The She Devil from Fire Island

By jmax young

Her hippie mother convinced Baez to birth her baby in the neighbor's swimming pool. After that bad advice, the reader must decide if her life went uphill or down. Enticed away from a topless bar, wrestling provided opportunities and adventures never before imagined. Her wrestling partner, the Vietnamese Ninja, and others provided a reckless ride through the comical world of wrestling and beyond. Her little girl, Shiloh, ruled her life as well as her desire to encourage other young women to study science and technology, but her personal decisions often interfered. Before wrestling, she struggled to pay tuition at MIT. The biggest challenge came when her daughter is kidnapped and she then spent many years searching for her. You will fall in love with Baez and others; despise the rest. Happy ending? You decide!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Mar 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781641380621

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The She Devil from Fire Island

jmax young

Copyright © 2018 jmax young

All rights reserved

First Edition

Page Publishing, Inc

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc 2018

ISBN 978-1-64138-061-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64138-063-8 (Hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-64138-062-1 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants rather than to create it herself. -- Anais Nin

My body looked good and weird in the outfit. Spandex was the new lace! And keeping the hair color, fire engine red, was a major nuisance. But if I were to wrestle as the She Devil from Fire Island I better look like one.

Trying to convince Max that the Fire Island reference might not be understood by the audience was futile. He was probably right anyway. These crowds seemed to share dentures like Macbeth’s witches shared the all-seeing eyeball.

Between matches the men would huddle in front of the concession stands where the pretty high school girls sold beer, popcorn, and hotdogs. The huddlers couldn’t afford snacks but they could afford to stare at the girls while they tried not to obviously rub their collective crotches.

Max also told me that a lot of these wrestling extravaganzas were scheduled for the day after welfare checks arrived in mailboxes. I suppose I could have studied opera.

I had taken my first naughty step when I tried the topless dancing gig. The wrestling crowd has a lot more ethics. At the bar, I was constantly defending my vagina from motorcycle gangsters, bartenders, the general public, and the manager/owner who assumed that he had hired my complete body and any function thereof. The money was good but not good enough to shower off the paw prints every day.

MIT is not cheap. I was smart enough to be accepted, but there were no scholarships so off to work this single mom did go.

Max was my most polite customer on my last night at the topless place. I didn’t do lap dances, but he seemed sort of sincere when he said he had a business proposition for me. I winced at the word proposition. But we took a table close to the bar and with the most light from the beer distributors’ neon props.

You got some great moves, but I also see an athlete up there.

I did enjoy the pole. Even the other dancers would watch my act as I climbed all over that thing. The DJ had to remind me constantly that the second song means I take off the top and the outer pants so the audience could strain and try and see if some bit of vulva would escape the crotch of my thongs.

I played sports in high school.

High school? How old are you?

Don’t worry. I’m legal for most things. What do you have?

Well, Tiffany, it’s Tiffany right?

In this building.

Probably my building too. Wrestling, Tiffany, wrestling. Female wrestling is hotter than the men. And the crowd doesn’t want Queen Kong anymore. They want hot chicks like you.

You’re asking me to be a cartoon?

A well-paid cartoon.

Some biker came behind me and stuck a twenty between my tits.

How much? I asked, Max, not the biker.

I can have you pulling down five hundred a match and that’s for starters.

I pull down more than that in here and with a minimum of headlocks.

Okay. You have good potential. I’ll start you at eight hundred for one match a night.

Is that only eight hundred a week? That won’t pay my bills.

No, two, sometimes three events a week in this town. And everybody starts as the enemy. When you get to be the good guy, that fee increases a lot!

I wasn’t making five hundred a night. Maybe if I did lap dances and hand jobs and blow jobs like the more enterprising girls, I could hit that mark but I did have some rules. There was no modesty in my family, so anyone who wanted to take a look at my stuff, help yourself. Touching presented a boundary issue.

At nineteen, I could claim that I was no sleep-around girl, but I did have a beautiful daughter. She was partially the result of my first and last experience with acid. What a trip that proved to be. Now it was wine only, red with meat, white with fish and chicken.

So do I need to sign a contract? I’d like my father to look it over. He’s an attorney.

He wasn’t an attorney. The last I heard he was selling his objet d’arts at some swap meet in San Diego.

Max was well prepared. He pulled a contract from his coat jacket. The same biker snuck up behind me and stuffed another twenty a little too far down my sequined shorts. I threw an elbow into his groin.

