Tuesday, May 27, 2025
THE STAFF OF SCHMOSES
Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me. - Moses
MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2023
In July of 1996 my cousin flew from LA to dance at ShowWorld in Times Square. The boyish brunette’s loyal following packed the legendary porno parlor to worship Sherri’s stage acrobatics. Pleasing her audience required more than stripping off her clothes.
The XXX actress augmented her salary by selling used underwear and autographing posters. Gloves cost $10. The filmy lingerie were $20 for the tops and $30 from the bottoms. Full nudity was never less than $50. By week’s end my cousin had cleared almost $8000, but the small fortune came at a cost.
“I wish I could dance in bare feet,” Sherri complained in the shabby dressing room shared with the girls working the $1 peep shows. “These stilettos feel like two spikes are driven through my feet.”
“They make your legs look great.” I had attended two shows and each time had been amazed by Sherri’s grace on four-inch heels.
“So I’m stuck with the heels.”
“Just for one more night.”
“Are you coming for the finale?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
“Or ShowWorld.” Sherri kissed with wet lips. Her skin smelled of exhaustion. In her late thirties the actress had never looked prettier. Her hand reached into her bra and came up with a damp twenty. “Go get yourself something to drink in a bar. I expect you back here on time.”
Sherri was a well-know dominatrix and ads played on the late-night sex shows promoting S & M. I bowed my head in submission even though sexually I was top to her bottom.
“Yes, mistress.”
I killed two hours at the old fight bar Bobby’s Corner drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon and arrived at ShowWorld at 11:30. Her faithful fans had packed The Triple Threat Theater to the rafters and Sherri performed a new dance routine. Fans stuffed $5 bills in her lingerie for a grope. After the finale the audience stood as a mob clapped and shouting her name. Sherri was a star returned for a black leather encore to Iggy’s I WANNA BE YOUR DOG. I escorted her through the melee of men’s hands into the dressing room.
“Fucking hell, my body feels like a sponge with a million fingerprints on the flesh.” Sherri swiftly packed away her costumes and changed into tee-shirt and jeans, then hurried through a crush of fans hoping to get lucky with their favorite actress. Outside ShowWorld she blew kisses and we jumped into a taxi. Normally Sherri partied at after a show.
“You don’t mind, if we call it a night.” She yanked off her heels and pulled on sneakers, sighing with relief, and gave She gave the driver my address on East 10th Street. “I have a few days off before my shows in Philly. We’ve been invited to Fire Island. You want to go??” “Of course.” The diamond exchange was closed for the July 4th Holiday and I hadn’t been to the barrier island for since AIDS. The weatherman had predicted temperatures in the high 90s for the next three days.
“Where we staying?”
“We’re guests of Rachelle Fly.” Sherri rolled down the cab window. People on the sidewalks walked like melting ice statues, but even after the decades in LA Sherri still loved the smell of New York in the summer. She inhaled deeply and said, “That brings me back to my youth. New York has a smell you can’t smell, unless you haven’t been here for a long time. You know Rachelle.”
“I’ve seen her show.” The overweight stripper was Cable TV’s famed XXX spokesperson. Sherri’s ads offered telephone sex to sadistic fantasies. “Your promos are on all the time.”
“That’s not what she says.” Sherri turned with an angry glare.
“At least a couple of times a night.”
“Rachelle said that she doesn’t owe me any residuals. Her husband does the books and ten years ago Shelley went to prison for fraud.”
“So this is a business trip?”
“Always good to have a little muscle on those, but this will be pleasure too.” Sherri loved the sea and sun. “Her husband’s a schmuck, but also connected to the Mafia. Porno and sleaze are good earners for the Mob. I’ll deal with them in my own way. You’re just insurance. Against Shelley, not anyone else.”
“Good. My fighting days are over.” I had retired from working nightclubs the previous year.
“So we have an early night and get going in the morning.”
“Sounds like a plan and tomorrow’s going to be a hot one.”
“Tonight is hot enough.”
Back at my third-floor apartment Sherri undressed and ran a bath. I kissed her goodnight and went to the door.
“Are you going to sleep with me?” She turned the big fan onto top power.
“No, it’s too hot, but I will take a bath with you.”
After a brief intimacy with Sherri I got out of the tub and went to the living room and lay on the sofa.
“Are you sure you won’t sleep with me.”
“I’ll sleep on the couch. See you in the morning.”
