How to Talk Dirty and Influence People

Synopsis:Last month, in Part I of his autobiography, Lenny Bruce detailed the crazy quilt of childhood experiences that influenced his development into the most controversial comedian of our time. He described his Depression- and divorce-sundered family; his awkward introduction to sex; his two happy years with a hard-working farm family and the disillusionment that followed his discovery that his self-adopted "family" considered him just another hired hand. He told of his enlistment, at 16, in the Navy during World War II; of his preference for battle over boredom on the U.S.S. Brooklyn: and of winning a speedy discharge at war's end by masquerading as a WAVE. Finally, he recounted his first onstage encounter with show business -- as emcee for his mother's dance act. Beginning Part II, we find Bruce, in 1945, unsteadily perched on the bottom rung of vaudeville's rickety ladder to fame.

I Began to make the rounds of agents' offices in Manhattan, and got in with Buddy Friar, an amateur agent who had an office in the Roseland Building, now torn down.

There were 15 or 20 clubs -- such as Squires in Long Island, the Clay Theater in New Jersey, George's Corners in Greenwich Village, the Blue Haven in Jackson Heights -- that would put on amateur shows to fill in on slow nights. Supposedly, people from the audience would be called on as contestants. Actually, we were the forerunners of the rigged quiz shows.

The prizes were $100, $50 and $25. We "amateurs" would sit around the club, and when they called for volunteers we would get up. We were paid $2 apiece, carfare and, if we won, an empty envelope.

One of the other "amateurs" was a waiter from the Bronx who always sang Sorrento. When he reached the last four bars his face used to get red and his neck blue. I think he got a hand from the audience just for the fact that he lived through the number.

There was also some nut from Rye, New York, whose act consisted of standing on a chair, jumping straight up into the air and then diving and landing square on his head. Not on his hands, mind you; they were held tight to his sides. No, he would land smack on his goddamn head. It was a short act but it certainly was a hell of an opener.

There was another guy who played the sweet potato, doing a medley of patriotic songs like The Caissons Go Rolling Along. Then there was a performer known as "Al Jolson, Jr." -- he was about 65 years old. And there was a girl acrobatic dancer who used to come to the club with all her lights, costumes, props, and her mother. I always wondered why no one ever caught on. Did they think that she just happened to drop in that night lugging all her paraphernalia?

Sometimes legitimate amateurs would try to get on, but they would be told that there wasn't enough time.

The winner was selected by holding a hand over the contestant's head and asking for applause. I never won. The sweet potato usually did. He had a limp and wore a double-size ruptured duck he had made especially for himself; you could see it from anywhere in the house. This gave me an idea for the first bit of material I ever did that caused controversy.

My agent had a pro date to fill on a Saturday night in Staten Island, at a place called The Melody Club. Since it had struck me funny that anyone who had been in the service would use that fact to gain rapport with the audience, I had a picture taken of all my campaign ribbons and medals (including a Presidential Unit Citation), had it enlarged, and put it on. I had the band play a big fanfare and Anchors Aweigh. Then I came out and said, "I stole this routine from Dick Powell and Ruby Keeler."

Right away one guy wanted to punch me in the nose for making fun of the ribbons. It was the first time I felt real hostility from an audience. And they'd missed the point.

The owner asked me to take the bit out for the second show. I tried to explain that I was trying to make fun of a guy who would do such a thing, not of the ribbons. He replied, "When in Rome do as the Romans do."

"OK, but I'll never play Rome again."

And I haven't played Staten Island since.

After four or five months of these amateur gigs, I wrote a little act for myself which eventually refined into the Hitler bit, wherein the dictator was discovered and handled by MCA. And I did all the standard impressions -- Cagney, Lorre, Bogart -- in double-talk German.

Marvin Worth, who later became a writer on the Steve Allen Show, had a lot of faith in my comedy prowess and decided to be my manager. He and his partner, Whitey Martin, and another agent, Bob Starr, got me on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts show, which I won.

Within a few months I became "hot" -- I was making $450 a week and working everything "good" -- the Strand on Broadway, the Tick Tock in Milwaukee -- and, around 1951, the consensus of showbiz opinion was, "Anybody can get a laugh with dirty toilet jokes; it takes talent to get laughs with clean stuff. You'll go a long way, Lenny, you're funny and clean."

Tears filtered through my lashes and rivered along each side of my nose. I was overcome with emotion -- for I was blessed with talent; I didn't have to resort to dirty toilet jokes.

Then I started worrying ... how dirty is my toilet?

I lay in bed, thinking about the "dirty-resort-to-anything-for-a-laugh" comedian. This could be the start of making the word "resort" dirty. Comedians who work resorts, entertaining people who go to resorts, are certainly resorting.

I couldn't contain my religious fervor. I exploded from the bedroom, thundered down the hall and threw open the door to that odious place -- the "resort."

I screamed, "You dirty, filthy, stinky, crappy, Commie, dopey toilet! Thank God I don't have to resort to you to make people laugh. It's just a shame that there aren't laws to keep you and your kind out of a decent community. Why don't you go back where you came from? Take the tub and the sink and that jellyfish hamper with you! Even though their names aren't as dirty as yours, anybody who'd live with a toilet must be resort-addicted. Purists don't even go to the toilet. All I can say to you, toilet, is -- it's lucky you're white!"

After theaters started closing and night clubs felt the absence of war, some show people couldn't get work and actually did have to resort to toilets. Not discussing them; cleaning them.

What happens to people whose vocations become outmoded?

Take Horace and Hilda, a dance team. They were a by-product of World War II. Not a very good dance team: everything good was sent overseas to be killed. Horace handled the business, making the rounds of agents: Horace, fighting for breath in the abundance of the icy wind that trilled and wheezed around the Brill Building, echoing with the sound of a behemoth Goliath with bronchitis.

Horace and Hilda had met at the Arcadia Ballroom -- "Dancing nitely, fun for all ages, no minors allowed." Hilda had been fortunate: she had a classical-ballet background received at the Bur-rough Hall Y.W.C.A. every Tuesday between eight and nine P.M., immediately after the Public Speaking Salesmanship class convened.

She had a big keister and no nay-nays. She was built like a pear. Ballet helped her so she didn't have any fat. Rather, she was very muscular. A muscular pear.

Horace lived flamenco and spent all of his time in the rehearsal halls striking the classic flamenco pose. The way he stood looked to Hilda as if he were applauding his ass. Horace was a faggot, an out-and-out flaming faggot. He didn't swish but he was sort of like an old auntie. He was so obvious that everyone knew he was a faggot except Hilda and her family. They didn't know because they were very religious and Horace acted just like a lot of ministers she had seen in her formative years.