You fuckin’ bitch! And you, asshole! Get away from my bitch!

No problem, I’m out of here! Call me, Tiffany!

My new agent was not a courageous man.

Bikers aren’t smart. He called me a bitch twice and now was about to caress my shoulder. But he hadn’t repositioned himself. So I concentrated like a ninja or a navy seal, and the pressure I exerted this time was approximately more powerful than the last by the power of 5.7. I was an engineering student. He dropped with enough pain so as not to allow him to rise for quite some time.

The manager chased me to the backstage.

Dese bikers bring in big bucks! I told you before. You gotta play ball with some of dese people.

You mean play with their balls, right?

Hey, dis is the sex trade! Play along, or I don’t care how popular you are, I’ll kick your sweet ass outta here!

I’ll play better, Marlon.

You’d better!

I was up next. I watched Brian wipe down the pole. He was some mentally disabled guy whose only skill I could see was wiping down the pole and mopping up the tips. At least he was honest though. I heard his job coach would often dip into the pile of tip bills and recycle them with his favorite dancers.

Brian had a man crush on Jeff, the bartender by night, ski instructor by day. Brian would sit at the bar sipping Pepsi and watching Jeff work the bar and the dancers between the acts. His job coach, Darren or Darrel or Doufus, would sit at the stage and spend Brian’s tips.

Jeff was all right. He worked two careers because he was a single dad to a daughter the same age as Shiloh. He had suggested a play date, but I wasn’t sure who would be playing. He sure was good looking so I couldn’t blame Brian and the strippers for hankering for him.

I tried to dance the dance of my life. I did acrobatic things on the pole that I didn’t think I could do. The hooting and hollering and bill throwing was prodigious. I picked up some of the bills, an expected symbolism before Brian mopped up the rest. I was about to go to the back of the stage to pick up my top and shorty thing. Before Sonia could step onto the stage for her performance, though her performance consisted of hefting those obviously painful 48Ds, I returned to the center. I pulled down my thongs and announced, This is what it looks like!

I pirouetted slowly so all the patrons could see my vagina.

Good night. Now get a life.

It was early. I had made better money with my finale and I was about to be a professional athlete. I’ll go pick up Shiloh and we will snuggle in bed, and I will lie to her about my second shift job at the library.

The next day I made an anonymous phone call to the vice squad to voice my indignation at being forced to look at a whoo-whoo in a place that served alcohol.

It was spring break. My classmates talked of trips to Cancun, Padre Island, Florida, and other havens of debauchery. When asked where I was going, I smiled and answered Shiloh. Some would squeal as if Shiloh must be some hot destination they didn’t know about and to me it was. She was three, and oh god, I was only nineteen!

So how did I manage to have a baby at sixteen?

I guess you could define my mother as a hippie although she was a generation and a half too late for the originals, Kerouac and Kesey and Leary. But she made her best effort to catch up. I believe her tie dye line of clothing that she sold at craft fairs supported her and her two daughters. There were suspicions that she augmented that income with discreet prostitution.

Well, when conversations turned to drugs, she would bemoan the introduction of crack and meth and the rise of heroin. She lauded the experiences of grass and mescaline and acid, her favorite. So when Jacob lured me to his father’s boat house and fed me alcohol and drugs and planted an embryo inside me, I blamed my mother.

I thought it would buy some babysitting obligations. As it turned out, Jacob’s mother was obsessed with having a grandchild, and as they were a very wealthy family, I took as much advantage of them as possible. Even after Jacob disappeared with rumors that he joined the French Foreign Legion or a cult in Berkley or the Peace Corps, his mother wanted to possess Shiloh.

She would never possess Shiloh regardless of the hours invested. Shiloh was mine and only mine until she became her own. But Evelyn, she was cool enough to recognize my income-earning experiments. She was a good caretaker for Shiloh. She constantly played the Jacob should have married you card. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that I really liked Jacob and Shiloh would always have the right to love him as well, but I wouldn’t marry him on a bet. He was smart, good looking, great sense of humor, and he hadn’t seduced me on that house boat. We seduced each other after being seduced by the trip. I might have continued to see him socially and even engage in protected sex if he hadn’t disappeared. Hey, being a single mother wasn’t impossible. I’d guess a fourth of the girls in my high school were doing it. And I was smarter and more self-reliant than at least a fourth of the girls in my high school.

