CASSE-TOI BRIGITTE by Peter Nolan Smith

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

An American In Paris - 1983

The 1952 Best Picture Oscar went to Vincent Minelli's AN AMERICAN IN PARIS, a romantically kitsch musical about an American painter trying to break into the Paris art scene coupling a suave Gene Kelly and an exquisite Leslie Caron dancing and singing through the movie.

During the 1980s I worked nights in Paris as the doorman to various nightclubs. Most famously Les Bains Douches. When I was employed there in 1983 I told Fabrice the co-owner, "I don't speak French. I only recognize Serge Gainsborough, Francoise Hardy, and Brigitte Bardot. How should I treat your clientele?"

"Like the shit they are " was his response.

At that moment I realized that at night I was the most powerful American in Paris. At night. Quelle epoch!

ps 1985 I 86ed Brigitte Bardot from the Royal Lieu. Albert, the DJ, was furious. I explained that I couldn't recognize her, because I was stuck on her sensuous role as the director's adulterous wife in Godard's CONTEMPT.

pps The Paris of 1984 was not that of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS en suit I was no Gene Kelly.

Foto - 1984 - Royale Lieu avec mon pote eternal Jacques Negrit.

December 29, 1978 - East Village - Journal

Dallas over Atlanta and the Steelers over Denver, the post season nears the yearly climax to the NFL, Super Bowl XIII, the league using Roman numerals to pretend this blood sport has a link the the gladiator games of the Roman Empire.

Alice returns tomorrow via a flight from Charleston WVA. In times for the New Year, although I have made no plans for the celebration. It's amateur night with millions across the country and billions around the globe cancel their inhibition and drink themselves into a frenzy to welcome in 1979. The last year of this decade.

We started the decade with Vietnam and Nixon and LSD and rock and roll and revolution. We now have Carter and cocaine and disco and complacency. Morte Morte morte.

Trump At War Everywhere

On Christmas Day 47 unleashed two dozen Tomahawk missiles on "ISIS terrorist scum in Northwest Nigeria who have been targeting and viciously killing primarily innocent Christians at levels not seen for many years and even centuries.

"Nigeria’s Information Ministry later said that the government, in collaboration with the US, had “successfully conducted precision strike operations” targeting ISIS hideouts in the forests of Tangaza district in Sokoto.

The UK Telegraph reported Craters can be seen in the ground of the village of Jabo in Sokoto state, but locals say nobody was killed, and insist that the area has been free from militant violence for several years.

Omoyele Sowore, the activist and former Nigerian presidential candidate, said on Saturday: “Twenty-four hours after the bombing, neither Nigeria nor its so-called ‘international partners’ can provide clear, verifiable information about what was actually struck.”

Another unbrilliant attack by the orange crackhead.

No casualties, but at least no civilians killed by the Pentagon. Everyone heard them coming at 550mph. A few mintu4s warning thankfully to those on ground.

And that was a good as it gets for the Pentagon in Nigeria.

ps a Tomahawk missile cost $2 million. Times twenty-five. $50 million to hit empty fields around of the village of Jabo in the north of Nigeria. Another job not well done.

ps Tomahawk missiles typically carry 1000-pound warheads.

According to AI Crater Size: A direct hit typically leaves a crater approximately 20 feet (6 meters) wide and 10 feet (3 meters) deep. The estimated safe distance for people outdoors is 1,500 feet (457 meters). Several landed without any explosion. Nigerian still say theere were no fatalities. Photos of the bomb landing sites show nothing like that, meaning the warheads were duds, a warning, or else the Navy command secretly ageed no killing on Chirstmas Eve.

Fuck-Up At DusselDorf - 2011

The days of December went into double-digits without my purchasing a ticket to Thailand. I was sitting with Vonelli in his Charleroi mansion sifting through the online travel sites. The Floridian suggested Air Berlin out of Dusseldorf. It was a four-hour train ride from Luxembourg, where I had been serving as 'unofficial writer in residence' to a foreign embassy. Thirty minutes later I booked a flight on December 20 and upon my return to the residence overlooking the Petrousse I informed Madame ambassador that my absence would last into the New Year.

"Bon Voyage." Madame Ambassador was stuck at her post. Diplomats at her level are expected to be present at their postings twenty-four hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year. "Get some sun for me."

