New York City showed its teeth the autumn of 1981. The 20th Precinct strong-armed our after-hours nightclub on West 25th Street for weekly payoffs. One of the Continental’s backers was a Odessa gangster. Vadim was going out with my old girlfriend from Buffalo. The tough zek smuggled stolen icons and passed bad paper. Lisa looked good in his furs.
Only problem was that the newest investor in the illegal enterprise looked like the FBI, mostly since they were the FBI investigating the dirty cops from the 20th. When I mentioned the likeness to the Feds to Arthur, the club’s owner, the ex-baseball player. mumbled out of the side of his mouth "Don't worry."
Those two words were never a good sign. Not when you were paying off the cops. Arthur had hired me to work the door, however his partner, a poster boy/model for herpes, didn't like my attitude and
Paul Garcia wasn't alone. In December Arthur apologized, "I got to let you go." "No worries."
The microphone wire on Arthur’s chest confirmed my suspicion about the new investors had been spot on and later that week I accepted the offer from Actuel Magazine to work at the rex Club as a doorman, since my friend Bernard Zekri had written an article about me the previous summer. I sublet my East Village flat to a Swedish photographer. Swedes were very trustworthy. After Actuel bought my plane ticket to France, they asked, if I had a a choice for a DJ. . Vladmar was my choice. He arrived in Brussels a week after me. For both of it was our first time in Continental Europe. Paris loved Vladmar’s spinning of cold wave hits.
I was another story. No one really likes a doorman. Working at a nightclubs I met the famous, infamous, and nobodies. Sometimes I had no idea who was who in the universe of Paris nightlife. One night I stopped a skinny bearded man from entering the club for free. His massive bodyguard steered me right.
"It's Mick Jagger."
"That's him." The Stones were my heroes. They hadn't sold out like the Beatles. The rock star was with a blonde model. She knew who he was, not that I cared. In the 1970s doormen ruled the night and that privilege followed me to Paris in 1982.
"Here you are not a doorman, but a physionomiste. You read people." The club manager was a socialist. Olivier sought an eclectic crowd dedicated to every level of fun.
"No problem, but I don’t know how to speak French." Two years of grammar school French from a nun with a lisp had taught me how to ask, "Ou est le Bibliotechque?"
"Pas de problem," Olivier shrugged with ease and said, "You only have to say two words. 'Ouais' or 'Non.'"
"Okay" I had learned that trick at CBGBs, Hurrah, and Studio 54. "But I don't know anyone in Paris. Not the famous people. Not the people who go to nightclubs."
"Pas de problem." His partner and he were tired of everyone getting in for free. "Make everyone pay and I don't care if it's Brigitte Bardot."
"But how shall I treat them?"
"Comme le merde."
"Like shit?" I didn't think that I had heard Olivier right.
"Exactement."
“I’ll do my best.”
Treating Parisians like shit was a dream job for an American and I obeyed Jean to a tee and favored my friends with glory. I built a new clientele of rockers, punks, models, gangsters, pop stars, and normal people for the basement club under the famed movie theater on the Grand Boulevard. For the most part the owners liked the mix and rejectees called me 'le ras-de-ped' or 'homo', which was Verlaine or slang for pederast.
My French improved watching subtitled movies and sleeping with French girls. After the closure of the Rex, the owners of Les Bains-Douches hired me to replace Farida. The Algerian Amazon was leaving her post to model with the famed fashion designer Claude Montana. She was that beautiful.
The owners of the club off Rue Sebastopol were a little more deferential about their upscale clientele, but also concurred with treating their regulars 'comme le merde'. I liked to throw them a curve ball and one night a decrepit clouchard approached the entrance.
The bouncers prevented the derelict's climbing the stairs.
"Leave him alone."
"Pour quoi?" My security were off-duty Legionnaires and shouldn't have been questioning my orders, but they hated the bums and blacks and Arabs.
"Because I said so."
They shrugged and resumed smoking Gitanes.
"Why do you want to enter the club?" I asked the grizzled drunk in Boston-accented French.
"Because I'm a good friend of Moses and he told me to meet him here."
"Come on in."
"Are you serious?"
"Mais ouais." I had heard plenty of excuses from people seeking to enter the Bains-Douches. None of them were as good as that offered by this 'friend of Moses'.
"I have no money." The clouchard patted his pockets.
"A friend of Moses doesn't need money. Here;s manna from heaven. Two drink tickets. Have a good time."
His raison d'être granted him entry to the elite boite de nuit. I went inside from time to time to check, if he was having a good time and the snobby clientele of the Bains-Douches opened their hearts to the Friend of Moses. My boss was not amused by Moses' friend and stormed up to the front door.
“Are you fou?” Americans were crazy estrangers to the French.
“What’s wrong?” I didn’t have an idea about what was amiss, but I was sure about the ‘who’.
“That clouchard drank a bottle of wine from Thierry Mugler's table." Fabrice had a sweet spot for the fashion czars of Paris. They brought models and models attracted the rich.
"Really?" I laughed at the audacity of 'le Ami de Moises'.
"You think it’s funny?”
"Just a little, but if you want him to leave, then I’ll show him out.”
"Why did you let him in?"
"Because he's a friend of Moses." The excuse meant nothing to the patron. "I guess you never saw Charlton Heston part the Red Sea in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS."
"I know 'the Parting of the Red Sea'. It was special effects, but the God of the Israelis killed their enemies with unforgettable style. Get Moses' friend out of here."