I would like to say that Shiloh popped out and everyone embraced like in a chick film. My mother did find a midwife and convinced me to have the baby in the neighbors’ swimming pool as they were out of town for two weeks. This was definitely one of those times when you needed your mother to be on top of her game. First bra, first period, first date, first baby—those are the events that have their terror exorcized by a mother or older sister. My sister was younger and I don’t think she ever liked me, not at any stage. I was much prettier than her at every stage, not my fault.

Time to drop Shiloh off at Evelyn’s; this almost-daily event ripped at the very fabric of my heart, a necessary evil. Yeah, if I had married the disappearing Jacob, I’d be a house mommy and Shiloh wouldn’t leave my sight until I sat in the front row of some venue and I watched her marry an unworthy man.

She clung to me, crying for me not to leave her as she did every day. I made the same promises: not ice cream or a plush toy but that someday Mommy would have only one job and we would spend so much time together. This day she asked for a little brother! For a brief moment I thought if there were any acceptable sperm donors out there.

Maybe from a sperm deli. I’ll have the Johnny Depp Two Egg Special, no wait, how much is the Thomas Pynchon Platter? You know what, let’s go with the Obama Omelet.

Not right now, Shiloh, but I will get you [beget?] a brother for you. That sounds like a great idea!

Evelyn extracted her grip with fresh baked cookies and some damn Barbie made for TV movie. I had little problem with the cookies but the Barbie influence really, really upset me. And good grief, I might resemble some Barbie in my stripper glitter but I would not subject Shiloh to the Barbization of children. On the other hand, I might make a few dollars pitching the Barbie Stripper to Mattel.

In class I had a little advantage as I had not worked a full shift till 2:00 a.m. My vulgar finale ended early, and though Shiloh wiggled all night, I rested. This professor, Dwight, was very sharp and his lectures provided so much more than the five hundred-page text book we were obligated to purchase. A giggle, wiggle, and smile had found me a deep discounted used text at the campus bookstore.

The next two classes and labs were run by assistants to the older professors who might have admired my appearance but knew not to try and take a taste. These doctoral candidates were not old enough and offered me a lot of one-on-one tutoring. There were areas where I probably needed that tutoring but I wasn’t willing to pay the price.

The library was my solace for the few moments I had between classes. I sat in this envelope, this bubble, where no one wanted to paw me or insist that I should marry someone or have a little brother. And I did fall asleep in here on a number of occasions. Today, I studied for there would be a test with Professor Dwight and his tests were of the make-or-break caliber. I was almost late for Sergeant Aluminum’s class. His nickname was based on his malleable approach to science, which seemed like the epitome of illogic and anti-engineering. But he was an easy grader and I sat in the front row.

Today he leaned or sat on his desk right in front of me, and he went on with a lecture about metallic stress and its relationship to earthquake preparedness. I was sure that he had delivered this same lecture a week ago, and I heard murmurs from the class that confirmed that. Then I noticed that his hands were fidgeting. He was trying to hide a major boner. I’m not sure that I could take full responsibility but this was a big, yet small campus and I had seen both classmates and instructors in the topless club.

My last class was an advanced form of calculus and I was a sucker for math. My left brain just sucked this stuff up. When Professor Allen would ask for input from the class, I waved my hand like some parochial brown noser. No one else picked up the cues and answers like I could.

And now I took a couple busses to find this arena where Max would introduce me to my new income source. Well, it wasn’t the Boston Garden, but it seemed to have the capacity of four hundred inbred misanthropes. There were many strange-looking men, mostly men, gathering outside the main entrance. I found the performers entrance and questioned my sanity.

There you are, devil girl. Come check out your costume!

Max led me to a large changing room that was filled with hot chicks putting on costumes and applying outlandish make-up. He was comfortable standing around women in various stages of undress. So was I, and in this crowd, my body looked good. However, it didn’t look as good as a few of the wrestlers. It appeared that their wrestling experience had made them much harder and tougher than I was prepared to be.

But it was all fake! Max assured me that no harm would come to any wrestler as long as they followed the script

We would rehearse our matches. Max had prepped me for the showmanship. I looked at the posted matches on the inside of the locker room door. I was up third against the Beast from Buffalo.

So which one of you is the Beast from Buffalo?

No one answered. In fact, most of the girls avoided my question and glance.

