I Could See Her Again, But Probably Not Any More

I recently spent a little time reconnoitring the Disney layout in Orlando. The scuttlebutt is that that outfit runs a tight ship, but it’s always a good idea to dot the “i”s and cross “t”s in terms of checking things for one’s self. We plan to bring in a cart load of students next year. First we went to see Disney Sport, than on to get a gander, first hand, at how a great American university organizes its intramural sporting options.

After Florida it was necessary to fly up to Chicago and drive down to the vast, sprawling corn fields of “down state,” to the enormous campus of the University of Illinois. Two of us visiting from a prestigious private Japanese school would be beating the bushes, chatting up the faculty, and checking into local accommodation. The U of I campus is a costly complex, dense with resources. At one point an information specialist (librarian) mentioned in passing that the school’s library was “no longer the third largest in the country,” meaning that counting books was hardly meaningful in today’s world of electronic media. Yet, to be in the top five is not that shabby after all.

For all its egg-head trappings, C-U is still down to earth. I was able to do bed rock research when breaking ground in Controversial Leisure (the field I carved out in Leisure Studies). Previously, Leisure Studies, the scholarly pursuit of the understanding of the phenomena of human leisure, tended to be sunshine and apple pie. “What about what people really do?” I wondered. Before I settled into my current curiosity about travel and travel narratives, and cultural tourism, I codified lots of areas of “purple” leisure. I talked to cock fighters, coke dealers, and strippers, for example. Eventually I wrote publications informed by field research on areas including cock fighting, fads, and prostitution.

I talked to one stalwart of an unsavoury yet popular genre in C-U. Krystal Lynn, star of stage and screen. She was dancing the night I taped our interview at the town's finest, and only, strip club, and had at that time featured in more than 15 hard-core pornography videos.

She arrived late.

She told me earlier on the phone that she was "making the circuit," performing for just a few nights each along a vast series of clubs throughout North America and in Canada. "You might not know it," she giggled into the mouthpiece, "but that's where the money is." Then, thinking a moment, she said, "in cash." Of course I have no idea why being in cash would be better.

But in broad daylight, far from the hoochi-coochi pole and the sticky bar littered with change, cigarette packs, half-filled glasses and empty hopes, yet fully pickled men, she was scheduled for an interview with the local radio station and then a "signing." I'd never been to a stripper's signing before but, since I was working on research about strippers and their impact on the local economy [example eventual publication: “Attraction of the Naughty - Gentleman’s Clubs as a Tourism Resource,” with J. Agrusa] I thought I should find out what such a thing was.

The bookstore, in reality, was an adult video shop with a small, though selective, array of so-called sex toys and broadly humorous gag gifts. It also hosted a rotating kiosk of "patch pocket books," expensive paperback books cheaply produced and apparently not spell-checked or proofread. This is one area where the computer did kill print media.

Novelty was not a virtue of these novels, I soon found, flipping through them as I cooled my heels. They eschewed variance from a boiler-plate formula, each focused closely on a particular category of audience and offered a sequence of minutely described scenarios. After a moment I began to wonder just how many different ways oral sex could be described.

My Victorian curiosity and marginal academic interest was extinguished by the unmistakable sounds of stiletto heels tap-tap-tapping across concrete. I’d worked my way through undergraduate school, partly as a bartender. As a result, my autonomic nervous system had long ago been taught to slip into a perfect balance between fight-or-flight at the noise. Few women would be in such a shop, fewer still in heels. Krystal Lynn, at that moment, rounded the end of an aisle and rapidly closed the gap between us. Except for being obviously very fit--she must work out all the time I guessed--and very sexily dressed, the actress was almost peculiarly normal in shape, height, and weight. The name was obviously a thin fiction.

In fact, she seemed to be absolutely inside the bell-curve: no mile-tall semi-anorexic model this. Nor was she a Linsey Dawn McKensie with her "cartoon-like 34GG breasts," back then in the press for having an affair with Premier League soccer-star Dean Holdsworth. She wore the tightest, shortest dress I'd ever to that moment interacted with, except of course when eyeballing videos from this very shop, and semi-glossy black very high heeled pumps. All exposed skin, and there was an astonishing amount of it, was tanned to a lush, nut brown. Hose free, her legs were powerful as a figure skater's, shapely, and absolutely smooth and absent of nick and blemish.

"I was in California," she told me, "and I liked to show it off, you know? I was about 17 and a girl friend asked me to fill in for her partner at a call out--that's when strippers go to parties. So I got into the business doing girl-girl acts. I liked it. The money was great. It was like no work and the guys would want to take you out and buy you stuff. Too much. I began my own act when I was 19, and liked it really wild. One guy said he wanted to make a movie with me; I figured he just wanted me to suck his cock. Which of course he did, but he also did make the first video with me in it."