I signaled the bouncers or 'videurs' to gently escort out my guest and the clouchard cried out, "You can't treat the friend of Moses like this. Just wait until I speak to Moses. He has more plagues up his sleeves than I have fleas."
Nothing as evil as the killing of the first-born ever visited the Bains-Douches.
Several weeks later I spotted the friend of Moses in Les Halles. He cursed everyone with damnation at the very popular Cafe Pere Tranquille. The chic junkies and fashionable drunks laughed at his predictions of doom. I looked to the sky. The madman pointed a finger at me.
"That Amerlot loves God."
And I wished it were true, but I had been a non-believer since 1960, although I loved wandering through Notre Dame. dn prayed to Black Michel, the small angel posised over the gothic cathedral's organ.
I gave him 20 francs.
My girlfriend Candia asked, "Why?"
"Because it's not a bad idea to have the friend of Moses saying good for you to the Grand Seigneur."
"Il est fou."
"Crazy, quais, but the believer's God moves in strange ways, so do the mad." Everyone was amused by this story, except for my boss and I was let go from the Bains-Douches.
I wasn't unemployed for long.
Albert and Serge opened a dance club near the Paris Opera 1984 and hired me to be the doorman. Le Nouvelle Eve's plush décor harkened to the glorious 50s. The young rich loved to dance to the soul and classic French hits stitched together Albert's skill on the turntables. We hired a young black bouncer to handle the voyous or thugs.
Jacques had run with several gangs from the outer suburbs. They invited me into Les Bafalos. It was good to belong to them.
Hard times had not ruined Jacques smile. The young girls from the good neighborhoods found the muscular Martiniquean handsome and flocked in droves to try their luck with the handsome Jacques.
These beauties in turn attracted men who brought them drinks. A glass of champagne cost $20 and Le Nouvelle Eve coined money for their collaboration. My job was to filter out the uncool.
A week after the opening an older man entered with two dowdy women in fluffy down coats. One of the blondes might have been attractive in her youth, but gray streaked her once blonde hair and no make-up masked her age. Her unfashionable clothing dated back to the early 70s and her feet were clad in tennis shoes.
I figured the old man for a boxer in the 60s suit. His nose lay splayed across his upper lip like a wet sox. An argument ensued with the cashier about the cover charge.
"What's the problem?" I asked the cashier. She was very strict with the guest list.
"They don't want to pay."
"We never pay." The fighter scowled at the cashier without acknowledging me. His damaged pride revealed that he had been someone once.
"Excusez-moi, Mssr. Give one reason you don’t have to pay and you can come in for free.” Any excuse would work, even that he was another cousin of Moses.
"We never pay," the ex-middleweight rasped in a punished voice. He had won more fight than he had lost and had not lost many.
"That's not a reason."
"I do not have to give a reason to un putain Amerlot."
"Fucking American? Jacques, chuck this 'vieux' out of the club and have him take the two old pallisons with him." "'Pallisons' was the French word for doormats. My French was improving better every year, but puzzlement muddied Jacques' face and looked over to the blonde woman. The fiftyish blonde glared with dazzling blue sapphire eyes. They had once belonged to a younger woman. One who would have considered me beneath her. Theyleft without any trouble.
"Salud." She had said that to more than one man, but I wasn't not a bastard and countered, "Casse-toi, putes."
The three of them left without further argument and Serge approached to the door.
"Is there a problem?"
"Nothing I couldn't handle."
"Then explain why you threw out Brigitte Bardot," Serge demanded with blasé curiosity.
"Brigitte Bardot?"
"Yes, Brigitte Bardot."
The boxer's companion re-assembled into the legendary sex symbol as would any woman who was Brigitte Bardot. AND GOD CREATE WOMAN and CONTEMPT were two of my favorite films of all time. I had dreamed about the blonde sex goddess as a boy.
"That's wasn't her?" Her face represented Madeline, the heroine of the Revolution.
"Ouais, c'est elle."
"Merde." I ran out to apologize for my faux-pas, except they had reached the boulevard and a taxi stopped for the trio. I returned to nightclub expecting a reprimand, instead Serge suggested that I act with more tact in the future.
"We will be old one day too."
"I know."
Bardot's rejection from the Nouvelle Eve hit the morning papers and I expected the Paris Police to institute deportation proceedings against me for having insulted a national treasure, however the passage of time had rendered the animal lover's beauty passé to today's youth and our business doubled with their appreciation of my indiscretion. A week later Mickey Rourke showed up at the club with ten friends, who were mostly young junkies from the Bains-Douches. We never let them in for free. I made an exception this time and Serge came up to me.
"No Brigitte Bardot, but hello to Mssr. Rourke." Serge never let me forget my error in judgment and it remained a joke between us till this day, even more so now that the American actor slipped down the ranks from his heyday, although we both agreed on his best line.
"Drinks for my friends." Mickey Rourke had called out in the same voice from Barbet Schroeder"s BARFLY.
It seemed to be a line he must have said in real life more than once.
A guy like me changes hard, I didn't want to change, but I had to change.
Same as the rest of us.
We all get old some day.
Et desole Brigitte, because je suis un con, and 'con' is not a nice word in French.
ps for some reason Brigitte Bardot became a fascist. She hated all immigrants, ruining her memory. still I shouldn't have thrown her out of the Nouvelle Eve. Albert, the DJ, is still furious with me. Moi, moins. BRIGITTE NEVER GETS OLD
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