Alice In Ultraland

By Simone Corday

Alice takes you to the nighttime world of a burlesque theater, haunted by a banshee and alluring stripper ghosts, the scene of an exotic dancer's tragic death. Plucky stripper Alice leads an uprising of her coworkers. They travel with their ghost girlfriends to Frank Sinatra’s haunted casino filled with Rat Pack era ghosts such as film

• Language: English
• Publisher: Denizen Press
• Release date: Aug 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781732513624

Simone Corday

From 1981 to 1989, Simone Corday danced at the Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell Theater in San Francisco. She was a girlfriend of porn king Artie Mitchell from 1982 until he was killed in 1991. She also worked for the Mitchell Brothers booking agent from 1988 to 1991. In connection with Jim Mitchell's murder trial, Corday was interviewed for newspaper articles, for both books on the Mitchell Brothers which were released in the early 90s, on "Inside Edition," "Entertainment Tonight," for an E!-True Hollywood Story on the Mitchells, and locally on KPIX. Her articles have appeared in two adult publications. Her pieces relating to gonzo writer Hunter Thompson have appeared on Marty Flynn's Hunter Thompson Resource and Bibliography site HSTBOOKS.ORG. Her book 9 ½ Years Behind the Green Door, A Memoir: A Mitchell Brothers Stripper Remembers Her Lover Artie Mitchell, Hunter S. Thompson, and the Killing That Rocked San Francisco was published in 2007. She has an MA in English from the University of California. Prior to becoming a dancer she taught at a Catholic high school for girls and at Soledad Prison. She has worked a variety of jobs and lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1975. Simone Corday is her pen name.

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KINDLE

Alice in UltraLand— A Novel

Copyright by Simone Corday, 2018.

Book Cover and Layout: http://martadec.eu

Published by Denizen Press

1459 18th Street, #107

San Francisco, CA 94107-2801

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN 978-1-7325136-3-1

For Rita and Charles

and

For Sandra and Diane

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to everyone who has shared valuable advice and given me encouragement and support. A special thanks to Rita Ricardo and Charles De Santos, who believed in this book from the beginning. Thanks also to Karen Bjorneby of the Writing Salon who saw me through my first draft, Ericka Lutz for consulting, and the teachers and students at the Salon and the Writers Grotto who gave their input. For the dancers whose voices echo in this tale, I am thankful. I am also grateful to Marta Dec, who created such a brilliant cover, and brought the image of Alice to life.

Alice in UltraLand is a work of fiction. Resemblance of the characters to real living people is unintentional, except for public figures. In this story time is elastic—some actual events happened later in real time but were included to fit the action.

1. Strawberry Blonde

Tendrils of fog were licking the trees at the panhandle of Golden Gate Park as I turned onto Haight Street. Near dark. Bedraggled, chattering street kids bunched together on the sidewalk adrift in pot smoke with their pit bulls and gave me the evil eye. Clutching a soft paper bag to my breast I headed through the wide, garish jaw of the Wasteland vintage clothing emporium. The rent was due in two days and I was down to selling my late mother’s bits of finery: a peach silk shawl embroidered with pastel blossoms and a necklace of heavy crimson crystal beads. A sacrifice.

Sixty-five dollars, said the clerk. A skinny little thing in tall patent punk boots. She wasn’t being snarky.

I folded the cash and plunged it into my purse, strung across my body. Less than I hoped. I sped up walking away from the place, feeling like the street kids might reach out for me like the creatures of the night they were morphing into.

Alice — why did I get tagged with such a prim Anglo name, with Lewis Carroll references? I wasn’t a blonde with innocent cornflower blue eyes. Alice was my grandmother’s name, pure as china painted with Victorian blossoms, clear as the chime of a mantle clock, a chaste girl next door who tried rice powder and rose petals for color and was ordered to Go wash that off. I put on more makeup than usual, eyeliner, mascara, blush, and deep red lipstick, then chucked it all into my red plastic artist’s case. Pulled on jeans, a black sweater, down jacket and boots. Took a last look at my black duffel bag, with just minimal lingerie, two dresses for stage, stilettos. Checked that the cat had enough food to nosh on during the evening, left a couple of lights on just in case, and clicked the key locking my door.

I had already lost my apartment in the City. Last August, in a panic I found this place. In the sunshine it looked livable, and was much bigger than my old apartment — even if the town a few scruffy blocks away felt third world.

As a talisman, I adopted a cat—mostly Russian blue, part Burmese, short charcoal gray fur that gleamed silver in the sunlight, yellow-green eyes, feral incisors. He looked like a familiar that should be peering down from a window in a tower of Dracula’s castle, but was sweet and affectionate. He came with the perfect name, too — Vito.

