John Guare in his play SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION contends that everyone in the world is no more than six people away from each other.
GW Bush to George Bush to his father to Hitler.
Me to my sister-in-law to George Bush Senior to GW Bush to his father and then Hitler
Me to Carrie Carey to Ahmed Bin Laden to Osama Bin Laden.
Me to Howie Montauk to Victoria Lockwood, Countess Spencer to Earl of Spencer to Princess Diana to QEII.
I'd be a little harder pressed to establish the lineage to Bill Gates but in some case you want more than six degrees of separation especially if the end of the line is a brutish blonde pimp named SS Tommy.
In 1982 I was working at a nightclub in Hamburg. A delightful sunny seaside town in the summer and a dark dangerous industrial wasteland in the winter. BSIR’s was fronted by Jurgen, a playboy. The real owners were the GMbH. The city biggest gang of pimps, whose leader was a black German/American. Nigger Cali’s right-hand claw was SS Tommy and this zulhalter resembled a pit bull on steroids. I had managed to keep my distance from the monster. It seemed the best thing to do.
A week before Christmas SS Tommy slapped a bill on the bar.
"20,000 Deutschmarks.”
“For what?” That sum was about $13,000.
"For having sex with Astrid.” Tommy smiled, as if he had told a secret.
“Astrid?” The ephemerally stunning lingerie model was supposedly studying German literature at university while not posing her divinely sculpted body for catalogue photographers. “She works for you?”
“This is Hamburg. Everyone works for someone.” SS Tommy had over two hundred girls on his string
“20,000.” Astrid had been coming over my Mittelweg apartment ever since she broke up with Kurt. Four months twice a night.
"And that is cheap."
"Yes, I know." $100/sex was a bargain if you had it. My bank account was short the bill but 14,000 DMs.
“And it’s not negotiable.”
“Sure, I can understand that.” I had 1000 DMs in my pocket and the keys to my orange VW Beetle. It wasn’t worth much since a late-night collision with a tree on Eppendorfer Weg, but handing him the keys bought time for my getting on the midnight train to Paris.
I never returned to Hamburg, fearing for my life.
Cali showed up in Paris once. He said SS Tommy wasn’t happy with my car. "I don't think he will buy a used car again."
Kurt had had no idea about my relationship with Astrid. “I thought you were my friend."
"What's a girl between friends?"
"Not glue."
Astrid and I continued on our relationship through the 80s in Paris, New York and London. SS Tommy’s bill was never a subject of conversation and I refrained from mentioning my debt to the English barrister who later became her husband. I haven’t seen her in years.
To be safe I google SS Tommy's name every couple of months. The search comes up blank. I thought he was either KIA or MIA.
I was completely wrong as usual.
Several years back I had an affair with a Thai hooker. That kind of relationship is hard to avoid in Pattaya. Tut was a short vixen into ja-bah or mad medicine. The rumor on the street that she had worked as a prostitute in a brothel. I was no saint and didn't ask questions, especially since I was paying for her company.
Once she heard me speak German and asked, "Where you learn German?"
"In Hamburg."
"I had a boyfriend in Hamburg."
Boyfriends who let their girlfriends work in a whorehouse are called Zuhalterei in Germany.
"What was his name?"
"Tommy?"
A chill slithered down my spine like a snake let out of a freezer.
"Was he a body builder with blonde hair?" I should have said 'pimp'.
"Yes."
"Did he have any black friends?"
"One called Kelley or Charlie."
Nigger Cali was one of kind. "Did any of his friends call him SS?"
"Ja. What's it mean?
Like ILSA SHE-WOLF OF THE SS. "Schiesse."
"You know him." Tut seemed as scared as me.
"I did but don't anymore."
Tut ran out that night to meet a boyfriend in Phuket. She called a week later for airfare back. I said I'd send it ASAP and blocked her number from my cellphone. We never had sex again and SS Tommy disappeared from my life once more and I hope he stays twenty separations away instead of one, because even though he's 60 now, someone like SS Tommy never forgets his debtors.
What else would you expect from someone built like an elephant on steroids?
For more on SS Tommy read the excerpt from ALMOST A DEAD MAN
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