Her bodyguard/driver came over, a young pup apparently as tough, and certainly as personable, as a fireplug. A few customers were ready. Pardoning herself, Ms. Lynn walked to the first guy (all the clients wore the rural Illinois, USA, costume: non-logoed sky-style or bomber jacket, ironed 501s, trainers). Just before sitting down on the couch in front of him, between his legs, she snapped the hem of her tissue-thin dress up to her throat. The driver popped off a Polaroid while the guy was still in a species of shock.

I noted that Krystal was cleanly shaven, her mons as bare and cute as a fresh peach.

Pop, pop, pop in ninety-seconds the guys paid their 50 bucks, clutched their instant-prints, and wandered off. Completely poised, Krystal smoothed her hem in place two-thirds up her oval, muscular thighs, and explained, "Fifty for instant beaver with me, for $20 I sign one of the 8X10s--you wouldn't believe how many Sharpies I go through--and I've got hats, posters, and stuff."

"So, anyway," she continued telling me the obviously well worn story of her life, "after two or three fuck/suck roles, I sorta specialized in anal sex films. I'm most known for my anal sex. The most popular, you know, what sells the most overall is money shots [facial or oral ejaculation images], but every girl in the valley does then. And I've got what they call “in the business,” and here she giggled very endearingly, "a bubble butt."

Turning, she looked over her shoulder and nodded her chin down. And, indeed, her foundation was of a robustly hemispheroid profile.

"A lot of the girls get boob jobs, but they still have satchel ass--firm but flat. Anyway, I like anal sex. I made a lot of money just letting myself be taped doing what I like. But, like a told you on the phone, it’s stripping that really pays. Even the best butt-bonk film doesn't get reruns, you know?"

Kristal then went off to deal with a group of 8 or 10 guys. A couple want Polaroids, but most want print or poster. She signs them, squeaking out her name with felt-tip on a glossy poster of herself on all fours, looking back at the viewer, with smaller images framing it. She sits at the folding table nude, signing, chatting with the guys. Those nose-bleed CFM heels are, I notice, functional accessories for this mercantile activity: they present her legs perfectly taut and pedestalled, pelvic plane tilted forward, her bottom fully bubbled.

Pulling down her dress, which had been like a ruffled collar at her tanned throat, she answers my question, "Yeah, if I can, I try to show as much skin as I can get away with. I figure, I'm making out like a bandit at this, and it doesn't cost a thing to show a bit of tit. It’s kinda like advertising, too, for tonight."

In spite of an established track record, and her experience stripping all over the United States, when I'm ready to go Krystal asks me a worried question, "are the other girls very good?" Local clubs rely on local talent and supplement this with headliners, today Krystal Lynn. I was, its true, a bit moved by the evidence of this human, all too human exhibition of anxiety. "This flyspeck town hosts one of the country's biggest universities," I told her, "and 51% of that 40,000 is female--some of them dance at the club. But, no, Krystal, I can't imagine that they have more poise than you do. I don't think you have a thing to worry about."

Now, although it has been a few years since my last visit – I wanted to do a little research in that great library, this time for a feature on the development of table games in the United States --- the campus is surprisingly the same. There are more sport facilities. More buildings. But the student body still mills about in that wacky orange. And, on the drive up to Chicago, the road side is still a spectacular landscape of variegated plant life in verities of greens, golds, and browns.

Sometimes A Good Cigar is Just A Smoke

In our guise—or is that “disguise,” as professionals---we do quite a lot of work in tourism. Much of it is focused on cultural and heritage tourism, the perspective embracing the lived, human experience. But naturally the field involves a large orbit and one does what is necessary to feed the hungry and clothe the naked (especially if they be one’s self and since I’ve seen myself in the mirror). In any event, recently my life and business partner (in Donlon & Donlon Consultants – I’m Donlon and she’s Donlon – not our wittiest prose work) and I flew round-the-world. This was largely a professional gig. But we also “hooked up” a few spiritual and private nodes. The undertaking took two months, a wheel-barrow of cash, & its own roll-on of specialized guide books. But then, it left us with 10 years of notes spread over 3 illlustrated bound journals, and a Seagate packed with images for future use.

I was curious how far we travelled in total but it beats me. The furthest around the globe is something like 25,000 miles. But we bounced from Tokyo to Beijing to Lhasa back to Beijing and on to Moscow and London then rattled around England hither and yon before larking on for Boston, Cape Cod, and New Orleans. Because of the merchandizing of air routes, we got to Baton Rouge via Dallas, and again to Orlando by first going west to Dallas, then north for Chicago and back South for some research in New Orleans (we have to deliver research in Thailand in a few months). Tokyo did involve generally going toward Japan, thank God.

Years ago, I recorded a narrative of other travellers in New Orleans. Our own “crooked” route puts me in mind of them and that fast and loose sort of life which once, and may in the future, give the Crescent City its attractive colour.

Bob still looked worn out. He slouched in his metal twisted-bar outdoor chair on the terrace at Cafe Du Monde, between New Orleans’s French Quarter and the mighty, muddy Mississippi. His face was deeply tanned, but his nose was splotched with red and white, bits of sun burnt skin still sloughing off. His sweaty Red Stripe t-shirt was liberal with confectioner's sugar in a wide white band down the front, the trio of beignets gone from his plate.