There was another reason and she knew it.
Rachel.
I lay on the sofa with a small fan blowing hot air over my body. Sherri went in the bedroom and snored like a drunken seal and I stuck wads of wet paper in my ears. They blocked out most of the noise, although at 3am I heard a neighbor shout to get the truck out of gear.
“Fuck off,” I yelled over Sherri’s snorting and went back to sleep. I woke with the dawn and showered off the night’s sweat. My cousin came out of the bedroom and stood by the tub with a towel wrapped around her still lithe body. “Move over. I feel like an overcooked pizza.”
“Just a second.” I ducked under the lukewarm water and dreamed of swimming in the Atlantic.
“You ever think about getting AC?” Sherri dropped the towel. Her skin sheened with perspiration.
“You’re from LA. You can’t live there without AC, but it never gets as hot here as the Valley.” Heat waves in New York lasted a few days, instead of months in North Hollywood. I backed against the rear of the tub.
“A tight fit. Have you been gaining weight?” Sherri settled into the tub with her back to me.
“Mostly beer. It will melt off by the end of the summer.”
“A constant battle. You want to soap my back.”
“With pleasure.” I reached for the spray nozzle and Sherri murmured, “I love Splish-Splash.”
She came quickly gripping the nozzle. We cut short our bath and caught a taxi on 1st Avenue to Penn Station and boarded an barely ACed train to Long Island. For once Sherri traveled light with a small bag over her shoulder.
“Fire Island promotes nude bathing.”
Two men eyed Sherri. They had probably seen the Rachelle Fly S&M promos. There wasn’t much else to watch past midnight.
After deboarding the ancient train at Sayville a shuttle bus transferred us to the ferry. The cruise across the tranquil bay lasted a half-hour. A thin line of green skimmed the horizon. It was our destination.
“Fire Island doesn’t belong to New York or America.” Sherri stood at the prow.
“This boat trip casts a magic spell.”
“Leaving the rest of the world behind.”
“I hope that’s still true.”
We stepped off the ferry at The Pines. Vacationers on Harbor Walk greeted their guests. Water taxies transported passengers to Cherry Grove. There was no sign of Rachelle on the dock.
“I know the way to her house.” We strolled through the cluster of cottages to Ocean Walk. A deer raised its head from the shrubbery and bolted into a thicket on beach pines.
“Fire Island looks the same, but 20,000 years ago a mile-high glacier towered over the ocean. Long Island and the Cape were formed by the melt off of broken mountains.”
“That must have been cold, but it isn’t cold today.”
“I can’t ever remember Fire Island as cold, then again I never came out here in the winter.
Back in the 70s The Pines had been the summer resort for a decadent gay lifestyle; anonymous sex at the Meat Rack, short-time stands in the hotels, and orgies at the beach houses. Our nightclub had reciprocity with a hotel and disco. Free drinks and beds smelling of poppers.
“The Pines is still Sodom by the Sea.”
“What about on a Sunday morning?”
“Well, the wicked know no time-out, but it is quiet.”
There was a reason. A sad one. Sherri and I had lost scores of friends to the devastating AIDS epidemic. The names of the departed haunted in my mind, especially since one of the gone had been my youngest brother.
We topped the dune, the deep green Atlantic spread from east to west. Waves thundered on the shore. A few people lay on beach blankets protected from the blazing sun by umbrellas. I was glad to have my Celtics hat.
“The beach is empty.”
“Same as the West Village. Dying homosexuals sold their beloved beach shacks to friends, family, and strangers.”
“Different people now,” Sherri said, as we stepped aside for a straight couple pushing a baby carriage onto Nautilus Walk.
“Not the same.”
“None of us are the same now, but you and me. We’re here. Together forever.” Sherri reached for my hand. We approached a high wooden wall behind which rose a two-story bungalow. It was the second to the last on Ocean Walk.
“Still alive.”
“Just one thing. Rachelle’s husband is very jealous of men. If she sleeps with one, he’ll leave her.”
“But she’s a porno actress?” Promiscuity was a virtue in the trade.
“That was back then and now she’s married to him, so she can only have affairs with women, because he likes to watch. If he caught her with a man, then she’d be out on the street. Everything she has belongs to him.”
“No worries. She not my type. Not then. Not now. Not like you.”
“Just play nice then.”
“I’ll be a good boy.”
We entered the pool area and Sherri called out, “Anyone home?”