On evenings like this, I hated to leave Vito alone. Sometimes the darkness was punctured by odd squeals—was it raccoons or possums or banshees? But regardless, tonight I needed to make money. My rent was due and a stack of bills gathering dust on my table.

Deirdre was working at my new club and told me they were hiring, It’s pretty much like the Midnight, but with less bullshit from the management.

That will be a relief. All the stupid politics. They’re insisting on more hardcore shows. There are just too many girls, it’s really hard to make money. The last straw was when they cut my shifts back. Deirdre knew the Midnight well. We had each started dancing there eight years ago.

The Moulin Rouge was seven miles from my place—I sped down the mountain in my aged VW, past the tiny gray town caught in a funky time-warp with spots like the Motorville Motel, Bocci Monuments, and the deserted La Pachanga. Slipping onto the freeway, I hit it. Getting to the theater late was too risky, especially as a new dancer.

Sometimes I had nightmares about rolling in too late at the Midnight, sneaking past the resentful owner, not having stage shoes, missing a g-string or negligee, and trying to fake a good show when the curtain rose. Just over the horizon, my expiration date as a stripper was stalking me. I didn’t remember being an ingénue, but I still looked good—so it was a ways off, but scary. When would one of the security guys sneer Bag it and tag it, about me?

Last spring I did some substitute teaching and then worked part-time in an office over the summer, but I hated straight jobs. Substitute teaching felt like a bad dream. One of the few white boys at Mission High hurled a rotten peach at the ancient bulletin board. It skidded down, drooling bits of sticky fruit along the way. Another kid snatched a tube of Elmers and grafittied half a dozen chairs before snickering out the door. Around islands of harmony, racial hatred seethed—and the teaching program I’d endured at university felt like a faded illusion. Plus the school days started at dawn—a real shocker since I was used to working at night.

During my stint as a receptionist, the Sicilian legal assistant dallied with the murderers on Death Row when they called in, I’m wearing my white miniskirt today, she would flirt in a raspy whisper, her complexion a faint gray from leukemia.

You still have it, Deirdre had reassured me. We both do. Don’t worry about making money. You’ll do fine.

A shapely leg kicked up its heel from violet neon petticoats, while the marquee sizzled Moulin Rouge in the Tenderloin dusk. I pushed open the mirrored glass door and got a whiff of the early twentieth century. This place survived vaudeville and later renovations, and a faintly musty smell hung in the lobby. The tall night manager with a slight paunch stood behind the glass showcase that served as the box office, sporting a ruffled tuxedo shirt, bowtie and thick 70s mustache. He grinned, It’s Alice, isn’t it? Welcome to the infamous Moulin Rouge! Meeting is in fifteen minutes.

And you are Len, right? I gave him a cautious smile. In an hour music would pulse from the depths and customers roll in. My dark hair styled at home and shining, duffel bag on my shoulder, I took in the scene.

The Moulin’s owner and had amassed a cache of eccentricities. I heard she started collecting antiques when she gave up heavy drinking. Red-haired Laffing Sal, who had cackled for decades at Playland, sat frozen and grimacing in a dusty glass dome, her frenzied eyes keen on the box office.

I looked into the original stage room where I auditioned a few days before. Crimson velvet draped the sides of the stage and a sparkly gold curtain hung at the back. Footlights lined the edge and the runway. One by one the dancers would take the stage to prance and flirt. When the stars were right and a dancer possessed with power, her show would touch the crowd with hot magic.

Deco sconces and a towering old chandelier at the top of the two-story auditorium cast a dim glow over the audience, where the dancers would keep the guys company and earn their tips. Over a wide curved doorway on the right side of the lobby a little neon sign flickered Ultraland.

The heavy wooden door that led upstairs stood open, since there was a mandatory meeting for all the dancers. I made the steep, creaky climb to the second floor and the dressing rooms, veering into the larger of the two when I spotted Deirdre, a petite strawberry-blonde, perched on a tall stool at the counter. She wore a flirty Betsey Johnson mini dress exposing just a little cleavage, carefully applied makeup, and her delicate blonde hair in curls. Alice, she gave me a hug. I’m so glad you’re here.

Me, too, I said. And you look very pretty today—all dolled up for the meeting?

She blushed. Not exactly. You’ll never guess what I’m doing now.

Besides dancing?

Yeah. I started helping the manager, Dwayne, do the schedules for the dancers. Just part-time.

So this place really was a burlesque theater—not a garage or a gay club, like the Midnight was before?

It was an old theater, then burlesque, Deirdre said. You’ve heard of Sally Hyde, haven’t you? She was a burlesque star in the 40s and 50s, had a few marriages and two children, made out O.K. Tommy Hyde is her son who’s in charge of the club—except a couple of managers and Dwayne actually run the place. Tommy’s mom bought the building a couple of years ago, and re-opened Moulin Rouge. Tommy is pretty hot. Actually, I’m falling for him.

