Chapter 11
There were all kinds of whorehouses, and all kinds of madams. Lilli deWitt was one of the better madams, so we looked for an average or below-average woman. In order to show all sides of the question, we felt it incumbent on us to show the seamy side, if only to deter young girls from entering the 'life."
The following conversations with Maggie Smith have been edited considerably. Her language has been brought to an acceptable level, for instance, more than with any of the others interviewed. Maggie Smith is not her name; in fact little of what she told us seemed the truth at first. She was a congenital liar. By constant checking and questioning we think we have come somewhere near the truth, and we present her story in that light.
Maggie is far gone on drink at the present time. We believe the only reason she consented to an interview was for the money, to buy booze. We have also edited out the hiccups:
MAGGIE SMITH:
"I was born in Buffalo, upstate. I think I'se born in a cat house. I never knew my old man, if I had one, and my old lady died when I was three. That's some beginning, huh?
I had a few years of school, not much. I lived with an Aunt and Uncle. He worked in a box factory and was a preacher o-the side. A hellsfire and damnation preacher. He had a rickity little joint for a church and on Sundays he would go in there and preach his damn head off and you could hear them hunkeys yelling for a mile.
He worked them up something fierce, and after the collection he got a bottle and come home and pawed me. Little as I was. He tried to get into my pants before I was five years old. Drunk and quoting the bible at me. And my Aunt would sit there and watch and laugh her fool head off because he was so clumsy.
By the time I was about six, I was giving him hand jobs. I was strong enough to fight him off-I hated the damn smell of him-but I wasn't strong enough to get out of his clutches. So I squeezed it and milked it for him and that quieted him down some.
We lived in a tough neighborhood. At six years old I was a target for plenty of guys on the street
... like every girl. The big game was jazzing. They got a finger in you and they made you hop. The worst thing was to fight them. Then they'd lay for you and a bunch of them would gang up. Then it was free meat. I got so I'd let them jazz me and I'd give them hand jobs. I could calm a guy in no time-or two at a time.
Sex and drinking was about the only fun people got in my neighborhood. Sex was free, at home, and the bottles were cheap if you stayed on wine.
So I don't even remember the first guy who spread me. I was giving it away before I could read and write good. Hell, it was no big deal. My uncle did it to me, and he was a preacher.
By the time I was eight he was screwing me every week. I got to expect it. Every time he was drunk, 'Hey Maggie, c'mere.'
Yeh, I got some school. I went through the sixth grade, but I didn't learn much. I never cracked a book. When they sent for my Aunt, she went to the school and listened to what they said and nodded her head, and I never heard no more about it.
I got lousy grades, and they kept puttin' me through the same grade, but I didn't care. I skipped school a lot because Tony Peaker wanted me to work waitress at his joint. That was class, working at Tony's.
I got a buck a day at least. That was as much as my preacher Uncle got. And I was eight, going on nine.
Tony called it waitress, no matter what he wanted me to do, it was waitress. He had a cafe with back rooms and rooms upstairs. He had three or four hookers working for him, mostly old bags with flat tits and calloused snatches. They got a buck a throw from the good Johns, and anything else from the rest.
I used to play out back of Tony's place with the guys, and one day he hollered at me and I went inside with him. "Hey," he said, "you a good-lookin' kid."
He talked like he had wire for vocal chords, real rough and throaty, but he was a pretty good joe. Fat though. With a stringy moustache and always sweaty.
He wanted to feel me right off. So I let him. Then he gimme a piece of pie and took me in a little room with a cot and sat on the cot and got me on his lap. Well I knew what he wanted without him telling me. He pulled his dick out and stuck it in and I just bounced on it. He didn't have a hell of a big one, so it didn't give me no trouble. He liked it.
But I didn't go for that pie deal too long. For about a week he was giving me like pie or ice cream and taking me into the room and grabbing a piece of ass. I got to talking to one of the chippies, Lena, and she wised me up.
