Dolores DeLuce - My Life, a Four Letter Word: Confessions of a Counter Culture Diva

My Life, A Four-Letter Word

Confessions of a Counter Culture Diva

Dolores DeLuce

Copyright 2013 Dolores DeLuce

All rights reserved.

Double Delinquent Press

www.counterculturediva.com

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for the inclusion of brief quotes in a review.

This book is dedicated to

Viva Marie Vinson, my daughter and the light of my life.

INTRODUCTION

A VIEW

From Planet Couch

I am painfully aware of my lack in this strange new world past middle age where so-called Reality TV has made life cheaper than fast food and where any bimbo can gain fame and fortune for big hair, big mouths, big money, big tits, big families and no talent whatsoever. While Kathy Griffin was building her fortune by living Life on the D List, I was traveling even further down the scale, living my life on the XYZ list: X for X-RATED, Y for Y-BOTHER and Z for ZERO SELF ESTEEM.

I confess to spending long gaps of time wallowing in despair, with the flickering blue light and rays of radiation keeping me alive. Living on Planet Couch with the TV droning in the background didnt exactly breed success, and its embarrassing to admit that if it werent for the relationship I have with my grown daughter Viva today, television would be my only long-term companion.

I own no property, have no significant other and no grandchildren, and yet I defy the tyranny of nagging voices that tell me I didnt live my life right. Perhaps if Id played by the rules, I might have been a credit to my parents and made it big in Hollywood. It was hard to see Johnny Carson retire in 1992 when I was forty-six, knowing I still had not fulfilled my showbiz fantasysitting on his set discussing my latest film or sitcom.

Modern technology has allowed me to never miss a moment of commercial-free TV viewing. With my trigger finger on the fast-forward button of my remote, I can watch an hour-long series in forty-five minutes, or a half-hour sitcom in twenty-two minutes, and feel good about all the time Im not wasting. But theres a problem with any untreated addiction: it only gets worse. I cant imagine living without access to HBO and Showtime. Without television, what would I have to talk about?

Im well aware that my mind, unguarded and poorly lit, is a fragile storage space, and if genes dont lie, I could end up like my motherliving out my twilight years with senile dementia in an Alzheimers ward. The closer I draw to my final act, the more passionate I am to tell about the loves, lies, and lessons that will fill the dash between the dates of my birth and death that must one day appear on my tombstone.

When I turn off the TV long enough to look around my apartment, I notice the warm, peachy light that fills the space Ive lived in for over thirty years. My spacious rent-controlled apartment, now an empty nest, is a stones throw from the Pacific Ocean and the Venice Boardwalk. I smile at the photos in funky frames of me and my beautiful daughter in all the stages of our lives together. And adding to the clutter on every available shelf are the other pictures of my parents and siblings and their offspring, and my close friends, near and gone. I take great pleasure in the mementos that tell a story about who I am and where Ive been.

In my bedroom, better known as the shoe museum, I proudly display thirty pairs of high heelsor, as my friend Philipp likes to call them, my mini-whore hooves. I was the Imelda Marcos of the welfare class. These shoes date from the Twenties to the Nineties and hang on three walls from an inch-thick molding a foot below my ceiling. The fourth wall features vintage platforms. My feet have grown tired of walking in them, but my eyes never tire of the hot pink, orange and fuchsia spikes, polka-dot and yellow-bowed pumps, and the gold-glitter tap shoes, all of which created the illusion I was more than five feet tall.

In my twenties, I was the size of an average fourth grader: four foot nine and three-quarter inches, and I could easily slip into a size-five shoe. Due to post-menopausal shrinkage, Im now an even four foot eight, and can only wear a six wide flat. When I look up at my leopard spring-a-latorsthe ones bought at Fredericks of Hollywood while shopping with Divine for the L.A. premiere of Female Trouble Im flooded with memories. The sight of platforms, the ones with the ornate cut-out Deco heels that my pretend husband Tommy dubbed my Filipino jogging shoes, brings to mind the many nights hed have to push me up the glistening, pre-dawn hills of San Francisco after dancing all night at the disco.

On the ledge are my Sixties black satin opera boots. In another spot rest my punk-rock, black-leather, spiked torture pumpscomplete with bondage locks. My walls also feature two pair of sparkling rhinestone pointy-toed pumps I inherited from Tippy, the only petite drag queen I knew.

When I dust off the Forties open-toe pumps, I recall my performance as the Wacky WAC from Hackensack in the musical Broken Dishes . The star of my shoe collection is the pair of Carmen Miranda six-inch sparkling gold platforms. These show stoppers match the Golden Rays Vegas-style headdress I wore singing mock opera while portraying a sacrificial virgin to the Sun God, who changes her mind about being thrown into a volcano.

Despite all my praying to Saint Clare, the patron saint of television, I lost faith. When I turned thirty, I told myself that if I didnt make it in show business by forty, Id gather up a sufficient stash of barbiturates and quietly check out. By the time I reached forty, I extended this pact even though I knew I could never do that to my daughter. By fifty, after surviving the grief-stricken years through the AIDS holocaust, I started to sum up my net worth by what my heart knows. And now Im still here collecting Social Security and Medicare and thinking: Well, theres still Letterman!

This teenage girl trapped in a post-menopausal body is screaming to get out, so, move over sister hag, Kathy, who sold her memoir for two million; I have some priceless memories to write about too. After all, if Snooky from the Jersey Shore can write a book without having ever read one, my chances look pretty good. And even if my gems hold little interest to the world at large, for me they are precious pebbles collected at lifes edge by the child still alive and kicking within me.

A FALL Preview

Lucille Ball is chanting in my brain. She wont shut up. She keeps asking, Who am I? Where am I? What am I?

Shut up! Im on stage at the Palace, a Chinese movie theatre in San Francisco, and Nixon is still in the White House.

Lucy says, Whos asking?

Im paranoid because Im peaking. I shouldnt have dropped that acid.

Lucy keeps her interrogation up. What am I?

Im an orange Pumpkin with little green legs kicking wildly and the coachman and two dancing mice are pulling me from a cardboard pumpkin patch. Lucy is rolling her eyes at me.

These are the facts and nothing but the facts maam. I tell Lucy like Im the cop on Dragnet .

Its October 1973. A few minutes, or maybe a few hours ago, some stagehands squeezed me into this hollowed-out, orange day-glow beanbag that stretched over my green tights and leotard. I bobby-pinned a bright green curly wig to my head and glued gigantic glitter eyelashes over my eyes. They were flapping against my lids like sails in a windstorm. Then crayons were melting, splattering like rain in an MGM Musical all over my round pumpkin belly. When I put my hand on the beanbag, I remembered that it wasnt completely dry when they put it on me, and it still feels tacky.

The mice and coachman pry me loose and theyre dragging me across the stage. When I look behind me, I notice Im leaving a long, orange skid-mark on the stage floor. That cant be good. I close my eyes and through transparent lids I see a rainbow waterfall. When I open my eyes, I see its a stream of lights spilling off pin spots attached to the beams on the ceiling. No matter how hard I close my lids, the lights keep pouring down like colored rain. The mice finally pull me to my feet, and a blinding white light hits me and now were dancing to a Tchaikovsky overture. I remember all these steps. I did this dance a hundred times during rehearsals. But I didnt have the costume then.