"Deirdre, I can’t believe you’d get mixed up with a club owner! You’re just too smart for that. You saw all the games at the Midnight. These club owners can fire you or break your heart."

"Tommy’s different. He’ll be at the meeting so you’ll get your first impression."

How long have you been seeing him?

About six months.

"Oh. Then you are involved. Is he married?"

Divorced. He has one son, David. He’s eleven.

What about his mom, Sally?

"You’ll see her at the meeting, too. She can suck up all the air in the room—but she seems nice enough. She has the typical old-fashioned burlesque attitude—you know, how the business went downhill with girls stripping totally naked, how nobody does real shows anymore—even though she knows the business has changed, and thank God Tommy makes most of the decisions now. She still believes burlesque is going to make a comeback!"

The Moulin Rouge’s office was upstairs not far from our dressing rooms. I knew enough to be cordial but distant with club owners and management types, but this was one of those meetings when everyone would be expected to turn their behavior up a notch. Pretty soon the rest of the dancers arrived and everyone headed to the office. I tagged along with Deirdre. The burgundy-hued carpet felt lush under our feet, a sign we were in the inner sanctum. An assured woman in her 70s with softly curled pale blonde hair was holding court from a rose velvet armchair like Catherine the Great, as the dancers found chairs facing her. Sally Hyde, superstar of burlesque and (an almost unheard of) woman club owner. Impossible to escape her sparkling, sharp eyes as she critically surveyed our ragtag group. Deirdre and I took a seat on the side not far from the door. The youngest dancer was last in, and took a space on the rug cross-legged and a little out of breath. Dwayne, the general manager, and the Len the night manager were there, too. I gazed around the office, a curious museum of all things burlesque. A framed massive lobby card hung on one wall, featuring Illona the Bavarian Orchid, wearing a huge velvet hat adorned with pale silk flowers. No question who the star of this poster was: Illona, a Marlene Dietrich blonde with bedroom eyes who stood with arms in opera gloves crossed over her breasts, a sinuous skirt edged in sequins showcasing her gams. Brunette Eva and the Red Mill Cuties beautified the background. A smaller poster advertised a 50s movie, Strip Tease Holdup, starring B’ways Deluscious Delovelies. More recent images from London’s Paul Raymond’s Showbar and Hamburg’s Reeperbahn district caught my eye, too—but a towering array of framed black and white stills of stars such as "Satan’s Angel, the Devil’s Own Mistress, Queen of the Fire Tassels" hung on the walls, so numerous it was dazzling.

Maybe we are part of a sisterhood, I thought, warmly—dancers from the past, dancers of today.

A door at the opposite end of the room past the pool table opened and in stepped Tommy Hyde with club owner swagger, his sandy hair well-groomed as a politician, sports jacket over jeans. Below in the street a soft pop and whir of a Roman candle, then firecrackers exploded, and I gave Deirdre a smile, Just kids, I said, seeing how smitten she was.

It was no mystery why Tommy was drawn to Deirdre. She helped her friends look at the world with a fresh sense of pleasure, like the perfume she favored, Delight, orange blossoms with a bright, lovely top note. Her flat was in the Mission, sunny and warm and full of light, suiting her perfectly, though she’d been through enough of life to know the dark side. Deirdre kept her green eyes soft on him.

Tommy, now that you’re here we should get started, Sally cleared her throat and began. Girls, this is the first time I’ve met many of you, and I want to say you are the backbone of this club. We depend on you every day to put on the best shows in San Francisco, to not get us busted, to represent the Moulin Rouge to the customers and get along great with each other. Tommy…

Ladies, we called this meeting today to let you know what’s coming up in the near future of our club, and explain why we’re making some changes.

Changes—just the word sent a chill down my spine. What did they have in mind?

You may have heard that the Midnight Club is letting their girls get looser with the customers. They’ve even put in a few private rooms, said Sally. We’re not going to do that.

If anybody wants to hook they can go up to Nevada to one of the brothels. Sally looked steamed, I run a clean club.

Our plan is to make our shows the hottest, best, most exciting shows in the City. We’re going to bring in a few of the stars of new burlesque, and encourage you girls to be creative in your shows. We haven’t had Ultraland open for a while, but that’s going to change. Those of you that can put costumes and themes together, plan the music, find a partner you can work with, we’ll book you in there. The more theatrical, the better. Any questions about themes or about doing shows in there, consult Dwayne, he’s a pro, has been in the business more than twenty years. Also, it’s time for most of you ladies to get a couple new costumes for the stage show, try something new on stage—remember, we’re in the entertainment business, even though interacting with the customers in the audience is part of it too. And I promise you, the more you put in to your shows and your appearance, the more you’ll get out of it and the more you’ll earn in tips.