Horace had chosen show business because it was best for him since he was so obviously nellie; not that show people have more of a Christian attitude toward their fellow men and are less likely to look askance at one who is out of step -- it's just that their egos are so big and they are so self-centered that they haven't the time to concern themselves with the individual and his problems.

As with drug addicts, Horace's homosexual traits were environmental. He wasn't "born that way." He was introduced to a group once that gave him identity. He was a stock boy at Macy's and after one summer at Atlantic City he came back a faggot. He could just as easily have come back a junkie or a water skier or a Jehovah's Witness -- the point is. he came back as something.

"At least I'm something," is the keynote. "I belong to a group. I share their notoriety, their problems, their laughter." In a crowded arena, the cliché "It takes one to know one" is actually a profound philosophy.

At any rate, Horace blossomed in this anthropophagous society. He became poetic in his facility to relate in the argot of the citizens of Groupery in the county of Padded Basketdom -- the esoteric delight in passing a complete stranger and shrilling, "Get you, Annie!": the same idiomatic rapport of the nighttime junkie who is looking to score. Horace became a faggot simply because he wanted to belong.

Well, the Korean War weeded out some of the population and helped the housing problem, but it didn't leave the dramatic impact that World War II did. As the impact lessened, so did the desire to escape lessen. And all the escape hatches -- the bars, night clubs, theaters -- felt it. And the people who depended economically upon these media also felt it.

Horace and Hilda were part of this milieu.

I was luckier. Comedy is an amorphous craft in the sense that there are no academies, there are no formulas. There are no books on comedy that can train an aspirant to command a salary of $200,000 a year, but it is a craft and it can be learned.

The reports on me were now: "All Lenny Bruce seems concerned with is making the band laugh." That should have been my first hint of the direction in which I was going: abstraction. Musicians, jazz musicians especially, appreciate art forms that are extensions of realism, as opposed to realism in a representational form.

The Club Charles in Baltimore was my last bomb, then. The owner asked me if I had any good numbers like "The Golf Lesson." This routine was sort of degenerated Dwight Fiske. I told the owner I didn't have any good numbers like that.

Jack Paar, Sophie Tucker, Joe E. Lewis and the other comedy performers of their generation grew up in our culture at a time when the discussion of sex was secretive (continued on page 152)How To Talk Dirty(continued from page 142) and chic, so that the double-entendre comedian was considered quite daring. It delighted the customer to be "in" -- "Ha, ha, you know what that means, don't you?"

My generation knows -- and accepts -- what that means, so there is no need for humor in that whoopee-cushion vein.

This is not an indictment of the performers of that era, for I know (and it disturbs me greatly) that soon I will be out of touch. I am 37 and already I can't relate to Fabian.

There's nothing sadder than an old hipster.

• • •

During this post-War period, I was afraid I didn't have it as a comedian. I had the mental facility, but I didn't have the psychological capacity to accept rejection, which I sure got a lot of in those days. It was after work in one of those showbiz restaurants -- the Hanson's of Baltimore, where everybody has his picture hanging on the wall -- that I bumped into Tommy Moe Raft, who was a terrifically funny burlesque comic. I had seen him work several times and admired him immensely.

Sitting next to him was a stripper who was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen in my life.

She had long red hair that she actually sat on. She had a face that looked like a kindergarten teacher's. Since she was obviously a natural redhead, she wore very little make-up, stood about five feet, seven inches tall, and had strength-and-health-club measurements. Her firm, alabaster breasts that were mapped with light, delicate blue veins, showed from her low-cut Frederick's of Hollywood dress, and I suddenly realized the attraction: Honey Harlowe was a composite of the Virgin Mary and a $500-a-night whore.

I sat with Tommy and he introduced us. Then he invited me to a party that she also was attending.

I took a cab there and walked up the stairs, heading for the door with the noise. The host was a manufacturer of aluminum awnings, and he "just loved show people." They used to give parties and get drunk, and then the husband would love his show people (the strippers and the girl singers) and the wife would love her show people (the acrobats and the emcees).

Everybody at this party was sober, and quite proper. Some people were exchanging cute little off-color jokes, and a few intellectuals were discussing the decadence and lack of culture in Baltimore. Honey and I just stared at each other and got hot.

Suddenly, right there on the sofa, in the midst of 20 to 30 people, we were hugging and kissing and rubbing and groping and embarrassing everyone at the party.

This was something special. I knew, and I didn't want to know it. Besides, who wanted "something special"? I was half-glad and half-sorry when I realized I wouldn't be around long enough to find out: I had made previous plans to ship out on a merchant ship after the Baltimore engagement. I was bored and depressed, so I had signed up.

If I had met Honey before, maybe I wouldn't have.

• • •

I was on the Luckenbach Line bound for Turkey, Greece, Marseilles, back to the Mediterranean I couldn't wait to get out of a few years before.

Two ships performed the same function -- transporting men and objects across the Atlantic from one place to another: one place was Pier 92 on New York's West Side, the other was Marseilles -- the two ships were the U. S. S. Brooklyn and the Samuel Brown. And I was on them both.

Samuel Brown might live in Brooklyn -- but in Red Hook, not in Seagate. He alone could never attain the stature of all the individual little people in all the neighborhoods from Kensington and Bay Ridge to Bensonhurst and Coney Island who collectively make up the borough -- rich, influential and powerful. That essentially is the difference between the merchant marine and the United States Navy. Though the merchant seaman commands less esteem (there are no campaigns to write letters to the boys on tramp steamers and no USO shows at Christmastime), he has an easier life and makes more money, which are a pair of compensatory factors carrying no small weight.

I shared a compartment with two West Indian Negroes who were immaculate in their personal habits, and quite entertaining to listen to. They had a unique sound: "Mon, what de hell awr ye tawkin' about? You don't speek de king's Hinglish!"

They were marvelous seamen, and one of them with whom I became very friendly, Caleb Chambers, had been all over the world 60 times. It never failed to amaze me that he was as much at home in North Africa, Casablanca or Gibraltar as he was in San Pedro, California. It really knocked me out to hear him give directions. I've traveled the States extensively, but my knowledge of places is extremely limited. I can tell you how to get from the Civic Center in Los Angeles to Hollywood and Highland Boulevard, or how to get from O'Hare Airport in Chicago to Mister Kelly's on Rush Street, but so could Caleb.