"Get dough for it, kid," she said. "Screw the pie. He'll give you dough."
He did too. He didn't like it, but then he give me fifty cents a throw. So did the cook. He was a skinny little squirt with a cast in one eye and fingers like steel. Jesus, he was strong. Right after I come out of the room with Tony, he wants me to go back in, and he don't care about a slippery deck.
I was a little scared when I seen his dick though. He had a big one. For a little guy. And none of the lap stuff, sitting, I mean. He laid me down and got it in and gimme a ride. It only hurt when he rammed it too hard, and he jerked like crazy when he shot it. Tony never did.
So for a while I made fifty cents each from them two, and once in a while two-bits from the dishwasher.
Then Tony wanted me to go to work for him after school or anytime. My tits were getting big and I looked older than I was. He give me the room for myself, and he sent guys in, fifty cents each. But I sure didn't like most of them. Some were drunks and some were old bastards who couldn't get it hard or keep it hard. They wanted me to blow 'em, and I wouldn't. So they com-pained to Tony.
Tony sent me up to talk to Lena.
I remember the day. Lena was half drunk and naked. She sat around naked a lot. "Shit," she'd say, "I just get dressed then some Joe comes in an' I got to strip-what the hell."
She was the first one who explained the whore trade to me. Tony didn't, he just grabbed what he could get.
"Lissen, Kid," she said, "Don't be a jerk, you gotta blow guys. It ain't so bad. You don't swallow it, you spit it out-see?"
"Yeh." I didn't see. What the hell a guy wanted to shoot in a girl's mouth for, I couldn't see.
"It's bad for you teeth," Lean said, "the gism, so you spit it out."
"Why they wanna do that?"
"Get sucked? Hell, baby, Johns love it. Besides, it's faster. You can blow a guy and get his buck in half the time if you're good at it."
I considered that, you know, that made sense. I was all for getting the dough.
"Dames like it too," Lean said. She got a half shirt on and looked less naked.
"Like what?"
"Jesus," she said. "Don't you know anything at all? Like gettin' licked."
That was the first time I heard about Frenching. She explained, and while she was telling me she crawled over close and I could see she had a funny look in her eye.
"You're a cute kid," she told me. "You wanna lay down?"
I ought to have known what she wanted, but I didn't catch on right off. She was being nice to me, so I laid on the bed.
"Take off the panties, honey."
I took them off and she was on me in a hurry. It doubled me all up. I had no idea what a crazy feeling it was-and Lena went for it like a house afire. My God, she got her tongue in me and I yelled so you could hear me a block away. She said to shut up. Of course it was new to me, and I tried to push her off for a minute, but she just kept licking and pretty soon I let her do it.
I have run into a lot of whores since who like to do it that way. They take so many dicks that they have to switch, I guess. Lena wasn't no lesbian, but she liked it for a change.
"I get a kick outa doin' it," she would say to me. "You wanna do me, honey?"
She had a big, flappy snatch, and I didn't get much kick from chewing it, but I did it because she did me. She got pretty wild doing me. She glued her mouth on it and made me rear up alright. Christ, she bore down with all six cylinders.
After that I did it to Tony, let him shoot it in my mouth. But he said I didn't do it right. I had to go back to Lena for more advice.
"You gotta hold it," she told me, sucking her finger to show me how. "Squeeze it with your lips, just like you're jackin' him. You get it?"
"Yeh. He wants me t'swallow it."
"Fuck 'im. Don't do it." She lit a cigarette and looked at her watch. "I'll show you, honey. G'wan down and tell Tony t'get me a John and you can watch."
There was a blacked-over window in her room, that went to a hall. The hallway had been added and the window wasn't needed. Anyway, I got behind it and made some scratches so I could see in, and it was a real education.
The John was a barfly that Tony sent up, but he could get it up alright. He looked like hell in his underpants, but Lena didn't care. She went down on it and made him twitch.