I departed from Luxembourg a day early to visit Koln's medieval cathedral and the Ludwig Museum. My hotel was close to the train station and I walked over to the soot-stained monument to a mythic messiah, which is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. The spacious interior impressed the gawking tourists. I stretched out my arms to test the mysticism radar. Not a beep lit up my 4D screen, then again I was no longer a Christian. 

Winter was more winter in Koln than Luxembourg. I drank Glohwein at the Christmas Fair. The girl serving my mulled wine was the prettiest girl in the city and her beauty was enhanced by the glogg. I staggered back to my cheap, but cheerful hotel and crashed on the single bed to the sound of an argument between a married couple in the next room. Nothing says love better than a fight in a cheap hotel.

The next day I toured the Ludwig Museum for two hours. Its extensive collection was too much to absorb and such a short time and I exited the museum with my eyes burned my images of Yves Klein, Otto Mueller, and Alexander Rodchenko. I had thirty minutes to kill before my train and I spent twenty of them at the gloog bar. The girl's name was Helga. The twenty-year old came from Bremen. Her favorite music was punk. If only I had been thirty years younger with three more hours to kill, but I had a train to catch. I ran to the station and caught the 12:40 to Dusseldorf.

An hour later I stepped onto the platform of the Aeroport Station. A hanging monorail brought passengers to the terminal. I presented my ticket at the check-in.

"This is one-way." The blonde Air Berlin attendant held up my ticket with consternation.

"Is that a problem?" 

"Air Berlin won't accept the responsibility of your getting refused entry to Thailand." She was following procedure.

"It's never a problem at the other end." The passport control at Cobra Swamp was overwhelmed by the deluge of tourists spewed off 747 and Airbus."

"Let me check on it." She picked up the phone. A minute later she handed back my ticket and pointed across the terminal. "Talk to them. They will find you a ticket."

Buying a last-minute ticket at the airport was daunting. January 1 was my daughter's birthday. The counterwoman found a cheap flight back from Bangkok to Dusseldorf on January 16.

$500 one-way.

"Make it so." I love quoting Captain Picard of the Starship Enterprise and saying those words almost made flying an adventure.

Times Square Babylon Then

Rent boys.

Hookers on the Strip.

Flesh peddlers.

Martinis at Hojos.

And let's not forget the pimps.

Now Babylon is no more.

But Times Square was something else in the 1970s.

And anyone who wandered that chasm of sin knew that all too well.

John Steinbeck's Rules of Writing - Happy New Year

Last week Dakota POllock called from Mexico City. He has a serious friend down in the DF. A woman. Ilsa. He'sin love and not afraid to say it every time we speak. I 'm happy for him. He's stopped drinking. A good thing. He's still in his thrirties. My sobriety began at 69 after throwing up blood and after a successful emergency operation or procedure to stop the internal bleeding bleeding from my liver, a young doctor at NYU hospital told me me, "It ddoesn't look good."

It hadn't, but I survived and I'm glad Dakota won't have to travel the same road, because he drank heavier than me and might have only made forty. Buena Surta.

He is revising his first novel and said that he had read John Steinbeck's rules for writing. He was surprised that I hadn't heard of them. I was too. I love Steinbeck. CANNERY ROW is perfect. That conversation was three days ago and today I search for Steinbeck's six rules. I should have read them decades ago. Maybe I had. Here they are from the man himself

Now let me give you the benefit of my experience in facing 400 pages of blank stock-the appalling stuff that must be filled. I know that no one really wants the benefit of anyone's experience which is probably why it is so freely offered. But the following are some of the things I have had to do to keep from going nuts.

1. Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

2. Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with fow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theatre, it doesn't exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person--a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one.

4. If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it--bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn't belong there.

5. Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing.

6. If you are using dialogue--say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech.

Simple, but I would have added, "Take a typing course." My typing sucks and still does. I blame it on maulyxsia, in that my fingers know how to spell, but can't navigate the QWERTY keboard with racking up typos en masse.

The opening lines to CANNERY ROW 1945

Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitant are, as the man once said, “whores, pimps, gambler and sons of bitches,” by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, “Saints and angels and martyrs and holymen” and he would have meant the same thing.”

In the morning, when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay … Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again … The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora’s emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong’s grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some part or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora’s – the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row.

-Cannery Row by John Steinbeck