My first costume must have come from some drug-induced fantasy from Max. It had a flared skirt with no panties and a big cape that any opponent could use to strangle me. I was wearing some modest bikini panties. Let the crotch theater begin

The Beast from Buffalo strolled into the dressing room. She was six foot two and close to three hundred pounds.

As Max was still nearby, I asked him, You said it was all the new hot chicks nowadays. What about my match?

You can handle this. Remember, you’ll go through the setup before you get out there. Piece of cake!

I watched the Beast point at me and then approach my stool at the make-up bench.

You’re really cute! We will enjoy our match.

Well, I thank you, Ms. Beast. I have a lot of respect for your skills too.

Call me Brenda.

Wow, that’s alliterate.

I can read and write!

Can’t we all.

When the first two women returned, one was covered in blood and I almost ran out the door. But it turned out to be fake blood, evidently a common trick in this theater. She took it off with make-up remover. Some floor manager summoned Brenda and me into another room.

Okay, new girl, both you and Brenda are the villains but Brenda wins this match. You come out rushing to take her down, but she’s so strong she throws you to the mat. You do this about four times and then you sucker punch her when she’s saluting the crowd.

How do I sucker punch her?

He stared at me.

Max said you been doin’ this for at least a year?

Of course, but in Canada. They use different terminology.

I will need to meet with my agent, Max.

He continued to lay out the scenario and said okay.

This match ends right away so get ready. And remember, She Devil, you go out and taunt the crowd, argue with them, and strut your stuff, and when the Beast enters the ring, act scared. Got it?

Piece of cake.

Maybe I’ll piss myself. I know some of the titty bar patrons would relish that. And after, I’ll meet with the agent and ask about some of the loose ends he failed to share with me.

Okay, She Devil, make it look real.

Was he kidding? Make wrestling look real! I listened to the announcer who said I hailed from Canada. In fact I had been deported for beating my children with a rock. The boos were simmering even before I strutted down the aisle to the ring. Some of the boos were moist. I jumped over the top rope doing a brief hand stand before landing. I had accidently watched some big-time wrestling on TV before, so I just pantomimed what the idiots did on the little screen. Shiloh will never watch wrestling. I think I would prefer made for TV Barbie.

Shiloh was my center. Whenever I was doing anything that was unpleasant, dancing topless, taking a pop quiz, arguing with my mother, or excessively praising Evelyn, I placed Shiloh in the center of my focus. My focus had been becoming an engineer. Now it was my sweet daughter.

A new barrage of boos followed Brenda into the ring. I cringed but choose not to pee. When she struggled to crawl through the ropes, I did not laugh but tried to shrink into my corner. The referee clapped his hand and I ran at Brenda, stopping just short so I didn’t accidently knock her down. She threw me onto the mat, harder than I expected, and I crawled like a coward to the edge of the ring. I got up and charged again, ditto. After the fourth charge, she turned away and taunted the crowd so I snuck up behind her and gave her a swat on the back of her head. She pretended to be stunned and wobbled comically around. I did a couple more swats, and as instructed, I smiled and taunted the crowd with my success. And lo and behold, she recovered and took advantage of my disinterest. She put me in some stranglehold that I must have missed in rehearsal.

She was on top of me and she whispered in my ear, I want to eat your pussy.

How about a couple breath mints instead.

So now she was mad. She pulled me up and threw me against the ropes. Having seen TV, I knew I was supposed to recoil off the ropes so she could do something to me as I flew by. I bounced back as she prepared to throw an elbow across my face. I ducked under her elbow and she fell quite awkwardly on the mat. Oops, now she was really mad. We went off script, or at least I did.

She got up and charged at me in a rage, but she got up too quickly and fell just short of where I was standing. I couldn’t help myself. I did that move where you jump up in the air and come down elbow first onto your opponent. I made sure my elbow hit mostly fat of which Brenda was well covered.

