dragod

LET THEM EAT CAKE (2)

The first day I hung around the Mitchell Brothers Theatre, back
when Hunter was working as Night Manager, of course my
mind was on the women. Come on, who is kidding who. Very different kinds of women, with very different ideas of why they were there, and what they hoped to accomplish, not at all different from what I am beginning to hear from the women at Suicide Girls. My best friends became a cowgirl from Colorado, and two brilliant artist/grad students from San Francisco State. There was also a PHD in psychology dancing there who I lked very much

Like at Suicide all the women held in common was that each was beautiful, and that all stripped dance largely for each other, and let the men pay the money to watch the show. It seemed like that -- just a deal. With an edge of uncertainly, the deal seemed
ok for those who wanted to get in the game. It was like some big wild west american music hall cosmic strip poker game of a kind.

The friends of the Mitchell Brothers -- Hunter, Abbie Hoffman,
Hiinckle, Me, Dan O Neill, Crumb, Spain, Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Ken Kesey -- found it thrilling. What with the cops kicking down the doors every other day, we just loved the place.

Hunter -- as one might not expect -- was truly into being the Night Manager. When the drugs didn't take him totally away,
which happened often enough, he could be as friendly as a
collie, or a lab, or, (as one's worst instict wants to say) a cocker spaniel.

Perhaps some of the women didn't want anything to
do with him -- of course that was possible, even likely, what with
the diversity of personalites among the dancers. But many seemed to just love the guy.

He was forever going off in corner, or sneaking off to couch in the outer office, to sit down and work out, and offer comments and ideas, with the dancers for new dance routines.

I don't think he had an actual girl friend there. But then, unless
you were a lesbian, very few of us did. What was never known
enough, or appreciated, about the Mitchell Brother's was that the women wrote their own script when it came to the shows, and what they would take, and what would not take from the audience. Men voted with their dollars, backing some shows more than others; but the women always held final sway.

And what was an amazing scene for guys like little old Irish
Roman Catholic me -- new to an atmosphere of total sexual radicalism. At the change of shift. the significant others showed up to take their girflriends home.

Many of the girls would talk, and flirt, and play games with the other girls, and us guys all day -- but at change of shift time this small army of dykes would show up in leather jackets, and you could cut the tension with a knife. Poor silly O'Neill would often be found hiding somewhere in the dressing room, maybe stuck inside some sister's locker, and he would literally get punched out sometime by the angry lovers who had come by to pick up their gals. It was truly brain scrambling to be there at times. And all this was long before any of us could even smell the violence that was coming.

-- End of Part Two