Capturing Beauty

by Jon Presco

Copyright 2014

Chapter Four

Belle’s Ballsy Bitches

Even after I caught Baby-face Belle trying to take over the Presco Family Syndicate, I did not give up on the idea she was ‘The One’. I mean, Belle is a shoe in. We have so much in common. She admitted it was a mistake not to let me know that, but, what was her motive?

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/the-church-of-safeway/

She never stopped ‘Wanting It All’ and would shed no tears if some miscreant went ape-shit and ended my life. You better believe my family is getting a big kick out of Belle, because she’s Vic, Rosemary, and Christine all in one! They have risen from the dead. The show will go on!

“We got our replacement! Jonny has saved us!”

Above is a three minute sketch I did of Belle that I did an hour after I met her. It was done by freezing the movie she helped make.

“How could I be stalking her your honor, when she gleefully took the video camera, and aimed it at me. I know it sounds like we are having sex, but, this baby-faced ragamuffin is very enthused with everything I lay on her!”

Above is the Dead Artist Art Sale list that Garth Benton mailed out to past customers. My aunt Lillian was mortified when she got one in the mail. There’s about thirty-five millions dollars worth of art listed. I wanted Belle to come out with the New Rosamond Bohemian Line aimed at her generation. Belle was going to be the model for street bitches, lost punk deviants, or, what have you. Belle knows the score.

I have been out of circuit since I got sober twenty-seven years ago. My loven-baby, Laurie Landis, kicked the shit out of me. She got sober a year before I did, and found herself a eighty-year-old Sugar Daddy with a Rolls Royce. Laurie loved Bling.

At her covert take-over meeting, Belle says this to me;

“Have you ever loved someone so hard, that you wonder if you can love someone anyone more deeply?”

Laurie came to mind, and all of sudden I saw her in Belle who was getting goose-bumps through our whole meeting, because she loved ‘The Danger’ of pulling off a Long Con. Captain Vic would have tried to take her from me like he did Gloria, get her working for him on the Presco Perk system. The sheriff almost released his dog on me and came close to blowing my head off when I came to kick Vic’s ass.

“Stop calling late and waking Gloria!”
“Are you going to make me, tough guy?”
“I’ll be right over!”

After I got out of jail Gloria told me Vic was coming on to her. My father was stalking my lover. The Sapranos is fiction. The Prescos are real. I think Belle understands she is a part of my Long Con, because, I can’t take it with me. I told her I was going to make her my Heir, and she squealed with delight!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_trick

* * *

When I called the Horsehead to ask about Belle’s favorite Jukebox, a drunk got on the phone when the bartender went to read what it says about feeding more money into it to get first-play rights.

“Where are you? Are you outside the bar? What kind of dude calls a bar? Why don’t you come down here and have a drink? Be a man!”

What I suggest, is, Belle form a dance troupe called Belle’s Ballsy Bitches, and work out a routine based upon the Lizzies in the movie ‘The Warriors’? If I was a young man I would have Baby-face Belle and her Girl Gang doing a chorus line kind of thing down at the Horsehead. I would show up for that – in disguise of course.

Belle’s Bars

Luckeys – Jaemeson’s – Horsehead

Young people lack complete passion. It’s like they feel they are not part of the franchise. They are a generation of half-hearted wannabes. Belle is the exception, because, she recognized an authentic Bohemian when she saw him, and tried to take over his chain – and run the show without me. Belle has passion, and thus, a immunity card. However, I still want a rewrite. This poem sucks – big time! Put some music and fire in it, baby!