He could also tell you how to get from the Medina in Casablanca to the Valletta in Malta, and advise you on the fastest, cheapest way to get there. But what really bugged me was that he was so familiar with everything everywhere that sometimes, when we would hit port, he wouldn't even bother going ashore. Imagine docking in Istanbul and staying on ship!

I have been to about 30 different countries and I'm ashamed to admit that my knowledge of the sights, culture, art and customs is on a par with the limited perspective of any other sailor. In Lisbon, the only place I know is the American Bar and Madame Krashna's. The same in Marseilles, Oran, Algiers, Izmir. The only place I know a little bit about is Libya. That's because the whorehouses are off limits. If you get caught in one of them, a fine and a jail sentence are mandatory.

I am enough of a snob to not mind having a record for jewel theft, embezzling or safecracking; but doing time for getting caught in a whorehouse would really be humiliating.

This is a warped concept, I realize. We Americans have a negative attitude toward prostitution which is not shared by foreign peoples. Even the words "French brothel" sound exotic, nearly romantic, compared to "cathouse." And they are more romantic. They cater to the imagination and the spirit as well as the body. Here, it's disgustingly cut and dried.

In Marseilles, for example, there was a place called Madame Claridge's which was delightful. They had an Arabian jazz trio, a bar and, of course, lots of girls. They charged admission, which I suppose you could call a "cover charge." Many guys used to go there just to drink and absorb a part of culture few American men ever experience.

If a guy walks into an American bar with the thought of picking up a girl, he will get an audible, hostile rejection from at least 90 percent of the women lie approaches. And a painful physical rejection from the boyfriends of some of the other 10 percent when they return from the men's room. At Madame Claridge's, however, if you had a neurotic imagination, you could pretend that you were walking into an American bar and that every girl you tapped (you had your choice of 20 or 30 beautiful ladies) was willing to go upstairs with you.

Their return English is always questioning, in the few broken phrases they know: "How much you got?" "Short time?" "All night?" "Costume show?"

The costume show is an institution which might well be studied by clinical psychologists. Although I assume none of these girls has ever read Krafft-Ebing, I am sure they are instinctively cognizant of the many erotic fetishes which men have and are willing to pay for in order to have them catered to.

The costume show cost 1000 francs extra, which in those days was about $20. This might seem expensive, but we were getting $10 a carton for cigarettes which we bought tax-free for about 50 cents a carton.

You had a choice of basic settings -- rooms complete with the particular decor required by the girl in costume to play her part.

1. The Housewife Room. The room was decorated like a homey kitchen. The girl wore a white cotton dress, an apron, no make-up, her hair pulled back simply in a bun. I didn't understand French, but since she had a complete routine memorized I called in a friend to translate for me. "Ah, Antoine, you naughty boy, you are late again. Tsk, tsk, tsk. You are making your poor mother gray with worry. Ah, quel dommage, you look disturbed, my son. Here, sit by Momma. There, that is better, no? See, I'll massage your back. But don't do anything naughty to me. Antoine! Antoine! What are you doing? I am your mother! In a moment I will have to ask you to stop...."

2. The Seminary. This cost 2000 francs, but it was worth it. The room was a bare monastery cell with only a wooden table, some straight chairs and a straw pallet. Religious statues, pictures and candles were everywhere. The "towel girl" led me in and left me alone there, and as I looked about I was furious that when I would tell my friends in the States about it, they would think it was a lie. Not only that, but they might have me committed. And I was at least as sane as the hundreds of men who visited this place seriously, men who we would consider decadent and degenerate, and, more than that, in some twisted way, fanatically religious.

In a moment my thoughts were interrupted by a beautiful "nun," complete in her habit, white starched headpiece, cross around her neck, gold wedding band and all. I was so excited that I offered her a 2000-franc tip if she would just sit and talk to me in her broken English; that was a twist -- a nun confessing to me. I was fascinated with her description of the operation. Some of her stories made my hair stand on end.

3. The Nursery. This was a sunny little room with small furniture, and an actual crib, with animal pictures and Mother Goose characters painted on the walls. There were all sorts of toys, a rocking horse, a music box, and lots of dolls. The girl was dressed in a little starched white organdy dress, and she acted as if she were no more than 12 years old. One of the musicians, who was her fiancé, told me later that she made more money than all the other girls put together. Especially in tips from men who got gratification from ripping the clothes off her, literally tearing her outer- and undergarments to shreds. Of course it put a lot of physical strain on her because most of these men demanded that she struggle, for they desired not the sexual act so much as the illusion that they were violating her.

4. The Torture Chamber. Again, macabre though I be, I am not making this up. If this were a production of the Grand Guignol it would have in the program, "Sets and costumes by the Marquis de Sade." The walls were blood red and adorned with whips and instruments of torture of all descriptions. There were pictures of men and women in every conceivable pose of suffering and debasement. A record played the Danse Macabre. When the girl entered, made up in a satanic manner, wearing a long black Dracula cape, I really shuddered. She bolted the door. She meant business! How could I tell her I was only window-shopping?

She took off the cape purposefully. Underneath she wore only brief black panties and a push-'em-up bra, arm-length leather gloves, and what looked like hip-length leather-laced stockings with spike heels that were easily six-inches high. She walked toward me and menaced me with a riding crop, raised it over her head and screamed something in French, baring her sharp white teeth. Just as in nearly every other delicate situation in my life, I began to laugh. She got quite insulted and threw me out.

I had laughed myself right out of a beating.

• • •

When I talk on the stage, people often have the impression that I make up things as I go along. This isn't true. I know a lot of things I want to say; I'm just not sure exactly when I will say them. This process of one subject automatically associating itself with something else is referred to as "stream of consciousness" à la James Joyce.

I think one develops a style like that from talking to oneself. I don't actually talk to myself out loud -- "Hello, Lenny, how are you today?" -- rather, it's a form of thinking. And out at sea you have a lot of time to think. I would just think all day and all night. All different kinds of things.

Sometimes I would talk out loud up on the bow, where tons of water actually bend the shield plate. You would never figure water to be so hard that it could bend steel, but I've seen it happen.

In the spring, however, the Atlantic Ocean is very pleasant, and the trip isn't so bad. The first land you sight is a thrilling experience. I must have played Columbus hundreds of times. It was really fun, standing those bow watches all alone.