“Only us naked people.”
Rachelle descended the stairs. The stark naked forty year-old descended down the sun-warped stairs from the top floor . She was easily thirty pounds over her prime and flabs of flesh overlapped her extended belly. Two small overweight Pugs scurried from the ground floor onto nto the deck.
“Excuse my state of undress, but I never wear anything on the island.” Rachelle bear-hugged my cousin. Sherri introduced us. RAchelle smile was more sneer.
“I might go naked myself.” I nodded to our hostess. She made me feel thin.
“When on Fire Island, do as the Fire Islanders do, but be careful of the sun. It’s brutal this time of year.” Rachelle's skin had tanned the color of a worn football.
“Sherri, I’m so glad you could come out.”
“The city is hell, but I had a good run at ShowWorld.” Sharon dropped her bag on the deck and stripped off her tee-shirt and shorts.
“What do you think?” The brunette provocatively posed for Rachelle. Every muscle stood for inspection. A stomach as flat as a pancake and breasts to match. I loved her body.
“Those hours in the gym,” sighed the older woman, as she caressed Sherri and then eyed me suspiciously. “So this is your cousin?”
“Yeah, on her father’s side.” Sherri and I have been calling ourselves family for years to save time explaining how we met playing pinball at an East Village after-hour bar. Even we got tired of our old stories, mostly because we were giving up trying to outrun our pasts.
“I can’t see family resemblance.” Robin squinted to examine my face. Depending on the light my face resembled either an Irish cop or Yankee sailor.
“That’s because Sherri was adopted into the family.” Telling a lie is passable if some of it was the truth.
“But we’re almost twins.” Sherri moved beside me.
“Almost identical, right?” Sheri had been adopted out of Italy. We looked nothing alike. “100%.”
Rachelle wasn’t buying our reply, but she said, “Come on inside.”
We stopped inside the cottage. The gleaming mirrors on the white walls paid homage to decadent 70s gay narcissism. The dogs yapped at my heels.
“Lovely place,” complimented Sherri.
“I bought the house from a man who found it too sad.” Rachelle led us through the living room. “There were too many ghosts.”
“But not for you.”
“I can live with them, if they can live with me. Same as my puppies.” She snapped her fingers and the dogs sat in utter thrall of their mistress.
“They’re my little babies. Come on. I’ll show you your rooms.”
We climbed the stairs and Rachelle said, “If you’re kissing cousins, you can share one bed.”
“Two bedrooms will be fine.” Sleep was impossible with Sherri’s epic snoring three inches from my ears.
“Then make yourselves at home,” Rachelle said to Sherri, opening the door to a large room with a beach view.
Mine was a converted closet without windows, but as the guest of a guest I had no complaints. It was good to be out of the East Village.
“How’s the beach?”
“Same as ever.”
“Some things never change.”
I stripped off my clothes and accompanied the two women to the edge of the ocean. I wasn’t ready for a plunge into the cold Atlantic and joined them on folding chairs under umbrellas. A naked man with a beaded necklaces, a long beard and an even longer penis waved to Rachelle with a gnarled wooden staff.
“That’s Moishe. He lives in a lean-to in the pine grove and scours the tide lines for treasure. In the winter he takes care of the houses, but stays in the hut. A true man of nature. Some people says that he hasn’t been to the mainland for years.”
“Nice crank for an old guy,” commented Sherri.
“I’ve never seen one bigger.”
Flaccid his cock hung down to his knees.
“I probably can’t get it erect without passing out from loss of blood.”
“Oh, he gets stiff alright.” Rachelle caressed Sherri’s arm and turned her back on me.
They discussed business. I didn’t need to hear this conversation and I swam in the ocean. Every minute in the cold Atlantic surf dropped my body temperature. I should have been paying more attention to the sun, but I loved the waves. Emerging from the sea I picked up my towel. Sherri and Rachelle had retreated to the beach house.
Moishe was returning from his beach-combing expedition. I nodded to him. He pointed his erect staff at my ass and said, “Ouch.”
“Too much sun?”
He grunted yes and I hurried off the beach.
At the entrance to the deck I showered off the sand. Sherri and Rachelle were in the pool with a video camera recording their conversation. I toweled dry in the shade.
“Oh, my,” laughed Sherri.
“What?”
“Your ass is lobster red.”
“Moishe said the same thing.”