I had to laugh too, because she kept looking over at me behind the window. The guy didn't notice. He just laid on his back and jerked. She really give him a good working over and when he shot it she caught most of it in a handkerchief which she used so she could show me easier.
For a long time I had a picture of Lena blowing that guy. His big red dick in her mouth stayed with me for years. She showed me good.
After the guy went out, she said to me, "You can tell afterwhile about when he's goin' to blow. That's experience, honey. Then you let him squirt, an' you catch it in a towel and that's all they is to it."
"It tastes funny-Tony does anyway."
"You get used to that."
Then she laid me on the bed again: "To get the taste of him outa my mouth." She made me squirm!
The next time I did Tony he said it was better. The cook said I was pretty good if I practiced. So I did him a couple times a day for a while. My jaws hurt. He tasted bitter and salty, and so did the dishwasher.
By the time I was ten I was doing guys regular and French, and getting as much as Lena. She told me, when she was sober, that I oughta get more.
"Tony's holdin' out on you, honey. Guys like young pussy. I bet he's gettin' a couple bucks for you. So I asked a John one day.
"I paid three bucks," he said. Tony told me he paid one.
So I saved my dough and slid out. I just up and took a bus. In Cincinnati I got a hotel room. The bellhop took my suitcase up to the room and gave me a real wise eye. I was awful young, so he wasn't positive about me. But I could see the look.
"Whassmatter," I said, "you want some fun?"
He came over and ran his hand up my leg. "You fooled me, baby. How old're you?"
"Sixteen." He got two joints of finger in me and diddled.
"Like hell you're sixteen."
"So I'm older'n that."
He grinned at me and laid me on the bed. I reached down and grabbed it just as it was about to plug me.
"Hey, I get paid for that-"
"Not me, baby. I'll send you Johns." He yanked my hand away and got it in deep. "But I gotta try you-first."
I found out that was a standard line: I gotta try you first. Crap.
He booted me good, then he told me his name, Muley.
"I can get five bucks for you, baby. Two for me, three for you. I'm generous, and I get my share of nooky, right?"
"OK," I said. I found out later he got more for me. He got whatever the traffic would bear. I bore a lot of traffic the first month. I found out why Lena didn't like to keep getting dressed. And Muley got his wick dipped about once a day.
That was hard work. I didn't get out, hardly to eat; I was really too young to be such a working whore. Muley got bossy as hell and didn't like it when I went to the movies and stayed too long. The only real fun I got was going to the movies.
"Shit, you missed a ten buck score," he'd say, or "you missed a couple of quick ones-we coulda made some fast dough-"
I got tired of him. One day I eased out and never went back. I had a couple hundred saved and the clothes on my back. For about a week I just went to the movies and took it easy. Then some smart sonofabitch wanted to know why I wasn't in school. I told him I was just getting over chicken pox. It was the first thing that popped into my head. He went, but it made me think.
They could grab me and send me back. I needed protection. That's when I met Louie. Boy, I fell for him hard. He was my first pimp.
I met him through some guy I took to my room, I don't even remember who. But Louie came up to see me and 'try me out.' I blew his hat off.
He was just right for me. He got me a room over a cafe, bought me some swell clothes, and got me all the Johns I could handle. Boy, I was making it great. And giving it all to him.
In those days I wasn't too bad looking. I had nice tits and nice legs. I was always a little wide in the ass, but guys liked that. They sure liked it that I was so young. Sometimes Louie got twenty bucks for me. For all night I got as high as forty. Once in a while we got sixty or seventy bucks, but I had to take two guys all night ... at the same time.
We were saving dough to go to California or Hawaii. Louie said I could make a mint out on the coast if I could get my legs around some of them movie guys.
The cafe was run by a gun named Joe Zwill, they called him 'Swill.' He was another Tony, fat and greasy with hands all over you all the time. He said he was crazy for me. Louie said I had to be nice to him because he had influence. So Swill got free rides. He was the first guy who ever got it up the dirt road. A few other guys had wanted to, but I wouldn't let them.