I always felt that the Azores were going to sink, because on the map they're just a bunch of little dots. And everything that's on the Azores is shipped in. There was even a Turkish seaman who had gotten an attack of appendicitis on board his ship, and they had let him off at the Azores, where we picked him up.

He bunked with Caleb and me. He had a little leather bag in which he kept all his worldly possessions. He didn't speak any English, but when he sat down on the bunk, I tried to communicate with him anyway, asking him what had happened to him, although we already knew.

People are the same the world over. Just like an old lady from the Bronx, he proudly showed us his appendix scar.

I gave him two candy bars which he devoured immediately, and Caleb gave him soap and a towel. He scowled at us, and I guessed that probably in his country a towel and soap meant only one thing -- that you were in need of same. I tried to explain in sign language. I sniffed him and smiled, in order to show that we all have towels and soap to keep in our lockers if and when we need them.

He wrote his name in Turkish for us, and we wrote our names in English for him. It seemed to be turning out like a Richard Halliburton story.

But then he opened his little bag and offered us something. I didn't know what the hell it was. It looked like bunches of strips of leather. I asked Caleb if he knew what it was, and he said maybe it was some sort of "good-luck leather." He took a piece and pushed it toward my face, and I pantomimed to the Turk: "Should we eat it?" -- and then it dawned upon him that we didn't know what it was.

He gestured for a knife and a cigarette. He took the cigarette and opened it up, dumping the tobacco out on the bench; then he started chopping up the leather and the cigarette tobacco, until he had it evenly mixed. He took a pipe from his bag, filled it, and lit it. Oh, that was it -- some sort of religious ritual like the Indians have on first meeting -- a peace pipe.

The tobacco was rather strong, and we passed it around several times, but when the pipe came to me the fifth time, for no apparent reason Caleb looked hysterically funny to me, and I started to laugh, and Caleb started to laugh, until we were carrying on like a couple of damned idiots.

"Oh, my God, this son of a bitch has us smoking hashish!"

As soon as I got the word out. he nodded and laughed, too. We smoked some more, and when it came time to go on watch, the relief man came and said, "Time to go topside," and I thought that was the funniest goddamned thing I'd ever heard in my whole life.

We laughed so hard that it scared the relief man, and he went away and didn't bother us anymore.

With in a week I could communicate perfectly with Sabu (the name I'd christened him). I made Harpo Marx look, slow. I'm sure Vincent Price would have been honored to have me on his team on the TV version of charades.

No matter how hard I tried, though, I couldn't make Sabu believe that it was against the law on American ships to smoke dope. He wanted to know why, and I honestly couldn't tell him. He asked me what I used to get high, I told him whiskey, and he was horrified.

Since then, I've learned that Moslems do not drink. But they sure smoke a lot of that lovelorn. It's based on their religious-health laws. Imagine that: religious laws to smoke dope. But here's the capper: They're right. Alcohol is a deterrent that destroys tissues which cannot be rebuilt. It is toxic, and damages one of the most important organs in the body that cannot repair itself or be repaired -- the liver. Whereas, for example, no form of cannabis saliva (the hemp plant from which marijuana is made) destroys any body tissue or harms the organs in any manner.

This is a fact that can be verified by any chemistry professor of any university in the United States. Nevertheless, the possession of marijuana is a crime:

Public Defender: Your Honor, I make a motion that the prosecution's statement, "Was involved and did encourage others to partake in this immoral degenerate practice" be stricken from the record. The word "immoral" is entirely subjective and not specific.

Judge: Objection overruled. Existing statutes give this word, in the context used, legal credence. Can counselor refer to an existing statute that labels marijuana users as moralists?

Public Defender: Which moralists are we using as criteria? Sherman Adams? Earl Long? Jimmy Walker? Or does the court refer to the moralists who violated Federal law -- segregationists, traitorous anarchists that have given ambiguity to the aphorism, "Of the people, by the people, for the people...." Or the moralist who flouted Federal law -- the bootleg coders flowed with billions, illegal whiskey drunk by millions. A moral standard that gives mass criminal rebellion absolution? In the realm of this subject, the Defense requests that the six men on this jury be disqualified on the grounds of unfitness.

Judge: Can the Public Defender qualify this charge?

Public Defender: The Defense submits these qualitative and quantitative documents in answer to the Court's query.

Judge: (Reading the documents aloud.)"... And these six jurors have sworn in the presence of a notary that their daily alcoholic consumption, martinis for lunch and manhattans before dinner, totals an average of a half-pint per day. Jurist also stated motivations for drinking: 'Gives me a lift.' 'Need a boost once in a while.' 'After a frustrating day at the office a couple of belts lift me out of the dumps.' " I fail to see the merit in your plea to disqualify. What is your point, succinctly?

Public Defender: One cannot cast the first stone -- if already stoned.

(Dissolve to interior of jury room and new set of jurors.)

First Woman: You know, I was thinking, that Public Defender was right. A crutch is a crutch no matter if it is made of wood or aluminum.

Second Woman: A couple of those jurors gave me the creeps anyway. That one with the thick fingers looked like a real moron.

Third Woman: And the other one with those sneaky eyes. I can always tell a person's character by his eyes.

First Woman: To serve on a jury in a civil case is easy, but when you're dealing with drug addicts it's rough. This damned jury duty has me a nervous wreck. I had to take five sleeping pills to get some rest last night. You build up a tolerance to the damned things so quickly. I feel miserable today. I'm really dragging.

Second Woman: Here, take one of these Dexies.

First Woman: What are they for?

Second Woman: They're Amphetamine, Dexedrine Spansules. My doctor gave them to me for depression and fatigue. They really give you a lift. I take them all the time except when it's "that time of the month" -- then I take Demerol.

Third Woman: (Rummaging through her purse and producing a handful of pills.) Do you know what these red-and-white ones are? My neighbor's doctor gave them to her to try out. They're supposed to be for nerves. Better than Miltowns.

Second Woman: Oh, these are Deprols. Umm, no, wait a minute, I think they're Phenobarbs.

(An elderly woman juror, silent until now, turns and speaks.)

Elderly Woman: Come on, ladies. We need a verdict. What are we going to do with this man?

First Woman: Oh, yes -- the dope addict. How does a person sink that low?

So I do not understand the moral condemnation of marijuana, not only because of its effects as contrasted with those of alcohol, but also because, in my opinion, Dexedrine, Amphetamine, and all tranquilizers are crutches for people who cannot face life without drugs.