“He spoke? He never speaks.” Rachelle seemed upset by my interaction with Moishe,
“Not so much spoke a grumbled a few syllable.”
My bum hurt to the touch.
“Did you shower before coming into the house?” Rachelle demanded harshly.
“Yes, with soap too.”
“Just checking.” The ex-stripper succeeded in conveying her disdain and she continued her ungraciousness throughout the day.
The sand on the floor came from me, not her dogs. When I nearly shattered my kneecap on a low glass table sitting down for dinner, she screamed at my clumsiness.
“Sorry.”
“Be more careful.”
She served me a small potion of salad, as if I should be on a diet. During dinner I recounted them how Fire Island had been formed by the Ice Age glaciers. Sherri had heard the story before. Rachelle Rachelle sat at the table with her arms folded across her flapjack breasts and her bulbous belly gracelessly hanging over her crotch.
Her eyes simmered with disdain. I was her public enemy # 1. That evening Sherri and I whispered in her bedroom. The beach bungalow’s thin walls were not conducive to privacy.
“Rachelle’s not very nice.”
“She doesn’t like men.”
“I’ll stay out of her way.”
“Not a bad idea.”
The next morning I looked in the fridge for food. There was none. Rachelle had hidden it somewhere.
Swearing under my breath I left the house and laid out my towel underneath the shades of the pines without taking off my clothes. The beach was empty. I remembered how once it had been crowded with laughing gay men and broke into tears.
Men. Gays. My friends. All gone.
I didn’t want to think about it and read my book. RUNNING by Maxie Laing.
When Moishe passed, he shook his head.
I defended myself by saying, “Clothing is optional. So is nakedness. Asshole.”
After ten minutes the novel about an Irish tinker fell from my hands. I dropped into a slumber. I dreamed of my younger brother. We were in a rundown cottage. Our last time he had been on his deathbed. In the dream he looked well. Young. The Dead were always at their best in my dreams. He hugged me and said, “Everything will all right.”
Michael opened the door and ran onto the beach to join friends. Some of them were his. Some were mine. They all looked happy. A cough ended the vision.
“You shouldn’t be out here.” Sherri glowed with a LA golden tan.
“The pines should be protecting me.”
“The sun reflects off the sand.” She scooped up a handful. “The remains of your glacier. You have breakfast?”
“How? Rachelle hid the food.”
“The bitch.”
“I can’t go back to the house.” “
I know. When’s her husband coming?”
“Not until the weekend.”
“So ‘she’ can’t write a check until he comes?” I refrained from using Rachelle’s name.
“I’m getting my money one way or the other.”
Sherri picked up a branch.
“Let’s built us a hut. “It will be my home away from chez Rachelle.”
We erected a shelter from driftwood and torn sails. We laid down our towels. Naked. We were nature and acted with nature, the waves, and the wind. The sea breeze lulled us to sleep. Sherri didn’t snore. It was a pleasure to lie with a naked woman.
As the sun descended over the dunes, Moishe roamed the high tide mark. Seeing Sherri his penis grew into an obscene erection accompanied by a satyr’s leer. He walked up to us and said to my cousin, “I like your films.”
“Where you see them?”
“Shelley showed them to me to turn me on.” He grasped his penis, as if he were at bat in Yankee Stadium
Sherri thanked the hermit, who licked his lips before wandering down the beach.
“Did you see that?” Sherri exclaimed with horror.
“Not easy to miss?” A medieval warhorse would have been jealous of his manhood.
“He shouldn’t be called Moishe, but Schmoses of the Greying Bush,” Sherri renamed the tramp.
“Carrying the Staff of Schmoses.” I raised my forearm.
“How about a drink at the Blue Whale?” Sherri liked a good bar.
“Vodka and Curacao liquor.” The drink gave everyone ‘blue tongue’. “Why not?”
The bartender recognized Sharon from her films. She was famous everywhere.
“Before I came out, I pretended I was you.”
Sherri autographed a napkin and the bartender comped us drinks. “We’ll see you at the Monster tonight?” “Count on it.” My cousin’s feet had recovered from the ShowWorld gig. “The man has a name. It’s Moishe.” That evening we joked about Schmoses at the dinner table. Rachelle saw no humor in our humor. “The man has a name. It’s Moishe.”
“I gave him a new one.” Sherri wasn’t taking any crap from the fat woman. She owed her money and raised her glass.
“It fits his unearthly shank of flesh. Here’s to the Staff of Schmoses.”