"Even a half dozen boxes," Mike, his friend (also a false name), was explaining, "and you can make do; if not a profit you get a free trip out of the thing. Some guys go down every two months just to have the trouser snake looked after properly and keep the tan in condition." Bob, Mike, and absent Steve were smugglers--smuggling, they claimed, Havana cigars through Can Cun.

"Oh, man!" Mike, the loud one, was whining, "there's like nothing in the pharmacies--if you need sunscreen," he said without irony, "you gotta bring it in. But the honeys! Two more cafe' au lait" he waved his cup around in the air for emphasis, attracting the Viet Namese waitress. "Nineteen, 20 year old babes for $25 US a night. They do it all, man, they do it all." Mike was a bigger man though still young, wearing a gaudy new Party Gras t-shirt and black Wayfarer Ray Ban sunglasses.

Bob and Mike claimed to be from Chicago, and Bob certainly had the tinny, flat Mid-west accent. They met Steve, who apparently also hailed from the Windy City, in Mexico and, confreres, had "partied-hearty!" in Havana for several days.
Both trade with and travel to Cuba are heavily restricted for American citizens. So, of course, many Americans busy themselves with methods of finessing travel, and with profiteering from the ridiculous embargo.

"Oh, yeah," Sal D'Amotto, buyer for Caesar's, a premier cigar emporium said, "a good Cuban is a great cigar. But there just aren't that many good Cuban cigars. It's like them frogs. Now, with the Nazis dead, every one of them was a member of the underground resistance. Fuck me! Most cigars you'll run into from Cuba are ok to just bad; made for the jerks who don't know better. You think Juan is gonna cut frat-boy on holiday a break? They may be Havanas, but they're way too young, no slow curing, way, way too much ammonia."

Sal was smoking a "Fighting Cock" cigar from the Caribbean: a short, blunt, dark stogey girded by a wildly exuberant band displaying a pair of cockerels rampant. Not a Cuban. "Now this," he took it out to admire it, "is a hell of a decent smoke for five and a half bucks."

The harried Vietnamese waitress brought more beignets piled sky-high with powdered sugar, more coffee, and more pony glasses of chilled water.

"Steve was crazy, you know? I mean, you can do just about anything there in Havana, long as you do it out of sight. Don't rub their noses in it. But that guy, he'd pick up a sweet little babe, and have his hands all over her walking down the street."

"He liked `em young —- 18, 19. So," Bob looked sincerely worried though it might just have been hangover, "I don't know if he's polishing some teenager's tonsils about now or is all bruised in some cell, belly down, taking Spanish with a couple more hombres waiting in line to give him their ‘lessons’."

If someone has to get rich Chicago lawyers bad Cuban cigars full of too much ammonia, it might as well be Bob and Mike, I thought. Mike said, "we'd go down once a year, three times in two years--I first went when I was in school downstate--you know? [Presumably downstate Illinois, meaning not in Chicago] We could party for a week, stay in a hotel, screw if we wanted to, surf, eat like pigs, and then give away all our t-shirts and pack the spare duffle with boxes."

"It's not like drugs," Bob lied, "we don't make money. But it can be kinda exciting, and Havana, even run down and with everything the hell broken, is a great city. And the women are fantastic, cheap, and very accommodating. The saying about sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch aint just a saying with the pros down there. But last time, it freaked me out. First, we lose Steve, gone without a trace. Then, I begin to get paranoid that our supplier was a cop plant, setting us up. He had so many boxes, I was sure it was bogus."

Fortunately for the pair, it apparently wasn't.

"We get 12 or 15 or 16 boxes each. That's a lot of money to put out," Bob continues, "and it's a lot to walk around Havana with, to say nothing of going into a decrepit building with some no-neck greaser with a lump at the waist of his grimy, counterfeit Tommy Hillfiger."

"But," in the end, "it was all fine. The guy is twice as honest as we are, and just as worried that w’gonna bop him on the bean." Sort of. "Got the merchandise, hit the bricks for the airport--got a ride there in a huge classic Buick with those jet ports on the side. But Christ's trousers if the little Mexican shitheels don't simply take both the duffels! ‘Contraband?’ the guy says, then Paco tosses `em behind the counter. Meanwhile I'm shittin' like a goose in gravy. It’s not even against the law, I don’t think, in Mexico, but they saw we were Americans, I guess.”

He pointed out that sometimes a good cigar is a smoke, and sometimes it’s a great way to get into a ton of hassle.

"I'm a lot happier a little light in the back pocket than in some lousy Mexican jail. No cafe au lait there, you can bet your sweet ass," Mike opined with gusto.

Part of New Orleans’ charm has been the frisson of perceived naughtiness wafting from its humid odours, carried along on its sultry breezes. I don’t know if these goofs – but then, who can say? – would be discoursing with the same élan amongst the Miros at the coffee bar at the Chicago Art Institute.


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