Visions of Sugarplums (A day in the lives of a traveling band)

Friday August 20th, 1999 @ 8:35 PM

Filed under: Everything, Tales Told Well

When it came time to get paid, the promoter told us to come to a restaurant across the street in the morning and he would pay us. He told us how much money they had lost on this convention due to police harassment. We felt a tremble of nausea sweep through us. We asked what time and he said he’d be there at eight, but we could come by any time in the morning. It was three o’clock. My face was sunburned like a freshly spanked behind and I was so tired I felt like letting out a baby’s wahhhhhhhhhhhh! The promoter told us he had reserved the Holiday Express. We drove around until we found it. The night manager told us he’d never heard of any such reservations or us. Now we knew we were getting stiffed.

The convention had filled all the motels. We searched for a room. My head looked like a boppin’ dog on the dash of a redneck teenager’s channeled Chevy. I dreamed that I fell asleep driving then woke up to find out it was true. Finally we found a vacant room. I fell asleep on top of my covers and it seemed like seconds later that the alarm went off at seven-thirty. We intended to be standing at that promoter’s door before everybody else came for his money or he scooped up what he had and ran.

The restaurant was closed. No one was anywhere around. We peeked in the windows and paced the sidewalks. We conjured up evil deeds to exact our revenge. We stood there for an hour, then went up the street to eat breakfast at the diner mentioned in the last Harptalk’s Yondering story.

When we came back, there he was. Should we be diplomatic and coax it out of him, or should we just get mad and beat it out of him? It is easy to picture yourself beating a guy into submission, but when you step out to do it, you start thinking about not being in your hometown and how lots of guys pack a weapon. Your body parts start talking to you. The stomach says “don’t let him gut shoot you, it will take you hours to die.” The groin says, “Remember, you haven’t worn a cup supporter since Little League baseball.” The eyes warn you of pencils, and the teeth remind you how much you like to eat food.

We tried diplomacy. He just shrugged and went about his business like we were vacationing under some palm trees with a tray of Mint Juleps and a copy of Leisure World. The anger rekindled and I started talking back to my body parts, “Listen up you cravenly conglomeration of wiseguys, we’re goin’ in, all of ya’, gird up for battle.”

Just then, the promoter very calmly said, “Well, fellas, let’s go over to the whore house and get paid.”

We shuffled off behind him down the infamous *”Venus Alley” the avenue of yesteryear’s soiled doves. Big question marks resided over our heads as life was taking a puzzling turn. We entered the front door of a building constructed in 1890 for the express purpose of being a whorehouse. It wasn’t closed until 1982 making it the longest running whorehouse in America. The Dumas Brothel.

We were ushered to a second floor suite where we were greeted by Norma Jean, a real life madam who looks the part. She sat at a computer surrounded by a collection of pornographic dolls that she made for both a business and a hobby. Graphic pornographic!

“How much do I owe you fellas”, she asked smiling?
“Eight hundred dollars,” we said. Our demand sounding more like a suggestion in her charismatic presence.

Now we have been conned and lied to and stiffed by important businessmen in our career, many times. We’ve learned how to spot it coming. We’ve learned how to stay assertive and to ferret out whatever we can salvage. We’ve learned how to collect. But now we faced a pro, someone who had to collect herself over the years, from the tough, the talented, and the troubled. A woman who could cause more grief among men than all their wives put together.

But that’s the twist to the story. She viewed us as the man with no legs had, who knew what it was like to be vulnerable and outcast. She was probably the one person above all who would make sure we got money we had been promised. It was while she was counting out our money that I realized whores are people too. She may be beyond reclamation by the righteous in our churches, she may be despised by the virtuous of our bourgeoisie, and snubbed by the aristocracy, but she was good to her word even though society had managed to damage her convention and finances.

I guess each human being breaks down into character categories, in some we are strong and in some we are weak. I’ll take a person who’s word is good over someone squeaky clean on the surface, but whose highly developed rationalization and self-deception allows him to justify cheating a poor band out of its money. With the former we can step out on faith, but with the latter we can only look over our shoulder. Norma Jean has taken money for physical favors, but treachery is a whoring of the soul. I have seen a lot of soul whores in this business.

She gave us a tour of the whorehouse. It is being refurbished top to bottom. Artists are contributing their work; writers their words, photographers their vision. The top floor of suites and four poster beds was for the elite whores, young and pretty and sensually powerful. Those with thickening bottoms, crows feet, and hard habits went to the first floor, and those with no youthful vestiges or virtues resided in the basement. The frills were gone and desperation hung in the dankness.

Tunnels ran under the entire City of Butte and the aforementioned bourgeoisie could slip through the dark to enter the Dumas Brothel, dally with the bawdy girls who they condemned on Sunday, then steal away back to their office to maintain their proper image.

Norma Jean was a gracious host, an intelligent woman of forceful character; an author of several books, and a human being with vision and dreams, desiring to eventually restore all the historical buildings of downtown Butte, Montana.

I don’t know whether or not she has a chance. Certainly she bucks the odds. My purpose here is not to moralize, or condone her, or condemn her, but only to unveil still another glimpse of this volatile mixture of good and evil we call mankind and deduce from it that I’d prefer to have the world peopled more with those old farmers who found us in a blizzard, and the Mexicans overjoyed to be in America, and the man with no legs who was unafraid of four disheveled men on a roadside, and a whore who kept her word.

As for the masses of self-absorbed who pass us by when we break down, perhaps they could learn that the lessor among us sometimes have more to offer, simply because they will.

Carl

*Look for a song from Blinddog Smokin’ about a lonely whore relegated to the room looking out at Venus Alley on our next CD due out this December.

Posted by Carl