Rachelle deserted the table for her bedroom. Sherri and I drank another bottle of wine. We swam in the pool. We fucked in the shallow end. There was no light from Rachelle’s bedroom.
“She must be dreaming of Schmoses.”
“And his Staff.”
We laughed quietly and Sherri said, “The Monster.”
Well past midnight we returned to the beach house and went to our separate rooms.
“You sure?” asked Sherri at her door.
“We’re cousins.”
“Not really.”
“I’m tempted, but my skin is too tender.”
Sherri slid into the bedroom with a seductress’ grace.
“It wasn’t in the pool and I promise I won’t be rough with you.”
And she wasn’t, although I made her leave later.
“My snoring?”
“Like a truck stuck on ice.”
“Sorry.”
I rose before the dawn and threw on a long -sleeved white shirt and shorts.
It was low tide and the ocean was calm. I beachcombed the tideline for jetsam. Schmoses appeared in the distance and I abandoned the shells and whelps. The first dibs on the beach debris belonged to him. We nodded to each other in passing, but we cursed each other under our breath.
I opted for a peaceful breakfast and walked over to the beach landing to have bacon and eggs at the Blue Whale. As I neared the beach shack Rachelle emerged from her house and shouted, “Moishe.”
The aging loner appeared from the pines. The TV hostess walked over to him and the two vanished into the pines. For a long time. I sat in the shade of the beach hut. Sherri came out of the house.
“Bitch.”
“No money?”
“She said she never showed the ads.”
“Lying cunt.”
“I told her my friends saw them.”
“Friends meaning me?”
“Yes.”
“Well, guess I should pack my bags.”
“Have you seen the bitch?”
“Yes, she went into the woods with Schmoses.”
“Like to have sex?”
“Looked that way to me. Schmoses was in full bloom.”
“Got her.”
“How?”
“The magic of video.”
Sherri grabbed my hand and ran into the house. She didn’t bother to brush the sand off her feet. My cousin emerged with a small video camera and said, “Follow me.”
We tracked Rachelle and Schmoses’ footprints to a piney grove. The two coupled on a rug inside Schmoses’ lean-to. The arcane structure seemed to predate the last Ice Age. The breeze whispered through the boughs carrying the slapping of flesh and Sherri whispered, “It sounded like a hog mating with a walrus.”
She ducked behind a bush and filmed them in coitus.
After a few minutes cousin nudged me and whispered, “I think I have enough.”
“Me too.”
Back at the house I drank a bottle of Rachelle’s best wine to obliterate the image of Schmoses and Rachelle’s in coitus. An hour later Rachelle arrived out of breath and the two fought about money. My cousin held up the video camera.
“I got it all on film.”
“All what?” asked Rachelle, but she knew what.
“You and Schmoses. Your old man doesn’t mind you going with girls, but I know how he feels about you going with men. Your choice. Pay me or pay the price.”
“That’s blackmail.” Rachelle took out a checkbook.
“I like to think of it more as an early trick or treat. Plus I’ll take cash.”
“Here.” Rachelle reached into her purse and came up with a wad of c-notes.
“And here’s your video.”
She glared at me.
“I want you out of here.”
“Our pleasure, fatso.”
Sherri packed fast and we left the house. Schmoses stood at the edge of the pines. He waved good-bye with his long prong.
My cousin blew him a kiss.
“I love my fans.” “And they love you.”
We caught the last boat to the mainland. The ferry ride was a relief from the hot dunes. “Did you really give her the video of Rachelle and Schmoses?” “Yes, but there's nothing on it.” Sherri pulled out a real tape and smiled with feline pleasure.
"Never be honest with a thief."
It had been a good trip to Fire Island. Gay men still ran the beach. And that was a good thing. Back in the city we ate steaks at Old Homestead on Rachelle. Sherri left the next day for Philly.
At the Chinatown bus she gave me $500.
“For your troubles.”
“There were no troubles.”
“What about the Staff of Schmoses?”
“It was big.”
“And it could get bigger.”
Sherri was a good cousin and we remained friend through the years. I never saw Rachelle again, but I recounted the Schmoses story to people from time to time. His cock had been really long and his schlong grows longer with each telling of the tale, but he was nothing. Not in comparison to the power of Sherri. She was a goddess.
Even if she snored.
THE END Sherrie is out in Santa Cruz. Wildness runs in our family Everywhere in the world.
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