Untitled

Last night I fell
asleep in a tent on the concrete
in front of city hall
to the sounds of a quiet radio-
some show about the Bermuda Triangle.
How things, people
disappear there.
Whether or not it exists.
Interviews with people
who believed in it,
interviews with people
who didn’t. Its history.
Amelia Earhart. (Airheart?)
It seemed to go on
for centuries.
There are people out there
who don’t have state IDs, passports,
birth certificates,
social security numbers,
who technically
legally
don’t exist.
The faeries who put people
to sleep for 100 years must live there
in that West Atlantic Vortex.
I got lost in it,
like Rip Van Winkle*,
and woke
to a changed world.
I texted a lover in New Orleans,
‘I’m stuffing almonds into a banana,
around my neck is a red bandana
and I love you.’ It was all true.
I walked through what is known
in Eugene as the Barmuda Triangle,
the magical trine of Luckey’s,
Horsehead and Jameson’s downtown.
If you order food at Jameson’s,
it gets run across the street
from Horsehead.
Luckey’s has the best pool tables,
and a fantastic little Mexican foodcart lovechild
that only accepts cash.
At the Horsehead,
there is a touch screen machine
where you get to choose
what music is being played.
You pay money for this privilege.
If you pay more money,
your songs get played
first.
This is a triangle
you can only get lost in
if you’re a real person.

* bandana around my eyes to keep the
blazing orange streetlights out

“What you don’t like this scene in the film or the song, man are you homosexual or somat, hottest scene ever, also when this film came out, back home everyone had just started wearing street gang patches all of us were well young just reaching 17, 18 or 19”

“i wish I was born during that time that’s the real thug life

i wish the cars and life style and music stayed the same and i wish i was born in the sixtys not 98 fuck”

https://rosamondpress.wordpress.com/2013/08/15/true-tramp-with-bling-bling-and-love-song/

Laurie was a Nudy Dancer who came rushing home at seven in the morning and dragged me off to this great bar she found.

“C’mon! They’re fighting over me!”
“Who?” I asked.
“You’ll see!”

When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I found myself in the Hell’s Angels bar in San Leandro. Laurie was determined to love me to death. We had loved each other as much as anyone loved anyone, and, now it was time for our swan song.

When I saw Belle working the street rabble, I saw Laurie in action in New Orleans. I was not there when Laurie ran wild on Bourbon Street, and then owned Bourbon Street, but Belle was giving me a flask from Laurie’s past. Gone are real babes swinging their hot legs out the window, something Laurie loved to do. When she took over Boontown in Neveda, she gave hot sexy catcalls to the chorus girls, who blushed, like no man ever made them blush.

This video breaks my heart and makes me homesick for the Bay Area. Laurie became a prostitute when she sixteen in order to get her boyfriend, whom she loved to death, out of jail. When she did up some dudes coke, he beat her up, and took the big diamond ring her pimp gave he. She got sober days later.

* * *

I met Laurie Landis in the Kerry House on Saint Patty’s Day 1985. Michael and Bruce’s son had just left my apartment, and I was alone. I walked to the closest bar near my house. No sooner did my eyes adjust to the dim light, then I am rubbing against a woman who knows how to drink. She has a handsome face. She has Sex Kitten written all over her, a look I would later learn came from slithering down a brass pole.

Laurie spotted my blues eyes and is coming in for a second look. Her bright greens are sparkling with sexual madness because there was a lot of that going around in those days. She wants to play with me – badly. We exchanged just a few words and she has me by the scruff of my neck while she sends her tongue in to do some deep exploration. I am game. And the Night Hunt that had just begun for both of, is over – so soon! We scored!

I downed the whiskey chaser I ordered and we were out the door. We’re done screwing around with those leprechauns. But, for Laurie’s eyes, we weren’t wearing any green because we’re pros.

“We need no stinken four-leaf clovers!”

Getting naked on arrival, I took Laurie by her ankles and turned her over. instinctively she raised her beautiful ass. My tongue explored her anal cavity, and she was all mine as she whispered;

“How did he know? How, did, he know?”

I was fuel for her fire for the next three years. She burned me everyday. Our love-making was other worldly. I was in love with a pro. She made sure there was never a dull moment. She owned langere’.

When we went to Santa Cruz to rent a room and celebrate her birthday, she tried to jump out of the car while it was moving because I wouldn’t let her drink with these street kids standing on the corner. A cop pulled up behind us as I struggled to get Laurie’s hand off the steering wheel. She tried to pull the car to the curb – where cars were parked.

