Chapter 12
Three months later, Big Bert sat in a cell, alone. She had already mutilated two women and they got wise to the fact that she wasn't fit to live with. Sitting there in her gray dress, she stared blankly at the wall.
It was a soft wall.
Soft and padded.
There had been no question as to her insanity, when the issue had been explored at the trial. The psychiatrist had categorically insisted that she was an active (butch) Lesbian with unquestionably criminal, sadistic tendencies. All the testimony confirmed it. She was sent to an institution for the criminally insane.
But it would be unfair to leave Big Bert at this point, because she had undergone one remarkable change. She had been humbled, to a degree. It no longer struck her as amazing that attendants and guards beat her and whipped her and humiliated her. It no longer occurred to her that there was something sadly ironic about her being here; to be cured, and if not cured, then harbored from things that would make her even sicker. These things had been lost sight of. It boiled down to a simple reversal: if you were on the inside looking out, you were on the receiving end of violence. H you were on the outside looking in, you got to call your own shots.
She was on the inside.
No boots now, no comforting security of being encased in leather and power-just a beltless, gray dress and a white, dully padded cell.
She thought she heard footsteps.
I'm imagining it, she thought-I'm nuts, ain't I? No thin's real.
"Bertha!" a harsh crisp voice shouted through the small barred panel.
She looked up.
"I've come to give you your medicine? You ready?" She didn't answer.
"I said, ARE YOU READY?" the harsh voice rose.
"Yeah." A very small, barely audible voice. The door opened. It closed with a decisive, clicking sound. Bert looked up to see her attendant: a big bull-dyke dressed in leather, holding a whip at her side. She wore high, leather boots, polished to a gleam. For a moment, Bert trembled, and tears came into her eyes. It wouldn't be so bad-she was almost ready to face the reversal. But why was she wearing her boots? "Where did you get those boots?" Bert asked. The big attendant sighed wearily. "Gripes, honey, we've been through it a hundred times! I liked 'em, so I took 'em from you. Now get the dress up like a good girl so lean give you your medicine."
Bert obeyed.
She lifted up the hem of her dress and gathered it around her waist, then went down on her hands and knees, buttocks exposed.
"That tattoo gasses me!" her tormentor said with a cruel laugh. "What's the big black knife for?'
"I don't know. I forgot."
She took her whipping. It hurt, but in that pain, was a certain satisfaction. Even pleasure. She had been whittled down to size, and when that happened, you deserved anything you got. She knew she should be grateful to this tight-lipped, boot-clad creature who ran around the halls of an insane asylum, unmolested, Bert kissed the boots gratefully, and tasted the leather. It had an animal taste, reeked of shoe-polish, It reminded her of other, better days I'll never get well, she thought. I like it this way too much.
No one was shocked when Phineas was thrown into solitary confinement. He, too, was an inveterate corrupter of morals, even behind bars where morals were supposedly absent, He had quickly changed into a simpering, limp-wristed fairy. He had shaven his arms and legs, and being as small and slim as he was, was more sought after than any of his competitors.
Her competitors.
In her own limited way, Phineas shed all vestiges of masculinity and became blatantly queen-like. She was downright bitchy about it, and the other queens didn't like her at all. Phineas dished them all with no trouble.
At night, you could hear her with her lover-and guards would throw her into any cell she wanted to go into, provided her procurers paid them for their troubles. After all, it was against regulations, She was exciting.
She came on like Scarlett O'Hara.
She excited her lovers so much, that one night when one took her, in his frenzied release, he strangled her until she fell limp beneath him. As the poet said, she went out of this life with a whimper. She whimpered before she felt the glories of the bang.
Sue and Cindy were walking down Fifth Avenue, weighted down by shopping bags and dress boxes."
"God, isn't that awful about Plane and Big Bert and all?" Sue asked.
"Had to be that way," Cindy said shortly. "The others all got theirs, too."
"Yeah." There had been tremendous coverage in New York's tabloid papers. The entire scandal had been making national headlines, but Sue and Cindy had been following it in the New York papers. Now they walked toward the subway tunnel to catch the late afternoon express that would take them back to their midtown apartment.