Louie made me put out to him. Swill greased it up and after a few times it wasn't so bad. "That's the way the fairies do it," he said. "Zingo, in the butt."
Swill knew some politicians. He was one of those guys who made an In downtown. Cops and flunkies from city hall were in his joint all the time. A lot of them were in me too. I asked Louie if I was giving it away and he put me off.
"Don't worry, baby, the bankroll is growin'-" It ought to, I was getting flat on the ass side. There were other floozies working the cafe too, and we used to get together now and then and talk shop. A couple of them were pretty cute broads, and all were older than me, of course. They all hated Swill because none of them liked it in the butt. They were scared to cross him though, but among ourselves he didn't come off so hot.
One of the chippies was a doll named Vera who made no bones about it, she liked other dames. She was always after me. Louie didn't like that, because he never liked me to put out free stuff-unless he said to. But I let Vera have it anyway and didn't tell him.
Louie got me into my first circuses too. We put on some shows for visiting firemen in the rooms. Boy, it got wild. Mostly there was me and another broad and a guy. Sometimes two guys. But the guys were harder to find. One was a nigger boy with a nice big dick. Swill liked to have him in the line-up. But I didn't like him much, not because he was a nigger, but because he rammed too hard. He got so goddamed excited.
Mostly by the time we had one of the circus shows everybody was half drunk anyway. Sometimes there was a big audience, including other broads, not in the life. Wives sometimes, Louie told me.
But they got out of hand, the shows did. One of the first ones I was in was with Vera and a guy. Vera usually did the shows because they could get her to lick the other girl. The guys always liked that. Always.
Anyway, this show was in a small room, smoky as hell. They put a couple mattresses on the floor and turned the lights on it. The squares were sitting in chairs and around the room on pillows and things. I guess there was about a dozen, guys and dames. You could smell the excitement in the joint.
Us girls stayed out in the hall, because there wasn't any stage. Me and Vera were naked, and there was another girl to break the ice, she was mostly naked, Kitty, she sang dirty songs. The MC was a guy from the cafe, a waiter, Wally, and he sort of ran the show. So Wally went in and told a few dirty jokes and then Kitty went in and wriggled her ass and sang the songs. Jesus, the audience ate it up.
I was scared as hell, it being my first show, but Vera and the guy, I forget his name, but he had a deep tan all over except around his fanny, and his dick was real white. It was like a stripe. Vera and the guy kept telling me to take it easy, and they fed me some drinks till I didn't feel any pain.
Then all of a sudden the door opens and the guy runs me into the room. All I can see are the eyes looking at me. Then I'm flat on my back and he gets on me and bam bam bam I'm getting it and the crowd is yelling.
The guy doesn't shoot it. He boots me for a while, then he gets off and sticks it down my throat. Everybody gets real quiet. All I can hear is myself sucking on that pole. The lights are on me and I sure feel funny, doing it in front of them. It seems like I blow him for a year. Pretty soon I can hear the heavy breathing.
Then Vera comes running in and grabs the dick away from me, and Wally shoves me out the door. I almost collapse in the hall.
Then Wally comes out. "You did great, Maggie, just swell."
The whole thing is making him hard. He pushes me up against the wall and takes it out. He makes me lean over and take it up the gash from behind. "It makes me so goddam hot," he says over my shoulder. And he boots me while Vera is eating the guy inside.
When I go back inside I am full of his goo. Vera swears at me when she starts to muff dive, because she don't like gism much.
For the finale Vera does me and I blow the guy with the stripe. By that time I can look at the audience, and I see that they are squirmy too. Every show, some broad blows a guy-sometimes three or four of them get loaded and let go like that-in the audience.
There was a dog act too. I never did take the dog on, but the singer, Kitty, did. She would grin at the audience with that damn big dog poking it up her, going a mile a minute. She had a big snatch on her. Man, that Kitty!