I could never say no to Laurie. The police tried, and she got in their face.

“Hey! Hey! Today’s my birthday! You can’t arrest my boyfriend. I need him to pleasure me. So, buzz off!”

Like I said, I love Aries women. I want to be reborn on a planet with nothing but Aries folks. I want to see how it goes – when everyone get’s their fucking way!

While in jail, Laurie seduced a young college student who did not want to be seduced, but, no one says no to an Aries, and she was soon into it. What the fuck else was there to do, but feel bad. This felt good, and made time fly. Aries logic is pure genius. I had met a Master Headinist.

When we got sprung, and were back in the car, Laurie asked me if I had my fun last night in – my cell! Before I could give her a dirty look, she is beaming ear to ear as she let me have it;

“I did! We kissed for two hours.”

“Who did you kiss!” I asked, having taken the wicked hook.

“Not you, that’s for sure!” and she let out her carnie dame laugh.

When we both got sober, she said this to me.

“You had sucker written all over you.”

She had to let me know, at the end of the 123rd. inning, when it was alas over, I wasn’t even in her league. Women are crazy. Why don’t they come clean? They never take their gloves off.

Laurie was twenty-eight when we met, and I was thirty-nine. She was sexually abused by her stepfather. When she and her boyfriend went on a road trip, and were driving through Louisiana, they got pulled over. Her boyfriend was sentenced to three years for an ounce of weed. Laurie did not forsake him. She loved him, and found a pimp to put her out. She was sixteen. When he learned her true age, he got her a job as stripper at Big Daddy’s on Bourbon Street. Laurie swung on that famous swing and made cat calls to the folks below. She tore up all the parties she could find. Everyone loved her, including her pimp, who bought her a big diamond ring.

“My pimp bought me this ring!” she said with pride.
“Youre lying.”

It was the last time I called Laurie a liar. She ripped me up. Fucked my brains out. On her days off we would get a shit-load of beer, lock the door, and have at it.

Most of the time our love-making, and drinking was a religious experience. We would reach a point where we were in a white light. I had found the high priestess of sex. Sex was her realm. She had a map. She had credentials. Her striptease monocure was ‘Bubble Butts’.

Sometimes I would lie on the bed with my arms out, my head on her stomach.

“You are crucifying me! My mortal soul is hanging by a thread. I will never be the same after you. We cant do this anymore. Something strange is going to happen to us.”

There was no one but I and Laurie in the world. How strange. Where did they all go? Other people existed, but they had nothing to do with us. We lost all contact with them. We were naughty beyond comprehension. Laurie’s sister and mother began to worry. She spoke to them. We even had them over for dinner once or twice. But, we couldn’t wait to close the door on them so we could tear each other up some more. We were sex fiends. We couldn’t get enough of each other.

We did Brando and Stella. We sweated our hearts out, and got rained on. We tore our clothes off. We tore each other’s clothes off. Who would believe two people could create so much drama.

Many times our love-making produced a river of tears. When we came to her betrayals, we fucked our way through them. She would bring women home from the bar for me to sleep with so she would have the goods on me, but, they were not attractive. In fact, most of them were dikes who would put up with me just get in Laurie’s pants. These were cute gestures. Tokens of love. At bars, she pointed out dudes I should get to know more intimately. She just wanted to watch, but, I wasn’t game.

Now Laurie to began torture me for her sins. Sitting cross-legged before the sterio, she put on the hit single ‘I’m never go to dance again’ a.k.a. ‘Careless Whisper’

When these word’s were sung “Guilty feet have no rhythm” it was on, the Dance Marathon of the Guilty Feet. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over again, Laurie picked up the arm of the record player, and the tears flowed, and flowed, and flowed, as she tried to set the needle down at the beginning – one more time.

“Screee! Never! Scratch! Again! Scruuuutch!

“Alright already! I forgive you. Now – knock it off! You’re driving me nuts with that song!”