"You got anything on for tonight?" Cindy asked.
"No. The John cancelled at the last minute. I'm going to take a nice, warm bath and spend the evening in bed-reading."
Cindy laughed.
It was a warm laugh, unlike the brittle one she had had in prison.
"That sounds like a good idea-you know, if we ever get money ahead, I mean really ahead, maybe we can give up the life."
"Maybe," Sue agreed, "It isn't that bad, though, really. All my tricks have been fairly straight, you know."
"Mine too."
"How much money've we got?"
"A little over a hundred grand." The women had a joint account.
"Another couple of years and we can live off the interest."
"And never work."
"I'm going to write a book when we retire," Sue said.
"On what?"
"You know. Hell, it'd be a crazy best-seller. People eat that stuff up."
"They oughta get a taste of it," Cindy said bitterly.
Their train came, and hurtled them uptown. They stopped at the mailbox downstairs and Cindy took out the mail.
"Letter from your lawyer friend," she said, handing an envelope to Sue.
Sue opened it rapidly. It began with hoping she was well, and that life on the outside looked much brighter than when he'd last seen her, and by the way, he was getting married next month and could she come to the wedding? And if she could find Cindy around, invite her too.
"What do you think?" she asked, letting Cindy read the letter.
"Not me. I can't ever go back."
"Me either. I'll send them a nice present, though. I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. You know, back in the beginning when he defended me and all, I pictured myself making it with him. Funny, huh?"
"No. He was a nice guy, Brock was," Cindy said softly. "A helluva nice guy."
"A nice guy." Sue would never again remember the innocent days when she had worked at the bank, those days when her head and heart had been filled with dreams. The fresh air of springtime New York obliterated the smell of prison from her memory. The only thing she would never forget would be those days and nights with Big Bert-and Phineas. Being a hundred-dollar call-girl made her feel clean by comparison. A couple of years at the most, and she would retire.
Maybe write a book!
Farley and Lilian Brock awakened to the sound of the ocean. The breakers rolled in and smashed against the shoreline, yards from their cottage.
Farley stretched his body and kissed her.
"Umm," she murmured, and clung to him possessively. He smelled sleep and sex on her, and something warm stirred inside him. It was six-thirty in the morning, and the sun was just coming up.
"How about a flounder for breakfast?" he asked. "I'll get into my suit and go out there and brave the elements for you."
"Later, darling." Lil smiled coquettishly.
"But aren't you hungry?"
"Very," she answered with a pointed smile.
"Then why-?"
"We're all hungry for different things, dear. That's what makes horse-racing."
"Oh. Then you don't want flounder for breakfast?"
"No. I want you, darling, I want to devour you and taste every delicious morsel." She held him close, and her hand slid under the covers to touch him.
"And I want you," he said, all the jest gone out of his voice. His throat was very, very dry.
"Well?" Lil kissed him, and he stroked her pendant breasts until the nipples swelled to the occasion.
He took her.
She whimpered and thrashed pleasurably beneath him as he filled her with himself, and she rose to meet his thrusts with sweet-timed counterthrusts.
"Darling!"
"Yes, yes!" she answered, and quickened her movements-her voice crescendoed into wild cries and she clung to him with the intensity of one holding onto a piece of driftwood out at sea. His hands cupped the cheeks of her buttocks and lifted her high off the mattress. Lil's thighs hugged him desperately and drew him down, deep inside her yearning flesh.
It was sweet.
Early-bird sex, pre-breakfast. Try it sometime.
So it began on the beach, and it ended on the beach. The poets have said that there is a cycle in all our lives-we are born out of the womb, and we spend our lives trying to return to it-we watch the sun rise and fall, rise and fall. We watch the seasons come and go. So it goes, until we find a pattern and a meaning to it all.
Farley Brock became State's Attorney after Benchly threw in the towel to spend the rest of his life writing memoirs and fishing in the surf. I hate to say it; it's corny, overworked and overstated, perhaps, but still completely true.
They lived happily ever after.