Look around this room, ladies, said Sally. I worked with the best, with great entertainers. But they all started just like you, as house-girls. Any one of you can become a star, if you work on it, invest in yourself.

Tommy, do you have anything else?

So ladies, we’ll keep you in the loop, any questions about theme shows or getting booked, ask Dwayne. This will be an exciting, fun time for us, he appraised the dancers with a flirtatious smile. So have a great day today.

Deirdre and I went back to the dressing room with the rest of the night shift. Someone chuckled, "Now I understand, we’re in show business, not the ho business!"

I wonder who they’ll book in here first, I said.

I heard Tommy mention Kitty Chow and Szandora LaVey. I’ve seen them both perform and they’re great. Kitty has this deep sultry singing voice and she’s a pro burlesque dancer too, Deirdre said.

LaVey. . . is she related to Anton LaVey, you know, the head of the Satanic Church during the 60s?

She married his grandson. She’s a wonderful performer, too. Amazon tall and built, and she does an act with a hoop where it slithers up and down her body with no effort. It’s amazing.

Wow. I’d like to see some of these shows, actually. Deirdre, do you want to get a theme and costumes together and get booked in Ultraland? I did room shows at the Midnight.

Sure. And since I’m working for Dwayne I can find out what bookings are open, keep my ear to the ground.

Do you think amping up our shows will really keep us competitive with the Midnight if they’re having sex in their private rooms?

It’s not about competing so much as surviving. This can be a tough business, Deirdre wrinkled her brow like she owned the club. Sally’s poured almost all her savings into this place. And you know how ruthless Al Midnight can be.

Well, yeah. I’d had more than my share of run-ins with Al. The last time he accused me of hustling for tips. Every girl working the clubs around here lived off tips, and at the Midnight the dancers had to pay stage fees out of their tips, too. I hoped the Moulin didn’t start charging stage fees.

They should have put in a ‘Tunnel of Lust’ in the super-basement under the theater—like the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland, with boats for the customers and girls—that would bring them in. Can’t you just picture it? a tall brunette suggested.

"There would be one problem, though—we’d have to worry about nutcases pushing us off into the water. Not that bad things never happened to anyone here. Did you ever see that weird dining room on the way to the basement, the one with all the clusters of grapes hanging from the ceiling? asked Deirdre. I call it the Mafia Dining Room. This place used to be a mob hangout!"

It should be fun to prowl around the place, I was looking forward to it.

This used to be an old burlesque theater, Deirdre continued. That big old poster in the office was an advertisement for this place.

The office looks like a fucking museum, except for the pool table Tommy put in, said Sugar, in her leather jacket with a silver Harley Davidson sticker across the back. It better be a good night—I need to make money! She slipped into lingerie, sprayed on deodorant, changed her scuffed cowboy boots for heels. Then she pranced out the door to the staircase that led downstairs to the audience.

A gorgeous platinum blonde in a lilac bodysuit came up the stairs towards the dressing room, carrying a big box of See’s chocolates. She opened the box and placed it on the ironing board in the hall. Guess who just came in, she smirked, Buddha-pig!

Who is that? I asked.

A regular. Greta, this is Alice. . . Alice, Greta.

"Nice meeting you. This guy, he really does look like a pig. I told him that Sunday he’s taking me to Macy’s. He is very nervous."

Buddha-pig has been sneaking into his mother’s bedroom at night and stealing her diamond jewelry to give to Greta, said Deirdre.

Then I sell it, Greta said with an innocent smile. Have some chocolate—I tell him to always buy a big box, so there’s plenty for everyone.

I thought her nickname for this guy, and her being fine with his stealing from his mother was low, but said nothing. Not good to be too moralistic or outspoken with other strippers, especially when you’re new at a club.

So far I liked the place and most of the girls.

Zelda had begun channeling a 20s vamp. Her best features were sleek auburn hair that was newly cut into a Louise Brooks bob, and eyes that were always looking for fun and trouble.

Adele was a tall, curvy brunette with Bettie Page hair and ivory skin, who dressed in typical vampy black and fishnets and was obsessed with all things supernatural.

A young dancer in a bright green bikini glided past the dressing room on roller skates.

"Damn, where’s she going?" I asked.

That’s Marigold. She does a show on skates sometimes, said Adele.

I’m going to be an interior designer, said Greta, our platinum blonde. I made a white canopy for my bed and hung lavender flowered wallpaper, it’s so feminine. I’ve had guys come just looking at the canopy!

Brenda had a scruffier look, a toned strong body, and short pixyish brown hair that was a bit unkempt. She wore a collar with studs. I want some dick but I don’t want the hassle, said Brenda. Then she told about her date with a guy who turned out to be a former member of the American Nazi Party. "I asked about his tattoo in the morning,’ What’s that? An ‘H’? He said No, it’s an ‘SS’. That had been a photo of Rommel in his living room.