Surprisingly enough, there are actually psychotics in high public places that have been reported to have sympathetic feelings concerning the stiff penalties received by the marijuana users and other narcotics offenders. Judging from the newspapers and movies, one would believe that drug users are sick, emotionally immature, degenerates, psychos, unstable. They are not right in the head. They are weirdos. So, I would assume, they belong in jail with all the other crazy people.

Or do you believe all that crap about mental-health programs? I mean, you don't actually believe there are crazy people, do you? You don't actually believe people are emotionally unstable, do you? A person is only bad because he wants to be. You can do anything you want to. Anything. You can memorize 12,000,000 different telephone books -- all the names inside them.

Or can you do anything you want? Do you perhaps believe in the existence of mental illness, but still feel that treatment for the mentally ill should be duplexed? Good nuts, the ones who blow up trains with 300 people or repeatedly try to kill themselves, should be sent to Bellevue or other institutions equipped with mental-health programs; but bad nuts, who try to kill themselves with heroin or other narcotics, should be sent to jail.

After all, what's the sense of sending a narcotics addict to a hospital for intensified therapy and perhaps curing him in three years, when you can have him in and out of jail three times over a period of 10 years? Then, the last time, you've got him for good!

I don't know about you, but I rather enjoy the tax money that is spent to arrest, indict, convict, imprison, parole, and then re-imprison these people. I'd just piss it away on beer, anyway.

I must admit that, since a certain incident, I've never given a penny to mental health. I shan't mention the city in which this occurred because I have no desire to cause any trouble for the individual involved (although, what with his being a genuine masochist, he might love the trouble). And certainly I have no moral judgment to bestow on him -- which others certainly would, if they recognized him from my description.

I discovered the truth about this guy through a friend of mine, this chick who was a hooker (vernacular for prostitute); the guy was one of her tricks (customers). Anyway, this noffka (Yiddish for hooker) told me about a trick who didn't want anything but a good beating. He was willing to pay from $100 to $500, depending upon how ingenious and sadistic the amusement she devised for him was each evening.

She described the guy in detail to me -- his home, his personal appearance, right down -- or up -- to his toupee.

Then, another hooker, who, I'm positive, didn't know the first chick, told me about this same trick one night and said that he had asked her to bring her boyfriend along to help work him over. She was a little wary about asking her boyfriend to do this because he was a rather surly type and inclined, perhaps, to get a little carried away with his work, which was important to avoid, because this trick insisted that he was never to be hit above the shoulders. He was an important man and had to travel in respectable business circles, and couldn't afford to have his scars seen in public.

She asked me if I would accommodate her that evening and punch him around a bit. Somehow, I didn't feel quite up to it -- I don't know, maybe I'm just a sissy -- and I graciously declined her offer. I was sorry about it afterward, because the next day she saw me and complained that they hadn't been paid because, sure enough, her boyfriend had gotten a little overexuberant and given the trick a black eye and a swollen jaw.

Now here's the capper, and I swear it is true. That afternoon there was a meeting of the heads of the mental-health campaign, and I had been asked to contribute my services as a performer to a fund-raising show they were organizing. I attended the meeting with the other acts, planning the billing and staging, and so forth, and we had to wait for about 10 minutes for the president of the committee to arrive. I had met the gentleman before, a very imposing, robust businessman with a brusque good nature and a toupee that nearly matched the graying hair at his temples.

Till the moment he walked in, I had never connected him with that trick, nor would I have in a million years. But there he was, black eye, swollen jaw and all. It was like a cheap old Charlie Chan movie; the Chief of Police turns out to have committed the series of brutal murders.

Immediately everyone displayed great concern over him. "What happened?" "You poor thing!" "Oh, my God, George, look at your eye!"

He sat down wearily and told his tale:

"I was coming out of the Plymouth House last night, about two in the morning, meeting with the board from the United Fund, you know, and in the parking lot there were these two chaps attacking a young girl. Well, I grabbed one of them and knocked him out and clipped the other one, when six more jumped out from behind a car. You see, it was a setup: the girl was in on it -- part of the gang, I guess. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my back. I mean I couldn't handle them all."

"Were there any witnesses?" I asked.

"No. At two o'clock in the morning, I might just as well have been alone in the jungle."

"Weren't there any cops around?"

"No. Isn't that the damnedest thing, Len? It's always that way -- when you want a cop, you can't find one. They're too busy giving out parking tickets."

"Well," piped up the inevitable cliché expert, "it's a lucky thing you didn't get killed."

"Yes," he agreed philosophically, "I guess I am lucky, after all."

I thought to myself: He probably would love to get killed, if only somehow he would be able to live through it to enjoy it.

I am not trying to project an image of myself as pure, wholesome and All-American. Again, I certainly am not making any value judgment of others and attempting to put myself on a high moral level above anyone else. As I have said, I have indulged myself in houses of prostitution.

I try to keep in mind that the only difference between a Charles Van Doren, a Bernard Goldfine, a Mayor Curley or a Dave Beck, and me, is that they got caught. I am always offended by a judge or district attorney with an Academy Award sense of moral indignation. I have great respect for the offices of law enforcement and preservation, but I'll never forget that William O'Dwyer was the D.A.

I love my country, I would give allegiance to no other nation, nor would I choose any other for my home, and yet if I followed a U.S. serviceman and saw the enemy bind him, nude, lying face down and then pouring white-hot lead into a funnel that was inserted in his keister, they wouldn't even have to heat another pot for me. I would give them every top secret, I would make shoe-shine rags out of the American flag, I would denounce the Constitution, I would give them the right to kill every person that was kind and dear to me.

Just don't give me that hot-lead enema.

So that's how low I am. That's what I would resort to, to keep that lead out of my ass. I spent four battle years in the Mediterranean and saw starving priests, doctors and judges. I saw ethics erode, again, according to the law of supply and demand.

So I am not offended by war in the same way that I am not offended by rain. Both are "motivated" by need.

I was at Anzio. I lived in a continual state of ambivalence: guilty but glad. Glad I wasn't the GI enjoying that final "no-wake-up-call" sleep on his blood-puddled mud mattress. It would be interesting to hear his comment if we could grab a handful of his hair, drag his head out of the dirt and ask his opinion on the questions that are posed every decade, the contemporary shouts of: "How long are we going to put up with Cuba's nonsense?" "Just how many insults can we take from Russia?"

I was at Salerno. I can take a lot of insults.

War spells out my philosophy of "No right or wrong" -- just "Your right, my wrong" -- everything is subjective.

After we resolved our conflict with the villainous English, the Indians were next. They had some absurd notion that since they were here before us, they had some claim upon the land.

