playing field, as if love could be weighted out in cold cash on the New York Stock Exchange.

She tells them that they can’t be in love, calling them “pond scum,” telling them love and money don’t mix, laughing over her own words as if not to offend them, but clearly meaning every one as much as she means anything else in her whole life.

You should see her dance, the throbbing beat of love’s integrity in every step.


Peggy Main Menu



email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

15- Chicken Scratch

Image
    *********************   Unnerved by the incident, I avoided the My Way for a while after that, hoping that a little time away might make it safe to return and have the My Way be what it was before. When I did go back, I picked a Saturday, a night I thought Peggy would not be dancing and yet I could somehow work my way back into Wolfman’s good graces. The whole plan fell apart when I saw Peggy on the stage and she saw me and howled. “You stood me up, you son of a bitch!” Wolfman gnawed on his cigar so hard I thought he might swallow it. I pretended not to hear Peggy and settled on a stool somewhat up the bar from the stage. “I’m talking to you!” Peggy yelled. I sighed and nodded, taking hold of the bar Mary quickly put in front of me. “Well?” Peggy asked. “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said. “You can tell me why you left when I told you to stay.” “Your boss told me to leave so I left.” “WHAT?” Peggy said, glancing sharply at Wolfman. “Didn’t he
Read more

16- What happened to Peggy’s Paddington Bear?

Image
    Peggy was in a foul mood when I got to the bar the next night, and she eyed me and my notebook from the stage as if I carried a disease.             Mary hurried over as I sat on the same stool at the previous night.             “Don’t do anything foolish,” Mary warned. “Peggy’ll gear your head off.”             “Is it something I did?”             “Not unless you swiped the Paddington Bear off her car last night.”             “Paddington Bear?”             “A thing she had on her car – a bear in a NY Giants uniform. She’s a real sucker for NY Giants stuff like that.”             “And she suspects me of taking it?”             “She suspects everybody. So just lay low and don’t cause trouble.”             I didn’t have a lot of money, so I figured I wouldn’t be around long enough to cause much trouble anyway.             Just the same, I slid my notebook to the floor at my feet, just on the off chance Peggy had changed her mind over night. I didn’t want to
Read more

08- Drunk again?

Image
 Journal: Jan. 28, 1987 I went and got drunk last night. Something I was really too tired to do, and foolish for doing. I always tend to be idiotic in the exhausted state, and this was no exception. Worse still are the places I choose, rather one place, from which I used to begin great and epic journeys through the go-go-strip-club world. The My Way Lounge goes way back to my early days with Hank, who discovered it as a refuge from the scum of other go-go bars. But the history of the place goes deeper, and the people have begun to become even more familiar now that I go there less often than I once did. I met two very special people there: Bethame – an over the hill go-go dancer who became my friend, and Chris, a My Way barmaid who, dying of cancer, decided to live out the rest of her life in a “Devil & Mrs. Jones” fantasy. People in these places change frequently, a coming and going in which only the customers remain the same. Go-go dancing, prostitution and porno – li
Read more