She was huffing and puffing and sweating and I also believe farting. She knew better than to charge. So she stalked me. And then I could see an oversized pole and jumped on her back and performed a couple of maneuvers from the topless bar. She couldn’t put her hands on me, too slow. At last she threw an elbow that caught the side of my head. That woozied me to the mat. Before I could regain my senses, she had picked me up for her signature bear hug. In rehearsal, this is where I submit and the referee has to stop the Beast from killing me. I do believe she wanted to kill me at this point. I hadn’t seen this particular move on TV, so I invented my own response. I knew that by cupping my hands and at the same moment clap them onto her ears would create a tremendous amount of painful pressure. It worked. She shrieked and dropped me. As she stood holding her ears, I decided, so elbows it will be and I threw mine into the side of her head. She dropped like the proverbial sack. The crowd was going wild, but I wasn’t sure why. Maybe my vulva had escaped. Oh yes, acting. I strutted around the ring, taunting, and insulting the crowd. I balled up my fist and threatened the thirteen-year-olds and their dads in the front rows. I kept one of my eyes on Brenda. And what a trooper, she got up and came at me. I moved like a toreador and she almost fell out of the ring. That could do some damage so I grabbed her, I guess trunks, and she settled on the middle rope. But there was way too much butt crack showing. My bad.

I don’t think anyone could hate another person the way Brenda hated me at this moment in time. Instead of boos, all her actions brought laughter by now. When she managed to get up and it took an embarrassing amount of time, I did the upside down pole hang. I used my thighs to do a little strangling of my own. She pawed at my legs but the ordeal had taken most of her energy. She crumbled again. Shame on me, I strutted around the ring, pointing at my defeated opponent. And now, not boos, but cheers and some interspersed indecent proposals.

The referee held up my arm in victory.

When I returned to the dressing room I thought it would be wise to change and leave before Brenda made it back. Outside the dressing room, Max was arguing with some suit, a cheap suit.

She can’t follow a fucking script!

And good for you! We got a new hero!

These bitches need to follow the script!

Hey, suit! You want to take me on! I snarled.

It must be the sweat-infused adrenaline.

Tiffany, I’ll handle this.

I want to renegotiate my contract. Bring them all on!

Good grief. I needed to shut up.

Louie! Did you listen to the crowd? She’s your new Wonder Woman!

She don’t listen!

You don’t listen. Tiffany, go take a curtain call before the other girls get out there.

Good idea. I strutted back down the aisle, and the crowd, as they say, went wild. Someone did slap my ass pretty hard, but when I turned around, I would have had to slap about eleven faces to avenge myself. I jumped the rope and did a short handstand before running around the ring. I flipped the skirt at the crowd. There was not a boo in the house. I jumped out of the ring onto the floor, landing with a split. When I strutted up the aisle, Max had dragged Louie to the top of the aisle. He was smiling. I’m going to ask for a raise.

The Beast from Buffalo never returned and that hurt me a lot. This woman had lost her career because of my heroic theatrics. But like Shiloh might taunt, she started it.

Max was right. I was the new Wonder Woman but not the comic book heroine but another wrestler who had become the ultimate champion on the local circuit. And the local circuit. This circuit included all of New England and into New York and Pennsylvania, even Canada. At first I declined.

Sorry, Max, I have a daughter and an education I am pursuing. I’ll wrestle here, that’s it.

Tiffany, you gotta know just how hot you are and how much hotter I can make you. Kid, we’re talking thousands of dollars.

Did I say that MIT was very expensive? Well, spring break is coming up and I don’t need to take classes in the summer. I could reluctantly leave, ouch, Shiloh with Evelyn, as I clobbered all these pretenders and filled my bank account.

The next day I designed and had sewn my new costume. I had the bill sent to Max.

Evelyn was more, much more, than willing to take Shiloh on during these off-class excursions. I owed her an explanation and she just laughed and laughed and laughed. We laughed together.

I kept telling Jacob, he missed the boat when he didn’t marry you! You’re a trip!

I hoped that that was a compliment, the trip thing.

So all I have to deal with now is that I am going to leave my heart and soul and tell my heart and soul. All so I can make money. There’s no app for that.

I sat with Max and established a schedule that accommodated spring break and then the summer break.

Maybe you can describe me as some sort of college student who also wrestles as the She Devil.

Yeah right. If you hadn’t gone from asshole to hero in one match. You’re on, baby. You and I will be rich soon.

I didn’t expect rich. I hoped to pay my bills, take care of Shiloh, and possibly pad some savings account.

So it seems reasonable that my match fee should be at least twelve hundred!

One grand! Take it or leave it!

You mean take it or leave it or find another manager, right?

Come on, Tiffany, work with me here. Let’s do some tours. See how the crowds react to your shtick and then we’ll talk.

Okeydokey, one grand per match, three matches per week guaranteed or at least the three grand guaranteed.

Mom said okeydokey a lot,