Setting a precedent for Nazi purging, we proved to those dunderhead Indians the correctness of the aphorism "Possession is nine tenths of the law." If you have any doubts about that, if you're ever in Miami, drive to the one tenth: the Seminole Indian reservation, in the mosquito-ridden, agriculture-resistant Everglades swamps.

The next suffering people we had to liberate were the Mexicans. We took Texas and California. But we always maintained a concept of justice. We left them a land where holy men could walk: the desert.

Later, continuing with our hollow, rodomontade behavior, we involved ourselves in the war to end all wars.

After going out on a limb like that, there were wars that followed nonetheless, especially the one that took courageous Americans, heroic Russians, invincible Englishmen, and the indefatigable French, who shared moral unity, having God and Irving Berlin on their side, and censuring those who offended the principles of Christianity -- the Italians.

Where was I? Coming out of a whorehouse in Marseilles -- the mental-health official would have been so happy in The Torture Chamber.

Sometimes when I work onstage I make these stream-of-consciousness transitions so smoothly from one point to another that the audience doesn't realize until later that I have forgotten to tie up the idea I began with. More than once, someone has come back to the club and tried to get back in, demanding to find out the ending.

• • •

Something unusually emotional was happening to me during that merchant marine time. I found that the longer I stayed away from Honey Harlowe, the more involved I became with her. It was so new to me -- what others had called "being in love" -- and I discovered that I actually enjoyed abstaining: a sort of selfless sacrifice. I just was not interested in participating in sexual relations with anyone but Honey.

It was an amazing experience for me. I was 25 and I had dated at least 200 girls and been promiscuous with twice that number (since this included those I never "dated," in dressing-room bacchanals, chorus girls and strippers who had nothing else to do till their nails got dry). It was an inescapable fact: I was hooked on Honey.

When our ship hit Spain I took all of the money I had saved and called Honey. It took me a long time to trace her, from one club to another, and finally to her mother, but then at last I heard her voice.

I told her I loved her and I was coming home.

• • •

Honey and I got married ... I was wed to a stripper!

Strippers were only a step above hookers, even as late as 1951. The first great break-through -- or, rather, breakdown -- of society's nudity/lewdity guilt-by-association was the now-famous Marilyn Monroe calendar. Marilyn's respectability when she died was based principally upon her economic status, which is, in the final analysis, the only type of status our society really does respect.

There were a number of other steps which she took to climb down off the barbershop mirror and up the ladder of acceptability, to the chairmanship of the Board of Directors of her own corporation. Joe DiMaggio was the first rung in that ladder. In marrying all America's All-American, she challenged society to condemn its own honored image of the red-blooded hero prototype. After all, would Jolting Joe ever take as a wife someone who we could not admire?

After she had thus won the "workers' vote," she copped the intellectuals' approval in a tour de force by becoming Mrs. Arthur Miller. (He's a brilliant fellow -- would he demean himself by climbing into bed with someone who was not his equal? She reads Dostoievsky!)

Other bovine ladies began to bare their chests for a frank and honest appraisal of their inner spiritual qualities. I have in mind that picture of Sophia Loren sitting in a public restaurant, quite exposed herself, in a gown of delicate décolleté, but staring at Jayne Mansfield's naked nipple peeking out of her low-cut sheath as if to say, "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

Marilyn Monroe was Playboy magazine's first Playmate of the Month. Playboy's Editor and Publisher, Hugh M. Hefner, has cleverly accompanied these center foldouts with capsule biographies emphasizing that the Playmate is not necessarily a professional model, but the very antithesis: a secretary, a coed, a waitress, a social worker. You Too Can Take Off Your Clothes and Succeed.

Archaeologists a thousand years hence will indeed be confused by the slew of would-be Playboy imitators, and even Pageant (the Legion of Decency's Playboy) and other like magazines with their articles interspersed with sweet young Oklahoma asses that are kept from being overexposed by bulky-knit Italian sweaters that never quite do the job.

If a girlie book was all that was left as a document of this generation, an anthropologist of the year 2963 would logically assume that this culture seemed to be identified with the religious concept: "God made my body and if it is dirty, then the imperfection lies with the Manufacturer, not the product. Do not remove this tag under the penalty of law."

I have had the opportunity to date these "Playmates" at various times and, although I can't produce doctors' certificates, I can state with reasonable authority that they were actually virgins. They were charming, intelligent, but -- to me, at least -- annoyingly virtuous. "Just because I pose in the nude doesn't mean I'm promiscuous."

Meanwhile, back at the strip show, I knew that according to all true Christian standards nudity in itself was certainly not lewd, but burlesque -- with its "subtle" charades of grabbing, "floor work," pulling and touching -- was lewd. Lewd in the sense that there was a woman on the stage whose chief aim was to get the audience horny. I knew that my wife would have to stop stripping unless I could rationalize being a halfway pimp.

I decided to develop her other talents. Honey had a fairly good voice. I spent two years doing a double with her, working all sorts of joints so that we could be together, but after about the first month, I realized I would have to have more money to make her a singer than I was making as a comedian.

How to make some quick money and stay out of jail....

If Father Divine could do it, why couldn't I!

Of course -- that would be the gimmick -- I would become a priest or a rabbi or a monk or whatever the hell was necessary to perform miracles such as taking money from someone else's pocket and putting it into mine, still remaining within the confines of the law. I had no qualms about the sinful aspect of my aspiration because I felt -- and still do feel -- that all so-called "men of God" are self-ordained. The "calling" they hear is just their own echo.

I knew, of course, that becoming a rabbi or a priest would be a slow process. Churches and synagogues were probably hard to come by. I've never seen one for rent, and they don't ever seem to go out of business. The amazing thing about churches and synagogues is that they never complain about a bad location. I suppose they have a lot of walk-in trade.

No, that would be too slow a process for me. First renting the building, then putting ads in the papers, "Grand Opening, Free Prizes and Blessings to the Kids!" Then I would have to hire an organ player, one that would be responsible and show up for the gig. And then I would have to decide if I would be the emcee or would I hire one, and what would be the theme of the show -- would it be Fire and Brimstone, or Ivy-League Reform?

The big problem would be the breadbasket holders. Most good ushers were working, I assumed, and the ones who weren't working had probably been busted for gelt-grabbing.

So a house of worship wasn't the answer. What I needed was some disease which hadn't been exploited yet. Cancer, muscular dystrophy and tuberculosis had been run through the wringer. Most people had benefited from their contributions -- they had the same catharsis of guilt for their own health that Nobel, the man responsible for the killer, dynamite, must have had when he instituted the Nobel Peace Prize.