“You’ll never forgive me – you bastard! NEVER!
“I DO! I DO FORGIVE YOU!”
“See! You hate me! Now, leave me alone. You are so cruel! Stop torturing me!

Aries folks don’t handle guilt and shame very well, not like us Libras with our Scale of Justice. Yeah! Right!

“(Now that you’re gone) Now that you’re gone
(Now that you’re gone) What I did’s so wrong
That you had to leave me alone”

Alas, as the first light of dawn appeared in the east, and one could hear the birds cheep in the beautiful silence, and, when she was fully convinced there was a chance I would alas forgive her, she stood at the foot of our bed, then launched her great – I Forgive You Fuck!

We were full-blown alcoholic in deep trouble, all alone in a deep forest. We never bought enough cases of beer. We had the money, but, every time we went to buy alcohol, we lied to ourselves, and then we lied to each other.

“Do you think we have enough?”
“I think we have way more than enough. Let’s put a couple of cases back.”
Come 1:57 A.M. our seller would look for our car to come screeching into the parking lot.

Laurie’s ring was the real deal. She had real Bling Bling. She earned it. All this other shit you see on other people is a lot of Bullshit Bullshit!

When Laurie married her eighty year old millionaire boyfriend, and drove him around town in his Rolls Royce, my ex-lover was at the top of the Bling Bling food-chain. And look at the bling bling in that Big Daddy’s neon sign.

“I worked there! I had me a good ol time!”

Good for you, Laurie! Good for you! But, stay sober!

That’s Laurie with Brian Purvis the infamous kidnapper of Rena Easton. What is that look he is giving my lover. He looks afraid, because I went to the Purvis boys for some advice.

“She has no morals. We are committing every degenerate sex act under the sun. you got to help. You got to save me!”

All I got from the Purvis boys, was the look, that said;

“And…..you got a problem?”

I know what Bryan is seeing. Laurie has real soul, something he will never have.
She was not a fake. This is why I still love her.

That’s me ‘The Ashamed One’ hiding behind my Foster Grants.

You see, Laurie at sixteen, lay on her back and let strangers have their way with her, because she needed more money for the attorney she hired to get her boyfriend out of a very dangerous prison where he suffered greatly. Her legal efforts, failed, and I…….could not forgive her for cheating on me!!!

Laurie was twice the human-being I was. I have not been with, nor lived with, or loved another woman – hence! I got sober in 1987. I have twenty-six years of sobriety. My daughter thinks I got sober so I could look down my nose on drinkers, like herself and her lover who has a bar in their home. She thinks I got religion so I can feel I am superior to those who love a beer now and then.
I haven’t talked to my daughter or grandson in two years.

Now, here’s a righteous question for all you folks out there who think they got their Judging down pat. Do you think Laurie’s boyfriend found out how Laurie was paying for his attorney? Did he ask, and she confessed? Or, did he hear it from the grapevine, a whispering prisoner giving him the skinny?

“Hey Dude, your old lady is a whore!”

Did he forgive her? Or, did he turn his back on her and leave her utterly alone in Sin City, she nothing but a tramp on the streets with no one to run to.

“I’m never going to dance again!”

I have heard Laurie cry from a very far away and utterly desolate place. It broke your heart to hear her. There are truly tragic people in this world. We seem to have a knack for finding one another.

“We spotted each other from across the dance floor, your Honor. She came to me, and asked me to dance, the dance of life. I don’t think her boyfriend knows how to dance. For sure he never wrote her a poem like the first one I wrote her wherein I try to answer her question. I was brave. I took my best shot!”

Mon Belle

We did a dance, and we did a rose.
Then
with radiant face you asked
“Have you ever loved so much
that you could love no more?”

This question lies
in the fragrance of a rose
that we must let go of
or be crushed by
the memory of unlimited love

This question can only be answered
by one who loves to dance
And
just when we think we are
completely exhausted
and all love is exhausted
Then?…….And Then!
Comes the Genius of Love!

To the genius of love!

Jon