My worst time was when I found out that Louie had spent all our dough. He liked to roll the ivory marbles on a blanket. A couple times I had to pay his I.O.U.'s on my back.
"Listen," he said to me, "so I lost it, we'll get it back-"
"I'll get it back!" I screamed at him. "I'm doin' the goddam work. I'm the one gettin' knocked up-" (I had had two abortions that year.)
He tried to soothe me, but for some reason I didn't want to be soothed. Most of the time Louie could wrap me around his finger and get anything he wanted. This time I was finished. I really didn't know why myself. But I packed up and took the bus.
I had about fifteen bucks, an orange dress and an extra pair of stockings. After a big year. Some payoff.
When I hit the big town I started hustling from a hotel and inside a week a guy came to see me. "You workin' for us, baby," he tells me.
So that's how I met Boodles. This guy takes me to see him and he put me in a house. "We'll treat you right, Maggie," Boodle says. "We're looking out for you now."
I couldn't buck the mob. Some dames tried it and had their snatches cut out. What hooker is worth a damn with only half her equipment? I went along witht he mob. It wasn't so bad. A big old dame, Fay, was the boss; and in about a year I was top girl. That meant I was making the best prices. So it wasn't the best house in town, but I was the top in that joint.
I got twenty bucks a throw when the other broads got ten. I didn't have to work all the circuses, only part, and no dogs. We had lots of circus call, three or four girls at a time and a guy or two. The hoods liked them. They got a big charge outa seeing two or three girls eating it ... each other, I mean. Our lezzie was a cute brunette named Myra. She liked it both ways, licking and getting licked.
Me and Myra put on private shows for guys, usually just one guy at a time. We'd lap each other and Myra always took it big. She's shudder and her eyes would roll up till only the whites were showing. She really jerked when it hit her, and she wasn't faking. Her clit got hard like a piece of rubber, and I could make her vibrate. The Johns loved it. They would come back over and over to see us work on each other.
The reason I know Myra wasn't faking is that she would come to my room in off hours and want to make it with me.
"Jesus, gimme a mouthful, Maggie," she would beg me. "I'm all trembly."
That was her favorite expression: Trembly. When she got trembly she was hot in the britches. So I went down on her and pretty soon she was gone. Man! she was gone!
Fay didn't like it too much. "She'll burn out," she said, meaning Myra. Fay had to show a profit and Myra was a moneymaker.
"Fuck 'er," Myra said, and we'd do it anyhow. I got pretty goddam 'trembly' too when Myra ate me. Myra ate me constantly for a couple years.
Then one night there was a fight and she got cut very bad in the gut. The doc tried to save her I know, but she had lost too much blood and was very bad cut inside. She died and man, I was heartbroken. It was like I lost a sweetheart. I didn't know I was so gone on her.
I got drunk that night. And every night for a week.
Boodle came to see me then. Fay had complained.
"You got to snap out of it, baby," he said. I just looked at him.
"You're top girl here," he said. "I don't wanna have to change that-"
"I am top girl," I told him. I was kind of proud of that.
"Alright, but you got to get back to work. Look, I know you was friends with Myra, but I got another pal for you. A dame you're gonna like. Linda."
I wasn't interested. Until I saw her. Linda was just like Myra had been. I guess Boodle made an effort to please me. He was a swell guy.
Linda was a brunette and she went for the pussy meat just like Myra. The first time we got together it was a hot little session. I just laid back and made believe it was Myra's mouth on me-and in no time at all I didn't have to make-believe. Linda was a crazy lover and I settled down again.
So I went on like that for quite a few years.
I didn't start hitting the bottle until Linda left me for another broad. But even that didn't make a drunk out of me. I got another girl and stuck to the straight and narrow.
Boodle came to see me then. He said he liked it that I didn't keep a guy, and wanted me to take over a house. I said sure.
That's how I became a madam. I didn't have to screw anymore unless I wanted to. Maggie Smith's house was a big success. We had hardly any fights and some of the best circus acts in town.
I know because I was in 'em."