I needed a disease.

Bronchitis? No, that's such an unhip disease. At least consumption has a sexual connotation to it; bronchitis is sort of poor and Jewish. "I've got bronchitis, I want a hallah and some sweet butter."

Cholera is Midwest--Protestant--Nelson Algrenish.

Pellagra has class. "Yeah, I got pellagra -- uh huh, we brought it up from Southampton with us." You can even make out with chicks. "Yeah, baby, cool it with him if you want to. I'll just pellagra it up here. I'll stay in the pad alone...." That'll get her.

The clap! No one had ever exploited the clap! When the guy comes to your door for the Community Chest or the United Fund, do you ever say to him, "Hey, wait a minute, I'm gonna give you a donation, but how much of my buck is going to the clap?" And actually, it's way up there on the charts. Or are you like a lot of subintellectuals who would say, "Well, no, I wouldn't ask about the clap because only bums get it. And Communists." Sure, 7,000,000 war heroes that are bums and Communists.

You can talk about leukemia all day long, because there's no specific cure, but the clap -- you could whack it out in two days with all the antibiotics, so how come it's there and stays up there? Don't even say the word clap, man. "It's all right. Mrs. Sheckner, you've just got a little discharge." Because you get leukemia in a respectable way. But how do you get the clap? By doing it, and anybody who does that dirty thing obviously deserves to get the clap.

Why do you think Ben Hur's mother and sister got leprosy? Because they didn't put paper on the seat.

I envisioned my campaign.... "She's got it, by jove, I think she's finally got it!" And then the chorus would sing, to the tune of "Tour the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet," "Curb the Clap Today in the U.S.A., it's a job that's never been done before!" What a thrill it would be to produce the first Clapathon on TV. Instead of little children being exploited, coming out with their little crutches, you could have glamorous movie stars: "Folks, we've raised $680,000 tonight. $680,000 that will be spent for research and treatment; no longer will men have to suffer the indignity of putting it on the window sill and slamming the window on it." A big ad campaign -- "Remember, an ounce of prevention, the most important quarter inch!" -- and then perhaps a beautiful dramatic actress would give a testimonial:

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have been helped by this wonderful organization; thanks to these brave people, we have been brought out of the dark ages. We have had the clap in our family for years and never knew it. My husband and I sensed there was something strange about the size of Ronnie's head -- he was our first son -- but like many others we were too ashamed to ask our doctor about it. Then we read the literature, Curb the Chip Today, and we brought it to our family doctor. He read it and to his amazement he discovered that he had the clap, too...."

But I was only fantasizing again, making stuff up for my own amusement. Then one day I was looking through my scrapbook and I came upon a feature story on myself that had appeared in the Detroit Free Press:

Friend to Four Hundred

Entertainer Conducts Aid Drive

For Lepers

By Ralph Nelson

Free Press Staff Writer

Ashore in Trinidad in 1944, while his ship was being refitted with guns, a 27-year-old Detroiter began a friendship with a colony in British Guiana that remains strong and warm.

The people of the colony number about 400 lepers at Mahaicony Hospital, East Coast Demerara, British Guiana, a handful of missionaries and six American Sisters of Mercy who care for the sick.

Leonard Bruce, of 1347 Selden, was then a turret gunner aboard the U.S.S. Brooklyn, a light cruiser that saw action at Casablanca and Salerno, and won a Unit Citation at Anzio.

"We put in at Trinidad for new guns and repairs from shell fire," Bruce said. "It was there I first found out about lepers, and how completely forgotten they are by the world."

Bruce said that the greatest strength for good at the tiny colony is a 61-year-old Unitarian missionary, himself a leper.

"The care and Godliness that Adam Abrigo, himself incurably ill, spread among the sufferers was wonderful," Bruce said. "I cleaned out the ship of all we could spare in the way of old clothing, shoes and food, and I've been sending the colony things ever since."

Bruce admitted that his private welfare project is getting out of hand.

"There are about 400 lepers there, including 50 small children who are stricken," he said. "Their need for toys, with Christmas coming, underclothing, jackets, candy and food, is overpowering. The colony is very poor."

Bruce pointed out that sunglasses are a great boon to the sick, as leprosy strikes at the eyes, making the equatorial sun unbearable.

Bruce and his wife, Harriet, both well-known Detroit entertainers, will leave January 15th, with a USO group headed for Korea, for a 10-week stay.

"Before we go, I hope we can reach into the hearts of enough Detroiters, with a few toys or old clothing to spare, to make a good Christmas for the inmates of the leper colony," Bruce said.

"Twenty-four-pound packages are the largest that arc permitted, and it will take a lot of bundles to go around to the 350 people and those little children."

Letters to Bruce from Father Abrigo bear mute testimony of the need and gratitude of the colony for gifts Bruce had sent on his one-man crusade of help.

"Just a package, to the Medical Superintendent of the Mahaicony Leprosarium, East Coast Demerara, British Guiana, South America, will do more for these people than anyone can ever know who has not been there."

Now this article had been factual and I had been proud of it. But for the first time it seemed to me that even I had been exploited. The reporter, a nice-enough guy, was hard up for a human-interest story around Christmastime and that was the reason he had printed it. He had to make a living, like everyone else. It was just practical.

Actually, the article didn't hurt anybody; it helped people. As a direct result of the article, a wealthy man donated 30,000 pairs of sunglasses. The people who received the donations, as well as those who gave them, benefited. They felt very generous and noble and gratified.

But more important -- to me, that is, at that particular moment -- was the fact that the reporter had helped himself. "God helps those who help themselves," I remembered.

Until then my theological knowledge had been limited to the lives of Christ and Moses, which I had read many times. I had been touched deeply by what I understood. I really loved Christ and Moses. I related very strongly to them because it seemed to me that I thought so much like them in so many ways. They had a deep regard for education and they continually gave, with no motivation other than to give.

Which is where we were to differ.

I felt that modern-day priests and rabbis were doing about the same thing as that reporter, and no one saw anything wrong with it. Maybe this is the sort of thing I was cut out for. I could assume the role of a "priest" and raise money for the leper colony. It would be better than going about it in the amateur manner I had been.

The lepers would benefit, and so would the good people who contributed. And I would keep 50 percent for my efforts. It was no more -- and certainly much less -- than the majority of charitable institutions take out for their efforts. They hire professional collecting organizations, advertising agencies, fellows who really know how to get the gelt. I might even employ some novice "priests" myself if business got good.

Of course it was dishonest and corrupt, and I don't fool myself by saying there are degrees of corruption. Just as the old cliché goes, "There is no such thing as being a little bit pregnant," stealing is stealing. But, I rationalized, what is the difference between a real priest and me?

Instinctively, I knew that for a true man of God with a crystal-clear set of ethics, there could be no compromise.

There are people living on the verge of -- and dying of -- starvation in this country. In New York City, in the vicinity of Lexington Avenue and 110th Street, there are 10 or 12 people living in one rat-infested room. This is not copping out on the "starving masses of India and China," although that, too, is nonetheless true, but it is too removed for people to grasp the horror of children eating out of maggot-infested garbage cans somewhere else in the world.

I did not doubt for a moment then that if Christ were to come down at that moment, he would go immediately to Headquarters and ask the pope, "What are you doing wearing that big ring? What are those gold cups encrusted with diamonds and other jewels for? Don't you know that people are starving all over the world? At this very moment a poor pregnant Negress is standing with swollen ankles in the back of a bus in Biloxi."

And if Moses were to come down, wouldn't he order all the rabbis in their Frank Lloyd Wright shuts to sell their tallith for rags and melt down the mezuzahs for the bail money for all the Caryl Chessmans that sit in gas chambers or electric chairs or walk in the blue-gray shadow of the gallows? Would not Moses say to them, "Why have you mocked the Ten Commandments? What is your interpretation of 'Thou Shalt Not Kill'? It's not, 'Thou Shalt Not Kill But....' "

I knew in my heart by pure logic that any man who calls himself a religious leader and owns more than one suit is a hustler as long as there is someone in the world who has no suit at all.

So I made up my mind. I would become a priest.

• • •

I spent two weeks hanging around a rectory, trying to observe the mannerisms of the Holy Men.

I noticed that the priests had the same attitude toward their lessers as do most successful businessmen: they treated them like illiterate children, not by kissing them and giving them ice cream, but rather by giving them the kind of treatment which makes the receiver feel as though he had graduated from third grade only with the help of political influence.

And then, too, they had their friends with whom they would have a few beers when they were off duty. They even enjoyed telling each other off-color stories.

With others, they were able, chameleonlike, to fit into the Pat O'Brien stereotype.

I found an ingenious method of hanging around the rectory without being picked up for vagrancy. I sold The Watchtower.

Daily, I learned more about how to behave in the manner of men who have the world by the tail ... no income tax, no traffic tickets, you live in a world on its best behavior, a wonderful, rosy world ... instead of cursing, everybody pours his soul out to you.

I would stand there every day watching visitors go in and out, and I observed, sadly, that most of them were little old ladies; the ones who actually needed help -- soothing love -- would never come. And, since the priests didn't go out looking for needy cases, the purpose and the end result seemed quite paradoxical to me.

After a couple of weeks of observation, I realized that I couldn't bring myself to start the basic operation; because of years of moral conformity I couldn't bring myself to break into a church and steal the uniforms.

And, unfortunately, Klein's didn't stock them.

But, as I pondered this problem, I noticed something else about priests that made my uniform-heisting task much easier -- both morally and technically. Their attitude with strangers was similar to any successful, busy merchant -- curt and direct. This was the direct opposite of the behavior pattern which Christ was supposed to have followed. So, not only was their life like the successful businessman's, but it was. in fact, a little better: Everything was delivered.

On Monday, Carmelo the barber would come.

On Tuesday, the Peerless Laundry man would come.

On Wednesday, the Paris Dry Cleaners man would come. This visit interested me most of all. The man from Paris Dry Cleaners was a rather nondescript chap with a strong Boston accent. He would rap sharply on the door with a two-bit Leonard Bernstein tempo, an overture which was the cue for a cheerful, red-faced father to appear with a bundle of soiled holy garments. The man from the dry cleaners would come at nine a.m. sharp, every Wednesday.

A week later, at ten minutes to nine, I appointed myself as Guest Conductor, substituting my own knock -- da de da, da de da da da (the opening bars to Joe and Paul, a dirty Jewish folk song) -- for the regular pickup man's "shave-and-a-haircut" rapping. I waited a moment, and a handsome young priest appeared with a bundle of priest uniforms that he would never see again.

He studied me quizzically, then said, "Haven't you been selling The Watchtower in front of the rectory?"

"Yes," I said, "but I didn't agree with their editorial policy, and I got a job instead with the Paris Dry Cleaners."

I noticed his white collar. Where the hell would I get white collars? They weren't included in the bundle of soiled uniforms.

Being an inventive, if corrupt, genius, I said, "Father, do you know the owner of the Paris Dry Cleaners?"

"No, I can't say that I do."

"Well, it's supposed to be a surprise, Father, but he wants to present Monsignor Martin with a dozen handmade Irish-linen collars."

"Well, isn't that lovely -- I'm sure he will appreciate them."

"Now, if you'll excuse me, Father, I don't want to be pushy," I said, jamming my head between the oak sill and the copper binding of the door, "but Mr. Kepnews, the owner, wanted to use Monsignor Martin's collar for a sample."

"Oh, that would be impossible. To touch anything in the Monsignor's room is unthinkable. However, you could ask Father Langford. He is the same size as Monsignor Martin." He pointed to a cottage at the end of the rectory yard.

As my feet crunched the gravel, I imagined them turning into red-hot coals. I saw Walter Huston, the Devil himself, laughing at me from above, where he was sitting on a tree limb.

I was about to knock at Father Lang-ford's door when I noticed a brass plate that announced the residence of Monsignor Martin. The door was ajar. I strolled leisurely in. whistling Ave Maria, and was in and out before you could say, "Blessed are they who give ..."

I had a neat haul: twelve collars and, believe it or not, seven of the furthest-out Tillie and Mac books I'd ever seen, plus one of the numbered editions of Henry Miller's Black Spring.

I left the grounds with movielike timing. I heard the disbelief in the voices of the real man from Paris Dry Cleaners and the priest as they exchanged the dialog that always follows the discovery of an unusual theft: "Why would anyone ... ?" "How could a person be so ... ?" "Now if they had some use...." "This is just a case of wanton stealing for no earthly reason...."

I had learned my last important lesson in theology: Always insist on an official receipt for your dry cleaning.

This is the second of six installments of "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People," the autobiography of Lenny Bruce. Part III will appear next month.